Where's the Outrage?

Massive protests in Wisconsin are entering their third week. In my opinion, unions are in a battle with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker for the future of the middle class. On one hand, Governor Scott Walker states that the state of Wisconsin is broke. In order to get their fiscal house in order, they must balance the budget and cut the size of government. Among the budget-cutting proposals, and the most controversial, is Governor Walker’s proposal to end collective bargaining among public workers.

On the other side of this titanic argument sit the Wisconsin unions. The unions have unequivocally stated that they’re willing to take salary cuts but are not willing to give up their right to collective bargain. So the unions have met Governor Scott Walker more than halfway and yet we still have an impasse. Who’s right?

The governor claims that the great state of Wisconsin has a $137 billion shortfall. As it turns out, the governor passed an approximately $140 million tax giveaway to special interest groups. This should sound familiar. Republicans like to cut taxes but they don’t pay for themselves. The Bush tax cuts did not pay for themselves. Reagan’s tax cuts did not pay for themselves. Why should Governor Walker’s tax cuts pay for themselves? The real crime appears to lie in the fact that Governor Walker wants to pay for his tax cuts by asking workers to sacrifice more. As I’ve chronicled, time and time again, the middle class is been squeezed like never before. The middle class continues to face increasing expenses (utilities, housing and education costs) and stagnant or decreasing wages.

This is part of a conservative agenda which started decades ago. Conservatives use the government to enrich their friends (tax cuts to the rich). Conservatives have never liked unions because unions support, for the most part, Democrats. So, Governor Scott Walker is only following the conservative playbook, which advocates enriching your friends and punishing your enemies.

Wisconsin is simply a microcosm of what’s happening on the national level. Currently, the House Republicans are insisting on somewhere around a $60 billion budget cut because “America is broke.” I don’t understand. How is it that we can be broke when we just gave the rich tax cuts in December? These tax cuts were not paid for. How can we afford tax cuts when we’re broke? Remember that Republicans successfully argued that we were in the middle of a recession and increasing taxes would slow economic growth. Using the same logic, spending would spur economic growth. Then wouldn’t cutting $60 billion slow economic growth? Of course it will. (Slowing the economic recovery also has the side effect of making Democrats look ineffectual and therefore decreasing the chance of Obama’s reelection.) Government spending equals approximately 25% of our GDP. Economists estimate somewhere between 200,000 and 700,000 jobs will be lost by $60 billion in discretionary spending.

America is looking at a $1.25 trillion deficit. Republicans continually point to this number and hope that Americans will reel at its size. The conservatives want you to be flabbergasted. But when you look at the number in its proper context it is not as large as it seems. We are a country of over 300 million people. Therefore, if every man, woman and child forks over $4000, the budget deficit is solved. $4000. That’s it. Not $40,000 or $4 million, we are talking about $4000 per person to prevent cutting programs that help the poor, like the low-income heating energy assistance program (LIHEAP) and Head Start. If we just look at those tax cuts, which were passed in December, the average millionaire is reaping over $100,000 in tax cuts. If we just require those who have benefited the most from our stable economic environment to simply pay their fair share, we could fix the budget in no time.

Conservatives are using a ginned up “financial crisis” in order to push through their agenda, which is destroying unions and killing government spending on social programs. This is a full-blown attack on the American Way of Life. We should and must take to the streets like they are in Madison, Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Democratic Party has started a petition to recall eight of Wisconsin’s Senators in accordance with the Wisconsin Constitution. If the Democrats win three of these eight seats, the balance of power shifts in the Senate. This is direct democracy. This is the way that we take back our government from corporate special interests who have the undivided attention of our politicians.

Tags: Economy, Newsletter by ecthompson md
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February is Black History Month. For all black authors, there is some sort of unwritten rule that it is blasphemy not to comment on Black History in February. Well, I will not commit blasphemy this month.

In many schools, history is taught as a bunch of isolated facts that are seldom related to reality. Students are forced to digest facts like…

• In 1885, Sarah E. Goode invented a bed that folded into a cabinet. She was the second black woman to receive a patent.
• Garrett Augustus Morgan created a gas mask.
• Thomas J. Martin patented the fire extinguisher in 1872.
• George T. Sampson invented a clothes dryer in 1892 that used heat from the stove.
• Although Thomas Edison is credited with inventing the light bulb it would have been nothing without the carbon filament. The process for creating a carbon filament which burned in hours instead of minutes was figured out by Lewis Latimer.
• Granville T. Woods invented the multiplex telegraph in 1887. He invented air brakes for trains. He also invented a device that picked up electricity from the “third rail” which made electric powered transit systems possible.
• And Dr. George Franklin Grant invented the world’s first golf tee, which was patented in 1899. He was also the first Black professor at Harvard.

But even lumped together all these individual achievements don’t tell the story of Black History. They don’t tell the story of how many minorities in America thrived despite oppression. Henry Blair, for example, never learned to read or write, yet he invented a corn seed planter in 1834 and signed his patent with an X. Martin Luther King wrote some of his most eloquent essays from a Birmingham Jail.

The story of Black History, then, is the story of overcoming obstacles, of excelling in spite of squalid conditions. As we sit back today and see the people of Egypt taking to the streets and asking for basic human rights, such as fair wages and equal treatment from the government, it is hard not to remember and reflect upon the civil rights movement.

