Articles 2009

We asked our members to submit articles about the election of Barack Obama. Parts of some of those articles appear in the Spring 2009 Silver Bulletin that was mailed out to all retirees. The SilverBulletin is limited in size by its 6-page format, but we are able to present the five complete articles here.

Following the articles about the election is the complete health benefits report, part of which appears in the Spring 2009 Silver Bulletin, from the health benefits chairman for CSU-ERFA, David Humphers.

Sing a Song: On Altered Terrain
by Hortense Simmons (English & Ethnic Studies)

For many Americans, the historic election of Barack Obama as our country’s 44th first black president exacted strong emotional reactions, but overwhelmingly so for black Americans. Cynthia Tucker, editorial page editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in her response echoes some of our feelings: “I’m struggling to find my footing on an altered terrain, a landscape where a black man can be elected president of the United States. It’s an exciting place, a hopeful and progressive place, but it’s unfamiliar. I didn’t expect to find myself here so soon.”

I was out of country during the elections (attended a Fulbright Conference in Beijing, followed by a 3-week jaunt to Malaysia and Singapore) and cast my vote in mid October in Atlanta, my new home where I moved from Sacramento a year ago this month. On the morning of 5 November, I watched election returns in the capacity-packed ballroom of the Renaissance Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia at an event sponsored by U.S. Ambassador James Keith. I recall vividly the electric atmosphere of the place. Loudly, exuberantly proclaiming their preferred choice for president, supporters of McCain and Obama donned campaign buttons and other paraphernalia. Red, white, and blue balloons were everywhere. Midst all the partisan excitement, civil cordiality ruled. CNN’s reporting of electoral votes flashed on the big television monitor above the stage and on flat screen televisions placed in various corners of the ballroom. A mock election was held solely for Malaysian guests who made their preference clear—Obama received 88% of the votes cast. Being among few black Americans present, I tearfully and jubilantly accepted congratulations, high fives, and “yes we did” from the celebrants. For me, the “altered terrain” described by Cynthia Tucker is proving guardedly challenging to traverse.

“Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us,”

The words above from brothers James Weldon and Rosamond Johnson’s “The Negro National Anthem” are indelibly planted in my memory. A native Floridian, after all, I was among the groups of young black school children who grew up singing the song (originally performed in Jacksonville at the turn of the century for a presentation celebrating Abraham Lincoln’s birthday). And this classic song continues to be sung by black Americans to open or close important events. Most recently, I sang it with guests present at the 100th Anniversary of The Inquirers Club (a women’s literary club which has met continuously since its founding in February 1909 in Atlanta).

Yes, for survival on unfriendly, treacherous terrain, as recorded in poetry, prose, and fiction, we black Americans sang, and continue to sing, all manner of songs, among them legendary spirituals as “Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel?” and “Steal Away.” As a young college student at Howard University, I learned from one of my professors, John Lovell Jr., of the significance of the coded messages, sometimes secular, in the “sorrow songs” sung by slaves in their struggle to escape via secret underground railroad routes. At this moment, I am recalling “thar’s a hill on the right and he cotched on the left.” His book, Black Song: The Forge and the Flame—The Story of How the Afro-American Spiritual was Hammered Out, is a classic.

Unmistakenly, Obama’s election initially is appearing as a welcoming terrain for new songs, melodious, beautiful songs capable of erasing the stings of our dark past (mine as a girl growing up in segregated south Florida). After all, I can cite something I could never imagine happening-- Earth, Wind, and Fire singing in the White House! In differentiating between us blacks of the civil rights era and President Obama’s generation, one of my former colleagues, retired professor of government Dave Covin writes in “Obama’s House,” that “ When he (President Obama) looks at the world, he sees doors that need to be opened. When we looked at the world, the doors did not exist.” And so the new songs we sing are informed by the deep recesses of our memories of doors, not closed, but that simply were not there. The challenge, therefore, is for us to charge that unfamiliar altered terrain as courageously as our ancestors, singers of the sorrow songs, charged theirs. Our president’s actions thus far, though difficult, are reassuring/hopeful. Despite the complex, multiple challenges facing him so early in his presidency, he is steady at the helm. We should not fear entering his house—President Obama deserves as much.

