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.

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

To the Editor;

I wish to express my objection to your absence of supervision over your Op-Ed contributors. David Brooks’ latest column, “The Tenacity Question” cites unnamed, but prominent, military sources as approving the President’s manner of policy-setting. However, Brooks then tells us these ‘experts’ (of unstated party affiliation) worry that Obama’s character is such as to preclude his continuing in this apparently praise-worthy manner.

I don’t recall hearing Brooks publishing his concerns regarding the manner in which George Bush’s military decisions were reached via the active counsel of The Lord. It is doubtful that Brooks’ sources were sufficiently lofty to confirm Bush’s claims, but he nonetheless failed to warn us that Bush might not have the resolve to see His work through to the end.

The election is over. Perhaps you should request that your columnist take his non-newsworthy fears to Face-Book or Twitter. This would be preferable to using up valuable space on your pages, at least until the next campaign begins. Republicans can then re-introduce issues of character as their replacement for substantive policy R&D.

Barbara Rubin

Fancy that.

The NY Times discusses it in their latest editorial, “Majority Rule on Health Care Reform.” It is past time our Senators were introduced to the concept that the people who voted for them actually hoped their will would be the guiding force behind the actions of the individuals designated to make our decisions for us.

The flaw in the process by which a republic operates is best demonstrated by the editorial’s quotation from South Carolina Senator James DeMint (referred to as ‘Jim,’ except that I have no intention of getting that informal with this character.) Apparently, his views take no notice of his constituents’ needs for medical services, but is solely concerned with ending any chance of Obama presiding over a nation that can actually consult a physician when the need arises.

Perhaps if such a privilege were called the “DeMint Prerogative,” we’d have a better chance of obtaining that goal with his extra vote? Hard to say, when elected officials only address issues one can not even call partisan at this point. The Republicans are no longer recognizable as a party. Instead, they appear to be buffoon-like caricatures of their former old boys’ network of well-educated, if exclusive (in all senses of the word), club of wealthy conservatives who once had some investment in the stature of their country in the world community.

Here is the comment left on the NY Times blog about this today:

153. B.R. August 30th, 2009

We should not attribute President Obama’s ‘efforts’ to obtain bipartisan cooperation in any area as naive or ineffectual. A man of his intellect and experience had to have known such efforts were destined for failure. However, that effort was the greatest source of enlightenment for a badly misinformed public. We have learned that our struggles with economic and health care issues are not based upon an unwillingness of reformers to reach across the aisle. It is based upon the determination of many elected officials to prevent reforms from ever becoming a reality for the American people.

Perhaps if the NY Times stopped paying people to publish obstructionist material in your paper, we might see an end to conservatives laboring in the service of industrial ‘dis’ interests, including the welfare of its own labor force. Perhaps we’d see an end to interminable debate and delay strategies by legislators being applauded and redefined as ‘incrementalists‘ by your own columnists.

President Obama had no choice but to parade this futile dance before our eyes to convince us once and for all that many of our representatives are busy representing something other than their constituencies. A show of reasonableness, and the offer of a clean slate for previous contributors to divisiveness, was a necessary step towards the political education of the American people. We must no longer be willing to be led down the garden path accompanied by slogans and waving flags as we sink into homelessness, under/unemployment, ignorance, poverty and disability. Just look at the plight of our veterans if anyone thinks conservatives today represent American values.

There are no conflicts – just incorrect premises. Thank you to President Obama for revealing those premises upon which so many of our political fiascoes are based.