Remember, first, that the civil rights movement did not happen one day in 1963 when the Reverend Dr. King stood before a crowd of hundreds of thousands and declared, “I Have a Dream.” It started after World War II, when our brave black soldiers came back from honorable, heroic service overseas and were then treated as second class citizens, again. The integration of the armed forces in 1948 really started the civil rights ball rolling. The NAACP saw enormous growth in the late 1940s, and its president Roy Wilkins, along with Thurgood Marshall, carefully planned a series of legal battles that culminated in Brown v. Board of Education (of Topeka, KS) in 1954. It was hundreds of thousands of thoughtful, hard-working blacks and whites who made up the civil rights movement that grew into a powerful force that lasted more than 20 years.

Freedom, liberty, and civil rights do not come easy. They did not come easy in America and they will not come easy in Egypt. We must remember that Dr. King, who was devoted to nonviolent change, led a series of marches. It is important that we do not forget people like Huey P. Newton (founder of the Black Panthers) and Malcolm X, who proposed using “any means necessary” to achieve the goal of civil rights for all, were a significant counterbalance to the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

All these people came together and demonstrated, and challenged, and marched, and fought to bestow on people like you and me the freedoms that we enjoy today. In Egypt, too, the people are going to have to fight for change on all fronts. They’ll have to continue with nonviolent demonstrations in the streets. They’re going to have to fight in the courts. They’re going to have to fight in their legislature. When I look at Egypt, I can see just how far we’ve come. When I look at the latest job numbers (unemployment rate of 9%, 8.7 million Americans having lost their jobs since December of 2007), I can see we have a long way to go.

Black History is more than a series of names and events. Black History is an American story of triumph and tribulation. It is a story of a very long struggle which should have meaning for all Americans.

Tags: Foreign Affairs, Newsletter, Race by ecthompson md
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As many of you know, I love and admire President Barack Obama. What he has accomplished is truly remarkable. Not only was he elected president but he has also taken over the helm at truly rocky times. We have wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. With escalating tensions in the Middle East, Iran and North Korea, the world is looking to us for leadership. Africa, South America and South Asia are in desperate poverty. Our polar ice caps are melting. Here at home, we’re in the middle of the worst economic slowdown since the Great Depression and our political atmosphere is truly toxic. Through all of this, our president has stood tall and managed to pull together coalitions to get significant legislation passed in Congress. Yet I have this uneasy feeling, nausea really, over Iraq.

Before we unwisely invaded Iraq, there was a balance of power in the Middle East. Iraq and Iran hate each other. They would truly like to annihilate each other but after fighting a fruitless war which cost hundreds of thousands of lives and after which there is no clear victor, they were content to scowl angrily at each other. The third point in the Middle East’s triangle was Israel. So when we swooped in and took out Saddam Hussein, we tipped the balance of power. It is really unclear how this will play out in the long run, but for now Iran seems to be the big winner.

Last week President Obama addressed the nation. He told us that combat operations in Iraq had been completed. Our troops were coming home. Cool. Let’s break out the champagne. Then, before I was able to get to the refrigerator, our president stated, “a transitional force of US troops remain in Iraq with a different mission: advising and assisting Iraqi security forces, supporting Iraqi troops and targeted counterterrorism missions and protecting our civilians.” What? Then, just for a moment, our president seemed to transform into President George W. Bush and talked about extremists, terrorist bombings and sectarian strife. We’re leaving 50,000 troops in Iraq to do the exact same job they’ve been doing for the last three years. I was flabbergasted. I began to feel like Fred Sanford, from Sanford and Son, and I grabbed my chest.

As soon as President Barack Obama ended his speech with what I thought was an overly gracious tip of the hat to President George W. Bush, the Republicans, instead of being grateful, went on the attack. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader John Boehner were two of the first to step up and criticize the president for not praising the surge and George W. Bush. Did we just enter the Twilight Zone? Did the conservatives say that the surge worked? To review, the surge had six key elements. These elements were unveiled to the American public by President George W. Bush, himself. Two of the six elements were to create space for political progress and diversify political and economic efforts. There has been no political progress over the last three years. None. Elections were held. No government was formed. The Sunnis, Shiites and the Kurdish Iraqis in the north continue to argue like school children. The surge did help decrease the sectarian violence but that was only one part of the plan (one out of six is an F, isn’t it?) Iraqis were supposed to form a functional government. That has not happened. We were supposed to create the space for Iraqis to lead. This simply hasn’t happened.

With Republicans giving each other high fives and congratulating themselves on the surge, I feel uneasy. With President Obama slipping into a George W. Bush-type trance and telling us that combat missions have ended when they really haven’t, I feel uneasy. This may be my whole problem with the Middle East — my feeling of uncertainty. I’m not sure it’s clear who our friends are (with the exception of Israel) and I’m not sure who our enemies are. We are embracing the Iraqi people as our friends but does that include all of the Iraqi people, including the Sunnis? I just feel that nobody has any good answers.

Tags: Afghanistan, Iraq, Newsletter, Obama administration by ecthompson md
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We’ve all heard the rhetoric that President Barack Obama really hasn’t done anything during his 18 months as president. There seems to be an overwhelming outcry asking, “What have you done for us lately and what will you do for us soon?” If you listen to the media, President Obama has been a failure. If President Obama is a failure then Einstein is a moron who needed remedial education. We must remember the environment that we are in. Conservatives will never say anything positive about the president. This is a given. Progressives will always want a more liberal policy then comes out of Washington. This is also a given. So the President is getting criticism from all sides. I want to take a moment to review Barack Obama’s legislative accomplishments.

