Truthout has a good posting here with some articles regarding this tragic event and some of its potentially likely underlining causes. This includes a provocative and well-reasoned analysis from AlterNet regarding why this tragedy is the result of conservative ideology…

The tragic collapse this week of a stretch of I-35 spanning the Mississippi river in Minnesota was shocking but should come as no surprise. America’s core infrastrucure has been falling apart in very visible ways during the past few years. It’s a predictable outcome of the rise of “backlash” conservatism; we’ve swallowed 30 years of small-government rhetoric, and it’s led us to a point in which our infrastructure, once the pride of the developed world, is falling apart around us. We’re reaping what we’ve sown.

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One of the primary reasons for that is that there aren’t organized constituents lobbying for public goods like highways and bridges - people take those things for granted. A thousand grifters have gained office promising to cut taxes as if they existed in a vacuum, without mentioning the cost; no politician has ever won office promising to keep highways from collapsing on their constituents. For 30 years, we’ve been told by a series of right-wing snake-oil salesmen that they could deliver more and better public services while constantly cutting the taxes that pay for them, but it was always a fraud. The result is that the United States enjoys the third-lowest tax burden among the 30 most advanced economies as its public spaces gradually come apart at the seams.

I would argue that skimping out on infrastructure investments in the name of a low tax burden is a triumph of ideology over commonsense, but it goes beyond that. Conservative philosophy stresses limited government, not bad government, and nothing can change the fact that the public sector remains the only way to organize collectively when there’s no profit involved. So nobody seriously believes that the the hidden hand of capitalism is going to step in and inspect and repair bridges that are open to the public. When lawmakers don’t fund that work, they know full well that it won’t get done.

Read The Full Article

Some colleagues of mine posted some insightful comments on this incident as well.

I think we are beginning to see the tip of the iceberg.

Nationwide we appear to be falling further and further behind with infrastructure maintenance. A recent example was the steam line rupture in New York City. There are plenty of other things — billions of dollars worth of water lines - some in excess of 100 years old - needing replacement. Yet governments don’t want to spend the necessary money to correct these deficiencies because it isn’t the “political thing to do.” Hey, can’t raise taxes or rates. Leave it for the next guy.

I’m at 33 years of local government service, and I don’t like what I see. Frustrating is putting it mildly.

It’s going to become a very real problem for all of us.

Unfortunately, I believe this individual is completely correct here. As our nation continues to more and more resemble the former USSR and authoritarian east bloc nations in the political sphere, that resemblance will begin to manifest itself in the realm of our physical infrastructure as well.

Another, from the Twin Cities, posted this…

I’m also nauseated and angry over reports this morning that our state administration was told in 2001, 2005 and 2006 that the bridge was structurally deficient, and was prone to single fatigue. Our governor this morning is assuring me and other citizens that 179,000 other bridges in the country have the same designation, so there’s nothing to worry about. It’s not the time to go on a political rant, but I know a lot of other people are shocked and angry. As I look at the devastation from one bridge collapse here, it’s hard for me not to think about our brothers and sisters in New Orleans who still haven’t recovered from Katrina in 2005. We have a lot of work to do.

Yes, we do.

E-Democracy.Org has put up a wiki to highlight news, videos, photos and more about the I-35W bridge collapse here. Interesting stuff, and an interesting use of citizen-driven information platforms to better communicate news and information.

Here is an interesting analysis and comparative study of the Canadian health care system vs. the American one (if you want to call that a coherent system). It seems that Canadians have become healthier than Americans over a thirty year span in the controlled social experiment of public vs. private care.

Publicly funded health care has its problems, as any Canadian or Briton knows. But like democracy, it’s the best answer we’ve come up with so far.

Should the United States implement a more inclusive, publicly funded health care system? That’s a big debate throughout the country. But even as it rages, most Americans are unaware that the United States is the only country in the developed world that doesn’t already have a fundamentally public–that is, tax-supported–health care system.

That means that the United States has been the unwitting control subject in a 30-year, worldwide experiment comparing the merits of private versus public health care funding. For the people living in the United States, the results of this experiment with privately funded health care have been grim. The United States now has the most expensive health care system on earth and, despite remarkable technology, the general health of the U.S. population is lower than in most industrialized countries. Worse, Americans’ mortality rates–both general and infant–are shockingly high.

Read the complete report in Yes! Magazine

A recent newspaper article from the New York Times Corporation reports on CIA domestic wiretapping, assassination plots, mind-control and spying on Americans. It quotes CIA director Michael Hayden saying that yesterday’s release of highly censored government documents was part of the agency’s “social contract” with the American public.

