The comments left by readers posted below that NY Times Op-Ed are certainly proof of the conditioning that the mega-corporatocracy (as opposed to actual businesses which compete to offer goods and services in the marketplace) has imposed on our society. How many hours of radio do they buy up for the Limbaughs and Becks whose vast fund of well-compensated hatred is only exceeded by the absence of logic in their statements. Who was it that equated the practices of ‘Capitalism” with the phrase, “Free Market Economy”? A marketing genius, no doubt since the two are not at all the same. However, the term, “Free” is a buzz-word that automatically spurs positive feelings and condemnation of those who spurn the misuse of the term in that context.

Capitalism is an economic practice with governmental restrictions upon it to ensure fair competition. Monopolies and trusts (the actual inhabitants of the Free Market zone) are forbidden, not that anyone bothers to enforce anti-trust laws any longer. Capitalism is neither a form of government nor is it a replacement for government. The constitution for our Republic actually empowers Congress to intervene in business to preserve constitutional freedoms for citizens. The framers were well able to conceive of robber barons gaining undue influence over government and trampling the rights of citizens.

Capitalism carries a lot of responsibilities for both businesses and for consumers. It’s a contract through which satisfied customers reward good businesses with their hard earned dollars. Bad businesses are supposed to fail as good ones expand and can take on the losses of workers created in a changing marketplace. However, when bad businesses form agreements to conform to policies which place them in adversarial roles with labor, the contract with capitalism has failed. Multiple businesses may be technically separate entities but competition has effectively ended. It represents a decision that the trough is large enough for all to feed. Trough, indeed.

But what happens when the drive to rake in another penny per unit so that a supplier can meet the demands of larger entities who don’t realize there is a ‘bottom line’ beyond which profits turn into losses for the populace? It results in hazardous products which harm the workers who make them and the consumers who buy them. It leads to low wages, importing illegal labor and exporting local jobs into the hands of people who will not in turn, be consumers of US businesses by and large. It means increased underemployment and unemployment to be remedied by tax funded means to prevent starvation and homelessness. It means poor educational experiences for children living in poverty, diminishing hopes of future generations to surpass the last one.

Everyone is a consumer, including our mega-corporations. What happens when the largest institutions refuse to examine the practices of the smaller ones with whom they trade? Here, the firing of janitorial staff earning under $14 per hour, was of no interest to the giant who referred to the matter as belonging only to another ‘vendor’. Too many providers of essential services (such as cleaning) are forced to sacrifice their more experienced employees for cheaper workers in order to underbid for a contract which further threatens their stability as a business. This practice ensures a smaller pool of trained, secure workers which makes up a stable society. It basically renders the entire workforce a disposable commodity. Were we less of a capitalist society when good workers enjoyed longevity and advancement within their employment settings? Now that the workforce has increased in diversity, the fund of useful knowledge and willing hands is larger than ever. It eradicates the independence of labor which is essential to the growth of a large (politically active) middle class.

There is one circumstance in which “trickle-down” economic theory does work. If the upper echelons of the business world refuse to think about the source of their wealth, mindlessness proceeds the rest of the way down the chain.

How can a violation of sound business practices be made to sound acceptable in society? Simple. You begin to use the term ‘Free Market Economy’. That makes it seem as if corporations work alone in creating a healthy marketplace. If someone refers to capitalism at all, just throw out that ‘other’ phrase, “Socialism” and be sure you sneer as you say it. It can misdirect the conversation admirably and no one has to learn anything new. Ever. Let people infer that if business were just free of all regulation and taxes, there would be two jobs in every pot. Or some such rhetoric (I’m not old enough to recall the New Deal). We’ve had that for quite awhile now. How’d that turn out? Anyone? Bueller? Despite incentives to hire, businesses kept the profits from those incentives and got more for less out of their workers. As we already know, you get ‘less’ for ‘less’ and this has led to a slower recovery and poorer quality of production practices and merchandise.

In the meantime, make business work for their money. To the largest extent possible, patronize ethical businesses which pay a living wage while producing quality products and services with full disclosure of ingredients. Mindlessness may work for industry moguls with golden parachutes but citizens have to eat today and plan for tomorrow. There is a reason why we refer to working as ‘making a living’. The demand that one work only so that others can live (high on the hog if we go back to the trough analogy), is against every principle of capitalism. Unless mindlessness is contagious, citizens should think of the consequences for their consumer choices.

My commentary on this article:

179.
Barbara Rubin, Ca.
September 4th, 2010

Mr. Herbert,

Thank you for bringing this to the attention of NY Times readers. This would have been a bit more effective if the information offered at the end of the column had been stated first. We have been left in the dark about the reasons for the lay-offs of janitorial staff at this huge enterprise.

