Transatlantic Politics

Corruption is still a big problem in most Eastern European countries, even after they joined the EU. The biggest failure, on the EU side, was to take for granted that once these countries adopt the EU legislation, their judicial systems will function exactly like in Western Europe. But in a Communist regime, the judiciary is a mere political tool. And by keeping all those judges and prosecutors who were trained in Communist times and have a distorted view of the rule of law, these countries cannot function properly.

A survey made amongst Romanian judges showed that most of them don’t consider corruption as being a serious crime. "It’s not like you kill someone. And how can I sentence someone to many years of prison for corruption, when I have to bribe myself nurses and doctors if I go to the hospital", said a judge as quoted by a German expert who ran the survey.

The Economist writes a sharp analysis on how the crackdown on corruption in Eastern Europe has eroded after the countries joined the EU.

For corrupt officials in central and eastern Europe, life has seldom been better. Joining the European Union has produced temptingly large puddles of public money to steal. And the region’s anti-corruption outfits are proving toothless, sidelined or simply embattled.

The biggest problems are in Romania and Bulgaria, the EU’s two newest members, whose apparent inability (or disinclination) to deal with high-level corruption has led to increasingly acerbic public warnings from Brussels. But other countries have done badly too.

Barely three months after it joined the EU in 2007, the Romanian government fired Monica Macovei, a doughty justice minister who had attacked corruption head-on. Her successor tried to fire the anti-corruption prosecutor for investigating his political sponsors. The incumbent is a former lawyer for Russia’s Gazprom. Procedural snags have held up all high-level corruption cases. Investigation of former ministers now requires parliamentary approval, sending every case back to square one. Although Romania comes out lowest in the EU in the rankings by Transparency International, a lobby group, the government seems determined to attack its critics rather than corruption.

(…)

As its economic competitiveness erodes, eastern Europe can ill afford bad government. Voters are generally disillusioned with post-communist politics. Yet from the Baltic to the Balkans, even politicians facing the most startling accusations of corruption seem not to suffer at the polls. A bit like Italy, really.

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After working as a translator in a U.S. hospital for the past two years, I have seen and experienced many things. Among the most disturbing is the outright plundering of the system by those who the system was never designed to cover, namely illegal immigrants.

Julia

Julia is an expectant mother who has been in the U.S. for less than 4 months. She has received no prenatal care and shows up at the Emergency Room of her local hospital here in the U.S. when she begins to have contractions. She arrives with no identification and a vague idea of her street address here in the U.S.

Her baby girl is subsequently delivered at the hospital and, during the three days following the birth of their daughter, both Julia and her daughter receive around-the-clock medical care in the Family Birthing Center of the hospital. A translator is contacted by the hospital and is provided to Julia and the father of the little girl because they cannot speak English.

Amongst other things, the little girl receives an application for a social security number & birth certificate, a variety of injections, and her first Hepatitis B vaccine. The mother is offered a free car seat - courtesy of the hospital - and a free smoke detector for use in the house because of the family’s perceived low-income status.

On the third day, a woman from the hospital arrives and, with the help of the hospital’s translator, files the necessary paperwork so that the mother and father can successfully enroll their baby on Medicaid. After the completion of the necessary paperwork, a nurse escorts the new mother & father and their baby out the front door of the hospital to their well-appointed Pontiac minivan.

A hospital bill that has reached upwards of $6,000 is never mentioned by anyone at the hospital to the mother or father. Ironically, the nurse who has escorted the new family out the front door and helped deliver the baby is pregnant herself. She pays for health insurance on a monthly basis and will later have to pay a $600 deductible in order to deliver her baby in the same facility as Julia.

This is just the first of a series of tremendous expenditures that will be absorbed into the great federal and state government largesse known as uninsured health care. Upon enrolling the baby on Medicaid, Julia’s baby will be eligible for baby formula, diapers, $15 well child check-ups until the baby is 4 years old - of which there are 8 check-ups with a highly-trained Pediatrician- and at least 10 different vaccinations, several of which are being rationed because of a nationwide shortage. All of this will be paid for by a combination of state and federal tax dollars. Head Start programs at the local elementary school are also paid for. All of this is provided to the baby because the baby is an American citizen by virtue of being born on American soil, regardless of the mother’s immigration status.

Ramon

Ramon is a day laborer at a local greenhouse. He has arrived in the U.S. on a temporary basis approximately two months ago to work at a greenhouse during the seasonal harvest. Ramon was diagnosted with diabetes two years ago in Mexico. He has never given himself an insulin shot and admits he has no idea how to check the level of sugar in his blood. He is 51.