Hortense Simmons
Professor Emerita, English and Ethnic Studies
California State University, Sacramento

Note: This piece was originally written for Underground Railroad Free Press (urrFreePress.com) and appears in the March 2009 issue which focuses on Barack Obama’s election.

The Inauguration
by Felicenne Ramey (Business Administration)

Inauguration day was more than I expected and more than I ever dreamed. It was ecstatic and thrilling for both my husband and me to see the swearing in of our 44th President in person. The friendliness of the crowd and our down jackets kept us warm even though the temperature was in the low 20's. We were in the cold and on our feet from 6AM until 3 PM. It was wonderful! I attended the March on Washington in 1963 which was most certainly a thrill. But this day was 100% better because I witnessed Dr. Martin Luther King's dream come true. Let us all pray for this new president and wish him good luck for the many difficult issues he has to face.

Obama's House
by David Covin (Government)

President Barack Obama has a lot to teach black people of my generation. He does not see the world as we do. Karl Mannheim told us almost a century ago visionary leaders see the world in terms of its possibilities. We saw the world in terms of its possibilities for our times. Obama sees it in terms of possibilities for his.

We were born and raised in a jim-crow world, a world where the black middle class was less than 10% of our population, where we--and everybody else--knew our place in it. Obama was not. When he looks at the world, he sees doors that need to be opened. When we looked at the world, the doors did not exist. His expanded vision consists of creating a whole new architecture--without doors or even rooms--a national structure with illimitable possibilities for everyone under the roof. But Obama’s house is not new. It is inhabited. It must be remodeled with the residents inside. Some are in choice spots--next to a window with a view, in front of a fireplace. Others occupy less favorable quarters, next to a garbage can, the attic, the basement. We old fogies have an acute perspective about this set of conditions. While we do not have the power of Obama’s vision, we do have a deft appreciation for the obstacles that stand in its way, and some of the means that might remove them.

We must sound one caution above all others--clearly, emphatically, and incessantly. All black leaders and the black population at large will be under tremendous and relentless pressure to throw up our hands and shout “Hallelujah,” to declare that we have reached the promised land, crossed over into campground, and lay our burden down. It ain’t so.

The 2008 election was about the directions the white electorate wanted to take the country. The black candidate represented the presidential party out of power in a country in the midst of a catastrophe growing more desperate by the day, and the white candidate represented the party which led the country into the abyss. The black candidate, by the standards of meritocracy, widely proclaimed as de rigeur for filling the highest offices, outshone his white counterpart by orders of magnitude. The white candidate was also close to entering his dotage, as proved by his choice for a running mate. If under those circumstances the overwhelming majority of the electorate could not vote for a black candidate, then clearly the election was about race, or so it would seem.

That, however, is an illusion. The majority of white voters have not voted for the Democratic Party since 1964. Even that was primarily the result of the Kennedy assassination. Before 1964, the last time a majority of whites had voted for the Democrats had been in 1948. But over the last four decades white voters have made a startling revelation. Through the election of a black Governor in Virginia, two black Senators in Illinois, black people elected to statewide offices across the country--all in white majority jurisdictions--white people have learned that office holders of African descent can and do represent white interests every bit as well as white office holders. Nowhere was that made plainer than the Illinois Senatorial election in 2004 when the Republican party chose the black Republican, Alan Keyes, to run against the Black Democrat, Barack Obama.

