By MARSHA MERCER
Madelyn Dunham was 86 and her grandson, Barack Obama, was running for president when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Doctors said she had six to nine months to live. A few weeks later, she fell and broke her hip, perhaps after a mild stroke.
Doctors offered the dying woman a hip replacement despite her fragile condition, and she agreed. She did well for two weeks following the surgery, then “things fell apart,” Obama said. His grandmother died two days before last November’s election.
The president shared the story at a town hall forum on health-care reform Wednesday to illustrate the tension between the personal feelings and the public policy needs of health-care reform.
Republicans complained that the forum, which was broadcast in prime time on ABC, amounted to an “infomercial” for Obama’s plan, but they needn’t have worried. The forum highlighted key, troubling questions at the heart of the debate: How much medical care is too much and who should decide?
“If somebody told me that my grandmother couldn’t have a hip replacement and she had to lie there in misery in the waning days of her life, that would be pretty upsetting,” Obama said.
But he also conceded that whether such expensive care for the terminally ill is a sustainable model for society is a very difficult question.
“The problem that we have in our current health system is that there is a whole bunch of care that’s being provided that every study, every bit of evidence that we have indicates may not be making us healthier,” he said.
Obama has downplayed changes that reform will bring to people who currently have health insurance. But how specifically will we stem the runaway inflation in health care costs?
Republican critics insist that rationing is inevitable. Obama is beginning to engage people on this issue. He told his story about his grandmother’s final months of life in nearly the same words in an interview in The New York Times magazine in early May.
Since then, he read and recommended to members of Congress Dr. Atul Gawande’s compelling article in the June 1 New Yorker magazine, explaining why expensive health care is not necessarily the best.
A consensus is developing around the idea of scaling back “overtreatment,” which will mean setting limits on medical tests, surgeries, scans and treatments. Obama sent a letter to Senate leaders June 2 saying reform should promote “the best practices, not simply the most expensive.” He praises the Mayo Clinic as an example of high-quality, low-cost care.
Republicans say they too want to cut health-care costs but Obama’s public plan option puts bureaucrats in charge of health decisions.
As Obama’s story about his grandmother demonstrates, overtreatment is something that happens in other people’s families, not ours. Like everyone, Obama wants the best medical care for his family.
At the town hall, Dr. Orrin Devinsky, an epilepsy specialist from New York University, noted that in the past politicians who have tried to reform health care have tried to limit costs by reducing tests and access to specialists, but they haven’t taken their own medicine.
“When they or their family members get sick, they often get extremely expensive evaluations and expert care,” Devinsky said. He tried to get Obama to commit to living within the limits. He asked the president: If a national health plan were in effect and your wife or a daughter became seriously ill, would you pursue private treatment not covered under the plan?
Yes, Obama said, he’d “always want them to get the very best care.”
As a Dukakis moment, Obama passed the humanity test with flying colors. During a presidential candidates’ debate in 1988, the moderator, Bernard Shaw, asked Democratic contender Michael Dukakis if his wife Kitty were raped and murdered, would he favor the death penalty for the murderer?
“No, I don’t,” Dukakis said, “and I think you know that I’ve opposed the death penalty during all my life.”
The answer, while consistent with Dukakis’ views about the death penalty, was shocking. How could he be so cold and bloodless? The episode was a nail in the coffin of the Dukakis presidential bid.
Obama said decisions about care should be guided with input from ethicists and others on an independent commission. But when it was his grandmother, Obama wasn’t worried about the cost. Other people facing such a situation with their grandmas or moms and dads aren’t worried about cost either.
And that’s a problem for Obama and health-care reform.
(Marsha Mercer is an independent columnist writing from Washington. You may contact her at mailto:marsha.mercer@gmail.com)
© 2009 Marsha+ Mercer. All rights reserved.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
A fly in the hand -- June 18, 2009 column
By MARSHA MERCER
Under a headline that read “Bunny Goes Bugs” was a smaller one, “Rabbit Attacks President.”
A reporter could wait his entire career for a story that good, and Brooks Jackson of The Washington Post didn’t waste his moment. Here’s Jackson’s first sentence: “A ‘killer rabbit’ attacked President Carter on a recent trip to Plains, Ga., penetrating Secret Service security and forcing the chief executive to beat back the beast with a canoe paddle.”
Jimmy Carter’s run-in with a varmint while fishing from his boat was the kind of spontaneous, unscripted presidential moment that can crystallize public opinion.
The 1979 “killer rabbit” incident came to symbolize Carter’s weak and ineffectual presidency. The next year, he lost his bid for re-election.
In 1992, President George H.W. Bush’s close encounter with an optical supermarket scanner left him pegged as out of touch with ordinary Americans. Bush, while touring a grocers’ convention, burbled that he was “amazed” by the scanner. Later, the White House tried to clarify the remark, saying that the instrument in question was far more advanced than the ones that had been in everyone’s local supermarket for a dozen years. But the damage was done.
The perception – or misperception – stuck that Bush was clueless about everyday life after spending 11 years cloistered as vice president and president. That November, the voters turned him out.
I was reminded of these quirky, defining moments when President Barack Obama, who has been derided as effete, the kind of guy who orders Dijon mustard on his burger, killed a fly with his bare hands.
Obama happened to be sitting down for an interview at the White House with John Harwood of CNBC, and a camera was rolling for the president’s tour de fly. If ever there’s a time for the word gross, it’s when someone smashes a fly between his hands. Of course, the footage became an instant Internet sensation.
What made the moment memorable beyond the ick factor is that Obama is often relaxed but rarely spontaneous. He’s so careful in image and presentation that he seldom makes remarks without a TelePrompTer.
That’s understandable since his every word is endlessly analyzed and dissected. This president is also engaged in a wider variety of weighty issues than his recent predecessors. This wartime commander in chief is trying to revive the world’s economy, fix the financial markets, tame the housing crisis, rewrite the nation’s health care system and run General Motors. And that’s before breakfast.
Everything about him and his family fascinates people. What kind of man is he? How does he approach the world? Is his famous cool genuine or an act?
Faced with the everyday irritation of a fly, Obama didn’t flutter. He didn’t call for a fly swatter or a butler. He smacked it.
“I got the sucker,” the president declared.
Naturally, reporters asked People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals for a comment. The animal rights’ group said in a blog post, “He isn’t the Buddha. He’s a human being, and human beings have a long way to go before they think before they act.”
Harwood reported that Obama picked up the fallen flier from the rug with a napkin and disposed of the creature, saying he always cleans up after himself. Well, that’s a relief.
Obama is popular and the fly-icide was viewed as a macho display of man against nature, Ninja in the Oval Office. Me? I imagined the fly as a tourist excited to have gotten inside the White House in the first place. Instead of being the proverbial fly on the wall, the insect buzzed around the leader of the free world. Wow. This. Is. So. Cool. Splat.
The storyline on the Web was fun, if predictable. The Caucus blog on nytimes.com reported “Obama Could Hurt a Fly.”
Others commented on the president’s eye-hand coordination and the precision of his strike. Scientists who have studied flies and swatting say what makes killing them so difficult is that their tiny brains process visual information at lightning speed and then act in milliseconds. Now you know.
To be sure, the fly was the least of Obama’s -- or our -- problems. But the incident gave us a brief respite from Iran’s elections, the swine flu pandemic, North Korea’s missiles, global warming and the ballooning federal deficit. And Obama didn’t use a canoe paddle.
marsha.mercer@yahoo.com)
(c) 2009 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
Under a headline that read “Bunny Goes Bugs” was a smaller one, “Rabbit Attacks President.”
A reporter could wait his entire career for a story that good, and Brooks Jackson of The Washington Post didn’t waste his moment. Here’s Jackson’s first sentence: “A ‘killer rabbit’ attacked President Carter on a recent trip to Plains, Ga., penetrating Secret Service security and forcing the chief executive to beat back the beast with a canoe paddle.”
Jimmy Carter’s run-in with a varmint while fishing from his boat was the kind of spontaneous, unscripted presidential moment that can crystallize public opinion.
The 1979 “killer rabbit” incident came to symbolize Carter’s weak and ineffectual presidency. The next year, he lost his bid for re-election.
In 1992, President George H.W. Bush’s close encounter with an optical supermarket scanner left him pegged as out of touch with ordinary Americans. Bush, while touring a grocers’ convention, burbled that he was “amazed” by the scanner. Later, the White House tried to clarify the remark, saying that the instrument in question was far more advanced than the ones that had been in everyone’s local supermarket for a dozen years. But the damage was done.
The perception – or misperception – stuck that Bush was clueless about everyday life after spending 11 years cloistered as vice president and president. That November, the voters turned him out.
I was reminded of these quirky, defining moments when President Barack Obama, who has been derided as effete, the kind of guy who orders Dijon mustard on his burger, killed a fly with his bare hands.
Obama happened to be sitting down for an interview at the White House with John Harwood of CNBC, and a camera was rolling for the president’s tour de fly. If ever there’s a time for the word gross, it’s when someone smashes a fly between his hands. Of course, the footage became an instant Internet sensation.
What made the moment memorable beyond the ick factor is that Obama is often relaxed but rarely spontaneous. He’s so careful in image and presentation that he seldom makes remarks without a TelePrompTer.
That’s understandable since his every word is endlessly analyzed and dissected. This president is also engaged in a wider variety of weighty issues than his recent predecessors. This wartime commander in chief is trying to revive the world’s economy, fix the financial markets, tame the housing crisis, rewrite the nation’s health care system and run General Motors. And that’s before breakfast.
Everything about him and his family fascinates people. What kind of man is he? How does he approach the world? Is his famous cool genuine or an act?
Faced with the everyday irritation of a fly, Obama didn’t flutter. He didn’t call for a fly swatter or a butler. He smacked it.
“I got the sucker,” the president declared.
Naturally, reporters asked People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals for a comment. The animal rights’ group said in a blog post, “He isn’t the Buddha. He’s a human being, and human beings have a long way to go before they think before they act.”
Harwood reported that Obama picked up the fallen flier from the rug with a napkin and disposed of the creature, saying he always cleans up after himself. Well, that’s a relief.
Obama is popular and the fly-icide was viewed as a macho display of man against nature, Ninja in the Oval Office. Me? I imagined the fly as a tourist excited to have gotten inside the White House in the first place. Instead of being the proverbial fly on the wall, the insect buzzed around the leader of the free world. Wow. This. Is. So. Cool. Splat.
The storyline on the Web was fun, if predictable. The Caucus blog on nytimes.com reported “Obama Could Hurt a Fly.”
Others commented on the president’s eye-hand coordination and the precision of his strike. Scientists who have studied flies and swatting say what makes killing them so difficult is that their tiny brains process visual information at lightning speed and then act in milliseconds. Now you know.
To be sure, the fly was the least of Obama’s -- or our -- problems. But the incident gave us a brief respite from Iran’s elections, the swine flu pandemic, North Korea’s missiles, global warming and the ballooning federal deficit. And Obama didn’t use a canoe paddle.
marsha.mercer@yahoo.com)
(c) 2009 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
This is smokin' -- June 11, 2009 column
By MARSHA MERCER
Once or twice during my freshman year in college, my roommate’s father brought me a carton of luxury British cigarettes. Thrilled by the elegant boxes, I smoked the cigarettes with gusto.
Today, that would be like someone’s dad randomly picking wild mushrooms in the woods, carrying them to the dorm and saying, “Here, these look great. They may be deadly, but eat up.”
One thing everybody agrees on in 2009: Cigarettes are poison. Smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States. About 443,000 deaths a year are attributable to cigarette smoking.
While banning cigarettes is not an option in a country where 40 million people are addicted, we have agreed as a society to restrict where people can smoke, to limit cigarette sales and advertising appeals to adults and to post warning labels on cigarette packs. Still, every day about 1,100 kids under 18 become regular—that is, daily—smokers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
And that’s why Congress is poised to give the Food and Drug Administration regulatory power over tobacco. President Barack Obama said he will sign the legislation.
More regulation may not end the problem of teen smoking, but it’s a step. Interestingly, regulation isn’t happening because smoking is on the rise. It’s happening because most Americans don’t smoke, and Big Tobacco’s political clout has waned.
In the late-‘60s to mid-‘70s, the obnoxious “You’ve come a long way, baby” Virginia Slims ads linked a woman’s right to vote with a dubious right to smoke. Such an appeal today would be ludicrous. Nonsmokers demand the right to clean air, and they’re militant for good reason. Many surgeons general have warned about the harmful effects of smoking.
Congressional hearings and lengthy court cases have provided ample evidence that tobacco companies misled smokers for decades. While publicly denying that their products were addictive, the companies were controlling levels of nicotine to hook smokers and keep them hooked.
In 1965, a year after the surgeon general first reported that cigarette smoking caused lung cancer in men and was a “probable cause” of lung cancer in women, more than half the men and one in three women in America smoked. By 2008, only about one in five adults over 18 are smokers. Americans’ relationship with tobacco remains complicated, however.
We’ve segregated smokers, forcing them to engage in their habit in certain areas, yet at the same time, we rely on smokers’ tobacco excise taxes for such worthy causes as health care. Congress passed a 62-cent tobacco tax increase in February to pay for the State Children’s Health Initiative Program. If everybody were to quit smoking, we’d have to find other funding sources.
Regulation has been a long time coming. In 1994, David Kessler, then commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, claimed jurisdiction to regulate tobacco as a drug through nicotine’s addictive properties, but the Supreme Court ruled that Congress had not intended to put tobacco under FDA control.
