Jonathan P. Baird

While it is not surprising that Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to try the 9/11 suspects in the federal court in New York was heavily criticized, it was the right call. We try people in America. We do not create star chambers. Nor do we, generally speaking, disappear defendants into a gulag.
One of the worst aspects of the George W. Bush presidency was the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects for years with no legal recourse. It is widely recognized that, along with the guilty, many innocent people were swept up and held in Guantanamo and other black sites during the past decade.
Holding suspects indefinitely without access to counsel is contrary to our deepest legal traditions. The founders prominently inscribed both the right to a speedy, public trial and the right to counsel in our Constitution.
John Adams probably gave the clearest statement about those rights in his closing argument in his defense of the British soldiers accused of committing murder in the Boston Massacre. Adams argued that it is more important to the community that innocence should be protected than that guilt be punished. Adams famously stat-
ed:
“We find in the rules laid down by the greatest English judges, who have been the brightest of mankind, that we are to look upon it as more beneficial that many guilty persons should escape unpunished than one innocent person should suffer.”
Adams warned about the consequence of what happens when innocence is condemned, especially to die. Then it does not matter if a person behaved well or badly because, as he said, virtue is no security.
It is hard to imagine less sympathetic defendants than the 9/11 suspects, and I would guess the government has plenty of evidence of their guilt. I do not know if these defendants have counsel yet, but the idea of representing the 9/11 suspects made me think of the defense attorney Bill Kunstler, who passed away in 1995.
If Kunstler were alive today, I think he would be representing one of the 9/11 defendants. He never retreated from representing controversial clients. Kunstler was a fearless attorney. Abbie Hoffman once described him as having the most moxie of anyone he ever met.
I mention Kunstler because I want to tell a story about him with a Concord connection. Although unnoticed at the time, Kunstler appeared before Judge Martin Loughlin in the federal court in Concord in 1984.
Kunstler was brought in as counsel on a case in which the FBI had wiretapped attorney-client conversations with the defendant’s original lawyer. That Boston lawyer, Rob Doyle, happened to be a friend of mine. I played hooky from law school and went to the federal court to observe the case.
When I arrived at the court, I sat down in the back. Two women came over to me and asked who I was. After I explained, they told me to come sit with them. They were friends of the defendant and they let me know they were witches. They were casting spells on the prosecutors and they did not think it was a good idea for me to sit where I had been. I moved.
I remember Bill grilling an FBI agent on cross-examination most of the morning. Bill, even then, was something of a legend. He was a huge, imposing man. Judge Loughlin, a wonderful man himself, treated Bill with great deference and called him “Billy.”
After the morning, Bill took me, Rob Doyle, and my friend Steve Cherry out to lunch at the old Thursday’s Restaurant. I remember Bill flashing a roll of hundred-dollar bills when he paid.
Bill was in his mid-60s at the time. At lunch, he confided in us that the secret to a long life was to have sex every day. Bill made it to 76, so feel free to draw your own conclusions.
Bill was a total character. I admired his chutzpah and bravery.
For anyone who would want to know more about him, his autobiography, My Life as a Radical Lawyer, is a revealing and wonderful read. The scope of his career was amazing.
Defense attorneys like Kunstler protect our rights by vigorously asserting them. These are the same rights John Adams fought for when he defended the British soldiers in 1770. Without that advocacy, rights shrivel and become dead pieces of paper.
The 9/11 suspects deserve the same rights as other criminal defendants, including the right to counsel and the right to a public trial. It is also appropriate that they are being tried in the place the crime was committed. Ensuring the fairness of the process is an important value in and of itself.

