The fight's not over yet!

As anyone who has read my commentary knows, I am a supporter of the idea of health care reform.

The idea that so many people in our society are uninsured in the event of a serious medical problem is a situation that can drag down our society. It also is one that I have a hard time believing anyone could seriously be opposed to.

YET I AM realistic enough to know politically that there will always be opposition, particularly from people who want to be able to vote against anything even remotely tied to President Barack Obama (let alone his major government initiative for his first year in office).

Personally, I felt a mild bit of relief when I learned that a bill had actually managed to pass the House of Representatives. But I know that a measure also will have to make it through the Senate, changes are likely to be made, and the bills will have to be reconciled before anything can be sent to Obama for his final approval.

My point is that there are still many places in the political timeline where this concept could be sabotaged. The political fight is far from over. Nobody should be uncorking bottles of cheap champagne to celebrate a “victory” that more people in our society will be insured.

I must admit to one bit of surprise. When the measure finally went through the procedures Saturday that result in passage, there didn’t seem to be much in the way of immigrant-bashing taking place.

DOES THIS MEAN Republicans for a few minutes backed away from their insistence that anything resembling health care reform was really a scam just to get the U.S. government to pay for medical care for Mexican citizens?

I doubt it.

I’d like to think the real explanation is that when Republican representatives were confronted with the moment of truth of having to vote (for the record) “yes” or “no” on the measure, they chose to go with their semi-legitimate talking points – which would mean that even hard-core GOPers realize how ridiculous their claims are that health care reform would merely benefit the so-called “illegal aliens” of our society.

Either that, or reporter-types have come to realize that Republican officials saying nasty things about people born in other countries (particularly if those countries are in Latin America) is just so routine that it no longer qualifies as newsworthy.

SERIOUSLY, I COULDN’T find much of anything in the way of Sunday morning reports and analysis that addressed how the House health care reform measure addressed the issue, if it chose to at all.

That would be the ideal, realizing that trying to make concessions to people who want to demonize the immigration reform issue does nothing to benefit public policy and only risks offending the growing Latino population of our nation.

Not that Democrats weren’t willing to dump on some people. Much was made of the fact that the health care reform advocates putting together the bill did give in to demands from the anti-abortion types who want to make sure that anyone who has to rely on a government-supported health insurance plan will not have access to medical procedures that even hint at terminating a pregnancy.

It was those measures that literally caused the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to endorse the final package that came up for a vote before the House this past weekend.

IT ALSO MEANS that some of the people who voted for Obama a year ago out of a belief that he was a liberal change are now going to see this as a sign he sold them out by giving in to the anti-abortion advocates.

But there wasn’t immediate evidence he sold out immigration advocates.

So did the president pick Latinos over women? Or is it likely that the immigration crackpots who want to believe Obama tells lies when he says health care reform is not just a scam to pay for non-citizen medical care will try to tack their harmful amendments onto the bill when it comes up for consideration in the Senate?

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Be patient, por favor

My "technical" difficulties are not fully resolved. But I'm also not anxious to just leave this weblog (and its sister site) sitting unattended.

Hence, there will be periodic commentary, although not the daily routine you regular readers have come to expect. I hope to resume that daily schedule as soon as possible.

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It's not laziness, just computer problems

I am experiencing computer problems that prevented me from filing the standard commentary readers of this weblog would have expected for Friday. As of now, I have yet to resolve these problems, but hope to do so as soon as is possible.

So I plan to go back to filing commentary meant to make you think (and occasionally annoy you) in the very near future. Please come back.

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Rivera faces tough critics - a pair of abuelitas

I'm not about to declare longtime broadcaster Geraldo Rivera to be some sort of exceptional Latino pundit, but that does seem to be the direction he's trying to take his career that will soon be entering its fifth decade.

Rivera has a pair of books he wrote in recent years to try to give himself a voice on the issues related to the significant growth of the Latino population in this country -- "His-Panic" and "The Great Progression."

THE FORMER TRIES to show how ridiculous most of the arguments made against Latinos truly are, while the second tries to show how much our society will benefit by accepting the Latino population increase.

Neither book goes all that deep, but I couldn't help but get my kick from this particular book review of Rivera's latter tome.

Published by the San Antonio Express-News (http://www.mysanantonio.com/entertainment/books/63960067.html) newspaper, the review is worth reading. Of course, any time one can get two abuelitas to go at it, the end result can be intriguing.

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They’ll take our money, but do they want us in the stands?

The National Basketball Association as a whole is stepping up its efforts to try to sway the growing Latino population of this nation into being fans of professional basketball, yet there are times when I wonder how many of these team owners are doing so with a clothespin clamped onto their nostrils.

The story is starting to get around about the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers. One of the sorrier franchises in professional basketball, owner Donald T. Sterling recently settled a lawsuit related to his real estate interests.

IT SEEMS THAT the team owner also owns a series of apartment buildings. His critics say he engaged in rental practices that were meant to discourage black people and Latinos from living in his buildings.

