Historic Events In Lancaster
Here’s an exciting article by Jerry Policoff about the events leading up to this past weekend’s Democratic Committee meeting in Lancaster, the unanimous endorsement of single payer there, and the encouraging support of single payer evinced by the potential governor candidates. Things are definitely moving!
http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/Single-Payer-Healthcare-Go-by-Jerry-Policoff-100209-270.html
A Message Small Enough For Sarah Palin’s Palm
DelMontPDA’s own brown bag vigil at Joe Sestak’s office happened last month and will be held again this month, February 17, at Noon at his office at 600 N. Jackson Street, Media. Join us if you can. These vigils will happen in even more congressional districts this month. And there will be more in Pennsylvania. To find them go to www.pdamerica.org. To read more about DelMont PDA, go to http://www.delmontpda.wordpress.com.
Progressive Democrats of America’s Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign has expanded with the Brown Bag Lunch Vigils. PDA had its official kickoff for the BBLVs last month in 22 congressional districts across the country. This month—on February 17—at least 34 CDs will be holding these vigils to raise awareness among the public and our elected officials that the electorate is not being served by current U.S. war policies.
Brown Bag Lunch Vigils (BBLV) are held on the third Wednesday of every month in front of the home offices of representatives—and even a senator or two—in congressional districts all over the country—most from noon to one. The good news for you is that there is a BBLV planned in your district.
Follow this link to get details about and register for your CD’s BBLV. For those of you who participated last month, you don’t have to register again: Just show up. Make signs to show your representative and your neighbors what social benefits we could have paid for if the money spent on foreign, nation-building wars had been spent in our own communities (courtesy of the good work of the National Priorities Project).
Billions of our tax dollars (look at how many at this very moment) are pouring out of our country’s coffers and into war pockets. As Norman Solomon wrote, “Foreclosing the future of our country should not be confused with defending it.” We demand that wasteful and unnecessary military spending be directed toward healthcare, jobs, and housing in America. We demand an end to the unjust and illegitimate wars against, and occupations of, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Thank you for taking a stand for peace with your fellow PDAers and our partners—CODEPINK, AfterDowningStreet, Democrats.com, the California Nurses Assn./National Nurses United, and United for Peace and Justice—with the Brown Bag Lunch Vigils.
In peace and solidarity,
BBLV National Team
Pennsylvania Democrats Endorse State Single Payer
Single Payer Senate Bill 400 and House Bill 1660
Tell Sestak To Cut The Pork
It’s outrageous, unnecessary, and expensive.
Worst of all, the budget has hundreds of millions in nuclear pork for several new facilities that would enable the U.S. to increase its capacity to create new nuclear weapons in the future. A new plutonium pit facility in New Mexico would allow for a huge increase in the production of plutonium pits – the bomb cores of nuclear weapons. These facilities could cost taxpayers $3 billion each in the long run. Meanwhile, funds to dismantle nuclear weapons we no longer need have been slashed.
You have a crucial role to play because your representative sits on a key committee that decides how much funding nuclear weapons will actually get. Tell Rep. Joe Sestak today to cut the nuclear pork.
The international community is coming together in May to evaluate progress on the cornerstone treaty of nuclear disarmament. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty obligates nuclear weapons states – like the U..S. – to work toward nuclear disarmament in exchange for non-nuclear weapons states not acquiring them. Other countries are looking to the U.S.. for signs that we are serious about living up to our nuclear disarmament obligations, and this budget undermines our credibility.
Last year, your emails and calls created the grassroots pressure that successfully eliminated pork for the nuclear weapons complex from the economic stimulus.. Please email now and ask Rep. Joe Sestak to cut funding for these new facilities.
Thanks for speaking out,
Bill Moyers and Dr. Margaret Flowers
Follow this link to Bill Moyers’s website. You can find his conversation with Dr. Flowers of the physicians healthcare organization and whole lot of other great stuff.
Events of Interest
All attractions are free and open to all unless otherwise noted. We are nearing the death of the one thousandth US soldier in Afghanistan. We expect that tragic milestone to be passed in the next 2-4 weeks (deaths are now averaging one per day). When we reach it, CFPA’s regional office and a number of our chapter-affiliates, as well as our sister peace groups in the region, will have Emergency Vigils the first day after (most will start at 5:00 PM). Stay tuned and we will inform you as that tragic milestone draws nearer.
February 9 – Tuesday – 7pm. Marcellus Shale presentation. Sponsored by League of Women Voters of Radnor. Carol Collier, executive director of Delaware River Basin Commission. Radnor Township Municipal Building, Iven Avenue, Radnor 19087. 610-688-5600 or 610-527-3706.
February 13 – Saturday – 10am-Noon. Report from Honduras by Sylvia Metzler. The Peace Center of Delaware County, 1001 Olde Sproul Road, Springfield. Delco Greens. www.delcogreens.org. 610-543-8427.
February 17 – Wednesday – Noon. Monthly brown bag lunch vigil at Rep. Sestak’s office, 600 N. Jackson Street, Media, to call for withdrawl of all troops from Afghanistan and application of those funds to serious domestic problems in the United States. This is part of a nationwide demonstration. For details, contact Jane Dugdale: tjdugdale@verizon.net, 610-527-4170.
Location: Radnor Township Municipal Building, Radnor, PA (also aired live on Channels 10 & 30)???
Radnor Township’s Carbon Footprint Inventory A Step Ahead: How Haverford Township is Leading the Way
Your Personal Inventory: Assessing Your Home or Business’s Carbon Footprint Shrinking Your Home or Business Carbon Footprint
For more information contact the Radnor Conservancy (610) 688-8202 or radnor.conservancy@comcast.net [1]
March 12 – Friday – 7pm. Great films series. “Corporation” at Jane Dugdale’s, 284 S. Roberts Road, Bryn Mawr, 19010.
March 15 – Monday – 7pm. “Corporation” discussion, 284 S. Roberts Road, Bryn Mawr, 19010. What can we do as individuals and as a PDA chapter about the recent Supreme Court decision on corporations and campaigns?
March 13 – Saturday. Peace Of The Action (Cindy Sheehan) starts camping out at the Washington Monument in DC.
March 20 – Saturday. March on the Pentagon.
April 10 – Saturday – 10am-5pm. Regional gathering of Progressive Democrats of America. Central Baptist Church, 106 W. Lancaster Avenue, Wayne PA 19087. For details, tjdugdale@verizon.net and 610-527-4170.
8 of 9 Minnesota Governor Primary Candidates Are For Single Payer
Single Payer Solution for Obama
by MN Senator John Marty
“If anyone…has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know.”
– President Obama, State of the Union
January 27, 2010
An open letter in response to President Obama’s State of the Union request for a better approach to health care reform:
Dear President Obama,
During your State of the Union address, you explained why you are fighting for health care reform, expressed frustration at the lack of success, and invited others to suggest a better approach.
I’m taking you up on that invitation and offer a bold suggestion:
Take a look at our Minnesota Health Plan — a proposal that covers everyone, saves money, and creates a logical health care system to replace the dysfunctional non-system which currently exists. It is a proposal that would provide health care to everyone, not merely health insurance for many. Our MN Health Plan (mnhealthplan.org) could be readily adapted as a nation-wide plan. It would meet each of the five requirements you mentioned in your State of the Union request:
Bring Down Premiums. Most Americans would see a big reduction in premiums because the plan would be significantly cheaper than our current health care non-system. Because the premiums for the MHP would be based on ability to pay, everyone’s premiums would be affordable. Some would pay more, but overall, costs would go down. Most people would save money, while getting the care they need and deserve. The total costs for the plan would be less than we now are paying for premiums, co-pays, deductibles, and taxes for medical programs.
Bring Down the Deficit. By keeping people healthier and by delivering quality health care efficiently, it would save hundreds of billions of dollars for the federal government, and even more for states. For example, by covering chemical dependency treatment and providing comprehensive mental health services, it would cut crime and human service costs (such as out-of-home placement of children), some of the biggest and fastest growing expenses facing state and local governments.
Cover the Uninsured. It would cover the uninsured and the under-insured. In fact it would cover everyone — 100% of the public.
Strengthen Medicare for Seniors (and everyone else). It would cover prescription drugs — with no “doughnut hole.” It would cover long term care, in-home care, dental, eye care, physical therapy, and medical supplies — it would cover all medical needs. And, they would have their choice of doctor, hospital, clinic, dentist — complete freedom to choose their medical providers.
