WHY NOT NEWT?
Dreams From My Father, A Story Of Race And Inheritance. Barack Obama. Book Review. Part Two: Chicago, Chapter Eleven; Auma and Father.
Dr. Auma Obama
Auma his sister came to see him. She was studying in Germany for her master’s degree in linguistics and she came to Chicago to know Barack, a half brother she had never met. She was an intelligent woman. However she dispelled some myths he had in his head about his father probably planted by his mother.
Auma told him that Barack Sr. came back to Kenya with his masters from Harvard in Economics with high hopes of being an important administrator in the post colonial government. The two major tribes in Kenya were the Kikuyu and the Luo . The Luo was the smaller and less powerful politically of the two. (Tom Mboya was a powerful Luo in the government and in the beginning Barack Sr.’s mentor and protector. However he was assassinated by a Kikuyu gunman.) Jomo Kenyatta was the President and a Kikuyu. Barack Sr. had a job in the administration, however, he was passed over for more important jobs in favor of Kikuyu administrators.
Barack Sr. believed that the government should rise above tribalism and that favoritism based on tribal origins was wrong and inhibited Kenya as a country. He didn’t care who heard his criticisms and they got to Jomo Kenyatta, who called him in and warned him to be quiet. Barack Sr., who was also a heavy drinker, failed to take heed and he was dismissed from the government and prevented from working in the private sector also. Auma related that these were bad years for the family. Ruth, the wife he met at Harvard, left with her two children and Auma and her brother stayed with Barack Sr. However they had to live off the kindness of relatives and often did not have their own house.
During this time Barack Sr. had a serious auto accident and it took him nearly a year to recover. After he was released from the hospital he went to Hawaii for a visit with Barack Jr.
After he returned home Kenyatta died and Barack Sr. was able to get a low level job in the Water Department. ( A drastic come down for a man of his intellect and ambition.) His constitution was weakened by the auto accident (and several bouts with malaria). Barack Sr. was a severely disillusioned man and his dreams of rising to the top of the first native generation to lead Kenya after the British left were dashed. He continued to drink heavily and ultimately died a premature death a disheartened and failed man.
Barack is stunned by this information about his father who he had placed on a pedestal before this.
He begins to have a premonition that the fate of his father as a black African and the problems that prevented him from fulfilling his hopes and ambitions may be also his fate as a black American.
Auma leaves with the admonition that they should both return for a visit to their father’s grave in the Luo home village to see him lying peacefully with his ancestors. She also leaves him with the haunting thought that the black man’s true self might be found wanting. A myth that probably haunted his father living in post colonial Kenya where the British had taught generations of natives that they were not able or ready to govern themselves.
Dreams From My Father, A Story Of Race And Inheritance. Barack Obama. Book Review. Part One: Origins, Chapter Six: Columbia University. Catching Fire.
Filed under: Barack Obama, Book Review, Dreams From My Father, Uncategorized
Barack Obama Graduation Columbia University
Occidental and Columbia had a transfer program and Barrack availed himself of it to go to Columbia University. He says wanted to move to New York to live in a black community.
While at Columbia he lived in Harlem at Occidental he lived in basically a white community. Left unsaid was the fact that Columbia was a far more prestigious school than Occidental. So it may be Barrack was catching fire in his desire to move up the social, political and economic ladder although it may have been a vague idea in his mind at this time. He was becoming a more competitive person. He says he ran three miles a day and made a serious effort at his studies.
Living in New York was a far more raw and gritty reality than the leafy suburban scene of Occidental college and its environs. Life between the races was much less cordial at Colombia as witnessed in the exchanges on the bathroom stalls of Columbia. This is where students wrote derogatory messages addressing each other as “niggers and kikes.” Relations between the races at Occidental had been more scholarly and philosophical. (However one cannot draw a lot of significance from the element that stoops to writing expletives on bathroom stalls)
He had written for the first time in a long time to his father about his change of schools. At this time his father was working as an economist for the Kenyan government. While his father’s return letter was short it was a positive one and although Barrack doesn’t state verbatim his own letter he does state his father’s letter. His father apologizes for not writing more often but excuses himself by saying that his work requires him to travel often. He invites Barack to Kenya to meet his brothers and sisters and to consider making a life there. He also inquires after the welfare of his mother and grandparents. It is signed, Love, Dad.
