LESS THAN A CENTURY

While the historic passage of health care reform today had not a single Republican vote, we should give a nod to a couple of long gone Republican presidents who championed, but failed to achieve this overdue reform.

In 1912, Teddy Roosevelt, one of the famous four on Mount Rushmore, made national health care a plank in his run for president, four years after he gave up the presidency in 1908. Although TR, who governed as a Republican, was running on the Bull Moose ticket, he was essentially representing the progressive wing of the Republican Party, which had been taken over by the conservatives during William Howard Taft's administration.

In 1973, Richard Nixon, who it turns out was a passionate proponent of national health care, proposed it to a Congress that was soon to focus on his removal from office for Watergate offenses.

The 178 unanimous and grim House Republican faces that said NO on giving health care to an additional 30 million while they champion trillions for senseless war, have amnesia when it comes to their two national health care forebears. TR's apostasy was being a progressive, the bete noir of current Republican propagandists like Glenn Beck who liken them to Nazis and communists. Nixon, has been largely erased from the Republican play book due to his disgraceful and early exit.

But in the Big Smoke Filled Room In The Sky a couple of Republican icons are surely smiling and gratified that their cause didn't even take a century to accomplish.

Originally published in the Glen Ellyn News, March 24, 2010 and the Chicago Sun Times
March 25, 2010

RESPONSE TO CHICAGO TRIBUNE EDITORIAL "REAGAN'S CURRENCY"

Your March 13th editorial "Reagan's currency" is a perfect example of how a half truth can be used to present a false argument.

In promoting the replacement of U.S. Grant with Ronald Reagan on the $50 bill, you make point that Grant "presided over a notoriously...corrupt White House" without saying a word in comparison to the Reagan administration. In fact, the Reagan administration had more members, 138, either indicted, convicted or subject to official investigations for official or criminal misconduct, than Grant's or any other administration.

Some of the more prominent include: Lyn Nofziger, Michael Dever, James Watt, John Poindexter, Richard Secord, Elliott Abrams, Robert McFarlane, Alan Fiers, Thomas Clines, Carl Channel, Richard Miller, Frank Gomez, Donald Fortier, Clair George, Rita Lavelle, Philip Winn, Thomas Demery, Deborah Dean, Cataina Villaponda, Joseph Strauss, and lastly, the notorious "arms for hostages" Oliver North.

When candidate Obama referred to Reagan being a transformational president, what he omitted was that transformation meant from pin stripes to prison stripes.

We who care about such mundane matters as honesty and legality in our presidential administrations have no problem putting Reagan on the $50 bill...as long as it is in monopoly money.