January 18, 2010

Dear President Obama,

Last year, on or around November 5th, one of your Revenue Officers hand delivered an envelope to my family’s home, addressed to me. The Internal Revenue Service has decided I owe them about $30,000, and the handwritten letter inside carefully detailed missing tax returns, requests for payment, and deadlines and threats about future actions if I decline to pay. Unfortunately, the officer, Matt Corewitz, dropped the envelope at the front door, which hasn’t been used by anyone since the house was bought nearly 40 years ago. If it hadn’t been spotted by my sister as she walked her dog, it would probably still be there today, with the full gravity of its threats of levy and seizure and summons languishing powerless in the snow. I guess the good news is that the house isn’t under surveillance (yet), or surely Officer Corewitz would have known to take his letter to the door that everyone uses. But I’m not writing to you to recommend hiring more competent revenue agents, or to put a camera on the house, or even to thank you for the friendly reminder about my delinquent payments. I’m writing to tell you about war tax resistance, or why the IRS hasn’t heard from me since 1998.

The health reform endgame is over for low-income senior citizens, but the national hoax continues. Seniors in the state where I live don’t have to wait for the finale of “what is expected to be a bruising, full-scale health care debate after Thanksgiving” to find out how their health care costs and benefits will be impacted. (AP/Espo, 11/21/09) No, the low-income elderly in Massachusetts already got notices in the mail, weeks ago, from their Medicare Advantage insurance providers announcing big premium increases for 2010.

“While investigators probe for a motive behind the mass shooting at the Fort Hood military base in Texas Thursday, in which an army psychiatrist is suspected of killing 13 people, military personnel at the base are in shock as the incident ‘brings the war home’… Tragically, Fort Hood has also born much of the brunt from its heavy involvement in both occupations. Fort Hood soldiers have accounted for more suicides than any other Army post since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. In this year alone, the base is averaging over 10 suicides each month - at least 75 have been recorded through July of this year alone.” (Dahr Jamail, Inter Press Service, 11/6/09)



“The parents of US Army Reserve Specialist Chancellor Keesling, an Iraq war veteran, received a letter yesterday from the VA asking that their son complete his ‘Post Deployment Adjustment.’ The only problem is, Chance Keesling had killed himself in Iraq nearly five months ago….” The father of Chancellor Keesling stated “I don’t think as a country we understand mental health…as we go through the longest war in our history since Viet Nam, and multiple deployments, using civilian soldiers like reservists and the Guard in ways we have never used them in this country before…we have to be very conscious that mental health issues are going to impact these soldiers.” (DemocracyNow.org 11/1l/09)



Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist accused of shooting to death 13 people and wounding 30 others on November 5, 2009, was responsible for treating a heavy caseload of PTSD patients whose severely disabling trauma symptoms result from horrendous combat experiences in the ongoing bloody and violent occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. The Major is opposed to US military invasions of those two countries. He is also a practicing Muslim, who also feels it is wrong for Muslims to kill Muslims. This much we all now know.

An opinion video produced by Press Pass TV on the need for comprehensive prison reform in the United States - featuring some of Boston's best known performers. The production takes the form of an open letter to Pres. Barack Obama.

Press Pass TV is a Boston-based youth-adult partnership non-profit whose mission is to produce socially responsible video journalism which promotes a more diverse media, empowers communities, and increases civic engagement.

During Q & A at the Arlington Town Meeting on Health Care with Representative Ed Markey (10/12/09), one brave woman suggested to the Congressman that if we would end US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the federal government would have more than enough money to provide comprehensive health insurance for every American citizen. Mr. Markey responded that President Obama’s health care plan isn’t going to require any new spending. It is "deficit neutral," meaning it will pay for itself! So, he said, there is no need to cut the military budget or any other funding.

Even at this late hour it seems progressives do not understand the goal of Obamacare. They keep repeating the mantra (on every “liberal” talk show from Democracy Now to NPR’s On Point) that the cuts in Medicare will only be from the “wasteful” programs like Medicare Advantage.

That’s right! Medicare Advantage: The plans that make Medicare affordable for most of us senior citizens. The original Medicare A & B do not begin to cover basic medical needs. I would be living in a shelter and begging on the streets if I had to depend on Medicare A & B or Medigap (the program that covers the 20% of costs not paid for by Medicare A&B) for my weekly medical expenses and doctor visits.

Whether intentional or not, the liberal “single-payer” promoters have greatly confused the public by equating single-payer, universal health care coverage with “Medicare For All.” Ironically,

An Open Letter to Professor Jacob Hacker, University of California, Berkeley

Dear Professor Hacker – You have become a vocal proponent of including in national health reform a Medicare-like public insurance plan to compete, in the commercial market, with privately-run health insurers. The primary goal of letting a public plan compete with commercial insurance would be to control rising health care costs – addressing a crisis in its own right that is at least as serious as the crisis in access to care, and allowing us to pay for expanding coverage to the uninsured and underinsured.

An Open Letter to Sen. Edward Kennedy (D - Mass.)

Dear Senator Kennedy – The crisis being induced by high and rapidly rising health care costs in the United States is well known. It has become the #1 issue for workers, most businesses, and almost all municipalities; it is the largest and fastest growing item on every state budget, as well as a very large portion of the federal budget; and its spill-over effects – particularly the impact on the affordability of adequate health coverage for patients – have made it of central concern to health care providers. We know also that we aren’t getting anything for our high costs, that countries spending half or even one-third what we do have better health outcomes (longer lives, lower morbidity rates), receive more care along a broad range of services, and even have better clinical outcomes – calling into question the notion that our quality of care is better than nations with universal health care.

April 1st, 2009

Dear Mr. President,

Congratulations, and may “hope achieved” spring down to us. Mr. President, as you’ve learned personally, some believe hope is not a strategy. But, today, after 24 years of incarceration (with my innocence maintained and my faith strained, yet still intact), I write you from a state prison facility to let you know that along with the reality of a mass incarceration of Americans (2.3 million United States inmates), primarily Black male, that as of this day “hope” may just be the only strategy left and/or available to save the generation of children I see in here around me today.