The Mythology of the So-Called News Program 60 Minutes

By Steve Halpern

The other evening was a routine night where Judi and I watched the so-called news program 60 Minutes. We don’t expect to get an accurate view of the world from 60 Minutes, but some of the stories give a different perspective to the news. Last evening there was a story about a $450 million gift to the New York University Medical School that made this university “tuition free.”

Lesley Stahl was the 60 Minutes so-called reporter who told this story. She reported that Kenneth Langone and his wife Elaine organized to raise the funds for the medical school. Langone personally contributed $100 million. Langone also raised the funds to finance the Home Depot corporation.

This story also reported on the astronomical costs for tuition in order to obtain a diploma from of medical school in this country. Those costs can amount to $100,000 per year, including interest. Yes, that’s right, lending institutions gouge out huge profits from medical school students who need to take out loans.

Largely because of this state of affairs, the story reported that by the year 2030 there will be a shortage of 49,000 primary care doctors. Because tuition is so high, students routinely gravitate to the specialties that pay significantly more.

The announcement of this grant was met with a standing ovation by medical school students who were greatly relieved that they would not need to go into debt for decades. One doctor said that in order for her to pay off her student loan and the medical school student loan for her son, she would be paying until the day she died.

However, this story also gave us a bit of information that wasn’t a reason to celebrate. Half of all the medical school students come from families representing the most affluent 20% of the population. This, no doubt, comes from the fact that educational funding in this country is grossly unequal.

Educational funding in Philadelphia is half of what it is in the neighboring Lower Merion School District. This inequality for the funding of education is a flagrant violation of the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution that calls for equal protection under the law.

Understanding this reality, we can say that half of the $450 million grant will go towards giving financial relief to the 20% of the most affluent families in this country.

The real story

While Kenneth Langone donated a small part of his money to the N.Y.U. Medical School, he is adamantly opposed to taxing the wealthy. In March of 2014 Salon.com quoted Langone as linking populist demands to tax the wealthy, to the politics of the fascist Adolf Hitler. He argued that: “Because if you go back you 1933, with different words, this is what Hitler was saying in Germany.”

However, nowhere in the 60 Minutes story did they mention that in the nation of Cuba, not only is all medical school free for all the students, but Cuba has trained thousands of doctors from all over the world without charge. These doctors include about 100 students from the United States who were trained in Cuba. As a result, today Cuba has three times more doctors per capita as the United States.

Because of this reality today Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate than the United States. While infant mortality in this country varies widely between affluent and less affluent communities, the infant mortality rate in Cuba is uniform throughout the country. Why?

While doctors in this country spend little time with patients who do not have the more expensive medical insurance, in Cuba doctors routinely visit all pregnant women as well as their children.

However, those facts are only a part of the story. Cuba has eradicated eleven diseases through vaccination programs. Cuban medical volunteers who serve indigent communities throughout the world have delivered 2.6 million babies, done 9.1 million surgeries, 12.8 million vaccinations, and 4 million sight saving surgeries worldwide. These procedures were done by about 400,000 Cuban medical professionals since 1960.

Conclusion

So, we can say that the story about the $450 million financial grant to the N.Y.U. Medial School had a few problems. First, we can say that, in my opinion, Kenneth Langone never earned the obscene amount of money he has.

Wealth is created by workers utilizing the minerals in the ground to fabricate the commodities we all need and want. This is done by workers all over the world who manufacture and distribute the commodities. Some of these commodities are sold by the Home Depot Corporation. Kenneth Langone, being a capitalist, is routinely obsessed with cutting costs and this effort keeps the wages of workers down. He has merely convinced people with money to move their money from one place to another.

Leslie Stahl is paid millions of dollars every year, in my opinion, to pretend that she is reporting the news. The conversation between Stahl and Langone was between one millionaire speaking to a billionaire. Working people were barely represented in this story.

Yes, there are some medical students who come from families who do not have financial resources, who will benefit from this grant. However, this grant will not reverse the overall cutbacks in health care in this country.