Once businesses accepted a closer relationship with the general public, (e.g. issuing stock, accepting public monies for bail-outs or relying upon provision of public services for under-employed or underpaid employees), a need for greater transparency arose.

The public should not have the right to demand any company retain incompetent employees or hire more individuals than are needed for their employment rolls. However, what we have seen is that corporations are freely dispensing with necessary jobs and satisfactory workers in order to inflate the bottom line from ‘healthy’ into a form of corporate obesity which harms all consumers and tax payers. Businesses taking advantage of leaner times have seen additional profits in maintaining low staffing levels while requiring unrealistic levels of productivity for remaining workers.

Fearful of losing their minimal incomes or protesting the absence of benefits, protests are few as employees are reduced to the level of serf. Some part time work schedules are always changing, preventing many workers from obtaining second jobs, ensuring consistent child/family care practices or allowing for schedules to accommodate those seeking higher education and job training.

It is nice to think that a free market economy requires no awareness of such internal corporate workings. Unfortunately, the truth is that the corporations look to the public sector to provide health care, housing vouchers and other vital services which used to be part of the reward for putting in a day’s good labor. Does anyone know the high rate of asthma and occupational illness among janitors? It is quite high and tax payers have been paying the price for the use of harmful cleaning and maintenance products janitors are required to use because they are cheap and reduce the time which is actually needed to effectively and safely manage occupied properties.

The Free Market Economy has termed workers to be commodities instead of integral parts of the business culture. No one denies the rewards at the top will rightfully surpass the rewards of lower echelon workers with less training and responsibility. However, there are no unimportant jobs and none which should require any worker to live below the poverty line, depending upon public assistance for the basic necessities of life.

The Free Market Economy has become another code word for feudalism with a larger castle and deeper moat. Worker ‘ownership’ can only be stopped by public awareness of company policies so we can put the more obese corporations on diets of integrity and fairness.

These days, the litmus test appears to be more along the lines of whether a justice will abide by existing constitutional law or be willing to dispense with it altogether. That isn’t limited to their views of Roe V Wade, which made abortion legal, but now involves decisions about whether businesses–already considered to be citizens–can be considered beyond the realm of US law-makers. This was the subject of this New York Times editorial, “The Republicans and the Constitution”. The clause referred to is the one granting Congress the right to make laws affecting commerce. The concepts of ‘capitalism’ and the ‘free-market economy’ may infer a hands-off approach to business, but Congress does retain legislative powers over commercial enterprise. Before you take umbrage with such interference, consider your teen-aged sons and daughters who are looking for summer jobs. Now how do you feel about child labor laws and minimum wage guarantees? It isn’t just about the privilege to tax businesses but also safeguarding consumers through passage of product safety laws which is at stake in this debate.

Here was my posted commentary:

25.
HIGHLIGHT (what’s this?)
Barbara Rubin
Ca.
July 20th, 2010
10:44 am

This brilliant editorial returns us to a more sane view of government for, and by, the people. The states fought for a Bill of Rights to restrain lawmakers from overly restricting the life options of citizens, including their ability to climb the ladder of success in any way they chose to define it. Republicans (and many Democrats) continue to regard the citizens of the United States as threats from which the more important paper citizens, (corporations), must be defended. The commerce clause is the only defense left for citizens who have become used to being defined as consumers and laborers. Laborers are mere assets belonging to businesses now rather than an integral part of their operations. Consumers are restrained from putting too many businesses out of business through restrictions upon information about product ingredients and any potential health hazards they pose.

Labels matter if we are to restore our government to its constitutional origins. Language shapes thought and citizens have to reclaim their identities again if we are to reclaim our eligibility for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Are we citizens or not? Do corporate claims to citizenship automatically put human citizens on a less equal footing with them?

Regulation of commerce is the only thing permitting many Americans to access the essentials of life. The minimum wage offers access to food and shelter although some businesses believe they can limit the hours of employees so that taxpayers cover traditional benefits which used to accompany full time employment. Now a benefits package is eligibility for Medicaid, housing vouchers and food stamps. Caps have even been suggested on labor’s potential to increase income beyond a particular level through exemptions from minimum wage mandates- if there were outside sources of income like tips based in the largess of restaurant patrons. Apparently corporate citizens must benefit from any expenditure of effort on the part of a laborer lest they earn a place above their assigned ‘stations’ or class membership.

Life and liberty are surely threatened by leaving allowable pollution levels to the discretion of producers while tax payers cover the costs of its morbidity/mortality. Should that cost become excessive, it is always possible to reduce it by having tax payers pay for the clean-up, and cover charges for catastrophic illnesses like cancer, as the lesser of evils.