Stop Insurance Company Abuses. There would be no “pre-existing conditions” to worry about, no underwriting, no denials of coverage, no “out of network” problems. I like to use the analogy of police and fire protection. When you return home to find a burglary in process and call 911, the police dispatcher does not ask if you qualify. They do not ask if you have police insurance. They do not ask whether your policy covers home burglary. They don’t ask if you have pre-existing conditions that would disqualify you. They don’t waste time and money having you fill out forms so your insurance company can be billed. The police response does not depend on your insurance status. Everyone is treated equally. It’s the American way. It is time to treat health care the same way.
As a 23 year member of the Minnesota Senate, let me comment briefly on the politics of this proposal:
The MHP is a single payer proposal. You have acknowledged that single payer is the only way to cover everyone. Seven years ago you said that single payer health care is “what I’d like to see. But… we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.” Now that we have taken back the White House and the Congress, it is time to act.
I recognize, as you do, that you do not have the votes to pass truly universal health care at this time. The insurance and pharmaceutical industries contribute so much to members of Congress — they control the debate — so health care for everyone isn’t even on the table.
This, however, is your opportunity for leadership. If you propose and fight for health care for all, as FDR did with Social Security in 1935, the voters would respond. If you don’t win this year, ask the American people to elect candidates who will stand with you. Make it the issue of the campaign: Health Care for All vs. Health Insurance for Some. Instead of losing Democratic members of Congress this year — as Massachusetts illustrates — you would gain votes and could actually pass the bill next year.
Dr. Martin Luther King stated, “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”
Almost a half century later, we still have not addressed the injustice in health care that Dr. King described as the most inhumane. Ignoring this injustice is immoral and it is economically unsustainable. People are hurting, some are literally dying, businesses are folding, and it is crushing our national economy.
Please, restore the Hope that you raised in all of us, bring back the inspiration that made the American people so excited by your inauguration. I urge you to step back, reconsider, introduce a health care plan that is truly universal, and fight for it.
Justice requires no less.
Respectfully,
John Marty
Bomb Power
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Oregon Shows The Way
Published by Global Research.Ca.
Victory! Thousands of Oregon workers fought valiantly over the past weeks to ensure that corporations and the rich will see their taxes raised, so that social services, health care, and education could be saved. Massive phone banking operations, door-to-door canvassing, and rallies were used by union and community members to educate the public about a progressive tax measure used to offset the state’s dire budget situation. <!– [more] –>
The campaign was indisputably class war, and the corporations came out firing—virtually every newspaper in Oregon shed their alleged “objectivity” and exposed their subservience to the corporations. Oregon’s largest newspaper, The Oregonian, displayed giant front page ads—daily—in order to defeat the measures (part of the ad showcased an article by Phil Knight—founder of Oregon company Nike—who spoke of corporate apocalypse if the tax measures passed). This, along with the countless false advertisements on TV and radio, shows the high level of understanding that workers in Oregon displayed in voting to pass the measures by a landslide.
The new taxes are hardly radical; if anything they are insufficient compared to Oregon’s budget problems. Oregon’s corporate minimum tax was raised from $10 a year—no typo here—to $150. Corporations with profits over $250,000 a year will pay an additional 1.3 percent on profits over that amount.
Wealthy individuals—those making over $125,000 or couples making $250,000 will pay an additional 1.8 percent above those numbers. Most Oregonians—97.5 percent—will see no tax increase. These minuscule tax increases caused Oregon’s corporate elite to feverishly organize to defeat the bill. Their stranglehold over the media was no match for well-organized working-class Oregonians.
Originally, the tax increase was passed by Oregon’s legislature, where the Democrats enjoy a supermajority. The Democrats were under immense pressure from Oregon’s unions, who, commendably, advanced the “tax the rich” measure to the point where the Democrats had to act. Though the tax increases were small, they were nevertheless progressive, saving Oregon’s budget $733 million in cuts.
The corporations mobilized, and paid signature gatherers to collect enough signatures to put the tax increase to a voter referendum.
The ensuing campaign caught the attention of the nation, where precedent is now set in favor of all working people. Corporations and unions from out of state contributed funds to help sway Oregon’s campaign, knowing that their fates were linked. Now, Oregon will hopefully serve as an example to other states experiencing budget crises and consequent cuts to education and social services.
Oregon’s vote coincides with President Obama’s national budget, where social services are being “frozen”—in reality reduced. Thus, Oregon gives inspiration for solutions to state and federal budget crises, where in both cases the working class has been carrying the brunt of the recession’s effects.
Union and community groups everywhere must follow Oregon’s example. Tax the rich and stop cuts in essential domestic services.
All About the www.delmontpda.wordpress.com blog
This blog is intended to reflect the interests of the Delaware/Montgomery County (PA) Progressive Democrats of America and Main Line Peace Action. Your comments, which are most welcome, can be posted on the blog directly, or you can contact the two people who do the posting: Jane Dugdale, 610-527-4170, tjdugdale@Verizon.net, or Walter Ebmeyer, 610-491-9549, ebmeyer6w@verizon.net.
Archives, a list of recent posts, links to other interesting sites, and tag clouds to help you find your way around the blog are to your right.
An Alternative To Cap And Trade
If you loved credit default swaps, derivatives, and leverage, you’ll love cap & trade. Here’s a better way. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/07/opinion/07hansen.html?_r=1&ref=opinion.
Our Energy Solution Is Not Under The Ground
The New York Times tells us about a new company, Tres Amigas, that plans to build a big power hub in New Mexico that will tie together the three power grids in this country. Read it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/business/energy-environment/08grid.html?_r=1&ref=business.
This will make possible not only the sharing of power among all regions, but will allow us to tap the enormous sources of wind and solar energy concentrated in the West. Already wind turbines in Texas on some days generate enough electric power to take care of the whole nation. The problem is transmission and variations in energy availabilities among regions. The new hub will help solve that problem.
It is interesting that one site that would generate huge amounts of wind power is the tops of the Appalachian Mountains. But instead of putting up those turbines, we are tearing down the mountains! Mountain top removal is in full swing, destroying mountains that withstood the great glaciers, and filling mountain streams with rubble and waste (called “fill” by the mining companies).
In a wide swath that extends from Virginia to New York, and especially under Pennsylvania, lies the Marcellus Shale, a geologic formation that contains giant amounts of natural gas. But to get the gas out, you don’t just drill a hole. You have to do something called “frakturing,” pumping enormous quantities of water and chemicals into the shale to flood the gas out. The water, full of contaminants that can cause cancer and birth defects, then either pollutes area drinking water wells or is trucked out to treatment plants in southeastern Pennsylvania and eventually pumped into the Delaware River and Chesapeake Bay, to further pollute our greatest inland marine environment.
What seems to be the lesson in all this? “Drill Baby Drill” is not the answer. Cutting down forests and mountains and blasting shale beds with contaminated water is the way to enrich a few large corporations but it is not the way to solve our energy problems. Clean renewable energy is ours for the taking – wind and solar. It is free and it is forever. To distribute the energy we need modern electric grids as The Times article indicated. That is all eminently doable. Let’s get started.
Walter Ebmeyer.
Liberals Are Useless!
Jane Dugdale said we’d better put this on the blog. “It’s seriously on target.” I’m afraid she’s right, and we should all do some serious thinking. Please read it: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/liberals_are_useless_20091206/?ln.
Why Quit Fossil Fuels?
For those who wonder how to convince resistant people we must move away from fossil fuels due to Climate Change, I have one word of advice: Don’t.
There’s actually no need. Not because Global Warming isn’t real – it is, and the overwhelming evidence is that it’s largely fueled by human actions – but because there are other reasons why we should move away from fossil fuel-based energy. The elegant thing about a multi-pronged approach like this is that you can always find some reason to convince someone with. For example, hard-core conservatives may simply refuse to believe anything people do could affect “God’s perfect world” but they are perfectly willing to accept that we should not be sending half a trillion dollars a year to foreign oil producers who mostly hate us, and who export terrorism along with their oil (#s 4-6).
1. Climate Change: Oil and Coal contribute to global warming and will only do so more as China, India etc. emulate American lifestyles. According to many scientists, we may already be past the temperature “tipping point” where runaway synergistic effects will make warming inevitable, even if we could stop all CO2 production today (which we can’t).
