Commentary, perspective, and point-of-view from the Globe's columnists and editorial-page editors and writers.
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August 3, 2006
Today’s story about Deval Patrick’s membership in Harvard’s all-male Fly Club misses the point. The news isn’t that Patrick may be more of an elitist than he admits. The headline is that the candidate had the good sense to listen to his wife.
Diane Patrick says she told her husband it was inappropriate for him to belong to the Fly Club, and he took her advice, dropping out in 1983.
Is his 30-year-old Fly Club membership proof that he doesn't respect women's rights?
Nah. As President Clinton's assistant attorney general for civil rights, he made a career of rebuffing both Congress and entrenched traditions.
In 1995, Patrick opposed a bill to end affirmative action and sponsored by Senator Robert Dole, saying that by "completely prohibiting otherwise lawful and flexible affirmative action and categorically rejecting several decades of Supreme Court precedent imposing limits on affirmative action, this bill attacks remedies that have evolved as a modest, but helpful response to the deep intransigence of institutions which persist in viewing African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and women as less deserving of jobs, business opportunities and places in universities."
In 1997, as he was stepping down from this job, he said: "There's work still to be done. For example, VMI and The Citadel are now open to women, but there are still issues to be worked through in terms of the full integration of women into those programs."
"How can I put it? I think it was Thomas Jefferson who said, 'Constant vigilance is the price of liberty.' I take that to mean that the work of civil rights, which is of course the measure of liberty and the vitality of American democracy, is never finished."
August 2, 2006
Corrosive political rhetoric sometimes makes it seem like hordes of terrorists and job-stealers are pounding at the gates, trying to infiltrate the United States.
Calmer voices don't grab headlines. But they help win the war against fear mongering. A few examples:
Sean Gonsalves of the Cape Cod Times takes a closer look at the term "illegal immigrant."
Scholastic, the children's book publisher, has a website for school teachers called "Immigration: Stories of Yesterday and Today." It's a look at the past as well as the thoughts and experiences of recent immigrants: three girls from India, Vietnam, and Kenya.
The Library of Congress has an immigration web site that starts with the Walt Whitman poem "You, Whoever You Are," a well-spoken salute to the rest of the world.
August 1, 2006
Two Democrats who are considered possible candidates for President in 2008 are proposing legislation on healthcare reform to find ways to provide health insurance to the more than 45 million Americans who do not have coverage.
Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts has a healthcare proposal that aims to insure all Americans by 2012. (See Globe op-ed here)
“We can't triangulate this issue," Kerry said, indicating that a “third way” compromise with Republicans would likely result in many Americans remaining uninsured. “The Democratic Party must stand for healthcare for all Americans, or we don't stand for anything at all.”
Interestingly, the new Massachusetts healthcare policy is the epitome of triangulation and bipartisan compromise, though and some critics say it will fall short of providing universal health coverage.
The latest proposal by Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin is an innovative plan that would enable states to test universal health care plans, in light of the federal government’s unforgivable inability to insure all Americans.
Feingold has always supported universal healthcare, calling in his first senate term for a single-payer model. In 1993, he opposed the Clinton healthcare plan, arguing that it did too much for the insurance industry, and not enough for the uninsured.
As for the costs of these plans: Kerry’s aides have told the Globe that his plan would cost $653 billion over 10 years, and maintain that a repeal of the Bush tax cuts for people who make more than $200,000 annually would help fund it.
Meanwhile Feingold’s plan, a pilot program that reflects a growing belief that state governments are a more likely home for creative policy-making than the federal government, is expected to cost $32 billion over ten years.
The question of how effective and politically feasible these plans are will be debated in the coming months. Given that an estimated 18,000 Americans die each year from lack of health insurance, it is clear that reform is long overdue.
Posted by Michael Corcoran at 11:20 AM
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