Author: jlpagano

And so #Trumpcare is born…let’s be sure and call it that

~ jlpagano

“Nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated”

Of course the President was referring to the “royal nobody” when he made that incredible statement!

What say we at least agree with him, since we all know it to be true.  My knowledge of a healthcare system is even more limited than his.

However, that does not mean I can’t have an opinion on the general aims of a health service.  And mine is that it our government should do all it can to ensure that it is accessible to all citizens.

When it comes to the nitty gritty of the new plan, I’m happy to let sources like Time magazine break  it down for me, like in this article titled “5 Things to Know Now About the GOP’s Obamacare Replacement Plan” :

The bill drastically cuts tax credits for the oldest and poorest Americans, while giving the upper class a major tax break. It also rolls back the Medicaid expansion and nixes the individual mandate, which requires everyone to buy health insurance. Crucially, it has not been scored by the Congressional Budget Office, so overall impacts are tough to gauge at this early point.

But even before we delve too deeply into all of that, can we make sure one thing happens.  We need to stop referring to this as an “Obamacare replacement”.

Both Donald Trump personally and the Republicans generally have done nothing but attack The Affordable Care Act since its inception.  In fact, they were responsible for some of the tweaks to the original legislation that brought about it’s current flaws.

Now, after six years of whinging and moaning and calling it a ‘disaster’, they have to be given ownership of this new plan.  And I don’t even think the GOP Congressfolk will have too many problems with my suggestion of a new name : #Trumpcare.

(note – I’m not saying I’m the first to think of it, I’m merely suggesting we all start using it!)

Let me be clear…I WANT it to work!!!  The only thing is…my definition of “work” doesn’t mean sustained or increased profits for insurance and pharmaceutical companies, rather it means, like I said previously, affordable care for as many citizens as possible.

But as we assess whether or not it will work, let us at least be sure to call it something that signifies who now owns it.

 

 

The Father Of All Scandals #tuambabies (repost)

~ jlpagano ~ Leave a comment

[After the findings of the Commission on Mother and Baby Homes, we have reposted this blog from June 8, 2014]

Much has been said about the #TuamBabies during the week, and when it comes to the vagaries of the Catholic Church and what they have gotten up to on this island since the formation of the State, there’s not that much I can add.

But at the risk of appearing to deflect attention from the Church, there is one key element of this outrage that I feel isn’t being mentioned at all.

There were 796 babies reportedly “discarded” in Tuam.  That means there are up to 796 fathers who are just as much involved in this story as the mothers, the babies and those in the institution involved.

Of course the whole reason for the existence of the institution was that the identities of the fathers was kept secret, so it’s not as though I could realistically expect us to ever discover any of their names.

But why aren’t we at least talking about them? 

Too much goes wrong in society at large because of the supposed need to protect people we deem to be important.  And the girls who were unfortunate to find themselves in these mother-and-baby institutions were usually being “blamed” for their situation.

We all know this to be wrong now, but as well as calling foul on the Church for their part in it, we should also be acknowledging exactly who is to blame.

Sure, such places like Bon Secours (which amazingly translates to “good relief”) contributed to a system whereby men, and more often than not men with a so-called “respectable” standing in society, had a ready-made “get out of jail free” card whenever their libidos got the better of them, often within their own family.  But I’m sure I’m not the only one sickened by that last sentence, so surely if lessons are to be learned from all of this we must start there.

Do we honestly think the root of this problem has gone away just because these institutions ceased to exist over 50 years ago on this island?  Hell no. 

Men are still acting on their urges today are they not?  And they have just as much need to have those urges hidden so they can remain in their lofty positions – only now we have things like sex trafficking to provide the supply to their demand. 

Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten I’m a man myself – but that’s my point.  Just because I am one doesn’t mean I should feel the need to defend the actions of these people, not by a long shot.  In fact, it should be people like me towards the front of the queue crying foul because I believe those of us who like to think we treat women with respect are very much in the majority.

And when the women who find themselves caught up in those horrible businesses get pregnant, the “inconvenience” is still “dealt with”, only in a different way, and you can bet your bottom Euro the father is nowhere to be seen.

