Letters Letters
Fractivists get serious, “free” speech far from the RNC, la belle France nukes paradise…
Oct 10, 2012 / Our Readers
Letters Letters
A Waste of Money—Theirs Charlotte, N.C. I invite readers offended by some of your ads to think of them as doubly beneficial [“Letters,” Sept. 24]. They provide the left much-needed financial support. They also divert funds away from nefarious projects. It’s hard to imagine that the ads would have any impact on Nation readers. RAJIVE TIWARI The Truth? They Can’t Handle the Truth Santa Fe Re “The Post-Truth Party” [Sept. 24]: The blatant falsehoods being spouted by Retro Romney and Ryan are all part of their campaign’s money-fueled calculation that the electorate is half asleep and that facts don’t matter. Let’s hope they are routed on election day, and the money-changers are chased from the political temple before they abscond with our democracy. BARBARA ALLEN KENNEY The Dalles, Ore. I shook my head in disbelief at your “Post-Truth” editorial. You correctly point out that Republicans don’t care much about facts, but you do not understand that about half the voting public also doesn’t care. And you don’t understand how to relate to voters. For you to contend that “The best way to unmask the GOP” is with “economic straight talk” is at best naïve and at worst just plain stupid. As a former trainer and lecturer, I know one must present the subject so that every person understands “where am I in this picture?” Consider Wisconsin: 46 percent of union households voted to retain Scott Walker. Why? Failure to communicate. Wisconsin is a harbinger of the upcoming national elections. Another tidbit: about half of seniors on Social Security and Medicare don’t understand they are in federally supported programs. With the Citizens United decision, any election is for sale. Money and BS rule! ROGER WAGNER Canaan, N.Y. “The Post-Truth Party” opines that the GOP knows it is “going to need big lies to win.” There is confusion here between lies and delusions. Lying is knowingly falsifying in order to manipulate. Deluding is unknowingly falsifying to satisfy an unconscious emotional need. Delusions are unconscious concoctions. Delusional people don’t know they’re being destructive; they believe they’re being constructive. The Romney/Ryan policies seem to be based on delusions that will destroy government rather than reform it. AUGUSTUS F. KINZEL, MD Songs of the Voiceless Houston Thank you, Wick Sloane, for “I Hear America Singing” [Sept. 24], featuring community college students’ poetry. Sometimes I don’t even have time to read my magazines. This morning, I just flipped through The Nation as I walked to my office and was overcome by the poetry. I love to see and hear the voices of the too often voiceless. Thank you for speaking about your students. Thank you for sharing their beauty. I will keep this issue forever. JANI J. MASELLI Assistant public defender, Harris County A Fact-Checkered Past Washington, D.C. Eric Alterman rescued me from isolation, for which I am grateful. I thought I was the only one who saw The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler making a false equivalence between the GOP and the Democrats [“The Liberal Media,” Sept. 24]. As a longtime Post reader, I feel that Kessler’s false equivalency has become even worse. It’s painfully obvious that he struggles to find something, anything, that President Obama or Vice President Biden has said that even remotely resembles the lies of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. Unfortunately for us, his “fact-checking” is quoted by the rest of the mainstream media. JOHN DesMARTEAU Crofton, Md. Eric Alterman was spot on in his discussion of The Washington Post’s “fact-checker,” Glenn Kessler. In the Post’s September 9 edition (published too late for Alterman’s column), Kessler took Joe Biden to task for saying that Mitt Romney had received a “bailout” for Bain Consulting by getting the FDIC to write off $10 million of its debt. No, it wasn’t a bailout, Kessler concluded, artfully hiding behind an FDIC euphemism. Hey, it was merely a “loan restructuring.” HARRY PIOTROWSKI Archives vs. ‘Anarchives’ New York City It’s stunning to see Nathan Schneider, in “Occupy, After Occupy” [Sept. 24], set up a conflict between the vibrant activism of Occupy and what he calls “the fossilized existence offered by Tamiment.” Schneider is referring to NYU’s Tamiment library, which seeks to add Occupy records to its collections. Schneider’s construction of an imaginary conflict shows a contempt for history and for an institution of immense value to the American left. Those who have used Tamiment’s collections, or attended its fine public programs (e.g., on Joe Hill, the CIA and Malcolm X, and presentations by Tamiment’s Center for the United States and the Cold War—which have elicited attacks from the right) will be dumbfounded by this attack. Among the collections at Tamiment are: Oral History of the American Left (not to mention—disclosure/boast—my