2. Balance of Trade: We import 70% of our oil – $500 billion/year – often from countries that hate us, fund terrorists, and buy our businesses (Citigroup) and infrastructure (Chrysler Building). This is an unsustainable transfer of wealth, which will only make America poorer. We are now paying foreign powers both what we earn personally AND what our companies earn, while they sit back and enjoy the results of their geological luck. Take a look at T. Boone Pickens’ presentation for a more realistic assessment of what exporting our wealth will do to us in 10 years. Or, take a look at post-Columbus Spain, which thought having all the gold in the new world would keep them prosperous forever and allow them to import whatever skills and goods they needed. It didn’t and they couldn’t.
3. Green Jobs: Germany has created 250,000 new green jobs in its solar industry, which supplies 13% of its electric needs. We need to replace oil, coal and nuclear producing jobs with wind and solar installation and maintenance jobs. (It takes 10 years to build a nuclear plant and 2 years to build a solar thermal field).
4. National Security: We must not depend on foreign powers to supply us with vital energy, which is as critical to modern society as food and shelter. Even if we drill the arctic for oil (home to up to 25% of the world’s reserves, according to US Geological Survey), we will have to defend those new wells not only from nature, but from Russia, Canada, Denmark (Greenland), and others with a claim to the high north, leading to unnecessary conflict with these countries. Clearly, ANWR has never been about the tiny bit of land off northern Alaska that would supply just 2 years of oil for America; it’s been about opening up the entire Arctic to exploration. We cannot afford to defend such a large and inhospitable region from other regional players with as large or larger geological claims.
5. The Oil Curse: Countries that depend on natural resources to make money, and not people, are the most corrupt, despotic, self-righteous and anti-human rights regimes on Earth. China does not seem to care where their oil comes from, encouraging rogue states like Sudan, Iran, Burma and Venezuela, where human rights barely exist. This is a naïve and ultimately counter-productive strategy for China but not one we should be encouraging again either (see: the downfall of the Shah of Iran).
6. Military Overreach: America cannot afford to defend oil fields. The Iraq war is, at least partly, a subsidy for Big Oil. Lives are being lost and resources are being spent ($12 Billion/month) so that – maybe, eventually – we can get more oil out of Iraq (estimated to be 2 or 3 largest holder of oil reserves). Meanwhile, Iraq does not even use $79 billion surplus to pay for its own infrastructure needs, while here in the U.S. our bridge collapse from lack of care (Minnesota) and our electrical grid blacks out.
7. Peak Oil: We are probably only seeing peak geopolitical oil, not peak geological oil, now, but it will only get more expensive to drill oil. Most estimates put peak oil within 10 years, and since global demand has exceeded earlier estimates, we may be even closer. The perversion of the OPEC dominated oil market means that they will drill LESS, not MORE, as the price goes up, since they literally collect more money than they know what to do with already, and they want to stretch out their supply. It’s only when the price of oil goes DOWN that OPEC members are tempted to cheat on their quotas because their dysfunctional economies become desperate for cash. Right now, they want to sell oil only a trickle at a time.
8. Local Environmental Damage: If we drill everywhere, we will eventually have oil wells all over the west (instead of wind turbines), and even in the (newly melted) arctic. These high-risk drilling areas will be more likely to see oil spills, soot, and CO2 damage and the further eradication of local animal (Polar Bears) and plant life. Already, regional water tables are being polluted by accidents and poisoness chemicals involved in the drilling industry. This is especially true of the Natural Gas and Coal industries, which use and pollute prodigious amounts of scare water resources. The cost to clean up the toxic coal ash release in Harriman, Tennessee has been estimated to be as high as $800 million higher than President Obama’s entire stimulus bill. This “pond” was merely average out of hundreds of similar ponds located all over the south and west.
9. We eat too much oil: Oil goes into fertilizer, which goes into corn, which goes into EVERYTHING we eat, including meat. Omega 6 fatty acids (the bad kind) are higher in factory-fed beef. Omega 3 fatty acids (the good kind) are higher in grass-fed beef and almost as high as in fish, according to Michael Pollen (the Omnivore’s Dilemma). Oil-based Corn-fed meat is making us fat and raising the national health bill. Cattle, pigs, chickens live a cruel, short life in tight, economical confines because it is cheaper to make them do so than to let them live on the open range. Even an omnivore must realize there is a difference for an animal to be raised humanely and then killed for food then one that is tortured in a CAFO its entire life and then killed. Each wind turbine pays farmers $5,000-$10,000 annually and allows livestock to graze in their shade, making natural grass-fed meat economically competitive again. This synergy could make us healthier AND wean us off imported oil. It would also make our streams, rivers and the Gulf of Mexico healthier by reducing fertilizer runoff.
10. Loss of American’s position as Innovation Leader: The oil and automotive industries were born here over 100 years ago. It is time for America to lead the world into the renewable era with Zero Emission Vehicles and renewable energy. If not us, then China or some other countries will take our place and America will become a second-rate power dependent on others for everything.
Take action — click here to contact your local newspaper or congress people:
Support Energy Independence
Click here to see the most recent messages sent to congressional reps and local newspapers
Lance Armstrong And The Insurance Companies
From Change.org Weekly
Hey Changemakers,
The health care debate can often appear muddled by political spin, but personal stories about the failures of our current system make it clear why reform is so important.
Seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong writes on Change.org this week about his personal experience with the health care system and why he supports reform.
In 1996, Lance was diagnosed with advanced testicular cancer. He was 25 years old, in the midst of changing employers, fearless… and without health insurance.
Thankfully, Lance was lucky, with a sponsor threatening to pull all of their business elsewhere if the company’s insurance company refused to cover Lance. Without his sponsor’s help, Lance might be drowning in a sea of medical bills today. Or worse, not alive at all.
Lance writes that luck shouldn’t have anything to do with whether the 1.5 million people in the United States who will be diagnosed with cancer this year get life-saving treatment, or whether they go broke in the process.
Too many cancer survivors today are denied new coverage or have their current coverage revoked when they need it most. This is inexcusable and must change.
That’s why Lance is urging everyone to write Congress and encourage their representatives to pass health care reform that ensures that no American is denied health insurance coverage because of pre-existing conditions, and that no American loses their insurance due to changes in health or employment.
If you agree, join Lance by sending a message to Congress now. Because cancer won’t wait.
Call your congressman at 202-224-3121.
What’s The Afghan War Going To Cost?
Tomgram: Jo Comerford, Afghan War Costs 101
Ashton Carter, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, put the matter this way recently: “[N]ext to Antarctica, Afghanistan is probably the most incommodious place, from a logistics point of view, to be trying to fight a war… It’s landlocked and rugged, and the road network is much, much thinner than in Iraq. Fewer airports, different geography.” In other words, we might as well be fighting on the moon. In translation, this means at least one thing: don’t believe any of the figures coming out of the White House or the Pentagon about what this war is going to cost.
As Jo Comerford, executive director of the National Priorities Project points out below, the president’s $30 billion figure for getting those 30,000-plus new surge troops into Afghanistan is going to prove a “through-the-basement estimate.” As for the dates for getting them in and beginning to get them out? Well, it’s grain-of-salt time there, too. According to Steven Mufson and Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, some of the fuel storage facilities being built to support the surge troops won’t even be completed by the time the first of them are scheduled to leave the country, 18 months from now.
And keep in mind the endless, and endlessly vulnerable, supply lines on which so much of that fuel — and almost everything else the U.S. military has to have to survive — travels. Along those mountainous roads, trucks are “lost,” or Taliban-commandeered, or bribes are paid for passage, or some are simply destroyed in what can only be thought of as an underreported supply-line war. All of this adds immeasurably to the staggering expense of the project. According to August Cole of the Wall Street Journal, in fuel terms alone, to support a single soldier in Afghanistan costs between $200,000 and $350,000 a year.
And while we’re at it: don’t expect all those surging troops to make it into Afghanistan any time soon. In the heroic tales of presidential surge deliberations (based on copious White House leaks) that appeared soon after the president’s West Point speech, much was made of how Obama himself had insisted on speeding up the plan to get the extra troops in place. All would arrive, the White House said, within six months. That was quickly changed to approximately eight months. Now, Lt. Gen. David M. Rodriguez, deputy commander of American and NATO forces there, has just announced that it will take nine to eleven months (or maybe even “up to a year”), and that’s if none of the factors that could go wrong do — something not worth putting your money on when it comes to the Afghan War.
