Daring Young Men
The Heroism and Triumph of The Berlin Airlift-June 1948-May 1949
From the bestselling presidential biographer, a stirring tale of young men in old planes who achieved the "impossible.": with planes landing and taking off 90 seconds apart supplying the food and fuel and medicines to supply a city of more than two million people by air for almost a year.
In the early hours of June 26, 1948, phones began ringing across America, waking up the airmen of World War II — pilots, navigators and mechanics — who were finally beginning normal lives with new houses, new jobs, new wives and new babies. Some were given just 48 hours to report to local military bases. The President, Harry S. Truman, was recalling them to active duty to try to save the desperate people of the western sectors of Berlin, the enemy capital many of them had bombed to rubble only three years before.
Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had ordered a blockade of the city, isolating the people of West Berlin, using hundreds of thousands of Red Army soldiers to close off all land and water access to the city. He was gambling that he could drive out the small detachments of American, British and French occupation troops because their only option was to stay and watch Berliners starve — or retaliate by starting World War III. The situation was impossible, Truman was told by his national security advisers including the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His answer: "We stay in Berlin. Period." That was when the phones started ringing and local police began banging on doors to deliver telegrams to the vets.
Drawing on service records and hundreds of interviews in the United States, Germany, and Great Britain, Reeves tells the stories of these civilian airmen, the successors to Stephen Ambrose's "Citizen Soldiers," ordinary Americans called to extraordinary tasks — again.
They did the impossible, living in barns and muddy tents, flying over Soviet-occupied territory day and night, trying to stay awake, making it up as they went along and ignoring Russian fighters and occasional anti-aircraft fire trying to drive them to hostile ground.The Berrlin Airlift changed the world. It ended when Stalin backed down and lifted the blockade, but only after the bravery and sense of duty of those young heroes had bought the Allies enough time to create a new West Germany and sign the mutual defense agreement called NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. And then they went home again. Some of them forgot where they had parked their cars after they got the call.
Reviews
"Re-evaluating what has been called the first battle of the cold war, noted presidential biographer and syndicated columnist Reeves (President Kennedy) takes a closer look at the courageous young American and British pilots who, in order to bring food, fuel, and medicine to a Berlin blockaded by Russia, flew aging cargo planes into Soviet airspace in the fragile post-WWII years. Vying with the West for control of Berlin and Germany , Stalin choked off the defeated German capital with 400,000 Red Army soldiers, and the Washington hawks called for war with Moscow. But Truman, whom Reeves calls a hero for persevering against skeptics, pursued the airlift instead. Using diaries, letters, and government documents, Reeves shows the suffering of the vanquished German people, the calculated coldness of Soviet officials, and the individual pilots who risked their lives to save their former enemies. This probing book reveals the intricate talks that led to the unraveling of Stalin's demands, the partitioning of Germany, and the creation of NATO. Reeves gives us a mesmerizing portrait of America at its best when challenged by Russia's tyranny." 16 pages of b&w photos. Publishers Weekly (Starred review)
"As the book's title suggests, Richard Reeves's main emphasis is on the human side. At centre-stage are General Lucius Clay, the iron-willed military governor of the American sector of Berlin, and the workaholic logistics chief William Tunner, who during the war had supervised a trans-Himalayan military airlift. Behind them stands the figure of Harry Truman, the American president who overruled his entire military, diplomatic and security staff to insist that Berlin be saved." The Economist
"...wonderfully told by Richard Reeves in "Daring Young Men," his account of the Berlin Blockade and the heroic efforts to defeat it. Could Berlin be supplied by air? "Absolutely impossible," said the American military governor, Gen. Lucius Clay. The British were optimistic, though; they would not only feed their own garrison but have a go at supplying the Berliners as well." The Wall Street Journal
"Richard Reeves, a bestselling author of three presidential biographies and several other books, has delved into declassified archives and provided fresh insights into the power clashes between Truman, Stalin and other leading figures... But the real value of Reeves's book lies in the remarkable human sagas he collected through hundreds of interviews with uncelebrated pilots, mechanics, weathermen and ground controllers who sustained the airlift for almost a year." The Washington Post
"...Reeves has helped to ensure that this enormous accomplishment will not fade from view. ... The individual stories Reeves tells are illuminating and often very moving. " The Christian Science Monitor
Upcoming Events
- Los Angeles — February 5, 2010 — Vroman's Books - talk/Q&A/signing, 7 PM
- Boston — February 21, 2010 — The Great Fenway Park Writers Series - talk/Q&A/signing @ 12 noon
Videos of Recent Appearances
The attached video is of a Richard Reeves lecture at Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, Kentucky on the night of October 30, 2007.
Click this link to launch this movie in an external player.
Recent Articles
This is the Text of the speech Richard Reeves gave at the Allierton Museum on Berlin on the 60th anniversary of the end of the Berlin Airlift:
The Airlift in American Global Politics
Richard Reeves
Asked years later about the importance of the Berlin Airlift of 1948/49, Clement Atlee, the British prime minister during those years said: "It wasn't until the Berlin Airlift that American public opinion really wakened up to the facts of life."
The facts of life, as Atlee called them, were the ambitions in Europe of the Soviet Union. Or, in shorthand, what the rest of us called the "Cold War." His words were apt. It was ordinary people - including that "ordinary" man, Harry S. Truman - who immediately and instinctively grasped the importance of the United States and its allies staying in the city divided into four sectors, occupied by the Soviet Union and by the United States, Great Britain and France.
Even after President Truman uttered, in private, the words, "We stay in Berlin. Period," almost all of his top advisers, including Secretary of State George Marshall, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Omar Bradley, and almost the entire National Security Council continued to believe that it was not possible to hold Berlin or that the old enemy capital was not worth holding. Marshall's Undersecretary, the formidable Robert Lovett, contributed two memorable quotes to the dialogue inside the White House:
"All the Russian's need to overrun Berlin is shoes."
"Mr. President, have you thought this through?"
Pessimism
It was not much different among American leaders on the other side of the Atlantic.After the Soviets blocked the roads, railroads and canals leading from the Allied-occupied territories of western German through 110 miles of Soviet-occupied territory to Berlin, General Lucius Clay, the United States Military Governor for Germany, was asked by Marguerite Higgins of the New York Herald Tribune whether Berlin could be supplied and sustained by air alone. His answer: "Absolutely impossible."
The pessimism among American leaders was generally shared by what is now called the "elite press." Months before the Soviet blockade was instituted in June of 1948, Newsweek magazine had published a scenario based on interviews with officials in Washington. The headline read: "Dateline Germany, 1948: The Big Retreat."
The dispatch, plausible fantasy backed by real State Department cables, was from James O'Donnell, the magazine's Berlin bureau chief, reporting on the exodus of American and British officials and soldiers from the city as the Soviet Union took complete control. In O'Donnell's fantasy, Clay cabled Washington that he intended to order B-29 Superfortresses, to begin attacking Soviet installations across Germany - and beyond. Washington responded: "Withdraw to Frankfurt."
Then, the Newsweek story continued: "At 1000 hours Saturday, the American cavalcade rendezvoused with the British.... The bedraggled and demoralized caravan proceeded along the 117 miles of Autobahn to Helmstedt in the British zone...." Newsweek got real at the bottom of that two-column account published on August 8, 1947: "This fantasy does not sound so fantastic in Berlin as it does in the United States. For the German capital has been buzzing with rumors that the Western Allies would this winter recognize the irrevocable division of Germany and pull out of Berlin. The Germans probably envision some dramatic exodus. Actually, policy makers in Washington have seriously considered quietly leaving Berlin for the Russians to rule - and feed."
