A lot of people are talking about this call by Juan Cole for Bush to fire Elliot Abrams, and for very good reason. It’s a great idea, but since it took six years for him to dump Don Rumsfeld, I’m not holding my breath.
What caught my eye in his post outlining Abrams’ long history of crime and perfidy, though, was this:
In 1991, Abrams pled guilty to two misdemeanor counts of lying to Congress under oath. Without the plea deal, he was facing felony charges, since what he did was in fact a felony.
Congress pledged that Abrams would never work at a high level in government again. But by the time the Neoconservative cabal in the Bush administration got Bush to appoint him to the National Security Council, there had been so much turn-over in Congress that, one member told me, “no one remembered who Abrams was.”
Please, someone, tell me this isn’t true. Elliot Abrahams was one of the most evil members of the Reagan administration. He was pardoned by poppy on Christmas eve 1992, just before he left office. He was notorious, infamous.
Unless Democratic staffers and members are all under the age of 40, there is absolutely no reason for them not to have already known who Elliot Abrams was. In any case, their job is to look into the president’s appointees and had anyone done that they would have seen that they were going to be allowing a war criminal back into the government. Then again, he’s just one of many in this administration (that has created a whole new generation of war criminals themselves), so perhaps they just thought that was a prerequisite for the job.
Abrams, unsurprisingly, is back to his old tricks. He’s a very, very bad man and should not ever have been let anywhere near government power again. But he’s one of those awesome Republican “grown-ups” the kewl kids were just thrilled to have back in Washington. I hope they are really enjoying those cocktail weenies.
Considering that I’ve been writing about aristocracy a lot these days, this is actually kind of amusing:
To: The Honourable Senator Olympia Snowe (Republican, Maine) The Honourable Senator John D. Rockefeller (Democrat, West Virginia)
Madame, Sir,
Uphold Free Speech About Climate Change Or Resign
The US Constitution guarantees the right of free speech. It is inappropriate for elected Senators such as yourselves to suggest that any person should refrain from exercising that right, as you have done in your letter of October 27 to the CEO of ExxonMobil. That great corporation has exercised its right of free speech — and with good reason — in openly providing support for scientists and groups that dare to question how much the increased concentration of CO2 in the air may warm the world. You must honour the Constitution, withdraw your letter and apologize to ExxonMobil, or resign as Senators.
You defy every tenet of democracy when you invite ExxonMobil to deny itself the right to provide information to “senior elected and appointed government officials” who disagree with your opinion. You are elected officials yourselves. If you do not believe in the right of persons within the United States to exercise their fundamental right under the world’s greatest Constitution to petition their elected representatives for the redress of their grievances, then you have no place on Capitol Hill. You must go.
[…]
You will rightly deduce from Beckett’s sinister remark that after a decade of Socialist government freedom of speech does not figure in our constitution. But let me quote the First Amendment to yours: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the Press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
I call upon the pair of you to live by those great words, or to leave.
Yours truly,
MONCKTON OF BRENCHLEY
One does feel the sting of the whip more keenly when it comes from one’s betters, doesn’t one? But this is no joke. It is a letter written by a real Viscount Mockton of Brenchley to two US Senators.
The story is related to my aristocrat series not just because some slice of irrelevant peerage decides to lecture US citizens in the tone of Henry the VIII, but because it is another example of big, big money financing their pet conservative causes by creating bogus think tanks and “institutes.” It’s just a little bit unusual that they have put an actual aristocrat up front. The aristocrat, however, has a long conservative political and journalistic history and currently “acts as trouble-shooter and corporate thinker to leading businesses.” (The first viscount Monckton was Chairman of the Iraq Petroleum Company.)
Lord Monckton is an ardent global warming science foe who recently published an exhaustive 52 page roll of toilet paper on the subject for The Telegraph. (George Monbiot explains the whole thing in this article in the Guardian.)He has no degree in any scientific subject and has never done any work in the field. Lately, he’s best known for his (admittedly impressive)jigsaw puzzle design. But he styles himself an expert, writes nonsensical papers and then demands the resignations of anyone who disagrees with him. I think there was more intellectual rigor involved in Galileo’s trial.
But this is how it works. I find it amusing that Exxon has actually engaged a real blueblood to make its dishonest pitch, but maybe they are getting desperate. They aren’t even trying to hide it.
I think everyone knows I’m a godless hippie and all, but I am fascinated by the subjects of politics and history so naturally I find myself constantly reading about religion. It’s all related.
So this story by Bruce Wilson at Talk to Action about the Episcopalian break-away over gay rights piques my interest:
Yesterday, seven Virginia Episcopal churches including two of the largest and wealthiest in the American Episcopal Communion voted to break away and, as a New York Times story written prior to the vote put it, “report to the powerful archbishop of Nigeria, Peter Akinola, an outspoken opponent of homosexuality who supports legislation in his country that would make it illegal for gay men and lesbians to form organizations, read gay literature or eat together in a restaurant.” ” Commentor Jim Naughton, who writes the “Daily Episcopalian”, noted “this no longer seems to be a debate about the proper role of gay and lesbians Christians in the Church, but about the moral legitimacy of rolling back human rights for minorities”…
It doesn’t get more political than that. But this highlights something that’s going on in the world of religion that I don’t think most people are aware of: the right is systematically attacking the liberal churches from within.
For instance, it so happens that the ever so mainline Episcopal church has been under assault from big money wingnuts for some time. This article by Max Blumenthal in Salon from 2004 reveals this pet project of rightwing freakshow Howard Ahmanson:
In the summer of 2000, a group of frustrated Episcopalians from the board of the American Anglican Council gathered at a sun-soaked Bahamanian resort to blow off some steam and hatch a plot. They were fed up with the Episcopal Church and what they perceived as a liberal hierarchy that had led it astray from centuries of so-called orthodox Christian teaching. The only option, they believed, was to lead a schism.
But this would take money. After the meeting, Anglican Council vice president Bruce Chapman sent a private memo to the group’s board detailing a plan to involve Howard F. Ahmanson Jr., a Southern California millionaire, and his wife, Roberta Green Ahmanson, in the plan. “Fundraising is a critical topic,” Chapman wrote. “But that topic itself is going to be affected directly by whether we have a clear, compelling forward strategy. I know that the Ahmansons are only going to be available to us if we have such a strategy and I think it would be wise to involve them directly in settling on it as the options clarify.” It was a logical pitch: As a key financier of the Christian right with a penchant for anti-gay campaigns, Ahmanson clearly shared the Anglican Council’s interest in subverting the left-leaning church. Moreover, Ahmanson and his wife were close friends and prayer partners of David Anderson, the Anglican Council’s chief executive, while Chapman and his political team were already enjoying hefty annual grants from Ahmanson to Chapman’s think tank, the Discovery Institute.
