Vietnam vet challenging Lungren
By Blake Ellington - Elk Grove Citizen Staff Writer

“It’s telling how far we have strayed from the principles that our country was founded on that someone running for Congress in the 21st century is asked what’s your position on torture.”

Giving it a second go against Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Gold River, for California’s Third Congressional District, Bill Durston leads his campaign with the lyrics to his 2006 song, “War Is Not A Game.”

“The Army sent me off to war. I was still 18 years old. They taught me how to hate and how to kill and just to do what I was told. But I could hear my father’s words every time I fired my gun….I heard him sayin, ‘War is not a game, Son….War is always the same.”

This is one of the verses from the song he wrote with his daughter Annie, performed by his folk-singing friends Eleanore MacDonald and Paul Kamm. The Vietnam vet received the Navy Commendation medal for bravery under combat for his time in the Marines after high school. He says he received the medal for an incident when his squadron was surrounded, and he radioed in artillery fire.

“I’m not a war hero, but I was there, I was in combat, but I don’t put a lot of stock in the medal,” he said.

Claiming not to be a pacifist, but that he believes that war becomes necessary only as a matter of self-defense, Durston, 58, is a strong advocate for swiftly exiting the war in Iraq, universal healthcare and stricter gun control laws.

“Basically, I support working class people, I think we have a widening gap between the rich and poor,” he said.

Durston has made a grand total of $42 off his single by selling it on his Web site and giving it out at campaign events. He now plans to run again against Lungren, who is up for re-election next November, after losing in 2006.

Serving as the Injury Prevention Chairperson of the California Chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians, a medical society formed to improve emergency care by setting higher standards for emergency medical education and practice, from 2000 until now, he has helped craft state legislation related to injury prevention. Being board-certified in both internal medicine and emergency medicine, he has practiced in Sacramento for over 20 years and he feels that his experience both in the military, and healthcare is why voters should vote for him come election time.

“There are good hearted, patriotic people who are worried about the direction the country is headed,” he said.

Where he differs with Lungren the most is the topics in which he says he has the most experience in. Lungren’s Web site states that a withdrawal in Iraq should be “connected to the facts on the ground rather than a time table.” Durston disagrees with that.

“The facts on the ground are that we are there under false pretenses and our presence is aggravating the situation,” he said.

Durston refers to when he was on the ground in Vietnam and how the facts that were reported were not always the facts on the ground. He calls for a “prompt, orderly withdrawal” and said he would vow to fight to remove troops within a month after he gets into office. The key, he said, is to not leave any military bases behind.

“Before March 2003, we had no military bases in Iraq,” he said. “It creates a tremendous amount of resentment towards the United States on the part of the indigenous people.”

Lungren’s stance on universal healthcare is also made clear on his Web site. He points to the systems in the European nations, such as Britain, where a universal system hasn’t worked and that patients have to wait for months for cancer treatments that are “routinely available here.”

Durston says that is not true, and that France’s universal program has been rated the best system by the World Health Organization.

“France rates number one in countries around the world and the U.S. ranks among the bottom third, patients in France give a 65 percent approval rate, while the U.S. is less than 50 percent,” he said.

The question then becomes, a way in which the country can afford to pay for a universal healthcare system. Lungren’s Web site says that comparing systems solely based on per capita spending is “deceptive,” and while Durston agrees with that to some extent, it doesn’t dissuade him from his three-point plan on how to clean up the system, which will ultimately allow blanket coverage.

The first point is to clean up the “for-profit motive.”

“The CEOs of some of these companies make profits in the hundreds and millions a year,” he said. “They are not for finding healthcare for people, but avoiding insuring people who are sick or likely to be sick.”

The second point is to clean up all of the administrative hurdles in the system, that with the competing health plans and the different types of billing. The third is to fix the “failure of the government to leverage the health care costs.”

“That’s because we have a government that’s not of, by and for the people but of, by and for special interest,” he said.

These three points, Durston said, will help clean up the system that is pumped full of money with little results as it is.

“However you slice it, we still spend more, whether per capita, or percentage of our GDP, than other industrialized countries in the world, we still are the only one that doesn’t have universal healthcare, and our overall numbers are lower,” he said.

Durston’s campaign is not listed on the California Secretary of State’s Web site for campaign finance. He did say that he is sacrificing a 40 percent loss in his salary and benefits during the campaign however.

Durston has been married to his wife Diane for 38 years. They have two children, who are both in their 20s.

For more information visit www.durstonforcongress.org.