If all this leaves you with lingering worries about the success of both the surge and the war, you can put them to rest, however. NBC’s Richard Engel found a “military schematic,” a single chart from the office of the Joint Chiefs, that offers a visual representation of the military’s full surge/counterinsurgency strategy. It has to be seen to be believed. (Just click here.) It lays out as a flow chart (or perhaps overflow chart would be the more accurate description) just how our war will achieve success. What could possibly go wrong with such a plan? It’s hard to imagine. In the meantime, let Comerford give you a little lesson in the economics of the Afghan War, and what we could have done with that low-ball figure of $30 billion, had we chosen not to fight a war on the moon. Tom
$57,077.60
Surging by the Minute
By Jo Comerford
$57,077.60. That’s what we’re paying per minute.
December 16 Senate Hearing on SB 400
This is a brief report by Chuck Pennacchio, Executive Director of Health Care For All PA, on the hearings held December 16 by the Pennsylvania Senate Banking and Insurance Committee. The very fact of the hearing was historic because it was called by a committee chaired by a Republican. Dr. Walter Tsou wrote a lengthy report on the hearings (www.healthcare4ALLPA.org) , but Chuck Pennacchio was on the panel and was, in fact, the first speaker. These are his comments.Help State Single Payer in Pennsylvania and Everywhere
Pennsylvania state single payer took another giant step forward Wednesday at a hearing by the state Senate Banking and Insurance Committee (a Republican-controlled committee) on the merits of our case. All the members, Republicans especially included, were sincerely interested in the plan and wanted more details, which we are prepared to provide. To see video of the hearing, please go to http://www.senatordonwhite.com/banking.htm.
The next step is to commission independent auditing firms to do Economic Impact Studies that will show what we’ve been saying all along: single payer will save everyone in the state big amounts of money. We’ve been collecting contributions to pay for the studies, and we’re still $49,000 short.
Nobody likes asking for money less than I, but please please consider making a tax-deductible donation to HealthCare4ALLPA to pay for this study. Any amount – $4.90, $49.00, $4900 – will be be gratefully received. You can easily make your gift by going to http://www.healthcare4allpa.org/donate.htm. Click on “Donate now through Network for Good.” Please be sure to specify that your gift is for the Economic Impact Study (EIS).
Our time is now. Pennsylvania stands ready to lead the nation to single payer. Please help. Walter Ebmeyer.
Obama’s Favorite Healthcare Reform Bill
This thought-provoking article is by our friend Jerry Policoff in Lancaster, PDA’s point person for the 16th congressional district.
The biggest and most often repeated talking point in favor of passing the so-called health reform bill is that it will insure 30 million currently uninsured Americans. Lets set aside for the moment the fact that “health insurance” is not the same as health care. Set aside for now the fact that many of the newly “insured” will be underinsured and will remain at high risk if they get seriously ill because their insurance will still leave them with huge bills they cannot afford to pay and that may cause them to avoid care until it is too late. Nothing in this bill protects individuals from medical foreclosure or medical bankruptcy. Forget for now that this is insurance provided by private insurance companies that are notorious for denying claims and/or preventing doctors from administering the treatment they often believe is most appropriate.
Let’s just deal with the numbers.
- Let’s assume those 30 million will actually choose to buy mandated private health insurance by the end of 2019 as they project.
- Today there are approximately 50 million chronically uninsured Americans. Another estimated 12 million are uninsured at any given point in time. Tens of millions more are underinsured.
- The population of the United States as of today is estimated to be 308 million.
- The Census Bureau projects the U.S. population in 2020 will be 341 Million.
Do the Math: Assuming the projections they are throwing at us are accurate, that means that we will grow our population by 33 million by the end of 2019, and the ranks of the uninsured will grow from 50 million to 53 million over that same period, while the ranks of the underinsured grow by even more.
Is this really change we can believe in? Is this really the best we can do?
Jerry Policoff, jpolicoff@comcast.net
It’s Getting Crowded In Afghanistan
Stunning Statistics About the War Every American Should Know
Contrary to popular belief, the US actually has 189,000 personnel on the ground in Afghanistan right now—and that number is quickly rising.
by Jeremy Scahill
A hearing in Sen. Claire McCaskill’s Contract Oversight subcommittee on contracting in Afghanistan has highlighted some important statistics that provide a window into the extent to which the Obama administration has picked up the Bush-era war privatization baton and sprinted with it. Overall, contractors now comprise a whopping 69% of the Department of Defense’s total workforce, “the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel in US history.” That’s not in one war zone-that’s the Pentagon in its entirety.
![[DynCorp instructor with police recruits in Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan, June 2008. In Afghanistan, the Obama administration blows the Bush administration out of the privatized water. (File image via TPM)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/soldiersit-cropped-proto-custom_2.jpg "soldiersit-cropped-proto-custom_2.jpg")
DynCorp instructor with police recruits in Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan, June 2008. In Afghanistan, the Obama administration blows the Bush administration out of the privatized water. (File image via TPM)In Afghanistan, the Obama administration blows the Bush administration out of the privatized water. According to a memo [PDF] released by McCaskill’s staff, “From June 2009 to September 2009, there was a 40% increase in Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan. During the same period, the number of armed private security contractors working for the Defense Department in Afghanistan doubled, increasing from approximately 5,000 to more than 10,000.”
At present, there are 104,000 Department of Defense contractors in Afghanistan. According to a report this week from the Congressional Research Service, as a result of the coming surge of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, there may be up to 56,000 additional contractors deployed. But here is another group of contractors that often goes unmentioned: 3,600 State Department contractors and 14,000 USAID contractors. That means that the current total US force in Afghanistan is approximately 189,000 personnel (68,000 US troops and 121,000 contractors). And remember, that’s right now. And that, according to McCaskill, is a conservative estimate. A year from now, we will likely see more than 220,000 US-funded personnel on the ground in Afghanistan.
The US has spent more than $23 billion on contracts in Afghanistan since 2002. By next year, the number of contractors will have doubled since 2008 when taxpayers funded over $8 billion in Afghanistan-related contracts.
Despite the massive number of contracts and contractors in Afghanistan, oversight is utterly lacking. “The increase in Afghanistan contracts has not seen a corresponding increase in contract management and oversight,” according to McCaskill’s briefing paper. “In May 2009, DCMA [Defense Contract Management Agency] Director Charlie Williams told the Commission on Wartime Contracting that as many as 362 positions for Contracting Officer’s Representatives (CORs) in Afghanistan were currently vacant.”
A former USAID official, Michael Walsh, the former director of USAID’s Office of Acquisition and Assistance and Chief Acquisition Officer, told the Commission that many USAID staff are “administering huge awards with limited knowledge of or experience with the rules and regulations.” According to one USAID official, the agency is “sending too much money, too fast with too few people looking over how it is spent.” As a result, the agency does not “know … where the money is going.”
The Obama administration is continuing the Bush-era policy of hiring contractors to oversee contractors. According to the McCaskill memo:
In Afghanistan, USAID is relying on contractors to provide oversight of its large reconstruction and development projects. According to information provided to the Subcommittee, International Relief and Development (IRD) was awarded a five-year contract in 2006 to oversee the $1.4 billion infrastructure contract awarded to a joint venture of the Louis Berger Group and Black and Veatch Special Projects. USAID has also awarded a contract Checci and Company to provide support for contracts in Afghanistan.
The private security industry and the US government have pointed to the Synchronized Predeployment and Operational Tracker(SPOT) as evidence of greater government oversight of contractor activities. But McCaskill’s subcommittee found that system utterly lacking, stating: “The Subcommittee obtained current SPOT data showing that there are currently 1,123 State Department contractors and no USAID contractors working in Afghanistan.” Remember, there are officially 14,000 USAID contractors and the official monitoring and tracking system found none of these people and less than half of the State Department contractors.
As for waste and abuse, the subcommittee says that the Defense Contract Audit Agency identified more than $950 million in questioned and unsupported costs submitted by Defense Department contracts for work in Afghanistan. That’s 16% of the total contract dollars reviewed.
© 2009 Jeremy Scahill
What Copenhagen Didn’t Do
Goodbye Africa. Goodby Southeast Asia. Goodbye glaciers and coral. Read on.
False Assumptions About The Healthcare Bill
Three good reasons we don’t have to swallow this awful healthcare bill. Worth a read.
Arlen Specter Opposes Funding War In Afghanistan
This is Senator Specter’s response to a letter asking him to stop funding the escalating war in Afghanistan. I doubt that Joe Sestak would agree.