That’s so silly. There is only one social contract — the one which sovereign people, alleged to be the source of all governing authority — make among ourselves to determine how we go about governing ourselves.

Of course, THAT social contract has been half-assed in practice from In the Beginning, given that a minority of people denied the majority their fundamental rights. But think, for a moment, that maybe it’s the idea that counts.

The CIA — and all creations of law, of government (including business and propaganda corporations) — are nothing but subordinate entities. They have no legitimacy except in being subordinate to the sovereign people.

Neither the CIA nor the Microsoft Corporation has authority — legal, moral, cosmic — to make “social contracts” with its superiors. Their legitimacy comes only from being obedient, from following orders, from licking We the People’s shoes metaphorical and literal, (not to mention our bare toes).

Which makes all this secrecy stuff not only absurd but contrary to fundamentals of self-governance. How can We the People, We the Sovereign People, even dream about governing ourselves when most of what our temporary public servants have been and are doing is kept from our eyes and ears?

There are empirical data galore demonstrating when law and our acquiescence enable mere creations of law — from corporations to government bureaus — to operate in secret, the result is governance by the few.

And destructive, stupid, rights-denying, authoritarian governance at that.

(These data, to be sure, precede today’s ephemeral Bush & Chaney and Pelosi and Reid.)

Of course, they — like their predecessors — make sure it’s all “legal,” and made necessary by some terrifying “other” out there — like for instance a fiendish enemy bent on destroying this country’s values and violets. For millennia, very important people have been obsessed with rendering their destructions and rights denials and oppressions as “legal.”

For them, “legal” has been a fetish.

And, our persistent authoritarians also make sure to instruct us over and over again that their secrecy, repression, fascism and legalities are for our own good.

See, for example, the popes who authorized European pillage of North and South America, Asia, and Africa, the kings and queens who paid for these pillages, their viceroys and generals and captains and men of religion, President McKinley who sent American soldiers to crush the Philippine War of Independence…and the endless violence and rights denials waged by governments from Germany to South Africa around the world. Read their documents and speeches, and see “legal” “legal” “legal” “legal” “legal” (accompanied, of course, by “God’s Will” “God’s Will” “God’s Will”….)

But it’s not about them. Rather, isn’t this all about us? About us as individuals, and us as We the People — and who among us truly aspires to BE the sovereign people, and what does it mean to ACT in concert like sovereign people?

All to say: the headline on the NYTimes Comany’s first page story this morning is “Files on Illegal Spying Show CIA Skeletons from Cold War.” If we the sovereign people really want to know, so we can act commensurately, don’t we need the files on all the LEGAL spying?

When people tore down the Berlin Wall and the East German government evaporated, thousands of people stormed into the STASI (secret police) headquarters and started pouring through the files.

Will We the American people one day storm into the CIA, NSA, FBI, Homeland Security, White House, Congress, Supreme Court, the Library of Congress and other of the people’s buildings so we can begin to learn what we need to know to start governing ourselves?

If we aspire to democratic self-governance, then don’t we gotta demand, and act upon, NO MORE SECRETS?

For starters?

- Richard Grossman, CELDF

Dean Baker is usually good for insightful and spot on analysis in regards to our corporate economy. He delivers again with this essay on Michael Moore’s film “SiCKO” and the dismal state (and causes) of America’s health care system, and the fraudulent and hypocritical claims towards ‘market choice’ that private insurance companies hide their bloated and inefficient (though personally lucrative) processes behind.

The pundits are working overtime trying to defuse the message from “SiCKO,” Michael Moore’s new film. They are trying to convince the public that the United States could not possibly do what every other rich country (and even some not so rich countries) have managed to do: guarantee their people decent health care.

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This experience is important. We cannot afford universal health care if we don’t bring the costs of the US system more in line with the rest of the world. We currently pay more than twice as much per person, with no obvious benefit in terms of outcome. The key to creating a more efficient system is to have a government-run system comparable to the traditional Medicare system.

But, we don’t have to pontificate about American values and the role of government - leave the silly pseudo-philosophical debates out of it. This is a straight dollars-and-cents question that can be determined by the market. Give people a choice and let them decide whether they want to be insured through the government-run system or want to stick with private health care providers.

The pundits have managed to flip reality on its head. It is the health insurance industry and their partners-in-crime, the pharmaceutical industry, that are scared of the market and competition.