Financial Reform – Big financial institutions now have more stringent regulations which should decrease their ability to make risky investments and make our economy less vulnerable. The government now has the ability to regulate derivatives. These were the instruments which helped cause the Great Recession. A new federal watchdog agency has been created to help consumers against these financial institutions.

Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 – This bill simply restores worker protection against paid discrimination. One would think that this would not be a big deal. This bill was shepherded through Congress against almost universal Republican opposition.

Hate Crimes Prevention Act – This bill extends hate crimes legislation to cover gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.

Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 – All I can do is smile when I see this piece of legislation. The credit card industry spent millions of dollars trying to lobby Congress to kill this legislation. In spite of their efforts, some decent legislation came out. This ended retroactive rate increases. This made it mandatory to give us, the consumers, 45 day notice before rate hikes. There is also a limit to the amount of fees that can be charged. There is also language in this legislation to make our credit card bills easier to read and easier to understand. This was a huge consumer victory.

Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act – This piece of legislation gives the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco products.

Universal National Service Act – This law set-asides billions of dollars to help students and seniors earn money through volunteer service. This can help students earn money for college.

Stem Cell Research – President Obama signed an executive order which ended the federal ban on embryonic stem cell research. Briefly, we all have stem cells in our bodies. Embryonic stem cells are a basic cell which has the ability to stimulate correctly to become any other cell in the body. The promise of stem cell research is great. Imagine one day being able to inject stem cells into the pancreas of a diabetic and those cells becoming healthy pancreatic cells, no more insulin shots. Imagine a 21-year-old who was in a devastating car crash and is unable to walk because of damage to his spinal cord. Hopefully, one day, we can inject specially treated stem cells directly into the spinal cord in order to heal the damaged segment. This is the promise of stem cells. (editor’s note: this paragraph has been edited to more accurately describe what President Bush banned and what president Obama overturned.)

Healthcare Reform – Americans are no longer beholden to insurance companies. Over 20 million Americans that do not have health insurance will be covered under this sweeping initiative.

Economic Recovery Act Of 2009 – President Barack Obama and the Democrats have been taking a beating from Congressional Republicans and talking heads about the stimulus package. Recent analysis by conservative economists, Mark Zandi (John McCain’s chief economist and an economist for Moody’s) and Alan Blinder (Princeton professor and served as vice-chairman of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve) found that intervention by this Congress and president Obama caused our GDP to be 11.5% higher and saved over 8.5 million jobs. The stimulus worked to avoid the Great Depression 2.0.

No President in our modern era has faced as much of an uphill battle as Barack Obama. Recently, at the Net Nation conference, ousted administration official Van Jones described the 44th Presidency by saying, “Barack Obama volunteered to steer the Titanic after it hit the iceberg.” In spite of his clear accomplishments, this President has faced overwhelmingly negative media, a stoically resistant Republican Party all while fighting wars both economic and military. And yet, he perseveres. As he stated at his address to the Urban League in late July, “I didn’t take this job to do the popular thing, I took it to do the right things.” For that, he has earned my admiration and continued support. I look forward to the future he is attempting to steer the nation towards.

Tags: Newsletter, Obama administration, Party Politics by ecthompson md
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Most Americans over the age of 20 can recall Roger Daughtry’s Daltry (lead singer for The Who) searing voice as he wailed, “Who are you?” Who Are You is also the theme music for the very popular drama CSI. As we look back over the first nine months of Barack Obama’s presidency, I think it is important for us, as Americans, to try to come to grips with who we are.

Thirty years ago, I think the answer was obvious. We were the good guys. We just elected a new president, Ronald Reagan. If we didn’t know that we were the good guys, he was more than happy to tell us. Those other guys, the Russians, they were the bad guys. We were honest, law-abiding citizens. More importantly, there was a collective America. Everyone seemed to want to share the responsibility of making America better. From the janitor pushing a broom to the CEO in an Armani suit, we were all working to make America better.

Something changed. The change probably started in the late ’60s and early ’70s, but it began to be really easily noticed in the late ’80s. We stopped working for us and began working for ourselves. This can best be seen by looking at our major corporations. Our major corporations throughout the ’60s and ’70s were good corporate citizens. It was unheard of at the time for a corporation to move its operation overseas and shut down plants here in the United States. That just wasn’t done. Corporations paid a fair wage. In return, Americans bought American products. Everyone profited.

click on image for larger version

Over the next 30 years, CEO wages skyrocketed. Corporate profits ballooned to unimaginable levels. The Dow Jones industrial averages doubled, tripled, quintupled and more in a short period of time (see chart below). The investment crowd made billions of dollars, yet wages stagnated (see chart above). Corporations moved overseas in search of cheaper labor and friendlier environmental laws. Small towns withered on the vine. Huge sections of large cities like Detroit, St. Louis and Baltimore became ghost towns. One income was not good enough to keep the family afloat. Now we needed two incomes. Even with two full-time working parents, household budgets are still strained.

click on image for larger version (From Morningstar)

After the economic collapse which started almost exactly a year ago, there is talk in Washington about new regulations. We also need to talk about who we are. How should our corporations act? Should they act in the best interest of their stockholders? Should these large corporations act in the best interests of America? Sometimes the two interests are not the same. Shouldn’t we expect corporations who hire hundreds of thousands of Americans to act in our best interest? We, as Americans, created an environment which made these corporations successful. Samantha Stevens, the beautifully seductive witch from Bewitched, did not twinkle her nose to get us into this predicament. Instead, hard-working Americans helped these corporations meet and exceed their goals. So, should we expect something in return… something more than just a job?