The new measure would mean stronger warnings, FDA oversight of cigarette ingredients and ads and such health-related claims as “light” and “mild.” The legislation doesn’t ban nicotine or menthol. Tobacco companies will pay fees based on their market share to cover regulatory costs.
Some in the health community worry that the bill doesn’t go far enough. It’s troubling that tobacco giant Philip Morris helped write the measure and backs it. Other tobacco companies oppose it, saying it’s structured to give Philip Morris a permanent business advantage by limiting competition. But it’s a sign of how far we’ve come that usually anti-regulation Republicans back tobacco regulation.
Here’s Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, on the Senate floor: “One might ask, as a conservative: Why would one support more regulation rather than less? Well, because of this split personality the federal government has in dealing with tobacco – recognizing it is a deadly drug, recognizing marketing often targets the most vulnerable among us, and recognizing the fact that it kills so many people and increases our health care costs not only in Medicare but in Medicaid…”
Why not just ban cigarettes? “We all know that is a slippery slope for the individual choices we make,” Cornyn said. “If we were to ban tobacco, we might as well ban fatty food; we might as well ban alcohol. Obviously, the government would become essentially the dictator of what people could and could not do and consume, and I don’t think the American people would tolerate it…”
Despite all the education about the dangers of smoking, lung cancer kills more women than any other form of cancer, including breast cancer.
I finally quit smoking for good circa 1995. No ad or cool British packaging could tempt me now.
My friend Laurie wasn’t so lucky. She and I both loved smoking, and we puffed through many a late-night dorm discussion of poetry and politics. Lung cancer claimed her at 52.
Today, when I see a smoker, I see someone who just hasn’t quit yet.
(c) 2009 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
Once or twice during my freshman year in college, my roommate’s father brought me a carton of luxury British cigarettes. Thrilled by the elegant boxes, I smoked the cigarettes with gusto.
Today, that would be like someone’s dad randomly picking wild mushrooms in the woods, carrying them to the dorm and saying, “Here, these look great. They may be deadly, but eat up.”
One thing everybody agrees on in 2009: Cigarettes are poison. Smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States. About 443,000 deaths a year are attributable to cigarette smoking.
While banning cigarettes is not an option in a country where 40 million people are addicted, we have agreed as a society to restrict where people can smoke, to limit cigarette sales and advertising appeals to adults and to post warning labels on cigarette packs. Still, every day about 1,100 kids under 18 become regular—that is, daily—smokers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
And that’s why Congress is poised to give the Food and Drug Administration regulatory power over tobacco. President Barack Obama said he will sign the legislation.
More regulation may not end the problem of teen smoking, but it’s a step. Interestingly, regulation isn’t happening because smoking is on the rise. It’s happening because most Americans don’t smoke, and Big Tobacco’s political clout has waned.
In the late-‘60s to mid-‘70s, the obnoxious “You’ve come a long way, baby” Virginia Slims ads linked a woman’s right to vote with a dubious right to smoke. Such an appeal today would be ludicrous. Nonsmokers demand the right to clean air, and they’re militant for good reason. Many surgeons general have warned about the harmful effects of smoking.
Congressional hearings and lengthy court cases have provided ample evidence that tobacco companies misled smokers for decades. While publicly denying that their products were addictive, the companies were controlling levels of nicotine to hook smokers and keep them hooked.
In 1965, a year after the surgeon general first reported that cigarette smoking caused lung cancer in men and was a “probable cause” of lung cancer in women, more than half the men and one in three women in America smoked. By 2008, only about one in five adults over 18 are smokers. Americans’ relationship with tobacco remains complicated, however.
We’ve segregated smokers, forcing them to engage in their habit in certain areas, yet at the same time, we rely on smokers’ tobacco excise taxes for such worthy causes as health care. Congress passed a 62-cent tobacco tax increase in February to pay for the State Children’s Health Initiative Program. If everybody were to quit smoking, we’d have to find other funding sources.
Regulation has been a long time coming. In 1994, David Kessler, then commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, claimed jurisdiction to regulate tobacco as a drug through nicotine’s addictive properties, but the Supreme Court ruled that Congress had not intended to put tobacco under FDA control.
The new measure would mean stronger warnings, FDA oversight of cigarette ingredients and ads and such health-related claims as “light” and “mild.” The legislation doesn’t ban nicotine or menthol. Tobacco companies will pay fees based on their market share to cover regulatory costs.
Some in the health community worry that the bill doesn’t go far enough. It’s troubling that tobacco giant Philip Morris helped write the measure and backs it. Other tobacco companies oppose it, saying it’s structured to give Philip Morris a permanent business advantage by limiting competition. But it’s a sign of how far we’ve come that usually anti-regulation Republicans back tobacco regulation.
Here’s Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, on the Senate floor: “One might ask, as a conservative: Why would one support more regulation rather than less? Well, because of this split personality the federal government has in dealing with tobacco – recognizing it is a deadly drug, recognizing marketing often targets the most vulnerable among us, and recognizing the fact that it kills so many people and increases our health care costs not only in Medicare but in Medicaid…”
Why not just ban cigarettes? “We all know that is a slippery slope for the individual choices we make,” Cornyn said. “If we were to ban tobacco, we might as well ban fatty food; we might as well ban alcohol. Obviously, the government would become essentially the dictator of what people could and could not do and consume, and I don’t think the American people would tolerate it…”
Despite all the education about the dangers of smoking, lung cancer kills more women than any other form of cancer, including breast cancer.
I finally quit smoking for good circa 1995. No ad or cool British packaging could tempt me now.
My friend Laurie wasn’t so lucky. She and I both loved smoking, and we puffed through many a late-night dorm discussion of poetry and politics. Lung cancer claimed her at 52.
Today, when I see a smoker, I see someone who just hasn’t quit yet.
(c) 2009 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
This is smokin' -- June 11, 2009 Column
Thursday, June 11, 2009 at 10:18am Edit Note Delete
By MARSHA MERCER
Once or twice during my freshman year in college, my roommate’s father brought me a carton of luxury British cigarettes. Thrilled by the elegant boxes, I smoked the cigarettes with gusto.
Today, that would be like someone’s dad randomly picking wild mushrooms in the woods, carrying them to the dorm and saying, “Here, these look great. They may be deadly, but eat up.”
One thing everybody agrees on in 2009: Cigarettes are poison. Smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States. About 443,000 deaths a year are attributable to cigarette smoking.
While banning cigarettes is not an option in a country where 40 million people are addicted, we have agreed as a society to restrict where people can smoke, to limit cigarette sales and advertising appeals to adults and to post warning labels on cigarette packs.
Still, about 1,100 kids under 18 become regular—that is, daily—smokers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And that’s why Congress is poised to give the Food and Drug Administration regulatory power over tobacco. President Barack Obama likely will sign the legislation.
More regulation may not end the problem of teen smoking, but it’s a step. Interestingly, regulation isn’t happening because smoking is on the rise.
It’s happening because most Americans don’t smoke, and Big Tobacco’s political clout has waned. In the late-‘60s to mid-‘70s, the obnoxious
“You’ve come a long way, baby” Virginia Slims ads linked a woman’s right to vote with a dubious right to smoke. Such an appeal today would be ludicrous. Nonsmokers demand the right to clean air, and they’re militant for good reason. Many surgeons general have warned about the harmful effects of smoking.
Congressional hearings and lengthy court cases have provided ample evidence that tobacco companies misled smokers for decades. While publicly denying that their products were addictive, the companies were controlling levels of nicotine to hook smokers and keep them hooked.
In 1965, a year after the surgeon general first reported that cigarette smoking caused lung cancer in men and was a “probable cause” of lung cancer in women, more than half the men and one in three women in America smoked. By 2008, only about one in five adults over 18 are smokers.
Americans’ relationship with tobacco remains complicated, however. We’ve segregated smokers, forcing them to engage in their habit in certain areas, yet at the same time, we rely on smokers’ tobacco excise taxes for such worthy causes as health care. Congress passed a 62-cent tobacco tax increase in February to pay for the State Children’s Health Initiative Program.
If everybody were to quit smoking, we’d have to find other funding sources.
Regulation has been a long time coming. In 1994, David Kessler, then commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, claimed jurisdiction to regulate tobacco as a drug through nicotine’s addictive properties, but the Supreme Court ruled that Congress had not intended to put tobacco under FDA control.
The new measure would mean stronger warnings, FDA oversight of cigarette ingredients and ads and such health-related claims as “light” and “mild.” The legislation doesn’t ban nicotine or menthol. Tobacco companies will pay fees based on their market share to cover regulatory costs.
Some in the health community worry that the bill doesn’t go far enough. It’s troubling that tobacco giant Philip Morris helped write the measure and backs it. Other tobacco companies oppose it, saying it’s structured to give Philip Morris a permanent business advantage by limiting competition.
But it’s a sign of how far we’ve come that usually anti-regulation Republicans back tobacco regulation. Here’s Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, on the Senate floor:
“One might ask, as a conservative: Why would one support more regulation rather than less? Well, because of this split personality the federal government has in dealing with tobacco – recognizing it is a deadly drug, recognizing marketing often targets the most vulnerable among us, and recognizing the fact that it kills so many people and increases our health care costs not only in Medicare but in Medicaid…”
Why not just ban cigarettes? “We all know that is a slippery slope for the individual choices we make,” Cornyn said. “If we were to ban tobacco, we might as well ban fatty food; we might as well ban alcohol. Obviously, the government would become essentially the dictator of what people could and could not do and consume, and I don’t think the American people would tolerate it…”
Despite all the education about the dangers of smoking, lung cancer kills more women than any other form of cancer, including breast cancer.
I finally quit smoking for good circa 1995. No ad or cool British packaging could tempt me now.
My friend Laurie wasn’t so lucky. She and I both loved smoking, and we puffed through many a late-night dorm discussion of poetry and politics. Lung cancer claimed her at 52.
Today, when I see a smoker, I see someone who just hasn’t quit yet.
(c) 2009 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
By MARSHA MERCER
Once or twice during my freshman year in college, my roommate’s father brought me a carton of luxury British cigarettes. Thrilled by the elegant boxes, I smoked the cigarettes with gusto.
Today, that would be like someone’s dad randomly picking wild mushrooms in the woods, carrying them to the dorm and saying, “Here, these look great. They may be deadly, but eat up.”
One thing everybody agrees on in 2009: Cigarettes are poison. Smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States. About 443,000 deaths a year are attributable to cigarette smoking.
While banning cigarettes is not an option in a country where 40 million people are addicted, we have agreed as a society to restrict where people can smoke, to limit cigarette sales and advertising appeals to adults and to post warning labels on cigarette packs.
Still, about 1,100 kids under 18 become regular—that is, daily—smokers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And that’s why Congress is poised to give the Food and Drug Administration regulatory power over tobacco. President Barack Obama likely will sign the legislation.
More regulation may not end the problem of teen smoking, but it’s a step. Interestingly, regulation isn’t happening because smoking is on the rise.
It’s happening because most Americans don’t smoke, and Big Tobacco’s political clout has waned. In the late-‘60s to mid-‘70s, the obnoxious
“You’ve come a long way, baby” Virginia Slims ads linked a woman’s right to vote with a dubious right to smoke. Such an appeal today would be ludicrous. Nonsmokers demand the right to clean air, and they’re militant for good reason. Many surgeons general have warned about the harmful effects of smoking.
Congressional hearings and lengthy court cases have provided ample evidence that tobacco companies misled smokers for decades. While publicly denying that their products were addictive, the companies were controlling levels of nicotine to hook smokers and keep them hooked.
In 1965, a year after the surgeon general first reported that cigarette smoking caused lung cancer in men and was a “probable cause” of lung cancer in women, more than half the men and one in three women in America smoked. By 2008, only about one in five adults over 18 are smokers.
Americans’ relationship with tobacco remains complicated, however. We’ve segregated smokers, forcing them to engage in their habit in certain areas, yet at the same time, we rely on smokers’ tobacco excise taxes for such worthy causes as health care. Congress passed a 62-cent tobacco tax increase in February to pay for the State Children’s Health Initiative Program.
If everybody were to quit smoking, we’d have to find other funding sources.
Regulation has been a long time coming. In 1994, David Kessler, then commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, claimed jurisdiction to regulate tobacco as a drug through nicotine’s addictive properties, but the Supreme Court ruled that Congress had not intended to put tobacco under FDA control.
The new measure would mean stronger warnings, FDA oversight of cigarette ingredients and ads and such health-related claims as “light” and “mild.” The legislation doesn’t ban nicotine or menthol. Tobacco companies will pay fees based on their market share to cover regulatory costs.
Some in the health community worry that the bill doesn’t go far enough. It’s troubling that tobacco giant Philip Morris helped write the measure and backs it. Other tobacco companies oppose it, saying it’s structured to give Philip Morris a permanent business advantage by limiting competition.
But it’s a sign of how far we’ve come that usually anti-regulation Republicans back tobacco regulation. Here’s Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, on the Senate floor:
“One might ask, as a conservative: Why would one support more regulation rather than less? Well, because of this split personality the federal government has in dealing with tobacco – recognizing it is a deadly drug, recognizing marketing often targets the most vulnerable among us, and recognizing the fact that it kills so many people and increases our health care costs not only in Medicare but in Medicaid…”
Why not just ban cigarettes? “We all know that is a slippery slope for the individual choices we make,” Cornyn said. “If we were to ban tobacco, we might as well ban fatty food; we might as well ban alcohol. Obviously, the government would become essentially the dictator of what people could and could not do and consume, and I don’t think the American people would tolerate it…”
Despite all the education about the dangers of smoking, lung cancer kills more women than any other form of cancer, including breast cancer.