mother Beatrice Lemisch’s radio interview series, Grandma Was an Activist), Radical History Review, Communist Party USA, Howard Zinn, Victor Navasky (ahem), William Kunstler, Campaign for Peace and Democracy, Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal, Occupy oral histories, and so on. Many of these valuable collections were brought to Tamiment by its director, Michael Nash, who died suddenly this past summer. Those of us who have lived in and through left movements know we are not limited by what happened in the past as we seek to make something utterly different from what is and has been. And it’s best that we know the kinds of things that Tamiment reveals. JESSE LEMISCH Schneider Replies Brooklyn, N.Y. Tamiment is an institution for which I have great respect, so I’m almost glad that this aspersion against me provides an excuse to sing its praises. However, I think most readers will recognize that the word “fossilized” in the article is meant to reflect the perspective of one of my sources, not my own. Furthermore, the debate in the Occupy movement about what to do with the archives is definitely not “imaginary.” An earlier stage of the debate was also attested to in the excellent essay “The Struggle for the Occupy Wall Street Archives,” written by a Tamiment employee and published online by the Awl in December. I’m sure historians of the future will be grateful for Tamiment’s efforts to preserve the material records of the movement, as well as for the efforts of those in the movement to create “anarchives” of their own. NATHAN SCHNEIDER
Oct 3, 2012 / Our Readers and Nathan Schneider
Letters Letters
May Todd Akin Rot in Hell—Legitimately New York City Katha Pollitt has nailed it again with “Women Who Love Republicans Who Hate Them” [“Subject to Debate,” Sept. 17]. I would just add that Todd Akin’s gag-inducing belief about the spermicidal capacity of women who have been “legitimately” raped goes back a lot further than 1988. According to The Guardian: “One of the earliest British legal texts, Fleta…[says]: ‘If, however, the woman should have conceived at the time alleged in the appeal, it abates, for without a woman’s consent she could not conceive.’” Fleta dates to approximately 1290. Yes, folks, the Republican Party, working to take us back to that golden age, the thirteenth century. NORA FREEMAN His Nose Just Grows and Grows Madison, N.J. Pinocchio! Your ad on page 16 of the September 17 issue is the best picture of Governor Christie! I sent it to him and recommended he subscribe to The Nation. LOIS VUONO Still a Difficult Woman Hayward, Calif. Victor Navasky’s review of a biography of Lillian Hellman by Alice Kessler-Harris [“The Antagonist,” Sept. 17] was interesting but uninformative—interesting in retelling some incidents in Hellman’s life, uninformative by avoiding others. The good: Hellman’s defiance of HUAC is still an inspiration. She stood foursquare for the “simple rules of human decency and Christian honor.” The reference to Christian honor puzzles me, though, since Hellman was not Christian and since, in light of fascism and vile McCarthyism, “Christian honor” seems to be an oxymoron. As for the bad: Mary McCarthy attacked Hellman’s autobiographical books as lies. I remember reading those books with admiration for their literary and political style. If the books were in fact a confabulation, my opinion fundamentally changes. So the question is: Were the assertions in those books true (or sort of true) or were they false? I don’t know whether Kessler-Harris gives an answer. Navasky certainly does not. I’d like to know. At least, I’d like to know the opinions of Kessler-Harris and Navasky. JOHN PLOTZ Navasky Replies New York City Which facts is Mr. Plotz talking about? Hellman’s three memoirs were filled with thousands of facts and undoubtedly some factoids. If it helps, I’d add that I don’t agree with Mary McCarthy that “every word” Hellman wrote was a lie. VICTOR NAVASKY The Highest Caliber Tucson Paula Findlen’s review of Brad Gregory’s The Unintended Reformation [“Scissor Work,” Sept. 17] is excellent—learned and subtle, and she comes to the right conclusion, the same negative one as everybody else, but in a very thoughtful way. SUSAN KARANT-NUNN, director Division for Late Medieval and Reformation Studies University of Arizona Corrections: August in Paris… Thomas Meaney’s “The Generalist” [Oct. 1] refers to the liberation of Paris in May 1944. Paris was liberated in August 1944. It also described de Gaulle’s laissez-faire economic policies as beginning in 1948; they began in 1945. Finally, a clarification: the piece stated that de Gaulle’s crowning economic achievement was establishing the European Economic Community in 1957. While de Gaulle was not in power in 1957, he retailored the Treaty of Rome, which established the EEC, to suit Franco-German needs in the late 1950s.
Sep 25, 2012 / Our Readers
Exchange: ACA vs. Single-Payer—Bury the Hatchet? Exchange: ACA vs. Single-Payer—Bury the Hatchet?
