Dale Cardwell, Democrat candidate for U.S. Senator, Georgia, spoke to Madison Forum members and guests at the regular breakfast meeting Saturday, January 26, 2008, with emphasis on his proposed “Health Care Program”.
Mr. Cardwell began with some background information. He has lived in five southern states. He was born in Kentucky, and lived for some years in Alabama. He went to Western Kentucky University, because it had and still has one of the best Journalism Programs in the United States. He worked his way through college as a DJ on local radio stations.
He started his career in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, at Fort Campbell. He said his first real taste of journalism, trying to make a difference, was in 1985 when the Gander, Newfoundland air crash disaster happened. 285 Fort Campbell servicemen were killed in that crash, on a return flight from a peacekeeping mission in the mid east. A day or so after, he said, he received a call from a young lady who was 18 years old, and her fiancé has been on that plane. She told Mr. Cardwell that she and her fiancé corresponded via audio tape. She had just received his last tape in which he said that he and all his service friends were terrified of flying this particular charter jet that was rickety. They felt it might crash at any time, and they were petrified about it. Mr. Cardwell said he got the tape, and listened to it; and that night it was the lead story on every major news cast in the United States, including CNN. Since he was working at an independent station, he could parlay that story to every outlet. He said that what was important about putting that story on television was that it created a moratorium on the way the military transported soldiers, and they stopped using charters for a year while they examined what went wrong. They found that Aero Air was a sub type of carrier that should not have been transporting troops. They increased the standards. And today, there has not been a major military disaster since then; because a little 18 year old girl had the courage to stand up and say – wait a second, this isn’t all about rah rah. This is about real people losing their lives because somebody was cutting corners.
Mr. Cardwell said his mother and father were both hard working people. They taught him some really simple values that he used to think everybody shared. But, he said, the older one gets the more one realizes they are more and more rare. His Mom and Dad believed that if you work hard, and you keep your shoulder to the wheel, and you keep your head down and do the right thing, you can expect a few things in life. You can expect to be able to put food on your table. You should be able to expect to put shoes on your kids. And you ought to be able to expect to be able to afford a family doctor. Today, he said, in 2008 we’re getting into a society where a lot of those things cannot be accomplished simply because you keep your shoulder to the wheel and your nose to the grindstone and do what’s expected of you. And, he said, he thinks that’s a big problem.
Mr. Cardwell has spent 23 years as an investigative reporter. He said nobody ordains you as an investigative reporter. You start by what he calls pulling the string. If you have a natural curiosity about the way things work, you start pulling that string, and that string will pull more thread, and pretty soon you’re unraveling something. And that’s the way he approached his job for 23 years. He said he had the privilege of breaking some major stories simply because he had this curiosity that would not let him rest. He said he is a fiscal conservative. He cannot stand the thought of the government writing a bad check. He and his wife cannot write bad checks. He’s not sure why the government thinks it’s OK to write a bad check. He does not understand why the government thinks it’s OK for one half of our debt to be owned by foreign countries, like the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Koreans. He does not hear politicians talking about that, and it’s scaring the fire out of him that they won’t talk about it. He said he believes strongly in accountability. A few of the things he was able to accomplish as a reporter, with the help of good people who were willing to stand up and make a difference. He was the guy who broke the story that Bill Campbell was using contractor money to go all over the country and gamble. A lot of people couldn’t stand that the station put that out, and there was huge pressure on Channel 2 not to print that story. He was the guy who broke the story that Sid Dorsey was using deputies that worked for the public to go and staff his private security jobs all over the metro Atlanta. Dorsey called him every name in the book, said it wasn’t true. And then later on he broke most of the stories that led to the fact that Dorsey was convicted of killing Derwood Brown. Dorsey said Mr. Cardwell was a racist, that it wasn’t true. And then, about four months ago from his jail cell he admitted it was all true. Mr. Cardwell is the guy who exposed the fact that Jackie Barrett had invested seven million dollars that belonged to the public in Fulton County with a guy named Byron Rainer, who was a rogue agent from Florida who had been terminated by Metropolitan Life. He’s the guy who exposed the fact that Zell Miller, when he left the governor’s office, pocketed $140,000 that the legislature appropriated for the maintenance of the mansion. Zell thought no one would know it, so he put it in his pocket and goes to Washington. He had to disclose his income when he became a Senator. And on a little bitty portion of the form he wrote $140,000 extra governor money. Mr. Cardwell said that’s the reason we don’t hear much from Zell these days, because he knows that if he starts to talk pretty loudly, that’s going to come back to haunt him. He said he calls himself an equal opportunity accountant. If Governor Purdue was flying around the state in a helicopter that belongs to us, and he was taking his son to football games in Gainesville, it was wrong. Mr. Cardwell told the story. Governor Purdue paid the money back, and the Attorney General said the Governor can’t use that transportation for his family any more. Mr. Cardwell said he believes strongly in standing up and telling what’s right and what’s wrong.
