Has there been a presidential election since World War II in which the country looked more divided against itself than in 2012? The division has been percolating since the morning after our first minority president won the office. The consensus that has been working among Republican playmakers from that day forward has been the blind opposition that would allow unrequited bigotry to limit the black commander in chief to one term. They’re still counting on it. Historians have made too little so far of President Obama’s meeting with House Republicans in his first month in office. They met with him at his request, but had taken in advance a unanimous decision against supporting anything he proposed. In the Senate, the Southern leader of the Republican minority, Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, was wed to the same game. His sole aim has never varied: limiting President Obama to one term. Are there newscasters who actually fail to see the racism that laces the arrogant minds behind such opposition?

It plays on into the fact-starved campaign that Governor Romney and Representative Ryan are waging for the presidency. The bigotry is still there. They bury their discomfit with race under verbal barrages about moochers and freeloaders, about Makers and Takers. They make every effort to associate Democrats with class warfare, yet nowhere is it waged more clearly, more divisively than in the word game of Makers and Takers.

Voters can be thankful that Romney has defined himself and his political purpose so precisely in his view of workers not earning enough to pay federal income taxes essentially as people who see themselves as “victims,” a mindset of dependency that only government handouts will satisfy.   He consigns 47 percent of the voters to this caste of “entitlement.” Its a caste that of course enfolds seniors on Social Security. By what twist of mind does he think he can be elected with no votes at all from a bloc as large as 47 percent?  e says, “These people need to take responsibility for themselves.” How could a man whose eaten every meal in his life with a platinum spoon possibly know how the people without a platinum spoon view themselves?

Plainly he wants the fame and glory of caring most for the 53-percent who can take care of themselves, thank you very much. What can the world expect in leadership from a president and party that see their own people split 53/47?  Where’s the show of unity that has always given the United States a firm hand in foreign affairs? What we have now is a ticket of Romney and Ryan that shoots from the hip in second-guessing the president on almost any move he makes to fight global terrorism. It’s a colossal irony that our president’s color opens doors abroad that no predecessor ever could, yet its effect at home has drawn bigots to the sole aim of denying him a second term – the national interest and the greater good be damned!

Can any voter forget the fiascos that the last Republican presidency left us? By any measure of cost, Bush-Cheney was most destructive presidency of our history. With a war we didn’t want, and one we can’t end, they left us with the largest national debt in the history of the world, with homeownership sinking in debt that exceeded its worth, with Wall Street and the banks at the brink of collapse, with GM and Chrysler about to close shop and terminate tens of thousands of their workers, and Ford’s nose barely above water. They had taken office on a Clinton legacy of successive budget surpluses, which they buried with tax cuts that no one had asked for. They were recycling the Reagan economics of “trickle down,” which had proven to be the antithesis of democracy. Democracy grows from the ground up, never from the top down.

What they had given us made us the home of what has become popularly known as the Vulture Culture.

Governor Romney’s refusal to show the voters his tax returns for this century tell us rather clearly that he made his substantial fortune flying with the Vultures. On the scant details that he’s supplied for his tax and economic policy, do we have reason to expect anything from him but more of the same? He’s been more than clear, however, it putting his care on the side of the favored 53 Percent. That tells us a lot in fact about where his domestic policy would point. Ryan and the infamous Ryan Budget are even more pointed. On domestic needs and entitlements, we can count on them for a 53-percent presidency.   Romney has in fact said he doesn’t have to worry about the 47 Percent.

Where then are they pointed in national security and foreign affairs?  So far, Romney has done a lot of sabre-rattling, little explaining. Shoot first, explain later, if you can. Has he forgotten the smarts of the first President Roosevelt: speak softly, carry a big stick?

In completing the Constitution, WethePeople could not have cast the presidency more plainly: the incumbent would serve all the people, in administering the law and government, with no responsibility greater than the 24/7 duty of Commander in Chief. History has in no way altered the office but in fact has toughened it through the incumbents’ living up to it. More than one president has taken the country to war without the constitutionally required sanction of Congress, claiming that his duty outweighed the obvious contradiction that would keep his hands tied by Congress when national security was threatened. He alone could act quickly for WethePeople when the threat was immediate.