On Oct. 21, my beautiful sister Lisa died from breast cancer. She was 56.
Lisa originally received the diagnosis of breast cancer in 1992. She underwent a mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation treatment. She remained in remission for more than 15 years.
Then, in late 2007, Lisa developed a persistent cough. After much prodding, she went back to the doctor. In December of that year, she got the bad news of a recurrence. There was evidence of cancer in her lung, liver and brain.
Lisa gamely pursued both traditional and non-traditional treatment. She was starting her sixth round of chemotherapy when she died.
Her life had evolved into an unending whirl of medical appointments. She underwent almost weekly chemo infusions. She contemptuously brushed off side effects and hid her suffering behind a mask of stoicism.
The cumulative effects of the chemo aged Lisa dramatically. It was like someone flicked a switch and the aging process speeded up. She lost her hair. A gray pallor replaced her previously rosy skin. Lisa also lost her appetite and, despite constant protestations that she needed to eat, she wasted away. She said food did not taste good anymore.
It was the spread of cancer to her liver that proved most problematic. The chemo delayed tumor growth but could not stop it. Lisa developed ascites, a fluid buildup in her abdomen. She became increasingly jaundiced.
I accompanied her to her last scheduled chemo appointment. It turned out that she was too weak to have it. Tapping her abdomen to drain off fluid was the only medical treatment left. That treatment temporarily stopped discomfort, but the ascites did not stop. It relentlessly returned, worsening as it progressed. Doctors tapped Lisa’s stomach a number of times.
Earlier, it had seemed
like Lisa had cancer on the run, but that turned around. Cancer did not take a day off.
Lisa worked until the day she died. She was an immigration law attorney in Philadelphia with a large and active private practice. For months, I had tried to get her to stop practicing. I thought she should apply for Social Security Disability, for which she would have been medically eligible. She consistently refused my suggestion.
I would call her on a Saturday night and more often than not she would be working on a case. I would say, “C’mon Lise, it’s Saturday night.” She ignored me. I wanted to lessen her stress, but work gave her satisfaction and a sense of creative self-expression. She got pleasure out of helping people, and it paid bills.
On her last day of life, lying in bed, she asked to make a phone call.
“Who do you want to call?” I asked.
“An immigration officer.”
I handed over my cell phone. In laborious but woozy fashion, Lisa punched in the number, got voicemail and left a message. She explained that she was calling on behalf of a client and she spelled out the client’s name. She said, “I am not feeling too well today. Could you give me a call in the morning?”
When she got off the phone, she told me, “You don’t understand. If this guy gets deported, his life will be over.” She told me she had worked on the client’s case for years.
Lisa died that night. She had been sleeping more, and she lapsed into unconsciousness. She spent her last couple of hours gasping for breath.
Breast cancer remains an absolute beast. Despite all the pink ribbons and races for the cure, treatment options leave much to be desired, especially for older women who have a recurrence. In Lisa’s case, I would say this is true even though she had a fine oncologist whom she trusted.
I had somehow expected better. I was surprised to find out that the average life expectancy after breast cancer recurrence for someone like my sister is only six to 12 months. That stinks.
Lisa made it almost two years. That is better than most. She did get that earlier 15 years, too. Still, she went through medical hell and ultimately treatment failed.
I remain outraged at the disease that took my sister. It is a cold killer. According to the Centers for Disease Control, aside from non-melanoma skin cancer, breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in women. In 2005, the most recent year numbers were available, 186,467 women were diagnosed with breast cancer and 41,116 women died from it. These are staggering numbers.
To say we need better, more effective treatment seems lamely weak.
We need the equivalent of an Apollo program for curing breast cancer. We should set goals and a timetable for a cure.
I don’t think we even ask the right questions about breast cancer. Where is all the money raised going? How effectively has it been used? How about looking at food, water, and other environmental factors to see if they are a contributing cause? How about critically assessing if breast cancer treatment is actually better than it was 50 years ago?
Rather than an elite discussion among a handful of experts speaking medical jargon, how about an accessible public discussion?
It is easy to be lulled into a false sense of security what with all the pink everything. I have nothing against the pink. I like seeing NFL players and coaches wearing pink. Still, potentially thousands of lives of our sisters, mothers and daughters are at stake.
I did not expect my beloved sister to die so soon. I do not think I will ever get over that.

Somebody needs to say this: both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are pointless. They are a death trap and a financial sinkhole. The lives of our soldiers are too valuable to be wasted there.
 
The Iraq War lacks any compelling justification. The Bush administration sold the war to the public on two grounds. Bush and company argued that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and they also argued the link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. Both turned out to be false.
 
There was also the unspoken reason — access to oil. That reason strikes closer to truth, but I submit it is warped to ask American soldiers to die for an environmentally backward commercial interest.  Our national security does not depend on access to Iraqi oil.
 
The reason given for the Afghanistan War is primarily the destruction of Al Qaeda. At the time of the September 11th attacks, Al Qaeda was in Afghanistan. The Taliban had given Al Qaeda sanctuary. Most current reports now place the Al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan. Al Qaeda remains an international terrorist movement with members in many countries.
 