In Philadelphia Hahnemann Hospital closed its doors laying off about 2,500 employees. This includes 500 residents who will have additional costs because their mal-practice insurance was cut off. Some of those residents are visiting from other countries, and are threatened with deportation if they fail to obtain a new medical residency.   

About fourteen maternity wards have been closed in the Philadelphia area. These kinds of cutbacks are happening all over the country. Yet the United States spends more on health care, per person, than any other nation in the world. The contrast between health care in this country and Cuba couldn’t be more striking.

So, a question must be asked that the so-called news program 60 Minutes isn’t interested in asking. Why is there such a profound difference between health care in Cuba and this country, given that Cuba spends only a tiny percentage of money for health care as the United States? The clear answer is that in Cuba the government makes the needs of the people their top priority. In this country the priority of the government and the capitalist press makes the drive to maximize profits for corporations it’s primary goal.

José Pepe Mujica—The journey from prison to the Presidency

By Steve Halpern

Recently I learned of the story of José Pepe Mujica. He was raised on a farm on the outskirts of Montevideo, Uruguay. His lifelong journey transported Mujica from a prison cell in solitary confinement to the Presidency of the nation of Uruguay. However, Mujica refused to live in the Presidential residence, and preferred to live in his small farmhouse.  

We might consider that the military dictatorships of Latin America did not allow for the right to protest. Denied these rights, Mujica joined the political organization known as the Tupamaros who defended their movement using armed struggle. They robbed banks to provide for the needs of the people. Mujica defended these actions arguing that the day-to-day operations of banks represent criminal activities against the majority of the population.

Mujica’s wife, Lucia Topolansky was also a member of the Tupamarus. She had been working for a bank and learned that this bank was engaging in routine corruption. In this country, corruption is often exposed by mass political movements, or by enterprising journalists. Since this was not possible in Uruguay, Topolansky took part in a raid of this bank where the internal documents were confiscated. This was how the Tupamaros exposed corruption.

In this country, I’ve supported protests against mass murder by the police, as well as the mass incarceration in this country. In the year 1971, 111 political prisoners in Uruguay protested against the conditions they faced by escaping from the dungeons where they lived.

However, in 1972 there was a government crackdown and many Tupamaros were arrested. José Mujica was one of those arrested. He was tortured, spent seven years in solitary confinement, and a total of thirteen years in prison.

During many of his years in solitary, Mujica was not allowed to read books. During that time he studied the lives of the insects and rats that he shared his prison cell with.

In 1985 because of a mass movement that opposed the military dictatorships in Latin America, the government released Mujica and the other political prisoners. Then, in 2010, after serving several years in the government, Mujica became the President of Uruguay.

I believe it is useful to look at all those revolutionaries who served time in prison, and then became government leaders or leaders of movements in support of the interests of the working class.

Revolutionaries who served time in prison

When we think of the idea of what a prison is, I believe we can also say that the institution of slavery was a mass prison. So, from that perspective, we can say that the Roman slave known as Spartacus went on to lead an uprising of about 90,000 slaves that defeated the Roman legions on many occasions. However, the Romans defeated his army and 6,000 former slaves, who supported Spartacus were crucified on a street called the Appian Way.

The former slave Toussaint L’Overture was the leader of a revolutionary movement that established the nation of Haiti. This was first nation in the American hemisphere that outlawed slavery.

Frederick Douglass as another slave who escaped slavery and became a central leader of the abolitionist movement. He then convinced President Lincoln to allow Black people to serve in the Union Army. This advice proved to be necessary in the Union victory against the confederacy.

The royal government of the Russian Czar arrested Vladimir Illich Lenin for participating in a meeting critical of the extreme repression in Russia during those years. Lenin was then exiled to Siberia. He escaped, and then lived in exile until 1917. Then he returned to Russia, and organized the Bolsheviks to take power and resolve profound problems the people faced in those years.