Then the magazine printed a genuine "Top Secret" cable from Ambassador Robert Murphy, the State Department's man in Berlin, Clay's chief political adviser: "The next step may be Soviet... demand for the withdrawal from Berlin of the Western powers. In view of the prospect that such a ultimatum would be rejected, the Soviets may move obliquely, endeavoring to make it increasingly impossible or unprofitable for the Western powers to remain on; for example by interfering with the slender communications between Berlin and the Western Zone, taking further actions towards splitting up the city.... Our Berlin position is delicate and difficult. Our withdrawal, either voluntary or non-voluntary, would have severe psychological repercussions which would, at this critical stage in the European situation, extend far beyond the boundaries of Berlin and even Germany. The Soviets realize this full well."
The Public Opinion
It all could have happened, except for Truman's determination, British initiative and determination and the steadfastness of the people of Berlin - and of the people of the United States. I would argue that, from an American perspective, the Airlift was a striking example of people leading leaders.
That July of 1948, a month after the Red Army blockaded land routes into Berlin in late June, as Truman was campaigning for reelection, he received a memo from the State Department about public support for the Airlift in the United States - even as American and British planes had been struggling, not very successfully, to fly food and fuel into West Berlin. The memo, titled "U.S. Public Opinion on the Berlin Situation," read in part: "The overwhelming majority of press and radio commentators remain united in support of the official United States position - that we shall not be 'coerced' out of Berlin." Some of the editorial support Truman saw confirmed that judgment: From The New York Times: "We were proud of our Air Force during World War II. We're prouder of it today."
From the more conservative San Francisco Chronicle: "The forthcoming Congress will be properly concerned with expenses. But we agree with General Clay that a pivotal operation like the Berlin Airlift - which will cost less for an entire year than a single day's operation toward the end of World War II - is no place to begin economizing. On the contrary, we would consider it cheap at ten times the price."
Public opinion polls backed up such editorials, generally showing support of 80 percent to 90 percent of respondents supported the Airlift, even when the possibility of war with the Soviet Union was mentioned in the questions. That same 80 percent of Americas thought the Allies would stay in Berlin, which compared with 43 percent in French polls. Ironically, as the Airlift continued, polling of Berliners done by OMGUS (Office of Military Government for Germany, U.S.) rose to that same 80-plus percent level among Berliners.
People Leading Leaders
Truman, running far behind his Republican opponent, Governor Thomas Dewey of New York, in electoral polls, was the big winner in those airlift polls. As Republicans usually did, Dewey was accusing the Democratic president of being "soft on communism" and of "blunders" that led to the crisis in Berlin. John Foster Dulles, known to be Dewey's choice for Secretary of State, called the Airlift "almost untenable."
It was soon obvious that American voters were not buying the Republican line on Berlin. Soon enough Dewey and Dulles began toning down their attacks on the Airlift. Dulles came to Berlin on October 17, 1948 and went to Clay's house for lunch. The two men despised each other and it was widely assumed that Clay would be fired in the first days of a Dewey administration.. They lunched in silence until the arrival of Berlin's elected Mayor, Ernst Reuter - invited by Clay. Dulles seemed annoyed that he was being asked to talk to a local official. "This is your problem," the General whispered to Reuter as he left Dulles and the German alone.
"Will the Germans stand fast during the winter?" Dulles began. "Or will they give up, accept Russian aid, and get us out of Berlin?"
"The people of Berlin are accustomed to suffering," said Reuter. "We are willing to suffer a great deal more to escape Russian domination."
The rest of the conversation is unknown to history. But, after leaving Clay's house, Dulles never said another negative word about Berlin or the Airlift.
Dewey got the message three days later at a major political event, the annual Alfred E. Smith dinner hosted by the Archbishop of New York, Francis Cardinal Spellman. Clay who was in the United States to plead for more planes - he got them after Truman overruled the National Security Council - was seated next to Dewey, an old friend. When Clay spoke, defending the Airlift and other American policies that Dewey had been attacking, the crowd of two thousand New Yorkers, stood as one, applauding and cheering for several minutes. Dewey stood, too, and most American newspapers ran photos showing the Republican candidate applauding America's military governor.
Whatever effect it might have had on the 1948 presidential campaign in the United States, the Airlift turned out to be as great a public relations triumph for the country as it was a technical and logistical success for the Air Force. Publicity was always a consideration and the Air Force proved to be one of the great public relations machines in the world. In August, the operational chief of the Airlift, General William Tunner, received a cable from his immediate superior, Major General Laurence Kuter, the chief of the Military Air Transport Service:
"We should make every effort to have the 'Vittles' story told by qualified aviation writers who can appreciate the implications of such strategic air transport and who can explain both the techniques of the effort and its essential place in any plan for national defense."
Tunner replied: "No one is more aware than I of the terrific public relations potential in this operation - that this is the greatest opportunity we have ever had, or probably will have, to tell the air transport story and make certain that people will pay attention to us. [It's] more than just an airlift. [It's] a propaganda weapon held up before the whole world."
Propaganda War
And, indeed, the United States fought a brilliant propaganda war on two fronts, winning the hearts and minds of both Berliners and Americans. Anyone my age, a young boy in New Jersey, would have thought Berlin was actually an American state. Mothers told their children to eat everything on their plates: "Think of the poor starving children in Europe" - meaning Berlin.
Lieutenant Gail Halvorsen, a young airlift pilot who had dropped, by little parachutes, candy bars to children gathered at the fence of Tempelhof airport to watch the planes take-off and land, was rushed back home to appear across the United States on the most popular radio and television shows. Predictably, candy makers sent tons upon tons of their sweet products to Germany, while ordinary folks contributed handkerchiefs by the tens of thousands to make the mini-parachutes. President Truman handed over 10 U.S. dollar - on camera - to send a CARE package to a family in Berlin. Walter Cronkite of CBS News did the voice-overs for television documentaries promoting the Airlift, films produced largely by the Department of Defense. Actors Paul Douglas and Montgomery Clift starred in The Big Lift (1950, dir.: George Seaton), a feature film that used pilots and airmen playing themselves. When Mayor Reuter came to the United States after a series of favorable magazine and newspaper articles, he was treated as a hero, an American hero, greeted with a ticker-tape parade down Broadway in New York City.
Germans were no longer the enemy. Germans were people. America was engaged with the world again. In Berlin, the Americans were no longer seen as occupiers; they were seen as protectors.
Lieutenant Arlie Nixon, who was the chief pilot of Trans World Airlines, before being recalled for "Temporary Duty" as an airlift pilot - reducing his pay from 550 U.S. dollar a month to 180 U.S. dollar - walked into a restaurant in Wiesbaden just as the Airlift was beginning and, without a word being spoken, every German stood, left their tables and food, and walked out. Two weeks later, he came back to the same place and every German stood again, walking to the bar and then lining up more steins of beer than he could drink in a week. A corporal, Louis Wagner, was huddled in a cold train headed for Frankfurt, when a German man walked up, uncorked a bottle of schnapps and said in English, smiling: "This could be poison, Captain, would you like to test it with me?"
Americans were being seen as they saw themselves, as crusaders for the right and true.
A Fundamental Change
In Berlin, RIAS (Radio in the American Sector), once a tiny-voiced 800 watt station grew into the most popular station in both West and East Germany, mixing entertainment, news and advertising in the American way. Most importantly, in a city starved for both news and electricity, RIAS trucks equipped with loudspeakers went from square to square to read the news of the day to the crowds that formed around the soundtrucks.