Mr. Cardwell said what he has learned from 23 years of going behind the lines of power and big government and brought people the real story was his passion. For as long as he can remember he has been passionate about telling people the truth, and he has been passionate about making a positive difference in people’s lives. So, when he started seeing what was going on with our government years ago, he saw this gulf continue to grow between what our national politicians tell us what they are going to do and what they actually do when they become elected. It’s almost like a side show. It’s like a circus atmosphere in Washington where they keep us entertained with craziness and silliness, and brinkmanship, when all the time they’re back here doing something in common. They are taking care of the giant corporations that pay their way to Washington. That’s not job one, that’s job 98%. There’s very little difference between the Democrats and the Republicans when it comes to taking care of their benefactors.
Mr. Cardwell showed charts prepared by the Center for Responsive Politics as of 2006. Of the three hundred million Americans, less than one-third of one percent contributes $200 to a political candidate running for anything. American people don’t contribute to elections. They don’t think they have to. And, says Mr. Cardwell, they shouldn’t have to. He thinks it’s awful that our government is for sale. So if ordinary people don’t contribute to elections, who does? Almost three-fourths of all money given to candidates for elective office comes from giant business. Mr. Cardwell worked for Cox for 12 years, and for big business most of his life. He said Cox is a good outfit. They make good money and work hard. Their number one goal is to put cable boxes in everyone’s house. Their goal is not to take care of Dale Cardwell’s family. Their goal is not to see that his retirement stays solvent, so they, and all other corporations, are paying to have their business interests taken care of in Washington.
Mr. Cardwell said, when he was considering running for office, he read an article about Saxby Chambliss in Georgia Trend Magazine. Senator Chambliss was asked if he had always had a passion for this – a burning desire on his part for this work. Mr. Chambliss replied that he had never thought much about politics, had never seen himself as a Democrat or a Republican. But a group of businessmen came to him in Moultrie, and said they thought he would make a good congressman. He ran for Congress in 1990 and lost. Then he ran again in 1994 and won. In 2006 Saxby Chambliss returned $26 million dollars of our tax dollars to Colquitt County to pay back those business people who came to see him to try to talk him into running for office.
Mr. Cardwell said he didn’t get any of that $26 million. He said he didn’t want any of that $26 million. He wants the government to take less from him. He doesn’t want the government to redistribute what they take from him to someone who can influence a legislator in Congress. Now, he said, here’s the scary part. What we are not hearing from the Democrats and we’re not hearing from the Republicans is that the money they are spending in Washington today does not belong to them, and it doesn’t even belong to us. It belongs to the Chinese. It belongs to the Koreans. It belongs to the Japanese who are more than glad to issue a credit card to our country. Almost 50% of the debt that we owe held by the public is owned by foreigners. So, what happens if we start doing something that the Chinese, the Koreans, or the Japanese don’t like? What if they decide to call in the debt? Is that going to influence our President - Democrat or Republican? Is it going to influence what we do in terms of foreign policy because they are afraid we will have the rug pulled out from under us. The Democrats and the Republicans are not telling us about this. We’re talking about taxes and tax incentives. And we’re talking about a way to stimulate the economy. He said it’s making him physically ill. We are a barge going down a river, loaded with iron ore. All our families are on this barge. And the water is close to coming over the side. It’s raining. So what Congress has decided to do is put a canopy of iron ore on top of our heads to keep the rain off of us. He said he wonders if that iron ore is going to cause the barge to go under. He is afraid it will. Congress is not sending us a $600 rebate on our taxes. What they are going to send us is a credit card check issued by the Bank of China, and we’re going to cash that check, and we’re going to spend it. And, you know who is going to pay it back, our grandkids. It’s like we are raiding the Christmas closet of our grandchildren. And we are sharing all the gifts that belong to our grandchildren. And, nobody will tell us the truth about it. He is fed up with it. He can’t stand that they are not telling us the truth about that.