The general election of 2008 underscored the same point. In the primary, because black voters are the largest single block of Democratic voters and the foundation of the party’s base, Obama could not stray too far from that base. Indeed, before he became well-known, he did not have the support of a majority of black Democrats. Hillary Clinton, a known quantity, had more support. Black people have learned to be selective about which black candidates they support. They are not willing to get behind just any person of African descent who comes rumbling down the pike. Obama had to establish his bona fides with black voters. He used Michelle extensively in that way. He had his picture-perfect black nuclear family. He had his roots--some twenty years--firmly in the black church. He proudly displayed his Kenyan father. He had been repeatedly elected by black constituencies in Chicago. In the U.S. Senate he established a liberal voting record, opposing the death penalty, building on a history of sentencing reform established in the Illinois State Senate. He stressed his background of community organizing. He was a courageous defender of civil liberties. The other thing he had to establish to black voters was that he could win, which he did in the Iowa caucuses. With that set of legitimatizing credentials, he won the black base and the Democratic nomination. He made a principled defense of his minister and his relationship with him. Without his sweeps in North Carolina, South Carolina, D.C., Maryland, Georgia, Alabama, based on the backs of black voters, he could not have won the nomination.

But even before the primaries were over, Obama signaled what this election--as all national elections in the U.S.--was really about. He disavowed the minister who had married him and christened his children. He supported continuing oppressive government infringements upon civil liberties, he tuned down his proposals for withdrawing from Iraq. He came out in favor of the death penalty. The more Hillary gained on him, the faster and further he ran from black people. By the general election campaign, black people had vanished from the Obama agenda.

The reason was simple. Obama wanted to win. To do that, he had to prove to white people he could represent them just as well and faithfully as all the other black people who had been elected by white constituents since the 1970s.

Obama’s strategy is to develop the national capacity to remodel the house so that people can move about freely within it. That is an element we old geezers have failed either to visualize or realize. Nevertheless, we must be like the old Greek choruses and remind him that despite winning the election by over seven million votes, he still did not get a majority of the white votes--and that tells us something about the residents of the house. We must remind him that when unemployment rates go up, they go up twice as fast for us. We must remind him that proportionately more of us are homeless, without medical care, and incarcerated than anybody else. Proportionately, our children suffer more from infant mortality, dismal educations, and shorter life spans.

Finally, we must use the opportunity President Obama and his conception of the world have given us. Not every historical period is propitious for organizing, mobilizing, and effective political action. This one is. Nevertheless, not everybody will have a free pass to better quarters. If we want every person to have the best chance possible, those of us who are best situated must become architects ourselves, plumbers, carpenters, electricians, and day laborers at work to construct within this house spaces and opportunities specifically for the marginalized. Because unless we lay our own minds, hearts, and hands to it, the national political edifice will always be the construct of the privileged, no matter what the architect or crew chief looks like.

Post-Racialism
by Tom Kando (Sociology)

Jan. 19, 2009: Today is Martin Luther King Day. Last night, we saw the incredibly uplifting concert held at the Lincoln Monument in celebration of Obama’s upcoming Presidency. So today many comments about race appear in the media. Let me focus on two in the Sacramento Bee: One by my colleague Tim Fong, Professor of Ethnic Studies at Cal State, and another by columnist Dan Walters. These two articles highlight both a frequent mistake and a correct observation about race at this time:

(1) Fong re-iterates the oft-heard truth that while Obama’s election is a great step forward, we are still not out of the woods, as far as race relations are concerned. He then proceeds to point out that a majority of white Americans voted for McCain, not for Obama. This oft heard statement is problematic. The obvious implication is that most whites are still racists. But by this measure, blacks appear to be more fixated on race than whites, since a far higher percentage of blacks voted the race line, i.e. for Obama. Fong also reminds us of continued racial economic inequality. Whites are better off than blacks--another indication of lingering racism. Yes. But Japanese and Chinese Americans make even more than whites. This is inconvenient for the facile and simplistic dichotomy that places whites on the side of privilege and all others on the side of victimization.

(2) Dan Walters, on the other hand, reminds us that it was indeed the great influx of minority voters which helped California pass the anti-gay Proposition. Sorry folks, if Obama had not motivated an extra 600,000 blacks and Hispanics to go to the polls in November, Prop 8 would have been defeated. But you see, here again, the liberals stick to their knee-jerk binary thinking: There are only two groups: (a) Good people, i.e. minorities, gays, women, etc.; and (b) bad people, i.e. whites, especially white heterosexual men. So the fact that African-Americans and Hispanics were more anti-gay than the rest of the electorate creates great cognitive dissonance in liberals. Anyone who even states this fact--as Dan Walters bravely does--is called a racist.