Washington, D.C. As the attorney who filed the amicus brief on behalf of Single Payer Action, It’s Our Economy, and Fifty Medical Doctors Who Support Single Payer, all of which opposed the individual mandate but otherwise supported the Affordable Care Act, I agree with Wendell Potter that it’s time for progressives to bury the hatchet [“No Time for Infighting,” July 30/Aug. 6]. I invite Potter and other progressives supporting the ACA to join those who never wavered in supporting what we all know is the only solution to the healthcare crisis—single-payer, aka Medicare for All. I hope Potter will blow the whistle on the individual mandate, which he, more than anyone else, must recognize as a deal with the devil. If Potter won’t bury the hatchet by embracing single-payer, he should at least rescind his demand that single-payer advocates support a law entrenching the same for-profit health insurers he now renounces after a lucrative career as their PR man. Otherwise, he’s just perpetuating the same old misinformation. OLIVER HALL New York City Wendell Potter’s insightful critique of his former bosses in big health insurance was marred by his reprimand of his newfound friends in Physicians for a National Health Program and the rest of the single-payer movement for failing to adopt the political style of his erstwhile employer. Potter incorrectly implies that PNHP urged a no vote on President Obama’s health reform by the Supreme Court. Some PNHP members condemned the ACA for boosting private insurers’ financial (and future political) power with a trillion-dollar infusion of public subsidies and mandated premiums. Others welcomed its expansion of Medicaid. All agreed that the reform would leave at least 26 million Americans uninsured and most others underinsured; that it would accelerate the corporate takeover of medicine and increase costs; and that single-payer reform remains an urgent necessity. Potter derides PNHP as a group of strategy-less “die-hards” too “furious at the president and the Democrats” to vote in November or pursue rational alliances. How odd to see a group of 18,000 doctors—including a number of Republicans, conservatives and libertarians—caricatured as ultra-leftists! His call for diluting the single-payer message in defense of Obama’s reform mistakes the nature of the group and its role in society. Physicians are neither politicians nor corporate lobbyists. On health policy, as in our consultations with patients, we’re ethically bound to tell the truth, not a tale we only wish were true. Aspirin may ease the pain of cancer, but it must not be portrayed as a cure. In Massachusetts, five years into Obama/Romney reform, access to care has barely budged, medical bankruptcy is common and costs continue to spiral. Having lived with such reform, doctors in the state favor single-payer over it by two to one, according to a recent Massachusetts Medical Society survey. Love it or not, Obamacare is the new status quo. Private insurers—whose paperwork and profits siphon off nearly one-third of healthcare dollars—are still in charge. We and our PNHP colleagues remain determined to replace them with a humane, publicly controlled single-payer system. We invite others to join us. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER, MD, MPH DAVID U. HIMMELSTEIN, MD, founders, Physicians for a National Health Program Potter Replies Philadelphia Our country owes Drs. Woolhandler and Himmelstein an enormous debt of gratitude for their untiring efforts over many years to see our uniquely dysfunctional and inefficient multipayer system of private insurance companies replaced with a more rational single-payer one. As I thought was evident, I’m on their side now. I agree with them and my other friends at PNHP that we must keep working for a more humane system in which private insurers are no longer in charge and can no longer siphon off our premium dollars to cover unnecessary administrative costs and to reward shareholders and executives. I hope Drs. Woolhandler and Himmelstein will take another look at my article. They’ll see I was suggesting that all reform advocates, not just PNHP members, might consider taking a more strategic approach to achieving their goals. In fact, I referred to PNHP only once, in the penultimate paragraph. I did not write or imply that the organization urged the Supreme Court to declare the ACA unconstitutional, only that many single-payer advocates (including some PNHP members I know personally) felt that way and expressed themselves very vocally. I also did not characterize PNHP as a group of “strategy-less ‘die-hards,’” and I did not reprimand advocates, single-payer or otherwise, “for failing to adopt the political style of my erstwhile employer.” Developing a comprehensive research-based strategy and forming alliances with other organizations to achieve a goal is not synonymous with adopting the insurance industry’s political style. Anyone who knows me and what I have written and said about the ACA knows that I always point out that the law falls far short of getting us to universal coverage and controlling costs. But I have indeed written that as flawed as the bill is, it is all we are going to get from the 111th Congress, and that starting over would mean that millions of Americans who now or soon will have better access to care would be out of luck for who knows how long if it hadn’t been enacted. I’ve often cited Drs. Woolhandler and Himmelstein’s 2009 study, which estimates that, as a PNHP news release put it, “nearly 45,000 annual deaths are associated with lack of health insurance.” When the ACA is fully implemented, that number will drop. This means that many friends and family members will not have to die prematurely. That number will not drop to zero, however, which is why we need to “get down to the business of developing a strategy to move forward.” That I did write, and I trust it is something all reform advocates can agree on. As well-written as Mr. Hall’s amicus brief was, it didn’t persuade Chief Justice Roberts to declare the ACA unconstitutional. And as sincere and hopeful as single-payer advocates were at the beginning of the debate on reform in 2009, they regrettably were not able to persuade Congressional leaders or the president to give single-payer even a hearing. So now that the ACA apparently will move forward, where is the strategy to persuade the public and lawmakers to even consider single-payer as a replacement for what we have now? Is it likely that a President Romney and Senate Majority Leader McConnell would be more receptive than Barack Obama and Harry Reid? Is the best strategy to wait until the special interests are no longer as powerful as they are on Capitol Hill and in statehouses or as able to manipulate public opinion? Is it best to wait for the revolution as millions more Americans fall into the ranks of the uninsured and die? No, thank you. My children and your children might be among those who die waiting for the revolution. Any one of us could be. We absolutely need those who have been unwavering in their support of Medicare for All—including the single-payer advocates I’m preparing to meet with as I write this—to stay unwavering and join us to begin the process of developing a strategy to win. I invite anyone interested in seeing a single-payer healthcare system established in this country to join in. WENDELL POTTER
Aug 29, 2012 / Oliver Hall, Steffie Woolhandler, David U. Himmelstein, and Wendell Potter