Are we getting the picture?
The institute is directed by Diane Knippers, an evangelical Episcopalian and writer who also happens to be a founding member of the Anglican Council and its acting executive director. She is the chief architect of the institute’s Reforming America’s Churches Project, which aims to “restructure the permanent governing structure” of “theologically flawed” mainline churches like the Episcopal Church in order to “discredit and diminish the Religious Left’s influence.” This has translated into a three-pronged assault on mainline Presbyterian, Methodist and Episcopal churches. With a staff of media-savvy research specialists, the institute is able to ply both the religious and mainstream media, exploiting divisive social issues within the churches.
[…]
The campaign against the Episcopal Church climaxed on Aug. 5 last year, just a day before the Rt. Rev. Eugene Robinson was scheduled to be elected as the church’s first openly gay bishop. In a column titled “The Gay Bishop’s Links,” Weekly Standard editor and Institute board member Fred Barnes alleged that the Web site of a gay youth group Robinson founded contained links to “a pornographic website.” Further, Barnes alleged, Robinson “put his hands on” a Vermont man “inappropriately” during a church meeting “several years ago.” The institute shopped the column to various cable news networks but only Fox News broadcast it. Barnes did not return calls seeking comment.
Though Barnes’ smear was discredited by a panel of bishops investigating the charges, it helped widen the rift within the Episcopal Church and isolate it from its global affiliates. Since Robinson’s Nov. 2 consecration, 13 dioceses affiliated with the Anglican Council have threatened to break with the Episcopal Church and form a renegade network. Though the network has yet to congeal, the momentum for a full-blown split continues to build. And the Nigerian and Southeast Asian churches, which, like the Episcopal Church, belong to the global Anglican Communion, have broken off contact with the Episcopal Church.
Once again you see the nexus between big right wing money, media and power — and not just in government, but all aspects of society. (I will talk about Wal-Mart’s stated desire to export its “culture” another time.) I’m not sure that there is anything the right does that is a true grassroots effort. When you peel away the layers you always find the same people spending a huge amount of money to buy off the leadership and brainwash the folks. Every time. Why, if I didn’t know better, I’d think a bunch of rich white people were looking to perpetuate an aristocracy.
And in other religious news, here’s a story in the NY Times today that just floored me:
Before David Paszkiewicz got to teach his accelerated 11th-grade history class about the United States Constitution this fall, he was accused of violating it.
Shortly after school began in September, the teacher told his sixth-period students at Kearny High School that evolution and the Big Bang were not scientific, that dinosaurs were aboard Noah’s ark, and that only Christians had a place in heaven, according to audio recordings made by a student whose family is now considering a lawsuit claiming Mr. Paszkiewicz broke the church-state boundary.
“If you reject his gift of salvation, then you know where you belong,” Mr. Paszkiewicz was recorded saying of Jesus. “He did everything in his power to make sure that you could go to heaven, so much so that he took your sins on his own body, suffered your pains for you, and he’s saying, ‘Please, accept me, believe.’ If you reject that, you belong in hell.”
The student, Matthew LaClair, said that he felt uncomfortable with Mr. Paszkiewicz’s statements in the first week, and taped eight classes starting Sept. 13 out of fear that officials would not believe the teacher had made the comments.
[…]
Greice Coelho, who took Mr. Paszkiewicz’s class and is a member of his youth group, said in a letter to The Observer, the local weekly newspaper, that Matthew was “ignoring the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gives every citizen the freedom of religion.” Some anonymous posters on the town’s electronic bulletin board, Kearnyontheweb.com, called for Matthew’s suspension.
On the sidewalks outside the high school, which has 1,750 students, many agreed with 15-year-old Kyle Durkin, who said, “I’m on the teacher’s side all the way.”
While science teachers, particularly in the Bible Belt, have been known to refuse to teach evolution, the controversy here, 10 miles west of Manhattan, hinges on assertions Mr. Paszkiewicz made in class, including how a specific Muslim girl would go to hell.
“This is extremely rare for a teacher to get this blatantly evangelical,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a nonprofit educational association. “He’s really out there proselytizing, trying to convert students to his faith, and I think that that’s more than just saying I have some academic freedom right to talk about the Bible’s view of creation as well as evolution.”
Even some legal organizations that often champion the expression of religious beliefs are hesitant to support Mr. Paszkiewicz.
“It’s proselytizing, and the courts have been pretty clear you can’t do that,” said John W. Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, a group that provides legal services in religious freedom cases. “You can’t step across the line and proselytize, and that’s what he’s done here.”
[…]
…Andrew Lewczuk, a former student of Mr. Paszkiewicz, praised his abilities as a history teacher but said he regretted that he had not protested the religious discussions. “In the end, the manner in which Mr. Paszkiewicz spoke with his students was careless, inconsiderate and inappropriate,” he wrote to The Observer. “It was an abuse of power and influence, and it’s my own fault that I didn’t do anything about this.”
One teacher, who did not give his name, said he thought both Matthew and his teacher had done the right thing. “The student had the right to do what he did,” the man said. As for Mr. Paszkiewicz, “He had the right to say what he said, he was not preaching, and that’s something I’m very much against.”
Where to begin? That last comment alone is stunning coming from a “teacher.” The man is recorded saying in a public school:
“If you reject his gift of salvation, then you know where you belong. He did everything in his power to make sure that you could go to heaven, so much so that he took your sins on his own body, suffered your pains for you, and he’s saying, ‘Please, accept me, believe.’ If you reject that, you belong in hell,”
If that’s not preaching, I can’t imagine what goes on in that man’s church. Clearly, this is completely unacceptable; even John Whitehead says so and he’s a raving. religious wingnut.
There are many things about this that are disturbing, of course — the fact that nobody said anything before this kid — the fact that everyone in the community seems to think this is just fine. But I think one of the things that disturbs me the most is that this guy is teaching the class that evolution is not scientific and that dinosaurs were aboard Noah’s ark. Dinosaurs were aboard Noah’s Ark. In a high school history class. And everybody is saying what a good teacher he is.
Am I nuts or have people become so religiously correct that they can’t say that a man who teaches his students that dinosaurs were aboard Noah’s Ark cannot, by definition, be a good history teacher?
Still, the kid has a lot of guts and he sounds like he’s tough enough to take all this. That’s not true of a lot of other kids who aren’t as temperamentally defiant and who will sit through that sermon and even participate just to fit in socially or get a good grade even though it goes against their own religious teachings (or their own knowledge that it has no basis in fact.) These kids are trapped in a church that’s being run by the government and that’s unconstitutional.