There was even a research project (San Francisco and New York University) which attempted to show that if you control for church attendance, then minorities did not favor Prop. 8 disproportionately. Do you see how self-serving this is? It merely adds one more category to the liberals’ list of bad people--namely church-goers!

* * * * *

The post-racial era is what we are all eagerly anticipating, and Obama’s election is a huge step in that direction. What is required, however, is a de-emphasis on race, not a continued emphasis upon it. And in that regard, I am afraid that liberals are as guilty as conservatives.

Now don’t misunderstand me: I would be very insensitive if I were to deny African-Americans the well-deserved and long-overdue celebration of the first black President. Ethnic (and gender and other demographic) identification is legitimate. Heck, I have been joking to my wife about how proud I am that Peter Orszag (a fellow-Hungarian) is going to be Obama’s director of OMB. It is eminently appropriate right now for African-Americans to be festive and to celebrate the election of the first African-American President.

But then, we need to move on: I voted for Obama not because of his ethnicity, but because he seems to be magnificently qualified for the Presidency at this time of great trouble. One of the things I love about him the most is that he is, indeed, post-racial. He is a universal man. He transcends race and nationality. Notice, for example, a very subtle passage in his January 18 speech when talking about Martin Luther King--he quoted the great man’s famous statement that men should be judged “on the content of their character.” But he left out “... and not on the color of their skin.” This is pretty revealing. There are many criteria that should not be used to judge others--gender, sexual preference, national origin, family origin, etc. Race is one of them.

We do not want traditional racism to be replaced by the inverted fixation which, as I just documented, seeps through some liberals’ editorializing. As we clearly saw during yesterday’s celebration in Washington, the greatness of the Obama transition is that it is inclusive rather than exclusive. It is truly post-racial.

The Underground Railroad
by Peter Michael (Business)

The election of President Obama was the culmination of that noblest of American institutions, the Underground Railroad, the ubiquitous, 280-year-long, illegal, clandestine moral imperative which did as much as any movement in the nation's history to shape the American consciousness. Operated by its now revered but still almost entirely anonymous freedom seekers, safe-house operators and conductors, it was the Underground Railroad which won the war for the soul of America. It would take another 143 years after the Underground Railroad passed into history--through Reconstruction, the ninety-year night of Jim Crow, Martin Luther King and the civil rights legislation of the 1950s and 1960s, and finally the dawning of racial enlightenment over the last generation--for the nation to reach the point when race was finally put aside and the content of the candidate's character was the hinge of the 2008 presidential election. Many had a part in this moral culmination: more than anyone--the appealing candidate himself; his superb campaign staff; the changed nation which elected him; and the brave Americans who fought at lunch counters, on busses and in the courts. In this watershed year of the nation's history, at this shining moment, let us not forget the brave souls of the Underground Railroad who risked and often lost everything to get this train moving.

Peter H. Michael is Lecturer Emeritus of the College of Business and publisher of Underground Railroad Free Press which will devote its March issue to the heredity of Barack Obama's election from its Underground Railroad roots. Visit urrFreePress.com for more.

Health Benefits Report
by David F. Humphers (Health & Human Services)

The California legislature rested on its faux laurel wreath in December and January while the financial crisis sank toward its nadir. In Sacramento, rumors were rife that the California Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) would be out of the health care business by February 1, 2009. The governor proposed transferring health benefit administration for active employees from PERS to the state Personnel Administration as a cost saving measure. Health benefits for retirees would remain with CalPERS. The noise dropped many decibels after the legislature, on February 19, adopted a budget that was due over seven months earlier. There was no mention of PERS giving up health benefit administration at the February PERS health benefits meetings.

State Controller John Chiang’s February 24 actuarial report estimated that health and dental benefits for retired state employees will cost $48.2 billion. His report may have been disquieting for those who read only the headlines. Chiang’s sensible recommendation, that the legislature take a pro-active role by setting aside funds to be invested to grow new funds for future health care benefits, follows the successful investment model for retirement pensions.