Leon Trotsky had a similar fate as Lenin. He was a leader in the 1905 rebellion in Russia. He also was arrested, exiled to Siberia, escaped and lived in Europe and the United States before returning to Russia in 1917. He was a leader of the Russian Revolution, and then became the commander of the Red Army that defeated an invasion of 14 nations attempting to overthrow the Bolshevik government.

When Joseph Stalin took power in Russia, he reversed most of the gains of the revolution. The new government of the Soviet Union arrested Trotsky and eventually exiled him from the country. However Trotsky continued to advance Marxist politics and continues to have a legacy in the international workers movement.

Eugene Debs was a socialist who ran for President several times in the United States. He gave a speech in Canton, Ohio protesting the U.S. sending troops to participate in the First World War. Because of that speech, Debs spent three years in prison. While in prison, Debs ran for President and received over 900,000 votes.

Mother Jones was an organizer for the United Mine Workers union. She supported strikes by workers throughout North America. When she attempted to support a strike in Colorado, the state militia placed her in prison.

While she was in prison, Mother Jones sent a letter to a support meeting held in New York City. She said that she was battling with “sewer rats” in her cell, but if she was out of prison, she would be battling with the “human sewer rats” who sent her to prison and opposed the demands of the strikers.

There was Malcolm X who experienced the routine discrimination in the United States. Denied a way of making a decent living Malcolm became a thief. He served many years in prison. Then he became a leader of the movement demanding unconditional liberation of Black people in the United States. Malcolm X became known all over the world. His speeches continue to inspire people seeking liberation today.

Martin Luther King was a leader of the movement protesting against the system of legalized discrimination known as Jim Crow. Government officials arrested King for violating those discriminatory laws. Today there is a national holiday celebrating the life of Martin Luther King. In Washington D. C. there is a prominent monument memorializing his life.

Then there was Fidel Castro. Castro faced the brutal dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Denied the right to engage in a legal protest movement, on July 26, 1953 Castro organized a raid on the Moncada military barracks located in Santiago, Cuba.

The military forces defeated Fidel’s raid at Moncada and Fidel served time in prison. Then, the July 26 movement organized a revolution that eventually took power on the island. That government continues to hold power in Cuba. Because of the revolution, today every Cuban has a lifetime right to education and health care.

Along with Fidel Castro was Celia Sanchez, who also was a leader of the Cuban Revolution. She was arrested and faced an almost certain execution. However, Sanchez managed to escape and became a central leader of the Cuban revolutionary government. 

Nelson Mandela was a leader of the African National Congress that organized to do away with the apartheid system in South Africa. For many years the ANC was a non-violent organization. Then, in the year 1960 the South African armed forces murdered 67 activists as they peacefully demonstrated in a place called Sharpeville.

Responding to those murders, the ANC armed itself and engaged in armed uprisings. Nelson Mandela was then convicted on charges of carrying out an armed struggle against the government. Mandela argued that there comes a time in the history of every nation when the people either use arms to defend themselves, or they cease to be a nation.

After serving 27 years in prison, Nelson Mandela became President of South Africa.

The ideas of José Pepe Mujica

Because of the nature of capitalism, corporations are driven to invest in advertising to the tune of $200 billion every year. They spend this money in an attempt to convince us to purchase things we might not need or want. They routinely make these huge investments in their drive to maximize profits. This state of affairs means that that the world will eventually run out of resources we all need to sustain ourselves.

Mujica has made it one of his priorities to promote a sustainable economy. This is why he donated 90% of his salary while he was President and lived on less than $10,000 per year. He has argued that: “If you do what you love, money is irrelevant.”

Mujica’s constant companion is his three-legged dog Manuela. Manuela lost her leg in an accident, but she has lived to be eighteen years old. This reflects the fact that in spite of Mujica’s limited income, he has taken good care of his dog.

Mujica expanded on his point of view saying: “When you buy something you’re not paying money for it. You’re paying with the hours of life you had to spend earning that money.”

“You’re only poor if you think you are. Poor people are those who only work to try to keep an expensive lifestyle and always want more and more.”