Thank you for contacting me regarding our presence in Afghanistan. We went into Afghanistan in 2001 following the barbaric attacks of September 11, 2001. Our forces swiftly toppled the Taliban and denied Al Qaeda leadership the safe haven it had enjoyed in Afghanistan. Both Taliban and Al Qaeda leadership survived the attack and were able to take refuge and reconstitute in the mountainous regions across the border in Pakistan.
I’m opposed to sending 30,000 more American troops to Afghanistan because I don’t believe they are indispensable in our fight against al Qaeda. If they were, I’d support such a surge because we have to do whatever it takes to defeat al Qaeda, which seeks to annihilate us.
But if al Qaeda can organize and operate out of Yemen, Somalia or elsewhere, then why fight in Afghanistan, which has made a history of resisting would-be conquerors – from Alexander the Great in the 3rd century BC, to Great Britain in the 19th and early 20th centuries, to the former Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s?
In order to be successful in Afghanistan, it’s necessary to have a reliable ally in the Afghan government. The evidence demonstrates that President Hamid Karzai does not have the requisite reliability.
The legitimacy of his administration is suspect because of vote fraud. There is widespread corruption at the highest levels of his government. His government has tolerated, if not encouraged, drug-trafficking.
President Obama has said, “President Karzai’s inauguration speech sent the right message about moving in a new direction.” In my judgment, any such “message” amounts to a dubious and belated pledge of reform and deserves to be treated with the greatest skepticism.
For too long, the United States has borne the overwhelming weight of providing troops with only modest NATO contributions. We currently provide 68,000 troops, Britain 9,500 and the other countries just over 36,000. NATO has pledged another 7,000 troops, an inadequate response when you consider the combined populations of NATO countries – excluding the United States – and the threat they face from al Qaeda.
In the context of the Vietnam and Iraq wars, it is understandable that the American people are very skeptical about fighting in Afghanistan. Had we known that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, we would not have gone into Iraq.
Historians have replayed the tragic mistakes in Vietnam. When you add the 851 killed and 4,605 wounded in Afghanistan to the 4,369 killed and 31,575 wounded in Iraq, it is understandable that the American people do not want to continue the overwhelming burden of fighting in Afghanistan with so little assistance from our allies and so little prospects for success.
The cost of the Afghanistan war imposes an additional burden. It costs $1 million a year for each soldier, or $30 billion a year to support 30,000 additional troops. The cost for the total force in Afghanistan of approximately 100,000 soldiers would be more than $100 billion a year.
Pursuing a successful war in Afghanistan would require considerable additional support from Pakistan.
While Pakistan has been more helpful in recent weeks, their long-term commitment remains uncertain. For years, I’ve urged that the United States should take the lead in brokering a rapprochement with India that would allow Pakistan to redeploy forces from the Indian border to Taliban and al Qaeda strongholds in the mountainous regions of the north. If we could cool that tension with India, they could help us fight the Taliban and al Qaeda.
My opposition to the troop surge in no way diminishes my concern over the challenge we
face in al Qaeda and the need to confront it wherever it emerges.
But I question whether Afghanistan is the primary front or even the only battlefield when we may face emerging challenges in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan itself. That is where we have the best chance to succeed.
We should concentrate on fighting al Qaeda without limitation on time or resources, but we should not engage in the laborious and problematic task of nation-building, or civil affairs, or the protection of other societies in place of their own security systems.
Sincerely,
Arlen Specter
You Can Take Action For Peace!
Join thousands of others who demand peace – withdrawl from Afghanistan, closing of hundreds of overseas military bases, drastic trimming of the defense budget – by going to the Mall in 
Washington, D.C. on March 13 and getting ready to use those civil disobedience skills starting March 22. Read all about it and get details : http://peaceoftheaction.org/.
We’re Killing Civilians In Yemen Too
Our media don’t tell us about attacks like this. But you can be sure the word has been spread far and wide among Muslim countries. The persistence of our military, the slaughter of civilians, and the waste of trillions of dollars needed to build our own nation seems like a bad dream. Read this from Common Dreams.
Jerry Policoff On The Healthcare Bill Anti-Trust Exemption
I’ve just finished reading a series of articles at the web site Main Justice dealing with the fate of the health insurance industry’s exemption from Federal anti-trust law.
First of all, I did a little research on the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945 which granted the exemption in the first place. Its original intent was not to weaken regulation of the insurance industry, but to strengthen it. The act came about as a result of a Supreme Court decision, United States v South-Eastern Underwriters Assn. which ruled that insurance companies that sold policies across state lines were engaged in interstate commerce, and were thus subject to federal anti-trust law. The original intent of McCarren-Ferguson was to enable the states to tightly regulate the insurance industry. Many states had become concerned that, as a result of the Supreme Court ruling, they no longer had the authority to regulate the insurance industry within their boundaries. It stipulated that no act of Congress could invalidate any state law dealing with the regulation of insurance unless the federal law specifically related to insurance. The Act permitted the federal government to regulate insurance, but it also stipulated that only the states have broad authority to regulate the insurance industry unless the federal government enacts specific legislation intended to regulate insurance and displace state law. In plain English that means that the states have the power to regulate the insurance industry if the federal government fails to do so. McCarran-Ferguson also stipulated that the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 (which prohibits abusive monopolies) and the Clayton Act of 1914 (passed by the U.S. Congress as an amendment to clarify and supplement the Clayton Anti-Trust Act and which prohibited exclusive sales contracts, local price cutting to freeze out competitors, et al, thus prohibiting abusive monopolies), apply to the business of insurance to the extent that such business is not regulated by state law. In short, McCarran-Ferguson was designed to empower both the federal government and the individual states to keep insurance companies from becoming abusive monopolies. How ironic that it has instead been used to enable the insurance companies to become the abusive monopolies it was intended to prevent. This in itself would seem to suggest that it is time to eradicate any confusion or ambiguity that has arisen over the years by repealing McCarran-Ferguson and restoring the original intent which was to subject the insurance industry to state and/or federal regulation and federal anti-trust law.
Nancy Pelosi apparently saw it that way and the anti-trust exemption was stripped from the House reform bill at her insistence. Not so with the Senate Finance Committee chaired by Max Baucus and his special interest-friendly gang of three, which produced a bill apparently written by Elizabeth Fowler, a former Baucus staffer who left his employ in 2006 to become VP and Director of Policy for WellPoint Insurance and then left to go to work for Senator Baucus’s Finance Committee in 2008. Apparently Baucus, Fowler, and WellPoint saw no need to strip the insurance industry of its anti-trust exemption, so they didn’t – even though it was never intended to actually be an anti-trust exemption.
Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy had other ideas. He proposed an amendment to the Baucus Finance Committee Senate bill that would subject health and medical malpractice insurers to federal laws that forbid firms from fixing prices, rigging bids, or dividing up markets, an amendment initially favored by the final arbiter, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who maintained that a repeal of the anti-trust exemption would produce more competition and better prices for consumers. President Obama seemed to agree when, in his weekly radio address, he championed revocation of the anti-trust exemption, complaining that the health insurance industry is “earning these profits and bonuses while enjoying a privileged exemption from our antitrust laws.”
Does the continuation of the insurance anti-trust exemption really make a difference? In a word, absolutely!
Both the Senate and House bills leave regulation of the insurance industry to the states which have never been known for holding the industry’s feet to the fire. A study recently published by The Center for American Progress found that “State regulatory authorities haven’t brought any consumer protection suits against insurance companies in the last five years…” The study asks whether states have the resources to enforce antitrust laws or if they are stretched too thin.” “The study cites Georgetown health policy professor Karen Pollitz’s recent comments to Congress: “In four states, the Insurance Commissioner is also the fire marshal.” “Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) used the study to reiterate his support for a repeal of the antitrust exemption for health and medical malpractice insurers. “If we remove it, they will have to compete,” Leahy said in a conference call with reporters.
Of course we have come to learn that the minority, not the majority, rules, if the minority bears the name of Ben Nelson or Joe Lieberman (sometimes referred to as the Senator from Aetna)..
I know there are some serious reformers who think it is time to hold our collective noses and pass this bill. I respect their opinions, but count me out. I don’t see the insurance companies mending their ways, and now, with mandates, they will have even more power and more money to thwart any attempt to enforce regulations that already exist or that may be enacted in the future. This, to me, is just one more reason to “kill the bill.”