The letter points out that coming home after graduation will allow him to meet his people and to know where he belonged. Barack had been searching for identity and a place to belong and establish roots. However he was sure it was not with his black family in Africa or his white mother, half sister and grandparents in Hawaii. He considered himself a black American and the place he chose would be in the black community but exactly where he was not sure. He stops referring to himself as Barry about this time.
While at Columbia his mother and sister Maya came to visit. They first stayed with him but because of his cramped quarters in Harlem Ann and Maya moved to a condominium on Park Avenue lent to her by a friend.
They went to a favorite movie of his mother that has become a classic. She wanted Barack and Maya to see it with her. It was Black Orpheus based on the Greek Myth of the love story of Orpheus and Eurydice set in the favelas of Rio de Janiero. Afterwards speaking alone Maya thought the movie was corny and Barack held the movie in distain because it treated the blacks like innocent children. His mother he thought was naive and idealistic about blacks and their lives and this may have been part of her motivation for marrying Barack Sr. It was at this time that she told them that Barack’s Sr.’s father was against the marriage not wanting the Obama blood to be mixed with white blood. Also it was revealed that Barack’s father had a wife and child in Kenya from whom he was separated. However there were no records of the marriage or the separation. So the marriage went forward.
More devastating to Barack was the information that his father had two scholarships to study for his master’s degree. One to the New School in New York which would have provided means to bring his family along and one to Harvard which did not. Barack Sr. chose Harvard as it was the better school and abandoned his family in Hawaii. (At Harvard he met another white woman who he later married and took back to Kenya with him.)
Barack dismisses his father’s letter as dime store advice and relates a dream of seeing his father in which they seem to reach some sort of rapprochement. This occurs after he is told by his father’s brother, who was in Boston, that his father had died. He called his mother with the news. She cried out in grief. His post graduation trip to Kenya was put on indefinite hold.
He reflects that his father’s memory provided him with a strong image and “had given him some bulwark on which to grow up, an image to live up to or disappoint.”
(Perhaps his father’s drive to get an education was inspiring but the strongest male figure in Barack’s life up to this point has been Stanley Dunham who took him under his wing and saw to it that he attended a college preparatory academy, Punahou, and mentored him on life while he was in grade school and high school; a critical period in Barack’s life. However he does not speak much about Stan Dunham’s influence on his thinking. Then again Barack seemed adrift in his senior high school year until his mother came home and challenged him to do better in school and go to college. So maybe Stan Dunham’s (who never went to college himself) desires for his grandson’s future were not positive enough for a person of Barack’s potential. Barack’s observations in this chapter seem bitter and skewed. However he is finding himself as a person and pushing himself to develop mentally and physically. Perhaps he is vaguely aware of his future potential.)
Dreams From My Father, A Story Of Race And Inheritance. Barack Obama. Book Review. Part One: Origins, Chapter Four: Punahou II. Racial Meditations.
In this Chapter Barack who had led a relatively sheltered life growing up in Hawaii and spending a few years in Indonesia meets a new friend, Ray, with a different perspective on being black in a white dominated society. Ray’s cynicism about the acceptance of blacks in main stream culture causes Barack to reflect as to just what the black man’s place is in white America. Ray’s position picked up from his former life in Los Angeles was that blacks would always be outsiders.
Although as he grew older Barack had to bear occasional racial slurs his family had mainly shielded him from the racial prejudice which was minimal in Hawaii.