After working in the greenhouse for three weeks, Ramon slips and sprains his ankle. He does little to treat his ankle and later arrives at the Emergency Room at his local hospital with a swolen right foot that is made even worse because of his diabetes. After examining his right foot, the doctor decides that the pinkie toe on said foot needs to be removed. This is a fairly complex surgery with a high risk of infection because of the size of the remaining open wound that will be left after the surgery has been completed. As such, 8 hours after belatedly walking into the Emergency Room, Ramon has had his right pinkie toe removed and is resting on the 5th floor of the hospital. He will remain in the hospital for a total of 6 days as the wound is cared for and cleaned by a variety of nurses and physical therapists.

On the 6th day, Ramon is transferred to a hospital-managed outpatient facility. He has a hand-held device called a wound-vac that is attached to his foot so that the 2 inch surgical wound along the side of his right foot will close faster. This wound-vac requires fairly constant medical attention and was the reason why Ramon was moved to the $350 per night outpatient facility rather than sent home with instructions on how to use the wound-vac himself.

While in the outpatient facility, the doctor checks daily on Ramon’s foot in order to assess whether the wound-vac has successfully closed the wound. Once closed, Ramon will be transported back to the hospital via ambulance where he will once again undergoe surgery. A portion of the skin on his hip will be taken in order to be used as a skin graph on his right foot. The total time Ramon will be in the hospital or at an outpatient facility is approximately 21 days.

By law, a hospital-contracted interpreter is present to explain every step of this process to Ramon. During the many conversations the interpreter has with Ramon over this 21 day period, it becomes clear that Ramon has engaged in absolutely no preventative care for the past two years subsequent to him being diagnosed with diabetes. Ramon admits to regularly drinking 6 to 8 beers several nights a week while in Mexico. The only reason Ramon stops drinking is when his body tingles all over. This is how Ramon crudely checks the level of sugar in his blood. This is how Ramon knows it is time to stop drinking for the night.

After Ramon’s second surgery to graph the skin from his hip over the wound in his foot, Ramon is released from the hospital with a bill that is over $14,000. He is given a variety of insulin for his diabeties and testing supplies and told to schedule a follow-up appointment with a physical therapist where, by law, a hospital-contracted translator will also be present. He is also directed to an uninsured discount clinic that is a satelite office of the hospital where he will receive a vision test as a result of his diabetes coupled with tri-monthly doctor consultations about his diabetes.

Ramon has no assets to speak of inside of the United States. He crossed the border with his brother and approximately 30 other Mexicans from central Mexico to specifically work at the aforementioned greenhouse.

Upon being released from the hospital, Ramon has two options. One option for Ramon is to return to Mexico early where he is a proud grandfather and where his large family - he is one of 11 brothers and sisters - are available to care for him. The second option is to remain at the greenhouse and continue to try and work while attending hospital-arrainged physical therapy sessions for his healing foot. The greenhouse’s need for Ramon’s labor lasts another 5 months, at which point Ramon plans to return to Mexico anyway to be with his family and enjoy the warmer weather.

As for Ramon’s $14,000 bill, a hospital administrator who arrives one day in Ramon’s room to quiz him about his U.S.-based assets admits that the hospital will likely collect absolutely nothing from Ramon. Ramon is blissfully unaware of this fact as the hospital makes virtually no attempt to collect funds from someone they deem unable to pay such a bill. Apparently, the hospital has dealt with the Ramon’s of the world before and has decided that the collection of such a debt is a loser’s game.

Whlie Ramon and Julia entered the same hospital for different reasons, the outcome of each person’s treatment is strikingly similar. Like Julia, Ramon will be escorted out of the hospital by one his nurses at the end of his 16-day stay in the hospital. Like Julia, he will have a bill that numbers in the thousands which he won’t be held responsible for. Like Julia, the hospital is left holding the bag as they are required to treat the Ramons and Julias of the world who need urgent medical care even if that person can’t pay their bill. Like Julia, Ramon can return to Mexico whenever he would like and leave any semblance of responsibility behind him in El Norte.