I hope the true extent of the #TuamBabies scandal around the country is discovered, but I also hope we derive the correct lessons from it. 

Sure, it is another stick with which to beat the Catholic Church, but as much as I’d be happy to wield said stick, I cannot ignore the fact that it is merely a subset of a patriarchal mindset which still thrives throughout the western so-called civilisation and the longer we avoid talking about it, the longer it will endure. JLP

A Week Of President Trump : Feb 25-Mar 3, 2017

~ jlpagano

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Week 6

The President would like this week, and indeed his entire first 100 days no doubt, to be defined by his speech to Congress on Tuesday…

Now whatever you might think of Trump, and if you are reading this site I’m guessing it’s “not much”, here at FPP we believe it to be important to keep track of what he says.  Yes, that means listening to ALL of the speech, no matter what kind of pain you may feel in the pit of your stomach throughout.

That said, the difficulty in watching does not stop there.   The fawning of the mainstream press afterwards was equally sickening.  “He shifted in tone”.  “He started to sound presidential.”  So he read almost exclusively from the teleprompter for once, BIG DEAL!!!

If a President comes across as a buffoon most of the time, he doesn’t deserve credit for suddenly behaving as he always should have done.

Besides…if he sounds “Presidential” then surely he must have sounded “like a politician”.  Wasn’t it a campaign promise for him to do anything BUT just that???

And finally, how many times during the Obama administration did we hear Republicans say something like “Well, sure, he gives a good speech, but it’s the substance that’s all wrong”?

It has to be all about the content.  So here are a couple of interesting viewpoints…first, from Bernie Sanders on what the President DIDN’T say…

…while The Young Turks highlight what had me yelling at the screen…

So the speech is what Trump WANTS you to remember from this week.  Does that make it the most memorable thing however?  How could it be, with THIS administration???

It turns out Mike Pence had his own private email server as governor of Indiana but seems to be unwilling to share all of the correspondence with us…wasn’t that considered by some a felony not so long ago?

Pence’s office said outside counsel was hired to review his private emails and make any necessary transfers to the state as he was leaving his job as governor.

Thirty pages of emails were released, and an unspecified amount were not released because of sensitive information.

Then we have Rachel Maddow claiming to have blown the lid on the botched Muslim Ban process…

The Rachel Maddow Show has obtained, exclusively, a Department of Homeland Security intelligence assessment document. The document, from the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, makes the case that most foreign-born, U.S.-based violent extremists are likely not radicalized when they come to the U.S., but rather become radicalized after living in the U.S. for a number of years.

Oh, and then there’s Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III…

Amid mounting calls for his resignation, Sessions told a press conference on Thursday that he decided not to participate in any investigations “related in any way to the campaign for president of the United States” after meeting with senior department officials.

And those three stories were just from Friday morning!!!

It’s going to take a whole lot more than a speech to help keep this fast-sinking Trump ship afloat. JLP

#IANWAE

Click here for last week’s post

Keego : America from the outside, Ireland from the inside – 1

~ jlpagano

Let the records show this is our first guest post here on FPP!  Many thanks to Keego, we hope to hear much more!  If you’d like to contribute contact us at firperplu@gmail.com

Welcome to episode 1 of ‘America from the outside, Ireland from the inside’. This first post will be an introduction of what the aims are of the series, views from my computer screen and an ability to contact me for further discussion and challenging of opinions.

Situated on Dublin’s Southside, I am looking at the world through various computer screens that frighten me, and this will be where I write down what I usually end up shouting at the screens that are ruining my life.

Firstly why America? Well it is fairly simple. I grew up wanting to go to America and be American. They had the best food, the best sport, the best TV, they got the films 6 months before us and everyone was so happy. Whereas here in Ireland everyone was always milliseconds from getting annoyed, in America they said ‘have a nice day’ just for buying chewing gum in the shop.

But I was also very young in a relatively safe world. During the cold war (I arrived towards the end of it) no one was going to pull the trigger, self-preservation meant that status quo (while angry) remained. There was no Vietnam War like my parents had, or WW2 like my grandparents had. This may have been the America I wanted to live in. Along with that, I had zero interaction with anything political. That is the key.