However in his teens he noticed that blacks were excluded or not fully welcome at white social events and that his white friends were uncomfortable at the black parties that Ray took Barack and his friends to at Schofield Barracks. The more mature Ray told him that most white chicks would not date him and it would be the same for Barack.
Barack, being who he is, went to the library and checked out books by Baldwin, Ellison, Hughes, Wright and Dubois and read their writings on the subject of race in America to corroborate Ray’s nightmare vision of black life in America. These thoughtful writers painted a dismal picture of the opportunities for blacks. Then he met a man named Malik who was a lapsed member of the Nation of Islam and a believer in the philosophy of Malcolm X whose book Barack had read. While discussing Malcolm X’s book with Malik another man joined in and said that Malcolm tells it like it is but he is not ready to leave the U.S. for Africa or the desert. Ray laughs and Barack admonishes him “What are you laughing about you never read Malcolm X.” Ray retorts “I don’t need a book to tell me how to be black.”
Then he was deeply wounded when his grandmother Toot asked Stanley for a ride to work since a man was pestering her for money at the bus stop. Stanley was angry and Barack offered to drive her instead. However Stanley was not angry about driving her but because she afraid because the man was black. Stanley saw the pained look in Barack’s eyes and said I am sorry I told you and then drove his wife to work. However the hurt remained.
Later Barack discussed this with Frank, an aging black poet, one of Stanley’s friends. Frank said Stanley is a good man but he will never know me because he has not lived the black experience. He also said that both Stanley is right and Toot is right to be afraid because she is aware to some degree that blacks have a lot of reasons to hate whites.
Barack says he realizes for the first time that he was utterly alone in life.
(Young Barack may have placed too much significance on Madelyn’s reaction to the bus stop incident. Any woman who was aggressively badgered by a homeless man for money be he white or black would be reluctant to go back to the bus stop the next morning.
Why he feels “utterly alone in the world “ one can only guess. His formative years were spent with his white grandparents and his white mother. His father was absent. His self worth and values were obtained from them and not from society in general or as he grew older from his black “friends”. So while he became aware of racial prejudice and its injustices as he grew older it was not a decisive factor in his development just a tertiary one but perhaps a prime motivator.
One has to speculate that if Barack had the ability to pass for white and didn’t believe his options were circumscribed would he still have accepted the challenge to go into politics and run for president or would he have joined a law firm and led a middle class life not making a major difference in our culture.)
Dreams From My Father, A Story Of Race And Inheritance. Barack Obama. Book Review. Part One, Chapter Two, Indonesia. Formative Years.
Lolo Soetoro, Ann Soetoro, Maya and Barack in Indonesia
Barack who was born August 4, 1961 in Oahu, Hawaii, U.S.A. Lived in Indonesia from ages six through ten with his mother and her second husband Lolo Soetoro, a Geographer for the Indonesian government.
It was during this period that although he attended Indonesian schools he was also home schooled by his mother in English and other subjects. During this period he became aware of the many inequities of life in Indonesia. Some people were reduced to begging to survive others suffered from ailments without adequate medical care. Some had good jobs others did menial work.
When his mother married Lolo, he had been a fellow student at the University of Hawaii and he was recalled home as were all students studying abroad after the overthrow of Sukarno by a military man, Suharto.
During this period he became conscious of the fact that he had a different skin color than others. His mother told him about famous, successful black people Martin Luther King Thurgood Marshall, Sidney Poitier, Lena Horne and others. However he couldn’t help noticing on the imported American television shows that black people were treated differently and held different positions in life than the whites on the same shows. In particular on I Spy he wondered why Bill Cosby never got the girl.
Then one day he came upon a pictorial in Life Magazine about a black man who had tried to change the color of his skin by peeling it off. This brought home to him the challenges he faced being a member of a black minority that was subject to racial prejudice.
He also became aware of power in the world and that those who held it made the rules. His mother taught English to businessmen at the American Embassy. There were men in the Embassy who held titles like Economist or Agricultural Scientist that seemed to be very knowledgeable about who controlled Indonesia. He also became aware that Sukarno was overthrown in a bloody coup because it was thought he might be a communist sympathizer.
