Disregard of Laws Not a New Thing

1870 celebration of the Fifteenth Amendment as... — 1870 celebration of the Fifteenth Amendment as a guarantee of African American voting rights (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The news this week is that the attorneys general and governors of several states are saying they will not respect the Affordable Care Act.

That is not surprising, nor is it particularly troubling. Over the course of American history, there have been several controversial laws either passed by Congress or upheld by the United States Supreme Court that states have ignored.

When Brown vs. Board of Education decided that there was no such thing as “separate but equal,” schools in some states closed rather than comply with the requirement to integrate. In Virginia, Mississippi and other states, there was open resistance to the High Court’s ruling. On the site, http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/brown/brown-aftermath.html, we find written: “The “deliberate speed” called for in the Supreme Court’s Brown decision was quickly overshadowed by events outside the nation’s courtrooms. In Montgomery, Alabama, a grassroots revolt against segregated public transportation inspired a multitude of similar protests and boycotts. A number of school districts in the Southern and border states desegregated peacefully. Elsewhere, white resistance to school desegregation resulted in open defiance and violent confrontations, requiring the use of federal troops in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. Efforts to end segregation in Southern colleges were also marred by obstinate refusals to welcome African-Americans into previously all-white student bodies.”

When the 15th Amendment was passed after the Civil War, again, states rebelled and refused to comply with the law. Writes Marian Wright Edelman, president and founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, “How is it possible that African-Americans after slavery can have the vote in hand and then 100 years later from 1865 to 1965 are still fighting for the vote? We have to understand that American history is not linear or upward progress. American history is about peaks and valleys.” After the brief peak of Black elected officials during Reconstruction right after the Civil War ended, the next valley began when Mississippi called a constitutional convention to look for ways around the 15th Amendment. The result was decades of new voting laws across the South requiring literacy tests, “grandfather” clauses that prohibited anyone from voting if their grandfather hadn’t, and other “colorblind” policies whose main purpose was actually to keep people of one color from participating in our democracy.”

Now, we have the Affordable Care Act, and states again are participating in civil disobedience. That is the right of being an American, a right that people in other countries with different governments apparently cannot do. But it is troubling that so many of the laws that have inspired such open rebellion and repudiation have been concerned with the rights of the disenfranchised, the poor, those for whom “the American dream” is elusive.

The fact that at least 46 million more people will have health care thanks to the Affordable Care Act is comforting to me; the fact that America is so deeply in debt is troubling, and so I can understand the protest against the cost of this massive bill. But at the end of the day, I still submit that a nation cannot be called “great” if it has such a large underclass that is exploited by those in power. The laws cited in this piece, concerning education, voting rights and now, health care, are designed to help those who have been so long ignored.

The debt that America carries is not solely because of the”entitlements” that so many are against. The fact that many working Americans cannot afford health care is not their fault. The fact that America has a culture that has supported disenfranchisement of a large number of her citizens is regrettable …but the fact that there have been put in place laws that protect this nation’s most vulnerable says that the ideal called democracy can work.

I shudder to think what America, the “land of the free and home of the brave” would look like had not these and other protective laws been passed. Although Reaganomics says that if there is a wealthy upper class, the wealth will “trickle down” to everyone else, that theory has not been shown to have merit. Neither is it apparently true that humans can be expected to take care of “the least of these” in America without laws, although America is willing to seek and to take care of “the least of these” in other countries.

It will be interesting to see how the fight against the Affordable Care Act will shake out, just as it will be interesting to see how the efforts at voter suppression will affect this nation. After all the struggle America has gone through, it seems that our problems are still the same. As “the preacher” said in the Book of Ecclesiastes, “there is nothing new under the sun.”

A candid observation …

Affordable Care Act Overdue

HR3590-Patient-Protection-and-Affordable-Care-... — HR3590-Patient-Protection-and-Affordable-Care-Act_1 (Photo credit: Obama For America – California)

Sarah Palin is probably right: the passage of the Affordable Care Act by the United States Supreme Court will mobilize the Tea Party Conservatives, and probably others.

The presidential election will be fierce and fiery, more negative than it might have been had the High Court struck down the law, with cries of “socialism” leveled against President Obama.

But in the midst of the sound and the fury, poor people, unemployed people and underemployed people will have access to health care. And for that, I breathe a sigh of relief.