Read The Full Essay

Update: Paul Krugman nails it again with this piece on the criminal state of America’s health care system and the immoral lengths the specially benefitting minority will go to maintain it with his essay Health Care Terror

This might be one of the more craven and cowardly things I’ve seen a local government do in awhile. Corporate welfare on full display (and somewhat reminiscent of how governments will cut 10 cents off gas taxes to try to offset cartel increases of 30 cents, so we subsidize US and Arab oil billionaires and have crummy roads). Rather than get something to stay in the community and make a big deal of the need for real competition, this Township is now subsidizing Comcast. At least poor little Comcast won’t go to bed hungry tonight.

An Open Letter To Kevin DeWine and Steve Austria

Kevin/Steve,

As my State Rep and State Senator, I would be very interested in your perspectives on the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicle’s practice of including DISCOVER and CHASE promotional materials in annual vehicle registration notifications. From my perspective, I don’t think taxpayers should be footing the bill for private corporation direct mail marketing campaigns, and frankly, I’m disappointed that you haven’t done a better job of overseeing the Ohio BMV.

Article 8, Section 4 of the Ohio Constitution reads, “The credit of the state shall not in any manner, be given or loaned to, or in aid of, any individual, association or corporation whatever, nor shall the state ever hereafter become a joint owner, or stockholder, in a company or association in this state, or elsewhere, formed for any purpose whatever.”

Do you agree or disagree that it is inappropriate for state government to use taxpayer dollars to aid private corporations in this manner? If you agree, what do you plan to do about it?

Otherwise would you be so kind as to explain how this practice fits into state government’s roles and responsibilities as outlined in the Ohio Constitution?

- John Mitchel, Beavercreek, OH
www.patriotpressohio.com

Fragile principle or oxymoron?

Michel Rocard, a former Prime Minister of France, takes the issue on with some insight and lucidity (by American standards, at least, considering these are not the types of questions usually discussed on the evening cable talk shows. Hmmm, wonder why?)

Henry Ford, builder of the American automobile (1863-1947), was not only the world’s biggest industrialist for fifteen years. He was also one of the saviors of the capitalism that had been severely struck by the 1929 crisis: He invented the policy of high salaries that assured consumption’s comeback. That indicates the importance of his intuitions.

On various occasions, he asserted that capitalism could not live and develop without respecting a rigorous ethic. In his opinion, it was bad - morally - for the head of a company to pay himself more than 40 times his employees’ average salary. He followed this rule himself. The key to this conclusion maintains that capitalism is assuredly the form of social organization that guarantees the greatest margin of freedom to all actors in the system. That observation obviously does not hold in the absence of a high degree of self-limitation and self-control.

Now it is clear, as this twenty-first century begins, that something has cracked somewhere in the system.

It sure has. And all of it is ‘perfectly legal.’

Read The Complete Essay

A good example of what it means to have a society operating by ‘market forces.’

The site is Turkish but the video is British.

Watch The Video

Paul Krugman, ever the foghorn that he is cutting through the smoke and mirrors, further dissects the scam that is private corporate health insurance racket.

Is the health insurance business a racket? Yes, literally - or so say two New York hospitals, which have filed a racketeering lawsuit against UnitedHealth Group and several of its affiliates.

I don’t know how the case will turn out. But whatever happens in court, the lawsuit illustrates perfectly the dysfunctional nature of our health insurance system, a system in which resources that could have been used to pay for medical care are instead wasted in a zero-sum struggle over who ends up with the bill.

Read The Full Article

Paul Krugman nails it regarding the idiocy of ‘market incentives’ solving the health insurance crisis afflicting the nation.

Going without health insurance isn’t like deciding to rent an apartment instead of buying a house. It’s a terrifying experience, which most people endure only if they have no alternative. The uninsured don’t need an “incentive” to buy insurance; they need something that makes getting insurance possible.

Read the complete article Here

Bob Herbert has a follow up piece on the desperate debt cycle many are taking on in their efforts to meet ever-increasing medical bills and insurance premiums.

A disturbing new report shows that with health care costs continuing their sharp rise, low- and middle-income patients are reaching for their credit cards with alarming frequency to cover treatment that they otherwise would be unable to afford.

This medical debt, to be paid off in many cases at sky-high interest rates, is being loaded onto consumer debt that is already at dangerously high levels. Many families have been crushed by the load, driven from their homes, forced into bankruptcy, and worse.

Read “Your MasterCard or Your Life” by Bob Herbert.