He took note of these perceptions about power and race and also realized upon later reflection that his mother seemed to be a new deal democrat while his father was a principled man that followed universal precepts of the dignity and rights of men. Lolo on the other hand, who had lost his father and brother in the political upheaval surrounding the coup along with the family homestead, was a fatalist divorcing his ideals from the realities of everyday life and went along to get along and kowtowed to those in power to survive.
It was during these years that he realized that his place and his father’s place in the world were different from his mothers teachings concerning the more successful blacks. Those lives were not the complete story of racial identity in the World. He learned that his fate was permanently intertwined with not only his mother’s heritage but also his father’s heritage.
Dreams From My Father, A Story Of Race And Inheritance. Barack Obama. Book Review. Preface To the 2004 Edition, Introduction, Part One, Chapter One, Origins.
Stanley Dunham With Daughter Ann and Her Children Maya and Barack
This book was written in the year after Barack Obama graduated from Harvard Law School. He was the first black elected to be president of the Harvard Law Review and Crown Publishers offered him an advance if he would write about his experiences. Also in the 2004, reissue Preface Obama mentions he was only the third black elected to the Senate since Reconstruction.
The book is about growing up as a person of mixed race in America. His mother, Ann Dunham, was white and his father, Barack Obama, Sr. was black and from Kenya. They met while attending the University of Hawaii. His maternal grandparents were originally from Kansas and his grandfather was in the furniture business and that is how his mother and her parents came to Hawaii. His father, was from a village near Lake Victoria in Kenya. He was the son of an elder and was sent to school in America to learn the ways of the West along with a number of other African students. (Kenya was in the process of disengaging from colonial rule and needed trained administrators.) His mother and father were married in a small wedding and remained together for about two years. Barrack Obama, Sr. left to pursue a PhD at Harvard. They were divorced in 1964.
Young Obama grew up in Hawaii which is often characterized as the melting pot of the Pacific because of the melding of Asians with other Asians, Polynesians and whites. However there were not very many blacks in Hawaii. Young Obama was racially mixed and grew up in a white household with his mother and her parents. The fact his father was missing was not relevant to him as a young child until he grew older and also the fact he was half black and half white was not a concious concern as a youngster.
However he reflects back on these concerns as he became older. He thinks that his grandparents were probably aware of racial problems in mainland America. There were Jim Crow laws in Kansas and they had lived for awhile in Texas were racial prejudice was much more pronounced. He reflects that they were probably skeptical at first at the thought of their daughter marrying a black man and also a foreigner. They knew that mixed race couples had many obstacles to conquer and that at the time such marriages were illegal in many states. However they were liberals even if they would never think of themselves that way and accepted their daughter’s choice. Later on when he was born he was a welcome and a loved part of the family. However as he grew older he became aware that his biological father was absent and that he was half black and he began to reflect how this would affect his life.
This book begins with Obama’s clarity of thought, eloquence of expression and willingness to discuss dispassionately what others often leave unsaid or if said it is with bitterness and rancor.
Mike Huckabee: A Simple Government: Book Review. Chapter 9: BULLIES ON THE PLAYGROUND UNDERSTAND ONLY ONE THING. (Huckabee On Combating Terrorism)
DEFINING THE ENEMY
This Chapter is about the way we should respond to terrorism. He believes that we are confusing Islam and the radical Islamists. Criticism of one is not criticism of the other yet our leaders refrain from doing any. He says Obama now has called the War on Terror “overseas contingency operations.” His point is if you cannot define the enemy and name him how can you fight him? This is a silly point since the Jihadist consist of many groups that seemed to be linked and motivated by radical Islam and the concept of Jihad against the non-believers and their Muslim supporters. Publicly the government refers to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere as well as Taliban terrorists and others like the Haqqani Network as all part of the War on Terror.