I finally quit smoking for good circa 1995. No ad or cool British packaging could tempt me now.
My friend Laurie wasn’t so lucky. She and I both loved smoking, and we puffed through many a late-night dorm discussion of poetry and politics. Lung cancer claimed her at 52.
Today, when I see a smoker, I see someone who just hasn’t quit yet.
(c) 2009 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
Hummer sale signals shift in how America drives -- June 4, 2009 column
By MARSHA MERCER
On Tuesday, the day after it declared bankruptcy, General Motors announced a tentative agreement to sell the Hummer brand to the Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company of China. It’s the end of an era.
Nothing said American excess at the end of the 20th Century like the first Hummers, cousins of the military Humvees used in the Persian Gulf war.
Hummer was a celebrity’s tank. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger persuaded Humvee-manufacturer A.M. General to make a civilian version, introduced in 1992. Hummer embodied the freedom to go wherever whenever at whatever price, financial or environmental.
The patriotic behemoth could climb 22-inch walls and ford 30 inches of water. It was also a polluting machine that cost about $100,000 each.
General Motors bought rights to the Hummer brand in 1999 and brought out a family of smaller Hummers, offering more people the power to conquer the open spaces of America. No matter if those spaces were just in the parking lot at Wal-Mart.
Hummer was a rolling declaration of red-blooded American independence. It marketed itself as the solution to being intimidated. In a TV ad circa 2006, a man in the grocery line buying tofu feels inferior to a guy loading up on slabs of beef for a barbecue. Inferior man hurries to the Hummer dealer and, what else, buys a tank.
“Reclaim your manhood” was the ad’s parodic tag line until Hummer changed it to “Restore the balance.”
In another ad, a mom snubbed on the playground with her kid rushes to the Hummer dealer to “Get your girl on,” whatever that means.
Hummer’s message: Don’t mess with me. Texas was the Hummer’s biggest market.
It’s all so “bring ‘em on” last administration, so pre-economic meltdown, so anti-green. The appeal of driving a tank waned when gas hit $4 a gallon. Sales of Hummers reportedly dropped by half last year, and slumped this year.
The Hummer sale will mark China’s entry into auto-making in the United States. The chief of Tengzhong said in a statement, Hummer “is synonymous with adventure, freedom and exhilaration and we plan to continue that heritage by investing in the business.” Hummers will still be sold here, but the plan is to market the vehicle more widely in China, Russia and the Middle East.
Like the once-inconceivable bankruptcy of GM and President Barack Obama’s decision to plow $30 billion into the company and take a 60 percent stake, the sale of Hummer is another sign of major change in the auto industry.
GM is downsizing, selling off Saab and Saturn and pulling the plug on Pontiac next year. GM will be leaner and, one hopes, after the infusion of so much taxpayer money, a survivor. Rival Chrysler is also getting a makeover as it emerges from bankruptcy.
One bright spot: General Motors said the Hummer agreement will save 3,000 American jobs as workers in Shreveport, La., continue to assemble the Hummer H3 and H3T through 2010.
Announcing the government’s plan for GM, Obama noted that 400,000 jobs in the auto industry were lost before the restructuring began.
“I will not pretend the hard times are over,” Obama said. “Difficult days lie ahead. More jobs will be lost. More plants will close. More dealerships will shut their doors, and so will many parts suppliers.”
Beyond where we work, how and what America drives is changing. Muscle cars and gas guzzlers are on the way out. Obama is mandating that cars and trucks average 35.5 mpg by 2016, up from 25.3 mpg now.
A “cash for clunkers” bill making its way through Congress would give people a voucher up to $4,500 to turn in their guzzler and purchase a new car that gets at least 22 mgp or a pickup or sport utility vehicle that gets 18 mpg.
For the record, Hummer isn’t the worst gas guzzler on the roads. It didn’t even make the Energy Department’s latest list of least fuel-efficient SUVs. That distinction went to another military-inspired vehicle. The Jeep Grand Cherokee with four-wheel drive gets 11 mpg in the city and 14 mpg on the highway.
In Europeans cities, parked cars look like puppies huddled next to each other for warmth. That’s not the American way, and it may never be. But more changes are coming.
On Tuesday, Schwarzenegger test-drove a plug-in hybrid Hummer H3 that gets 100 mpg. He’s a fan.
© 2009 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
On Tuesday, the day after it declared bankruptcy, General Motors announced a tentative agreement to sell the Hummer brand to the Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company of China. It’s the end of an era.
Nothing said American excess at the end of the 20th Century like the first Hummers, cousins of the military Humvees used in the Persian Gulf war.
Hummer was a celebrity’s tank. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger persuaded Humvee-manufacturer A.M. General to make a civilian version, introduced in 1992. Hummer embodied the freedom to go wherever whenever at whatever price, financial or environmental.
The patriotic behemoth could climb 22-inch walls and ford 30 inches of water. It was also a polluting machine that cost about $100,000 each.
General Motors bought rights to the Hummer brand in 1999 and brought out a family of smaller Hummers, offering more people the power to conquer the open spaces of America. No matter if those spaces were just in the parking lot at Wal-Mart.
Hummer was a rolling declaration of red-blooded American independence. It marketed itself as the solution to being intimidated. In a TV ad circa 2006, a man in the grocery line buying tofu feels inferior to a guy loading up on slabs of beef for a barbecue. Inferior man hurries to the Hummer dealer and, what else, buys a tank.
“Reclaim your manhood” was the ad’s parodic tag line until Hummer changed it to “Restore the balance.”
In another ad, a mom snubbed on the playground with her kid rushes to the Hummer dealer to “Get your girl on,” whatever that means.
Hummer’s message: Don’t mess with me. Texas was the Hummer’s biggest market.
It’s all so “bring ‘em on” last administration, so pre-economic meltdown, so anti-green. The appeal of driving a tank waned when gas hit $4 a gallon. Sales of Hummers reportedly dropped by half last year, and slumped this year.
The Hummer sale will mark China’s entry into auto-making in the United States. The chief of Tengzhong said in a statement, Hummer “is synonymous with adventure, freedom and exhilaration and we plan to continue that heritage by investing in the business.” Hummers will still be sold here, but the plan is to market the vehicle more widely in China, Russia and the Middle East.
Like the once-inconceivable bankruptcy of GM and President Barack Obama’s decision to plow $30 billion into the company and take a 60 percent stake, the sale of Hummer is another sign of major change in the auto industry.
GM is downsizing, selling off Saab and Saturn and pulling the plug on Pontiac next year. GM will be leaner and, one hopes, after the infusion of so much taxpayer money, a survivor. Rival Chrysler is also getting a makeover as it emerges from bankruptcy.
One bright spot: General Motors said the Hummer agreement will save 3,000 American jobs as workers in Shreveport, La., continue to assemble the Hummer H3 and H3T through 2010.
Announcing the government’s plan for GM, Obama noted that 400,000 jobs in the auto industry were lost before the restructuring began.
“I will not pretend the hard times are over,” Obama said. “Difficult days lie ahead. More jobs will be lost. More plants will close. More dealerships will shut their doors, and so will many parts suppliers.”
Beyond where we work, how and what America drives is changing. Muscle cars and gas guzzlers are on the way out. Obama is mandating that cars and trucks average 35.5 mpg by 2016, up from 25.3 mpg now.
A “cash for clunkers” bill making its way through Congress would give people a voucher up to $4,500 to turn in their guzzler and purchase a new car that gets at least 22 mgp or a pickup or sport utility vehicle that gets 18 mpg.
For the record, Hummer isn’t the worst gas guzzler on the roads. It didn’t even make the Energy Department’s latest list of least fuel-efficient SUVs. That distinction went to another military-inspired vehicle. The Jeep Grand Cherokee with four-wheel drive gets 11 mpg in the city and 14 mpg on the highway.
In Europeans cities, parked cars look like puppies huddled next to each other for warmth. That’s not the American way, and it may never be. But more changes are coming.
On Tuesday, Schwarzenegger test-drove a plug-in hybrid Hummer H3 that gets 100 mpg. He’s a fan.
© 2009 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
A Latina judge's salad days -- May 28, 2009 column
By MARSHA MERCER
President Barack Obama’s choice of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court illuminates a cultural divide in how Americans see their country in the 21st Century. Is it – and should it be -- a melting pot or a salad bowl?
In earlier centuries, Americans embraced the melting pot in which immigrants assimilated and shed their ethnic uniqueness. The salad bowl theory prizes diversity and multiculturalism and has led to wider use of Spanish and other languages besides English in daily life.
The melting pot-salad bowl divide affects how people react to Sotomayor and her comment about a wise Latina making better decisions than a white man. Her 2001 lecture at Berkeley was titled “A Latina Judge’s Voice.” In it, she talked about the ``tension between `the melting pot and the salad bowl.’”
“America has a deeply confused image of itself that is in perpetual tension,” she said.
“We are a nation that takes pride in our ethnic diversity, recognizing its importance in shaping our society and in adding richness to its existence. Yet, we simultaneously insist that we can and must function and live in a race and color-blind way that ignore(s) these very differences that in other contexts we laud,” she said. The speech was published in the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal in 2002.
Sotomayor questions whether even judges can set aside their past experiences and be entirely impartial.
“Our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions. The aspiration to impartiality is just that – it’s an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experience making different choices than others,” she said.
Critics say such comments show Sotomayor lacks the proper judicial temperament. Barring more explosive news, though, she’s likely to be confirmed. Court-watchers say that her presence on the court replacing Justice David Souter is unlikely to change the typical 5-4 voting patterns.
Obama, no stranger to the power of the multicultural personal story, has wisely avoided choosing either the melting pot or the salad bowl. He speaks about his Muslim, Christian, Kenyan and Kansan heritage without indicating which might be superior.
He made Sotomayor’s multiculturalism a key factor in her selection, saying he looked for someone with more than a mastery of the law and a belief the judge’s proper role is to interpret the law. He touted Sotomayor’s American dream saga: daughter of Puerto Rican parents who grew up in South Bronx public housing projects and worked hard to succeed at Princeton and Yale.
At Berkeley, Sotomayor was playing to her largely Latino audience when she talked about “my Latina identity and the influence I perceive it has on my presence on the bench.” She cited her love of such Latin culinary favorites as pigs’ feet with brains and her fondness for Spanish love songs and entertainment.
It was in that context that she disagreed with then-Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s view that a wise old woman and a wise old man in time would reach the same conclusions in deciding cases.
“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion that a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” Sotomayor said.
Her critics argue that Sotomayor’s feelings as a Latina should play no part in her judicial philosophy, just as gender supposedly makes no difference.
And yet, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told the Associated Press in 2007, a year after O’Connor retired, that she and O’Connor “have had the experience of growing up women and we have certain sensitivities that our male colleagues lack.”
Last month, when the court took up the case of a 13-year-old girl who was strip-searched at school, Ginsburg said of her colleagues, “They have never been a 13-year-old girl …I didn’t think that my colleagues, some of them, quite understood,” Joan Biscupic of USA Today reported.
Sotomayor will have the opportunity during her confirmation hearings to talk more about the “wise Latina” and other remarks.
It’s worth noting that at Berkeley Sotomayor recognized that white male justices had done much to end discrimination.
“We should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable.”
As for her, “Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see…I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.”
Salad, anyone?
(Marsha Mercer is an independent columnist writing from Washington. You can contact her at marsha.mercer@yahoo.com)
© 2009 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30
President Barack Obama’s choice of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court illuminates a cultural divide in how Americans see their country in the 21st Century. Is it – and should it be -- a melting pot or a salad bowl?
In earlier centuries, Americans embraced the melting pot in which immigrants assimilated and shed their ethnic uniqueness. The salad bowl theory prizes diversity and multiculturalism and has led to wider use of Spanish and other languages besides English in daily life.
The melting pot-salad bowl divide affects how people react to Sotomayor and her comment about a wise Latina making better decisions than a white man. Her 2001 lecture at Berkeley was titled “A Latina Judge’s Voice.” In it, she talked about the ``tension between `the melting pot and the salad bowl.’”
“America has a deeply confused image of itself that is in perpetual tension,” she said.
“We are a nation that takes pride in our ethnic diversity, recognizing its importance in shaping our society and in adding richness to its existence. Yet, we simultaneously insist that we can and must function and live in a race and color-blind way that ignore(s) these very differences that in other contexts we laud,” she said. The speech was published in the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal in 2002.
Sotomayor questions whether even judges can set aside their past experiences and be entirely impartial.
“Our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions. The aspiration to impartiality is just that – it’s an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experience making different choices than others,” she said.
Critics say such comments show Sotomayor lacks the proper judicial temperament. Barring more explosive news, though, she’s likely to be confirmed. Court-watchers say that her presence on the court replacing Justice David Souter is unlikely to change the typical 5-4 voting patterns.
Obama, no stranger to the power of the multicultural personal story, has wisely avoided choosing either the melting pot or the salad bowl. He speaks about his Muslim, Christian, Kenyan and Kansan heritage without indicating which might be superior.