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Excellent article from Peggy Noonan (former Reagan speechwriter and five-time bestselling author) on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal talking about the reasons behind middle America’s disenchantment with Bush and his subsequent spectacular fall in popularity:
 

America is in line at the airport. America has its shoes off, is carrying a rubberized bin, is going through a magnetometer. America is worried there is fungus on the floor after a million stockinged feet have walked on it. But America knows not to ask. America is guilty until proved innocent, and no one wants to draw undue attention. America left its ticket and passport in the jacket in the bin in the X-ray machine, and is admonished. America is embarrassed to have put one one-ounce moisturizer too many in the see-through bag. America is irritated that the TSA agent removed its mascara, opened it, put it to her nose, and smelled it. Why don’t you put it up your nose and see if it explodes? America thinks.

And, as always: Why do we do this when you know I am not a terrorist, and you know I know you know I am not a terrorist? Why this costly and harassing kabuki when we both know the facts, and would agree that all this harassment is the government’s way of showing "fairness," of showing that it will equally humiliate anyone in order to show its high-mindedness and sense of justice? Our politicians congratulate themselves on this as we stand in line.

All the frisking, beeping and patting down is demoralizing to our society. It breeds resentment, encourages a sense that the normal are not in control, that common sense is yesterday. Another thing: It reduces the status of that ancestral arbiter and leader of society, the middle-aged woman. In the new fairness, she is treated like everyone, without respect, like the loud ruffian and the vulgar girl on the phone. The middle-aged woman is the one spread-eagled over there in the delicate shell beneath the removed jacket, praying nothing on her body goes beep and makes people look.

America makes it through security, gets to the gate, waits. The TV monitor is on. It is Wolf Blitzer. He is telling us with a voice of urgency of the Pennsylvania returns. But no one looks up. We are a nation of Willie Lomans, dragging our rollies through acres of airport, going through life with a suitcase and a slack jaw, trying to get home after a long day of meetings, of moving product.

No one in crowded gate 14 looks up to see what happened in Pennsylvania. No one. Wolf talks to the air. Gate 14 is small-town America, a mix, a group of people of all classes and races brought together and living in close proximity until the plane is called, and America knows what Samuel Johnson knew. "How small of all that human hearts endure / That part which laws or kings can cause or cure."

Gate 14 doesn’t think any one of the candidates is going to make their lives better. Gate 14 will vote anyway, because they know they are the grownups of America and must play the role and do the job…

In Lubbock, Texas – Lubbock Comma Texas, the heart of Texas conservatism – they dislike President Bush. He has lost them. I was there and saw it. Confusion has been followed by frustration has turned into resentment, and this is huge. Everyone knows the president’s poll numbers are at historic lows, but if he is over in Lubbock, there is no place in this country that likes him. I made a speech and moved around and I was tough on him and no one – not one – defended or disagreed. I did the same in North Carolina recently, and again no defenders. I did the same in Fresno, Calif., and no defenders, not one.

He has left on-the-ground conservatives – the local right-winger, the town intellectual reading Burke and Kirk, the old Reagan committeewoman – feeling undefended, unrepresented and alone.

This will have impact down the road.

I finally understand the party nostalgia for Reagan. Everyone speaks of him now, but it wasn’t that way in 2000, or 1992, or 1996, or even ‘04.

I think it is a manifestation of dislike for and disappointment in Mr. Bush. It is a turning away that is a turning back. It is a looking back to conservatism when conservatism was clear, knew what it was, was grounded in the facts of the world.

The reasons for the quiet break with Mr. Bush: spending, they say first, growth in the power and size of government, Iraq. I imagine some of this: a fine and bitter conservative sense that he has never had to stand in his stockinged feet at the airport holding the bin, being harassed. He has never had to live in the world he helped make, the one where grandma’s hip replacement is setting off the beeper here and the child is crying there. And of course as a former president, with the entourage and the private jets, he never will. I bet conservatives don’t like it. I’m certain Gate 14 doesn’t.

 Bush has never been a favorite of this author.  However, the lack of leadership from the White House on a number of issues is astounding.  Think back to immigration, social security reform, campaign finance ‘reform’, education ‘reform’, an ill-informaed stimulus package that pushes us farther into debt, an inability to ratify various free trade agreements, aging infrastructure here at home while we spend BILLIONS in Iraq, the ethanol boondoggle/vote buying scheme, etc. etc.  Add to this the ridiculous treatment all Americans are subjected to on a daily basis at the airport as a result of Bush’s creation of the Department of Homeland Security (incl. the 30,000+ new federal workers that were added so that we could all be ’safer’).

A continued crisis of leadership from both sides of the political aisle has America headed in the wrong direction.

