Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/8590
6A – Daily News – Friday, April 2, 2010 Author of Bush-era memos a stranger in a strange land BERKELEY (MCT) — In his slate-blue suit and Republican-red tie, John Yoo stands out as discordantly formal among the denim- and turtleneck-clad faculty at Boalt Hall School of Law. Never mind how his poli- tics play in what he derides as "the People's Republic of Berkeley." The former Bush administration lawyer who drafted what his crit- ics call the "torture memos" is reviled by many in this liberal East Bay academic enclave, a feeling that is mutual though not, Yoo insists, wholly unpleasant. "I think of myself as being West Berlin during the Cold War, a shining beacon of capitalism and democracy surrounded by a sea of Marxism," Yoo observes, sipping iced tea in the faculty club lounge, a wan smile registering the discomfort of col- leagues walking by en route to the bar. He sees his neighbors as the human figures of "a natural history museum of the 1960s," the Telegraph Avenue tableau of a gray- ing, long-haired, pot- smoking counterculture stuck in the ideology's half-century-old heyday. "It's like looking at the panoramic displays of troglodytes sitting around the campfire with their clubs. Here, it's tie-dye and marijuana. It's just like the 1960s, with the Vietnam War still to protest." Yoo, 42, is unrepentant about his role in provid- ing the CIA and other agencies with legal cover to conduct harsh interro- gation of terror suspects with techniques such as water-boarding, which simulates drowning. In legal guidance he provid- ed to the past administra- tion, Yoo redefined tor- ture as pain resulting in organ failure or death. Calls for his ouster haven't subsided despite a Department of Justice decision in February that neither Yoo nor his for- mer boss in the Bush administration Office of Legal Counsel, federal Circuit Judge Jay S. Bybee, will face prosecu- tion for advice to the administration that showed "poor judgment" but not willful breaking of the law. Liberal civil rights advocates like the Center for Constitutional Rights, the American Civil Liber- ties Union and the Alliance for Justice have demanded a full, indepen- dent investigation of Yoo MCT photo John Yoo, a professor of law at UC Berkeley School of Law, poses for a portrait in Berkeley. and Bybee for their roles in the sanctioning of interrogation tactics the Obama administration has outlawed as violations of international treaties and U.S. moral values. "I feel vindicated," Yoo said of the Justice Department internal affairs report that con- cluded a five-year investi- gation and dropped an earlier recommendation that he and Bybee be sub- jected to disciplinary action by their respective state bar associations. Yoo sees the investiga- tion as political score-set- tling by those who dis- agreed with the tough war-on-terror policies of the Bush White House. "Someday the Republi- cans will be in charge again, and would you want to see them conduct- ing ethics and criminal investigations into the Obama administration?" he says. "I wouldn't want to see that. So I hope that this closes this chapter in trying to use criminal and ethical charges to carry out political fights against the policy of a past administration." He sees the persistent protests of his fitness to teach law as the campaign of a radical community intolerant of views that don't accord with their own. After disclosure of the memos last year, Christo- pher Edley, the law school's dean, deflected demands that he fire Yoo, saying that he and other university administrators would wait for the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibil- ities report and then "review it carefully and consider whether there are implications for this campus." Edley has said little since the Feb. 19 report that both detailed Yoo's and Bybee's misdeeds and eliminated an earlier find- ing that the lawyers had engaged in professional misconduct. "I hope these new developments will end the arguments about faculty sanctions, but we should and will continue to argue about what is right or wrong, legal or illegal, in combating terrorism. That's why we are here," Edley said in a statement after the report was released. Though Berkeley's fac- ulty remains predominant- ly liberal, it has become more ideologically diverse over the years as the best minds — regardless of political bent — have been picked to build the nation's well-respected computer science pro- gram, engineering school and law school, which is considered one of the best in the country. Many of Yoo's faculty colleagues have spoken out on the need for repre- senting a wide range of viewpoints. Among those deflecting calls for Yoo's dismissal was fellow law professor Goodwin Liu, whom Obama has nomi- nated for the U.S. 9th Cir- cuit Court of Appeals. Students also represent a broad array of political outlooks, although critics of Yoo's work for the Bush administration have dominated the debate over his tenured position. "We don't want some- one like that teaching us about the law and how to apply the law. It's a humil- iation for the law school and a huge disservice to the law students," said Liz Jackson, co-chair of the Boalt Hall chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. "We are a very prestigious place to be, and he gets a lot of legitimacy from being here and having a respected platform from which to speak." Yoo carries on cheer- fully with his constitution- al