He made Sotomayor’s multiculturalism a key factor in her selection, saying he looked for someone with more than a mastery of the law and a belief the judge’s proper role is to interpret the law. He touted Sotomayor’s American dream saga: daughter of Puerto Rican parents who grew up in South Bronx public housing projects and worked hard to succeed at Princeton and Yale.
At Berkeley, Sotomayor was playing to her largely Latino audience when she talked about “my Latina identity and the influence I perceive it has on my presence on the bench.” She cited her love of such Latin culinary favorites as pigs’ feet with brains and her fondness for Spanish love songs and entertainment.
It was in that context that she disagreed with then-Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s view that a wise old woman and a wise old man in time would reach the same conclusions in deciding cases.
“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion that a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” Sotomayor said.
Her critics argue that Sotomayor’s feelings as a Latina should play no part in her judicial philosophy, just as gender supposedly makes no difference.
And yet, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told the Associated Press in 2007, a year after O’Connor retired, that she and O’Connor “have had the experience of growing up women and we have certain sensitivities that our male colleagues lack.”
Last month, when the court took up the case of a 13-year-old girl who was strip-searched at school, Ginsburg said of her colleagues, “They have never been a 13-year-old girl …I didn’t think that my colleagues, some of them, quite understood,” Joan Biscupic of USA Today reported.
Sotomayor will have the opportunity during her confirmation hearings to talk more about the “wise Latina” and other remarks.
It’s worth noting that at Berkeley Sotomayor recognized that white male justices had done much to end discrimination.
“We should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable.”
As for her, “Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see…I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.”
Salad, anyone?
(Marsha Mercer is an independent columnist writing from Washington. You can contact her at marsha.mercer@yahoo.com)
© 2009 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30
On the politics of saying no to the jobless -- May 21, 2009 column
By MARSHA MERCER
“How’s it going?” I asked the harried checkout clerk at a grocery store in Northern Virginia.
“Two days ‘til payday!” he said.
Lowering his voice and still scanning items, he added, “I have to work two part-time jobs just to pay my bills. They say the unemployment rate is, what, about 9 percent? Well, I bet it’s really at least 12 or 13.”
The supermarket economist was onto something. The official unemployment rate in April was 8.9 percent but that tells only part of the story. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also surveys households for an unofficial employment rate that includes discouraged workers who have stopped looking because they think no jobs are available and part-time workers who want a full-time job, like the guy at the grocery store. That rate was 15.4 percent in April.
In all, about 13.7 million people were officially unemployed in April, and another 2.1 million were what the government calls “marginally attached to the labor force.” That’s a lot of potential votes, a point that some Southern politicians seem to be missing.
Rising unemployment makes the case for a government safety net – food stamps, unemployment insurance and Medicaid. These payments have the added benefit of juicing the economy, as people tend to spend them quickly. By contrast, stimulus spending for education and other measures reap benefits in the longer term.
Critics complained that President Barack Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus package was short on immediate stimulus, but the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act did contain $7 billion to expand unemployment programs to reach another half million people. States can choose among several options to expand eligibility.
They can provide benefits to people seeking part-time work, to those who are jobless because of domestic violence or relocation due to a spouse’s job or to those who have already exhausted unemployment benefits and are enrolled in approved training programs.
It seems counterintuitive that politicians would refuse money to help the unemployed get back on their feet, but several Republican governors -- of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas -- rejected the stimulus for unemployment benefits. Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska first said she wouldn’t take it but later reconsidered.
The argument against the federal largesse is part states’ rights and part taxes. Opponents of the unemployment stimulus provision say states would lose control over eligibility and would be forced later to raise taxes on all businesses to continue the expanded program.
States are also wary of entitlement creep. States already devote about 21 percent of their budgets to food stamps, Medicaid and unemployment benefits, according to the National Governors Association.
Gov. Bob Riley of Alabama said the $66 million in stimulus for unemployment benefits would run out in about four years, forcing Alabama to raise taxes on all employers to the tune of $17 million a year.
“Congress has tucked this job-killing tax increase inside the stimulus and that’s something Alabama should not be forced by the federal government to accept,” Riley said. Efforts in the state legislature to go around Riley have stalled.
North Carolina, where unemployment has risen to the highest levels in 25 years, is on track to receive $205 million for unemployment expansion.
Virginia’s Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine wanted the $125 million in unemployment stimulus for his state, but the legislature said no, citing the prospect of higher taxes.
The people making these decisions all have jobs, but voters will decide whether to let them keep them.
The first voters to make the judgment are in Virginia, which will elect a new governor in November.
In Virginia, all three Democratic gubernatorial candidates competing in a primary June 9 say they would have accepted the unemployment stimulus. The Republican candidate, former state attorney general Bob McDonnell, approves of the General Assembly’s decision. His spokesman said McDonnell believes the unemployment expansion money is an “expensive unfunded mandate.”
Common Sense Virginia, a group financed by the Democratic Governors Association, is running TV ads against McDonnell. In one, an unemployed man named Stephen Bishop of Christiansburg says McDonnell turned his back on unemployed Virginians.
“Now he wants to be governor? No way,” Bishop declares.
But this is May. Much depends on where the economy is and whether guys working two jobs have time to vote in November.
(Marsha Mercer is an independent columnist writing from Washington. You can contact her at marsha.mercer@yahoo.com)
© 2009 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
“How’s it going?” I asked the harried checkout clerk at a grocery store in Northern Virginia.
“Two days ‘til payday!” he said.
Lowering his voice and still scanning items, he added, “I have to work two part-time jobs just to pay my bills. They say the unemployment rate is, what, about 9 percent? Well, I bet it’s really at least 12 or 13.”
The supermarket economist was onto something. The official unemployment rate in April was 8.9 percent but that tells only part of the story. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also surveys households for an unofficial employment rate that includes discouraged workers who have stopped looking because they think no jobs are available and part-time workers who want a full-time job, like the guy at the grocery store. That rate was 15.4 percent in April.
In all, about 13.7 million people were officially unemployed in April, and another 2.1 million were what the government calls “marginally attached to the labor force.” That’s a lot of potential votes, a point that some Southern politicians seem to be missing.
Rising unemployment makes the case for a government safety net – food stamps, unemployment insurance and Medicaid. These payments have the added benefit of juicing the economy, as people tend to spend them quickly. By contrast, stimulus spending for education and other measures reap benefits in the longer term.
Critics complained that President Barack Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus package was short on immediate stimulus, but the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act did contain $7 billion to expand unemployment programs to reach another half million people. States can choose among several options to expand eligibility.
They can provide benefits to people seeking part-time work, to those who are jobless because of domestic violence or relocation due to a spouse’s job or to those who have already exhausted unemployment benefits and are enrolled in approved training programs.
It seems counterintuitive that politicians would refuse money to help the unemployed get back on their feet, but several Republican governors -- of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas -- rejected the stimulus for unemployment benefits. Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska first said she wouldn’t take it but later reconsidered.
The argument against the federal largesse is part states’ rights and part taxes. Opponents of the unemployment stimulus provision say states would lose control over eligibility and would be forced later to raise taxes on all businesses to continue the expanded program.
States are also wary of entitlement creep. States already devote about 21 percent of their budgets to food stamps, Medicaid and unemployment benefits, according to the National Governors Association.
Gov. Bob Riley of Alabama said the $66 million in stimulus for unemployment benefits would run out in about four years, forcing Alabama to raise taxes on all employers to the tune of $17 million a year.
“Congress has tucked this job-killing tax increase inside the stimulus and that’s something Alabama should not be forced by the federal government to accept,” Riley said. Efforts in the state legislature to go around Riley have stalled.
North Carolina, where unemployment has risen to the highest levels in 25 years, is on track to receive $205 million for unemployment expansion.
Virginia’s Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine wanted the $125 million in unemployment stimulus for his state, but the legislature said no, citing the prospect of higher taxes.
The people making these decisions all have jobs, but voters will decide whether to let them keep them.
The first voters to make the judgment are in Virginia, which will elect a new governor in November.
In Virginia, all three Democratic gubernatorial candidates competing in a primary June 9 say they would have accepted the unemployment stimulus. The Republican candidate, former state attorney general Bob McDonnell, approves of the General Assembly’s decision. His spokesman said McDonnell believes the unemployment expansion money is an “expensive unfunded mandate.”
Common Sense Virginia, a group financed by the Democratic Governors Association, is running TV ads against McDonnell. In one, an unemployed man named Stephen Bishop of Christiansburg says McDonnell turned his back on unemployed Virginians.
“Now he wants to be governor? No way,” Bishop declares.
But this is May. Much depends on where the economy is and whether guys working two jobs have time to vote in November.
(Marsha Mercer is an independent columnist writing from Washington. You can contact her at marsha.mercer@yahoo.com)
© 2009 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
Sacrifice for health care reform -- Who us? -- May 14, 2009 Column
By MARSHA MERCER
Last year, Americans voted for health-care reform. Are they now willing to roll up their sleeves and give some blood for the cause?
President Barack Obama says the stars are aligned to pass sweeping reform this year. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promises to bring a bill to the floor in July. A coalition of industry and labor groups pledges to cut health-care costs by $2 trillion over the next decade.
And yet, when Obama and Pelosi stood outside the White House to cheer coming action on Capitol Hill, House Republicans and senators of both parties were conspicuously absent. Nor have details materialized on how the coalition will cut health-care costs.
As Obama says, “there’s no silver bullet.” For reform to become a reality, everybody will need to give up something. Ah, sacrifice -- always easier in the abstract.
The cost of health-care reform is estimated between $1.2 trillion and $1.5 trillion over 10 years – and the Obama administration has identified ways to pay about half that amount.
While changing Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement formulas and finding waste, fraud and abuse may yield some money, it’s likely the government also will penalize certain behaviors. One idea is to raise federal excise taxes on alcohol and tobacco products. And levy a new federal excise tax on sugary soft drinks. People generally favor excise taxes to pay for health-care reform, at least in theory, according to polls.
The biggest potential pot of money involves millions of workers who already have health insurance through their jobs – and their employers.
For 55 years, Congress has excluded from income taxes the costs of employer-provided health care. The amount employers spend doesn’t count as income for workers, and employers deduct health care costs as a business expense. The tax break is a legacy of World War II when companies, desperate for workers, offered health insurance as a new benefit.
The tax break is a rich target. The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that $147 billion in potential revenue will be lost this year to the tax exclusion. The committee predicts that a whopping $799 billion won’t be collected from 2008 to 2012.
Presidents since Ronald Reagan have sought to cap the tax exclusion. On Capitol Hill, Democrats as well as Republicans have tried to scale it back. President George W. Bush wanted a cap, then later proposed replacing the tax exclusion with a standard deduction for health insurance.
At a Senate Finance Committee hearing Tuesday, policy wonks from think tanks and academia urged senators to leave open the option of repealing or capping the tax exclusion to help pay for health care reform.
Proponents cite good reasons beyond cost for scaling it back. The tax break disproportionately benefits higher-income people, who are more likely to have jobs with employer-paid health benefits. Low and moderate-income workers are less likely to participate in plans when they are offered because of cost. Analysts also believe people choose more generous plans when they are subsidized, which runs up costs.
People who don’t get their health coverage through their jobs face a much tougher time getting tax relief for their health-care costs. They can deduct their health-care expenses only if the costs exceed 7.5 percent of their adjusted gross income, and they have to itemize.
But here’s the rub: Three-fifths of individuals under 65 get their health insurance through their jobs. That’s a massive group of potentially angry taxpayers.
The current benefit is substantial. An employer’s cost for an individual’s policy averages about $4,750 and for a family, $12,700, the Congressional Research Service reported.
Plus, capping the tax break only seems simple. Many companies would find administering a cap difficult and expensive, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute.
During the presidential campaign, John McCain backed repeal of the tax break as part of his health-care proposal, and Obama opposed repeal. White House spokesmen say Obama still dislikes the idea of ending the exclusion, but he’s keeping options open.
Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said Tuesday, “To be honest, I don’t think we’re going to repeal the exemption.”
But Congress could cap the tax break for higher-income employees, tinker with employer deductibility, change the tax break to a tax credit or extend the tax credit to those buying insurance on their own. Each has pros and cons that could affect employers and individuals during the worst recession in decades.
So, while nearly everybody agrees that the nation’s health system is broken, we’re about to test our national resolve. Are we ready to roll up our sleeves and give blood?
(c) 2009 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
Last year, Americans voted for health-care reform. Are they now willing to roll up their sleeves and give some blood for the cause?
President Barack Obama says the stars are aligned to pass sweeping reform this year. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promises to bring a bill to the floor in July. A coalition of industry and labor groups pledges to cut health-care costs by $2 trillion over the next decade.
And yet, when Obama and Pelosi stood outside the White House to cheer coming action on Capitol Hill, House Republicans and senators of both parties were conspicuously absent. Nor have details materialized on how the coalition will cut health-care costs.
As Obama says, “there’s no silver bullet.” For reform to become a reality, everybody will need to give up something. Ah, sacrifice -- always easier in the abstract.
The cost of health-care reform is estimated between $1.2 trillion and $1.5 trillion over 10 years – and the Obama administration has identified ways to pay about half that amount.
While changing Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement formulas and finding waste, fraud and abuse may yield some money, it’s likely the government also will penalize certain behaviors. One idea is to raise federal excise taxes on alcohol and tobacco products. And levy a new federal excise tax on sugary soft drinks. People generally favor excise taxes to pay for health-care reform, at least in theory, according to polls.