Still, even though Matthew is a bright kid who will do just fine, you have to feel a little bit sorry for him. High school is a terrible place even for the popular:
Matthew said he missed the friends he had lost over his role in the debate, and said he could “feel the glares” when he walked into school.
Instead of mulling Supreme Court precedents, he said with half a smile, “I should be worrying about who I’m going to take to the prom.”
It will be a girl with exceptionally good judgment and courage who agrees to go with him.
Now that the Democrats run Congress, the question becomes, “What should they do?” Yes, raise the minimum wage. And yes, fix the Medicare drug program. But will this bind a new majority to the party? We’re often told, “Democrats have no ideas.” But that’s a silly thing to say. Washington, D.C., is crawling with foundation-types bubbling with new ideas, and if anything, the Democrats are awash with new ideas. Many of these new ideas may make their way into law. And we need not have the cynicism of Mario Cuomo, who once said, “In America, a new idea is a cereal that grows hair.” But what the Democrats don’t have is a serious commitment–the political nerve–to make people happier in the only way they can: by raising people’s taxes. How happy more of us would be if only we could pay higher taxes! More of us at last could joyfully retire. In May 2005, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) put out a sort of Michelin Guide to the pensions of the world’s 30 wealthiest nations: the United States, Ireland and their ilk. While the United States is rich, comparatively it’s a beggar at the bottom, with a…
It seems as if I’ve been thinking about southern politics all of my life. The truth is that since the founding, everyone who has ever been involved in American politics has thought about it their whole lives. The struggle over politics and culture and regional pride in the south is America’s story — it is us and we are it, no matter where we live.
The day after the 2004 election we all looked at the electoral map and knew that we were now dealing with a rock solid Republican south. The realignment that had been in the works since the 1960’s was complete. (In fact it was almost exactly the same electoral map of 1860, with the parties reversed.) The south has pretty much voted as a bloc from the very beginning. And it is also a fact that the south is the most conservative region in the country, always has been. (Even FDR had to agree to keep civil rights off the menu — and once the crisis of the depression passed, the Dixiecrats immediately got restless. That coalition forged in the depression was always on a collision course with itself.)
In his book Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South Tom Schaller gathers all the data to prove what those maps imply — the south is conservative in ways that the Democrats cannot crack without offending its other constituents or losing its progressive identity, which is exactly what’s been happening since 1992 when Clinton made a last charge through Dixie and barely managed to get 43% of the national popular vote. In this article by Schaller in The Democratic Strategist, you can see that the statistics tell the story. By all measures of gender,age, religion, family/marital status, occupation and socioeconomic status, the demographics strongly favor conservative Republicanism in the south for the foreseeable future. And more strikingly, it’s quite clear that as much as attitudes about race are losing their salience in the rest of the country, it remains a strong predictor of voting Republican in the south. From Rick Perlstein’s article called “The unspoken truth about the GOP. Southern Discomfort” in The New Republic:
The very heart of his argument is a taboo notion: that the South votes Republican because the Republicans have perfected their appeal to Southern racism, and that Democrats simply can’t (and shouldn’t) compete.
But, among scholars, this is hardly news. Schaller builds this conclusion on one of the most impressive papers in recent political science, “Old Times There Are Not Forgotten: Race and Partisan Realignment in the Contemporary South,” by Nicholas Valentino and David Sears. Running regressions on a massive data set of ideological opinions, Sears and Valentino demonstrate with precision that, for example, a white Southern man who calls himself a “conservative,” controlling for racial attitudes, is no less likely to chance a vote for a Democratic presidential candidate than a Northerner who calls himself a conservative. Likewise, a pro-life or hawkish Southern white man is no less likely–again controlling for racial attitudes–than a pro-life or hawkish Northerner to vote for the Democrat. But, on the other hand, when the relevant identifier is anti-black answers to survey questions (such as whether one agrees “If blacks would only try harder, they could be just as well off as whites,” or choosing whether blacks are “lazy” or “hardworking”), an untoward result jumps out: white Southerners are twice as likely than white Northerners to refuse to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate. Schaller’s writes: “Despite the best efforts of Republican spinmeisters … the partisan impact of racial attitudes in the South is stronger today than in the past.”
I read the paper Perlstein mentions and this is not a misrepresentation. It shocked the hell out of me.
Now, before everyone gets upset and thinks that we are saying all southerners are racists: the data does not say that. But when it comes to conservative white southerners, I’m sorry to say that the evidence is clear. When all is said and done, the thing that separates them from the rest of the nation is racism. All the racial codes, the slick misdirection, even the appeals to homophobia and religion are in some sense directed at this one simple characteristic. And that characteristic is the thing that trumps all the other concerns about economic justice that Democrats persist in believing they can use to persuade white southern males to vote for them. Democrats simply cannot thread that needle.
Schaller does not “write off the south” as so many assume. Indeed, he explicitly endorses Howard Dean’s 50 state strategy to build for the future and ensure that Democrats are prepared to step in where opportunities present themselves. What he is saying is it is impossible for Democrats to currently win nationally by trying to appeal to the southern conservative majority, which seems to me to be an obvious point. You can’t be all things to all people.
Yet we have seen for decades now a concerted effort to persuade the Dems that they must appeal to NASCAR dads and “the heartland” and “evangelicals” and all the other cultural signifiers that relate closely to the conservative south. But that’s not where the votes for us are and the more we try to get them, the less appealing we are to everyone else. As Schaller persuasively shows, there are plenty of votes to be had among blue collar workers in the upper mid-west and among the less traditionalist and religious types in the west and southwest. These appeals offer the possibility of emphasizing areas on which we agree instead of compromising on fundamental issues on which we never can. Schaller’s “diamond demography” chapter shows exactly where the Dems stand the most to gain.
The fact is that it is the Republicans who have backed themselves into a corner. By allowing their southern wingnuts to dominate they have marginalized themselves and are losing their appeal to the country as a whole.
You’ve seen the numbers and understand that America is growing steadily less white. You try to push your party, the Grand Old Party, ahead of this curve by taking a tolerant stance on immigration and making common cause with some black churches. Then you go and blow it all in a desperate attempt to turn out your base by demonizing immigrants and running racist ads against Harold Ford. On Election Day, black support for Democrats remains high; Hispanic support for Democrats surges. So what do you do next?
What else? Elect Trent Lott your deputy leader in the Senate. Sure locks in the support of any stray voters who went for Strom in ’48.
In case you haven’t noticed, a fundamental axiom of modern American politics has been altered in recent weeks. For four decades, it’s been the Democrats who’ve had a Southern problem. Couldn’t get any votes for their presidential candidates there; couldn’t elect any senators, then any House members, then any dogcatchers. They still can’t, but the Southern problem, it turns out, is really the Republicans’. They’ve become too Southern — too suffused with the knee-jerk militaristic, anti-scientific, dogmatically religious, and culturally, sexually and racially phobic attitudes of Dixie — to win friends and influence elections outside the South. Worse yet, they became more Southern still on Election Day last month, when the Democrats decimated the GOP in the North and West. Twenty-seven of the Democrats’ 30 House pickups came outside the South.
