Home Front: Dispatches from the War on America
By Chris Floyd
08/15/06 "Information
Clearing House" -- -- While your attention has been
diverted by the proxy war in Lebanon, the civil war in Iraq, the
still-hot shootin' war in Afghanistan and the coming war with Iran,
the Bush Regime been busy waging -- and winning -- another
take-no-prisoners, give-no-quarter conflict right in the sacred
Homeland itself: class war.
I know, I know: we don't have "classes" in America. No, our society
is flatter than a flitter; we're all born on the same level playing
field, lined up together at the same starting gate, given the same
amount of seed corn to plant on identical plots of rich topsoil.
We're all subject to the same laws, which are applied equally to
everybody, all the time, regardless of race, creed, color, national
origin or sexual orientation. Who would deny these self-evident
truths -- except perhaps for those same churls who refuse to
acknowledge the seasonal beneficence of Santa Claus or the
wonder-working power of the Easter Bunny?
And in truth, the epic despoliation now being wrought by the Bush
Regime upon the overwhelming majority of the American people does
not fall neatly into classic (or classist) Marxist categories. For
one thing, Marx's bête noir, the bourgeoisie, are getting it in the
neck
along with everybody else. In fact, now that the poor have
essentially been erased from public consciousness, wiped out by
decades of savage Right-wing rollback, and "tough love" from
corporate-coddling, welfare-whacking "New" Democrats, the middle
class and its "privileges" -- higher education, affordable health
care, job security, pensions, government services and regulatory
protections, civil liberties, etc. -- have become primary targets of
the Bushists' bold attempt to return American society to the glory
days of the Gilded Age, where rapacious robber barons held
untrammeled sway.
Dispatches from the Bush Faction's war on America come in every day,
piecemeal, the dots rarely if ever connected. Last week saw a bumper
crop of precision strikes, hitting an array of some of the Regime's
favorite targets: the cannon fodder they've used up in their wars of
crony conquest then tossed aside like so much bad meat; the two
million Americans that have been clapped behind bars by the Bush
Regime -- more prisoners both in sheer numbers and percentage of the
population than any nation on earth; and those ever-popular punching
bags, the unwealthy sick. First up,
from USA Today:
Center for war-related brain
injuries faces budget cut.
Excerpts:
Congress appears
ready to slash funding for the research and treatment of
brain injuries caused by bomb blasts, an injury that
military scientists describe as a signature wound of the
Iraq war. House and Senate versions of the 2007 Defense
appropriation bill contain $7 million for the Defense and
Veterans Brain Injury Center — half of what the center
received last fiscal year.
Proponents of
increased funding say they are shocked to see cuts in the
treatment of bomb blast injuries in the midst of a war. "I
find it basically unpardonable that Congress is not going to
provide funds to take care of our soldiers and sailors who
put their lives on the line for their country," says Martin
Foil, a member of the center's board of directors...George
Zitnay, co-founder of the center, testified before a Senate
subcommittee in May that body armor saves troops caught in
blasts but leaves many with brain damage. "Traumatic brain
injury is the signature injury of the war on terrorism," he
testified.
The Brain Injury
Center, devoted to treating and understanding war-related
brain injuries, has received more money each year of the war
— from $6.5 million in fiscal 2001 to $14 million last year.
Spokespersons for the appropriations committees in both
chambers say cuts were due to a tight budget this year.
"Honestly, they
would have loved to have funded it, but there were just so
many priorities," says Jenny Manley, spokeswoman for the
Senate Appropriations Committee.
Boy, they're not even
trying very hard to put a plausible spin on these things, are
they? No "budget flexibility" to fund treatment for the heads
being battered, splattered and bashed in Bush's lie-greased,
blood-sodden "war of choice" in Iraq. The Republicans couldn't
even find $7.5 million in chump change just to keep the current
level of funding. Seven-and-a-half million dollars -- Dick
Cheney could pay that much with a personal check with scarcely a
flutter in his bank balance. Halliburton and Boeing charge the
taxpayers that much in "overhead" before they sit down to
breakfast every day. George Widowmaker Bush could chip in that
much with just a chunk of the windfall he'll get from his
elimination of inheritance taxes. And how much money have they
given the Moonies to peddle "abstinence" in the public schools?
The Republicans are
slashing war-related brain trauma treatment for one reason only:
they don't give a good goddamn about the rabble they send off to
kill and die in their crusade for loot and dominion. That's all
there is to it. If they wanted to fund it, if it was important
to them, they'd fund it. But they don't, and it isn't, so they
won't.
Buried deep in the
story is yet another twist of the knife. It seems the Center has
also offended the Lord High Warlord, Don Rumsfeld. How so?