Unfortunately, fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan is not the same as fighting Al Qaeda. While the Taliban is a deeply troubling entity, it is a response to issues internal to Afghanistan. Afghanis, not Americans, must settle this civil war.
 
The idea that fighting the Taliban translates into fighting Al Qaeda is a fallacy. Combating Al Qaeda depends on police and intelligence work, not the creation of a conventional army deployed to fight a national counterinsurgency.
 
As part of the generation of Americans who experienced the Vietnam War, I think it is critical we look hard at the reasons given to justify war. The Vietnam War is the prototype for stupid, unjustified wars. Nearly 59,000 Americans and 3.4 million Indochinese people died as a result of the Vietnam War. Untold numbers of Vietnam veterans returned home messed up with traumatic and devastating injuries. And for what?
 
We must learn from the Vietnam debacle. Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan pose any threat to our national security. The reasons given to continue the Iraq War and to escalate the Afghanistan War are shockingly unpersuasive. The reasons are ultimately about face-saving, desire not to lose the huge investment already made, and speculation about what might happen if the United States withdrew militarily.
 
Maybe it is time to give diplomacy, not war-making, a chance. Security for the Iraqi and Afghani people would be better promoted by peaceful, humanitarian means.
 
We have reached a sad place with our too casual attitude toward war. It has become a first resort, not the last resort. A rational approach would gauge the appropriateness of a military response to whether there actually was a proximate threat to national security.
 
I have been a fan of Barack Obama. I campaigned and voted for him. But, along with many liberals and progressives, I will not go along with military escalation in the Middle East. Probably the major reason Obama gained support during the campaign for the presidency was his stated opposition to the war in Iraq.
 
It is impossible to forget that a Democrat, Lyndon Johnson, presided over the escalation of the war in Vietnam. The consequences were disastrous. Progressives must pressure Obama against the dangers of escalation. We saw this movie before. It was horrible the first time and there is no need to see it again.
 

Somebody needs to say this: both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are pointless. They are a death trap and a financial sinkhole. The lives of our soldiers are too valuable to be wasted there.
 
The Iraq War lacks any compelling justification. The Bush administration sold the war to the public on two grounds. Bush and company argued that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and they also argued the link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. Both turned out to be false.
 
There was also the unspoken reason — access to oil. That reason strikes closer to truth, but I submit it is warped to ask American soldiers to die for an environmentally backward commercial interest.  Our national security does not depend on access to Iraqi oil.
 
The reason given for the Afghanistan War is primarily the destruction of Al Qaeda. At the time of the September 11th attacks, Al Qaeda was in Afghanistan. The Taliban had given Al Qaeda sanctuary. Most current reports now place the Al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan. Al Qaeda remains an international terrorist movement with members in many countries.
 
Unfortunately, fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan is not the same as fighting Al Qaeda. While the Taliban is a deeply troubling entity, it is a response to issues internal to Afghanistan. Afghanis, not Americans, must settle this civil war.
 
The idea that fighting the Taliban translates into fighting Al Qaeda is a fallacy. Combating Al Qaeda depends on police and intelligence work, not the creation of a conventional army deployed to fight a national counterinsurgency.
 
As part of the generation of Americans who experienced the Vietnam War, I think it is critical we look hard at the reasons given to justify war. The Vietnam War is the prototype for stupid, unjustified wars. Nearly 59,000 Americans and 3.4 million Indochinese people died as a result of the Vietnam War. Untold numbers of Vietnam veterans returned home messed up with traumatic and devastating injuries. And for what?
 
We must learn from the Vietnam debacle. Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan pose any threat to our national security. The reasons given to continue the Iraq War and to escalate the Afghanistan War are shockingly unpersuasive. The reasons are ultimately about face-saving, desire not to lose the huge investment already made, and speculation about what might happen if the United States withdrew militarily.
 
Maybe it is time to give diplomacy, not war-making, a chance. Security for the Iraqi and Afghani people would be better promoted by peaceful, humanitarian means.
 
We have reached a sad place with our too casual attitude toward war. It has become a first resort, not the last resort. A rational approach would gauge the appropriateness of a military response to whether there actually was a proximate threat to national security.
 