The Democrats won control of five state legislatures, all outside the South, and took more than 300 state legislative seats away from Republicans, 93 percent of them outside the South…
The one strategist who fundamentally predicted the new geography of partisan American politics is Tom Schaller, a University of Maryland political scientist whose book “Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South” appeared several months before November’s elections. Schaller argued that the Democrats’ growth would occur in the Northeast, the industrial Midwest, the Mountain West and the Southwest — areas where professionals, appalled by Republican Bible Beltery, were trending Democratic and where working-class whites voted their pocketbooks in a way that their Southern counterparts did not. Al Gore carried white voters outside the South, Schaller reminded us; even hapless John Kerry came close.
I would suggest that there are a couple of other reasons why Schaller’s theory is sound, which he doesn’t mention. While the party is listening to the likes of Amy Sullivan about how to compromise on abortion rights so as to appeal to conservative evangelicals, there is a resurgence of ideological progressivism throughout the country and we are not going to sit still for anybody running against us latte swilling liberals anymore. It would behoove the party to factor that into their calculations and see if they can find a way to properly respect their left flank while reaching out to swing voters.
I also suspect that the progressives in the south, with the help of the 50 state strategy, are going to begin to work harder than ever on that stubborn old region from the grassroots — and netroots — up. If they want us, we are here to help our southern brothers and sisters, many of them African American and our most loyal voters, to change that political dynamic once and for all. There’s nothing that says just because the conservatives have ruled pretty much forever that they always will. Where there are candidates who want to run, even if it’s a long shot, we will do what we can to help them just as we did this time — and we’ll be trainspotters for the national party to see where the soft spots are.
But the national party must forge an identity that makes sense, that conveys what we stand for and what our values are. And we cannot do that if we continue to try to split the difference on these culture war issues and tailor our message to some mythical southern white conservative whom we think will vote for us if only we wear the right clothes and carry a shot gun. The data shows that unless we start running “call me, Harold” ads, that isn’t going to work on those guys. (And, btw, the southern conservative women vote pretty much the same way — no gender gap in the south.) Until further notice, they are the southern majority. We’ll do better in places where we can make a case based on economic populism and civil liberties that is untainted by a majority that are still too influenced by racism and fundamentalist religion to even meet us part of the way.
The proof is in the pudding. If Democrats can gain power we can begin to make a real case for progressivism in the south based upon progressive achievement.
(I do disagree with Schaller’s belief that the Democrats could turn South Carolina into the “Taxachusetts” of the south — meaning that we could use it as a symbol of being out of touch with the mainstream. I don’t think it would work. That kind of thing works for the Republicans because they are exploiting an existing grievance among a group of right wingers who are perpetually aggrieved. Those guys have been railing against the yankees since before the country was even a country. It’s peculiar to their own sense of regional pride.)
Now keep in mind that for every assertion I’ve made here, there are a hundred qualifiers and data points that Schaller’s book addresses. He believes that the south will eventually become more progressive from the outside rim inwards, hence the win in Virgina. He sees Florida as a different kind of southern state and subject to a different analysis. There are many other fascinating details that only reading the book will fully satisfy.
I should also take the time to point out that it is an entertaining read for such a dry subject. Schaller spares no important data — it’s a work of scholarship. But it’s written in the lively style that those of us who’ve been reading his posts at Daily Kos, the Gadflyer and TAPPED for the last few years have come to enjoy. It is a very breezy read for a work of social science.
A few posts ago, Hullabaloo regular llamajockey and I had a little sidebar about healthcare in Indiana. I was very pleased to hear that Michael Moore’s latest work Sicko will be looking closely at two Indiana corporations: Eli Lilly and Anthem/Wellpoint. With regard to the history of Anthem/Wellpoint, the link below to the Consumers Union details how, in Indiana, two nonprofit corporations from the 1940s became the publicly-traded, for-profit Anthem, Inc., which itself would later become Wellpoint:
Indiana Blue Cross and Indiana Blue Shield were created in the 1940s. In 1985, the two plans merged and changed their name to Associated Insurance Companies, Inc. In 1989, Associated created a wholly-owned subsidiary, Accordia, Inc., to handle insurance brokerage, claims administration, underwriting management and employee benefit consulting services. Associated conducted an initial public offering of Accordia stock in 1992 and in 1996, the name was changed to Anthem Insurance Companies. Anthem, a mutual insurance company, has purchased BCBS plans in Colorado, Connecticut, Kentucky, Maine, Nevada, New Hampshire and Ohio.
In February 2001, Anthem announced its intention to convert from a mutual insurance company to a stock corporation (“demutualization”), and filed its demutualization plan with the Indiana Department of Insurance in June 2001. The plan deprived policyholders in Colorado, Maine, Nevada and New Hampshire of any right to receive shares in the new company whereas policyholders in Connecticut, Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio were eligible. Consumer groups in all Anthem states (the eight already owned by Anthem along with soon to be acquired Kansas) concerned about the potential impact of this conversion on health care coverage, encouraged regulators in the Anthem states to review the transaction carefully and to impose conditions that would protect current and future policyholders. Despite this request of the multi-state coalition, only the Indiana Department of Insurance conducted a public hearing – as required by state law. The hearing was held in Indianapolis (Anthem’s home base) in October 2001 and was quickly followed by the approval of the Indiana Insurance Commissioner. Subsequently, Anthem launched its IPO to become a publicly traded for-profit company.
So next came the obligatory attaboy (tongue-in-cheek) for Anthem CEO, Larry Glasscock and his helpers (yes, it really says merit pay):
The top executive at Anthem Inc. will receive a $42.5 million stock-and-cash award for guiding the company as it became the state’s largest firm and now stands to become the nation’s largest health benefits company.
Larry C. Glasscock will receive the merit-based performance award over the next three years on top of his salary, bonus and other compensation of $3.73 million last year. It’s the most compensation Glasscock has received since he became the company’s chief executive in 1999 and helped convert it to a publicly traded concern in 2001. … The large cash-and-stock awards for Anthem executives — based largely on the firm’s profits from 2001 to 2003 — are some of the biggest ever seen in corporate Indiana. The company reported net income of $743 million in 2003, up 41 percent from the previous year.
Award amounts of $16 million each went to Glasscock’s two highest-ranking associates: executive vice presidents David R. Frick, an attorney and former Indianapolis deputy mayor, and Michael L. Smith, a former chief executive of moving company Mayflower Group.