Here's how:
… The center has
clashed with the Pentagon in recent months over a program to
identify troops who have suffered mild to moderate brain
injuries in Iraq from mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and
roadside bombs — the most common weapons used by insurgents.
Preliminary research by the center shows that about 10% of
all troops in Iraq, and up to 20% of front line infantry
troops, suffer concussions during combat tours….The center
urged the Pentagon to screen all troops returning from Iraq
in order to treat symptoms and create a database of brain
injury victims. Scientists say multiple concussions can
cause permanent brain damage.
The Pentagon so
far has declined to do the screening and argues that more
research is needed.
In other words, the
Pentagon doesn't want to acknowledge all the brain injuries
being borne by returning troops -- because then they'd have to
pay to treat them. And they don't want to pay. Bush and Rumsfeld
need that money for the black-hole warpits they've already dug,
and the one they're planning for Iran. (As
Sy Hersh notes this week: "A former intelligence officer
said, "We told Israel, 'Look, if you guys have to go, we're
behind you all the way. But we think it should be sooner rather
than later - the longer you wait, the less time we have to
evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office.'")
They don't care if the soldiers they've ordered into battle come
back damaged, crippled,
irradiated or diseased. They don't want to know about it.
All they really care about is that these soldiers have the good
grace to kick off quietly and cheaply somewhere
after their service, so
their deaths won't add to the politically-charged body count of
the Bush wars.
Next up, from the
New York Times:
Panel Suggests Using Inmates in
Drug Trials.
Excerpts:
An influential
federal panel of medical advisers has recommended that the
government loosen regulations that severely limit the
testing of pharmaceuticals on prison inmates, a practice
that was all but stopped three decades ago after revelations
of abuse.
The proposed
change includes provisions intended to prevent problems that
plagued earlier programs. Nevertheless, it has dredged up a
painful history of medical mistreatment and incited debate
among prison rights advocates and researchers about whether
prisoners can truly make uncoerced decisions, given the
environment they live in.
Supporters of
such programs cite the possibility of benefit to prison
populations, and the potential for contributing to the
greater good.
Until the early
1970’s, about 90 percent of all pharmaceutical products were
tested on prison inmates, federal officials say. But such
research diminished sharply in 1974 after revelations of
abuse at prisons like Holmesburg here, where inmates were
paid hundreds of dollars a month to test items as varied as
dandruff treatments and dioxin, and where they were exposed
to radioactive, hallucinogenic and carcinogenic chemicals.
In addition to
addressing the abuses at Holmesburg, the regulations were a
reaction to revelations in 1972 surrounding what the
government called the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis
in the Negro Male, which was begun in the 1930’s and lasted
40 years. In it, several hundred mostly illiterate men with
syphilis in rural Alabama were left untreated, even after a
cure was discovered, so that researchers could study the
disease.
“What happened at
Holmesburg was just as gruesome as Tuskegee, but at
Holmesburg it happened smack dab in the middle of a major
city, not in some backwoods in Alabama,” said Allen M.
Hornblum, an urban studies professor at Temple University
and the author of “Acres of Skin,” a 1998 book about the
Holmesburg research. “It just goes to show how prisons are
truly distinct institutions where the walls don’t just serve
to keep inmates in, they also serve to keep public eyes
out.”
...“It strikes me
as pretty ridiculous to start talking about prisoners
getting access to cutting-edge research and medications when
they can’t even get penicillin and high-blood-pressure
pills,” said Paul Wright, editor of Prison Legal News, an
independent monthly review. “I have to imagine there are
larger financial motivations here.”
This story speaks --
screams -- for itself. It's part of that grand rollback
mentioned earlier. The Hard Right and its present avatars in the
Bush Faction really do want to repeal and destroy all of the
advances in civil rights and civic rights and human rights won
-- at such tremendous sacrifice -- over the past century. It's
not just about dismantling the Great Society or undoing the New
Deal; it's about going all the way back to the post-Civil War
era, when the powerful few could prey without let or hindrance
upon the wretched many, and government was a brutal tool in the
robber baron's arsenal. These guys don't just have Franklin
Roosevelt in their sights; they're going after Teddy Roosevelt
too, with all the trust-busting and major social reforms of his
era (many of which he gets unearned credit for, but that's
another story). -- And of course, a goodly number of these
Hard-Righters don't want to stop at the post-Civil War era;
they'd like to restore the "honor" and "morality" of the
antebellum South as well.
Anyone who wants to
understand the roots -- and future goals -- of the Hard Right's
penal philosophy should check out David Oshinsky's searing 1996
book, Worse Than Slavery:
Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice. You
might have trouble finding it (I ran across my copy in the
remainder bin in a Nashville bookstore): hard truths don't hang
around on the shelves as long as the latest Harry Potter. But if
you want to see where the Hard Right is coming from -- and what
they "admire" when, like John Ashcroft and Trent Lott, they hark
back to the good old days -- the book is well worth the effort
of looking up.