On that premise, President George W. Bush met the 9/ll massacre of New York’s Twin Towers with the immediate invasion of Afghanistan, which has evolved into the longest war of our history and the costliest in coin. He then shunned both Congress and the Constitution by invading Iraq, on the pretext that its murderous dictator and its arsenal of weapons of mass destruction threatened the world.  The arsenal didn’t exist.

How does a 53-percent president play commander in chief when nearly all his forces come from that 47 Percent that he puts down as second-class Americans at best?  

Since the forces are on the federal payroll, they must be moochers and free-loaders in Romney’s book. He can’t have it both ways. Or, can he? November will tell. Should he win, would we be getting another Teddy or another George W? The second possibility leaves me sleepless.

Frank Mensel  – September 2012

The Dallas Morning News reports that Texas has no health economist so, my dear neighbors, please allow me to volunteer to so serve. I am only a matter of days beyond a three-day hospital stay, which prompts me to feel that I’m the right case study for the role.

When I phoned my primary care physician to report unwavering acute pain in the left side of my chest that was then three hours old, his assistant took the call and said, “You better head for the emergency room, the hospital will then keep us advised.”

It turned out that four physicians, all different specialists, were drawn into my treatment. As the pain suggested, my heart was the immediate concern. The several expensive procedures they put me through undoubtedly turned into huge reimbursements from Medicare. I’ve yet to be billed for any copayment. I will make sure that I am, the sooner the better, because I am very grateful that I am eligible for Medicare, and have been for 18 years.

Medicare should be the health coverage for all Americans. But there are too many lobbies and inconvenient truths working against it. The biggest is our loose borders, protected by the special interests who demand a steady supply of workers of foreign origin who are incapable of fighting for fair pay or equal rights. It’s the same loose borders that enable our illegal drug traffic, which feeds an epidemic that the health care industry can’t begin to solve.

Yet our doctors and hospitals live by a code that says all comers who ail or hurt will be served, and the tab for those without insurance will be paid by the taxpayers. Ironically, the uninsured patients, if they have jobs at all, aren’t taxed enough to help the system.

But such uncovered costs are hardly the biggest impediment to universal health care, by Medicare or any other national system. The biggest, which is more ironic still, is the health insurance industry, which spares no resources to keep its profits and executive pay unthreatened by the public interest or the greater good.

We all know that American health care is the costliest in the world, in part because it is so loosely and badly managed and overwhelmed with the paper work that helps keep the ambulance-chasing lawyers at bay. Nowhere more obviously than in Medicare, which gets me back to the intense  and  expensive learning experience of my hospital stay.

The physician that the hospital assigned to manage my case then teamed with three specialists. Together they sanctioned an elaborate nuclear study of my lungs and the procedure in which the cardiologist went through my femoral artery to scan my heart. Later, a cat-scan found the actual problem, which was acute pneumonia in the left lung. That finding then put my immediate care thankfully in the hands of a pulmonologist, whom I will continue to consult as needed on lingering respiratory problems.

These team approaches to care can’t help but add to the costs of Medicare. Seniors who land in hospitals become fruitful prospects for specialists looking to enlarge their client base and keep their private practice and its staff drawing steady incomes. It would defy human nature if the specialists  involved with hospitals didn’t check incoming cases to offer consultation from which they might land new clients for their private practice. Medicare will pick up the tab.

Surely the pulmonolgist, and probably the cardiologist who scoped by heart, remain key in my ongoing care, even though my primary care doctor may wish otherwise. Such are the doors that Medicare opens for seniors – cost be damned. Because we find the system so accessible and comforting, we seniors should bend over backwards not to abuse it. As needs arise, I will always start with my primary doctor, whom I’ve found to be very astute.