I expect good corporate citizenship. We all should expect good corporate citizenship. There’s a reason why General Motors, IBM, Dow Chemicals and other Fortune 500 companies did not arise in China, Mexico or Dubai. They arose here in the United States because we created an atmosphere that was friendly to business. Now we need Congress to restore some of the balance that was lost over the last 30 years. Corporations need to be taxed for sending things out of the country and having them processed and then transporting them back here for sale. These taxes need to make it prohibitively expensive to ship jobs out of the United States. Secondly, corporations are not people. Congress needs to pass a law stating that the rights of people should always usurp the rights of corporations (this would seem obvious but is, amazingly, hugely controversial in the Courts). Thirdly, Congress needs to pass health care reform that truly fixes the way healthcare is delivered in the United States. Finally, Congress needs to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. This makes it easier for people to unionize. If we can get Congress to do this once and for all, we then create jobs. We actually create better paying jobs and a better lifestyle for all of us. Only then can I answer the question of who we are. We are the same as we’ve always been, a country of the people, for the people and by the people.

Tags: Corporate Wrongs, Economy, Healthcare, Newsletter by ecthompson md
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For reasons completely unclear to me, the Democrats thought they could take their August recess and leave the USS Healthcare on autopilot. While the Democrats were asleep at the wheel, conservatives pounded the USS Healthcare. Death panels. Socialism. Marxism. Republican Congressmen Phil Gingrey stated that we don’t need to regulate private insurance companies, that the marketplace will regulate them for us. Senator Chuck Grassley actually told his constituents “you have every right to fear.”

I find it ironic, in the age of information and the Internet, that there can be so much misinformation. There are no death panels. No such thing exists in any of the three bills in the House or in the one bill that’s percolating in the Senate. Anyone with an Internet connection can go online and look at these bills. Yes, these bills are long, but they are easily searchable. I cannot explain why the media has allowed this misinformation to ricochet around the airwaves.

As I see it, Republicans are playing some type of child’s game where they claim to support healthcare reform. I don’t see any real effort to support healthcare reform. Senator Mike Enzi is probably the best example of this. He is supposedly negotiating for a bipartisan reform bill. Just last week he told a group of supporters at a rally that he was sure that healthcare reform was going to fail. Unfortunately, Mike Enzi is a very important senator, on the Finance Committee and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Some Republican senators have said they won’t even read the final bill. Democrats, liberals and progressives need to read the writing on the wall. If we truly want change, we’re going to have to push for it. We are going have to march for it. We are going to have to pull the rest of the country kicking and screaming to get it. This is the only way that we are going to prevent the USS Healthcare from sinking.

I came across an enlightening poll conducted by Research 2000 (8/31- 9/3). They asked whether individuals “favor or oppose a government administered health insurance option that anyone can purchase to compete with private insurance plans.” This is the liberal public option. This is not including some quasi-public option that only triggers when we have 50 or 60 million Americans without health insurance. The question did not ask anything about cost control or if the public option adds to the deficit. It was a straightforward question. 58% of respondents favored the public option. 57% of independents supported the public option. America, by a three-to-two margin, supports the public option. This is even after a month of misinformation and lies. The American people still want the public option and not some watered down version of it.

BTW, we need healthcare reform.  This isn’t a luxury.  People are lining up for free clinics all over the country.  They are having to turn away people.  Where were the birthers and teabaggers shouting down these Americans who needed healthcare?

Republican Representative John Kline of Minnesota gave the weekly address on Saturday, suggesting that we just start over. Personally, I believe his suggestion was disingenuous but let’s take his advice anyway. Let’s simplify the whole equation. Medicare for all. Period. Fix the donut hole in Medicare part D. Allow Medicare to truly negotiate drug prices. Nothing fancy.  Nothing complex.  No triggers.  No bailout for the health insurance industry.  Simply the freedom to go to any doctor you choose and any hospital you choose.  Why can’t we do this and make it affordable?

Finally, on a personal note, I’ve just completed one of the most emotionally and physically draining two weeks of my medical career. I’ve had to sit down with a number of families and tell them that their loved one was not going to make it. These end-of-life discussions, even under the best of circumstances, are obviously extremely difficult. To have elected officials, even senators, tell their constituents that there are “death panels” in any of these bills is beyond reprehensible. I know that there is a special place in Dante’s Inferno just for these liars.

Tags: Healthcare, Newsletter, Obama administration, Party Politics by ecthompson md
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(I wrote this last week.)

At this time of year, I especially like to use football analogies. Leon Lett was a very talented defensive tackle for the Dallas Cowboys during the early- and mid-1990s. In the Super Bowl, Leon Lett picked up a fumble and ran towards a certain touchdown. Approximately five yards from the goal line, he began to celebrate and Don Beebe of the Buffalo Bills came out of nowhere and knocked the ball out of Leon Lett’s hand before he crosses the goal line. No touchdown.

There are a couple of ways to look at this story. One way is from Don Beebe’s perspective. The Buffalo Bills were losing and losing badly.  The Bills were about to lose their third Super Bowl in a row. Beebe could’ve easily given up. Instead, he has become a part of football legend. With grit and determination, he prevented a touchdown. Leon Lett, on the other hand, is remembered for being a great player who made a boneheaded play.