I am beginning to understand what I call the “politics of the fortunate,” the “fortunate” being those lucky enough to have enough resources to live comfortably in this country. In many of their minds, entitlements, including Medicaid, welfare, and other large-scale programs funded by the government to aid the poor allow and encourage people to be lazy and content to allow others to pay for their needs.

What “the fortunate” don’t seem to understand is that while there are certainly people who take advantage of government programs, many people would rather die than take government assistance, yet would probably literally die were not government assistance available for them.

They don’t seem to understand that many of the unemployed are not working because they seriously cannot find a job; they don’t seem to understand that underemployment is as bad as is unemployment in many instances, not providing enough money for employees to adequately take care of themselves and their families.

What they don’t seem to understand is that just because a person is poor does not mean that that person does not deserve to be treated as a human being. People in the 21st century ought not be walking around with cancer that they cannot afford to get treated, or with abscessed teeth because they cannot afford to go to a dentist.

What they don’t seem to understand is that nobody wants to be poor. Nobody wants to struggle financially. And nobody wants to be penalized and be made to feel like they are not worthy of health care just because they are poor.

It feels strange to live in a country where many put more value on the proliferation of military might than on the protection and care-giving of its own citizens. It feels even stranger to be involved in wars that fight for democracy in other lands while democracy here is broken – because, surely, a country that does not take care of its poor is broken.

I have heard people today say that this health care bill converts America into a socialist country. I do not understand, but I am sure it has something to do with the resentment that many have that the poor are being helped along by the government …and by their tax dollars.

If you never see the poor, look into their eyes, see how they live, see what they endure, then it’s easy to be dismissive and critical of their presence. If you have not been unemployed or underemployed, it is, again, easy to make judgments about people who are in those situations, and blame them for their situations.

Sarah Palin, like I said, is probably right. This action by the High Court is going to get the Tea Party boiling mad and energized in their fight against big government.

But as we have big government anyway, much of the recent “bigness” put in place by President Bush, causing us to go into serious debt, I rest a little easier knowing that some of my tax dollars are going to help those who absolutely cannot get out of their economic ruts. Like it or not, that is a reality in America. Perhaps one of the biggest differences between the “haves” and the “have-nots” is that those in the former group are more likely to have help to get out of their ruts, while the have-nots get more and more entrenched in theirs.

All people, wealthy or poor, deserve health care. No human is so poor that he or she deserves to be treated like an object with no feelings and no needs.

A candid observation …

America’s Moral Economy and the Issue of Health Care

I read a story in The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/health/oregon-study-reveals-benefits-and-costs-of-insuring-the-uninsured.html?smid=fb-share) about a woman who “shattered” her ankle. Because she did not have health insurance, the emergency room put the ankle in an air cast, but doctors would not perform the surgery she needed. As a result, she “hobbled around in pain” for four years, causing her to gain weight, miss work and suffer other health challenges.

This woman did not live in a Third World country. She lives in the United States.

As the country awaits the United States Supreme Court‘s ruling on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare), I find myself shuddering because I am worried that the Court will rule against the bill and if it does, so many people will again be out of luck.

The health care bill, though unpopular because opponents say it’s government-controlled, really does do some helpful things, like allow children with pre-existing conditions to get health care, children to stay on their parents’ plans until they reach age 26, and will eventually allow anyone with a pre-existing condition to get health care.

If the bill is shot down by the Court, however, all of those really positive gains will be lost.

What gets me is how this nation, which calls itself “the greatest nation in the world,” can live with itself when people like the woman mentioned at the beginning of this piece are walking around in pain in spite of our “greatest health-care-system-in-the-world” claim. How can any system be that great when the very people who need it most are shut out?

By now, people have heard of tragedies like children, primarily poor children, dying from such fixable ailments as an impacted tooth. Without health care, these children cannot afford the most basic of care, which also for them happens, many times, to be life-saving. Children and adults have been cut off from receiving necessary chemo-therapy or other treatments when Medicaid has refused to cover such treatment. Can this really be the reality of the so-called “greatest” nation?

Not having health insurance keeps some people from even seeking the care and treatment they need. In the same New York Times article, a woman, 24 years old, was said to be suffering from depression and C

rohn’s disease, but also for stage 2 cervical cancer – for which she cannot afford treatment.