Like America's
soldiers, America's two million prisoners are worthless trash in
the eyes of the elite. The former are to be denied medical
treatment; the latter are to be subjected to medical
experiments. Either way, they're just things, just ciphers to be
moved around in the great game of grabbing loot. You ditch the
soldiers so you can take the money that should have been used to
heal them and either stuff it in your trousers or ladle it out
as pork or payoff in some backroom deal. And you use the
prisoners as guinea pigs to pump profits for Big Pharma. As for
the usual porous "protections" outlined in the measure, one
expert noted: “They’re also the parts of the report that faced
the strongest resistance from federal officials, and I fear
they’re most likely the parts that will end up getting cut as
these recommendations become new regulations.”
Finally, a week
wouldn't be complete with yet another Bush bashing of the sick
and old and poor. Once more into the breach with the
NYT:
Planned Medicaid Cuts Cause Rift
With States.
Excerpts:
The White House
is clashing with governors of both parties over a plan to
cut Medicaid payments to hospitals and nursing homes that
care for millions of low-income people. The White House says
the changes are needed to ensure the “fiscal integrity” of
Medicaid and to curb “excessive payments” to health care
providers....
More than 330
members of Congress, including 103 Republicans, have
objected to the plan. A letter signed by 82 House
Republicans says it “would seriously disrupt financing of
Medicaid programs around the country.” A bipartisan group of
50 senators recently urged President Bush to scrap the
proposed rules, which were set forth in his 2007 budget and
could be issued before the end of this year.
Medicaid finances
health care for more than 50 million low-income people, with
money provided by the federal government and the states.
Under the White House plan, the federal government would
reduce Medicaid payments to many public hospitals and
nursing homes by redefining allowable costs. It would also
limit the states’ ability to finance their share of Medicaid
by imposing taxes on health care providers. About two-thirds
of the states have such taxes.
Ah, there's the rub,
you see. There's the heart of the matter: limiting "the states'
ability to finance their share of Medicaid by imposing taxes on
health care providers." How dare these commie bastard states try
to help the poor and sick by begging a nickel from the
billionaires of Big Medicine like Bill Frist.
State and local
officials, members of Congress, hospitals, nursing homes and
advocates for poor people make several arguments. First,
they say, Mr. Bush is doing by regulation what he
unsuccessfully asked Congress to do by legislation in the
last two years. Second, they say, prior administrations and
the Bush administration itself approved many of the state
taxes that would be deemed improper under the new rules.
Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger of California, a Republican, said, “The
administration is attempting to reverse decades of federal
Medicaid policy through the regulatory process,” less than a
year after “Congress rejected these misguided cuts.”
In Missouri, Gov.
Matt Blunt, a Republican, said the change “could mean a loss
of more than $84.9 million” for his state. That, he said,
would “jeopardize the continuity of care for Medicaid
recipients” and set back efforts to improve care in nursing
homes....
The cuts
contemplated by the White House would not reduce the cost of
care. But state officials said the changes would put
pressure on states to reduce Medicaid benefits, restrict
eligibility or lower payments to health care providers...
Dr. Bruce A.
Chernof, director of the Los Angeles County Department of
Health Services, said the cuts would “reduce access to
services in a county where 33 percent of residents are
uninsured.” The county’s five public hospitals operate
trauma centers and burn treatment units for all patients,
not just Medicaid recipients, he said.
The effects are
magnified by the way Medicaid is financed. For each dollar
that a state loses in provider tax revenue, the federal
government will reduce its contributions — by $1 in
California and Connecticut, and by $3 in a poor state like
Mississippi.
In other words, the
point is to kick people off the Medicaid rolls, make it much
harder to get treatment (just as it's now harder for students to
go to college), and re-define whole sections of the population
out of eligibility. And in classic Bush style, the poorest of
the poor, as in Mississippi, will lose the most.
Every day, the Regime
makes it abundantly, overwhelmingly, undeniably clear that there
is only one thing that sick poor people -- and used-up soldiers
and chained-up prisoners -- can do to play their part in Bush's
noble vision for American society: they should all slink off
into the dark somewhere and die.
That is the very
quintessence of Bushism. That is now the actual, actionable
platform of the modern Republican Party. This is the reality
they want to create behind the words "the United States of
America."
Chris Floyd is an American journalist. He writes the weekly
Global Eye political column for The Moscow Times and St. Petersburg
Times. His work also appears in The Ecologist, The Nation,
CounterPunch, Christian Science Monitor, Bergen Record, Columbia
Journalism Review and elsewhere around the world. He is the author
of the book, Empire Burlesque: The Secret History of the Bush
Regime. Visit his website
http://www.chris-floyd.com
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