The cardiologist scheduled me the next week for a visit to his office, to check the healing on my incision. His work had shown that my heart was sound and protected by clear vessels all around. The office follow-up led him to propose the extra precaution of the procedure that scopes the carotid arteries. After his techie had completed this computerized exam, the doctor reported the following.  “Frank, the right carotid has some blockage, between 20 and 40 percent. But it becomes serious only at 70 percent. But on your left side, the artery to your brain is perfectly clear.” I said, “Doctor, there’s  a simple and obvious explanation. The left artery is clear because all my life I’ve been a staunch Democrat!”

The beauty and sorrow of Medicare are one and the same: it should cover every citizen.

But as things stand, we cannot afford quality, universal health care and a military that is so obscenely bloated that the next dozen major powers don’t together match our costs. We’re addicted to an arms race that never ends. It rewards us with chronic weaknesses and threats that we lack the will to solve, including the ever-growing national debt, the insatiable right-wing appetite for war, a dwindling middle class, and schools so enthralled with the religion of football that they show no hope of meeting global competition in math and science in secondary schools. The emergence of football as our leading medium of entertainment, based on dollars spent, does zero for our competitiveness in global economics. Whatever its pride on teamwork, football cannot turn up a new middle class.

Our rank as the only superpower has heightened our fears, not lessened them. We’ve become the handiest target of every gang of terrorists and fanatics on the planet. And the arms race will never change that. The arms race feeds our fears, even as it feeds on them. It’s that last and grandest dream of our inventors: the perpetual motion machine. Its price is its fuel: national paranoia.

Whether Medicare can compete over time with this machine will say a lot about our future as a democracy, as a free people. If it can’t, then our drift toward oligarchy will continue, and only one outcome will be possible:  corporate fascism. In fact, the world is nearly there. It’s taking root no less  in Texas, freeing it of any need for a health economist. But I won’t give up.

Frank Mensel  –   September 2012

History is often framed in paradox. Perhaps none in the 20^th century was more vivid than the contrasting mantles and party fabric of two illustrious Republican presidents, General Eisenhower and Governor Reagan.

In the aftermath of World War II and the national debt that was the price of victory, General Eisenhower was the ideal choice to repopularize Republicans and their hallmark principle of fiscal responsibility. As supreme commander of the Allies’ victory, he was the very image of responsibility. Among his deep concerns for postwar America, he’s best remembered for his stern warning against “the military-industrial complex” whose influence he saw growing in the cold war arms race with the Soviet Union. Though the USSR is long dead, the American war machine never stopped growing. In view of

America’s well-earned eminence as the world’s most caring country, Ike also saw universal health coverage for our people as a logical extension of that caring.

(If Vietnam and the Iraq War had dimmed my memory of our postwar works as the most caring nation, they were revived quickly a few years ago on a Danube River cruise by one of our Vienna tour guides.  I asked her how Europeans felt about our invasion of Iraq, she called it big mistake. She said, “Those tribes have been killing each other for 14 centuries, let them finish on their own.” But she quickly added that Americans would always be dear to her. She explained that when WWII ended, Vienna was partitioned four ways among Allied forces. It was her joy to be in the American quadrant. She said, “The city was starving, and we were starting elementary school on empty stomachs. On the second day, a Jeep pulled up to the school door, and two GIs began tossing us loaves of bread and pouring cups of hot soup from a huge cylinder. They were there every day until school year ended. We still cherish the memory.”)

American politics is suffering heavily from the GOP’s loss of principle. From Lincoln’s day into Richard Nixon’s election, the hallmark of Republican leadership was fiscal responsibility. President Theodore Roosevelt added to it a deep commitment to protect our natural wonders while also protecting We the People from ruthless corporate power. Of course, if beloved Teddy were politicking today, he’d be a Democrat! History may continue to deepen the realization that the Republican mantle of responsibility was shredded by the Nixon debacle, a rash of presidential criminality that was the very antithesis of public responsibility. Imbedded in Nixon’s paranoia were the seeds of national paranoia.