TREATING THE TERRORIST AS EMNEMY COMBATANTS
Huckabee points out that too often we confuse terrorists with criminals and apply U.S. Constitutional rights to people who are actually enemy soldiers in the civilian courts instead of military tribunals. This is true when it can readily be perceived but sometimes people are deterred and imprisoned on the slimmest of evidence. This was based on V.P. Chaney’s one percent rule that the Terrorist had to succeed only one time out of a hundred to cause immeasurable loss of life. So it is much easier to detain a person on the slightest suspicion who may be a U.S citizen as well. How does he prove he is innocent without the protections granted by our Constitution? Abandonment of our freedoms is a goal of the Terrorists.
UNDERESTIMATING THE ENEMY
Huckabee thinks we have underestimated the capabilities of the enemy given the fact that the Times Square Bomber came very close to executing his plan. Also the Christmas underwear bomber managed to penetrate our security and fly to Detroit only failing to set off his bomb on the way. Huckabee fails to note that the men involved were disaffected bumblers, failures in life. However the fact that U.S. Army Major Nidal Hasan, a psychologist, at Fort Hood committed an act of Jihad murdering thirteen soldiers and an unborn child has served as a warning that we have to be watchful for people who have been radicalized by radical Islamist clerics outside the country. So nothing can be taken for granted. The fact he was an Army Major was perceived as putting him above suspicion. This despite the fact his Army medical records indicated he has having mental problems but not the kind that would indicate he would do what he did. However many mass killers have problems and that does not necessarily mean they will kill innocent people in schools or post offices etc.
RADICAL ISLAM IS AS MUCH A RELIGION AS IT IS A PSYCHOSIS
All religions must be on guard against radical perversions such as the Spanish Inquisition or the Salem Witch Hunts per Huckabee. To fight them you must know exactly what they think. Sayyid Qutb was an Egyptian radical Islamist whose thinking most radical Islamists follow today. He felt Muslims owed no allegiance to any country but only to himself and his belief in Islam. The believer is bound by religion to make Jihad and found a radical Islamist theocracy. Nasser executed Qutb in 1986 but his followers still exist like Anwar- Al Awalki a radical Islamist who grew up in the U.S and now resides in Yemen. He influenced the Christmas Bomber as well as the Times Square Bomber.
VIGILANCE ON THE PART OF GOVERNMENT AS WELL THE PUBLIC
The fact that the Christmas Bomber and the Times Square Bomber got so far and that Major Hasan was able to execute his plan indicates to Huckabee that the government was not vigilant enough nor does the various government agencies share intelligence fully. The Christmas Bomber’s father reported that he thought his son was a religious extremist to our embassy in Nigeria. The FBI’s Joint Task force on terrorism interviewed a man who bought a condominium from the Times Square Bomber in 2004. What prompted this? Why wasn’t he on a no fly list? Huckabee believes we need even greater sharing of information between government agencies as well as increased vigilance by the public to prevail in this War On Terrorism where the terrorists want to attack us in our homeland.
NOTE
Mike Huckabee recently stated he didn’t intend to run in the Republican primary races for the nomination as a candidate for president. Allegedly he is in a comfortable place with his Fox show and $500,000 a year plus book income and speaking fees. Then he may think that this may not be a Republican year, running against an incumbent with strong campaign skills, money raising skills and a record of passing healthcare and eliminating Osama Bin Laden. There also is the problem of Huckabee raising the money necessary to win in a crowded field which may not be there. He is only 56 so he can be a candidate in 2016, when an incumbent will not be running.
Mike Huckabee: A Simple Government: Book Review. Chapter 6: If You Don’t Hear The School Bell Ring Class Never Starts. We Need An Education System That Values All Students. ( Huckabee: In education the states should do the dancing and the federal government would supply the music.)
Huckabee Speaking At A Christian School Pre -Weight Loss.