I have been a fan of Barack Obama. I campaigned and voted for him. But, along with many liberals and progressives, I will not go along with military escalation in the Middle East. Probably the major reason Obama gained support during the campaign for the presidency was his stated opposition to the war in Iraq.
 
It is impossible to forget that a Democrat, Lyndon Johnson, presided over the escalation of the war in Vietnam. The consequences were disastrous. Progressives must pressure Obama against the dangers of escalation. We saw this movie before. It was horrible the first time and there is no need to see it again.
 

On television, radio and the internet and in the newspapers, you hear that there are promising signs of economic recovery. As a legal aid lawyer representing low-income people, I wish I could say I have seen those signs. I have not.
What I have seen are many unemployed workers struggling for economic survival. Despite their best efforts, these workers are staying unemployed for longer periods of time. They are competing against six other workers for every job opening.
Many who never previously needed to seek help have turned to the state Department of Health and Human Services for food stamps. Caseloads in all categories at Health and Human Services have spiked upward every month since September 2008.
If it were not for unemployment benefits, food stamps and other public assistance, the hurt would be much worse. In this economy, without those programs, large numbers of people would be utterly destitute. Jobs are not out there.
Here are three vignettes from my last couple of weeks.
There was the 55-year-old Sullivan County man who cried his eyes out in my office. His employer terminated his job last January. In the past year, his wife left him and he lost his home to foreclosure.
The state initially denied his claim for unemployment benefits. It took him months to get an appeal hearing, as things have been so backed up at Employment Security. In his first bit of good luck in a long time, he drew a very professional, smart and caring hearing officer who promptly decided the case in his favor. This was huge for him as he collected 26 weeks of back benefits, his first income since he lost his job.
Then there was the unemployed single mother of three who also depended on unemployment benefits. Her ex-husband had stopped paying child support when he too got laid off. She had been in constant severe pain from medical problems that impair her ability to stand and walk. She needs to lie down frequently.
Because of her lack of income, she has faced a continuing threat of eviction and utility shutoff. When she sought assistance from her town, a town official had the chutzpah to suggest that she give up her children.
Lastly, I represented a mentally disabled veteran who had been homeless for several years. He had been living in a tent community in the southern tier of the state. Imagine living in a tent through the last two New Hampshire winters.
The guy had applied for both financial and medical assistance from the state through the Medicaid program. Even though the state medical reviewers had knowledge of his homelessness for a period of months, they ignored the fact. Delay and bureaucratic indifference defined the quality of response to his case. After a hearing, he is awaiting a decision.
Unfortunately, these cases are the tip of the iceberg. According to the most recent statistics from New Hampshire Employment Security, there were 9,318 new unemployment claims in July. That compares with 5,569 new claims in July 2008. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that the unemployment rate will remain above 9 percent nationally through 2011.
Wisely, the New Hampshire Legislature recognized the gravity of the unemployment crisis last session and increased employer tax rates, which had been among the lowest in the nation. The tax increase will be gradually implemented over three years, and it will help the solvency of the unemployment trust fund.
Still, more federal and state action is required. An estimated 1,478 New Hampshire workers will exhaust their unemployment benefits by December. A top congressional priority must be to provide additional weeks of extended benefits for long-term jobless workers. Also, features of the economic stimulus legislation should be continued. Specifically, boosting unemployment benefits by $25 per week and allowing the first $2,500 of unemployment benefits to be received tax free.
At the state level, the Legislature must recognize and fund the actual caseload increases at Health and Human Services. It is a dangerous game to construct budgets based on assumptions that are known to be factually inaccurate.
Those who complain about government spending for unemployed workers and for other human needs have not explained what help they would offer the unemployed and vulnerable. Doing nothing is not an option. Government has an essential role to play to alleviate economic hardship.