“I’m not advocating poverty. I’m advocating sobriety” I’m free when I have time to spend on things I love, which may be different for you and her. That’s freedom.”

“If you don’t have many possessions, then you don’t need to work all your life to sustain them, and therefore you have more time to sustain yourself.”

One of Mujica’s priorities while he was President was to promote renewable energy sources. His administration legalized both abortion and marijuana.

Certainly these ideas do not attempt to correct the fundamental problem of our times. This is the routine functioning of the capitalist system that guarantees the majority of the human race to live in poverty.

Today, several years after Mujica was President, there is an extremely affluent class that lives in Uruguay. Mujica acknowledges that there are opulent homes in his country where the owners only live there about twenty days per year. While poverty was reduced while Mujica was President, it continues to exist in Uruguay.

Mujica argued that if he attempted to support a movement that redistributed the wealth in his country, powerful forces would have worked to end his life. He clearly learned this lesson in his thirteen years in prison. Yet Mujica has also spoken about how he was personally inspired by the life of the revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara.

Mujica also signed an agreement with former President Barack Obama accepting several prisoners who had been housed at the infamous prison at Guantanamo, Cuba. Mujica didn’t feel that these former prisoners would in any way be dangerous to the people of his country. He said that Uruguay is a nation of immigrants. He knows from personal experience how prison can break someone’s spirit. He feels that these former prisoners might be able to heal from the wounds inflicted during their time in the dungeons of the United States.

Finally, Mujica compared his life to making banana muffins. He said that if you follow a recipe for banana muffins, you will have a nice tasting muffin. However, if you want a better tasting muffin, you will experiment. Many of those experiments will be disasters. However, if you keep working, it is possible that you will make a truly exceptional banana muffin, and this will be all your own.

So when we look at the life of José Pepe Mujica and all the other revolutionaries who served time in prison, and then became genuine leaders, I believe there are a few things we can learn. First humanity has a tremendous endurance and we have the potential to overcome the most persistent obstacles. We can also learn how to make truly outstanding banana muffins that are all our own.         

The Generation Gap

There was a time when the government

drafted millions of young men

to invade Southeast Asia,

and inflict unimaginable horrors to the people of that region.

People viewed those horrors

every night on the television.

Then, the people realized that the government

didn’t have a good reason for carrying out these horrors.

Millions marched in demonstrations.

Those demonstrations and the tenacity

of the Vietnamese people

forced the United States out of that region.

In those days, the unions had improved the standard of living

by organizing thousands of workers to go on strike.

Working people could then own a home, a car,

and send their children to college.

Black people organized to force the government

to outlaw Jim Crow segregation,

and for the first time,

Black people had some citizenship rights in this country.

But employers were driven to drive down their costs.

They didn’t invest in improving people’s lives.

No, they made massive investments to build factories

where workers received $1 or $10 per day.

As a result, millions of union jobs vanished.

Prominent people argued that the way to get “ahead”

was to get an education,

and millions went into debt to get that education.

Some people saw their living standards improve,

but the majority needed to work more hours

to have a more insecure living.

And this went on for decades.

Then, a new generation grew up

that knew how to do arithmetic.

They thought about paying back a student loan

throughout their lives and into their retirement.

They thought about $1,000 per month rents.

They thought about $200,000 row homes.

They thought about $400,000 starting prices for new homes.

And they thought that this just didn’t add up.

First they called themselves “Occupy.”

They said they represented the 99%.

Then, they argued that “Black Lives Matter,”

arguing that Black people deserve respect and not brutality.

Then, they protested the destruction of the environment,

and argued that people are more important than profits.

Some young people call themselves “socialists,”

and believe that poverty can be eliminated in the world.

Yes, a new generation is growing up.

They are tired of hearing the old excuses.

They are tired of hearing the myths they learned in school,

and they have the energy to create a new environment.

Clearly all of us understand that

we have a lot to learn when we are young.

But these young people are developing a new vision,

and everything is being questioned.

However, when they think about the future,

they also look to the past,

where I think they will discover how to make this world

a place where there is liberty and justice for all.