In my lifetime I have seen 2 bushes, a Clinton and Obama and now a Trump. I don’t remember a thing about Bush sr. Clinton appeared to take care of business in his office, while making some mistakes along the way. Not diminishing these mistakes, but they were none of my business. Private life is private. This was the first time politics entered my life from America. I wondered why older men were interested in the private life of a younger man. Was it criminal jealousy on their part? Was it because no one wanted to travel south of their equator? Or was it to score points?

Through the next line of presidents the country began being strangled. Laws were brought in to tap phones, to screen passengers (mostly of a certain colour let’s be honest) and to invade the private lives of Americans. People reacted with ‘I have nothing to hide so I don’t care if they listen to my calls’. This is like saying I don’t care about free speech because I have nothing to say. Reactions became simply yes or no. Nuance disappeared. The eye for an eye mentality that came from western films was now a legitimate reaction.

The world changed. The economies crashed, the Kardsashians and obesity arrived and we fast forward further to 2017. An America with a reality TV star and business ‘mogul’ as president. The people got so annoyed with the system that the change they chose was someone who made money by licensing his image to buildings, fighting legal action and showing an inability to live in the real world.

In America, you are either left or right even though both main parties are now so similar you would struggle to find a difference. You pick your side and you are there forever. That is not healthy. Sometimes the more conservative approach works and sometimes a more liberal way works it depends on the issue at hand. It is never one or the other.

America is the epicentre of the social justice warrior movement. A group who chase offence with self-importance and who appear to have an inability to stand on their own beliefs and challenge those who disagree, Ireland has this too (there is a video from 3 Trinity College students getting someone they disagree with banned from the college). Instead they depend on violence to stop people expressing themselves, sounds familiar from the history books doesn’t it? Recently an unedited video surfaced from a lecture where an SJW did not believe in biology or scientific proof of gender. This is a problem. It is equal parts frightening and comedic. The police treat kids in bikinis like they are smuggling bombs and celebrities  are treated like leaders in debate. Meryl Streep gets up and talks about understanding and tolerance, while wearing a 20 grand dress in front of other actors who haven’t been stuck on a train at rush hour in a long time. The gap between the ‘them’ and ‘us’ has never been bigger and that leads to their current presidential predicament.

It may appear that I am on my high horse, but there is a saying. ‘People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones’. In Ireland there is an insane political system populated by careerists. But we also have a population that continues to vote the same people in. We have a ‘you scratch my back; I’ll scratch yours’ way of business which leads to the Healy Rae family getting up and talking about the war on flowers in a public park. Never mind the homeless people, they don’t vote! The pensioners who walk in the park will vote for me if I get the park cleared.

This is where we live. This is how our island works. Our police force have been accused on multiple occasions of smearing innocent people with varying crimes, because they reported wrong doings by the force. If I get accused of anything at work that needs an investigation, I would be sent home pending the outcome. In Ireland, in the Garda Siochana, the commissioner is allowed stay in place. It is insane. Either she has something on the people in government or they know we will forget about this if they spring another story. We have horrific stories coming out about abuse against children under state care since the smearing thing came out and it is slowly disappearing from the headlines.

I think that bring the introduction to an end. Basically I am a frustrated man struggling to make sense of people who use important constructs of the world for their own gains while promising to look out for those less well off.  For any American readers, there is no malice intended and  I expect debate and abuse on my observations from thousands of miles away, but I am always open to enlightenment and correction from all.

For my Irish readers, I think we need a beer!

This will be weekly observations on a world filled with beautiful people, run by people who couldn’t run a bath.

@nkeegan on twitter and @kdubdd on instagram

If you want actual appraisal of media coverage, ignore the President and go to FAIR.org

~ jlpagano

The President is very good at accusing those around him of doing exactly what he does, with “blaming the media for deliberate inaccuracy” a perfect example.

Nobody is suggesting the mainstream media is perfect, but if you want to see it properly scrutinized, I wouldn’t rely on the White House, past or present.

Instead you want a website like FAIR.org, this stands for Fairness & Aiccuracy In Reporting, which is dedicated to holding the fourth estate to task, not only on what it reports, but also what it tends to leave out.