As a law student back in the mid-1980s, I worked on a class-action case on behalf of female state prisoners in New Hampshire. The case had an unusual purpose. It aimed to force the state to create a women’s prison inside New Hampshire. There was not one.
At that time, the state exiled female inmates and shipped them off to out-of-state correctional facilities. The small number of female inmates translated into an almost complete lack of consideration of their needs by the state.
A lawsuit, Fiandaca v. Cunningham, challenged this unfairness. With no women’s prison in New Hampshire, the state effectively denied female prisoners access to their children and lawyers. The lawsuit also took issue with the poor quality of programs available to female prisoners which were not comparable to the men’s programs.
As part of my work on the case, I traveled around and took affidavits from a number of women who were mostly confined in Massachusetts prisons. There were 23 female state prisoners when the Fiandaca case was filed in 1983. Probably the biggest change since then, beyond getting a women’s prison in the state, has been the remarkable increase in the number of women inmates.
According to the most recent available data, in 2007 there were 142 women in the state’s women’s prison in Goffstown or at the Shea Farm Halfway House in Concord. There were 291 in jail and another 1,450 under correctional supervision in the community.
Considering the extent of the increase, it is surprising how little public discussion and analysis has been forthcoming about the reasons for the climb.
A little-noticed 2008 report from the New Hampshire Women’s Policy Institute entitled “Women Behind Bars” did make a serious attempt to study underlying reasons.
The report found a complex of reasons to explain the increase in female arrests, including substance abuse, mental illness, a history of domestic violence, low education and poverty. Recidivism was a major factor driving the increase.
Two-thirds of female inmates have children and almost half are single mothers. The Women’s Policy Institute report estimates that 1,300 or more children are affected by their mothers’ incarceration each year. Research suggests that children of incarcerated parents are five times more likely to enter the criminal justice system than children whose parents have never been incarcerated. They are also more likely to leave school and have issues with depression, substance abuse and delinquency.
Nationally, 64 percent of mothers in state prison lived with their children immediately before their incarceration. The children of these inmates will often have emotional and psychological problems stemming from the trauma of separation. In effect, the children will do the prison time too.
From the perspective of societal self-interest, addressing the multiple needs of offenders is rational. It is about future crime prevention. It is not about being a bleeding heart or excusing the crimes of the women. Those crimes must not be excused.
Yet being tough or warehousing is not in and of itself a policy. It is certainly not a thoughtful policy. Many of the female prisoners are very young. The great majority will leave prison and re-enter society. Their children are in the background, but they are very much part of the equation.
A comprehensive treatment approach is needed that integrates substance abuse treatment, mental health, child care, children’s needs, housing assistance and job training. Long-term, successful rehabilitation should be the goal. Many of these women can turn their lives around.
We are far from having such an approach. We do not even gather adequate data to understand the unique profile of women offenders. Warehousing trumps rehabilitation.
Of course, there are many who will argue that such a rehabilitation approach is too expensive or not worth it. I would suggest that lack of investment and treatment is even more expensive. The cost will be more incarcerations and more lives ruined by largely treatable conditions like substance abuse, mental disorders and domestic violence victimization.
Too bad budget sheets do not typically capture the costs of lack of treatment.
Recently our Legal Aid softball team played two games against the inmates at the prison in Goffstown. Many of the prisoners who were not playing came out to watch. I was struck by how young the women were. They could have been high school or college students. Some looked like classic All American girls.
There is sometimes a thin line between being in prison and being on the outside. The path to criminality is not a given. Demonizing inmates and ignoring their needs is short-sighted. The upward trend in female incarceration could be combated if the political will was there.