What if we experimented by defining corporations as something other than citizens with the right to sue the government for any loss of profits (under NAFTA, chapter 11) should restrictions be imposed? You know, the rules which might benefit those ‘other citizens’; the ones with beating hearts.

Barbara Rubin
www.armchairactivist.us
Recommended by 207 Readers

Far from the image of an objective reporter, Nicholas Kristoff is a journalist immersed in documenting the moral failures of men which drive them to unspeakably destructive acts. He doesn’t only report but also intervenes, comprehending that some things cannot be encountered with the professional passivity of a paid observer. The violence he describes around the globe is directed both externally and inwardly, as is the usual case with aggression. External battles between nations are most easily documented, such as that between Israel and it’s neighbors. Much of Kristoff’s reporting is devoted to civil divisions in which men seek to subjugate or exterminate portions of their own societies, as seen in his visits to African nations. Unlike most reporters, his attention is draw to the inevitable targeting of women who constitute the lowest rung of all societies. He chronicles these atrocities, and the occasional modest victory, very well.

Kristoff continued his series on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in a piece called, “Waiting for Ghandi”.
While a previous column discussed below advised men to forget the past and begin anew in an area where history–and mythology– reign supreme, this column expresses the hope that males immersed in violence might be shamed into negotiations. That shame would be instigated by the sight of women engaged in passive resistance and filmed for posterity as they are met with violence. Yes, it would put a powerful image before many cameras.

But what of the women?

Kristoff, like Ghandi, appears to regard women as if we hold the answer to all of societies ills. As a matter of fact, we do. But, we aren’t going to share these most ‘un-secret’ of all strategies because we’re exhausted. Not only is the demand for these ‘secrets’ unceasing, but we are also expected to be impervious to the retribution exacted by men who fail to meet their own expectations of evolving to that sought-after, higher level of being. There is always a ‘reason’ for continuing their violent games.

And what of the women?

Women are indeed practiced at this because passive resistance (there is nothing ‘civil’ about flagrant disobedience) is a major strategy by which women stay alive in their own homes or retain their places in the work-force. However, passive resistance is not really a model of revolution. It is a protective shield to guard the spark of repressed humanity within oppressed humanity. It impresses others for only a very short time. Then the women will be left to pay the price of their demonstration.

Kristoff demonstrates the usual struggle of all men with the ‘Madonna/Whore’ division in which women are idealized. Nonetheless, that idealization of women still results in punishment for the assigned role of receptacles for male expression of sex and seed; of power and need. And sometimes of love, which is never returned as powerfully as required by the ‘thwarted’. Still, I had to question the very nature of the suggestion and read a bit about Ghandi’s view of women. It was very much the same. Women are necessary to save men from themselves.

Ghandi put women on pedestals to induce men to control themselves by example. By opening the door to females as voters, he assumed they would elect more reasonable individuals among the male half of the population. Females elected to any position of power would be expected to minimize the degree to which they visibly exercised it. Ghandi didn’t actually endorse social equality for women, fearing they would become equally violent and immoral with such freedom. This circular reasoning merely places men at the mercy of their atavistic impulses and makes women responsible for altering men’s goals. None of this requires the necessary and radical shifts in the gender hierarchy within society.

Hopefully, women will be permitted the garb required for their appointed task as peacemaker. A cape and tights, as provocative as the latter might appear, would seem necessary.

Wistful notions by men of peace making and describing huMan history. This reply was posted to Mr. Kristoff’s blog:

254.

July 11th, 2010
3:54 pm
Mr. Kristoff,

You disappoint today with this easy discharge of responsibility from warring, patriarchal factions to solutions which will result in some transient shame to men through the public abuse of women. Women are at the lowest rung of the ladder of oppression in that even an oppressed male can own one. Female lives should not be risked for lack of clear written agreements by men to end their armed conflicts and respect the rights of other men to exist.

You have seen how women are weapons of war in Africa through rape; how women become human shields in Middle Eastern villages occupied by terrorists needing bases for their guns and rockets. Yet now you propose women risk their lives in an effort to shame men whose customs preclude women from appearing in such a public manner for subversive purposes. How should they dress and comport themselves to avoid condemnation and punishment by their own leaders? Their own husbands?

Women can’t solve the problem, when we are even denied equal rights under the constitution – any constitution. Equal rights of citizenship in this country are even granted to paper entities – corporations – as for its human, male residents. Those corporate, paper citizens reap profits from war and provide its weapons – propaganda, money and instruments of violence. Remove those weapons of war instead of placing women between those weapons and their primary targets. Make war unprofitable and refuse recognition to terrorist-led governments.

