�鶹Ů��

When American soldiers return home from war with disabilities, they often suffer twice — first from their combat injuries, next from the humiliation of government dependency. Wounded veterans learn they have two basic choices: They can receive almost $3,000 a month in disability benefits along with medical care and access to various other welfare programs, or they can try to find a job. Especially in this economy, it's no wonder that many find that first option hard to turn down. (Phil Harvey and Lisa Conyers, 11/11)

The first person executed in the United States this year, Andrew Brannan, was a Vietnam veteran who had been granted 100% disability because of his Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and other problems stemming from his military service. Approximately 300 other veterans remain on death row and face execution. As retired Army general officers, lawyers and a psychiatrist, these facts concern us greatly, and they should disturb many other Americans, as well. (James P. Cullen, David R. Irvine and Stephen N. Xenakis, 11/11)

After suffering through the usual bureaucratic indignities — in my case sitting on a waiting list for three months — I started treatment at the big VA hospital in La Jolla, which included weekly appointments with a therapist who was finishing up his doctorate. Oddly, whenever I brought up the issues that bothered me the most — the catastrophic mismanagement of the war by the Bush administration, the pointless slaughter I’d seen in Fallujah, the casually bloodthirsty way Americans would talk about Iraq and about Arabs in general — my therapist would change the subject. I was admonished for “intellectualizing” my trauma and encouraged to focus instead on an IED ambush I had survived in Baghdad in 2007, as if that one event were the key to unlocking all my feelings about the war. Eventually this made my insomnia and anger issues worse, so I quit. (David J. Morris, 11/11)

Two Princeton economists, Angus Deaton and Anne Case, issued a study last week that should push what the writers Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb called the “hidden injuries of class” to the center of our political conversation. Deaton and Case found that the death rates for whites 45 to 54 who never attended college increased by 134 deaths per 100,000 people between 1999 and 2014. They unearthed a startling rise in suicides as well as diseases related to alcohol and drugs. ... The truth is that elites — including many of us in the media — are largely insulated from the brand of despair that is driving so many of our fellow citizens to drink, drugs and suicide. Well-off liberals and conservatives have different ways of evading the realities of lives distant from their own. Will the work of two economists finally convince us that our indifference is unconscionable? (E.J. Dionne Jr., 11/11)

A year ago, a mother and self-described “God-fearing woman” called me after she had an abortion. She said that earlier, when she found herself unexpectedly pregnant, she drove straight to what she thought was a comprehensive health care provider near her home in Columbus, Ohio. When she asked about abortion, the staff told her she shouldn’t murder her child. ... She had landed at a crisis pregnancy center, a religious nonprofit organization that obstructs women’s access to abortion. In recent years, many more low-income women are finding themselves in her shoes. Abortion foes are subsidizing these centers with public funds, while pushing to defund comprehensive health care providers. (Meaghan Winter, 11/12)

Syria. Gun violence. A dysfunctional Congress. All serious problems that we don't know how to fix. But the world knows how to save 800 women a day from dying in pregnancy and childbirth. We simply choose not to. ... Scientific research shows that the vast majority of maternal deaths are due to preventable or treatable causes such as hemorrhage, hypertension, sepsis and unsafe abortion. Relatively simple interventions, such as skilled birth attendance, access to voluntary family planning and treatment for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, would go a long way toward reducing morbidity and mortality. (Diana Ohlbaum, 11/10)

Judging by their rhetoric, you might think Republicans and Democrats have fixed Social Security. Describing the budget deal signed into law on Nov. 2, John Boehner said it secures “significant long-term savings from structural entitlement reform,” while President Obama lauded the agreement for reforming Social Security “in a responsible, balanced way.” None of this is true. The deal tweaks the soon-to-be-bankrupt Social Security Disability Insurance program—but only shaves off between 1% and 1.5% of the program’s long-term shortfall. All Congress really did was delay insolvency by siphoning money from the rest of Social Security. Put another way, lawmakers “solved” the problem by bailing out one failing program with money from another failing program. (Andy Koenig, 11/11)

Now that Republicans control both houses of Congress, the House of Representatives has an important role to play in advancing conservative policies. House membership is more conservative than the Senate; its rules often make it easier to pass conservative legislation .... But when both chambers finally came together on a budget, there was one important promise they made together: They would use the budget-reconciliation process to repeal Obamacare. Oddly enough, it’s the House, not the Senate, that was first to cave in delivering on repeal (a top commitment that members in both chambers made during the 2014 campaign). (Michael A. Needham, 11/10)