The world was turned upside down. Lieutenant Noah Thompson, was called away from his farm, wife and new baby in New Hampshire for Temporary Duty. Within 24 hours of arrival, he was piloting ten tons of coal toward Berlin. He knew the landscape below from 21 bombing missions over Germany in the B-17s of the Eighth Air Force. More than 40 percent of his Group's 450 crews had been shot down or just crashed. Below him now were the people who beat to death his buddy, Lieutenant Don Dennis, the man in the bunk next to him in 1945, who had parachuted onto farmland from his burning B-17 one spring day. "And now I'm bringing them food," Thompson thought. "What a world."
When the Soviet blockade of Berlin ended on May 12, 1949 with Berliners cheering in the streets as the first trucks came down the Autobahn from Helmstedt, a talented British correspondent, Anthony Mann of London's Daily Telegraph was there and wrote: "It was a victory of great political and psychological consequence, but in fact it decided nothing fundamental in the East-West war of ideologies...." In the United States, Secretary of State Dean Acheson, who had succeeded Marshall, added: "[We are] again in the situation in which we were before the blockade was imposed." Diplomatically, Acheson and Mann may have been correct. But, politically, everything was different. The American people had decided the nation had to stand up in Berlin, in Germany, everywhere in the world. Atlee was right: The hardening of American attitudes represented fundamental change.
In 1945 and 1946, the United States had demobilized its great military machine as quickly as possible after World War II. "Bring the Boys Home!" was the cry of the nation. Those were the boys called back by Truman to feed Berlin and America rallied around them. They may have been the reason Truman was elected in one of the great upsets in democratic history. It was, in large measure, the reason the American public was willing to support and pay for the Truman Doctrine of fighting communism globally, to support the idea of containment, to cheer the Marshall Plan, to accept the idea of two Germanies, East and West, in September of 1949. And, most of all, Americans chose to stay engaged, to support and pay a great deal for the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a mutual defense treaty that extended far beyond the borders of the United States.
Atlee was right about the United States and the facts of life. What a world, indeed. As prime minister, Atlee visited British stations only once during the Airlift, on a rainy day in March, 1949, coming home to call the effort: "One of the wonders of the world."
And so it was.
Richard Reeves has the lead article in the Fall 2007 edition of Berlin Journal, the magazine of the American Academy in Berlin.
I spent the better part of the last twenty years researching and writing a trilogy on the American presidency, doing books on John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan. I knew I had said what I had to say on all that. I had to find some new subjects. At the same time, I continued writing a syndicated column for newspapers around the country, an exercise that kept me up on the politics and people of the day and of the twenty-first century. I was not happy many of those days. My country was becoming, or being — seen as, arrogant, self-righteous, and brutal — a monster using its very substantial power to try to enforce a new order, a kind of neo-imperialism. Of course, we meant well; Americans usually do. After all, didn't these people want to be like us?
Reader Emails
JANUARY 26, 2010 — RE: Latest Column
I dunno. I think you pulled a lot of punches on this one.
Seems to me Mystery Man Brown is a product of ineptitude on the part of the Democrats. They failed to act as a cohesive party, and, even with their huge majority, the could not rise up to the challenge of naked Republican obstructionism. Rather they looked like a pack of backroom deal makers, trying to maximize their own individual take of the swag. They overtly failed to "feel our pain," as Bill Clinton would have put it. They did little that was effective to address the jobs crisis or the foreclosure crisis, unless you think that goosing the stock market through bank bailouts was supposed to make the common man happy in his penury. I hate to say it, but even Obama seems to show little empathy for the stricken working class. I can't believe he doesn't feel it, but he doesn't show it. Some tips from Bill Clinton on acting the part of a Democratic president would do him well. Yes, he plays nice with the Republicans, but I don't care about that anymore. Gets him absolutely nowhere. Moreover, they are eating his lunch every day.—M.O.
JANUARY 22, 2010 — RE: Latest Column
I have read your column for years. Your column on Haiti just about moved me to tears. Thank you, sir, for reminding us what it means to be Americans, the kind of Americans I, like you, grew up believing in. Thank. God bless you!—R.G.
JANUARY 14, 2010 — RE: Your Own Doctor
You may not agree with Dr. Jolly or Brooks, or Reagan or me. But we all seem to end up in about the same place: Something has gone terribly wrong in America, and you're on you own, buddy!
It seems to me that the level of corruption and self-serving that has always existed to a degree in politics, business and everything else has risen to such a high level that America has gone over the cliff into a, sort of, non-violent, white collar anarchy.—S.K.
DECEMBER 30, 2010 — RE: Latest Column Grading the man
You are right about the GOP leadership, it needs to be more than radio personalities, two of the most successful have past and possible present addiction problems. These problems I believe are prevalent in their rhetoric and behavior.
It is not that Barack doesn't deserve a solid "B", it has a lot to do with the people who surround him. Like it or not, the Right Wing has uncovered some very disturbing advisors and people who have populated the fringes of science and social activism . It does not help that Mr. Obama was a community organizer, (A very low impact undefined position based on his educated pedigree) and suddenly the likes of ACORN fall off of the tree of sanity. Also, who are the fat cats during the collapse; CEO's or the likes of Nancy Pelosi, the wife of a very successful California businessman, Diane Feinstein, Harry Reid, George Soros, Dollar Bill Clinton etc. etc. etc.
The other painful truth is our "New" position in the world. Those that are emerging are less likely to show us respect, not because of the bellicosity of W., but because of the attempted dialogue with those who understand and believe that power comes from the end of a gun.
By the time we get to the Mid-terms Barack will have a solid "C", and by the 2012 election a solid "D".—C.R.
DECEMBER 28, 2010 — RE: Latest Column
President Obama receives B++ considering a flaming torch on both ends---the economy and the war---were passed onto this administration. Can President Obama and the Democratic party save the American Dream---yes, if their plan for the economy is successful and I'm not economist nor a socialist. Can the future cost of the new Health Care bill exceed the incoming tax revenues and snap the American economy into a socialist state? Then life in America will be similar to life in the Ukraine---boring. President Obama's administration must be going into its fourth year of this term with a fairly successful admistration to win a second term.
I can't fault President Obama for the present State of the Union, but only look back to the previous eight years his administration.—M.C.
DECEMBER 28, 2009 — RE: Harry Reid article
Just read your article about our boy Harry. Good piece, but you are old enough to know that the quip about the impossible taking a little longer came from the Seabees, not the Marines.—Anon.
DECEMBER 26, 2009 — RE: Latest Column
Mr. Reeves, perhaps since your daughter works on the White House staff, you should recuse yourself from writing columns about this President and this administration as if they were going to be objective. I should just let go my criticisms of your article based on that fact alone. But, what the heck. It's the day after Xmas, and I'm ready to jump back into the dialog about what's happening with healthcare and all the other agenda items that are being forced upon us at this time.
The Republicans may indeed be saying "no" to everything simply because the Democrats don't know how to say "no." Even if some of the more moderate ones wanted to object, they are being bullied, cajoled, bribed, and manhandled to step to the podium with "yes" on their lips. Since the numbers regrettably are against the Republicans until 2010, what would you have them say in order to make their points and to represent most Americans who actually don't want this healthcare bill??? They have offered alternative ideas, but are given no quarter whatsoever. The only muscle they have for the moment is perhaps through such powerful voices as Rush Limbaugh. I'm quite sure the Republicans would love to have anyone, anyone in the mainstream media speak for them. But that's not about to happen either. Thank God for talk radio! Otherwise, the Democrats might actually come to believe that they speak for everyone and indeed have a lifetime "mandate" to champion their agenda.