Again in this chapter Huckabee explains how he would fix the American education system in just 14 pages. First he notes that about one third of students never finish high school. High school dropouts have a bleak future. They have the highest rates of drug addiction, the highest rates of involvement with the criminal law system, the highest divorce, bankruptcy, foreclosure rates and just about any other social malady you can name.
He notes that the United States spends the highest rate per pupil in the World. However, since approximately 1979 the percentage of all pupils finishing high school is declining. The percentage of students failing to finish high school is worse for Hispanics and still worse for Blacks.
Huckabee blames the education system for this condition. He attributes teacher unions, which have obtained seniority security for its members and pay increases unrelated to student achievement as being at fault. Merit pay is often related to additional courses or degrees the teacher has acquired and not to the academic scores of the pupils for which he or she is responsible. He notes that when there is a cut back in teachers it is not the worst teachers that are laid off but the last hired. This perpetuates a system that only benefits teachers with seniority and not the children they teach. Thus the teachers have no incentive to excel at teaching and the result has been a higher dropout rate and students on average doing more poorly on achievement tests. (Huckabee, like all politicians, fails to mention that between 1900 and 2001 the high school graduation rate in raw numbers went from 95000 to 2,800200 per year in 2001. The highest year for high school graduates was in 1975 with 3,133,000. The rate has been declining since then although the population is increasing. Also Huckabee doesn’t distinguish between native born Americans and those that immigrate to this country after first attending a different educational system in a different language. Also he doesn’t mention that college graduates between 1900 and 2001 increased from 26,410 to 1209000 per year. However much of this is explained by the fact more females received a college education. This rate is not declining but there are bumps in the road. Also he fails to explain why parochial schools have a lower dropout rate especially for Hispanics and Blacks. )
Huckabee would solve the high school dropout problem by eliminating seniority for teachers and basing pay increases on merit primarily based on student achievement scores. (This is an idea worth exploring however there should be seniority and layoff protections for teachers; after all most teachers don’t choose the students they are assigned. Many students come into a new grade unprepared by the preceding grade. Who should take the blame for that? The last teacher or the preceding teachers. Also it is assumed that all students have the same capacity to learn all subjects equally and are interested in learning. Who should take responsibility for low achieving students for lack of ability or interest? Obliviously to lay all fault at the teacher’s door is not fair. However one would think that the board of education and teachers unions would have worked these problems out long ago but they haven’t. They seem to be like General Motors and the United Auto Workers Union fighting to cut up the spoils thinking they had a monopoly while the car buyers went elsewhere. This might be a part of the problem. Thus we have politicians entering the education system.)
Huckabee believes public schools will be the main source of education for Americans as it has been for the last two hundred years or so. Charter schools have been successful in a few places but many have failed to better public schools. He believes the correct thing is to improve public school education mainly by eliminating seniority and awarding merit pay. (He doesn’t say how he would safe guard teacher security if they could be penalized pay wise or by dismissal every time a new principle was hired or a new board of education was elected. Highly educated people have other opportunities and may not wish to be subject to drastic change every time the political winds change or someone comes into power with a new idea he or she wants to try out.)
He would give the student more choice in their courses and preparation for life after school. (Students in high school already have this degree of choice. In grade school one must first be proficient in reading, writing and arithmetic to make these choices in the first place.) Finally he would make courses in the arts and music available as they as they offer a choice for students to follow career paths they may be more adept at. (While all students should be exposed to Art and Music only a small percentage are qualified to follow a career in that direction. Those that do can go to a performing arts high school and those inclined to teach those subjects can major in them in college.)
He is in favor of President Obama’s Race To the Top plan whereby federal funds would be given out to states on a completive basis based on state systems that change and improve student scores according to a federal point system. However he believes public education should be the domain of the states. (I guess he means that the states would do the dancing and the federal government would supply the music.)
Mike Huckabee: A Simple Government: Book Review. Chapter 5, Once Humpty Dumpty Falls, its Hard To Put Him Back Together. We Need A Responsible Approach To Heath Care. (The Simple Plan: Eat Healthy and Exercise And All Will Be Well.)