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In another example of a nanny state out of control or the overwhelming influx into the U.S. of illegal Hispanics who don’t speak English (you choose, this story touches on both of those nerves), we have American firefighters in Oregon who are being demoted or fired simply because they don’t speak Spanish. 

The State of Oregon requires firefighter crew leaders to be able to communicate with every crew member, therefore, if one firefighter speaks only Spanish the crew leader is required by the State of Oregon to speak Spanish.  Those who don’t are losing their jobs or being demoted.  After all, what is most important to the State of Oregon is not the fact that the fires need to be put out or that most likely those who speak only Spanish are in the U.S. illegally.  No, what is important is that they be able to communicate.  Repeat after me until we all believe it: "Government knows best, government knows best"… 

Why all firefighters aren’t required to speak English is beyond me:

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Bucharest, Romania:  The final fronteer.

It was the first NATO summit where the US failed to get what it publicly asked for - granting Ukraine and Georgia a next step in the NATO-accession process, the so-called "Membership Action Plan" or MAP.  MAP does not mean automatic NATO membership and can take 5-10 years to complete because the requirements laid out in MAP are dependent on the reformist drive of the respective governments. In the battle over whether to grant MAP to Ukraine & Georgia, French President Sarkozy, whom Bush qualified as "the last reincarnation of Elvis", suddenly switched sides and joined the opposition led by German chancellor Angela Merkel, who was against MAP from the very beginning.

After bitter quarrels at a working dinner hosted by the Romanian president Traian Basescu, the leaders of Old Europe prevailed. Bush and Brown got a measly compromise - a second chance in December, when NATO foreign ministers could decide to give MAP to the two former Soviet countries. But German Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier already qualified as "unconceivable" the prospects of changing his mind by December, when, in his view, there will only be a "first assessment". Followed by a second, third, etc. until Ukrainians and Georgians give up hope of ever joining NATO.

The real winner of the NATO summit in Bucharest was none other than Vladimir Putin. It was he who delivered the final speech on the last day of the summit, it was he whom Germany and France were thinking of as these two stalwarts of "Old Europe" fought to keep Georgia and Ukraine out of NATO. Self-confident and pleased that "our concerns were heard", Putin gave the audience at the Summit a condescending discourse which seemed as if the West was already at his disposal and he, the "Tsar of the Kremlin" didn’t feel the need to bully his loyal servants.  If the result of the NATO Summit are any indication, Putin was right.

During the closed-door NATO-Russia Council in Bucharest, Putin threatened the statehood of Ukraine in the event that it would become a NATO member.  Putin noted that "there are 17 millions Russians there" and that "Ukraine is a patchwork of territories from other states". But in the following press conference he refrained himself form directly attacking Ukraine or Georgia. The argument against NATO enlargement, in Putin’s public speech, was that "NATO is not a democratizer", but "a powerful military block whose appearance on our borders will be considered by Russia as a direct threat to our country’s security.

He also stressed that no threat - from terrorism to proliferation of WMD, from cyber attacks to energy - can be tackled without Russia. NATO was set up during the Cold War against an "evil empire" - the USSR - "but it remains to be seen who was right then", Putin said. That statement alone should set off alarm bells among military strategists and historians throughout the West. 

Putin also mentioned Iran and that, although Russia opposes a military nuclear program, it is "fully committed to honor its contractual obligations in terms of civilian technology and fuel for the civilian Iranian nuclear program".  No comment.

So what will be the future of NATO after Bucharest, after Russia got a veto right through its advocates in the NATO Alliance, especially Germany?

Hopefully Russia will make another mistake, the way it cut off gas to Ukraine in 2006 and let German consumers shiver. And hopefully we’ll have a strong leader in the White House next year. One who knows Russia from the Cold War and sees the new threat it has become. One who doesn’t look Putin or Medvedev in the eyes and thinks he has "seen into their soul", as George W. Bush famously stated after meeting with Putin. That would be the only hope for the transatlantic community. It cannot rely on a reincarnation of Elvis in France and a jello-like chancellor in Germany, too weak to break the will of her half-socialist, pro-Russian government. 

It is a sad indication of where the power truly lies in Europe when Bush and Sarkozy, both hawkish on foreign policy in general, are not able to secure the nomination of two former Soviet satellites to one of the most important military blocs in the world.  Perhaps, in the end, Putin smiles because he knows the truth:  Putin has also looked into the West’s eyes to see its soul and has found that the West is lacking both a soul and a backbone. 

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