And there are leaders in the Republican Party if you would pay attention and not be enamored of the "thoughtful, cool" Obama. For example, Newt Gingrich continues to have an intelligent, time-tested voice of conservative persuasion and may indeed emerge at the head of the Party. I don't remember hearing anything at all about Obama except a few years ago when, once again, he made a speech at the DNC. Beyond that, he did not lead this Party until he managed to beat Hillary Clinton in the primaries. And he has had the great good fortune to have been the candidate who followed 8 years of the opposition party, who now operates with a majority in the House and Senate. No wonder he looks smart! No wonder he gets a B. I long for 2010, when balance will be restored to Congress so that these jackals have to work with each other across party lines. We'll see if Obama remains as brilliant then.
I'm not at all sure how he has improved our standing in the world. That's something liberals love to say, though the results of all those good, good, good, good vibrations are nebulous. Iran has become more of a menace than ever before, Afghanistan is getting more and more dangerous, and turning Pakistan into a reluctant ally. North Korea, well, just hasn't changed its insane activities either. Israel and Palestine don't appear any closer to dialog than they ever have been. Perhaps you were referring to our standing in the world in Scandanavia. They like Obama so much they awarded him a prize just based on what they HOPE he will do.
And, trust me, in 2010, the Republicans will have a firm platform on which to launch their campaigns. It will be very clear and very distinctive from the Democrats' campaigns. As a parent, surely you realize that it's so much more popular with your children to say "Yes", but often the best lessons come from "No". The Republicans will urge fiscal responsibility, individual accountability, cost savings in government programs rather than spend, spend, spend, and concrete ways to encourage small business and the middle class.
While you visited a doctor in LA, no doubt, who wanted a single-payer system, I too have talked with many doctors myself and heard many different opinions about this healthcare reform. None of them is encouraged by what's in this bill, and these doctors believe it is fraught with disaster. Yet all of them want ways to help the needy while not penalizing everyone else, including doctors. Your anecdotal comment offers just one man's viewpoint.
Finally, I'm curious as to how you have determined that Obama's assignments are to get out of Afghanistan and to RAISE federal revenues. Do you have some special knowledge or insider trading that gives you the audacity to make these pronouncements? I know this may be a hard concept to understand, but our government really should try to satisfy the majority of its citizens with common sense and understanding of our history. No one wants to be involved in war. But if we're there, we should do our best to accomplish our goals and not try to make this an 18-month program. And, could it just possibly be that LOWERING our federal deficits and the endless spending we're engaged in might have to go hand-in-hand with RAISING federal revenues??? I feel certain, and sick, that this administration has already figured out how to achieve this item on your wish list. It's called higher taxes, and I'm preparing for the worst.
If Obama gets a B, I must conclude that you go easy on your students at USC........Happy New Year, and thank you for your time.—L.S.
DECEMBER 22, 2009 — RE: Latest Column
Richard: your columns exceed last one every time out. Give you an A-plus for content & full disclosure in latest.—H.L.
DECEMBER 16, 2009 — RE: Aberdeen World column 12/16/09
The column was titled "We, the people, are not at war". Thank you very much for this column. Spot on!—B.E.
DECEMBER 16, 2009 — RE: We the people ... not at war
I agree with you on this subject - nice article.
I would like to see, not only the draft reinstated, but, additional military possibilities offered to the American citizen which would further connect "we the people" to the wars we partake in. Such as - middle aged men allowed to volunteer into the army to man the less rigorous but highly dangerous duties, which would spare the lives of some younger soldiers and show the young that the war is indeed worth fighting.—Anon.
DECEMBER 15, 2009 — RE: Latest Column
The US government seems to have determined that it need not adhere to its constitution on a multitude of different levels, one of which has been the failure of congress to declare war in our country's last several major conflicts, including Afghanistan. Various presidents have invaded numerous foreign countries without proper constitutional authority, making them all illegal wars and the chief executive a war criminal. The pretexts for theses conflicts were, as often as not, blatant lies.
The unconstitutional activities of the executive and legislative branches by no means end with illegitimately starting wars of choice. All signed treaties ratified by the senate are declared by the constitution to have the force of law. The president is not given the authority to unilaterally change the law or nullify any ratified treaties, yet that is exactly what was done to the Geneva Conventions and to nuclear weapons treaties. Due process and habeas corpus were also unconstitutionally negated in a tyrannical collaboration between the executive and legislative branches in the Military Commissions Act. The senate has been running roughshod over the constitution since its inception with the practice of the filibuster. The constitution clearly outlines only two or three specific instances in which a supermajority is required for any congressional body to effect policy (most notably in impeachment and removal from office). The constitution does not confer filibuster rights, in fact it specifies majority rule on all legislation. The filibuster was merely a very early usurpation of constitutional power by those elected to office. I'm sure one could discern dozens of other ways in which our American government has been acting fraudulently for generations, if one took the time. Apparently, rules and process have always been considered suitable for chumps, not for power brokers with their predetermined agendas.—M.O.
DECEMBER 4, 2009 — RE: Latest Column
For once I agree with your column on Afghanistan. Now what are we to do about the scientists that are smearing our profession. Remember our honor system? It worked and demonstrated how the engineering and science should be trusted. Now the world should not trust anything our profession says and publishes. No wonder space suttles explode and bridges fall down as engineers fudge the data. The politicians are in bed with them funding the fraudlent agenda. It must stop! I could go on for days but it will not do any good. Thanks for letting me bend your ear.—C.H.
NOVEMBER 28, 2009 — RE: Latest Column
My remedy - blow the whole place up and start over.—S.K.
DECEMBER 27, 2009 — RE: Latest Column
You correctly point out many of the problems.
Please note, that if not for Prop 13, my mother (now 87) would not be able to stay in the house she and my father purchased in 1955.
Also, as I pointed out in a previous letter, I am a public school teacher (part-time). The waste I see, every day, is staggering. I could easily fire half of the "support" staff where I teach and it would only make my job easier.
Keep the teachers: Fire the staff!—B.S.
NOVEMBER 15, 2009 — RE: Latest Column
Exactly. Get out ASAP!—B.S.
NOVEMBER 5, 2009 — RE: Latest Column
The "low level of the healthcare debate" is even lower than I had imagined it could go. It makes you feel a little embarrassed for your fellow Americans who are too stupid to realize that Medicare is a government program--one that even works fairly well, according to them! Today there was a mass rally of these idiots at the Capitol. Their angry diatribes were incoherent, illogical and inaccurate. Their complaints were also, basically, Fox News talking points. The cynicism of Republican "news" organizations is matched by the immoral opportunism of people like David Koch.—J.C.
NOVEMBER 3, 2009 — RE: Latest Column
It is very apparent form your recent columns that you are indeed in the tank for a single payor system. The Canadian chap who was enthralling the crowd with his stories of the government mandated magic is only giving one side of the story. Let's start with the fact that here are only 22 million Canadians rather than 300 million Americans. Being in the Healthcare industry, the rationing of such procedures as simple and accessible in the United States as shoulder, knee and hip replacements are in very short supply in Canada. For a population of 22million this is indeed an embarrassment for the Canadian Health System. Such things as easily scheduled as an open MRI is totally unheard of in Canada let alone a closed MRI.
American medicine needs reformed not socialized. You can say what you want with the Pelosi semantics, but the fact is the radicals in the White House, and they are radicals unseen in this country with their talk of re-distribution which is the most important function of their economic policy, want and will over time get a single payor system.
The sad fact is that the one thing that will spur competition and drive down premiums are health saving accounts. The administration won't hear of this because their core constituency does not work and cannot understand how to keep track of their medical usage. Also the simple fact that insurance companies are so hamstrung by state insurance boards, there is no cross state competition like car insurance.