To end our national paralysis about health care reform, the voices of the people must be heard. There is a reservoir of private anguish which could sway lawmakers if they bothered to listen to the untold number of horror stories which are accessible but ignored.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has performed a public service by collecting and publishing personal stories about the problems people are having with their health coverage or lack thereof. He solicited these stories by e-mail and received more than 4,000 responses. The personal stories are available on Sanders’s website and include the following:
• A combat-decorated veteran of the Vietnam war died three weeks after being diagnosed with colon cancer. He had been laid off his job and he could not afford COBRA coverage. He delayed going to the doctor until he was in extreme pain. By then, it was too late. The attending physician said that if he had only sought treatment earlier, he would still be alive. He left behind a wife and two teenage sons.
• A 42-year-old single mother was diagnosed with breast cancer which had spread to her brain. She was insured, but her co-pays and deductibles were so high that the expenses forced her to file bankruptcy. What kind of system adds financial pressure to an already scary medical prognosis?
• A low-income Washington state woman had lengthy wait to see a physician. She was uninsured, diabetic and lacked money to pay for medications and checkups. Because she could not afford her medication, she went without and died. She had two young children who will grow up without a mother.
• A 23-year-old volunteer firefighter, part-time EMT and paramedic developed his own medical problems and had to go to a hospital a year ago. He was uninsured and did not have the financial resources to pay his medical bills. He would pay what he could when he could. How is it possible that a young man who risks his life to save others would not be covered?
• The owner of a natural foods supermarket with 50 employees provided health care to all full-time employees at 100 percent paid by the company. Because of increasing cost, the owner had to start including deductibles and then he had to have employees pay for their insurance. The owner ended up spending so much money on health care, more than he ever made in profit, that he had to close the business in 2008.
• The wife of a Missouri man died of cancer in 1989. Her medical bills were more than $100,000. The insurance company refused to pay the bills, stating that the chemotherapy she received was experimental. The man appealed the insurance company’s denial and spent five years unsuccessfully litigating the claim. Although his lawyer recommended bankruptcy, he refused that route. For years after, he paid off the medical bills.
These types of stories are all too common. They are testimonials to the failure of the private insurance model. As Sanders argues, how is it acceptable to leave 46 million Americans completely uninsured and millions more underinsured?
There is a window of opportunity now to fix national health care. It would be a tragedy if this chance slipped away. Who knows when in the future there will be a similar opportunity.
If we cannot have a single payer system, then there at least must be a robust public health insurance option. Such a public health option would be cheaper and more efficient, and it would spend a smaller percentage of dollars on non-health items.
It is ironic that opponents of a public health option are afraid of competition. Adding a public health option would give the public more choice. The old arguments about how such an option is socialism or socialized medicine are stale.
We remain alone among the advanced capitalist countries in not having some form of national health insurance. It is so past time for us to address health care.

There has been insufficient public outrage over the assassination of Dr. George Tiller.
Early this month an anti-abortion fanatic was charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of Tiller, who was killed as he and his wife attended Sunday church services in Wichita, Kan. The murder was an unprovoked attack.
However much anti-abortion zealots may have disliked abortion providers like Tiller, his practice was constitutionally protected activity. Roe v. Wade remains the law of the land. Because the movement cannot legally prohibit women from exercising their rights, it has targeted physicians – to kill them or make it impossible for them to provide abortion services.
Political murder is a slippery slope. If such murders become commonplace, how long before the fabric of society starts to unravel and civil society begins to resemble a Mad Max movie? The rule of law hangs in the balance. Somalia, anyone?
Tiller’s murder is reminiscent of the 1998 murder of another physician, Dr. Barnett Slepian. Hiding in Slepian’s yard, another anti-abortion extremist shot the doctor in the back through a kitchen window. Slepian and his family had just returned from Friday night services at his synagogue.
You do not have to be religious to think premeditated murder at or near a church or synagogue is ghoulish. Nevertheless, it would not surprise me if the shooter believed he had a hotline to God. I expect he will argue justifiable homicide.
The late comedian George Carlin used to do a routine about the anti-abortion movement. As I recall, he mocked the label “pro-life.” Carlin said the movement killed doctors. Tiller is, in fact, the eighth abortion provider to be murdered in the United States since 1977. The victims include four doctors and four clinic workers. The National Abortion Federation says 17 other abortion providers have been targeted for murder.
Prior to his murder, Tiller and his medical clinic were subject to more than two decades of violent threats, incidents of violence and vandalism. In 1986, his medical clinic was bombed. Later, his clinic and patients faced years of picketing and harassment.
Protesters blocked access to the clinic. Eventually, federal marshals arrived because patients could not get in. In 1993, a gunman shot Tiller in both arms in an earlier assassination attempt.
More recently, the anti-abortion movement in Kansas ran a smear campaign against him. Activists created “most-wanted” posters resembling the posters used by the FBI to track down most-wanted criminals. Some of the posters offered a $1,000 reward for stopping physicians from performing abortions. Protesters called him “Dr. Satan.”
Pitiful reaction
Since Tiller’s murder, the quality of self-criticism I have seen from the anti-abortion movement has been nothing short of pitiful. Beyond pro forma apologies and denials of responsibility, much of the commentary seems to be of the “he had it coming” variety. Apparently there is no need for the allegedly “pro-life” movement to look into its responsibility for violence. Condemn the violence, ignore your role, and move on. It is back to business as usual.
In his classic essay, “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell wrote that political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable. The political language of the anti-abortion movement created the context for Tiller’s murder. If the message you persistently drill is that Tiller is a monster, it is hard to be surprised when one of your crazies acts on the demonization.
On Fox News, Bill O’Reilly routinely referred to Tiller as “Tiller the Baby Killer,” as did much of the right-wing media. In June 2007, O’Reilly stated that Tiller killed thousands of late-term fetuses without explanation. He said Tiller performed such abortions when there was no danger to the mother’s life and when the fetus was viable outside the womb.
A big fantasy of the anti-abortion movement is the notion that there are not severely troubled pregnancies. In this fairy tale, all babies are born healthy and women are simply electing to abort fetuses for the sake of convenience.
In reality, the biggest reason for late-term abortions is the discovery of fetal anomalies incompatible with life. Sometimes these anomalies are not apparent until late in the pregnancy. The mother finds out the heartbreaking news that her baby has no brain. Such anencephalic babies are doomed. They will either die in childbirth or shortly after. Tiller’s clinic was one of only three in the country that assisted women who encountered this horrendous situation.
Blaming a physician who had the courage to help women in such difficulty reflects a profound misunderstanding of the underlying medical issues.
By all accounts, late-term abortions are exceedingly rare. They are also restricted by law. The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed states to restrict access to abortion in the third trimester except when necessary to preserve the life and health of the mother. Tiller always operated inside these lawful constraints.
Hate and ignorance propelled the portrayal of Tiller as a mass murderer. What is bizarre is the denial of women’s experience. Tiller described himself as a women-educated physician. He became the doctor he was because he listened to women and addressed their medical needs so compassionately.