Governor Reagan brought with him to the White House a GOP revamped in both body and agenda. The body was a corps of neoconservatives, and the agenda was void of the concerns of Teddy and Ike. Behind his claim that he could cut taxes, beef up defense, and balance the budget was the promise of “trickle down” growth, from the wealthy freely spending their tax cuts, and from massive increases in defense spending. When his savvy budget director, David Stockman, told him that his first two aims would make the third impossible, Stockman was fired. The longer American democracy endures, the more tribute history should pay Stockman for his devotion to principle and fiscal responsibility.

The neocons loved the cold war. They ignored studies that showed a dollar spent in domestic programs delivered twice the employment of the defense dollar. They shunned international observers who had been saying for years that the Soviet Union was crumbling of its own bureaucratic stagnation.  They had a promise to keep: beef up defense. The military-industrial complex had just been waiting to get this shot. And, what a full plate it became, with Defense Secretary Weinberger leading the charge. He would settle for nothing less than scores of new weapons systems, escalating an arms race that soon would leave the United States as the sole superpower. Paranoia soon shadows such singularity. The arms race was a cash cow that fit the neocon agenda perfectly.  The neocons came to Washington with corporate welfare in their budget-making sights. And no agency provided more of it than the Pentagon, in the cost over-runs that were piling up in the push for more arms. The national debt more than doubled under the Reagan presidency, making ashes of Republican devotion to principle. As the superpower, we are left in the paradox of an arms race that never ends. The constant pursuit of the next “ultimate” weapon continues to escalate, at the cutting edge of global competition in systems technology. It’s a pursuit that can only deepen our paranoia.

Equally collateral and colossal in the arms race is the monumental waste. The cost overruns that are chronic in the rush for new weapons are only part of it. The passion for secrecy plays easily and often into favoritism that deprives the taxpayers of open and competitive bidding for goods and services. With numerous duplications and overlaps among our forces, it’s hardly surprising that our military spending runs higher than the combined defense budgets of the next dozen largest contenders. We hardly question even such costly frills as the Air National Guard. Why each governor needs his/her own little Air Force cannot be answered by any politician in rational terms. It begs the question of just how many of our extravagantly arrayed weapons systems are mere toys. And, how many have  little value beyond sabre rattling. Consider the vast cost of building, staffing and maintaining an aircraft carrier group that might be erased by one small nuclear device.

The military is the paradox within the paradox of the arms race. The services are intensively schooled in warfare. War is what they are poised for. They can’t help but feel somewhat unfulfilled in their careers if they are not tested by combat. As history amply tells, military careers are heightened by wars. Generals and admirals grow stars on their shoulders much faster in war than in peace. Our veterans are most glorified if they’ve tasted combat. We taste it too, as we honor them.

That taste has just the flavor we’re looking for: security. National security, homeland security. It’s our ever-growing box of chocolates, this war machine. But in keeping us the lone superpower, it puts a bullseye on our back. It keeps us paranoid. Every gang of tribal fanatics and mobsters has us in their sights. They are bent ’round the clock on stealing or destroying our candy. They can’t resist tweaking our paranoia.

We’ve earned our perpetual paradox and the endless paranoia that goes with it: the greater our military advantage over the rest of the world, the less certain our security.

Terrorism bows to no war machine. 

Yet our addiction to arms gives us less, not more, security at home and abroad. The wars we’ve been waging in this century have put the world no closer to peace, and ourselves at the brink of fiscal ruin, with both our middle class and our economic competitiveness sinking against the global field.

Addiction to arms was the downfall of the Roman empire. Will we face the fact that we’re traveling the same path, before it’s too late? Or, will we go on leading the world in the manufacture and sale of weapons in both the open and black markets, often to buyers bent upon destroying us? Is there no cure for such paranoia? A Romney-Ryan win can only lead us deeper into our addiction.

Frank Mensel –  August 2012