I'm sorry Richard, I just think that the United states needs to stay on course with what has proven to work, capitalism. Yes the government must intervene for the greater good; but the governments job should be to support businesses and organizations to succeed, not be the organization that delivers.—C.R.
NOVEMBER 2, 2009 — RE: Canadian approach
Thanks for your article on the Canadian Healthcare Plan; it's right on target w/ my experience over the last 2 years! I started planning opening a business in BC w/ a Canadian friend 2 years ago and I've been amazed how easy a small business can start-up primarily because you don't have to include healthcare costs and related issues in your business plan. Within weeks we were able to find qualified, experienced employees who were willing to change employer for a better situation. So within weeks we were up-and-running. This year we opened a second location w/ the same ease as the first location..
I've never heard my business partner, his family and friends, or our employees complain about the Canadian Plan in BC. Yes, the Providences (as can our States) supplement the national plan depending on what the people want and pay for through taxation. They do say that you have to be your own strong advocate when you need a procedure/surgery to avoid an excessive wait. And, by the way, comparing what I pay in federal, state, and local taxes on my salary, our business and personal taxes are only slightly higher.—S.H.
OCTOBER 20, 2009 — RE: On Snowe: Keeping a Date With History
Concerning Medicare, "Within weeks, it was also law, and few elderly Americans would argue that is bad law."
The Medicare Trustees current report (and these Trustees were ALL appointed by President Obama) states: "$38 trillion (260% of current GDP) would have been needed at year-end 2008 to fund over the next 75 years projected shortfalls for Medicare hospital coverage and to meet the federal government's statutory obligation to pay its share of other Medicare benefits, including prescription drug coverage."—E.H.
OCTOBER 14, 2009 — RE: Better Jaw-Jaw than War-War
Your stated, "Perhaps our new Peace Prize winner can use his many rhetorical skills to end all the war-war here at home."
He can't even end them in his home city of Chicago, let alone anywhere else. Guaranteed, you'll be eating your words before his term is over.—D.D.
OCTOBER 14, 2009 — RE: Feedback
A fan of yours for years, I am delighted with your take on the Obama Peace Prize. (and glad that you cleared up, however slightly, the fact that the Nobel is Swedish, not Norwegian as some TV 'mouthy' experts have declared )
Here in Hawaii, we are of course proud of our native son-- and last week we had a Saint and a Winner-- ! Having just returned from a month in Holland, always a stalwart friend of the USA, it was great to see the difference, and relief, of our selection of President., having wondered if were ready and able, to elect him. These previous 8 years saw a distinct disbelief and disappointment with the US, especially when we re-elected Bush, as to what had happened to our basic principles.
I wish that your column could be reprinted in the International Herald Tribune, for it answers the questions, which even the Dutch have had. as to whether it wasn't 'too soon'. I'm sending off copies to my friends there, and thank you for your always cogent articles.—K.R.
SEPTEMBER 22, 2009 — RE: American Decline and the new Hessians
I read you regularly, and I enjoy your international view. Sunday's column was particularly good--about a subject that many don't consider. (The media, including my fav. NPR, kept reporting the deaths of contractors; and for the longest time i thought they were talking about poor electricians who were just on their way to help restore the elec. system!!) The reason we don't know/care/see what is going on is precisely because we don't have family there. We don't have a draft. (I am 59 and my draft number was 33). If we had to daily face a person involved and a tax bill, we would be out of there before your next column.
Keep up the good work; all those with the power (including the voters) need to be on the hot seat daily.—P.D.
SEPTEMBER 13, 2009 — RE: Latest Column
The easiest way for our 535 member political class to establish unassailable credibility on the matter of health-care change is for them---all of them---to go first.
Whatever they devise, they and their families should be subject to it's benefits and shortcomings first. One can only imagine the advertisements they could create. Smiling politicians extolling the virtues of a system to correct our current shortcomings. It would be irresistable.
The fact that this group has apparently excluded themselves from that which they will subject the rest of us to is all we and, we suspect, millions like us need to hear.
For shame, their arrogance is stunning---but somehow not surprising.—C.L.
SEPTEMBER 10, 2009 — RE: Latest Column
Mr.Reid was featured on C-Span this past Sunday. During an interview conducted by Brian Lamb, he praised the French system. Coincidentally, a day or so after the AP reported that the France now has to raise taxes because their health care system is running a steep deficit and is in danger of going belly-up. No sane person can possibly argue that the private sector has managed health care efficiently. They most assuredly have not, but if Medicare is an indication of anything, there is no reason to believe that the public sector would do any better. Indeed, they would probably even do worse.And we only have to point to France as an example. Under a public health care system i.e. single payer system, the sheer numbers of people who would have to be insured --some 300+ MILLION--are daunting to say the least! And then there's the issue of how this is to be financed. A general tax? At at time when the economy is hovering upon a depression? Not likely? And then, of course, who would pay and how much? Does a wealthy person who contributes more tax revenue then become entitled to more care than a low income person? Or does everyone get the same care, regardless of how much they contribute--if indeed they contribute at all? How about malpractice tort reform, which adds hundreds of millions of dollars to cost of health care delivery? The last time I checked, the Democratic Party remains in thrall to the Trial Lawyers Association
Though I am by instinct a free market libertarian, I have concluded , albeit reluctantly, that the likelihood is that in five to ten years America will be left with no choice but to institute some kind of public health care, even if only in a rudimentary form. Why? According to the stats, by far the most amount of money is expended in health care during the last five years of one's life. That point in time is starting to stare the 70 million or so members of the Boomer Generation (of whom I am a member), and as the saying goes " if you think it's expensive NOW...' etc. In the absence of either some kind of public health care or, alternatively, some reformation in the way we finance health care on the private sector , watch the hospices begin proliferate country-wide as health care facilities simply discharge patients, effectively throwing up their hands in despair at the lack of funds.
During the aforementioned interview, Mr.Reid said that health care reform is a moral/ethical issue, not an economic issue. This is debateable--the operative phrase nowadays, particularly favored by young people and uttered with no small degree of cynicism, is "it's all about money"!--but, given that reality, he raises a profound issue which he correctly points out is the one argument that the Obama Administration has not harped upon enough. Perhaps the choice should be put as follows: If you believe that a society has the moral and ethical obligation to provide medical care to its citizens regardless of income or social status,then you are in favor of public health care. If the answer is no, then you pretty much believe in the status quo.
In my view, either choice is fraught with perils and pitfalls, so it behooves both sides to lay out their arguments side by side, free of cant and propaganda, so that the public, in making their decision, is aware of the one truism in life allegedly attributed to an Italian laborer---"There's no free lunch".—H.B.
SEPTEMBER 7, 2009 — RE: What Is Wrong With American health Care?
I read this article and I agree with part of your premise. Medical care in the U.S. is too expensive. It is also not very accessible and not well coordinated. The fact is, medical care in the U.S. has been this way for at least the 50 years that I have been involved as a G. P. then a Family Physician. I'm a retired guy now, but I keep track of what is happening.
What you and most writers fail to do is look behind the cost issue to explore these issues of accessibility and coordination as they relate to the costs. Briefly, most of the lower cost systems in other countries (Canada, England, Germany, etc), systems which you and others tout, are based on a strong primary care physician base as the place where most people get most of their care. The primary care physician is their personal physician who is readily accessible, accepts the responsibility for their total care, and coordinates their care when they need to see referral physicians. In the U.S. we have an upside-down care system with only a few primary care physicians and lots of specialists. This is what is responsible for the poor accessibility, high cost and lack of coordinated care.