In some cases, Sterling’s staff refused to accept checks for rent payment, then tried to claim that the Latino or black tenants should be evicted for non-payment of rent.

Not that he was offering up housing for “whites only.” It seems that Sterling, according to reports in the LA Weekly newspaper, preferred to market his buildings as residences for people of Korean ethnic backgrounds.

He did this, the newspaper reported, because he sensed that Korean immigrants would be more accepting of substandard conditions and would not generate complaints the way that black and Latino people might.

THERE’S ALSO THE little tidbit from the original lawsuit filed earlier in this decade – one that quotes Sterling as saying that Latinos, “smoke, drink and just hang around the building.” Gee, I never realized it was a criminal act to stay at home.

Of course, would he or people with this kind of mentality have used reverse logic, saying that if they had left their homes, they were just going out to cause trouble?

Now I know in theory that Sterling’s real estate dealings have little to nothing to do with his ownership of a professional sports franchise. And I also realize that the settlement he negotiated to bring to an end a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles did not require him to admit to any guilt.

So there is no piece of paper that says he discriminated against black people or Latinos. But he does have to pay a fine of $2.725 million – which is a record-high fine for a case involving housing discrimination.

I DOUBT THE federal government could have pressured such a large settlement if there wasn’t some substance to the complaints against Sterling.

But it just makes me wary to read about such activity taking place among the ownership at a time when the NBA is trying follow the lead of many other sports leagues in seeking fan support from the Latino population.

In the case of the NBA, they’re developing a theme called ène-bè-a, which is meant to be a phonetic spelling of the Spanish pronounciation of the letters N-B-A.

It is the theme of the Spanish-language portion of the league’s website, and also is a marketing campaign that lets people know of the goings on of the six Latinos and 19 Latin American- or Spanish-born players in the NBA these days.

IN SHORT, THEY’RE trying to make it clear that Latin American athletes in this country aren’t solely playing baseball – although 25 players with Latino ethnicity is a far cry from the nearly 40 percent of Major League Baseball players who are either Latino (which is U.S.-born, for those of you who are clueless) or born in a Latin American country.

But is this one of those cases where certain teams are going to gain reputations for being less hospitable to the vision of the future than others?

It would not be unheard of.

In baseball, the Boston Red Sox to this day get some grief for being the last major league team to have black ballplayers (although the Philadelphia Phillies weren’t that far behind them). Both teams preferred to think of themselves as all white into the late 1950s – even after it was clear that black ballplayers (and darker-skinned Latin Americans) were here to stay.

THEN, THERE’S FOOTBALL, where the Washington Redskins’ ownership into the 1960s remained hard-core against black athletes, and only acquiesced when integration of the Redskins (that nickname is an issue of offense that we can discuss another day) would be a condition of their being allowed to play in the federal government-owned D.C. Stadium (later renamed for Robert F. Kennedy).

This is the potential category in which Sterling could be placing himself – the NBA equivalent of George Preston Marshall.

It’s not exactly the kind of environment I could picture many Latinos spending their money at.

Then again, perhaps the best revenge is one that is settled on the playing field. Perhaps the proper response for Latinos is not to reject the NBA, just the Clippers. It just means we’ll all have to be just like the rest of Southern California and root, root, root for the Los Angeles Lakers.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: One can argue that the Los Angeles Clippers are such an insignificant basketball franchise (http://blogs.laweekly.com/ladaily/city-news/clippers-owner-allegedly-didnt/) that it really doesn’t matter what their owner thinks about ethnic relations.

The National Basketball Association as a whole (http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=115670) wants our money.

Who didn’t support whom?

The Senate last week passed one of their purely symbolic resolutions – one that proved to have more symbolism than was originally intended.

The resolution at stake was a resolution that officially declared last week (the final week of October) to be National Hispanic Media Week. It was meant to be a sop of respect toward the roughly 800 Spanish-language newspapers and 550 Spanish-language magazines, all based in the United States.

THE SENATE PASSED the resolution, which noted that Spanish-language publications generated more than $1.4 billion in revenue last year. In short, it is a significant business interest, and one that shows the degree to which the Latino population is a significant market for business interests to appeal to.

Now the only reason this particular resolution has gained any lasting attention is because all of its support came from the 60 members of the Senate who happen to be Democrats.

This was one piece of symbolism that Republican members of the U.S. Senate wouldn’t touch with a 3.3-meter pole.

Some pundits already are trashing the GOP for not being willing to cast a “yes” vote in favor of a measure that didn’t do anything solid, and was a mere gesture of support to a business interest that is part of the growing Latino population.

I’LL AGREE WITH those pundits in thinking it is sad that not even a lone GOP senator or two could find it within themselves to cast a vote in favor of this symbolic resolution.

And I’m going to look down upon those who will claim that Republicans ought not to be thinking about supporting such measures, because Latinos aren’t exactly supportive of GOP interests these days.