Having women lie at the feet of armed men with the responsibility of disarming them is simply unfair. The State Department should instead grant women political asylum to leave their men to enjoy their battles and flee to safer environs. Deprivation of the sex class might serve to end war since shame is nonexistent. And, if wars are to be won by media influenced opinion, have journalists travel en mass to these battlefields.

You get paid for it and have medical insurance.

Barbara Rubin

Post Script: A post regarding the column by David Brooks written about Mel Gibson’s case has been postponed pending verification of the content of the tapes by law enforcement.

Many Americans learn their history through movies and animated Disney films about our pasts. It has led us to celebrate victories. Violent acts become crime dramas and ‘movies-of-the-week’, to be replayed over and over again. People enjoyed the sight of (attractive) heroes and heroines triumphing over evil. They were often vanquished by evil warlords but animated people could be shot, stabbed and fall off cliffs and still be reconstituted with a dash of water. Those who weren’t animated, all had medical insurance and would eventually recover from their comas.

Unfortunately, humans are not that resilient and survivors of violence (or merely violent times) often pass on little more than their traumas to future generations. Triumphant and tragic events are both remembered and oral knowledge eventually becomes archived as history. However the repetitive facts and themes contained in the history of men are transformed into mythology. Belief replaces facts and cannot easily be fought with reason. As women have only been rarely accounted for in recorded history, at least outside of mythology, I refer to the subject as huMan history – which tells a story all its own.

Most of the triumphs in historical records of one group are actually tragedies in the records of another. For some reason, success is equated with victory, meaning one can only advance at some cost to another with violence usually in evidence somewhere along the way. The error is actually one of reasoning. We regard each circle of aggression and defense as a closed chapter in group or individual histories. The allies won a war in 1942. A man was executed for killing another man. A wife left an abusive husband . None of these circles have been completed because history has been mistaken as something which is part of the past. The allies have since met the same evil occur within and between countries and executions, oddly, did not appear to deter other murders. Women return to abusive men when they realize they have no other way to raise their children without neglecting vital aspects of their health and safety regarding food, housing, supervision and medical care. Sometimes it is the mythology about two parents always being preferable to one.

HuMan history doesn’t repeat itself but merely continues. How we view history is key in many conflicts where mythology has replaced reason and is used to justify any amount of brutality. “Who did what to whom first?”, is a never ending question huMans ask one another. This first column by Kristoff, “Burrowing Through A Blockade”, attempts to remove huMan history from the equation entirely. He optimistically called for an end to memories of injustices on all sides, yet never addresses the nature of the participants involved. Change requires an alteration of more than circumstances. It calls for a huMan revolution of beliefs about the past and new ways of viewing progress as something other than winning which ensures a loser. Seeking a victory instead of a draw in which all coexist to the detriment of none is the temporary fix we are all condemned to replay. As long as only victories count, huMan history will continue as it is at present.

My posted comment was as follows:

144.

July 4th, 2010

Dear Mr. Kristoff,

Having just read your latest piece about the Middle East, I take issue with your recommendation to “… start over again.”. This is a form of wishful thinking that perpetuates violence around the globe. People tire of repetitive cycles of egregious harm done to various groups, be it to women or entire cultures in genocidal acts. Rather than persevere through the complexities of ending such evil, everyone wants to first wipe these dirtiest of slates ‘clean’.

The problem with recognizing an entity like Hamas must begin with their own stated goals. Have you looked at their charter? I recommend you seek out a person fluent and literate in Arabic to objectively review it. You should also review the failure of the former ruling party, the PLO, to make changes to their charter stating their intentions to destroy Israel until the late 1990s. Such provisions in their charter existed even after the Oslo Accords (I and II) in the early portions of that decade.

How do you ask any nation to negotiate with others whose stated intention is your eradication? The assumption of ‘good faith’ in such negotiations is not just ‘silly’ but ‘suicidal’. The Palestinians will always be deprived of political legitimacy until a governing body dedicates itself to the transformation of that territory into a nation able to respect the standing of other, non-Islamic nations in the world community. We must not mistake the offering of relief to a beleaguered populace as offering legitimacy to its rulers.

Humans suffer under governmental mandates to pursue bad policies. The US went bankrupt pursuing war in Iraq on pretenses of weapons of mass destruction being stockpiled there. Military and civilian casualties in that effort will remain a permanent blot on our record forever, which could not be halted for many years despite protests by citizens free to speak out about the issue. Who can speak in repressive environments by voice or vote? Our July 4th celebration of our Constitution is useless if we allow any of our temporary elected leaders to violate its written provisions.