Primary care groups, the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the American Society of Internal Medicine (ASIM) have studied this problem for years and have a proven system of addressing these problems. It is called The Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH). The PCMH begins with accessibility. The primary physician, let's say a Family Physician, s ets aside several appointments each morning and each afternoon. That provides access to patients who have an acute problem. The patients also know they can contact their health care team by e-mail, cell-phone, or even conventional phone, if they have one. The physician heads the health team which takes responsibility for all the health needs of the patient-preventive, primary care and specialty care. In the case of specialty referral, the primary care team maintains contact and bears responsibility for coordinating that care with any other care the patient is receiving. This system saves money for many reasons, not the least of which is preventing duplication of services, especially expensive tests.
You should take a longer look at PCMH. It is getting lots of attention from business and industry. Check out the web site. www.pcpcc.net This is the Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative, which recently met in Washington, DC. For a more comprehensive look at the PCMH concept, log on to www.aafp.org/online/en/home/membershi/initiatives/pcmh/html .
That web site might be accessible only to AAFP members, but I'm sure you can get some information by going on to the AAFP web site. If you care to, please e-mail me and I will be glad to provide you with more comprehensive information about the Patient Centered Medical Home.
The Congress and the President are pushing hard to provide a health care payment system for the country. Without the kind of reforms that the PCMH embodies, any payment system is doomed to failure. Finally, speaking of payments, adopting a PCMH system would cost very little compared to the incredibly expensive plans that are currently on the table.—R.S.
SEPTEMBER 6, 2009 — RE: What is wrong
Everyone I know wants quality healthcare for all Americans and most everyone I know is one of those evil, stingy, prejudiced, religious fanatical, ignorant conservatives. What these folks don't want is healthcare for all Americans that includes a govt. option. Government regulation in the area of healthcare may be needed to fix the current situation, but, please, don't ask red blooded Americans to trust government sponsored healthcare initiated by this bunch of communists (by the way - wasn't it sad about comrade Van Jones). A question I keep asking myself is why are liberals insisting on government sponsored healthcare without trying free market fixes first. My conclusion is that the ignorant liberals are used to Mammy govt. providing for them and don't care or even understand the negative implications and the elite liberals (to whom liberalism is a religion) have an agenda to be advanced by way of govt. run healthcare. Anyway Sir, keep watching FOX NEWS NETWORK (until the FCC Czar gets it banned) and I hope to see you at the "Tea Parties." Sorry about the sarcasm, but, dealing with liberalism all my life is starting to wear very, very thin on me.—S.K.
SEPTEMBER 5, 2009 — RE: Recent Column
I am self employed and have what is called "Catastrophic" health insurance. Anything before 5000 bucks, I pay with a credit card. Recently I went in to see an ENT about an ear infection. A $400.00 bill was reduced 30% when Io told the office person that I was paying cash.
My wife, who has really good coverage through her work, was sent a bill for several thousand dollars after some medical care. The letter said that they would reduce the bill 80% if she had no insurance and was... poor.
Adding a government run health insurance company to the mix will only make things worse. Laws in many states make it illegal for doctors to create their own private insurance relationships with their patients. This should be available to all citizens.
Clearly doctors want to avoid the hassle of insurance companies as much as possible.
These two anecdotes (maybe antidotes?) and a little faith in the market tell me that we should do all we can to narrow the relationship between patient and doctor.—B.S.
SEPTEMBER 4, 2009 — RE: Latest Column
I really enjoy your analysis and usually agree with your political positions. The only time I ever admired Teddy was when he took on Carter--a sitting president of his own party! He did this knowing he would be attacked for his sins. He was given his status as a senator because of his family connections and nothing else. He became powerful and influential by virtue of experience and senate seniority rules. He "Borked" the most intelligent judge nominated to the Supreme Court in living memory. I didn't agree with Robert Bork's extreme conservatism--but his reasoning would have surely have sharpened liberal and moderate thinking in that once principled institution!—R.C.
AUGUST 26, 2009 — RE: Kennedy
Not a word about Chappaquiddick in your current essay.
"Kennedys went into politics and then grew up." - He was a U.S. Senator when he drove off the bridge, spent 10 hours consulting with his political and legal advisors, and THEN reported the "incident" to police, while Ms. Kopechne was still submerged. You call this growing up. —L.R.
AUGUST 26, 2009 — RE: Latest Column
Richard: Give me hospice and follow my "living will". I know that day will come--and I wish I had the choice to end my life if it seems the best option given my condition and age at the time.
Unfortunately, we cannot afford health care reform. Our congress gave into a $700 billion extortion demand by a Wall Street broker on temporary duty as Secretary of the Treasury. Even more debt was taken on when AIG was used as a conduit for billions more to Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street conspirators. Our congress delegated its war making power to Bush and we have two and one half wars.
I voted for Obama, but he is no leader. He has turned over the Treasury to a RICO gang and war-making to the generals. Let's see if we can get Mayor Bloomberg to take over whatever is left of our Beloved America in 2012. Thanks for your common sense analysis. I do appreciate it! —R.C.
AUGUST 16, 2009 — RE: Latest Column
I just want to tell you how much I appreciate your editorials whenever I am
teaching a unit on persuasive rhetoric. Whenever I need examples of
name-calling, straw-man, begging-the-question, etc. There
you are!!! Please
Keep it up. What would I do without you. —Anon.
AUGUST 2, 2009 — RE: BRING ON THAT SOCIALISM -- Amen
Amen to your take on this one! I'm beyond the geezer threshhold, and I can tell you I have received useful and courteous assistance from real people at Medicare. Strangely (surprisingly?) I have received equally good personal service at every level of Social Security. Who'dathunkit???
One of the worst? AARP. The favorite word of their "suppliers" is No. That's why I'm with Humana now. For less than I paid AARP, I get good service . . . and a free membership to a neighborhood YMCA. As a recovering heart attack/sudden cardiac arrest victim, that's a real blessing. —J.B.
AUGUST 2, 2009 — RE: health care
Your latest column on health care was on target in advocating a public program in competition with private insurers, but in doing so you are permitting the private insurers to frame the debate on their terms.
Instead we should be debating the merits of exactly the opposite: a government run program (aka Medicare for all) with a private insurance option for those who wish luxurious coverage (no drug formulary, access to non-generic drugs, etc.) or simply want no part of anything the government offers (except their other government benefits, of course!).
If we presented the argument that way, we'd be more likely to have all the Seniors supporting it. —L.B.
AUGUST 1, 2009 — RE: Latest Column
Equitable access to affordable medical care is a worthy goal, but will be impossible to attain unless & until sweeping reform to tort law is made; almost nowhere is this crucial subject addressed in the current Congressional programs. It stands to reason that because tort lawyers are heavy Obama supporters, it will not be addressed, therefore no real progress is possible. —T.D.
JULY 31, 2009 — RE: Latest Column
As I have mentioned before, I have been working with Physicians since 1981. To a person, many physicians who have either worked overseas or went to do research in Europe are amazed at how inefficient or rudimentary the health is in Europe especially England. The Socialists Neurosurgeon may have saved your wife, and probably did a fine job. But he did not have the training or the tools available to him supplied by the free market that make these tools available to American doctors. The idea of medicine being a right in the developed world is something that I just cannot get head around. Yes the insurance companies are a pain in the ass, and YES there must be reform i.e. portability, pre-existing conditions ect, but with health saving accounts and reform of the marketplace, we will not lose the level of sophisticated medicine that is available to us. The pain of dealing with an insurance company is nothing compared to the pain of waiting in line for hours to get treatment, rationing of care to those that have a medical condition that are in need, trying to get a test for a spreading condition that takes months to schedule, physicians not working 3 months out of the year as in Canada because they have reached their income limit for the year!
