Back in 1947, a public relations firm called Whitaker and Baxter, hired by the American Medical Association, created a term to disparage President Harry Truman’s proposal for a national health-care system.

It was a stroke of PR genius, at the dawn of the cold war between the U.S. and the communist Soviet Union, when many Americans feared communist infiltration of the republic, to label Truman’s plan for universal health care “socialized medicine.” Nearly thirty years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the phrase endures, along with at least some of the accompanying disdain it was designed to evoke.

The A.M.A. ran with the medicine ball and distributed posters to doctors with slogans like “Socialized medicine … will undermine the democratic form of government.”

Fast-forward seven decades. Universal health care is shaping up to be one of, if not the, defining issues of the 2020 presidential campaign, and in some circles is being labeled “socialist.” And indeed it is, at least in the word’s more benign definition.

Some words or phrases, of course, don’t always mean what they might seem to on the surface. Like “Important!” in the subject box of an e-mail, which almost always means the opposite. Or “a service representative will be with you shortly” on a phone call, which usually turns out to be a bald lie. “Socialist,” too, doesn’t necessarily mean what it once did.

Back in the day, a socialist was a close ideological cousin of a communist. Socialism as a governmental system may have lacked the communist element of totalitarianism and total control of people’s lives; but it still placed ownership of all means of production in the hands of the populace, with members of society receiving what they need but having no incentive to work hard to achieve anything more.

But socialism as an all-encompassing, coercive system of government is something distinct from governmental programs aimed at providing safety nets to citizens. Like Social Security, for example, or Medicare or, for that matter, the public school system. All are “socialist” creatures, at least in the sense that they are government-run and aimed at ensuring certain benefits for the entire citizenry.

Universal health care, which has been endorsed as a desideratum by a number of Democratic candidates for the nation’s highest office, is “socialist” too, for sharing the same aim – here, to ensure that all Americans have access to doctors, hospitals and medications.

As it happens, though, even “universal health care” – reflected in the increasingly popular mantra “Medicare for all,” which is becoming the Democratic counterpart to Republicans’ “Build the wall!” – has different meanings. Or, at least, there are very different vehicles for achieving that goal.

The idea of providing health care to all Americans is simple enough. But there is a den of devils in the details.

For some, like Senators Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren, the way to go is a national, “single-payer” health system, in which private insurance is abolished. (As you might imagine, insurance companies are not fans of such a plan.) All sorts of costs born of the way insurance interests operate would presumably be eliminated, and medical care streamlined.

That’s the upside. The downside is that the insurance companies’ replacement would be the federal government. Frightening as that may be to some, and imperfect as such systems are in places like Great Britain and Canada, most Americans feel that the feds have done a decent job running Medicare. Back on the other hand, though, a “single payer” approach would likely mean higher taxes.

Other plans are mixtures of government and private insurers. In Switzerland, for instance, citizens buy insurance for themselves and pay deductibles, but the government subsidizes health care on an income-based graduated basis,

Then there is the approach of offering citizens discounts on government-sponsored health insurance plans, and expanding the Medicaid assistance program to include more people who can’t afford health care. That is the essential feature of something called Obamacare, the current system in place.

As in all large governmental efforts, achieving universal health care in the U.S. is a stupendously complex undertaking. But six out of ten Americans say it is the federal government’s responsibility to make it happen. The U.S., in fact, is the only wealthy industrial country in the world lacking such a system.

I’m not sufficiently proficient in assessing the necessary calculi to offer any opinion about which health-care path is the best way forward. What I do know, though, is that whatever approach ends up being chosen by the electorate, it won’t be the sort of socialism Americans once feared was lurking under the bed.

© 2019 Hamodia

Every civilized human being is rightly outraged by things like the vicious murders committed by members of the international Salvadoran gang MS-13, the fatal beating of the 76-year-old Georgia resident Robert Page by undocumented Mexican immigrant Christian Ponce-Martinez and other appalling acts committed in the U.S. by people who were born elsewhere.

But anecdotes, even the most horrific, don’t necessarily lead to correct conclusions. Samuel Little, after all, who last year confessed to killing 90 women in multiple states over nearly four decades, was a born and bred American, as was John Lee Cowell, who stabbed two sisters, one fatally, in an Oakland, California train station. And Robert D. Bowers, the killer of 11 people last October at a Pittsburgh Jewish congregation, was another “all-American.”

Immigration issues, including the question of whether immigrants are disproportionately responsible for crimes, have been on the front burners of Americans’ consciousness for several years.

As Jews, we have good reason to favor, at least within reasonable limits, the welcoming of new Americans. Most of us ourselves descend from fairly recent immigrants, many of whom said Kaddish for other would-be Americans who were prevented by quotas and prejudices from finding refuge on these shores. But Jewish immigrants to the U.S. have overwhelmingly been law-abiding and contributors to the economic growth and well-being of American society.

What, though, about the current wave of immigration from points south? Are those Central Americans and Mexicans who aspire to living and working in our country of similar bent, and potential? Or do they endanger Americans’ safety and security?

Ascertaining if there is a significant relationship between crossers of the U.S.-Mexican border and criminal acts committed on American soil requires looking not at narratives but at numbers.

When comparing different populations’ crime rates, controlling for the size of the population is essential. And so, researchers plumbing that data look at the numbers of convictions per 100,000 members of a particular group. And the resultant numbers are striking.

Most law enforcement agencies’ crime data don’t include violators’ immigration status. But Texas, a border and law-and-order state, does; its police cooperate with federal immigration enforcement authorities at the Department of Homeland Security who check the biometrics of all arrestees in the state.