The biggest potential pot of money involves millions of workers who already have health insurance through their jobs – and their employers.
For 55 years, Congress has excluded from income taxes the costs of employer-provided health care. The amount employers spend doesn’t count as income for workers, and employers deduct health care costs as a business expense. The tax break is a legacy of World War II when companies, desperate for workers, offered health insurance as a new benefit.
The tax break is a rich target. The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that $147 billion in potential revenue will be lost this year to the tax exclusion. The committee predicts that a whopping $799 billion won’t be collected from 2008 to 2012.
Presidents since Ronald Reagan have sought to cap the tax exclusion. On Capitol Hill, Democrats as well as Republicans have tried to scale it back. President George W. Bush wanted a cap, then later proposed replacing the tax exclusion with a standard deduction for health insurance.
At a Senate Finance Committee hearing Tuesday, policy wonks from think tanks and academia urged senators to leave open the option of repealing or capping the tax exclusion to help pay for health care reform.
Proponents cite good reasons beyond cost for scaling it back. The tax break disproportionately benefits higher-income people, who are more likely to have jobs with employer-paid health benefits. Low and moderate-income workers are less likely to participate in plans when they are offered because of cost. Analysts also believe people choose more generous plans when they are subsidized, which runs up costs.
People who don’t get their health coverage through their jobs face a much tougher time getting tax relief for their health-care costs. They can deduct their health-care expenses only if the costs exceed 7.5 percent of their adjusted gross income, and they have to itemize.
But here’s the rub: Three-fifths of individuals under 65 get their health insurance through their jobs. That’s a massive group of potentially angry taxpayers.
The current benefit is substantial. An employer’s cost for an individual’s policy averages about $4,750 and for a family, $12,700, the Congressional Research Service reported.
Plus, capping the tax break only seems simple. Many companies would find administering a cap difficult and expensive, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute.
During the presidential campaign, John McCain backed repeal of the tax break as part of his health-care proposal, and Obama opposed repeal. White House spokesmen say Obama still dislikes the idea of ending the exclusion, but he’s keeping options open.
Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said Tuesday, “To be honest, I don’t think we’re going to repeal the exemption.”
But Congress could cap the tax break for higher-income employees, tinker with employer deductibility, change the tax break to a tax credit or extend the tax credit to those buying insurance on their own. Each has pros and cons that could affect employers and individuals during the worst recession in decades.
So, while nearly everybody agrees that the nation’s health system is broken, we’re about to test our national resolve. Are we ready to roll up our sleeves and give blood?
(c) 2009 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
We've come a long way to tobacco regulation -- June 11, 2009 column
By MARSHA MERCER
Once or twice during my freshman year in college, my roommate’s father brought me a carton of luxury British cigarettes. Thrilled by the elegant boxes, I smoked the cigarettes with gusto.
Today, that would be like someone’s dad randomly picking wild mushrooms in the woods, carrying them to the dorm and saying, “Here, these look great. They may be deadly, but eat up.”
One thing everybody agrees on in 2009: Cigarettes are poison. Smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States. About 443,000 deaths a year are attributable to cigarette smoking.
While banning cigarettes is not an option in a country where 40 million people are addicted, we have agreed as a society to restrict where people can smoke, to limit cigarette sales and advertising appeals to adults and to post warning labels on cigarette packs. Still, about 1,100 kids under 18 become regular—that is, daily—smokers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
And that’s why Congress is poised to give the Food and Drug Administration regulatory power over tobacco. President Barack Obama likely will sign the legislation. More regulation may not end the problem of teen smoking, but it’s a step.
Interestingly, regulation isn’t happening because smoking is on the rise. It’s happening because most Americans don’t smoke, and Big Tobacco’s political clout has waned.
In the late-‘60s to mid-‘70s, the obnoxious “You’ve come a long way, baby” Virginia Slims ads linked a woman’s right to vote with a dubious right to smoke. Such an appeal today would be ludicrous. Nonsmokers demand the right to clean air, and they’re militant for good reason.
Many surgeons general have warned about the harmful effects of smoking. Congressional hearings and lengthy court cases have provided ample evidence that tobacco companies misled smokers for decades. While publicly denying that their products were addictive, the companies were controlling levels of nicotine to hook smokers and keep them hooked.
In 1965, a year after the surgeon general first reported that cigarette smoking caused lung cancer in men and was a “probable cause” of lung cancer in women, more than half the men and one in three women in America smoked. By 2008, only about one in five adults over 18 are smokers.
Americans’ relationship with tobacco remains complicated, however. We’ve segregated smokers, forcing them to engage in their habit in certain areas, yet at the same time, we rely on smokers’ tobacco excise taxes for such worthy causes as health care. Congress passed a 62-cent tobacco tax increase in February to pay for the State Children’s Health Initiative Program. If everybody were to quit smoking, we’d have to find other funding sources.
Regulation has been a long time coming. In 1994, David Kessler, then commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, claimed jurisdiction to regulate tobacco as a drug through nicotine’s addictive properties, but the Supreme Court ruled that Congress had not intended to put tobacco under FDA control.
The new measure would mean stronger warnings, FDA oversight of cigarette ingredients and ads and such health-related claims as “light” and “mild.” The legislation doesn’t ban nicotine or menthol. Tobacco companies will pay fees based on their market share to cover regulatory costs.
Some in the health community worry that the bill doesn’t go far enough. It’s troubling that tobacco giant Philip Morris helped write the measure and backs it. Other tobacco companies oppose it, saying it’s structured to give Philip Morris a permanent business advantage by limiting competition.
But it’s a sign of how far we’ve come that usually anti-regulation Republicans back tobacco regulation. Here’s Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, on the Senate floor: “One might ask, as a conservative: Why would one support more regulation rather than less? Well, because of this split personality the federal government has in dealing with tobacco – recognizing it is a deadly drug, recognizing marketing often targets the most vulnerable among us, and recognizing the fact that it kills so many people and increases our health care costs not only in Medicare but in Medicaid…”
Why not just ban cigarettes? “We all know that is a slippery slope for the individual choices we make,” Cornyn said. “If we were to ban tobacco, we might as well ban fatty food; we might as well ban alcohol. Obviously, the government would become essentially the dictator of what people could and could not do and consume, and I don’t think the American people would tolerate it…”
Despite all the education about the dangers of smoking, lung cancer kills more women than any other form of cancer, including breast cancer.
I finally quit smoking for good circa 1995. No ad or cool British packaging could tempt me now. My friend Laurie wasn’t so lucky. She and I both loved smoking, and we puffed through many a late-night dorm discussion of poetry and politics. Lung cancer claimed her at 52.
Today, when I see a smoker, I see someone who just hasn’t quit yet.
(c) 2009 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
Inside the job fair -- Column of May 7, 2009
By MARSHA MERCER
It’s one thing to hear the statistic: The United States has lost five million jobs in 15 months.
It’s something else entirely to see someone who has lost a job gulping air, trying to steel her nerves to talk to recruiters at a job fair.
The woman was among about 200 white-collar workers who swarmed around a hotel in Northern Virginia Monday, hoping for jobs. An out-placement firm sponsored the fair for its clients, and most of the job seekers were mid-career or older, blackbirds in sober suits, doing their best to exude upbeat confidence in an economy that hasn’t yet hit bottom.
She was plus-sized and stood out in her flower garden dress. I ran into her in the ladies room where she seemed to be hyperventilating. She pulled herself together and began washing her hands so vigorously it suggested she was avoiding more than flu virus. This was procrastination by hygiene.
Then she straightened her shoulders and stepped bravely into the crowd, leaving a wake of misery and cologne.
They say job fairs are no place for the faint of heart. Neither is this economy.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke made news the next day when he testified before the congressional Joint Economic Committee about the loss of five million payroll jobs. He warned we haven’t seen the worst of it.
“We are likely to see further sizable job losses and increased unemployment in coming months,” Bernanke said.
As in previous recessions, unemployment has hit construction and manufacturing hardest, but almost every sector is affected. About half a million financial activities workers have lost their jobs since the peak employment in December 2006.
During the recession of the early 1980s, I was a newspaper reporter. I met many people in Pennsylvania and the industrial Midwest whose jobs had vanished. I talked to steelworkers whose industry was collapsing and autoworkers who blamed their woes on the Japanese.
So-called experts were always advising the jobless to reinvent themselves. “Retraining” was the mantra. I remember 50-somethings teary at the prospect.
In this recession, the jobless rate among college graduates has doubled over the last year, to 4.3 percent in March. That’s significant but still less than half the 9 percent jobless rate for those with just a high school diploma.
In the Washington area, college-educated workers are losing jobs as companies and associations contract. I’ve met engineers, IT and human resources professionals, lawyers, architects, even a medical doctor – all out of work due to downsizing and restructuring. They worked for non-profits and companies like Freddie Mac and Sprint.
Me? I’m among the journalists laid off as media companies shut down their Washington bureaus.
At the job fair, 17 companies set up tables. Job seekers formed long, patient lines and chatted – “networked” -- as we had been coached. A woman behind me had worked 13 years in human resources for a major company.
“It’s like a death!” she wailed.
“Don’t you think it’s like a death? You have to grieve…And they say we should reinvent ourselves. I don’t feel like reinventing myself,” she said. “What am I going to be now?”
It was the same question the steelworkers outside Pittsburgh had asked in the ‘80s.
“I’m in the doldrums,” the HR woman told a friend. “I just can’t get out of the doldrums. How about you?”
Her friend said she has been out of the job hunt for a while because her father died. Here was someone grieving an actual death. The HR woman dropped her talk about job loss as death.
A woman in a black suit checking her BlackBerry had worked 21 years in pharmaceutical sales for the same company. She wants to reinvent herself as a program manager.
A few feet away, a beefy, former university student government leader, Class of ’96, said this is the first time he hasn’t been recruited for a job.
“I can’t believe I’m in this situation!” he declared.
I introduced myself to the recruiter for a company involved in online education and told him I had experience writing and editing.
“Content? We don’t do content. We do processes,” he said. Universities and other customers buy the company’s system and provide their own content. Oh.
I wondered how the woman in the flowered dress was faring. I looked around for her, but she was gone.
© 2009 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
It’s one thing to hear the statistic: The United States has lost five million jobs in 15 months.
It’s something else entirely to see someone who has lost a job gulping air, trying to steel her nerves to talk to recruiters at a job fair.
The woman was among about 200 white-collar workers who swarmed around a hotel in Northern Virginia Monday, hoping for jobs. An out-placement firm sponsored the fair for its clients, and most of the job seekers were mid-career or older, blackbirds in sober suits, doing their best to exude upbeat confidence in an economy that hasn’t yet hit bottom.
She was plus-sized and stood out in her flower garden dress. I ran into her in the ladies room where she seemed to be hyperventilating. She pulled herself together and began washing her hands so vigorously it suggested she was avoiding more than flu virus. This was procrastination by hygiene.
Then she straightened her shoulders and stepped bravely into the crowd, leaving a wake of misery and cologne.
They say job fairs are no place for the faint of heart. Neither is this economy.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke made news the next day when he testified before the congressional Joint Economic Committee about the loss of five million payroll jobs. He warned we haven’t seen the worst of it.
“We are likely to see further sizable job losses and increased unemployment in coming months,” Bernanke said.
As in previous recessions, unemployment has hit construction and manufacturing hardest, but almost every sector is affected. About half a million financial activities workers have lost their jobs since the peak employment in December 2006.
During the recession of the early 1980s, I was a newspaper reporter. I met many people in Pennsylvania and the industrial Midwest whose jobs had vanished. I talked to steelworkers whose industry was collapsing and autoworkers who blamed their woes on the Japanese.
So-called experts were always advising the jobless to reinvent themselves. “Retraining” was the mantra. I remember 50-somethings teary at the prospect.
In this recession, the jobless rate among college graduates has doubled over the last year, to 4.3 percent in March. That’s significant but still less than half the 9 percent jobless rate for those with just a high school diploma.
In the Washington area, college-educated workers are losing jobs as companies and associations contract. I’ve met engineers, IT and human resources professionals, lawyers, architects, even a medical doctor – all out of work due to downsizing and restructuring. They worked for non-profits and companies like Freddie Mac and Sprint.
Me? I’m among the journalists laid off as media companies shut down their Washington bureaus.
At the job fair, 17 companies set up tables. Job seekers formed long, patient lines and chatted – “networked” -- as we had been coached. A woman behind me had worked 13 years in human resources for a major company.
“It’s like a death!” she wailed.
“Don’t you think it’s like a death? You have to grieve…And they say we should reinvent ourselves. I don’t feel like reinventing myself,” she said. “What am I going to be now?”
It was the same question the steelworkers outside Pittsburgh had asked in the ‘80s.
“I’m in the doldrums,” the HR woman told a friend. “I just can’t get out of the doldrums. How about you?”
Her friend said she has been out of the job hunt for a while because her father died. Here was someone grieving an actual death. The HR woman dropped her talk about job loss as death.
A woman in a black suit checking her BlackBerry had worked 21 years in pharmaceutical sales for the same company. She wants to reinvent herself as a program manager.
A few feet away, a beefy, former university student government leader, Class of ’96, said this is the first time he hasn’t been recruited for a job.
“I can’t believe I’m in this situation!” he declared.
I introduced myself to the recruiter for a company involved in online education and told him I had experience writing and editing.
“Content? We don’t do content. We do processes,” he said. Universities and other customers buy the company’s system and provide their own content. Oh.