Slates, like memories, cannot be wiped clean. Slates must boast written proof of current beliefs and future intentions regarding their principles and methods for governing. Aspiring governments must acknowledge that they will be taking their place among a community of nations with diverse beliefs.

Barbara Rubin

Note: A tag of feminism was added to this post since the eradication of women from much of history is symptomatic of the denial which is the basis for so much huMan misery as we see in the next two posts.

This is another case of drug makers enlarging the pool of patients to treat without thought to the consequences of such actions. According to reports by Alan Roses of GlaxSmithKline earlier in the decade (referenced above), Alzheimers drugs—like many others– are ineffective for half of patients due to genetic diversity within the population. On the other hand, earlier identification of cognitive decline and brain cell death is extremely valuable if findings are not dropped into an overly broad overly broad category of of ‘ Disease’. The bulk of it may well be due to injury. Exposures of citizens,(not patients), to neurotoxic substances occupationally and residentially, will have to be identified and ruled out as sources contributing to declining cognitive functions. Dr. Kaye Kilburn, former professor of medicine at the Keck School and VA epidemiologist, saw that occupational asthmatics frequently displayed such signs of central nervous system decline with changes in memory, learning and motor skills. Unfortunately, he also found the majority of ‘normal control’ subjects were also showing signs of CNS degradation far earlier than age-related decline should appear. His paperback , “Endangered Brains” and a medical text on chemically induced brain damage (no financial interest) indicates that neurologists begin to look for signs of preventable, and not just premature, losses in function.

The only interventions mentioned in this news article – unless that is the fault of the reporter but I doubt it—are drugs which can actually damage the central nervous system (CNS) through hyperactivating it with anti-cholinergic pharmaceuticals. Earlier in the decade,. the EPA banned the most commonly used pesticide–Dursban–from residential use because it acted in such a manner. It killed insects through destruction of nerve cells firing themselves to death through suppression of the enzyme, acetylcholinesterase. Not only are those pesticides still in use in proximity to people but their replacement chemicals known as pyrethroids and pyrethrins also hyperactivate the nervous system by damaging neurons directly and amplified their toxicity with synergists. Those prevent the body from clearing such toxic substances from the body before they can do their killing work.
Alzheimer’s drugs would further damage the body’s ability to counter those substances. The CDC tells us our exposure to pesticides, primarily a class of neurotoxic substances, is ubiquitous. California is even now applying them aerially in the northern part of the state while many building owners have exterminators applying them 12 to 24 times per year to their buildings. Landscaping relies on numerous pesticides and herbicides with their multiplicity of actions.

It is time to stop counteracting chemical damage with more and earlier administrations of yet more chemicals. Occupational therapy to stimulate skills in decline, healthier diets and safer environments are what will halt the huge incidence of damage and disease. Technology has advanced. Exterminators have a wealth of profitable options in safer pest control now and drug makers are well aware of the hazards and limitations of various classes of drugs.

I was prematurely disabled by such substances and the cost to society of preventable illness is unsupportable.

Barbara Rubin

Meanwhile, Glaxo-Smith-Klein, maintains their earlier studies were conclusive in ruling out such adverse impacts for their product. However, if this item in the Triangle Business Journal is correct, legal settlements have already been made in more than 700 cases concerning this drug.

Wouldn’t it be cheaper to go to court and prove the drug did not have these adverse effects if the evidence were compelling? Or, are the costs of legal settlements merely part of the cost of doing business today? After all, given the enormous amount of dollars flowing into the coffers of some multi/trans-national corporations, settlements may be easily absorbed compared with the costs of further research and possible removal or modification of a product already in the marketplace.

This brings up important questions about plaintiffs’ attorneys. How moral it is to press for settlement after settlement in repetitive claims of harm for a product, rather than conduct a court-room trial on the matter? Trials set precedents and serve to limit future harm to those likely to repeat the experience of prior litigants and become the next generation of plaintiffs. Is litigation taken to the floor of a courtroom instead of a ‘back-room”, actually the most moral course of action?

Regardless, this may be indicative of how to best resolve discrepancies between a marketing firm’s data and the actual experiences of patients using a given product. The pool of available data about the incidence and nature of illnesses and injuries increases exponentially, when patients are enrolled in a public option for health care insurance. The potential savings alone from analysis of this data ought to pay for much of the costs for such coverage. This would certainly assist the FDA greatly in making tough decisions about approving drugs for sale, when to withdraw them or require further testing. As the public option would also be funding drug purchases, a great deal of attention would be paid to drug efficacy and the potential for adverse effects.

Here is the letter which went to the Times:

Re: NY Times editorial, “More Questions about Avandia” (7/5/10)

To the Editor,

Your editorial illustrates extremely important economic benefits to having a ‘public option’ in the provision of universal health care. Data regarding possible adverse outcomes from use of the drug Avandia, was only accessible because the 227,000 patients studied had Medicare coverage. Insured patients have records permitting impartial review of large numbers of cases.