Here is a new context for the use of the phrase “ticking time bomb.” The context is retirement and the utter lack of preparation we have devised as a society for a fast-approaching demographic explosion.
The basics of the retirement crisis are easy to grasp. As the boomer wave starts aging into retirement, the senior population is on the verge of big-time expansion. We will have more people living longer with lower income and fewer savings. These same people will face high housing costs and, living longer, will often experience higher health care costs whether they are insured or not.
Leaving aside the current recession and its consequences, it is entirely fair to say that the safety net, particularly Medicaid, is not prepared for this sizable demographic shift.
At particular risk are women because they live longer and are more likely to be single. They represent the majority of those who will be financially insecure during their retirement years. A significant percentage will run out of money during retirement.
New Hampshire is fortunate that an in-depth study of the retirement crisis titled “Retirement Insecurity” has just been released by the New Hampshire Women’s Policy Institute. The authors are Peter Antal, Katie Merrow and Peter Francese. The report, supported by the nonprofit Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirement (WISER), is the first comprehensive look at the financial status of
women age 65 and over in our state.
The findings of the report are sobering.
Sixty two percent of older women living alone have income below what is needed to cover the basic cost of living. As of 2007, the report found 28,000 New Hampshire women age 65 and over who had income below what is minimally needed to survive. The report predicts that by 2020, if income distribution remains the same, that number will rise to 49,000.
The report identifies four main reasons why women are particularly challenged in preparing for retirement.
First, women have lower lifetime earnings than men. There are multiple factors behind this finding including differences in wages, occupational concentrations, labor force participation in full-time and part-time work and women’s primary role in family care-giving. The report estimated the lifetime cost of care-giving is $659,139.
Second, women are less likely than men to have retirement plans. Women living alone rely more heavily on Social Security benefits. Yet the average Social Security benefit for a woman over age 65 is only about $800 a month, according to WISER.
Third, women tend to live longer than men. National data put women’s average life expectancy at 80.1 years, men’s at 74.8 years. Just the fact of living longer means that there is a need for more savings to last through later years.
That does not even consider the additional health care costs of older age. Approximately one-quarter of women over 65 rate their health as fair or poor.
Finally, women tend to have lower financial literacy than men. The report mentions that even women with substantial assets may not be secure if they lack the financial education to manage their resources. Lack of financial literacy particularly matters because women are increasingly likely to live alone as they age.
Some might say the simple answer is for women to work longer. But WISER points out several reasons why this isn’t a workable solution for many women: a lack of jobs, poor health, or providing care for a spouse, a mother, or mother-in-law. The grim economy could stay this way for months or even years. Jobs will likely be harder to come by for older workers.
The Women’s Policy Institute report does not stop at identifying the problem. It suggests practical programs at the state level that could increase retirement savings.
New Hampshire could set up a state-sponsored voluntary retirement savings plan. Such plans do not entail state funding of contributions. They would simply provide a vehicle for individual savings similar to the “529” education plans. They could be targeted to low- and moderate-income workers.
The report also proposes targeted educational seminars on retirement savings, the development of local ordinances that would allow more older women to live with family and education for adult learners to increase opportunity for higher wages.
Retirement is an issue that cuts deep. It is a public service to raise the profile of retirement planning as a critical policy issue. In a bad economy, temptation exists to think about only the immediate future. Doing that would wrongly indulge our societal blind spot. Retirement is an issue for everyone.