As both presidential campaigns try to sprint to the finish line, we must remember that the world will not stop on November 4^th.  All the problems that existed on November fourth will still be around on November 5^th. For almost two years, Barack Obama has asked us to be an active participant in his campaign. After the election results are announced, we cannot stop being activists.

For more than 30 years, the American people have been spectators. We have been busy either cheering or booing our politicians. It is time for us to help our candidate carry the ball over the goal line. Our goal must be more than just to win a presidential race but, to make a better America.

It is my opinion that we, the American people, need to accomplish five things in order to save our republic. First, we need to create jobs. Many of these jobs should come from the creation of a clean energy industry. Without good jobs, we are not going to get out of this economic recession. Secondly, we need to revamp our tax structure. We need to reward businesses that hire and pay a fair wage. Thirdly, we need to extricate ourselves from Iraq in an orderly fashion. Some troops will need to be redeployed to Afghanistan. We need to provide Afghanistan with an infrastructure so that the central government can be effective. Fourth, we truly need to invest in education. We need to do more than just throw money at the problem. We need to rebuild our crumbling schools, which would create more jobs. We need to create a system where the best and the brightest want to go into our public school system and teach our children. Last, but not least, we need to look seriously at health care. Doctors, nurses, patients, hospital administrators – almost no one is happy with the way our healthcare system is running. The system needs to be friendlier to everyone. Is excellent health care a right in this country? We need to have this discussion. The American people, not just our politicians, must be involved in this discussion. Whatever solution we come up with is one we’ll all have to live with.

If we are able to accomplish these five things relatively quickly we can save our wonderful country. Through letters and e-mails, phone calls and faxes, we must continue to be engaged with our politicians. We must demand town hall meetings where we see our politicians face-to-face.  We need constantly to remind them that they work for us. They should carry out our wishes and our desires. Right now, we want change.

Tags: Domestic Issues, Election 2008, Newsletter by ecthompson md
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As we see the collapse of Wall Street, AIG, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual, and Lehman Brothers, we all must wonder what happened. We have been told that our economy was strong. Yet within the last seven to eight months we’ve seen 19 banks collapse and the kind of volatility in the stock market that makes us all queasy and seasick.

Within 20 years, we went from being the most prosperous nation on the earth to the nation carrying the most debt. Personally, I think we have to look back to the 1980s for the answers. This was the so-called Me Generation. It was all about nicer clothes, nicer cars, and the biggest house in the gated community. It didn’t matter if you obtained all of this through credit cards, six mortgages and a loan from Guido down the street. The bottom line was it was all about Me.

Some of this thinking came from supply-side economics. The theory behind supply-side economics: tax cuts for the wealthy and for businesses will free up capital; the wealthy would spend more money; business and the wealthy would hire more people. This prosperity would trickle down to everyone. On the surface, this makes a lot of sense but upon further reflection we see it is a magician’s trick. Before we get the hard data, let’s just think about this. If you’re a wealthy businessman who makes $10 million a year, for argument’s sake, you pay 40% of what you make in income tax. This comes to $4 million. With tax cuts, your tax rate is changed from 40% to 35%. You take home an extra $500,000. What are you going to do to spur the economy? You already have a new car, maybe two or three. You have a house, possibly two. You already have a maid and someone to cut your grass. Most likely, you will do what most multimillionaires would do, which is to invest that $500,000. The logic for business is about the same. Businesses don’t hire people just because there’s extra money lying around. Extra money from tax cuts can be paid out as bonuses (remember upper management is very fond of bonuses and stock options) or distributed as increased dividends to stockholders. Therefore, in this example, it appears that supply-side economics lines the pockets of the rich.

With President Bush, President Clinton, and President Reagan, we are able to look at two eras of supply-side economics sandwiching a more traditional economic approach. Real investment growth was greater in the period of 1993-2001 at the rate of 10.2 percent. President Reagan had a growth of 2.8 percent. President Bush has had a growth of 2.7 percent. Gross Domestic Product, a measurement of economic growth, increased at an average annual rate of 3.9 percent during the Clinton era while Reagan and Bush had rates of growth of 3.9 percent and 2.5 percent respectively. For me, the most important indicator of how we are doing is real average annual median income. With the tax increases during Clinton’s presidency, real average annual median income grew at a rate of 2 percent. Reagan’s presidency spurred an increase 1.4 percent and under the Bush administration, the increase was only 0.3 percent. (Data from Center For American Progress.)

There are multiple excuses that true supply-side believers will give us as to why supply-side economics did not work. They will claim that any change in the economy takes years to make an effect. This plainly contradicts the father of supply-side economics, Art Laffer, who stated that we would see changes in our economy “before the ink is dry” on the legislation for tax cuts. They will argue that there weren’t enough government spending cuts. There’s further data to support a more traditional economic approach. This approach includes higher wages, higher employment growth and results in decreased federal deficits. This was the case during Clinton’s years in office, as compared with either supply-side era. In spite of all this data, though, some still advocate tax cuts for the rich. Why?

Supply-side economics simply does not work for America. Maybe this “Me First, Everything Else Second” mentality helped cause the craziness that we’re seeing on Wall Street. I’m just askin’.