The individual liberty, limited government and free markets-promoting CATO Institute, formerly the Charles Koch Foundation (yes, that Charles Koch), has analyzed Texas crime data over the year 2015 – the most recent year for which all the relevant figures are available. It found that the criminal conviction and arrest rates for legal immigrants in most criminal categories were markedly… below those of native-born Americans. Even the conviction and arrest rates for people who immigrated illegally were lower than those for those who were born and raised in the U.S.

During that year, reports CATO, as a percentage of their respective populations, the criminal conviction rate for legal immigrants in Texas was about 66 percent below the native-born rate, and 50 percent lower than native-born Americans for illegal immigrants.

Limiting the findings to homicide cases alone, the conviction rate per 100,000 people for native-born Americans was 3.1; for illegal immigrants, 2.6; and for legal immigrants, 1.

There were also fewer larceny convictions of immigrants than of natives that year. (Interestingly, though, there were more such convictions for legal immigrants than for people who are here illegally: 74 per 100,000 for the former, 62 for the latter. For born Americans, the number is 267.)

All of those facts might seem counterintuitive, or at least counter-assumptive, but, surprising as they may be, they are borne out as well from the documented lack of any positive effect on crime rates in localities that enacted enforcement programs focused on deporting illegal immigrants.

There are many matters attendant to the issue of immigration that need to be carefully considered: What should be done about the more than three million “Dreamers,” undocumented young people who have been in our country since childhood; what should qualify as grounds for asylum; the economic impact of increased immigration (though it’s generally positive, low-wage workers may suffer if immigration numbers grow); how to most effectively and sensibly secure our borders; how to deal with those seeking to enter the U.S. as families; what kin should be permitted to join their legal immigrant relatives already here; and more.

All are legitimate matters for discussion, and none have obvious, straightforward answers. But in those conversations, one thing is, or should be, absent: the notion that immigrants, even those who have crossed our borders illegally, are more likely than good ol’ Americans to be criminals.

© 2019 Hamodia

Executing my duty as a citizen, I once sat on a jury. It was an edifying experience, leaving me to conclude that the jury system, at least in its current form, is utterly absurd.

During out-of-courtroom deliberations in the case – a civil one, in which a man who, it seemed, had burned down his store and was who was suing his insurance company for compensation – a fellow juror opined that the store-owner could have been at his place of business at 3:00 AM, where and when he was found, for entirely legitimate reasons. And that his being discovered, badly burned, unconscious and still holding a gasoline can, may have been pure coincidence. She also confessed to the rest of us her conviction that a famous entertainer, long gone and buried in Memphis, Tennessee, was actually roaming the earth incognito. I am not making that up.

The U.S. Constitution, despite what most people think, doesn’t guarantee a defendant the right to “a jury of his peers,” only to an “impartial” jury. And it is silent about any other juror qualifications, like basic intelligence. But I think a case can be made that a modicum of good judgment is at least implied by “impartial.”

Likewise counter to popular assumption, the Constitution does not mandate an explicit right to vote. A number of constitutional amendments prohibit certain forms of discrimination in establishing who may vote. But voting remains, in the end, a privilege, not an inalienable right like free speech or freedom of worship. That’s why voting can be denied to individuals who have not yet reached a certain age, or who are incarcerated (or even, as in some states, who have been incarcerated in the recent past). And why it could have been, as it was for many years, denied to women and members of various religious groups (ours included).

In contrast, more than 20 countries actually require all citizens to vote. (Please don’t give your local representatives any ideas!)

In the best of all possible worlds, were I king of the forest (as would no doubt be the case), I would require passing a test to qualify for sitting on a jury and in order to vote. The Shafran Voting Exam (SVE) would seek to establish basic comprehension of texts, simple logic and elementary familiarity with important issues and our political system.

Alas, in this yet imperfect world, the SVE wouldn’t stand a chance. Not with the history of “literacy tests” that, for many decades, were utilized expressly to prevent immigrants and blacks from voting.

Like the one selectively administered by Louisiana as late as 1964. It included questions like the following:

“Print the word ‘vote’ upside-down but in the correct order.” (Correct upside-down order?)

“In the space below draw three circles, one inside (engulfed by) the other.” (Three or two?)

“Spell backwards, forwards.” (Wha?)

And a “wrong” answer to any question, the test states, “denotes failure.”

There is much controversy today about alleged “voter repression,” also ostensibly aimed at depriving targeted groups of Americans of the ability to vote. I’m not convinced that the presentation of identification, even photo identification, is an onerous requirement. Nor do I find updating voter rolls – what opponents of the process call “purging” them – in any way objectionable.

To be sure, there is no evidence whatsoever of widespread voter fraud, as has been charged by some. But at the same time, reasonable measures to ensure that voters legally qualify to vote don’t disturb me.

But things like what happened recently in Georgia do.

Jefferson County officials made 40 African-American senior citizens get off a bus taking them from their assisted living facility to a polling place to vote early.

Why? Well, take your pick. Either because one of those who arranged for the bus was the county Democratic Party Chairwoman (although she acted in her capacity as a pastor and made no voting recommendations); or because, as the county administrator explained, “Jefferson County administration felt uncomfortable with allowing senior center patrons to leave the facility in a bus with an unknown third party” (although approval of the bus trip by the facility had been obtained beforehand).

There is, of course, a third possibility, but far be it from us to consider it.

And so, unfortunately, the Shafran Voting Exam must be quashed on arrival. The bigots of years past, and of days present, have ruined it for us all, having given the very idea of earning the privilege to vote the worst of reputations.

© 2018 Hamodia