‘Have we got a deal for you.” These are not words you typically expect to hear from state government. However, when it comes to unemployment benefits, the words ring absolutely true.
New Hampshire’s unemployment trust fund stands to gain almost $21 million if a bill sponsored by Sen. Maggie Hassan, SB 144, becomes law. The money comes from incentive funding under the Unemployment Insurance Modernization Act, which was part of President Obama’s stimulus package.
How this works is quite ingenious. New Hampshire and other states will get money if they take certain qualifying steps to modernize their unemployment systems. Over the years, many states passively watched as the percentage of unemployed workers becoming eligible for unemployment benefits precipitously dipped. Women, low-wage and part-time workers were the most adversely affected.
The Unemployment Insurance Modernization Act offered states financial incentives for doing the right thing: changing eligibility rules so that a more inclusive group of unemployed workers can qualify. Money becomes available to a state if it completes three reforms off a smorgasbord list of positive changes.
New Hampshire already has a jump start on qualifying for the modernization money. Two of the three necessary reforms have been accomplished.
More than 10 years ago, the Legislature passed the alternative base period, which allows more recent earnings to count toward financial eligibility. The fact that the alternative base period is law entitles New Hampshire to an immediate $10.4 million trust fund infusion under the stimulus.
Last year, the Legislature allowed part-time workers to collect. This reform was a second qualifying legislative enactment. New Hampshire needs one more progressive reform to access the over $20 million incentive funding.
This is where Hassan’s legisla
tion comes in. Originally designed to address a narrow circumstance around job terminations due to a non-work-related injury, Hassan’s bill has been amended to allow New Hampshire a chance to get the $20 million.
The amended bill makes two adjustments to the rules around quitting a job due to a compelling family reason. First, a worker could be eligible for benefits if the reason for the quit was illness or disability of an immediate family member. Second, a worker who accompanies a spouse to a new location from which it is impractical to commute could also qualify. Both scenarios have historically been considered voluntary quits and disqualifying.
These family-friendly adjustments have merit standing alone. Both changes are consistent with the bedrock principle of unemployment law that all workers who become unemployed through no fault of their own should be able to collect. Rather than individual employers being charged for benefits paid under these provisions, the trust fund will cover the cost.
Hassan’s bill would fully qualify the state for the additional modernization money. The compelling family reason provision also requires coverage for victims of domestic violence who had to leave their jobs due to abuse. New Hampshire law has provided for that for over a decade.
The state Department of Employment Security supports Hassan’s bill and has carefully priced out the cost of the reform. Officials estimate the cost of the trailing spouse provision as almost $175,000 a year. The ill family member provision cost estimate is $160,00 a year.
If the unemployment trust fund received $20 million, Employment Security estimates the annual interest earned on that money would be $900,000. The interest alone would more than cover the cost of these reforms.
With a worsening recession, the state needs adequate money in its unemployment trust fund to be sure it can meet its obligation to the working people of our state. The modernization money shores up the fund at a critical time of expanded need.
Opponents of taking federal stimulus money like Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour have argued that modernizing their unemployment systems will raise taxes on employers. The opposite is actually true. More stimulus money in the fund decreases the likelihood of an employer tax increase. In many states, the modernization funds will avert mandatory tax increases that happen when their unemployment funds drop below specified levels.
We are living with the marvelous results of the Bush-era free market and its do-nothing approach to unemployment insurance. Ignore workers for eight years, promise trickle-down benefits that never materialize and never speak about the unemployed. Out of sight, out of mind.
Unemployment modernization is a win-win proposition. The state gets federal money for carrying out reforms that help especially needy working families. Now there is a novel concept perfectly suited to these times.