In Oregon, there has been created a lottery where people can “win” health care through the lottery system. Because of that, some people now have health care. The article is lifting up alternatives to the present health care system, where so many people are left out and is also presenting the benefits and cost of insuring previously uninsured people. The lottery, by allowing people to “win” health care, is apparently a win-win situation for the state and for the “newly insured,” who are getting better care and are cutting health costs in other areas.

That some states are looking for alternatives to our present system is a comfort, but that the federal government is not so supportive of a health care system that takes care of more Americans is troubling. We as a nation seem to have little time or patience for those who are poor and who depend on the government for help. There is a moral economy here that is not working, but the federal government and too many state governments seem unable and unwilling to look at that issue.

In effect, not providing the poor, the unemployed and underemployed with viable health care seems to be immoral, in a country which touts itself as a moral leader in and of the world. I don’t think a nation can be “moral” and not only blame “the least of these” for their predicaments, but also ignore them as much as possible.

I would bet that the nation’s highest court would not agree with me, but we will see, sooner rather than later.

For the sake of people like the 24-year-old woman who is walking around without getting treatment for serious illnesses and diseases, I hope I am wrong. No nation can afford to ignore its masses, our nation included.

A candid observation …

When Humiliation Explodes

http://www.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/photos/... — http://www.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/photos/020903-o-9999b-098.jpg filedesc Tuskegee Airmen – Circa May 1942 to Aug 1943 Location unknown, likely Southern Italy or North Africa (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Oppression, under any name, is humiliating.

I recently watched the HBO version of the story of the Tuskegee Airmen, a work which was much better, actually, than the film Red Tails. There were a lot of “ouch” moments in the film for me, but one particularly painful moment for me came in a scene where a white commanding officer told a black recruit that he was “nothing,” and after he was finished, the recruit was forced to salute.

It made my stomach turn.

Oppression comes in many forms: it may be racial or sexual; it may occur between a parent and child or a husband and wife or between partners. In all cases, oppression appears to be a form of sophisticated and sanctioned bullying, designed to keep the oppressed “in his or her place.” And in assuring that “place,” someone is inevitably humiliated.

A woman, Marissa Alexander, was recently sentenced in Florida to 20 years in prison for firing a warning shot into the air as her husband threatened her with violence. Domestic violence is a form of oppression, and it is humiliating. As is the case with so many cases of oppression, the oppressor in the case of Alexander escaped charges in the incident; he is free while this mother is in jail for trying to protect herself and maintain a sense of dignity.

Oppressors have power because their oppression is supported by society; their society-sanctioned bullying is carried out so that they can maintain power, and that power is used not to uplift society but to belittle other individuals, but what people do not seem to understand that individuals can only take so much humiliation before they explode. People have a need, a desire, to be honored and to be treated with dignity, and when that doesn’t happen, after a while, something inside one’s spirit gives out.

In the HBO movie, the recruit who was early on humiliated was punished later for being a show-boat; he was a licensed pilot when he entered the Tuskegee program but was never honored as such. He was treated as a nothing, and so when he had an opportunity to “show his stuff” in a plane, he did so, and was punished by being put out of the program. It was too much. He begged for mercy, to be allowed to stay in the program. He said he’d do anything…but his begging was for naught. In despair, he snapped; he ran impulsively to a plane, got in, and took off on a suicide flight. If he was going to be out of the program, he would be “out” on his own terms. He would NOT go home humiliated, not again.

That humiliation builds and then explodes is no surprise. What is troubling, however, is that oppression continues as a force in life, causing far too much despair, far too much humiliation.

Rev. Jesse Jackson said that people only revolt when they are humiliated. Race riots, women finally fighting back against abusive spouses, children exploding because of overbearing parents …all seem to bear out Jackson’s statement. After a while, those who are oppressed say “enough,” and violence ensues.

That’s not a comforting thought…but what it is is a troubling reality.

A candid observation …

Mashed Potato Bulletin

This story about Romney’s accomplishments and problems as governor of Massachusetts illustrates the Romney many of us foresee entering the White House should he prevail against Obama. It’s a Romney who is unable to break away from the CEO mentality of “What I say goes”. One who can’t truly grasp what it means to work with other elected officials nor fully comprehend that members of state legislatures, or Congress for that matter, are not his employees who will obediently follow lockstep with every decision he makes. Given his past as governor, one would think Romney would comprehend better than most the frustrations Obama has faced in his attempts to move his policy forward amidst an ideologically driven opposition.