Tallying the enormous price tag accompanying tobacco-related illnesses (CDC estimates $193 billion dollars annually in productivity losses, mortality and morbidity) led to ground-breaking legislation restricting smoking in workplaces. Diminishing rates of cardio-vascular disease have already reduced costs and much human suffering.

Universal health insurance in Europe brought about REACH, the requirement that vendors prove the safety of chemicals in products before marketing. The value of the ‘public option’ in matters of public health research and policy is clear.

Barbara Rubin

Postscript:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/health/policy/13avandia.html?nl=health&emc=healthupdateema2

More history about the research and development of Avandia.

Corporations have had their rights to endorse candidates and contribute to their campaigns restored so they can be just like regular citizens – you know, the ones with actual beating hearts. Well, you’d have to multiply what we regular citizens might contribute by a gazillion, but yes, paper citizens enjoy the same rights to participate in politics. That must buy a lot of gratitude on the part of a candidate, although a corporation would be hard to take to lunch as a polite ‘thank you’ gesture.

What does IBM eat? Italian? Thai? DW-40? Perhaps a thank-you card would be a better idea.

Here’s my problem with this issue. It duplicates and magnifies the rights of corporate owners and officers to twice engage in electioneering, on their own and then again via the combined use of assets/monies which aren’t necessarily theirs to use for this purpose. Does it say in the prospectus that the corporation is a registered member of a particular party?

Perhaps this is an overly simplistic view but if every person working in or owning a corporation has the individual right to engage in electioneering and fund raising for a campaign, why would they be able to do so again through their business? The initial notion of a corporation having the status as a ‘person’ is attributed to the bizarre phrasing of a judge summing up a Supreme Court decision of 1886 regarding a railroad. Why it is assumed that the right to due process of law for a business belongs to the corporate entity rather than to the corporation’s owner(s) on behalf of that entity, is a form of non-reasoning which escapes me. But then, I’m not a lawyer.

If each individual working in or owning a corporation has the right to engage in electioneering and fund raising for a campaign, why would they be allowed to engage in such activities a second time via their business? If a corporation has status as a ‘person’ shouldn’t the Corporation vote as well? Perhaps the age of the corporation might be important to define, ensuring it has the knowledge and maturity to make such a decision. I supposed any corporation which has been around for 18 years or so might be qualified, assuming it is legally registered within the United States. I’m not sure which corporate representative should have the privilege of casting it’s vote, along with his or her own, but that would be nitpicking.

Of course, this may abridge the rights of shareholders expecting a certain percentage of profits to come to them directly, rather than reducing them through the making of contributions to candidates they may not even personally support. This will certainly limit the hopes of employees for a better tier of medical plan as monies accrued through their labor go to some yutz running for office. And about that 401K… .

Corporations have some really hard decisions to make.

So do we. Corporations needing friends in government obviously no longer have enough friends among consumers. There’s a reason for that – consumers wouldn’t voluntarily buy their ‘stuff’ without the assistance of government to hide selected ingredients in labeling, restrict competition as corporate monopolies multiply freely or lowering prices by offering starvation wages to their employees.

Learn about the companies you reward with your purchasing dollars and shop accordingly.

Public perception of today’s societal burdens is largely the product of media presentation. Objective reporting goes out the window when the tactic of appealing to the ‘human interest’ readership portrays abusive viewpoints as legitimate (e.g. blowing poisonous fumes into communal airspace). Would you expect reporters to present a ‘side’ by a serial killer about why his victims ‘made him do it’? Does it honestly matter that smokers don’t like leaving a nice warm bar to smoke outside before returning to their fun when non-smoking patrons and bar employees will live to enjoy a new dawn because of such bans? My comment at that site contains links to mainstream research which should help the hapless victims of drifting tobacco smoke to explain the urgency with which the non-smoking public requires protective legislation.

Enforcing it would be nice, too.

117. B.R.
January 2nd, 2010
4:40 pm

The media is contributing to the continuing confusion on the part of the public about the crucial nature of anti-smoking legislation. It wasn’t intended to reduce the number of people who are addicted to smoking but to first protect citizens from bearing the costs of smoking-related illnesses and to prevent the unnecessary disability and death that smoking causes in millions of non-smokers. Stories of this nature require simple citations of why the laws were even put on the books.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/15/health/main5385879.shtml

http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2009/09/28/heart_attack_rates_fall_after_smoking_bans/

The data as summarized by the Centers for Disease Control and the Institute of Medicine indicates that over 125 million non-smokers are enjoying unprecedented relief since this legislation was implemented in so many communities without incurring financial losses to businesses. University of California (San Francisco) researchers pooling data found that in just three years, cardiac events were reduced by a third in participating communities. That translates into huge societal benefits. The debate presented in these articles should be about how to accommodate the needs of smokers since the practice is legal and quitting is an impossibility for so many. However, their addictions don’t’ warrant a death sentence – or death tax via medical costs – being assigned to non-participants in the practice.