Tags: Economy, Newsletter by ecthompson md
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Basically, I’m a happy guy. I love to laugh. I’m married to beautiful, thoughtful, supportive wife. I’m living my childhood dream. I’m a doctor. A friend of mine sent me an e-mail that touched a nerve. It was about happiness. The first paragraph reported that polls show that vast majority of Americans are unhappy with the direction of our country and our President’s leadership. The e-mail went on to berate Americans for being unhappy. We have a great economy, it said. We have jobs and a roof over our heads. It went on and on then ended with the question – what is there to be unhappy about? I thought about this e-mail for a little while then I wrote the following -

Our unhappiness is clear. We should be unhappy. When we are lied to by you’re your parents you’re unhappy. When people you trusted, people you poured your heart, soul and dreams into turn out to be con-men, you’re unhappy. Vice President Cheney stated, “There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us. And there is no doubt that his aggressive regional ambitions will lead him into future confrontations with his neighbors — confrontations that will involve both the weapons he has today, and the ones he will continue to develop with his oil wealth.” None of this was true.

When a Black man who is running for president of the United States in the 2007 is called a “Halfican” by several leading right wing commentators and there is no action taken against them, I’m unhappy. When those same commentators play a song called, “Puff the Magic Negro” sung in Al Sharpton’s voice and it’s about Barack Obama and these commentators are still on the air, I’m unhappy.

When politicians stand up and say that we need to end this war like John Warner (Republican Senator from Virginia) and then vote against timetables, troop withdrawal and giving troops some time away from the front, yep, I’m unhappy.

When the average family has 2 incomes and still can’t make ends meet, I’m unhappy. The average income for the top 20 Hedge Fund managers was $654 million last year. Average! WE have a system in place where if you are born rich you can’t lose. If you are born poor, good luck! [Read more →]

Tags: Iraq, Newsletter, Race by ecthompson md
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I wrote this last August. I hope you still find it relevant.

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For the last 25 years, we, the American people, have been sold a bill of goods. The pitch, on one level, appeals to our natural sense of right and wrong. We’ve been told that we pay too much in taxes. We get taxed in the morning. We get taxed as we drive to work. We clearly get taxed on the money that we make it work. We come home and we kiss our spouse. We get hit with the marriage tax. As we make our way to the kitchen we trip over toys that we bought for our kids and of course, those toys were taxed. We get taxed morning, noon and night. Finally, when we leave this earth, we get taxed again with the death tax.

We’ve also been told that our government is not to be trusted. If you give money to the government it is almost equivalent to flushing the money down the drain. Some of our elected leaders have gone so far as to say flushing the money down the drain is actually a better use of the money. The take home lesson is our government is wasteful and we get taxed to death. Cool story. Unfortunately, reality is different than this fantasy world. This week, in my opinion, we saw clearly the result of 27 years of cutting government programs and government spending. The evidence has been all around us but we’ve refuse to see it. Our infrastructure is crumbling around us. We’ve invested almost nothing in our schools, roads, government buildings, levees and, of course, bridges.

As I’ve pointed out in my book, A Letter to America, taxes are like membership fees to an exclusive club. The United States of America is the club that we belong to. Our club used to treat us like exclusive members. If you work hard in school you were almost guaranteed a job for which you can be well-paid. You could be secure in the knowledge that you would have this job until you retire. Once we retired we had a generous pension that made all those years of work, pain and suffering, worth it. Well, like any club, when you reduce the membership fees too far, the perks that made that club special are now not affordable. [Read more →]

Tags: Budget, Domestic Issues, Newsletter, Taxes by ecthompson md
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I found this article on my computer. I wrote this article back in May of 2007. Hope that you enjoy it.

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Just because something is complex does not mean it’s not understandable. The US Attorney scandal is confusing. The question is, what’s going on? Well, in order to figure out everything that’s going on there must be investigations. Some folks on Capitol Hill are calling the current investigations a witch hunt and “political theater.”

Question B if a policeman sees someone walking down the street with a large plasma TV should he be curious? So he asks the guy, “What are you doing with that TV?” He replies, “I’m fixing it for Ms. Smith.” “Ms. Smith? There’s no Ms. Smith that lives on this street.” “Did I say fixing it? I meant delivering it to Mr. Jones.” I think that everyone would assume that this situation deserves further investigation.

The same type of thing has happened with the Justice Department. Eight US attorneys were fired out of the blue. All of these attorneys were Republicans. The initial explanation was that they were fired for performance reasons. Several reporters were able to obtain performance evaluations on several of these attorneys and they were excellent. The next explanation was that some of the attorneys did not prosecute enough immigration cases. This explanation did not hold up to investigation either. Finally, Alberto Gonzales, the US Attorney General, stated that these US attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president. Therefore, the president can fire them at any time for any reason. Well, this is sort of true. It is true that the president has the power to hire and fire US attorneys. But, and this is important, the President cannot fire at a US attorney to influence a particular case or to halt a particular investigation or for political reasons. [Read more →]

Tags: Newsletter, US Attorneys by ecthompson md
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I wrote this for the Urban News over a year ago. I thought that you might enjoy it.

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Okay, just stop it. I’m so tired of talking points. Both sides have ‘em. On one side, we have, “we can’t have politicians telling the generals in the field what to do.” Well, our Constitution has been set up in such a way that politicians tell generals what to do. On the other side, “the American people have spoken and have put us in charge to end the war.” Well, that is sort of true. If the American people unanimously wanted the war to end, then the Democrats would govern with 70 or 80% of the seats in both chambers.