In addition, the president of Anthem Midwest, Keith R. Faller, will get a stock-and-cash award of $11.9 million, while Anthem Southeast President Thomas G. Snead Jr. got $4.36 million. … If Anthem acquires WellPoint Health Networks of California this summer, as expected, Anthem will have grown during the past decade from a one-state, nonprofit Blue Cross-Blue Shield licensee to a public company that handles the health benefits of one of every 10 insured Americans.
Then, in 2003, Anthem indeed swallowed Wellpoint. Oligopoly Watch reported on those details:
Indiana-based Anthem, one of the largest managed care companies in the US announced it will acquire California-based WellPoint Health Networks for about $16.4 billion (a cash and stock deal). The new company will operate under the WellPoint name but will have its headquarters in Indianapolis. In fact, Anthem is the smaller company. Anthem has a market capitalization of around $11 billion, while WellPoints’s is around $12 billion.
According to the Wall Street Journal (“Anthem to Acquire WellPoint Health”, 10/27/2003).
The transaction brings together two of the nation’s largest providers of Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans, with about 26 million members. More importantly, it will transform the Blue Cross and Blue Shield name into a truly national brand for the first time. The Blue plans currently operate under license from a nonprofit association but are owned by different companies. … Both WellPoint and Anthem have a long history of acquisitions as they have grown from single-state Blue Cross/Blue Shield providers to major national managed care chains. While Blue Cross was once existed only as independent state programs, in recent years, there has been a frenzy of acquisitions as one after another has been snapped up by the larger managed care oligopolies.
WellPoint started in 1942 as the managed care of Blue Cross/Blue Shield of California.
*In 1996, WellPoint acquired the health insurance division of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company. *In 1997, that was followed by the group health division of John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance. *In 2000, it bought up PrecisionRx, a mail-order pharmacy, along with Rush Prudential Health Plans of Illinois *In 2001, Cerulean Companies, Inc.-parent company of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia. *In 2002, WellPoint acquired RightChoice, the parent company of Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Missouri and of the Healthlink network. The company also acquired the MethodistCare HMO in Texas. *WellPoint in August 2002 just completed acquiring Cobalt Corp. Cobalt was founded by the merger of Blue Cross & Blue Shield United of Wisconsin and United Wisconsin Services, Inc … The Anthem name was invented in 1997. In 2002, Anthem acquired Trigon Healthcare of Virginia for $4 billion. On the other hand, this August, it got a rebuff when its attempt to acquire Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Kansas was ejected by the Kansas Supreme Court, citing competition reasons.
According to the WSJ, “The deal will be one of the year’s largest mergers, and is likely to trigger other unions among providers of managed care. … Most analysts expect that things will not be so great for “members” or medical providers like doctors and hspitals. Anthem in particular has had a growing number of complaints about its prompt payment for treatments. As an oligonomy, these new healthcare giants can squeeze on both sides to make money, and they tend to squeeze hard. With headquarters remote from the people they serve and less competition all the time, the incentive for good service is slackening.
So how have the Anthem/Wellpoint executives fared post-merger?
Executives at WellPoint have enjoyed a cornucopia of compensation in recent years.
The wealth came as the new WellPoint, headquartered on Monument Circle, was created from the $20.8 billion merger of Anthem of Indiana and WellPoint Health Networks of California.
Since then, 31 current and former WellPoint insiders have sold more than $500 million worth of company stock, according to insider trading data tracked by Thomson Financial. Those sales, along with exercising stock options, have given those insiders gains well in excess of $150 million. … WellPoint, which provides health insurance to more than 34 million people nationwide, says its executive compensation policies are designed to recruit and retain top talent in a competitive marketplace.Company spokesman Jim Kappel said those executives help WellPoint in “delivering more benefit to its members than ever before while helping to hold down the rising costs of health care.”
Delivering more benefits and holding down costs? For the residents of Indiana? Since the original BCBS public-interest, nonprofit charters were converted for private gain by self-interested sharks? Yes, says the Anthem-Wellpoint web-site (see the “About Us” tab):
Our mission is to improve the health of the people we serve. At Anthem, we believe the best health care coverage can actually help people stay healthy. That’s why we go beyond simply providing health care coverage. We help encourage members’ wellness by:
-Offering large networks of some of the region’s best physicians, specialists and hospitals. -Reminding members to have important preventive screenings. -Providing programs and information to help manage chronic health conditions. -Offering related services including dental coverage, life insurance and pharmacy benefits management.
We work with physicians, hospitals and other providers to help ensure that care is accessible, coordinated, timely and provided in a manner and setting that promotes positive patient-provider relationships.
But no, says today’s Indianapolis Star:
More than a half-million Hoosiers have no health insurance, an uninsured rate among the highest in the nation. To make matters worse, compared with other states, we’re not very healthy. Too many of us smoke, are overweight and lack childhood immunizations, with rates far above the national average. These lead to higher medical bills, for which you, the taxpayer, help pay. … Indiana’s alarming health statistics • 561,000: Hoosiers without health insurance on any given day.
• $953: additional amount each family with health insurance paid in premiums in 2005 to cover the uninsured.
• 10,200: children under 18 who start smoking each year.
• 160,000: children now under 18 who will die prematurely from smoking.
• Second: number of adult smokers compared with other states.
• 10th: percentage of adults who are overweight/obese.
• 22%: children do not receive requisite immunizations by their second birthday and lack immunization against preventable diseases.
You gotta love that invisible hand, working in mysterious ways to create private wealth out of the public good. And who sits on the Wellpoint Board and has apparently enjoyed seven-figure gains from some of these private transactions? Susan Bayh, wife of Indiana Senator and former presidential hopeful, Evan Bayh.Sicko indeed.UPDATE: Commenter tofubo notes the President’s uncle Bucky Bush is also on the Wellpoint Board.
Undigested Haggis and a Tastier Alternative: Stereotyped in America
By Dennis Hartley
I’m going to risk crucifixion here and confess that I only recently got around to viewing Crash , Paul Haggis’ 2005 Oscar winning meditation on racism in America. (Perhaps I was shamed into screening it after Michael Richard’s recent little star turn on YouTube).
“Crash” takes the premise of 1993’s Falling Down and expands on it exponentially. Instead of one disenfranchised white guy going off the deep end and raging through L.A. blaming every person of color he encounters for his own personal failures, “Crash” serves up an Altman-sized, multicultural cast of self-pitying whiners running around L.A. pissed off at everybody else. They hail from all ethnic and socio-economic strata, they are all fuming about their (real or perceived) victimization by one societal injustice or another and (yeah, you guessed it) they are all on a ‘crash’ course, about to collide.