Today we came across a great example of what they do in this article titled Shotgun Pointed at Black Children Trivialized as ‘Confederate Flag Incident’.  The story itself is worth a read and the wide variation in reporting is astonishing, but for this article we’d like to focus on the overall theme explored by this text :

how a story is framed is as important—if not more so—than the content of an article. Sixty percent of Americans don’t read past the headline and 60 percent of Americans share articles on social media without reading them. How a story is teed up to the reader is an essential element in how our media shape our understanding of the news.

That above passage could very well serve as a mission statement for this First Person Plural site going forward.  JLP

#IANWAE

 

Barry Cowen’s smugness re: #Right2Water campaign does not hold water

~ jlpagano

“Oh look at me!!! I’ve made the #Right2Water campaign look foolish!!!”, to paraphrase Fianna Fáil TD and brother of Bertie’s successor, Barry Cowen during the past week.

At an Oireachteas hearing (aka Joint Committee on Future Funding of Domestic Water Services Debate), Cowen asked representatives of the movement if they were in favour of a charge for excessive use of water, to which he was replied in the positive.

Deputy Barry Cowen: I ask the witnesses to answer the following. If this committee was in a position to agree a process by which people who use excessive amounts, in the opinion of this committee, were charged, is Right2Water happy with that?

Mr. Steve Fitzpatrick: Yes.

This led Cowen to go on twitter as though he had somehow convinced a vegetarian to enter a Big Mac eating competition.

After Paul Murphy TD of AAA-PBP accused Cowen of “selective quoting”, The Journal decided to do one of its “fact-check” articles, which in essence served to back up the very picture Cowan was trying to paint, ie one that only pro-Establishment readers would appreciate.

Let’s back up this particular truck, shall we.

First we need to make a clear distinction between what regulating water is meant to do, and what instead our government actually did.

Of COURSE we should be regulating water usage.  It is an important resources and should not be wasted.  But before we do so, we need to identify who is wasting it the most and target the regulation at them.  This clearly brings the private sector in the firing line way before domestic users, but this State has never been led by a Government that would acknowledge this.

Instead, the Fine Gael-led government (yes, I know, with Labour also in tow) sought to establish a revenue stream (pun fully intended) for a new corporate cash-cow known as Irish Water, and began charging the general public long before there was any opportunity to gauge which houses were using excessive amounts of water.

And on top of the specifics of the #Right2Water movement, the main reason it earned itself such incredible public support wasn’t just because of the water issue itself, but also because it was the straw that broke the Irish camel’s back after successive years of austerity following the banking crisis which happened under Bertie Ahern’s, and ultimately Brian Cowen’s, watch.

Even without the most recent poll numbers, when Fianna Fáil party leader and former Minster under Bertie, Micheal Martin eventually has the balls to bring down this current Government and call an election, seeing how the wider voting Irish public sees only two possible parties for leadership, he will be Taoiseach.

Would it be crazy to assume that his government would quickly seek to establish water charges exactly as Fine Gael had done, using the above selective testimony as some kind of justification?  With Cowan as the Minster responsible, no less?  JLP

#IANWAE

Perez wins #DNCchair vote but Progressives should not turn their backs

~ jlpagano

One of the most telling questions in the aftermath of Trump’s victory last November was – how can the Democrats respond?

It was a crushing defeat, leaving them not only without the White House, but also ther Senate, the House and the vast majority of state governing bodies as well.

Well, the opening remarks from the party’s leading “establishment” figures did not bode well.  The likes of Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi were a little too keen to focus on the involvement on the Russians in the election campaign while ignoring the fact that they both shut out the Sanders campaign in the primaries and also missed an open goal with the general election itself even with the alleged interference.

Now they need to regroup, and the first big test of this was the election of a new dhairperson of the Democratic National Committee.  This role is not that of “leader of the Party”, it is more one that is responsible for the overall brand of the party.  But this vote was significant in that the contest turned out to be a straight fight between Tom Perez, Labor Secretary under Obama and thus seen as leaning towards the “establishment”, and Keith Ellison, a Progressive congressman from Minnesota.