There are a few things that are clear. First, the opinion of the American people has been slowly changing over the last two to three years. We’ve lost faith in the purpose and the execution of the Iraq war. In December 2003 (Quinnipiac University Poll), 46% of Americans thought that President Bush was handling the war in Iraq well. Over the years the percentage of Americans who supported the war and supported President Bush’s handling of the war has declined. In an April 25, 2007 poll from the same researchers, President Bush had an approval rating of only 31% on his handling of the war in Iraq. A new CNN poll (May 4-6, 2007, http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2007/images/05/08/rel6d.pdf) reveals that 57 % of Americans believe that Congress should send the president another bill with funding and timetables. [Read more →]

Tags: Bush Administration, Iraq, Newsletter by ecthompson md
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My good friend, Timothy Johnson, Ph.D., was recently honored by the Buncombe County Republican party. Timothy Johnson has been elected party chair. It did not go unnoticed that he is the first black elected party chair in Buncombe County – Republican or Democratic. In an interview with the Weaverville newspaper, Tim commented on how many blacks are “ignorant” of the bedrock beliefs of the Republican Party. Dr. Johnson believes that the ideals of the Republican Party line up very well with the ideals of the Black community.

Before I go on any further, I would like to say that no one and no party has cornered the market on ethics or morality. There are bad and evil people that are motivated by greed and power in both parties. But, with that being said, I think we can look over the past 40 years and honestly begin to evaluate which party truly benefited Blacks and continues to benefit minorities and the underprivileged. Let’s look at a few issues.

Civil rights. This one is easy. There is no contest. In the 60s the Democrats stood with Blacks. Southern Democrats there were opposed to integration did not like the direction of the party and slowly but surely left the Democratic Party and joined the Republican Party. Were there individual Republicans who believed that integration was inevitable? Were there individual Republicans who believed that segregation was an abomination? I think the answer is yes on both counts. Did the Republican party change their platform in 1964 and 1968 to appease Southern Whites? Yes. [Read more →]

Tags: Newsletter, Party Politics, Race by ecthompson md
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I wrote this for the Urban News (April 2008):

I just finished watching the History Channel’s two-hour documentary on Martin Luther King narrated by Tom Brokaw. It was extremely well done but… something was missing. There were interviews from civil rights activists like Representative John Lewis, Ambassador Andrew Young, and Martin Luther King, III, along with thoughtful commentary from contemporary activists including President Bill Clinton, Bono, Forest Whitaker, Jr., and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who grew up in Birmingham.

The program was like a wonderful BBQ sauce that tastes great but is missing some key ingredient or ingredients that give the sauce a pizzazz. That’s what was missing! Pizzazz! In spite of that, I highly recommend it.

As I sit here in my house, in a nice suburban neighborhood, in Arden, North Carolina, I am dictating this column into my Dell computer using sophisticated (translation: expensive) speech-to-text software. I mention this because it takes some capital to do what I’m doing — capital that, in the 1960s, 99% of black Americans didn’t have. My world has been made possible by the sacrifice of Martin Luther King and tens of thousands of others. I’ve attended some of the best schools that our nation has to offer. I have worked at some of the best hospitals because of those who’ve come before me (like my father who was also a doctor). For this, I am forever indebted and grateful. [Read more →]

Tags: Newsletter by ecthompson md
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Where’s the Outrage?
May 2005*

A huge showdown is brewing in the Senate over President Bush’s judicial appointments. Senatorial tensions over this process are especially pronounced since it is very likely that later in the summer at least one member of the Supreme Court will be stepping down. This type of thing happens almost weekly in the House, but the 100-person Senate has always been more collegial. Compromise has been the hallmark of the Senate for over two hundred years. Now, it is looking as though High Noon is approaching. [Read more →]

Tags: Domestic Issues, Legal, Newsletter by ecthompson md
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Where’s the Outrage?*
April 2005

Pope John Paul II has died. I believe the passing of this extraordinary man of God is an opportune moment for all people, including a Methodist like me, to reflect on his life, his actions and his faith. John Paul made the papacy relevant once more on the world stage. He was truly a world leader. He helped to inspire changes in his native country that led to Polish independence. He spurred similar developments in Chile (1). Some historians have even given Pope John Paul credit for the fall of the Soviet Union. Besides having a hand in political events, the pontiff was a champion for the poorest and most oppressed souls on our planet, an inspiring friend to young people, and a serious environmentalist. But, paradoxically, he chose to turn his back on women, and he discouraged activist priests. Worst of all, he did not act quickly to rid the American Catholic church of child-molesting priests or their apologist-protectors such as Cardinal Law of Boston. Why didn’t he say, “If you molest a child, we will defrock you immediately and make sure you go to jail?” For these reasons, I am a bit bewildered by this great man. But I hope and pray that he rests in peace. [Read more →]

Tags: Civil Liberty, Domestic Issues, Newsletter, Pakistan by ecthompson md
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I wrote this over a year ago.  It is kinda fun to look back at what I was thinking about.  What was on my mind?  Bush and his misguided policies were on my mind!
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I’ve already written a book about the recent Presidential election and the state of politics in America; but, like many people who think and read and worry and talk a lot, I have more to say. A lot more. This on-line quarterly newsletter, with the working title, “Where’s the Outrage?” will be my sounding board—and yours—at least for now. Why this title? Because today, perhaps more than any other time in global history, outrageous events are happening all around the world; these events have me hopping, book-throwing, foot-stomping mad. And my question for you is: “Where is the Outrage?” As rational citizens of America and the world, we need to talk more and start thinking about what we can do.