Structurally, “Crash” is a close cousin to PT Anderson’s (vastly superior) “Magnolia”, and operates on the same conceit. We are asked to accept an absurdly implausible series of “coincidences” in order for the story (or in this case, Today’s Lecture) to work.
The cast is talented, the performances are earnest and the film is slickly made, but the mind boggles as to how this condescending, contrived, PC-pandering mess earned a Best Picture Oscar. The Message (people are people and bigotry is colorblind) has been delivered numerous times before and with considerably more panache (see list below).
They don’t make ‘em like this anymore-honest, bold, uncompromising, socially and politically meaningful, yet (lest we forget) entertaining. The late Ashby only directed a relative handful of films, but most, especially his 70’s output, were built to last (Harold and Maude, The Last Detail, Bound for Glory,Shampoo, Being There). In The Landlord, Beau Bridges is a spoiled rich kid who worries his parents with his “liberal views”, especially when he buys a run-down inner-city tenement, with intentions to renovate. His subsequent involvement with the various black tenants is played sometimes for laughs, other times for intense drama, but always for real. The social satire and pointed observations about race relations are dead-on, but never preachy or condescending (are you listening, Paul Haggis?). Top-notch ensemble work, featuring a young Lou Gossett (with hair!) giving a memorable dramatic turn. The lovely Susan Anspach is hilarious as Bridge’s perpetually stoned and bemused sister. A scene featuring Pearl Bailey and Lee Grant getting drunk and bonding over a bottle of “sparkling” wine is a minor classic all on its own. Unfortunately, The Landlord remains the only Ashby film not on DVD (a crime!). It does pop up on cable, so check your listings, or your local independent video store may have a VHS copy for rent.
I know we just met recently and all, but, y’know, we’ve been talking movies for well past our, er, third review now, and uh (gosh this is awkward) y’know, I was kinda hoping you could, erm, trust me if I recommend some DVD stocking stuffers? (No theme here, just some great “off-Hollywood” flicks from my personal library)-DH
The Bad Sleep Well-Lesser-known Akira Kurosawa film (from 1960) that mixes Shakespearean intrigue with modern Japanese corporate politics and a dash of film noir.
Chan Is Missing-Outstanding 1982 indie debut for director Wayne Wang, filmed in SF’s Chinatown (on a shoestring!) Unique, keenly observed low-key cultural satire.
Dazed & Confused-Richard Linklater captures the bell-bottom and bong hit 70’s zeitgeist to a tee in the best “coming of age” period film since “American Graffitti”.
Free Enterprise-Pop culture geeks approach the dreaded age of 30 with trepidation and the sage advice of one William Shatner (playing himself!) Much smarter than it sounds.
The Loved One-Classic 1965 cult flick that finally made it to DVD in 2006. A black comedy extraordinaire co-scripted by Terry Southern; unbelievably surreal casting!
Me and You and Everyone We Know-Performance artist Miranda July’s 2005 directing debut is a daring, whimsical and sublime statement on the universal need to connect.
Nightmare Alley-Classic cult film noir from 1947 is the darkest of them all. Out of print for decades due to legal hassles-it finally reached DVD in 2005. Not to be missed!
Pow Wow Highway-Unusual Native-American road movie/spiritual quest/comedy-drama from 1989 that eschews stereotypes and made me a Gary Farmer fan for life.
The Quiet Earth-1985 cult sci-fi from New Zealand featuring the great Bruno Lawrence in a “last man on earth” scenario. Enigmatic wonder of the final scene will haunt you.
Rude Boy-This 1980 backstage pseudo-docudrama is not for all tastes, but it is a must for fans of the UK’s late great agitprop punkers The Clash-fantastic performance footage
In keeping with the usual Saturday night at the movies here on Hullabaloo, I just watched An Inconvenient Truth and I am here to tell you that if you ever thought Al Gore was a boring has-been, this film will prove otherwise. It isn’t that he’s any less stiff or formal than he ever was. He’s the same guy I always saw — earnest, decent and human. But this film shows us a person who is doing something that so transcends any of the usual political and media calculations that he seems almost serene.
This film is so important. I saw it last summer and felt more moved than I have in years. This is a complicated and dangerous world and we are all overwhelmed by the challenges we face. Global warming may be the biggest and most challenging of all — and yet it may present opportunities for us if we can recognize just how connected we are to other people by virtue of this planet we all share. The film is educational and illuminating but it also unexpectedly imbues you with an almost lightheaded feeling of hope.
Al Gore is really too good for politics. He’s more like a prophet than a politician at this point. I almost don’t want to see him enter the fray and take the disgusting offal they will throw at him. But I love the guy and if it happened I can’t think of anyone who’d make a better president.
If you haven’t heard Melissa Etheridge’s great song for the movie, check it out. It makes me all verklempt:
Gore is asking that people sign a million postcards which he will take to the new congress in January. He says:
Yes, the new majority in Congress will be much more receptive on the importance of global warming. That’s the good news. But I know from personal experience that the only thing that will make Washington really take notice and do more than give lip service to the problem of global warming is the prospect of millions of committed citizens taking action. It’s time to join together and make that happen. Can you help?
There’s been quite an outcry in China (and here) about the recent public shaming of prostitutes. Everyone seems to acknowledge that there is something inherently discomfiting about this use public humiliation.
But it reminded me of a famous essay by someone you don’t usually associate with totalitarian practices — the godfather of communitarianism, Amitai Etzioni, who wrote some twenty years ago:
Public humiliation is a surprisingly effective and low-cost way of deterring criminals and expressing the moral order of a community. It is used by a few judges, but much too sparingly. Some jurisdictions publish the names of “Johns” who are caught frequenting prostitutes.
Lincoln County in Oregon will plea-bargain with a criminal only if he first puts an advertisement in a local newspaper, apologizing for his crime. This is limited, in practice, to nonviolent criminals, including some burglars and thieves. The ad includes the criminal’s picture and is paid for by him. Judges in Sarasota, Fla., and in Midwest City, Okla., have required people caught driving while under the influence to display an easy-to-see sticker on their cars: “Convicted of Drunken Driving.”
When I mention public shaming to my social-science colleagues, their first reaction is a mixture of disbelief and horror. Such punishment seems some how to violate people’s rights, to be dehumanizing. But what is the alternative if one grants that criminals ought to be punished?
[…]
Some people respond that such penalties remind them of the stars Jews were made to wear in Nazi Germany. However, the main problem with these insignia was that they were imposed on innocent people, on the basis of creed. Marking those convicted in open court, after due process, seems a legitimate use of such a device.
Possibly people object to “psychological punishment” as an alternative to imprisonment precisely because it is public and thus highly visible. They may prefer to shut criminals away, out of town, out of sight, rather than face reminders of their own unsavory inclinations. Maybe they feel that if they were caught with a prostitute or driving drunk, they would rather not see their own names in the paper. That is no reason to suggest psychological punishment is a poor public policy.