Jerry Policoff
1117 Wheatland Avenue/ H-4
Lancaster, Pa. 17603
Home phone/fax: 717-295-0237
Cell: 717-682-4434
www.progressives4pennsylvania.com
Face Book Causes: HealthCare4ALLPA
Spiritual Progressives – Tikkun
This is a review of the new 3-D sensation “Avatar” from the Tikkun magazine. Jane Dugdale recommends the review and also the magazine and the organization behind it. Enjoy.
Think Globally, Act Locally
Thanks to Paul Roden for this economic tip [the White Dog is also a very fine restaurant near Penn].
The “slow food, slow eating and slow money” movement are part of this new vision of a new economy as well.
Judy Wick, of the White Dog Cafe in Philadelphia, who is writing a book has started a foundation to promote “slow eating, slow food and slow money or capitalism.” She wants a right livelyhood for all people with sustained businesses, customers and suppliers. Relationships that are just and sustainable that are fair and just. Growth for the sake of growth, maximization of profit, cutting costs and cutting labor are not the vision of a new economy. It is not about monopoly, franchising and global domination. It is thinking globally but acting locally with business practices that are sustainable to the ecosystem of the planet as well to the workers, customers and the relationships of all involved. Microfinancing is part of this vision as well.
Walter Ebmeyer called to cancel his Comcast cable TV service. “Why, sir?” “Because you’re getting too big now that you’re merging with NBC.” ”But sir, that’s the direction entertainment is going. Pretty soon we’ll all be one big company.” “Not if we enforce the Sherman Anti-Trust Law.” You could tell by the tone of voice at this point that they figured they were dealing with a crazy. But where is the Federal Trade Commission now that we need them?
Save The Gaza Marchers!
It’s Déjà Vu with Another Media Blackout
The International Coalition to End the Illegal Siege of Gaza is marking the anniversary of Israel’s 220-day siege of Gaza, but you might not know this if you rely wholly on the US media for your news. Leading up to the Gaza Freedom March on December 31, peace and social justice activists from around the world have gathered in Cairo to march to the Israeli border in nonviolent protest against the ongoing occupation and oppression of Gazans.
The Associated Press wrote about on December 26 that activists have appealed to the Egyptian Government to reverse denying the march participants access to the Gaza border, but The New York Times and The Washington Post gave this story scant space on their pages.
The Egyptian police walled off a peaceful protest in Cairo at UN offices from view, the Egyptian government blocked an aid convoy for Gaza from entering Egypt, and members of the Gaza Freedom March—including American Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein—have begun a hunger strike to protest these actions.
Press around the world—in France, the UK, Canada, and even Brunei—has carried comprehensive stories about these events. But the major print news sources in the US are treating this story as if it were, well, single-payer healthcare.
We know what happened when the US media marginalized or altogether ignored single payer. What should have been central to the US debate about healthcare reform wasn’t even on many Americans’ radar.
Join PDA, Just Foreign Policy, CODEPINK, Free Gaza, and many others in asking the editors of the NYT and WaPo why they’re ignoring the Gaza Freedom March. Go to JFP’s page to send an email to those editors. http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/gaza-march-press
It’s up to us once again to counter corporate notions of what is and isn’t news that should reach the American people.
In solidarity,
Tim Carpenter, National Director
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Stop The Mandate
Jane Hamsher, Founder, FireDogLake.com
Posted: December 30, 2009 02:03 PM
If the health care bill written by the Senate is passed, middle class Americans will be mandated to pay almost as much to private insurance companies as they do to the federal government in taxes for insurance they can’t afford, with the IRS acting as a collection agency for penalties of 2% of their annual income if they refuse to comply.
Keith Olbermann has said he will go to jail before doing so.
But this left-right alliance against corporatism isn’t new. Many recent measures have been bringing liberal progressives and conservative libertarians together to join forces in opposition:
The individuals on both sides of the political spectrum who signed these letters agree on very little, but they do share both a tremendous concern for the corporatist control of government that politicians in both parties seem hell-bent on achieving with this health care bill.
In 2000, the Democrats railed in opposition when the Republicans passed Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage that didn’t allow for negotiated drug prices. And in 2006 when Democrats took over Congress, one of the hallmarks of their first hundred days was passing legislation allowing Medicare to do so, supported by both Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama.
Of course, it had no chance of passing with George Bush in the White House.
Candidate Barack Obama said the ability to negotiate for drug prices would save $30 billion a year in medical costs. Yet when President Obama was elected, he negotiated a secret deal with PhRMA that prevented drug price negotiations in exchange for $150 million in political advertising to help vulnerable Democrats in the House and in support of the health care bill.
Jaws dropped when Senator Tom Carper said that because PhRMA had paid for the deal with political advertising, they were obligated to abide by it.
But the Democrats are hardly alone. Jeff Sessions railed on the floor of the Senate against the corrupt PhRMA deal, but he didn’t mention that he voted for the 2000 bill without it. He also didn’t think it worthy of note that when he had the chance to vote for it in the Senate in 2006, he voted “no.”
Both parties are equally blameworthy — the only difference is who is in power and taking PhRMA’s money.
The PhRMA deal is one of many negotiated by the White House this last summer which formed the underpinnings of the health care bill. From then on, it just became a matter of which member was going to extract what deals for their vote, and who was going to take the blame for cutting popular elements from the legislation that the corporate “stakeholders” didn’t want.
As FDL’s Jon Walker wrote recently, if the ability to cut health care costs hadn’t been auctioned off to private corporations in exchange for political patronage, there would have been no government subsidy necessary to make insurance coverage affordable.
We are ceding control of the government to private corporations, not figuratively but literally. (Emphasis Mine — Ginny) When the Senate Finance Committee bill was released earlier this year, the “author” was a former VP of Wellpoint. Liberals, conservatives and independents alike are all justifiably alarmed at what this represents.
It is tragic that health care for the poor is being held hostage to the corporatist agenda, a fig leaf to buy public support and disguise this bill for what it is. As blogger Marcy Wheeler noted in a piece called Health Care and the Road to Neo-Feudalism:
I understand the temptation to offer 30 million people health care. What I don’t understand is the nonchalance with which we’re about to fundamentally shift the relationships of governance in doing so.
Just as those on the libertarian right were demonized by the Republican establishment for opposing the Iraq war during the Bush years, so progressives on the left are being pilloried for “damaging the cause” by joining with Republicans to oppose these extreme measures. It’s ironic that the most virulent supporters of a President who ran on “bipartisanship” should reject it so vehemently when it becomes critical of the policies pursued by his White House.
But this “right-left wraparound” is happening because politicians in both parties have become so unresponsive to popular sentiment, and the political drama that plays out in the media little more than kabuki theater for the benefit of the voters. The public support for stifling investigation of the bank bailouts just to protect the President are infinitesimally small, and fortunately Dennis Kucinich announced today that he would commence an investigation into the Fannie/Freddie bailout. But it’s a testament to the extreme nature of what is happening to our government that such traditional political foes could find common cause in opposing it.
It’s foolish to say that only those who agree with you on every issue are allowed to share your opinion when it comes to opposing something like the mandated bailout of Aetna — it isn’t necessary to achieve health care reform. As Jon Walker notes, removing the mandate would reduce the CBO score and its inclusion in the health care bill with no government alternative is unacceptable for moral, political and policy reasons.
Candidate Obama himself opposed the mandate. Arianna Huffington and Howard Dean agree with him.
As Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos said, “remove the mandate or kill this bill.” We’ve opened a “war room” at Firedoglake with information about calling your member of Congress to demand that this provision to bail out the insurance industry be removed from the health care bill before they agree to cast their vote in favor of it.
And nobody needs to pass an ideological purity test before they can use it.
Join us to oppose the mandate. Enter the war room.
The Congressional Progressive Caucus
The Progressive Caucus (CPC) is the largest caucus in Congress with 82 members–it dwarfs the often-hyped Blue Dog Democrats with its 52 yapping pups.
![[Lynn Woolsey and Raúl Grijalva, Co-Chairs of the House Progressive Caucus, sandwich President Obama. The question, however, is whether or not the 82 member caucus can exert any influence as the health bill goes to conference. One point of particular interest is waiver language that would permit states to implement alternatives to insurance market exchanges, including single-payer systems. (Newscom collage h/t TPM)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/woolsey-obama-raul-903-cropped-proto-custom_2.jpg "woolsey-obama-raul-903-cropped-proto-custom_2.jpg")
Lynn Woolsey and Raúl Grijalva, Co-Chairs of the House Progressive Caucus, sandwich President Obama. The question, however, is whether or not the 82 member caucus can exert any influence as the health bill goes to conference. One point of particular interest is waiver language that would permit states to implement alternatives to insurance market exchanges, including single-payer systems. (Newscom collage h/t TPM)Yet the CPC has struggled to get the respect and attention it has strived for–prior to this Congress, it seemed like the mainstream media wouldn’t even refer to it by name, instead using vague descriptions like “the liberal wing of the party.”
