What we need, what we want

    Watching the indescribable sacrifices of America's infantry in the trenches of World War II, legendary war correspondent Ernie Pyle made a plea in print.

    Pay for enlisted men overseas made no distinction between those dodging bullets and those in the typist pool. That was wrong, he wrote. Those with mud on their faces deserved additional combat pay.

    Pyle didn't assume anyone would hear his plea, but Congress did. A combat bonus was enacted mere weeks after he suggested it.

   In a similar vein, I wonder if anyone in Congress was listening when new Secretary of Veterans Affairs Bob McDonald said that the VA health system needs 28,000 added medical professionals to respond to runaway needs.

   Yeah, fat chance.

   Maybe someone in Congress was listening, but since McDonald hails from the executive branch, again: Fat chance. It doesn't matter if veterans' care is on the line. Republicans on Capitol Hill have a feud to wage and scores to settle.

   Whatever number is needed, and some Republicans say McDonald overstates it, vouchers and privatization aren't going to patch the holes that caused the VA wait-list scandal.

   When it comes to battle, it's, "Go, go, go." Then survivors return home, and it's, "Take a number." Over the last 11 years we wouldn't haven't blinked twice to send 28,000 bodies to Afghanistan or Iraq. But 28,000 added medical professions to help heal the returning? Can't do it.

  You say the VA is too costly? Ah, but we spent $1.57 trillion to fund wars in Iraq and Afghanistan without a cheap peep from today's deficit hawks. That includes $92.3 billion this year when, for all intents and purposes, on both fronts, the war was over.

   That we can spend so much on war yet run from what it costs to mend the resulting wounds indicts us as a society, and reveals many of our policy makers to be shysters.

   There is spending we need, and spending we want.

    Many -- too few, unfortunately -- questioned the need to roll tanks into Iraq. Well, there's no questioning the need to help the wounded war veterans. Yet out of political expedience we will figure out ways to prolong their suffering.

   It's just a fact of life that often our needs as a nation are set aside for the "wants" of political forces.

    Back in the '80s, with Ronald Reagan leading the charge, Congress passed a massive restructuring of the tax code. It flattened rates. It closed loopholes. And what did Reagan and Co. do with the revenue freed up by these measures? Use the money to reduce the deficit? Help schools, highways, waterways? Heck, no.

   The measure was revenue-neutral by design. To do anything else would be to feed the beast: the federal government.  So from tax reform there would be no gain whatsoever to the commonwealth, except for happier returns for those at the upper reaches of the tax code.

   Indeed, if those lawmakers had wanted to, they would have erased the federal deficit entirely at that historic moment. But they didn't. The anti-government crowd needed the deficit to continue to say we couldn't afford to help those who needed a little extra help.

   Wants and needs: They needed that deficit in the campaign to asphyxiate that which the Roosevelts, Kennedy and Johnson had wrought.

    Today we are told we can't afford to provide subsidies to Americans who previously had no health insurance. We can, however, afford to build whole cities overseas to wage war, to clothe, to feed the people we send. We provide the world's best battlefield triage, because those who wage our battles need our support.

    Those who should come home after the battle? Well, a nation must watch its spending.

    Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

Democrats hit by Newton’s apple

    The political Einsteins are flexing their brows over Nov. 4: They cite President Obama's failure, Dems' fecklessness, Republicans' vision and efficacy, Mitch McConnell's savoir faire. Egads.

   Sports fans: Is there anything more grating than The Wave? Imagine one that is confined to those in the box seats.

   Celebrate they can. Yes, stretch those legs and those arms. The Superior Dance is in order.

   However, let's not overanalyze that which can be explained with two theorems – one in political science and one in physical science.

   The physics first: Newton's third law says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

    Action: The nation elected Obama twice, smiting those who demonized him from the moment he first strode on-stage.

     Reaction: To these bitter defeats, one should have expected fulsome off-year responses. We've now seen two. Why expect anything else, especially from a GOP base that never even accepted this president's legitimacy as an American? Reaction is what reactionaries do.

  Now for the political science theorem, which goes thusly: In a low-turnout election, the advantage goes to the antis, the angries, the negatory vote.

  Simply put, when few people vote, the ones who have a blood oath to do so will, and those who have no grievance won't.

   Low turnout? Not only was it low, it was historically low -- an estimated 37 percent of registered voters -- the most pitiful turnout since 1942. (And just what GOP chieftains wished for.)

   There seems to be some disagreement as to whether to call this a wave election. Some analysts say, no, it's just what one can expect, certainly not a tidal endorsement of a party on the "outs" nationally. The distinction is immaterial.

    Call it a wave.