Huckabee Staying Fit
Huckabee mentions his own struggle to maintain his health. Once diagnosed with incipient type II diabetes he was able to shed 110 pounds and ward off the dread disease. He is now in the process of losing the thirty pounds he put back on. He notes that 75% of our health care costs are related to four chronic conditions, heart disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity. They are also the most preventable because they are linked to four behavior traits, tobacco use, alcohol use, lack of exercise and poor diet. The four chronic diseases are interrelated. Being overweight increases your risk of diabetes, which in turn increases your risk of heart disease (as well as kidney disease, stroke, blindness and leg and foot amputations.) By Limiting the intake of saturated and trans fats a diabetic can reduce the risk of heart disease. Presently Approximately one third of Americans born after 2000 will become diabetics mainly because more Americans are overweight.
Your risk of death due to cancer is increased by being overweight by about 20 percent.
One third of Americans are considered obese. This is as an increase since 1960 by a factor of three. Obesity related health care costs were 74 billion in 1998 now they are 147 billion. Obesity is also linked to Alzheimer’s disease because it is related to a large stomach which is related to high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes.
Since 1980 the number of obese children has tripled to about 17 per cent.
Thus failure to lead an active life with a low fat diet is causing our health care costs to increase exponentially.
Huckabee believes that Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act (Healthcare Act) is the wrong way to go because the emphasis should be on the prevention of health care problems by encouraging a healthy life style and diet.
Huckabee is right children in his assertion that should be encouraged to engage in sports and other physical activities, spend less time watching television and in front of computers. Their diet should be carefully monitored to weed out unhealthy foods. Adults should be called upon to do the same for themselves. Many businesses have programs to encourage their employees to lose weight.
Huckabee believes if we could solve childhood and adult obesity it would go a long way to lowering our health care costs. (This may be true but it is not grounds repeal the Health Care Act. Thirty two million people including many children were uninsured before the act and many adults and children were excluded from coverage because of preexisting conditions creating an inability to purchase insurance. These people relied on emergency rooms which the states and the federal government paid for through Medicaid. Now these people will have to buy insurance if they can afford it and if not they will receive a subsidy to buy insurance. They can’t be turned down for preexisting conditions. Thus those that can pay will pay. Those that can’t will receive a subsidy for which we as taxpayers were paying for anyway.
He recognizes that we have a health care problem and his idea of promoting healthy living is a worthy goal. However it will not solve the problem of providing adequate coverage for all people. He points out that when employers or the federal government are paying the bills this leads to patient indifference and allows the medical community to exploit the system for their own profit. This is a valid criticism that needs to be addressed but the solution is not to eliminate the Health Care Act which replaced an outdated, inefficient and expensive private health care system mainly funded by employers and exploited by the medical profession as well as insurers. (Once again Huckabee attacks a major problem in just twelve pages. His points about living healthy are well taken but that alone will not curtail increasing health care costs. Also to stick with the old system will not solve the problems for which it is partly responsible. Medicare fraud is wide spread and the problem of inflated billing is endemic. Guidelines should be passed and enforcement of these guidelines by Justice Department attorneys should be a priority.
Medical providers should be paid by the procedure and not by for every swab or stitch they apply.
Huckabee relates the issue of health care reform to healthy living, a good idea but an untested idea since it is unknown if enough people will participate to make it viable. Fast food, the stress of modern living, advertising, television, computers and new electronic devices seem to promote a sedentary life style. Also Huckabee likes to use the term “socialized medicine” loosely although the Health Care Act is a long way from government ownership of medical facilities and direct employment of medical personnel.
Mike Huckabee: A Simple Government: Book Review. Chapter 3: You Can’t Spend What You Don’t Have; You Can’t Borrow What You Can’t Pay Back. (Beware Of Politicians Offering Simple Solutions.)