According to Marie Cocco, writing for the Washington Post (Sacramento Bee, March 3, 2009), the health insurance industry is developing scare tactics in attempt to keep the overpayments generated by Medicare Advantage. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission estimates a 14% overpayment per Medicare Advantage enrollee. The Obama administration plan is to save $176.6 billion over the next ten years by tightening the bidding process. If successful, the administration’s Medicare Advantage reform plan may impact health care financing for retired California public employees. What will be the outcome of the next round of bidding by Blue Shield and Kaiser Permanente for CalPERS Medicare Advantage contracts?

Federal Health and Human Services Inspector General Daniel Levinson reported (Sacramento Bee, February 1, 2009) that many retirees who buy their medicines through a Medicare Part D prescription drug plan (enacted by Congress in 2003) may be paying too much. The Inspector General’s audits of Medicare prescription drug plans reported unreasonably high marketing costs, over-charges for mail-order prescriptions, and inflated co-payments for generic drugs. One-quarter of all prescription plan audits revealed errors that resulted in higher profits for insurance companies, and higher premiums or fewer benefits for beneficiaries. The overcharges to subscribers and taxpayers amount to $4.4 billion for 2006 alone.

Some PERS beneficiaries learned more about Medicare Part D in 2008, when they received a call or letter from CalPERS or from their health plan informing them that a Medicare policy prohibits concurrent enrollment in two federal health plans (for example, a PERS Medicare Advantage HMO and the TriCareForLife health plan for veterans). Some individual PERS members were informed that they must elect one health plan and drop the other.

In mid-December, a CSU-ERFA member received a telephone call followed a few days later by a mailed notice from PERS stating that he and his spouse were to be terminated from his PERS Medicare Advantage health plan effective February 1, 2009. The reason for termination: “You can’t be enrolled in two federal Medicare health plans.” He had been enrolled in a PERS health plan since the 1960’s, and he was enrolled in the TriCareForLife health plan for veterans who served for twenty or more years. Our ERFA colleague and his spouse are both currently undergoing expensive medical treatments. He elected to stay with the PERS health plan and called TriCare to disenroll. He learned that it is impossible to disenroll from TriCare. He also learned that when TriCare eligible veterans reach age 65 they must enroll in a Medicare health plan; thereafter, TriCare is supplementary to Medicare.

Thanks to CSUS SilverLink webmaster Steve Gregorich (CSU-Sacramento) and CSU-ERFA webmaster Mark Shapiro (CSU-Fullerton), a prompt survey of the ERFA membership identified thirteen CSU retirees who are enrolled in the TriCareForLife health plan. Twelve of the thirteen are enrolled in both TriCareForLife and a PERS Medicare plan. None of the twelve received a termination notice.

We were able to promptly inform PERS that our colleague’s termination notice was based upon a misinterpretation of Medicare policy and a misrepresentation of TriCareForLife as a competing plan, rather than supplementary to Medicare. A few weeks later our colleague received confirmation that his PERS health coverage is safe.

A telephone call to Medicare customer service in February confirmed that veterans eligible for TriCareForLife coverage must enroll in a Medicare plan at age 65. They remain enrolled in TriCare, and TriCare becomes supplemental to Medicare. Also, the February call to Medicare customer service confirmed that the Medicare prohibition of concurrent enrollment in two plans applies only to the Medicare Part D pharmacy benefit; that is, the prohibition does not apply to Medicare Part A (hospital care), Part B (medical services), nor Part C Medicare Advantage plans. Finally, the customer service representative said “If a health plan tries to terminate someone from their Medicare plan, that person can file a complaint directly with Medicare.”

We do not know whether the misinterpretation and misrepresentation of the Medicare policy began with Medicare, the health plans, or with PERS. The ERFA Executive Committee will consider remediation efforts at the next meeting. ERFA members who received termination letters or have been instructed to give up a health plan are invited to inform ERFA Executive Director, Don Cameron, camerontrs@aol.com, or David Humphers, ERFA Health Benefits director, humphers@csus.edu, or leave e-mail or telephone messages for both at the CSU-ERFA office 818-718-7680, csu_erfa@csun.edu