I wondered how the woman in the flowered dress was faring. I looked around for her, but she was gone.
© 2009 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
Obama's RX for swine flu -- Column of April 30, 2009
By MARSHA MERCER
Ronald Reagan said that government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem. To those who still share his view, I have two words: swine flu.
The current global swine flu outbreak is a reminder that we need a robust, competent federal government to cope with problems individuals can’t solve, even with frequent hand washing.
One of the lessons of Hurricane Katrina is that people may like small government in theory, but in times of crisis they demand government that’s responsive and effective. To be sure, swine flu isn’t a full-fledged crisis, not a pandemic -- not yet. And yes, every year 36,000 people in the United States die of ordinary flu-related causes.
As I write this, one person in the United States, a child in Texas, has died of swine flu.
His critics cite those statistics to argue that President Barack Obama is overreacting. If George W. Bush’s response to Katrina was too little too late, they say, Obama’s proactive stand on swine flu is too much too soon. Obama can’t win.
He’s damned if he does -- and damned if he doesn’t -- pull out all the stops to protect the country from swine flu. He’s asking for $1.5 billion to track the virus and build a supply of anti-viral drugs.
“Every American should know that that their entire government is taking the utmost precautions and preparations,” Obama said at a news conference Wednesday night.
Skeptics complain that the news media are hyping the story. But it’s news when the Centers for Disease Control activates its emergency-response system and tweets the latest on its Twitter page, CDCemergency. People want to know what Health and Human
Services officials say in briefings and post on the Web.
Some critics suggest that Obama could be using Swine Influenza A (H1N1) to divert attention from the weak economy. And yet, imagine the outcry if this or any president ignored the potential for mass infection and economic disruption.
If travel to and within the United States is curtailed, if large events are canceled, if fear keeps people from going out, the recession will deepen and last longer. The potential cost in lives is mind-boggling.
The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic killed more than 50 million people worldwide, including 675,000 in the United States. About 70,000 in the United States died in the 1957 flu pandemic, among up to 2 million who died worldwide.
Go to PandemicFlu.gov for more on the current outbreak and an historical perspective. Check out the “Pandemic Influenza Storybook” section of the site for reminiscences and state-by-state accounts of the 1918 flu.
Before the first swine flu cases were reported, Obama’s critics were already upset that he has gone in so many directions. He continues to make the case for moving on many fronts. He mentioned the swine flu outbreak when he called for increasing scientific research spending to 3 percent of GDP, from 2.6 percent.
He said at the National Academy of Sciences, “there are those who say we cannot afford to invest in science, that support for research is somehow a luxury at moments defined by necessities. I fundamentally disagree. Science is more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, our environment and our quality of life than it has ever been before.”
Obama has asked people to wash their hands, cover sneezes, avoid the sick and stay home when they are sick.
As important as those measures are to limit exposure, we need government to provide trustworthy information, planning and resources. Many people, however, fear they can’t depend on government to give them solid information or to protect them. The tainted-food episodes over the last few years – spinach, jalapenos, peanuts – have eroded confidence in government’s ability to safeguard health.
The Food and Drug Administration, overwhelmed by its many duties, is viewed as unable to police the nation’s food supply, especially in a global market.
While no president can stop a flu pandemic by decree or dollars, Obama has the chance to write a prescription that will begin to restore faith in government as a solution and not the problem.
© 2009 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
Ronald Reagan said that government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem. To those who still share his view, I have two words: swine flu.
The current global swine flu outbreak is a reminder that we need a robust, competent federal government to cope with problems individuals can’t solve, even with frequent hand washing.
One of the lessons of Hurricane Katrina is that people may like small government in theory, but in times of crisis they demand government that’s responsive and effective. To be sure, swine flu isn’t a full-fledged crisis, not a pandemic -- not yet. And yes, every year 36,000 people in the United States die of ordinary flu-related causes.
As I write this, one person in the United States, a child in Texas, has died of swine flu.
His critics cite those statistics to argue that President Barack Obama is overreacting. If George W. Bush’s response to Katrina was too little too late, they say, Obama’s proactive stand on swine flu is too much too soon. Obama can’t win.
He’s damned if he does -- and damned if he doesn’t -- pull out all the stops to protect the country from swine flu. He’s asking for $1.5 billion to track the virus and build a supply of anti-viral drugs.
“Every American should know that that their entire government is taking the utmost precautions and preparations,” Obama said at a news conference Wednesday night.
Skeptics complain that the news media are hyping the story. But it’s news when the Centers for Disease Control activates its emergency-response system and tweets the latest on its Twitter page, CDCemergency. People want to know what Health and Human
Services officials say in briefings and post on the Web.
Some critics suggest that Obama could be using Swine Influenza A (H1N1) to divert attention from the weak economy. And yet, imagine the outcry if this or any president ignored the potential for mass infection and economic disruption.
If travel to and within the United States is curtailed, if large events are canceled, if fear keeps people from going out, the recession will deepen and last longer. The potential cost in lives is mind-boggling.
The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic killed more than 50 million people worldwide, including 675,000 in the United States. About 70,000 in the United States died in the 1957 flu pandemic, among up to 2 million who died worldwide.
Go to PandemicFlu.gov for more on the current outbreak and an historical perspective. Check out the “Pandemic Influenza Storybook” section of the site for reminiscences and state-by-state accounts of the 1918 flu.
Before the first swine flu cases were reported, Obama’s critics were already upset that he has gone in so many directions. He continues to make the case for moving on many fronts. He mentioned the swine flu outbreak when he called for increasing scientific research spending to 3 percent of GDP, from 2.6 percent.
He said at the National Academy of Sciences, “there are those who say we cannot afford to invest in science, that support for research is somehow a luxury at moments defined by necessities. I fundamentally disagree. Science is more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, our environment and our quality of life than it has ever been before.”
Obama has asked people to wash their hands, cover sneezes, avoid the sick and stay home when they are sick.
As important as those measures are to limit exposure, we need government to provide trustworthy information, planning and resources. Many people, however, fear they can’t depend on government to give them solid information or to protect them. The tainted-food episodes over the last few years – spinach, jalapenos, peanuts – have eroded confidence in government’s ability to safeguard health.
The Food and Drug Administration, overwhelmed by its many duties, is viewed as unable to police the nation’s food supply, especially in a global market.
While no president can stop a flu pandemic by decree or dollars, Obama has the chance to write a prescription that will begin to restore faith in government as a solution and not the problem.
© 2009 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
Monday, June 1, 2009
A cicada moment? - April 23, 2009 column
President Barack Obama and Democratic congressional leaders agree that health care reform is overdue and should pass this summer. Or this could be another cicada moment.
The cynical view in Washington is that health care reform is like the cicada.
It comes around every 17 years, makes a lot of noise and then disappears.
Ron Pollack, head of Families USA, a health-consumer advocacy group, offered the cicada analogy at a news conference. But while he and others are hopeful, health care reform is not a done deal.
Conservatives are arrayed against reform, which they see as socialistic and over-reaching government. Some liberals are wary that key provisions will be dropped as part of a compromise. And there’s talk the Democrats could try to use a budgeting procedure known as reconciliation to push the measure through without Republican support.
How much really has changed since Harry and Louise scared people off Bill and Hillary’s universal health care proposal in 1993? Thirty-seven million people lacked health insurance when a TV ad paid for by the Health Insurance Association of America galvanized people against the Clinton brand of reform.
In the ad, Harry and Louise are sitting at their kitchen table, worried about the bureaucracy and lack of choices in the Clinton plan. The ad hit a nerve, and people in droves wrote and called their congressmen, urging them to vote no on “HillaryCare.”
Once again, a popular president promises reform. There’s a consensus that American business can’t compete in a global economy with escalating health care costs. But, while the Clinton plan was conceived in secrecy, Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of the Finance committee, has held more than 20 public hearings.
Sen. Edward Kennedy, chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, has returned to Washington battling brain cancer to meet with various groups.
Baucus and Kennedy wrote Obama Monday, saying they planned to have very similar bills ready in June. Three House committees are working through legislation and could have a bill on the House floor by August.
Meanwhile, the ranks of the uninsured have grown to 43 million. Health care consumes 17 percent of GDP, and health care costs are escalating.
Harry and Louise have changed their tune. The couple made a comeback in a TV ad during last year’s Democratic and Republican national conventions.
This time, Harry and Louise agree the next president should put health care at the top of his agenda. Five diverse groups sponsored the ad -- the National Federation of Independent Business, Families USA, American Hospital Association, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network and the Catholic Health Association.
Obama convened a health care summit soon after he took office, and a team of White House officials is working with Congress to get a bill passed. He put a $634 billion down payment on reform in his budget. But the ailing economy and heavy stimulus spending have dominated his and the nation’s attention.
One sticking point is the public plan. Obama promised an option for people to buy into the same health insurance coverage members of Congress have. Those who want to stick with their private insurance plans could also do so.
Some analysts say millions would flock to a public plan, which could hurt private insurers.
Much depends on how Obama brands his reform and whether critics get to it first. Congress passed Medicare and Medicaid in 1965 after Lyndon Johnson’s triumphant 1964 presidential campaign in which health care for the elderly was a priority. The public inundated Congress with cards and calls asking for Medicare.
The government already picks up the tab for nearly half the nation’s health care. Public plans cover the poor, working poor and their families, the elderly, disabled and the military. One simple way to expand coverage is by extending Medicare to cover other age groups.
The incremental approach works. Public health plans cover about one in five Americans under 65. The government covers about 35 percent of children. Obama signed an expansion of the Child Health Initiative Program, and he helped lower costs for the unemployed to purchase health insurance.
But most people under 65 have private insurance. If Obama can persuade these Harrys and Louises to tell their senators and congressmen to embrace change, health care reform could happen soon.
-- Marsha Mercer
(c) 2009 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
The cynical view in Washington is that health care reform is like the cicada.
It comes around every 17 years, makes a lot of noise and then disappears.
Ron Pollack, head of Families USA, a health-consumer advocacy group, offered the cicada analogy at a news conference. But while he and others are hopeful, health care reform is not a done deal.
Conservatives are arrayed against reform, which they see as socialistic and over-reaching government. Some liberals are wary that key provisions will be dropped as part of a compromise. And there’s talk the Democrats could try to use a budgeting procedure known as reconciliation to push the measure through without Republican support.
How much really has changed since Harry and Louise scared people off Bill and Hillary’s universal health care proposal in 1993? Thirty-seven million people lacked health insurance when a TV ad paid for by the Health Insurance Association of America galvanized people against the Clinton brand of reform.
In the ad, Harry and Louise are sitting at their kitchen table, worried about the bureaucracy and lack of choices in the Clinton plan. The ad hit a nerve, and people in droves wrote and called their congressmen, urging them to vote no on “HillaryCare.”
Once again, a popular president promises reform. There’s a consensus that American business can’t compete in a global economy with escalating health care costs. But, while the Clinton plan was conceived in secrecy, Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of the Finance committee, has held more than 20 public hearings.
Sen. Edward Kennedy, chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, has returned to Washington battling brain cancer to meet with various groups.
Baucus and Kennedy wrote Obama Monday, saying they planned to have very similar bills ready in June. Three House committees are working through legislation and could have a bill on the House floor by August.
Meanwhile, the ranks of the uninsured have grown to 43 million. Health care consumes 17 percent of GDP, and health care costs are escalating.
Harry and Louise have changed their tune. The couple made a comeback in a TV ad during last year’s Democratic and Republican national conventions.
This time, Harry and Louise agree the next president should put health care at the top of his agenda. Five diverse groups sponsored the ad -- the National Federation of Independent Business, Families USA, American Hospital Association, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network and the Catholic Health Association.
Obama convened a health care summit soon after he took office, and a team of White House officials is working with Congress to get a bill passed. He put a $634 billion down payment on reform in his budget. But the ailing economy and heavy stimulus spending have dominated his and the nation’s attention.
One sticking point is the public plan. Obama promised an option for people to buy into the same health insurance coverage members of Congress have. Those who want to stick with their private insurance plans could also do so.
Some analysts say millions would flock to a public plan, which could hurt private insurers.
Much depends on how Obama brands his reform and whether critics get to it first. Congress passed Medicare and Medicaid in 1965 after Lyndon Johnson’s triumphant 1964 presidential campaign in which health care for the elderly was a priority. The public inundated Congress with cards and calls asking for Medicare.
The government already picks up the tab for nearly half the nation’s health care. Public plans cover the poor, working poor and their families, the elderly, disabled and the military. One simple way to expand coverage is by extending Medicare to cover other age groups.
The incremental approach works. Public health plans cover about one in five Americans under 65. The government covers about 35 percent of children. Obama signed an expansion of the Child Health Initiative Program, and he helped lower costs for the unemployed to purchase health insurance.
But most people under 65 have private insurance. If Obama can persuade these Harrys and Louises to tell their senators and congressmen to embrace change, health care reform could happen soon.
-- Marsha Mercer
(c) 2009 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
Why the first pup matters - April 16, 2009 column
I should have seen Bo-mania coming. My dentist, of all people, predicted people’s fascination with the presidential pet before Barack Obama was elected president.
During a checkup last summer, my dentist offered some unorthodox campaign reporting advice. Rather than covering what the presidential candidates say about issues, he said, focus on their pets.
“What kind of dog will McCain and Obama have in the White House?
That’s what people care about,” he assured me. I laughed, as much as one can in the dentist’s chair. Good one, Rich.