    Hauling Isaac Newton back into the discussion, nothing else could have been expected. For when it comes to action fit to unleash a tidal reaction, Obama and the Democrats issued one of asteroidal size in 2010: the Affordable Care Act.

    Big? It's the biggest health-care initiative in our history. Medicare was for seniors. The ACA is for young and old. Medicaid is for the poor. The ACA is for those with enough money to live but not enough to afford health coverage.

   Controversial? Nothing this seismic could come without angst and anger, and quite a few screw-ups. Name your game-changing national adventure -- World War II, the space race, the civil rights movement – each had its debacles and disasters, and of course political trials.

   Indeed, the political ramifications are uncannily reminiscent of what emanated after Congress eviscerated Jim Crow with the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act.

   Lyndon Johnson acknowledged that he and his party lost a lot of political capital to the forces of social stasis and obstruction. After Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan exploited antipathy to such federal audacity, that anger became a political force unto itself. And so it remains.

   Speaking of political capital: As Johnson did with civil rights, what Obama has done with health care has benefited people with almost no political coin, while infuriating those with every advantage imaginable.

   So, too, Obama has done by standing up for gay rights. So, too, by deferring deportation of children of undocumented individuals. So, too, by challenging big oil and big coal in favor of alternatives that don't enrich those who've called the shots politically since the Rockefellers

    As with 2012, the 2014 election was a tip of the top hat to that grand old tradition, now embodied by the Koch brothers.

    A wave? Oh, yeah. A comeuppance for an activist president? Indeed.

    History will say that this is the price of a historic action. As for the next general election, when far more Americans are paying attention, we'll await history's verdict.

     Longtime newspaper editor John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

Choosing who gets to choose, 2014

  It's been 14 years since the victors in a dramatic election proved that the people's will could be wholly secondary to lawyers' arguments.

  It wasn't until 2001 that Bush v. Gore officially was settled by a single vote in the Supreme Court. But the precedent of setting aside a whole bunch of democracy for expediency's sake was well-established by then.

  We could belabor the inequities in the Electoral College which awarded the presidency to the man in second place. We could belabor all things Florida, its votes ultimately awarded like the services of a slave on a crate.

  All of those things are 14 years of torrent under the bridge. We are left with today.

  Give immense credit to the party that won that 2000 race. Today's GOP is 14 years smarter at ways to make sure expediency always beats out democracy.

   Comedian Lewis Black emotes: "Elected officials shouldn't get to choose who gets to choose elected officials." Ah, but of course they do, and will.

   Consider North Carolina, which cut back on early voting, affecting the potential participation of 2 million voters.

   And Florida. In the Sunshine State, scientists have determined that merciless voting lines are a good source of sun-imbued Vitamin D. Long voting lines are actually good for you.

  Then there's Texas and a restrictive voter I.D. law a federal judge said clearly was designed to undermine the turnout of blacks and Latinos. That was before a divided U.S. Supreme Court let Texas' abominable law stand for this election. Dissenting, Justice Ruth Ginsburg likened the law to a poll tax.

   True, there were victories in democracy vs. expediency. The Supreme Court threw out a voter I.D. measure in Wisconsin that was like a frozen maze from the mind of Stephen King.

   All of these measures are framed as confronting voter fraud. Based on exhaustive Republican investigations, voter fraud has been shown to be nearly as much a threat to the commonwealth as a Ricky Martin comeback tour.

   We are advised that without these measures, illegal aliens will swing elections. No they won't. Illegal aliens don't come to this country to swing elections. They come to swing hammers on our storm-torn roofs, to change our bed sheets, to wash our dishes, to mow our lawns, to harvest our veggies. Shame on the fear-mongers who use this weak pretext to turn voting into an obstacle course.

   The architects of vote suppression aren't afraid of illegal aliens' voting so much as having an accurate assessing of what all Americans think. They know what the thinking is at the country club, and that suits them just fine. They seek to leave it at that on Election Day.

   Then we have states like Oregon and Colorado, which have gone all-in on the notion of having all in – as many voters as possible, that is.

    Oregon and Colorado have all mail-in ballots. They have same-day voter registration. Yes, one can register on Election Day. This is something the power structure in North Carolina could not countenance. It revoked the practice this year. Expediency first, understand.

   Not surprisingly, we have heard attempts to portray these liberalized voting laws as recipes for disaster. Fox News siren Megyn Kelly told viewers that Colorado law allows just anyone to print a ballot on the computer. No, it doesn't. The print-out ballots in question are for overseas and military voters alone. And what is wrong with it anyway if secure means are devised to make that possible? Nothing, that's what.

  Colorado and Oregon are showing that more is better when it comes to democracy. But "more" is not what today's vote suppressors want, if it means more voters. They want to choose those who choose them.

  Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.