To Your Health

BOSTON Apr 4, 2006 (AP)— Lawmakers overwhelmingly approved a bill Tuesday that would make Massachusetts the first state to require that all its citizens have some form of health insurance.

The plan approved just 24 hours after the final details were released would use a combination of financial incentives and penalties to dramatically expand access to health care over the next three years and extend coverage to the state's estimated 500,000 uninsured.

If all goes as planned, poor people will be offered free or heavily subsidized coverage; those who can afford insurance but refuse to get it will face increasing tax penalties until they obtain coverage; and those already insured will see a modest drop in their premiums.

The measure does not call for new taxes but would require businesses that do not offer insurance to pay a $295 annual fee per employee.

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I'm all for extending health care to people who don't have it. But forcing people to buy health insurance? Does that make any sense?

I don't like it. It's predicated on the assumption that if only those stupid lower-class people were forced to prioritize and spend money on things that matter instead of frittering away their extra $200 a week on cans of beans or country music CDs or whatever it is poor people buy.

The fact is, lower-income people don't buy health insurance because they like the thrill of living without a net or because they foolishly think they won't get sick. Rather, they simply can't afford rent, food, transportation, AND health care. Rather, the needs of shelter, food, and getting to work are far more pressing than the possibility of injury. This added to the fact that most of the cheaper health-coverage plans only provide for 'catastrophic' health problems while people who work in manual or service jobs are more susceptible to chronic condictions which require constant treatments which add up; pill-by-pill costing $20 a day instead of a one-time $10,000 operation. Not to mention the fact that some of those most in need of free health care don't even have to money to get to the hospital or doctor's office in the first place.

Temporary half-measures are appealing, but ultimately they just confuse the hell out of people.

For the Absolute Last Time, Bush Lied

No, not necessarily about Iraq having WMDs (though I still think that what he did constitutes dishonesty at the very least) but about whether Iraq having WMDs had any bearing on whether or not we would invade:

Via the old NYT:

LONDON — In the weeks before the United States-led invasion of Iraq, as the United States and Britain pressed for a second United Nations resolution condemning Iraq, President Bush's public ultimatum to Saddam Hussein was blunt: Disarm or face war.

But behind closed doors, the president was certain that war was inevitable. During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times.

"Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," David Manning, Mr. Blair's chief foreign policy adviser at the time, wrote in the memo that summarized the discussion between Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair and six of their top aides.

"The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March," Mr. Manning wrote, paraphrasing the president. "This was when the bombing would begin."

So! All that pre-war guff about war being our last resort and the necessity if attacking Iraq because it was a clear and present danger was solely a charade for the cameras, just like the hippy who always wears sandals into the coffee shop said. Great. Bush used to say that he prayed for peace; did he have his ifngers crossed or what?

Out of Those Terrible Threes

We've now reached our third full year in Iraq. Oh, and what a difference three years makes! That we only just launched the biggest air assault inside the countyr since the beggining of the war is being taken as a hopeful sign. I always assumed the better things are going the less the need for giant military operations, but I guess that just shows my ignorance.

I believe in the American tradiition the third-year anniversary gift is leather. I don't think leather would make a good present at the moment; leather is a poor choice of clothing in the desert sun, and it would probably be taken as a very tasteless reference to Abu Ghraib and and a certain leather leash.

Now, it would of course be better if there was no sectarian violence in Iraq But there are very powerful international interests at work here which have turned Iraq into a battleground for control of the oil and the people. What they all - Americans, Iranians, al-Qaeda, etc. - agree on is that they don't want Iraq to be independent. Shoot, with their relatively educated, secular populace and vast oil resevres, we could have a real force on our hands.

And, even if you think it was 'worth it', was this really the best possible way we could've spent hundreds of billions of dollars and sacrificed thousands upon thousands of Iraqi and American lives? Aren't there other people who could've been far more liberated with far lesser expenditures? Just wondering...

Death of a Moffo, and Death of a Mofo.

Within the past two weeks, two important figures have died.

The first, Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosvic:























The second, opera singer Anna Moffo:




























These two are surely not of equal importance in world history, but to me, Moffo takes up far greater space. Her recording of La Traviata - with Richard Tucker and Robert Merrill (both jewish) - was the first complete opera I ever heard and liked. More than liked, actually. I would take the tapes with me on the bus to and from summer camp, listening to Act I on the way over and Act II on the way back (I never did find out what happened to acts III and IV). Her voice was delicate but vibrant, impressive but not overdone. She's the one who really got me into opera, and it's against her that I measure all other sopranos.

As for Milosveic, he can burn in hell. Good riddance.

Beware of Tehran

What follows is a heavily edited (and, as such, slightly incoherent) article I wrote for the school newspaper which was not published. Suffice to say that, if it had every appeared in print, the speaker would have been in alot of trouble back in Iran. Even in this version I have tried to remove all identifying remarks and will identify him only as 'Reza'.

Reza dismissed the idea of a full-scale U.S. invasion of Iran saying that – all other considerations aside – America simply doesn’t have the resources or manpower to invade Iran. Doing so would give free reign to every other regime which is restrained by the threat of American power, such as North Korea.

Reza explained why he believes Iran will not use its prospective nuclear arsenal on Israel. He reminded the attendees that Israel is home to over a million Muslims, as well as Muslim holy sites. This, combined with Iran’s antipathy towards the use of WMDs (in large part caused by the memory of Iraqi chemical attacks during the war) and fear of the inevitable retaliation, is enough to forestall any large-scale aggression.

Reza also spoke about the character of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and why has taken to making such inflammatory statements recently. “You have to understand where Ahmadinejad comes from.” According to Reza, Ahmadinejad and his closest allies are mostly veterans of the Iran-Iraq War who are dissatisfied with the way the Islamic Republic of Iran has ‘strayed’ from the values of the ’79 revolution. Reza stressed that Amadinejad and his cohorts use populist rhetoric and social programs to appeal to the working classes and are possessed of a desire to be self-sufficient both domestically and in the international community.

He explained Iran’s desire for nuclear power is separate from Achmadinejad, since the program started before Achmadinejad took office and is supported by a large section of Iran’s power elite.

The second part of the lecture was given to a discussion of Iran’s relationship with the West, and the United States in particular. Mutual mistrust is a key theme in U.S. – Iran relations, which he believes has contributed in large part to the current impasse. He stressed that both sides must show they are willing to trust each other and pay attention for conciliatory gestures instead of simply dismissing them out of hand. Reza remarked pointedly that the current U.S. policy of “treating the Iranians as if they were crazy liars isn’t helping”.

To deal with this issue, Reza suggested that President Bush should offer Iran a deal on nuclear energy which couldn’t be reconfigured into use for nuclear bombs. Such an offer, he said, would put the Iranian government in a corner, giving them the nuclear power they say they want and denying the nuclear arsenal they still claim is not their objective.