I’d forgotten the conversation until the Obama family escorted Bo to a panting press corps on the White House lawn Tuesday. Rich was right about the power of pups.
Earlier, President Barack Obama had spoken at Georgtown University, explaining his actions so far to fix the economy and renewing his call for major health care reform.
What captivated the news media -- and by extension the nation -- wasn’t public policy but the personal. The more digitized and impersonal life becomes, the hungrier we are for the human touch.
It’s one reason 200 million people “friend” each other on Facebook, why Twitter and other social networking tools are so popular. We care what other people are doing in their lives. We want to feel connected.
Reminded by a reporter of Harry Truman’s famous line, “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog,” Obama said, “I finally got a friend.”
Most people can’t get enough of the adorable Bo, whose picture has splashed across front pages, the Web and TV. But not everybody is thrilled. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican, grumpily declared the coverage of Bo “fairly stupid.”
That’s no way for an aspiring president to talk. Dogs humanize presidents, making them more likeable and more like us. People love that the Obamas are a family and plan to take turns walking Bo.
Anyone who has had a puppy knows the joy of coming home – and that doesn’t change whether you’re coming from work, school or the Oval Office. Puppy owners also know frustration – when that wonderful pup chews favorite shoes.
Even the mini-controversy over whether Obama broke a campaign promise is benign. Candidate Obama said he wanted a dog from a pound, but he also wanted a breed that wouldn’t aggravate daughter Malia’s dog allergies.
President Obama accepted the pure-bred Portuguese water dog as a gift from Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Obama did make a donation to the local animal shelter.
With the economy in tatters, it’s a relief to argue over trivia. Besides, Obama made good on the promise to his daughters. They have their dog in the White House.
And so Barack Obama joins the long line of presidents with dogs. Calvin Coolidge felt so strongly about dogs that he declared, “Any man who does not like dogs and want them about does not deserve to be in the White House.”
First lady Grace Coolidge posed in a red gown for her official portrait with her white collie, Rob Roy. The painting hangs in the White House.
This and other stories about presidents and their dogs come from the charming book “First Dogs” by Roy Rowan and Brook Janis.
Fala, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s black Scottie, accompanied him even on foreign trips. Roosevelt once sent a destroyer to pick up Fala when he was left behind in the Aleutian Islands.
Republicans complained that the pooch retrieval set taxpayers back $15,000, and Roosevelt responded in a fireside chat, “These Republicans have not been content with attacks on me, my wife or my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala.”
A dog softened hearts to Richard Nixon and saved his political career. In 1952, vice presidential candidate Nixon deflected news about a campaign slush fund when he talked about his cocker spaniel. Nixon’s “Checkers’ speech” was one of the few times he showed his humanity.
In the late 1960s, as antiwar protesters outside the White House chanted, “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” Lyndon Johnson called his beagles, Him and Her, to his side. “They like me,” Johnson said.
Here’s a prediction. In 2012, if Newt Gingrich is running for president, he’ll have a dog. He may think the hype over Obama’s dog is stupid, but he’s not.
-- Marsha Mercer
(c) 2009 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
During a checkup last summer, my dentist offered some unorthodox campaign reporting advice. Rather than covering what the presidential candidates say about issues, he said, focus on their pets.
“What kind of dog will McCain and Obama have in the White House?
That’s what people care about,” he assured me. I laughed, as much as one can in the dentist’s chair. Good one, Rich.
I’d forgotten the conversation until the Obama family escorted Bo to a panting press corps on the White House lawn Tuesday. Rich was right about the power of pups.
Earlier, President Barack Obama had spoken at Georgtown University, explaining his actions so far to fix the economy and renewing his call for major health care reform.
What captivated the news media -- and by extension the nation -- wasn’t public policy but the personal. The more digitized and impersonal life becomes, the hungrier we are for the human touch.
It’s one reason 200 million people “friend” each other on Facebook, why Twitter and other social networking tools are so popular. We care what other people are doing in their lives. We want to feel connected.
Reminded by a reporter of Harry Truman’s famous line, “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog,” Obama said, “I finally got a friend.”
Most people can’t get enough of the adorable Bo, whose picture has splashed across front pages, the Web and TV. But not everybody is thrilled. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican, grumpily declared the coverage of Bo “fairly stupid.”
That’s no way for an aspiring president to talk. Dogs humanize presidents, making them more likeable and more like us. People love that the Obamas are a family and plan to take turns walking Bo.
Anyone who has had a puppy knows the joy of coming home – and that doesn’t change whether you’re coming from work, school or the Oval Office. Puppy owners also know frustration – when that wonderful pup chews favorite shoes.
Even the mini-controversy over whether Obama broke a campaign promise is benign. Candidate Obama said he wanted a dog from a pound, but he also wanted a breed that wouldn’t aggravate daughter Malia’s dog allergies.
President Obama accepted the pure-bred Portuguese water dog as a gift from Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Obama did make a donation to the local animal shelter.
With the economy in tatters, it’s a relief to argue over trivia. Besides, Obama made good on the promise to his daughters. They have their dog in the White House.
And so Barack Obama joins the long line of presidents with dogs. Calvin Coolidge felt so strongly about dogs that he declared, “Any man who does not like dogs and want them about does not deserve to be in the White House.”
First lady Grace Coolidge posed in a red gown for her official portrait with her white collie, Rob Roy. The painting hangs in the White House.
This and other stories about presidents and their dogs come from the charming book “First Dogs” by Roy Rowan and Brook Janis.
Fala, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s black Scottie, accompanied him even on foreign trips. Roosevelt once sent a destroyer to pick up Fala when he was left behind in the Aleutian Islands.
Republicans complained that the pooch retrieval set taxpayers back $15,000, and Roosevelt responded in a fireside chat, “These Republicans have not been content with attacks on me, my wife or my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala.”
A dog softened hearts to Richard Nixon and saved his political career. In 1952, vice presidential candidate Nixon deflected news about a campaign slush fund when he talked about his cocker spaniel. Nixon’s “Checkers’ speech” was one of the few times he showed his humanity.
In the late 1960s, as antiwar protesters outside the White House chanted, “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” Lyndon Johnson called his beagles, Him and Her, to his side. “They like me,” Johnson said.
Here’s a prediction. In 2012, if Newt Gingrich is running for president, he’ll have a dog. He may think the hype over Obama’s dog is stupid, but he’s not.
-- Marsha Mercer
(c) 2009 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
Obama's "God, guns and gays" - April 9, 2009 column
Ronald Reagan, courting the South in 1976, said in Lynchburg, Va., “I don’t think we should have expelled God from the classroom.”
Ever since, Republicans have sought votes in the South and elsewhere by talking about “God, guns and gays.” The winning strategy failed in 2008, though, as Republican John McCain never connected on the Three Gs, despite Sarah Palin.
Now, with President Barack Obama, progressive causes and issues – gay marriage, the environment, a larger federal role in American life – are ascending.
The dismal economy has been a national preoccupation for months, but on his first overseas trip as president, Obama used the bully pulpit to talk up American values – and to encourage international cooperation and good will. He even has a progressive riff for “God, guns and gays.”
God: Obama has been speaking about his Christian faith and Muslim background since the campaign. In Turkey, he reiterated his belief that the United States is not a Christian nation.
Guns: While he was away, Obama sent his Republican Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to deliver the Pentagon budget proposal, which marks a huge shift in priorities from what Gates called “exquisite” weaponry to intelligence, surveillance and counter-terrorism programs that help troops.
Gays: The White House has invited gay parents to bring their families to Monday’s Easter egg roll on the South Lawn, a pastel rainbow gesture that signals inclusiveness.
In these and other ways, Obama, whose communications skills rival Reagan’s, is trying to tap into 21st century sensibilities and priorities to appeal to a younger, more politically independent generation.
On his mission to mend America’s relations with the world, he told Europeans the United States has not always understood Europe’s leadership role and that Americans have been arrogant about Europe. While some older Americans thought Obama’s mild criticism of his own country inappropriate, many young people find his candor and humility refreshing.
Besides, Obama criticized foreigners too, saying Europeans blame America for what’s wrong in the world rather than seeing the good America does.
Reaching out to Muslims, Obama said America, rather than being a Christian, Jewish or Muslim country, is “a nation of citizens that are bound by ideals and a set of values.”
One risk for any president is straying too far from his people. Obama assumes as fact something that polls say actually is unsettled. A new Newsweek poll found that 62 percent of Americans do think the United States is a Christian nation.
That’s perhaps not surprising as 78 percent of Americans say they’re Christian, according to a 2007 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Next, with 16 percent, are the “unaffiliated” – including atheists, agnostics and “nothing in particular.” About 2 percent are Jewish and six-tenths of a percent are Muslim.
Obama acknowledged in Europe that Christians are America’s largest religious group. As a fan of history, he would know the country’s Christian foundations and ties.
Abraham Lincoln, in his second Inaugural Address at the end of the bloody Civil War, spoke of forgiveness and said of soldiers in the North and South, “Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other.”
Obama is not denigrating the value of Christianity in American life but espousing a more inclusive value of religious freedom and acceptance of different views.
Similarly, he’s inclusive on sexual orientation. The invitation to gay families to the Easter Egg roll was symbolic, but even an audience with the Easter Bunny is not risk-free for the president.
Most people tell pollsters they are opposed to gay marriage, and three-fourths of those surveyed by Newsweek said they have “old fashioned values about family and marriage.”
Obama’s first real test on “gays” could come over legislation pending in Congress that would grant federal benefits to same-sex spouses of federal employees. Obama also needs to remember the practical obstacles to changing attitudes and policy. Members of Congress know the struggles of voters.
Obama may want to stop various big “guns,” including production of the F-22 Raptor fighter jet after only four more are built, rather than expanding its production further. Congressional Republicans are lining up to save the elaborate weaponry – and factory jobs in their districts.
-- Marsha Mercer
(c) 2009 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
Ever since, Republicans have sought votes in the South and elsewhere by talking about “God, guns and gays.” The winning strategy failed in 2008, though, as Republican John McCain never connected on the Three Gs, despite Sarah Palin.
Now, with President Barack Obama, progressive causes and issues – gay marriage, the environment, a larger federal role in American life – are ascending.
The dismal economy has been a national preoccupation for months, but on his first overseas trip as president, Obama used the bully pulpit to talk up American values – and to encourage international cooperation and good will. He even has a progressive riff for “God, guns and gays.”
God: Obama has been speaking about his Christian faith and Muslim background since the campaign. In Turkey, he reiterated his belief that the United States is not a Christian nation.
Guns: While he was away, Obama sent his Republican Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to deliver the Pentagon budget proposal, which marks a huge shift in priorities from what Gates called “exquisite” weaponry to intelligence, surveillance and counter-terrorism programs that help troops.
Gays: The White House has invited gay parents to bring their families to Monday’s Easter egg roll on the South Lawn, a pastel rainbow gesture that signals inclusiveness.
In these and other ways, Obama, whose communications skills rival Reagan’s, is trying to tap into 21st century sensibilities and priorities to appeal to a younger, more politically independent generation.
On his mission to mend America’s relations with the world, he told Europeans the United States has not always understood Europe’s leadership role and that Americans have been arrogant about Europe. While some older Americans thought Obama’s mild criticism of his own country inappropriate, many young people find his candor and humility refreshing.
Besides, Obama criticized foreigners too, saying Europeans blame America for what’s wrong in the world rather than seeing the good America does.
Reaching out to Muslims, Obama said America, rather than being a Christian, Jewish or Muslim country, is “a nation of citizens that are bound by ideals and a set of values.”
One risk for any president is straying too far from his people. Obama assumes as fact something that polls say actually is unsettled. A new Newsweek poll found that 62 percent of Americans do think the United States is a Christian nation.
That’s perhaps not surprising as 78 percent of Americans say they’re Christian, according to a 2007 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Next, with 16 percent, are the “unaffiliated” – including atheists, agnostics and “nothing in particular.” About 2 percent are Jewish and six-tenths of a percent are Muslim.
Obama acknowledged in Europe that Christians are America’s largest religious group. As a fan of history, he would know the country’s Christian foundations and ties.
Abraham Lincoln, in his second Inaugural Address at the end of the bloody Civil War, spoke of forgiveness and said of soldiers in the North and South, “Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other.”
Obama is not denigrating the value of Christianity in American life but espousing a more inclusive value of religious freedom and acceptance of different views.
Similarly, he’s inclusive on sexual orientation. The invitation to gay families to the Easter Egg roll was symbolic, but even an audience with the Easter Bunny is not risk-free for the president.
Most people tell pollsters they are opposed to gay marriage, and three-fourths of those surveyed by Newsweek said they have “old fashioned values about family and marriage.”
Obama’s first real test on “gays” could come over legislation pending in Congress that would grant federal benefits to same-sex spouses of federal employees. Obama also needs to remember the practical obstacles to changing attitudes and policy. Members of Congress know the struggles of voters.
Obama may want to stop various big “guns,” including production of the F-22 Raptor fighter jet after only four more are built, rather than expanding its production further. Congressional Republicans are lining up to save the elaborate weaponry – and factory jobs in their districts.
-- Marsha Mercer
(c) 2009 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
A war on terror by any other name -- April 2, 2009 column
A familiar phrase died this week. President George W. Bush’s “global war on terror” is no more.
The Obama administration buried it in the slogans graveyard next to “It’s the economy, stupid,” near Al Gore’s “lockbox” and the lips that said, “No new taxes.”