law class and a seminar on which he has bestowed the assignment to write a manual for delegates to a state constitutional con- vention, should one be called. He points out that 180 students enrolled in his civil procedure class last semester, as evidence that he is hardly being shunned by the students. Critics contend, though, that only two professors offered the course and that it was the last opportunity for this year's graduates to take the class. Despite his rocky pas- sage from government back to Berkeley, where he has taught off and on since 1993, Yoo doesn't rule out a return to public service should Republi- can conservatives regain the White House. Though he says he much prefers the freedom and intellectual stimula- tion of a college campus, he says he believes any- one called to serve the country should do so. "My parents were immigrants. I could have been a convenience store manager," the South Kore- an-born professor says of the opportunities afforded by his adopted country. "I feel very fortunate to have a job like this one." Yoo seems at peace liv- ing in Berkeley, even though he disparages the community as an enclave of self-satisfied extrem- ists intolerant of those who think outside the lib- eral mind-set. "But that doesn't mean I don't like it here," he says. MIAMI (MCT) — One of the two original major components of health care reform was pushed to the background by the time the bill was finished last week — controlling America's world-highest health care costs. For years, experts have maintained that lowering Cost containment seen as a political casualty in health care overhaul costs was as important as covering America's 45 mil- lion-plus uninsured because the issues are closely inter- twined: Many can't afford insurance because it costs too much. But in the past year, as reform became a battleground in Congress, costs moved to the back burner. "The job of figuring how to cover uninsured people used up all the political oxygen that was available," said Alan Sager, a health policy expert at Boston University. "They didn't have the energy for costs." Originally, many experts wanted the reform package to do away with the fee-for-service payment system in which the more tests and procedures ordered, the more providers got paid. They sought "global payments" for an ailment, with groups of doctors and perhaps hospitals paid for getting a patient well, not for every extra mag- netic resonance imaging test. But as politicians struggled with cost reform, power- ful groups blocked some cuts. In some other cases, the proposals were so complex that lawmakers decided they needed to be worked out in demonstration projects before being enacted. Those experiments are crucial, says Donna Shalala, president of the University of Miami and former secretary of Health and Human Services during the Clinton admin- istration's failed reform efforts. "This bill contains all sorts of demonstration projects — to get away from fee- for-service, to emphasize prevention and primary care." Still, some industry leaders believe lawmakers should have been more aggressive. "The one thing they missed out on is robust cost controls. ... So many special interests were operating," Chief Executive Brian Keeley of Baptist Health South Florida said. Those include both providers and consumers. Keeley cites an example: the tax on the so-called Cadillac plans. Some insurance policies are so rich that they provide virtually any health care people want, regardless of necessity. Taxing such plans would both provide funding for the uninsured and help rein in excess costs. Last November, the Senate proposed a tax starting in 2013 on policies worth $8,000 a year for an individual. But labor unions realized that many of its members had Cadillac programs, and they became adamantly opposed to the tax. Upshot: In the final bill, thresholds for taxes increased to $10,200 for an individual — and won't take effect until 2018. "We know how to control costs," said Karen Davis of the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit studying health care policy, "but it certainly takes political leadership to make that happen." Sager in Boston put it this way: "We're used to giv- ing doctors and hospitals blank checks, and that's hard to stop. ... Many of the people who support coverage of the uninsured do not support cost controls — hospitals, physicians, drugmakers." It's politically easier to give coverage to the unin- sured — meaning more money for providers — then cut costs, meaning less money for providers. Four years ago, in Massachusetts, reforms led to almost everyone getting insurance. "Cost control wasn't even on the agenda," Sager said. Only now is the state dealing with costs, which were high even before the reform. "A lot of countries have done it like that" — first assure access, then control costs. Business Roundtable, an association of chief execu- tives of America's largest companies, says the reform package is "just the first step in reforming our nation's health care system. Health care in America is too costly _ for individuals, for employers and for our country." Despite all this, one provision in the bill has huge, albeit delayed potential. Starting in 2014, a new Medicare advisory board will recommend ways to keep the program solvent. "If Congress fails to enact propos- als that achieve an equivalent level of savings, then the board's recommendations are automatically implement- ed," said Medicare spokesman Nicholas Papas.