There can be little surprise that Progressives will be annoyed that Perez won, as this article on CommonDreams.org outlines…

Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth Action, which supported Ellison, said the outcome showed “[t]he DNC is out of touch with the American public and their needs. Democratic leaders were at a crossroads and today they chose to continue the failed Clinton strategy of prioritizing wealthy donors over the activist base.”

…and even the President himself weighed in shourtly after the result was announced…

Personally, while I would have backed Ellison myself, I don’t believe this is the time to direct anger at the Democrat leadership, however frustratingly corporate-controlled they may seem.  Now is the time to show them how much they need Progressive support,  and having won the vote by just 235 to 200, Perez at least appointed Ellison as his vice chair.

Does that automatically mean the Minnesota congressman will be included?  Of course not.  But right now is not the time to show division in the party.  Instead, at least let the new leadership be given a chance to take shape because there is a much bigger orange fish to fry.

That said,  a keen eye needs to be kept on how the party moves forward because if the likes of Sanders, Warren & Ellison aren’t getting their voices heard, their sizeable following could pose “establishment” Democrats a lot of headaches the next time primaries come around for house and senate elections.  JLP

#IANWAE

“All Presidents complain about the press” : Interesting New Yorker article from 2004

~ jlpagano

Barring the press because you don’t like what they write is an act of cowardice. The current President of the US is a coward.

The above is what I posted on my personal Facebook account as soon as I heard that Trump had barred the NY Times, CNN & the BBC from a press briefing.   I was pretty angry.  But then I remembered that even President Obama had issues with the press at times, so I did a bit of research, and I came across this article in the New Yorker from 2004.

It comprises an interview with writer Ken Auletta on the relationship between then-President George W Bush and the media – remember, this was the era of “weapons of mass destruction” and the neo-cons’ determination to invade Iraq.

DANIEL CAPPELLO: All Presidents complain about the press. How is the Bush White House different?

KEN AULETTA: In two ways. They are more disciplined. They reject an assumption embraced by most reporters: that we are neutral and represent the public interest. Rather, they see the press as just another special interest. The discipline flows down from President Bush, who runs the White House like a C.E.O. and demands loyalty. This is a cohesive White House staff, dominated by people whose first loyalty is to Team Bush. When Bush leaves the White House, most of his aides will probably return to Texas. They are not Washington careerists, and thus they have less need to puff themselves up with the Washington press corps. In fact—and this leads to the second difference—from Bush on down, talking to the press off the record is generally frowned upon and equated with leaking, which is a deadly sin in the Bush White House (unless it is a leak manufactured to advance the President’s agenda).

So clearly a fractious relationship with the press is far from a novelty, but you can’t deny that Trump has brought it to a whole new level.

 

A Week Of President Trump : Feb 18-24, 2017

~ jlpagano

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Week 5

This week our snippets are all going to be from the same source, namely The Rachel Maddow Show.

Donald Trump is always going on about “Fake News” but of course he knows as well as the rest of us that he’s only saying that about the publications who are getting closest to the truth about him, when in fact in general they do actually endeavour to cover the news as it should be done, albeit with some influence from corporate advertisers.

Rachel Maddow is different.  Put simply, her show is the closest to an ideological mirror image of Fox News in that she seems to have a lot of her information handed to her directly by the Democrats.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, and I do like her style of presentation, where she not only covers a story but also takes you back through her reseatch process with some interesting information along the way.

However, I wonder if she is just a little bit too much…what’s the word, sneery?  I mean, let’s face it, Trump makes an ass of himself a LOT, but to sit there and laugh at him as you cover it, in my view anyway, is only going to strengthen the resolve of his supporters.

Anyway, that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop following her show on a daily basis, and here are some links from the week just gone…

Judge’s e-mail order could move Pruitt from frying pan to fire

Trump’s for-profit enterprise isn’t the ‘Southern White House’

Administration adopts a ‘Never-Mind-What-Trump-Said’ foreign policy

New Trump NSA pick, McMaster, known for speaking truth to power

Disgusted by Donald Trump’s antics, CIA veteran resigns

Annoyed by pushback, Trump takes aim at progressive activism

Dem reminds Trump: LGBT doesn’t stand for ‘Let’s Go Back in Time’

Trump’s ‘military operation’ apparently isn’t a military operation

Is the Trump administration stupid or nefarious?