The fact is that this has the potential to become the ultimate “pollo y huevo” argument (a.k.a., chicken and egg). Do Republican politicos refuse to support Latinos, or is it Latinos who won’t support GOP political people?

I have always believed that many of the Latin American newcomers to this country could have been had by the Republicans, particularly the ones to whom the Catholic church and its morals prevail in their thoughts on social issues.

ONE OUGHT TO consider the number of Latin American nations where abortion is a criminal act and where the idea of gay rights also borders on criminal to realize that there are parts of the Americas outside the United States where the most conservative Republicans would feel completely at home.

I always thought that if the Republican Party had any true sense, it would have taken the lead on trying to reform the nation’s immigration laws to make it possible for the masses already here to stay in the United States. They’d gain voters for life, and possibly never lose an election again.

Instead, the social conservatives let their ethnic hang-ups get the best of them.

It is what has turned off many Latinos to the Republican Party, and is what has made many of us “Democrats by Default.”

THESE HANG-UPS HAVE become so intense that they can’t even bring themselves to vote for a resolution that, if we can be honest, is rather trivial. Society as we know it did not come to an end because last week was National Hispanic Media Week.

All Republican officials managed to do with this incident was make themselves look – in the eyes of Latinos – just a bit more petty than usual.

As for those who will argue that Republican officials should not be supporting things that are in the interest of their opposition, I’d argue they’re the opposition because the GOP has made no attempt to gain us among their supporters.

Besides, I always thought one of the “rules” of electoral politics is that it was the job of the candidate to make people want to vote for him (or her).

SO SHOULDN’T IT be the role of GOP candidates to explain how they would benefit our interests – and occasionally even throw us a purely symbolic gesture?

If they’re not willing to do that, as is the case in this instance, then neither I nor anyone else is all that interested in hearing the GOP whine about how the growing Latino population is going to provide a mass of votes for Democratic candidates for years to come.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Pure symbolism appears to be beyond the ability of Republican (http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=67ff17c41341d3cf253805269bb1f6ef) political people to show the least bit of support to the growing Latino population.

School kids may educate parents about the Census

It will be interesting to see what comes of the “Census in Schools” program that Census Bureau officials plan to kick off on Monday in an effort to bolster the number of people who actually cooperate with the effort next year to count the nation’s population.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Census Director Robert M. Groves will be at the Digital Harbor High School in Baltimore to show off their new program, which consists of a curriculum for many subjects that manage to include plugs for the significance of the 2010 Census.

OFFICIALS SAY THE program is meant for all grades from kindergarten through high school, and for all subjects – not just social studies. They say they’d like to think that 56 million students at 118,000 schools will be exposed to the program.

On the surface, it doesn’t make much sense.

Teaching second-graders (including my two nieces, Meira and Jessica) about the Census may be a noble gesture, but I wonder how much will stick in their minds.

And somehow, when the Census Bureau form shows up at homes across the nation next spring so that people can count how many live there on April 1, 2010, I doubt many of these children (even the ones in high school) will be the ones with access to the mail.

IN SHORT, I doubt there will be many kids bothering to fill out the Census Bureau form.

What a gesture like this is about is somehow getting the idea of the Census (rather than any specifics) into the minds of the youth of America, in hopes that they go home and pound into their parents the significance of allowing oneself to be counted.

As I have written on many other occasions, being counted by the Census Bureau is acknowledgement that one exists.

So if it takes a little nagging from the kid in the family to encourage a parent to give that Census form a second look next spring, if even one parent bothers to fill out the form because their kid helped explain it to them, then perhaps this initiative is worthwhile.

WHAT I FIND interesting about this effort by the Census Bureau as a whole is that it is merely a large-scale effort of what I have heard occurring in certain municipalities across the nation.

I know of one Chicago suburb where municipal officials are considering sending notices to one particular elementary school in town. Those notices would be a bilingual explanation of the significance of the Census.

The point of that effort is that the one school is in the part of town that has the bulk of that town’s Latino population, and municipal officials are thinking that a “note from school” will be looked at more closely than a municipal mailing – you know, the notices that once we figure out they’re not bills get tossed in the trash without a second thought.

Now this particular school-oriented effort by the Census Bureau itself is not focused on boosting the Latino population count – although the bureau is undertaking several initiatives to make sure as many Latinos as possible are counted.

BUT ANYTHING THAT encourages people to quit being paranoid and give us an honest count of how many people really live in this country (whether U.S. citizen or not, all it claims to be is a count of how many are here at a specific moment in time) is a good thing.

And who’s to say that some lesson taught now won’t stick in the mind of some youngster when they become adults. Perhaps a Census lesson now will ensure that compiling a population count in 2040 will be just a tad easier.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Although starting in Maryland, officials ultimately hope to have schools (http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/2010_census/014406.html) in all 50 states cooperate with an initiative to educate school kids about the Census.