That’s because getting the talented but diverse Caucus to unite and show its legislative muscle has often been described–even by its own members–as herding cats.
This might be the moment for the Caucus to change all that in dramatic fashion.
The House healthcare bill passed by just five votes–220 to 215. Surely the CPC’s 81 House votes (the 82nd member is a Senator, CPC founder Bernie Sanders) should be viewed as just as powerful as the votes of Ben Nelson or Joe Lieberman in the Senate.
But will a strong majority of the CPC unite around a single provision and insist that it be included in the final bill exchange for their support?
One item worth rallying around–and it hasn’t received a lot of attention–is waiver language that would permit states to implement alternatives to insurance market exchanges, including single-payer systems.
The Senate bill allows states to apply for such waivers in 2017, but that’s arguably too late. States would be required to establish (and invest in) the insurance market exchanges in 2014, making it difficult to develop and provide resources for any alternative model. The House bill doesn’t have any waiver language at all, though CPC members–including CPC co-chairs Raúl Grijalva and Lynn Woolsey, and Congressman Dennis Kucinich–fought successfully for similar language in the House Committee on Education and Labor version.
Canada’s healthcare system evolved from a program first established in Saskatchewan. Will states in the US have a similar opportunity to serve as incubators and prove that single-payer can provide comprehensive coverage and reduce costs? The CPC has the power to insist on it–if it chooses to do so.
© 2009 The Nation
Mountaintop Coal Mining Is Bad!
This is from the Washington Independent. It’s from December 3, but you might have been distracted by such things as healthcare reform. It’s an important tectonic move.
Has Byrd Shifted Positions on Mountaintop Coal Mining?
Aaron just hit this from the angle of climate change. I found Sen. Robert Byrd’s (D-W.Va.) op-ed interesting because, as recently as March, he was attacking the administration’s moves to rein in mountaintop mining as a threat to jobs in West Virginia, where the coal industry is an economic juggernaut.
Today he reverses course, arguing that mountaintop removal itself is the threat to jobs — something that environmentalists and community activists in Appalachia have been screaming for decades. From Byrd’s piece:
The increased use of mountaintop removal mining means that fewer miners are needed to meet company production goals. Meanwhile the Central Appalachian coal seams that remain to be mined are becoming thinner and more costly to mine. Mountaintop removal mining, a declining national demand for energy, rising mining costs and erratic spot market prices all add up to fewer jobs in the coal fields.
He continues, raising the specter that mountaintop removal could be a health threat to local communities — yet another position that local health activists and scientists have been arguing for as long as the practice has been around.
It is also a reality that the practice of mountaintop removal mining has a diminishing constituency in Washington. It is not a widespread method of mining, with its use confined to only three states. Most members of Congress, like most Americans, oppose the practice, and we may not yet fully understand the effects of mountaintop removal mining on the health of our citizens. West Virginians may demonstrate anger toward the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over mountaintop removal mining, but we risk the very probable consequence of shouting ourselves out of any productive dialogue with EPA and our adversaries in the Congress.
That’s not the strong language that environmentalists would use, but it certainly signifies a change of heart from the 92-year-old senator, who has spent a political career defending the coal industry from any outside threat.
A Christmas Meditation
This is from the blog www.gotell.wordpress.com, which asks the question “Go tell it on the mountain, but where are the mountains?”
The Decline Of The West – In Population
“At the beginning of the eighteenth century, approximately 20 percent of the world’s inhabitants lived in Europe (including Russia). Then, with the Industrial Revolution, Europe’s population boomed, and streams of European emigrants set off for the Americas. By the eve of World War I, Europe’s population had more than quadrupled. In 1913, Europe had more people than China, and the proportion of the world’s population living in Europe and the former European colonies of North America had risen to over 33 Percent.
“But this trend reversed after World War I, as basic health care and sanitation began to spread to poorer countries. In Asia, Africa, and Latin America, people began to live longer, and birthrates remained high or fell only slowly. By 2003, the combined populations of Europe, the United States, and Canada accounted for just 17 percent of the global population. In 2050, this figure is expected to be just 12 percent – far less than it was in 1700. (These projections, moreover, might even understate the reality because they reflect the ‘medium growth’ projection of the UN forecasts, which assumes that the fertility rates of developing countries will decline while those of developed countries will increase. In fact, many developed countries show no evidence of increasing fertility rates.) …
“According to the economic historian Angus Maddison, Europe, the United States, and Canada together produced about 32 percent of the world’s GDP at the beginning of the nineteenth century. By 1950, that proportion had increased to a remarkable 68 percent of the world’s total output (adjusted to reflect purchasing power parity). This trend, too, is headed for a sharp reversal. The proportion of global GDP produced by Europe, the United States, and Canada fell from 68 percent in 1950 to 47 percent in 2003 and will decline even more steeply in the future. …
“The year 2010 will likely be the first time in history that a majority of the world’s people live in cities rather than in the countryside. Whereas less than 30 percent of the world’s population was urban in 1950, according to UN projections, more than 70 percent will be by 2050. Lower-income countries in Asia and Africa are urbanizing especially rapidly, as agriculture becomes less labor intensive and as employment opportunities shift to the industrial and service sectors. Already, most of the world’s urban agglomerations – Mumbai (population 20.l million), Mexico City (19.5 million), New Delhi (17 million), Shanghai (15.8 million), Calcutta (15.6 million), Karachi (13.1 million), Cairo (12.5 million), Manila (11.7 million), Lagos (10.6 million), Jakarta (9.7 million) – are found in low-income countries. Many of these countries have multiple cities with over one million residents each: Pakistan has eight, Mexico 12, and China more than 100.”
Jack A. Goldstone, “The New Population Bomb,” Foreign Affairs, Jan/Feb 2010, pp. 32-33, 38.
Shooting Afghanistan Children
This refers to some David Swanson comments on his blog, “Let’s Try Democracy.” David is being especially sarcastic, but he certainly seems justified in being very angry. We invite you to click on his blog below.
C-Span Says Open The Healthcare Debate To The Public!
A breathtaking idea from C-Span Director Brian Lamb. Why not let us all in on the negotiations? Or is there again “dirty work at the crossroads”?
Why Do They Hate Us?
The man next to me in the barber shop yesterday said Muslims just don’t seem to like us. So I told him about this massacre, and he agreed it sounded pretty bad. Speak up! And read this link if you can and contact your congressperson.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Afghans-Take-to-Streets-Ov-by-Ralph-Lopez-100103-659.html
In Afghanistan, hundreds have taken to the streets of Kabul and elsewhere to protest U.S. killing of civilians. The incident that has sparked the most outrage took place in eastern Kunar on December 27th when ten Afghans, eight of them schoolchildren, were killed. According to The Times of London, US-led troops dragged innocent children from their beds and shot them during a nighttime raid. Afghan government investigators said the eight students were aged from 11 to 17, all but one of the from the same family.
Bush Lives On With Obama Signing Statements
When he was President, George W. Bush broke all the records for signing statements. Many of us considered that unconstitutional, and it was one of the grounds on which we wanted to impeach him. Then Barack Obama came along, and guess what? He went right on using signing statements until enough people in Congress convinced him that it was a bad idea. So now we’re told he will continue to ignore parts of laws he considers unconstitutional, but he just won’t bother issuing a signing statement. Which proves what we said during the Bush administration: if you don’t stop Bush from doing something like this, the next President – of whatever party – will continue to do it. As you know, the Constitution makes no provision for such a course. It says a President can either veto a bill or sign it and carry it out to the letter. The Constitution requires the President to take an oath to “faithfully execute the laws of the United States.” The NY Times article tells you all about it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/09/us/politics/09signing.html?hp.
Take Me To Europe!