No medicine is not a right! A government should support the institutions and businesses to broaden the base of employment, the betterment of the marketplace will make it possible to provide the medical insurance for those employed and their families. As it is now the underemployed, infirm and the elderly already have a policy, Medicare and Medicaid. Nobody does not receive treatment.
Why do we have to completely reorder our lives and the way of doing business, because a President was elected that thinks this the right way, against the will of the people? I for one am tired of competing with the Government. —C.R.
JULY 29, 2009 — RE: Latest Column
You are a columnist I very much like to read now and then.
Politics aside:
You spin the whole health care "controversy" - for the lack of a better word, in a very touching way. You skirt the issue on the financial angle completely. And your apparent gloating over the socialist French doctor/surgeon is so totally overt while downplaying the American version of healthcare allowing for folks to jump to different conclusions depending maybe on how deep their pockets are.
You are also vague and non-committal on the "how-to" problem of administering this into society.
Your article is well written and well communicated but leads me only to think that maybe each of us would enjoy living in Utopia and you play that card well.
Do you have a point - some leadership influence you are attempting to exert, or are you just writing elegantly?
How about a follow-up on your article on a practical means of reigning in this out-of-control industry? Are you up to the challenge?
Otherwise, thanks for the entertainment. —G.P.
JULY 25, 2009 — RE: Latest Column
Unfortunately, you have the advantage of wisdom that comes with age. The uninsured young do not. They buy auto insurance because it is mandated by the states, and so they can get their car fixed if it is damaged in a crash. They do not consider that their bodies may have to be repaired by doctors in a hospital if damaged in that same crash. Old age may be the most lethal of human conditions, but young people die of accidents, of all sorts, more than any other group. Young people are also most frequently the victims of violent crimes.
At the very least, health insurance should be mandatory for all. That would not be "socialized medicine" any more than car insurance or homeowner's insurance are communist plots.
The best of all possible worlds would, in fact, be a public health service such as they have in Britain, France or Canada. Let the uber-rich buy more and better health care if they like on the free market (whatever they care afford--brain transplants if needed), but guarantee essential health services to every citizen without all the nonsense of differential premiums, deductibles, co-pays, drug formularies, yearly and lifetime caps, and all the other nonsense associated with the parasitism that is private health insurance. Raise the money to run the program through taxation. Whatever is lost to businesses and individuals in taxes will be more than made up for in not having to pay insurance premiums, a very fat percentage of which does to pay the parasitic middlemen called insurance plans and not for health care.
Isn't it idiotic to pay not only the doctors and hospitals for needed medical care but nearly an equivalent amount of money to bean counters, paper shufflers, investors, administrators and deniers of care? Isn't the purpose of the health care system to make us well, not to make capitalists peripheral to the delivery of health care wealthy? The only thing being defended by the Republicans and Blue Dogs in blocking a public health care plan is the right of these pigs to continue feeding at the trough. How can that logic be so opaque to so many? —M.O.
JULY 24, 2009 — RE: Latest Column
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. wrote a poem I think of fondly these days. I'm your age and have medical issues. The poem was in my junior high school English book and meant nothing to me then. It starts out: The wonderful one horse shay, it lasted 100 years to the day. The poem continues about how well every part was made, and all of them wore out at the same time. Of course, I get it now! If only my own body worked that way! —R.C.
JULY 16, 2009 — RE: Latest Column
McNamara was definitely a man of numbers as you point out (body count). I served in a staff job in the early 60's when we all had to make Cost Reduction Reports (CRP). A lot of effort went into those reports--if not so much into actually reducing costs. Later, I had a flying assignment where we defoliated much of South Viet Nam. Our Agent Orange (also Blue and White) reports had to show large quantities sprayed, so we had "sponges" where a load could be placed on a "secondary target" if the primary did not work out (War Zone D and the Rungsat). The bomber escorts had to be released from supporting us if they did not "expend". The FAC would then direct them to targets in "Free Fire Zones". As nearly as I can tell, a lot of the madness from that ill-fated and ill-conceived war has been revived in the Mideast today. Thanks for your stories! We who remember are becoming a minority. —R.C.
JULY 13, 2009 — RE: McNamara and Waxman
Secretary McNamara:
Great piece! History, contemporary events and poetry!
I am confused a bit regarding your stand on Afghanistan. I recall lauding you before the election for your advice to the new president: call Afghanistan hopelessly futile and get out. Then after President Obama decided to increase troop levels and you wrote a piece in support of this, I was taken aback. Now you seem to be returning to your first position. Maybe your readers would like some clarification.
Each week, my wife and watch "Sunday with George Stephanopolis . We always make a point of waiting for the KIA's. After years of numbers averaging in the 30's per week, we began to feel some comfort when, by the time President Bush left office, they had lowered to single digits. Now they're rising, and for Afghanistan. I just don't understand how these fine young boys have to die for Afghanistan. I don't see the pay off.
Regarding Congressman Waxman:
The problem with Mr. Waxman is that he is so good at what he does, legislate. There is not a single human activity that Mr. Waxman does not want to control, tax and/or ban. He's the ultimate faceless, fascistic bureaucrat. He's like a zombie from a bad monster movie: he just keeps coming. —B.S.
JUNE 29, 2009 — RE: Latest Column: Happy Days Will Be Here Again
I hope you're right.
I think you are. Some backup data: We belong to couchsurfing.com. We've had folks from all over the world stay for a night or two on our living room couches.
We recently shared a meal with two college aged women from Europe. I asked about their impressions of California (was it what you expected?) and Americans in general. After some joking remarks about Californians not being as obese as the rest of the country the Swede got a little serious and she said "The difference I notice about Americans is your confidence. We've been all over and it's just not like that elsewhere". Her Austrian friend nodded emphatically. —T.M.
JUNE 23, 2009 — RE: Latest Column
How can people disagree with President Obama's policies yet have confidence with him?
There were major depressions in 1921, 1929, 1961 (not as big), and 1981. In 1921, the depression may have been worse than the Great Depression but it lasted only a year because Harding and Coolidge cut taxes, let banks and businesses fail, cut domestic spending, and let our industry do its thing.
In 1929, Hoover tried spending our way out, which FDR did much more of, and it made the Great Depression worse than it needed to be and last longer than it needed to last. WWII got us out of the Depression.
In 1962, John F. Kennedy cut taxes and let industry do its thing. We recovered.
In 1982, Reagan cut taxes and let industry do its thing. Even while outspending the Soviets, we rebounded.
Now, with no industry to rebound, Obama is handicapped; but massive spending -- with a projected deficit of more than $1 trillion a year -- and printing our own money while borrowing the rest, how can we come out of this?
We're sinking, like the Titanic. Those who maintain faith in Obama are either clueless, partisan bigots, or worshipers. —H.Z.
JUNE 10, 2009 — RE: What to do with Enemy Prisoners
I find your commentary extremely naive because of the following:
Not all POW's were treated well in WWII. My father, who served under Gen. Patton, personally captured two German soldiers in North Africa. He took them to a POW camp operated by the Navy. When he arrived, my Dad tried to turn them over to the Office in Charge who said that there was not room for any more prisoners. Dad could not keep them any longer as he was simply a private who had no authority to do otherwise. As he turned to walk away, he heard two "pops". Turning back, he saw that the officer had shot both of the Germans in the head. Point being that there were bad things that happened then.
During WWII, there were Geneva Convention rules that maintained that soldiers had to wear uniforms to identify themselves. Caught behind enemy lines and out of uniform, they would be considered spies and would be summarily executed.
By the time that Viet Nam came along, the rules were tossed out. One of my best friends was killed by a bomb that had been attached to a little child whom my friend was trying to help.