[…]
We need more courage and creativity: Should we shave the heads of convicted first-offender teen-agers caught selling hard drugs? (It beats incarceration in “correctional institutions.”) Should we require them to carry placards listing their transgressions and calling on others to desist? Other methods are sure to be found once we look for ways to say “shame on you” to those who committed a crime, and to create opportunities for them to express publicly their shame, penance and regrets.
When I first read this, my immediate thought was that in many cases we weren’t talking about “crimes” at all — and if these behaviors needed to be regulated or punished in some way, that public shaming was the absolute worst way to do it. I certainly agreed that we would no doubt find “other methods.” There is no end to the variations of creative humiliations people can devise if given sanction to inflict them. (Abu Ghraib anyone?)
Public, degrading, humiliating affronts to human dignity, institutionalizing phony pretentions of moral superiority, enlisting the public to inflict punishment in the form of social ostracism all seem like Theodore Dreiser novels turned into social science. I recalled that essay when I saw the story about the Chinese prostitutes because it had clarified something for me that I hadn’t thought of before: that there was a side to communitarianism that I really recoiled against on a visceral level. There seemed to me to be a great temptation to force conformity through coercive social means.
To me, the idea of institutionalizing community bully tactics and moral scolding as a legitimate tool of the state is nothing short of hell on earth. I’d rather live in a totalitarian political environment any day than a totalitarian social environment that is backed by the rule of law and enforced by James Dobson and Lynn Cheney. (We don’t actually have to imagine this. We already lived it.)
The idea has gone on to become quite popular, however, in certain legal circles and is used in courtrooms throughout the nation. The rightwing has joined with the communitarians with an enthusiastic backing of such clever punishments. (One called it “beautifully retributive.“) I continue to be appalled at the notion of enlisting the community to administer public shame as a criminal punishment. This is not to say that there is no such thing as creative sentencing, there can be great utility in forcing someone to face the person against whom they transgressed, for instance, and personally offer an apology or some sort of compensation. These are called “guilt punishments” and are not the same thing as public shaming.
Shame is a powerful, primal thing and it’s been a socially useful tool since humans were still in caves. But shame is a very short hop to repression and in the hands of the powerful or the mob it can be used for social purposes that have less to do with regulating bad behavior and more to do with sending messages to the community about the dangers of individualism.
The Chinese used it as a form of political represssion during the cultural revolution and that memory is fresh enough that last week’s little pageant was protested by many throughout the country. I wonder if there would be outrage in this country if prostitutes were paraded through a town in certain parts of America? I would hope so, but I’m really not sure.
We knew this, but it’s still good that the AP is investigating and reporting it:
The Pentagon called them “among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the Earth,” sweeping them up after Sept. 11 and hauling them in chains to a U.S. military prison in southeastern Cuba.
Since then, hundreds of the men have been transferred from Guantanamo Bay to other countries, many of them for “continued detention.”
And then set free.
Decisions by more than a dozen countries in the Middle East, Europe and South Asia to release the former detainees raise questions about whether they were really as dangerous as the United States claimed, or whether some of America’s staunchest allies have set terrorists and militants free.
[…]
But through interviews with justice and police officials, detainees and their families, and using reports from human rights groups and local media, The Associated Press was able to track 245 of those formerly held at Guantanamo. The investigation, which spanned 17 countries, found:
Once the detainees arrived in other countries, 205 of the 245 were either freed without being charged or were cleared of charges related to their detention at Guantanamo. Forty either stand charged with crimes or continue to be detained.
Only a tiny fraction of transferred detainees have been put on trial. The AP identified 14 trials, in which eight men were acquitted and six are awaiting verdicts. Two of the cases involving acquittals — one in Kuwait, one in Spain — initially resulted in convictions that were overturned on appeal.
[…]
Overall, about 165 Guantanamo detainees have been transferred from Guantanamo for “continued detention,” while about 200 were designated for immediate release. Some 420 detainees remain at the U.S. base in Cuba.
Clive Stafford Smith, a British-American attorney representing several detainees, said the AP’s findings indicate that innocent men were jailed and that the term “continued detention” is part of “a politically motivated farce.”
“The Bush administration wants to be able to say that these are dangerous terrorists who are going to be confined upon their release … although there is no evidence against many of them,” he said.
[…]
The United States insists that the fact that so many of the former detainees have been freed by other countries doesn’t mean they weren’t dangerous.
“They were part of Taliban, al-Qaida, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners,” said Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman.
But Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, a lawyer representing several detainees, says the fact that hundreds of men have been released into freedom belies their characterization by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as “among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth.”
“After all, it would simply be incredible to suggest that the United States has voluntarily released such ‘vicious killers’ or that such men had been miraculously reformed at Guantanamo,” Colangelo-Bryan said.
I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that a nation that has more people in jail than totalitarian communist China (which has four times our population), would do such a thing, but it still is. I can only assume that these officials think throwing innocent people in jail to be tortured and driven half mad is just the price that these people have to pay for being the wrong nationality, race or religion.
And they’ve assigned another psychopath to run the place:
As the first detainees began moving last week into Guantánamo’s modern, new detention facility, Camp 6, the military guard commander stood beneath the high, concrete walls of the compound, looking out on a fenced-in athletic yard.
The yard, where the detainees were to have played soccer and other sports, had been part of a plan to ease the conditions under which more than 400 men are imprisoned here, nearly all of them without having been charged. But that plan has changed.
“At this point, I just don’t see using that,” the guard commander, Col. Wade F. Dennis, said.
After two years in which the military sought to manage terrorism suspects at Guantánamo with incentives for good behavior, steady improvements in their living conditions and even dialogue with prison leaders, the authorities here have clamped down decisively in recent months.
Security procedures have been tightened. Group activities have been scaled back. With the retrofitting of Camp 6 and the near-emptying of another showcase camp for compliant prisoners, military officials said about three-fourths of the detainees would eventually be held in maximum-security cells. That is a stark departure from earlier plans to hold a similar number in medium-security units.
Officials said the shift reflected the military’s analysis — after a series of hunger strikes, a riot last May and three suicides by detainees in June — that earlier efforts to ease restrictions on the detainees had gone too far.
The commander of the Guantánamo task force, Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., said the tougher approach also reflected the changing nature of the prison population, and his conviction that all of those now held here are dangerous men. “They’re all terrorists; they’re all enemy combatants,” Admiral Harris said in an interview.
He added, “I don’t think there is such a thing as a medium-security terrorist.”