“Global war on terror” was the organizing principle of the Bush presidency after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The war touched all our lives – through color-coded terrorist alerts, heightened airport security, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. And it led to prisoner detention at Guantanamo.
President Barack Obama didn’t declare victory in the war. No one could say what winning would look like anyway. And Obama didn’t sign an order banning the phrase.
Instead, the administration put the phrase out of its misery by shunning it.
The question arises: If no one hears about a global war on terror or its unlovely acronym, GWOT, does the war exist? Well, yes. Only the phrase is dead.
Obama isn’t so much turning the page on the global war on terror as renaming and updating it. These days, “overseas contingency operations” are in. But threats of terrorist attacks in the United States remain.
Obama has set new military goals. “We have a clear and focused goal to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaida in Pakistan and Afghanistan,” he said. The three Ds are less dramatic than “war,” but the strategy still envisions international anti-terrorism efforts.
“We understand that this cannot be an American-only effort,” Michele Flournoy, the undersecretary of Defense for policy, told the Senate Armed Services Committee Wednesday.
“Defeating al-Qaida and its extremist allies is a goal and responsibility for the international community.” Flournoy said the president would be engaging U.S. allies so they’re contributing to the anti-terrorism effort.
The Obama team wasn’t the first to try to banish the phrase. Two years ago, the House Armed Services Committee tried to scrub the global war on terror from the 2008 defense budget.
Reporter Rick Maze wrote in the Army Times on April 4, 2007 that the committee’s Democratic leadership disliked the phrase and had banned it.“
A memo for the committee staff, circulated March 27, says the 2008 bill…should `avoid using colloquialisms,’” Maze wrote. Among those to be avoided, along with “long war,” was the phrase President George W. Bush used soon after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Bush was unfazed. He continued to use the phrase. With Obama in the White House, another memo went to Pentagon staffers last month.
“This administration prefers to avoid using the term ‘Long War’ or `Global War on Terror [GWOT.] Please use `Overseas Contingency Operation,’” it read.
The Office of Management and Budget, which pre-screens administration officials’ testimony on Capitol Hill, sent the memo, according to The Washington Post. A spokesman for OMB denied it was official policy and said the memo was only the “opinion of a career civil servant.”
But it was more than opinion when the secretary of state weighed in.
“The administration has stopped using the phrase, and I think that speaks for itself, obviously,” Hillary Clinton told reporters. Obviously?
What dropping the phrase says is that the administration wants to tamp down the rhetoric, in part to repair the nation’s image abroad. The International Commission of Jurists, a human rights group, called in February for the United States to drop the war paradigm as a basis for counter-terrorism policy.
Putting the nation on a war footing after 9/11 resulted in human rights violations, including torture, the group’s report said. Obama and his team discuss operations, not the global war on terror, while seeking international support.
Defense Undersecretary Flournoy said the United States needs “all the instruments of our national power and those of our allies” to fight al-Qaida and the Taliban. Some Republicans, though, aren’t letting the phrase go quietly. On Wednesday, Sen. John McCain of Arizona asked Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command, about a threatened terrorist attack on Washington by Pakistan’s Taliban leader, Baitullah Masood.
Petraeus responded that the government is taking the threat seriously. Intelligence analysts are working hard because there are questions about “the capacity of that organization in terms of transnational activities,” he said.
“Well,” McCain said, dryly, “we certainly wouldn’t want to call it a global war on terror.”
-- Marsha Mercer
(c) 2009 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
The Obama administration buried it in the slogans graveyard next to “It’s the economy, stupid,” near Al Gore’s “lockbox” and the lips that said, “No new taxes.”
“Global war on terror” was the organizing principle of the Bush presidency after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The war touched all our lives – through color-coded terrorist alerts, heightened airport security, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. And it led to prisoner detention at Guantanamo.
President Barack Obama didn’t declare victory in the war. No one could say what winning would look like anyway. And Obama didn’t sign an order banning the phrase.
Instead, the administration put the phrase out of its misery by shunning it.
The question arises: If no one hears about a global war on terror or its unlovely acronym, GWOT, does the war exist? Well, yes. Only the phrase is dead.
Obama isn’t so much turning the page on the global war on terror as renaming and updating it. These days, “overseas contingency operations” are in. But threats of terrorist attacks in the United States remain.
Obama has set new military goals. “We have a clear and focused goal to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaida in Pakistan and Afghanistan,” he said. The three Ds are less dramatic than “war,” but the strategy still envisions international anti-terrorism efforts.
“We understand that this cannot be an American-only effort,” Michele Flournoy, the undersecretary of Defense for policy, told the Senate Armed Services Committee Wednesday.
“Defeating al-Qaida and its extremist allies is a goal and responsibility for the international community.” Flournoy said the president would be engaging U.S. allies so they’re contributing to the anti-terrorism effort.
The Obama team wasn’t the first to try to banish the phrase. Two years ago, the House Armed Services Committee tried to scrub the global war on terror from the 2008 defense budget.
Reporter Rick Maze wrote in the Army Times on April 4, 2007 that the committee’s Democratic leadership disliked the phrase and had banned it.“
A memo for the committee staff, circulated March 27, says the 2008 bill…should `avoid using colloquialisms,’” Maze wrote. Among those to be avoided, along with “long war,” was the phrase President George W. Bush used soon after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Bush was unfazed. He continued to use the phrase. With Obama in the White House, another memo went to Pentagon staffers last month.
“This administration prefers to avoid using the term ‘Long War’ or `Global War on Terror [GWOT.] Please use `Overseas Contingency Operation,’” it read.
The Office of Management and Budget, which pre-screens administration officials’ testimony on Capitol Hill, sent the memo, according to The Washington Post. A spokesman for OMB denied it was official policy and said the memo was only the “opinion of a career civil servant.”
But it was more than opinion when the secretary of state weighed in.
“The administration has stopped using the phrase, and I think that speaks for itself, obviously,” Hillary Clinton told reporters. Obviously?
What dropping the phrase says is that the administration wants to tamp down the rhetoric, in part to repair the nation’s image abroad. The International Commission of Jurists, a human rights group, called in February for the United States to drop the war paradigm as a basis for counter-terrorism policy.
Putting the nation on a war footing after 9/11 resulted in human rights violations, including torture, the group’s report said. Obama and his team discuss operations, not the global war on terror, while seeking international support.
Defense Undersecretary Flournoy said the United States needs “all the instruments of our national power and those of our allies” to fight al-Qaida and the Taliban. Some Republicans, though, aren’t letting the phrase go quietly. On Wednesday, Sen. John McCain of Arizona asked Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command, about a threatened terrorist attack on Washington by Pakistan’s Taliban leader, Baitullah Masood.
Petraeus responded that the government is taking the threat seriously. Intelligence analysts are working hard because there are questions about “the capacity of that organization in terms of transnational activities,” he said.
“Well,” McCain said, dryly, “we certainly wouldn’t want to call it a global war on terror.”
-- Marsha Mercer
(c) 2009 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
A Window on Washington closes - March 26, 2009 column
WASHINGTON – Media General opened its window on Washington thirty years ago, three blocks from the White House. This week, the recession closed it.
The Media General Washington bureau came to life in 1979 during a major international crisis with a mission to untangle the capital for newspaper readers in the Southeast. It ends as a multimedia bureau during – and because of – another international crisis.
On Nov. 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and captured about 70 Americans. The hostage crisis would last 444 days. The enduring embarrassment to the country – and President Jimmy Carter – ended with his defeat in the 1980 election. The hostages were released as Ronald Reagan was inaugurated in January 1981.
In those first shocking weeks after terrorists attacked the embassy, the new Washington bureau chief, John Hall, wrote his newspapers’ editors from his second-floor perch overlooking 14th Street:
“It’s hard to concentrate on anything else during the Iran crisis. Iranian demonstrators staged a 30-minute ‘Death to the Shah’ protest right outside our windows a couple of weeks ago and a man carrying an American flag climbed a telephone pole until he was at eye level with us, looking like he had just captured San Juan Hill.”
Hall’s boss soon sent him and a photographer to Iran. Few correspondents were able to enter Iran then, and Hall wrote of facing a million people marching toward him, shouting, “Death to America.” He later reported from China, the Philippines, Vietnam, the Soviet Union, Poland, Great Britain and Western Europe.
Hall built the bureau and I, happily, was among his hires. He stepped down as bureau chief in 2001 to focus on his column and was replaced by Gene Marlowe. I became chief in 2003 when the much-loved Gene passed away.
In early 2008, the bureau reorganized and adopted a Web-first approach. The transition was successful, and in addition to print stories, our talented reporters began producing TV packages, Web videos and an unending stream of online updates on mgwashington.com.
From a staff of 10 print reporters and an office manager in 1982 serving six papers, the bureau hummed this year with a multimedia staff of six serving Media General’s 24 daily newspapers, 19 TV stations and scores of Web sites. We spent most of this year covering today’s international crisis – the global economic collapse.
In 1979, it was hard for Hall to focus on anything other than the international crisis du jour, Iran. Today, it’s hard for me to concentrate on anything but the economy.
This time, we aren’t just covering the crisis from our window on Washington. We are part of the story. Media General decided a few weeks ago to close the Washington bureau March 27, joining the other media corporations that have taken that difficult step because of the decline in newspaper advertising.
We six bureau staffers are joining millions of others who have been laid off. This is my last column from the Washington bureau.
The bureau was hitting home runs until the end. Unfortunately, the company had a really bad 2008. The outlook for this year does not look much better and the company has had to slash expenses.
“We very much regret having to take this step,” Graham Woodlief, president of Media General’s publishing division, said in a statement earlier this month announcing the bureau’s closing.
So for the first time since the Richmond Times-Dispatch sent columnist Charley McDowell to the capital in 1965, Media General has no one stationed in Washington.
I am honored to have been your eyes and ears in Washington for 28 years, covering Congress and the White House. I have had the good fortune of working for a company that encouraged and backed the Washington bureau and me. I’m proud of our team of dedicated journalists, and I know they’ll go far.
My favorite assignments have given me the gift of traveling this great country, meeting and talking to people about politics and how Washington affects their lives. My weekly column has brought me many friends – and critics -- who have helped me think and write more clearly. I loved our conversation. I am grateful for a great run. Thanks for reading.
-- Marsha Mercer
The Media General Washington bureau came to life in 1979 during a major international crisis with a mission to untangle the capital for newspaper readers in the Southeast. It ends as a multimedia bureau during – and because of – another international crisis.
On Nov. 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and captured about 70 Americans. The hostage crisis would last 444 days. The enduring embarrassment to the country – and President Jimmy Carter – ended with his defeat in the 1980 election. The hostages were released as Ronald Reagan was inaugurated in January 1981.
In those first shocking weeks after terrorists attacked the embassy, the new Washington bureau chief, John Hall, wrote his newspapers’ editors from his second-floor perch overlooking 14th Street:
“It’s hard to concentrate on anything else during the Iran crisis. Iranian demonstrators staged a 30-minute ‘Death to the Shah’ protest right outside our windows a couple of weeks ago and a man carrying an American flag climbed a telephone pole until he was at eye level with us, looking like he had just captured San Juan Hill.”
Hall’s boss soon sent him and a photographer to Iran. Few correspondents were able to enter Iran then, and Hall wrote of facing a million people marching toward him, shouting, “Death to America.” He later reported from China, the Philippines, Vietnam, the Soviet Union, Poland, Great Britain and Western Europe.
Hall built the bureau and I, happily, was among his hires. He stepped down as bureau chief in 2001 to focus on his column and was replaced by Gene Marlowe. I became chief in 2003 when the much-loved Gene passed away.
In early 2008, the bureau reorganized and adopted a Web-first approach. The transition was successful, and in addition to print stories, our talented reporters began producing TV packages, Web videos and an unending stream of online updates on mgwashington.com.
From a staff of 10 print reporters and an office manager in 1982 serving six papers, the bureau hummed this year with a multimedia staff of six serving Media General’s 24 daily newspapers, 19 TV stations and scores of Web sites. We spent most of this year covering today’s international crisis – the global economic collapse.
In 1979, it was hard for Hall to focus on anything other than the international crisis du jour, Iran. Today, it’s hard for me to concentrate on anything but the economy.
This time, we aren’t just covering the crisis from our window on Washington. We are part of the story. Media General decided a few weeks ago to close the Washington bureau March 27, joining the other media corporations that have taken that difficult step because of the decline in newspaper advertising.
We six bureau staffers are joining millions of others who have been laid off. This is my last column from the Washington bureau.
The bureau was hitting home runs until the end. Unfortunately, the company had a really bad 2008. The outlook for this year does not look much better and the company has had to slash expenses.
“We very much regret having to take this step,” Graham Woodlief, president of Media General’s publishing division, said in a statement earlier this month announcing the bureau’s closing.
So for the first time since the Richmond Times-Dispatch sent columnist Charley McDowell to the capital in 1965, Media General has no one stationed in Washington.
I am honored to have been your eyes and ears in Washington for 28 years, covering Congress and the White House. I have had the good fortune of working for a company that encouraged and backed the Washington bureau and me. I’m proud of our team of dedicated journalists, and I know they’ll go far.
My favorite assignments have given me the gift of traveling this great country, meeting and talking to people about politics and how Washington affects their lives. My weekly column has brought me many friends – and critics -- who have helped me think and write more clearly. I loved our conversation. I am grateful for a great run. Thanks for reading.
-- Marsha Mercer
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