Today, we have an enemy who does not confine his agression to military targets, does not wear a uniform for indentification purposes, and observes no rules of conduct nor morality. He would just as easily kill your grandchildren as he would our soldiers.
I would think that 911 would be enough evidence of what I just said. To me, anything that we can do to prevent more of the same is justifiable.
On the issue of the world's opinion of us, who cares? When they are oppressed, it will be us that they run to, just as it has been for the past 100 years. —R.W.
JUNE 3, 2009 — RE: Latest Column
As a California resident of 40 years, I along with most of my neighbors will be driven from our homes and the state of California if and when Prop 13 is repealed. As I young home owner back in 1979, Prop 13 enabled us to live in Marin County. Your disdain for that measure does not sit well in this household, although you are correct in that California is proposition-happy, clueless about paying for ballot measures.
You fail to mention that Californians pay billions in schooling and caring for illegal aliens. Anyone who lives in the real world in this state sees services being offered gratis when taxpayers are not eligible for the very same. Long lines tie up our post offices daily, as Mexicans buy money orders to send home. The school systems have been dragged down by catering to the lowest common denominator. Hospitals offer English as a second language and are too busy with freebees to notice anyone else.
When the schools are asked for fiscal and teacher accountability, the books and teacher records are not available for public review. The first thing the current governor did after his election was to put two measures on the ballot asking for school accountability. Why such measures would be necessary, is a mystery to many of us. We believed that such information belongs to the taxpayers. Nevertheless, the teachers unions came up with $millions to defeat those measures using a battalion of misinterpretations to side track the voters. No one in the media or general public ever asks where the unions get the wherewithal to fund ballot measures for every election and issue non-stop rebuttals in the major media of anything that asks for accountability.
Accountability is the key failure here, for individuals, the state mad the nation.
The late, great state of California, indeed! —W.M.
MAY 15, 2009 — RE: Latest Column
Of course, you don't realise what you have when you are young. You can't imagine that, amidst all of your insecurities, you will never be as inspired or full of great expectations ever again. Moreover, you have your health, your energy and your good looks, and are not yet plagued by all of the aches and pains that begin to encroach in middle age. For a brief springtime in life, all you have to worry about is yourself and your own goals. It is only over time that many of those same goals morph into the major responsibilities of family and career. There is no staying forever young, no matter how you attempt to cultivate a winning attitude, and all any of us can ultimately do is take a bittersweet look back at our own youth.
As a former fellow professor who has now retired, I can tell you that profession is in the process or drastic redefinition and retrenchment, just like your other field of mass communication, as universities are being run more and more like corporations with fewer tenured positions and more disposable parts in the form of poorly-paid temporary adjuncts. The future I see in higher education is one in which the classroom experience is largely replaced by flat screen monitors and keyboards, and a small cadre of teaching superstars from a few elite institutions replace most lecturers on campuses across the country. Students will keep their own hours, live where they choose and view lectures on DVD's or internet downloads. The human interaction between teacher and student, which we like to think will save our jobs, will be carried out on line, via e-mail or chat rooms. Tests and assignments will be completed via the internet as well. I'm not saying the technology offers a superior experience for the students, I'm saying that economics will drive the change, which I already see happening, just as newspapers are succumbing to the internet and reporters are being eclipsed by bloggers. American society twenty years from now was not imaginable twenty years ago. (And, don't get me started on the transformations in my own fields of molecular biology and biotechnology.)
I think that, within your lifetime, the University of Southern California will be more like the University of Phoenix than you or I care to realise. For what it's worth, your current column makes for a very nice commencement address over the internet, the kind we'll be seeing a lot more of twenty years from now. —M.O.
Latest Column
Party On! The Revolt Of The Old
LOS ANGELES — My favorite Tea Party guy is Merle Firestone from Rainbow, Miss., who left home at 4 a.m. last Saturday morning to drive to Nashville. He left a note on the coffeepot for his wife saying he wanted to hear Sarah Palin at the "National Convention" of the "Tea Party." He could not afford a $300 ticket to get into the auditorium at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel, but he thought he might get a glimpse of the former Alaska governor.
Column Archive
Edmund Burke And Obama 2.0
LOS ANGELES — First the news: Barack Obama is a hell of a speaker. His first State of the Union message will not change history, but it was a skillful balancing act between the winds of change he wants to ride and the sour and contradictory winds of discontent blowing across the United States.
Who Is That Masked Man?
WASHINGTON — When Barack Obama of Illinois first walked into the Capitol of the United States as a senator-elect in 2004, he was greeted with the usual bowing and scraping that senators take for granted in those hallowed halls. His wife was stunned, saying, as I recall: "What will they do if you actually achieve something?"
Why We Are In Haiti -- Because We're Americans
PHILADELPHIA — In February of 1961, President Kennedy asked this question of Jawaharlal Nehru, the prime minister of India: "What do you think of the idea of our Peace Corps?"
Why You're Your Own Doctor
DENVER — All of your adult life it seems you are told that you are your own doctor. You don't believe that, or perhaps, just don't think about it, until there inevitably comes a time when you have to spend a good deal of time with physicians.
Harry Reid: The Dealer From Nevada
WASHINGTON — Harry Reid, you may have noticed, is not a very colorful fellow. Among the interesting things you can say about him is that he is the first Capitol police officer to become a senator working in that same building.
Is Obama A B-plus President?
LOS ANGELES — It's the time of year when college instructors grade papers. Having done this for more than 10 years at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism here at the University of Southern California, I would offer this general rule: Students usually think they deserve a half-grade better than what they get. Give them a B, they think they should have gotten a B-plus.
We, The People, Are Not At War
WASHINGTON — So, our extraordinarily rational and articulate president went to Norway to receive the Nobel Peace Prize and identified himself as a wartime commander-in-chief. True, but he neglected to mention that his nation is not at war.
Lost In Afghanistan
WASHINGTON — Barack Obama says a lot of smart things. During his campaign last year, in his second debate with Sen. John McCain, in Nashville, he closed by saying:
The Late, Great State Of California
LOS ANGELES — California, contrary to popular opinion, is not broke. It's only crazy, mean and at war with itself.
The United States — Decline And Fall?
LOS ANGELES — It has become fashionable on both the left and the right to compare the United States to ancient Rome. Decline and fall: We are a militaristic power trying to make everyone else in the known world submit to our way, or we are an irreligious, hedonistic bunch going the way of all flesh. Or maybe both.
An Audience Of One
LOS ANGELES — Most of what you read, see and hear about Afghanistan is not meant for you. The words, optimistic and pessimistic, right and wrong, all the leaks, all the numbers of troop estimates, costs and polls are aimed at an audience of one: the president.
Conservatives Poised To Repeat History
LOS ANGELES — Was George Santayana right when he said that those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it?
Why Canadians Are Laughing At Us
AUSTIN, Texas — A guy walks up to you in a bar here and asks, "Are you a Republican, conservative or independent?" You can't tell if he's kidding. After all, this is the most liberal place in the state. It's also where I first heard about Shona Holmes, the Canadian lady.
When History Calls
LOS ANGELES — Sen. Olympia Snowe said last week that in the end, which is near, she may or may not vote for health care reform. But she will, judging by her last comment as the Senate Finance Committee voted out a bill: "When history calls, history calls."
Better Jaw-jaw Than War-war
LOS ANGELES — Obviously, the world, or at least a heck of a lot of foreigners, love Barack Obama. The Nobel Peace Prize is an impressive, if surprising, symbol of that.
Trust Your Instincts, Mr. President
LOS ANGELES — We do not pay the president by the hour and, I understand, he has some pretty good telecommuting equipment. So if he wants to take a 20-hour trip to Copenhagen, even in a lost cause, the Republic will survive.