The data on asthma indicates it is the fourth largest cause of lost work productivity (and largest cause of missed school days in children). With over twenty million asthmatics in the country, how would any employer find it financially rewarding to allow smoking in their facilities?

The dramatics of wealthy bar patrons agonizing about being deprived of nicotine while indoors is simply not news but a sad commentary on a society disinterested in human suffering. The real drama of bar employees having to choose between their jobs and their health is news – not that they are free to complain if they want to retain their jobs.

Lest the smokers continue to feel put upon in this matter, recall the 2001 attempt by Phillip Morris to lobby against legislation of smoking restrictions in the Republic of Czechoslovakia. Government officials were told of the fiscal benefits they might enjoy by permitting smoking to continue. Their statistics showed that the premature deaths of smokers reduced government expenditures in retiree pensions and health care.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1120774/

NY Times, some stories really don’t have ‘two’ sides.

Unfortunately, the media is just another form of ‘show biz’, further separating people from important direct and concise summations of issues. The NY Times demonstrates how little can be learned from participating in the pomp and circumstance of a 24 hour news cycle when journalists reiterate their diametrically opposing points in ‘counterpoint’. You don’t really have a conversation that way but just fill more space with the same signatures.

So, when this weeks NY Times Op Ed columnists, David Brooks and Gail Collins each posted their views of the current health reform nonsense – that bipartisan race to preserve medical care for the healthy and wealthy – it is impossible not to recognize how this country turns a basic philosophical premise about how we view human life into a comedy sketch. I keep expecting Brooks to address Collins as “Gail, you ignorant slut.”, in a parody of the old Saturday Night Live take-offs of similar debates to the ‘Conversations‘ of these two writers.

In her column this week entitled, “The New Perils of Pauline“, Gail Collins demonstrates the classic dilution of feminist theory and rhetoric as she competes for attention with male colleagues in this still mostly-male domain. David Brooks presented us with his ‘views’ in another colunm, “The Hardest Call“. Brooks is the Times’ resident conservative who continues to make abject apologies to the Republican party for breaking faith with them and voting for Obama.

Let’s get down to the basics. Women in this country are far more likely to be uninsured due to underemployment and therefore more likely to fall into unemployment and disability/homelessness than our male compatriots. Women raise children and are essential to the workforce. How is depriving women of health insurance contributing to the economic stability of the United States? As far as looking for equity in medical care for women (e.g. reimbursed for birth control or coverage for abortion as men are covered for Viagra prescriptions), we have to start with a woman’s right to coverage for a simple appendectomy. The rest will come through legislation or litigation by healthy women in active pursuit of that goal.

Don’t ask David Brooks for answers, Ms. Collins. He cited his fears that a vote to allow another thirty million Americans access to health care will lead to overconsumption of services which will then raise health care costs. Should we assume Mr. Brooks is going to forgo health care when he gets sick in order to prevent such a rise in costs? Never mind, that’s another ‘conversation’ which shouldn’t take place.

Health care costs cannot be studied in the same manner as other relationships between goods/services and consumption. This is because consumption of health care services is not dictated by a positive leaning towards a product like that second TV gracing so many households. It is dictated by a problem which likely shouldn’t exist – that of enormous rates of sickness in the population. The mapping of health care provided to the population is a map for understanding the nature of illness itself and the actual key to reducing need, and therefore demand, for medical services.

Legislation to ban smoking in workplaces and public places was based in the high costs of medical services to people with tobacco-related ailments. The controversy surrounding this landmark legislation meandered around the block many times into the land of ‘free choice’, Big Brotherdom and loss of income to bars and restaurants where smokers gather to, well, choke together over coffee or gin and tonics.

Even physicians were among the doubting Thomases despite knowing how harmful smoking is to their patients. To everyone’s astonishment (okay, not mine but I’m an asthmatic who can detect cigarette smoke from a block away), passage of this legislation led to a reduction in heart disease/cardiac events in the population by one third! Non-smokers were dropping like flies because they became secondary consumers of tobacco products without such legal protections. Imagine the savings in health care costs, not to mention human suffering!

Here is my comment to Ms. Collins as she wanders through the labyrinth of corporate America’s road blocks with her fellow journalists.