Mr. Cardwell said he is proud to be an American. He has been proud of his country ever since he learned we had a Pledge of Allegiance. We are of the opinion that we are the number one nation in the world. We are number one in some ways. We’re the number one economy in the world. But, look where we have fallen because of our political leadership. When you take a look at things like economic trends, prices, energy, labor market, science and technology, education, quality of life, public finance, we are 16 our of 28 industrialized nations. Nobody is telling us that story. Nobody’s telling the truth. If you listen to the non-partisan Concord Coalition, they will tell you we’ve got serious problems. We’ve got a $9 trillion dollar debt. He does not believe we can grow our way out of this. The Concord Coalition says we would have to have 75 years straight of double digit economic growth to reduce the deficit we have. We can’t grow our way out of it. If the politicians tell us that all we have to do is grow our way out of it, they’re lying. They’re telling us what we want to hear, not what we need to hear. The Democrats and the Republicans will not quit spending. They want to tax and then they want to spend. They continue to insist on spending money we don’t have. Growth can help. It’s important to support the economy, and it’s important to have a growing economy. The reason we cannot fundamentally grow our way out of this is: today, there are 3.3 workers for every retiree in the United States. In 1960 there were five workers for every retiree. In 2040 there are going to be 2.2 workers for every retiree. We’re becoming an inverted nation. We’re becoming a nation of fewer workers and more retirees. The path we are on today, as far as Social Security and Medicaid are concerned, is not sustainable. We’ve got to stop spending money we do not have. It’s that simple. That’s the hard message that people need to hear.
Mr. Cardwell said he does not believe the SCHIP plan is the way to solve our health care issues. That’s not the answer. Here’s the inconsistency of our seated Senator. He voted against the SCHIP because he thought that parents who make $46,000 a year in Georgia and other places should not get help from the government for health care. He said he could see some reasoning behind that, but there is a problem with that. The same Senator, four months later, supported and voted for a farm bill that gave corporate welfare to people who make a million to two and a half million dollars a year profit. It’s because that’s the group of people who came to him in Moultrie, GA and said we think you ought to run for office. Mr. Cardwell said he doesn’t believe in corporate welfare. He does. There’s this mistake that he was doing this for the mom and pop farmers in Georgia. Folks, there are no mom and pop farmers left in Georgia. It’s Monsanto. These are giant corporate farms that are headquartered in Nebraska, and they lease huge tracts of land in Georgia. And the regular farmers that are left in Georgia can’t compete against them, because they are getting these Federal subsidies to come in here and buy and lease land.
Mr. Cardwell outlined what he wants to accomplish as a U.S. Senator. He said in his 23 years traveling around the Southeast, he has spent a lot of time in small towns in Georgia. There are two Georgias, one inside 285, and one outside of 285. He said he covered a tornado in a little town south of Villa Rica during the 2004 Presidential election cycle. About four houses were wiped out, and one house was not that bad. That family had everyone over for dinner that night. That’s the way neighbors help each other in places like that. He said he learned so much about politics that was an education in one night. He learned that the everyday Georgian wants three things from the Federal government. They want to be left alone. They want to Federal government to stay out of their pockets, and they want to Federal government to enforce the law. That’s what they want, and that’s what he said he plans to give them. The problem, says Mr. Cardwell, is that Saxby wants to give us everything we want, and then he wants to talk the talk. He’s a borrow and spend Liberal. He talks rhetoric that sounds conservative, but when it comes time to approve all those budget bills that get higher and higher, he’s right there voting for them. Somebody’s got to stand up and say so,. It’s got to come to an end.
Mr. Cardwell said he wants to secure our borders. He thinks it’s an abomination that six and a half years after 9/11 we still don’t know who’s coming across our borders. He said we can track a cow from Nova Scotia and know where its calves are. We know what happened to them, but we don’t know where people are when they come across our border. And a lot of people who came here legally, their visa expire, and they don’t go home, and we don’t know where they are. It’s got to stop. And, this is another inconsistency. When he saw Saxby Chambliss support and co-write the amnesty bill with Ted Kennedy, and he was so proud of it, Mr. Cardwell thought – why did he do that? All he had to do was use his reporter’s skills and find out where his money comes from. His money comes from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce which wants the border to stay open. They want the influx of cheap illegal off-the-books labor to come in. He calls it off-the-books, rocket fuel for a false shadow economy. The average American family is making $1,000 a year less today than seven years ago. Mr. Cardwell said he is a capitalist. He believes in a free market. Everyone knows that an economy can only work inside a model that everyone agrees to go by the rules. He said what we are doing is bring this off-the-book labor from a place where they don’t have to go by our rules. The industries don’t have to follow the rules that support supply and demand in the United States. We’ve got to get back to following the rules for supply and demand. We’ve got to secure our borders. It’s a travesty that they will not secure our borders. He said our ports are wide open, and they won’t do it because a very small number of people that control a significant amount of capital in our country will not let it be done. And, he said, they control the politicians through their purse strings, Somebody’s got to stand up and say so and do something about it.
