USA - Where Everything's for Sale.

Ever since I put this as my signature on e-mail, I've gotten comments and questions about why I put it there. BTW, not all the comments were polite. This piece is a defense against charges that I am a communist, a fascist, an Islamist or simply anti-American.

I've asked everyone who's questioned the signature to come up with one thing in our society that ISN'T for sale and I've been met with large amounts of silence. One person replied, "love" and this seemed reasonable until I suggested that this meant no one marries for money - and this was obviously the wrong thing to say because the person I was speaking with hung up the phone. I was, however, gratified that no one even suggested our government since even the most trollish of people don't think our respresentatives put the common good ahead of personal or political gain as reflected in campaign contributions. Education is clearly for sale unless you can tell me with a straight face that all kids in this country get an equal shot at a good education. Health? Perhaps you've read that many drugs, including some necessary to support life, are in short supply because they've gone off patent and are in the public domain - which means the drug companies can't make as much money from them and so have discontinued their production.

The last straws, of course, were those who suggested justice as an unpurchasable commodity. This might have been before four San Francisco police, accompanied by two employees of Apple Corporation, invaded a citizen's home without a warrant in order to look for a lost iPhone prototype, which was not found. If a typical citizen tried that, I wonder what the outcome would have been. And let's not talk about high-priced lawyers.

Speaking of justice, does anyone seriously think that money doesn't play a part with folks like Lindsay Lohan, Charlie Sheen or any number of professional (oops, I mean college) athletes who seem to think the law is for "the little people," as Leona Helmsley called them? Is it a coincidence that the great majority of inmates in our prisons are poor or is it just that the poor are fundamantally morally inferior to the people at the top of the income ladder? Everyone knows wealthy people don't do drugs or mess with minors. Ask Roman Polanski. Prostitution? That's obviously something the rich don't do. They marry a number of times and throw exclusive parties in between.

We've mentioned patented drugs, but how about general medical care? Does money have anything to do with how long people live or how well? Why are there so many more doctors per capita in areas with very high incomes? Could it be that the system is rigged a little? Making a doctor go into hock for a couple of hundred grand is a great motivation for that doctor to look for places he can make the most money. Hint: this is not in the poor part of town.

The pat answer for this is that we have to allow free enterprise and "the market" to regulate our way of life. Since Cuba provides free education through medical school and since Cuba is a communist state, the thinking is that providing free medical training is communistic. Never mind that Denmark has a higher life expectancy than we do and its people register a higher level of happiness in life. Denmark is socialist!!!!!! Therefore what they do must be wrong. Look at their taxes!! The fact that most Danes think not having to worry about medical expenses, schooling or elder care might be worth the money has nothing to do with it. It's socialistic!!

O.K. I'm waiting for some blistering replies.

Justice Song at Twilight

The death of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan on May 2 did two significant things. First, it rid the world of a man who, in my judgement, was a truly dangerous and deranged person. Second, it gave us a terrific opportunity to examine what we mean by the term "justice."

If what we mean by the word is the John Wayne-type of justice we see in westerns or the Old Testament "eye for an eye" justice that is being practiced by Jews and Muslims in the Middle East or the plain revenge killings popular among members of the Sicilian Mafia, then I would unhesitatingly agree with President Obama that bin Laden has been "brought to justice." But if we're talking about the kind of justice discussed in the New Testament, or the Constitution or American jurisprudence, then what happened to bin Laden is as far from justice as Abbottabad is from the World Trade Center.

After World War II, I watched newsreels of some of the biggest scumbags in world history stand trial in Nuremburg, Germany. Among them were people who participated, not in the murder of 3000 innocent people, but over six million. They stood or sat in court, listening to witnesses in front of a judge and were duly sentenced and, in some cases, executed. Later, even Israeli agents, after kidnapping Adolf Eichman from Argentina and taking him to Israel, put him on trial for the murder of hundreds of thousands of their fellow Jews. The key world here is "trial."

Regardless of how heinous a person's actions may be or what kind of person he or she may be, under American justice and, incidentally, the justice system of any advanced nation, a person must be judged. This means arguments for both sides must be heard and a verdict delivered. Here, there must also be a jury to hear the evidence. That's the way American Justice works.

Shooting an unarmed man in the head is not American Justice.

So let's not quibble over whether we're better off as a country - or a world - without Osama bin Laden. Let's instead debate what kind of country we want and be honest enough to admit it when we want it changed. If, for example, we think torture is justified if it results in a desired outcome, then be honest enough to say it. If assassination squads are needed for our country's survival, then change the law to permit it. Don't teach our children about things that don't exist - it's unfair to them.  Justice is justice. Murder is murder. Let's not confuse the issue with flag buttons or shouts of "USA! USA!"

If you believe in justice, then you have to believe in equal justice. If it's OK for us to shoot bin Laden, then why isn't it OK for some member of the Taliban to shoot President Obama? Because Obama is a good guy and bin Laden is a bad guy? You can call this idiotic because everyone knows our way of life is the best in the world, right? Our kind of justice is the best, right?

But you have to be able to back this up with evidence. In America, a person should be believed innocent until proven guilty. In America, a person's color, race or national origin shouldn't matter in a court of law. In America, a person is entitled to a trial before a jury of his/her peers. When Lee Harvey Oswald, accused of shooting President Kennedy, was gunned down by Jack Ruby before going to trial, many of us cheered. But the fact was Oswald was innocent when he died. He had not been proven guilty. Cumbersome, but that's the way our justice system works.

Think of this when we think of Osama bin Laden.