Filed under: Mike Huckabee, Mike Huckabee Book Review 2011, Uncategorized
In this chapter Huckabee discusses budget deficits and the National Debt. To put things in perspective he uses illustrations from Tutor.Com showing the relationship of money to an individual. $10,000 in $100 dollar bills to one man then 1 million then 1 billion then 1 trillion then the national debt in $100 bills to one man. This is all interesting but he should have put in the number of people now and in the future in relationship to the debt. Also the relevant fact is the size of the economy to the money we spend or owe.
(It was thought by many that Reagan bankrupted the country on military spending while he was in office. This later turned out to be untrue. However Reagan’s example started the current rampage by Republicans (notably Bush II) for deficit spending and in Bush’s case the financial meltdown due to a failure to regulate Wall Street, The banks, and mortgage lending that caused most of the deficit spending and the increase in The National Debt that came into fruition as Bush left office and the Obama Administration took over. This non-regulation or light regulation was a policy started by Reagan also. So the man Republicans look to as their great leader had a lot to do with the state of the economy today.)
To the point: Huckabee uses examples to illustrate his conclusion that are irrelevant and not productive in analyzing the issues of deficit spending or the National Debt.
SOCIAL SECURITY
As one might expect he tries to make an issue out of Social Security and other social welfare entitlements as the source of the problem.
One of his major points is that Social Security is scheduled to run out of money in 2037. He points out that the baby boomers are retiring. They are a population bubble that occurred after WWII and as they retire these people will increase the demands on Social Security. These points are true but he ignores the fact that by 2037 the vast majority of the baby boomers will have passed on. In fact they are passing on right now incrementally and the rate will increase as time goes by. Therefore what the situation will be in 2037 is anyone’s guess but if anything the baby boom bubble will be gone. Therefore any dire future prediction based on this statistic is flawed. Social Security which is funded by taxation is a political football used by the conservative right to frighten people. (Most mainstream economists think with slight adjustments Social Security will be there for everyone indefinitely. Huckabees dire consequences and equally dire solutions don’t hold water.
MEDICARE
Huckabee devotes half a page to Medicare. This is the area where there is a major funding problem. His solution is to raise the age of eligibility. (Of course then what do we do with the uninsured that need medical care if we do away with the Affordable National Healthcare Plan as he wishes to do? He doesn’t say. He said these were going to be simple solutions for government problems. So if you are uninsured and have cancer do you go to your church and neighbors. Well we know from experience that doesn’t work. Half a page to the issue of Medicare with a solution calling for the raising of the age of eligibility is absurd. Perhaps he will talk further on this issue elsewhere in this book.) Apparently by raising the eligibility age less people will have proper medical care and the simple solution is to just let them die.
WE NEED JOBS
This is an obvious conclusion. However he doesn’t say what kind of jobs; detailing the cars of the well off or jobs that are more than just menial service ones with benefits, stability and pay sufficient to support a family at a reasonable standard of living. His solution is to lower taxes especially the ones that support the social safety net in place now. That way “small business” will use the money to create jobs, hire people and everyone will be happy ever after.
(Huckabee doesn’t mention the fact that American business has trillions of dollars in their treasuries that they are not investing in the creation of new domestic jobs. Also in the case of the larger corporations, profits made abroad are not returned home to invest. This is done for the purpose of tax avoidance. However if the money was reinvested here there are many tax benefits to be obtained. So this is not the simple solution because business already has the money to invest, they just don’t know where to invest because of the advent of Globalization which reduced the need for American labor. Globalization is a financial boom for business which can create the same products using cheaper overseas plants and labor. Because of this phenomenon American workers have lost jobs and income and their standard of living is declining. On the other hand business has prospered and the gap between rich and poor in the United States has widened. He fails to propose new ideas or strategies that would create jobs except for the reduction of taxation on business.
This chapter proposes simple solutions for simpletons. Huckabee is living in the 19th Century.
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