Health care, he said is a work in progress. His first thought is that our model is upside down. We have these insurance companies that basically act as stock brokers. They collect our money and put our money in the market. They don’t want to release the money, because they make less money when they do. Therefore, we have a process whereby preventive medicine is just not what we do. We don’t encourage people to go to the doctor at least once a year. We don’t encourage people to get colonoscopies or mammograms. We don’t encourage people to take care of themselves or give them any kind of incentives to do so. What we do is hang on to their money until they become chronically ill, and then we release the money. It’s an upside down system. What would be workable, says Mr. Cardwell, is for the government to use its clout to go to a Blue Cross Blue Shield or Humana. To say why not try a test case for two years in a specific geographic area. The government could make certain that the company would not lose profits for two years, and wants the company to at least try to invert its pyramid and spend money on the front end, because we (the government) theoretically feel that the company would make more money on the back end by keeping its clients healthy. The company gets to make more money, because it’s not spending money on chronic care. He thinks that’s something Congress ought to get up the nerve to try to do. But the reason they can’t do it is because the insurance companies that control Washington have a price point. They’re comfortable with the fact that there are still enough paying American families that can afford that price point. And so they are insisting that the price point does not move. In the meantime, we have 47,000,000 Americans who are not insured, and who cannot be insured. And here’s the sad part about the rhetoric you hear. You hear people talk about should we have universal health care or should we not. We already have universal health care, said Mr. Cardwell. It’s called the Emergency Room. It is the illegals, he said. And the taxpayers are paying for it. And that’s another reason we have to secure our borders. In 1850 we had a horrible form of slavery. Well, he said, in 2008 we have another form of economic slavery. The problem is these people who violate our laws and come across our borders, and then are hired illegally by industries. The companies have the best of both worlds. They don’t have to house these people, they don’t have to pay for their health care, and they don’t have to educate them. Who’s doing all that? We, the taxpayers are. Somebody’s got to stand up and put an end to it, and do something about it.
The other idea, he said, came to him from a man who is an attorney and sold life insurance for years. And it sounds workable. The man said; we’re spending so much money o Medicaid every year in chronic care. If a person has diabetes we won’t build a ramp for them to get to their house, but when they fall and break their leg and have to have the leg amputated, then we build a ramp for the wheelchair. It’s just not smart. The man said, what if we had a deductible. What if we had a Federal insurance program where the Federal government provided $5,000 a year to every American for preventive care, to go to the doctor, to do these things. But, then at the $5,000 level, private insurance kicks in. You have to have a private insurance plan where after the Federal government pays $5,000, you have to go to private insurance. The gentleman Mr. Cardwell talked to said it would accomplish two things. First, health care premiums would drop precipitously, because insurance companies, their biggest expense is paying first dollar out. They don’t want to pay for preventive care. And number two, it would only require one form to fill out, because the Federal government would be the insurer. And everybody would have access to that. That’s another thought. It’s another idea that’s out there. Mr. Cardwell said he likes it in one regard. He doesn’t believe the government should take over health care. He doesn’t believe in a single payer universal health care system, because there’s no cost control. We see what happens when the government takes over an entitlement program. On the other hand, he doesn’t like a pure private insurance solution. Mitt Romney’s plan in Massachusetts sounds great on paper. Force everyone to pay for insurance. Premiums go down. Well, here’s the problem. As a reporter for 23 years, he said he can’t tell how many stories Clarke Howard and he did stories on families where both spouses were working and sometimes had an extra job. And then they had a child who had Leukemia, and they would go sit in the family’s living room and hear them talk about how the health insurance company wouldn’t pay the claims. They have a policy and paying their premiums, and they’re denying claims? So, looking at the Massachusetts model, the common denominator for all those people he and Clarke did stories on was that they didn’t have any political power. They couldn’t force those private insurers to pay for the coverage that these people had bought. So what’s going to happen if we add millions of poor Americans to this insurance plan and force them to pay it? They may pay the premiums, but the private insurers are not going to pay for the coverage. They’re going to bring in all that money, but they’re not going to pay coverage. Mr. Cardwell said he believes it has to be a public-private partnership. We have to find a way to keep the market involved in order to control costs. But we also have to find a way – and this is number one, to insure children. We have to find a way to make certain that children, up to the age of 18, are covered with health care coverage. It’s smart money, because it saves us money in the long run, and they don’t wind up in the emergency room.
Those are a few of the things, he said, that we need to be talking about. Things we need to be hearing Senate candidates debate. And you’re not hearing at all.