Admiral Harris, who took command on March 31, referred in part to the recent departure from Guantánamo of the last of 38 men whom the military had classified since early 2005 as “no longer enemy combatants.” Still, about 100 others who had been cleared by the military for transfer or release remained here while the State Department tried to arrange their repatriation.
[Shortly after Admiral Harris’s remarks, another 15 detainees were sent home to Saudi Arabia, where they were promptly returned to their families.]
MORAN: So no man who ever came to Guantanamo Bay came there by mistake [or] was innocent?
HARRIS: I believe that to be true
Admiral Harris also thinks that these prisoners are committing an act of terrorism when they commit suicide. I guess the logic is that embarrassment for the United States government is equivalent to the deaths of innocent people in a suicide bomb. In fact, he thinks that any resistence to their captivity is terrorism.
Rear Admiral Harris is adamant that the people in his care are well looked after and are enemies of the United States.
He told me they use any weapon they can – including their own urine and faeces – to continue to wage war on the United States.
I wrote about this last fall:
When heavily guarded people in cages throwing feces is considered assymetrical warfare, we have gone down the rabbit hole. (Either that or a couple of toddlers I know are in training to be the next Osama bin Laden.) Does this man think he’s actually fighting terrorists down there?
The men being held in Guantanamo might have been terrorists, but when they are under the total control of the most powerful military in the world they are most definitely not combatants, they are prisoners. It’s not an act of war to dislike your jailers or resist your imprisonment. That’s absurd.
According to the NY Times today, Harris has really straightened things out down there:
Several military officials said Admiral Harris took over the Guantánamo task force with a greater concern about security, and soon ordered his aides to draw up plans to deal with hostage-takings and other emergencies.
He and Colonel Dennis both asserted that Camp 4 — where dozens of detainees rioted during an aggressive search of their quarters last May — represented a particular danger.
Admiral Harris said detainees there had used the freedom of the camp to train one another in terrorist tactics, and in 2004 plotted unsuccessfully to seize a food truck and use it to run over guards.
“Camp 4 is an ideal planning ground for nefarious activity,” he said.
But according to several recent interviews with military personnel who served here at the time, the riot in May did not transpire precisely as military officials had described it. The disturbance culminated with what the military had said was an attack by detainees on members of a Quick Reaction Force that burst into one barracks to stop a detainee who appeared to be hanging himself.
But officers familiar with the event said the force stormed in after a guard saw a detainee merely holding up a sheet and that his intentions were ambiguous. A guard also mistakenly broadcast the radio code for multiple suicide attempts, heightening the alarm, the officers said.
“Nefarious activity?” They send in one more bizarre, psychotic warden down there after another. Maybe that’s the only kind of person who is willing to do it.
We know that they paid bounties in Afghanistan to rival clans who sold out their enemies who had nothing to do with al-Qaeda. We know that they knew this very early on and yet kept the prisoners there for years. There may very well still be some of those guys down there. Some of them mayh ave died in prison or killed themselves.
Guantanamo is a stain on America that is going to haunt us forever. Its very existence is an affront to the constitution upon which our government is built and the philosophy of human rights that inform it. For years now we’ve known what was happening down there and yet it still continues. In fact, from today’s report, it’s taken a recent turn for the worse. I can hardly believe it.
All the sordid evidence of Guantanamo abuse is laid out here and the Center for Constitutional Rights. Amnesty has more.
over at the FDL book salon this afternoon. 
, Paul Haggis’ 2005 Oscar winning meditation on racism in America. (Perhaps I was shamed into screening it after Michael Richard’s recent little star turn on YouTube).
and expands on it exponentially. Instead of one disenfranchised white guy going off the deep end and raging through L.A. blaming every person of color he encounters for his own personal failures, “Crash” serves up an Altman-sized, multicultural cast of self-pitying whiners running around L.A. pissed off at everybody else. They hail from all ethnic and socio-economic strata, they are all fuming about their (real or perceived) victimization by one societal injustice or another and (yeah, you guessed it) they are all on a ‘crash’ course, about to collide.
, 
,
, 
). In The Landlord, Beau Bridges is a spoiled rich kid who worries his parents with his “liberal views”, especially when he buys a run-down inner-city tenement, with intentions to renovate. His subsequent involvement with the various black tenants is played sometimes for laughs, other times for intense drama, but always for real. The social satire and pointed observations about race relations are dead-on, but never preachy or condescending (are you listening, Paul Haggis?). Top-notch ensemble work, featuring a young Lou Gossett (with hair!) giving a memorable dramatic turn. The lovely Susan Anspach is hilarious as Bridge’s perpetually stoned and bemused sister. A scene featuring Pearl Bailey and Lee Grant getting drunk and bonding over a bottle of “sparkling” wine is a minor classic all on its own. Unfortunately, The Landlord remains the only Ashby film not on DVD (a crime!). It does pop up on cable, so check your listings, or your local independent video store may have a VHS copy for rent.
, 
, 
,
, 
, 
, and 
(it’s really an allegory-but you knew that!) 
-Lesser-known Akira Kurosawa film (from 1960) that mixes Shakespearean intrigue with modern Japanese corporate politics and a dash of film noir.
-Outstanding 1982 indie debut for director Wayne Wang, filmed in SF’s Chinatown (on a shoestring!) Unique, keenly observed low-key cultural satire.
-Richard Linklater captures the bell-bottom and bong hit 70’s zeitgeist to a tee in the best “coming of age” period film since “American Graffitti”.
-Pop culture geeks approach the dreaded age of 30 with trepidation and the sage advice of one William Shatner (playing himself!) Much smarter than it sounds.
-Classic 1965 cult flick that finally made it to DVD in 2006. A black comedy extraordinaire co-scripted by Terry Southern; unbelievably surreal casting!
-Performance artist Miranda July’s 2005 directing debut is a daring, whimsical and sublime statement on the universal need to connect.
-Classic cult film noir from 1947 is the darkest of them all. Out of print for decades due to legal hassles-it finally reached DVD in 2005. Not to be missed!
-Unusual Native-American road movie/spiritual quest/comedy-drama from 1989 that eschews stereotypes and made me a Gary Farmer fan for life.
-1985 cult sci-fi from New Zealand featuring the great Bruno Lawrence in a “last man on earth” scenario. Enigmatic wonder of the final scene will haunt you.
-This 1980 backstage pseudo-docudrama is not for all tastes, but it is a must for fans of the UK’s late great agitprop punkers The Clash-fantastic performance footage
and I am here to tell you that if you ever thought Al Gore was a boring has-been, this film will prove otherwise. It isn’t that he’s any less stiff or formal than he ever was. He’s the same guy I always saw — earnest, decent and human. But this film shows us a person who is doing something that so transcends any of the usual political and media calculations that he seems almost serene. 
the book is a great choice if you are looking for something meaningful to give someone for Christmas.