368. B.R.
West Lebanon, NH
December 19th, 2009
3:04 pm

Ms. Collins,

Perhaps you are having too many ‘conversations’ with David Brooks. Your writings are becoming more ‘centrist’ than objective views of reality. America is owned by corporations. Corporate interests don’t want universal health care in the U.S. for two reasons:

1. Provision of health care is profitable when given to the privileged at high premiums. I call it a privilege since the corporations can revoke the contract seemingly at will.

2. Universal health care means accurate statistics regarding illness and better tracking of causation for those ailments. That has led the EU to implement such remedies as REACH in which new and untested chemicals must be studied for potential harm to consumers before marketing. The requirement for complete product labeling is also a huge aid to consumers there in making healthy choices. Our corporate owners need to retain their veil of secrecy about how the pollution of air and water, and our adulterated foods and other consumer goods taken into our homes has been responsible for driving up the need for health care services. Fears of overconsumption driving up health care costs (Brook’s position) is completely misleading to the public.

A third of adult Americans (16-64) have a chronic illness or disability according to the CDC; one in six children a developmental disability according to pediatrician, Dr. Phillip Landrigan of Mt. Sinai. Three of ten workers can expect to file for disability according to the Social Security Agency.

Overconsumption of services has its base in the need for said services, all courtesy of corporate America. Please address your sharp journalistic eye to the real underpinnings of our failure to pass health care in any form. There is no debate here and passage of a bill authorizing access to health care is the thin end of the wedge which will lead to further refinements/improvements over time.

Right now, too many are flat out of time. Women are disproportionately affected as well, being more prone to autoimmune diseases provoked by environmental causes. Let’s not pander to the predominantly male game players who are confident they will win while pretending ambivalence in the matter.

Thank you,
Barbara Rubin

First is this column by Charles Blow of the NY Times. Mr. Blow read a blog entry by Tyler Perry, detailing his horrendous childhood experiences at the hands of a drunken father.  Reading the words of this survivor of child abuse made it clear that Perry lost his opportunity to escape his father’s influence because his fleeing mother had been returned to that abusive man, much like the other ‘property’ he’d declared stolen – the family car. Perry was additional baggage, not even separated from his mother during her incarceration while waiting to be ‘claimed’, and a witness to his mother being beaten throughout that endless drive home. 

Being forced to witness abuse is also abuse. Children, by their egocentric natures, feel they are integral parts of the problems surrounding them, requiring tremendous reassurance of their blamelessness. That balm is simply unavailable in the face of overwhelming pathology. This leaves the children of such homes forever marked not just by fear, but the sense of shame and guilt accompanying inaction. That inaction on the part of all who know or suspect abuse extends that helplessness into an all-pervasive characteristic of society.

How convenient for those in authority.
 
Here was my comment (minor corrections added), posted in reply to the column, “No More Suffering”, by Charles Blow (NY Times, 10/10/09):

13. October 10th, 2009

Mr. Blow,

Law enforcement forced Tyler Perry’s mother to return to her violent husband. Violence against women is a way of life, sanctioned in nearly every society, if not actively endorsed. We have only recently seen an end to foot binding in the last century after billions were abused. Female genital mutilation remains a common occurrence in some cultures even where there has been specific legislation against such practices. Here in the US, with our culture of violence, women plead in vain for protective measures against known and unknown parties. Our own rape shield laws are one example of how pervasively society blames violence upon the violated, pursuing them into the court room on the rare occasions sexual assault cases make it to trial. Such assaults are a crime against society, not just the woman (or man) in question.

The CDC notes that a quarter of women endure partner violence, an overt measure of subjugation which makes no mention of the day to day mental cruelty endured prior to physical brutality. Children growing up in the climate of emotional and physical abuse may learn to accept it as normal and repeat the cycle. Those who manage to avoid passing on that legacy of violence are its only true survivors.

One factor is rarely included in the serious issue of violence being ‘under-reported’. Many victims do not initially consider remaining silent. Law enforcement personnel often refuse to record complaints by women of stalking, harassment and assault (never mind investigating or prosecuting them), automatically consigning them to nuisance calls. From there we move on to the insufficient availability of housing options for abused women and children to escape retribution and the need to endure in silence.

Additional benefits stem from ignoring violence. All of societal ills can then be blamed upon histories of self-reported trauma. It conveniently replaces the need for concrete social services with prescriptions of anti-depressants for adults and children (assuming the parties are insured). It continues to ignore a lack of parity in employment between the genders and access to safe, affordable childcare which can go a long way towards preventing and identifying child abuse.

Thank you for keeping this topic in the public eye but it is largely preventable if its roots in misogyny are recognized.

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