Let me start by saying that, surprising as it may seem, I am not upset over the election. The best organization, the best politician won. I am upset at how George W. Bush won. He won, as he has governed, not by being the straight-shooting, no-nonsense fellow he is reputed to be, but by bowing to the so-called political savvy of advisors who advocate showing the public only shades of the truth. They told us why we had to go to war in Iraq–for the security of our country so we wouldn’t have to fight terror on our own soil. Iraq, they told us, posed an immediate threat. That turns out to have been a shade of the truth.

They told Middle America how the Bush tax cuts have helped our economy. Shaded truth again: our median income is still below year 2000 levels, the American economy has lost more jobs during the Bush years than it has created, and few of these new jobs are long-term, well-paying jobs.

To be fair, it is not unusual for politicians to stretch or shade the truth, especially during a campaign; and I expected Bush to puff up his record like a sixteen-year-old stud bragging on his pimped out Yugo. But the fact that so many Americans bought his versions of the truth and didn’t look a little harder at what was happening in their own neighborhoods is disheartening. The fact that we were distracted by Swift Boat Veterans—who ever heard of this group before now?—or that Kerry’s wife is wealthy and independent-minded or that the Bush daughters seem to enjoy life in spite of living in a fishbowl seemed to interest Americans more than the real issues like the war and the economy and education. Outrageous.

Now we are mired in Iraq—in part because we didn’t question the “truths” we were told about Saddam’s regime. Maybe Bush’s team didn’t know the whole truth at the time of the invasion. The idea of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of the madman Saddam—that does sound serious. But now we know circumstances weren’t as dire as our “intelligence” told us. The situation in Iraq has become a huge vortex that is sapping our resources, sucking about $1 billion a day and who can see the end? The January elections have not stopped the violence. Now we talk about “containing” rather than ending the violence. Apparently, there is no exit strategy. Perhaps there never was. Outrageous!

[Read more →]

Tags: Domestic Issues, Newsletter by ecthompson md
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I wrote this article and submitted it as an op-ed piece.  It was published in the Asheville Citizen Times on February 14, 2006.

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For several weeks now, Americans have been aware that our government is eavesdropping upon our private communications, calling these activities a “terrorist surveillance program.” These invasions of our privacy, we are told, have all been in the name of homeland security and have been characterized as part of President Bush’s war on terrorism. I’m only a physician, not a spy, but I cannot believe we have come to this.

Since the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, the specially appointed Sept. 11 Commission as well as a House and Senate Joint Intelligence Committee on Sept. 11, 2001, have investigated this act of terrorism as well as our intelligence-gathering system. Both groups have had much to say. Our intelligence community has been inefficient, poorly organized and ill-equipped in general. Looking back specifically at what led to Sept. 11, these study groups have identified a number of signs we missed or misread, bits of evidence we did not take seriously enough, instances of poor communication between government agencies and failures to properly interpret the intelligence that was being gathered prior to the attack on Sept. 11.

One of their most worrisome findings is the fact that the powerful government agencies charged with protecting Americans from terrorism — the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and State Department — were not working cooperatively. In all the pages of recommendations made by the Sept. 11 Commission and the House and Senate Joint Intelligence Committee, however, there was not one suggestion that our government should secretly violate the privacy of its citizens by eavesdropping upon their telephone calls and e-mail.

In order to prevent the government from misconstruing or abusing its powers, our Founding Fathers adopted the Bill of Rights in 1789.

It would seem, however, that in the year 2006, in the name of homeland security and with frightening language about the possibility of another terrorist attack on U.S. soil, our government is coming very close to violating several of the rights that are basic to American democracy.

The First Amendment addresses the right to free speech, the Fourth Amendment assures citizens that their privacy will not be violated without due cause, and even the Sixth Amendment, which addresses criminal trials, requires that the accused be confronted with the witnesses against them.

Does secretly eavesdropping on American citizens’ conversations square with these constitutional provisions?

I would imagine that most Americans are like me — we don’t want any more Sept. 11s, and we are satisfied that the official criticisms of the agencies in our government charged with protecting our security and the recommendations for improving our intelligence community, listed below, make a lot of sense:

• Both the Sept. 11 Commission and the House and Senate Joint Intelligence Committee found that neither the U.S. government nor the intelligence community had developed a comprehensive strategy for dealing with Osama bin Laden or al-Qaida.

• Both groups noted that the intelligence community was not well organized or well-equipped to combat global terrorists with targets inside the United States.

• They recognized that our intelligence community is not prepared to handle the volume of foreign-language data that comes in relating to terrorism.

• They recommended that we combine strategic intelligence and operational planning against international terrorists by creating a National Counterterrorism Center.

• They recommended that we unify the intelligence community under a new national intelligence director and develop mechanisms to share information among all the arms of government that participate in counterterrorism.

Let me repeat, however, that nowhere in their analysis or recommendations did either study group mention, much less suggest, warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens.

Even if a good case for governmental eavesdropping could be made, does the evidence we now have about the events leading up to Sept. 11 suggest that a measure such as this could have prevented the murder and destruction that took place that day?

I don’t think so.

Writing assistance by Catherine Ross, PhD.

Tags: Domestic Spying, National Intelligence, Newsletter, Terrorism by ecthompson md
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