It has been remarked that in Europe, where nobody goes to church, people behave like Christians: they believe in welfare policies that care for the sick, the poor, the old as a matter of right. In America, where everybody goes to church, people don’t act like Christians: they whine about “welfare queens” and oppose universal health care and social security (unless it’s their own). The Right in America is horrified that in Denmark people allegedly pay 60% of their income in taxes, even though that entitles them to virtually free health care, university education, unemployment insurance, and retirement. Well, I say “Go Denmark!” and so, apparently, does Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/opinion/11krugman.html?emc=eta1
Wall Street And Versailles
Chris Hedges of Common Dreams writes about where Wall Street is taking us.
The Scoop On Pennsylvania Single-Payer
As Federal attempts for healthcare reform crash, find out what’s very doable here:
A Citizen’s Guide to Pennsylvania
Single-Payer Health Care Reform
Many of us are working to establish a state single-payer system that would take effect here even if the federal government doesn’t act. Some important points:
Coverage would be universal. Everybody in, nobody out.
In many ways it would be like Medicare expanded to serve all.
A state agency would pay all medical, dental, lab, drug, and therapy bills. Hence the name “single-payer.” This would save enormously on clerical costs. Right now the University of Pennsylvania employs 650 clerks to handle the many different insurance claims forms. The University of Toronto employs only 6.
There would be no deductibles or co-pays.
If you already have Medicare or VA or CHIP or Medicaid, single-payer would wrap around it and cover all costs the way “advantage policies” do now, but there would be no individual premiums, co-pays, or deductibles.
The state agency would get its money from a 10% salary tax on employers (who would pay no more insurance premiums) and a 3% tax on employed workers (who would also pay no more premiums)..
Non-workers and children would all be covered.
If you lost your job, you would not have to worry – you’d still be covered. And it would make it much safer to look for a new job.
You would have total choice of which provider you went to: which doctor, which hospital, etc. No bureaucrat would tell you what you can do the way the private insurance companies do now.
This would be a real boon to Pennsylvania businesses because it would save them so much money and trouble.
There would be real savings to governments and municipalities. It is estimated that Lower Merion Township, for example, would save $3,320,477 per year, and the school district $ 5,641,765.
The thousands of people now employed by private insurance companies would be guaranteed up to two years’ salary and re-training.
The private insurance companies are very much against this reform. You can guess why. But many doctors and nurses are for it.
The bill is right now before the Pennsylvania legislature (HB 1660 and SB 400), and Governor Rendell has said he will sign it if passed. If you want this program (and a large majority of people do), tell your state legislator by phone or e-mail. A guide to contacting your legislator is on the next post to this blog.
If you have a friend who is unsure about this program, urge him/her to see www.HealthCare4ALLPA.org. Prepared by www.delmonthealthcare4allPA.wordpress.com.
SO WHAT DO WE DO TO GET SINGLE PAYER IN PENNSYLVANIA?
Tell your state senator and representative that you want single payer. Here’s how to contact them:
Contacting your state legislator:
If you live in Haverford, Radnor, Lower Merion, Upper Merion, Plymouth or East Norriton townships or in Norristown, Conshohocken, West Conshohocken, Bridgeport, or Narberth, your senator is Daylin Leach (D): 717-787-5544; 610-768-4200; DLeach@pasenate.com
If you live in Whitemarsh township, your senator is Vincent Hughes (D): 717-787-7112; 215-879-7777; hughes@pasenate.com
If you live in Upper Darby, Springfield, Marple, Newtown, or Easttown townships, your senator is Edwin Erikson ®: 717-787-1350; 610-853-4100; eerickson@pasenate.com
If you live in Tredyffrin township, your senator is Andrew Dinnaman (D): 717-787-5709; 610-692-2112; andy@pasenate.com
The State House is more difficult because districts are smaller and cut across township lines.
If you live in Upper Merion, Bridgeport, or West Conshohocken, your representative is Tim Briggs (D): 717-705-7011; 610-768-3135; repbriggs@pahouse.net
If you live in Haverford township, your representative is Greg Vitali (D): 717-787-7647; 610-789-3900; greg@gregvitali.com
If you live in Tredyffrin township, your representative is Paul Drucker (D): 717-772-2943; 610-688-5691; pdrucker@pahouse.net
If you live in Easttown, Williston, or East Whiteland townships or Malvern borough, your representative is Duane Milne ( R): 717-787-8579; 610-251-1070; dmilne@pahousegop.com
But if you live in other townships or boroughs, go to www.house.state.pa.us/ and enter your ZIP code in the upper right hand corner. Prepared by www.delmonthealthcare4allpa.wordpress.com.
The River Is Rising
FORUM: SEA LEVEL RISE AND THE DELAWARE RIVER AND ESTUARY
January 13, 2010, 9:30-11:30 AM
The John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge
Summary notes by Jane Dugdale
About 150 people, a capacity crowd, gathered in the Cusano Environmental Education Center, a model of green design and construction, listened intently, and questioned knowledgeably the following experts as they made climate change, sea level rise, wetland mitigation, inundation, storm surge, and redevelopment part of our new vocabulary.
Organizer: Anne R. Crowley, Union of Concerned Scientists www.ucsusa.org
Speakers:
Carol Collier, UPenn and Delaware River Basin Commission www.state.nj.us/drbc shared studies that established reality of temperature rise, precipitation rise, sea level rise.
Chris Linn, Delaware Valley Regional Planning Council www.dvrpc.org talked about his shoreline protection study, how wetland mitigation inland during climate change is now and will be blocked by development, and about inundation vs. storm surge (e.g., a category 3 hurricane means a 10’ surge at the airport).
Danielle Kleeger, Science Director at Drexel University www.delawareestuary.org discussed climate adaptation in the Delaware Estuary, especially salinity rise and its effects, about impoundments vs. retreat, and how wetlands protection is a value judgment.
Maya van Rosuum, www.delawareriverkeeper.org, talked about advocacy; for example, the need to inform decision-making by making global climate change part of the discussion. Building dams, etc., will only postpone flooding. Extracting natural gas is extremely polluting to the air and ground even though it is touted as being cleaner to burn. Deepening the river channel hastens salinity and magnifies sea level rise. Artificial turf not only creates toxic run off but with temperature rise, increases heat danger exponentially for kids using it. Doing things right actually benefits the economy, such as eco tourism. There are many opportunities for doing it right, like in redevelopment, using porous parking material. How to keep people motivated and active? Take issues to them, make them real.
Check the websites above for recordings of today’s forum, or check www.oneifbylandbuckscounty.com , which will post the entire forum.
Also check www.sustainabledelco.org
What Are We Doing About Handguns In America?
The presence of handguns and their easy availability through gun shops and gun shows will be the subject of the next meeting of DelMontPDA/Main Line Peace Action – February 17. Save the date!
Read about what handguns have done to us since May, 2007.
What Pennsylvania Could Do With The War Money
Bring Our War $$$ Home
Taxpayers in Pennsylvania will pay $ 26.9 billion for Defense Spending in Fiscal Year 2010. For the same amount of money, the following could have been provided:
- 6,633,142 People With Health Care for One Year OR
- 588,654 Public Safety Officers for One Year OR
- 409,177 Music and Art Teachers for One Year OR
- 1,582,353 Penn State Scholarships (tuition, room, & board) for One Year OR
- 5,020,061 Students Receiving $5350 Pell Grants OR
- 272,966 Affordable Housing Units OR
- 8,429,954 Children With Health Care for One Year OR
- 4,209,612 Head Start Places for Children for One Year OR
- 425,716 Elementary School Teachers for One Year OR
- 135 Elementary Schools OR
- 32,299,835 Homes With Renewable Electricity for One Year.
People will tell you we can’t afford these things. The Pennsylvania state budget for 2010 is $ 26.67 billion with an estimated shortfall of $4.8 billion. If we could reduce military spending by 25%, think what it could mean to our children, the sick, the homeless, the students, our infrastructure.
Tell Congressman Sestak you want him to vote “NO” on any bills that fund wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Yemen. Tell him to cosponsor HR2454, calling for an exit strategy from Afghanistan, and HR 3699, prohibiting any increase in the number of U.S. Armed Forces in Afghanistan. Call him at 202-224-3121.
Join us in a Brown Bag Lunch Vigil Noon – 2pm Wednesday in Sestak’s office, 600 N. Jackson Street, Media. If you want to carpool, call 610-491-9549.
For details, go to www.nationalpriorities.org, OR www.delmontpda.wordpress.org, OR http://pdamerica.org.
Help Elizabeth Warren Save Us!
Our favorite candidate for Federal Reserve Board Chair, Elizabeth Warren, wants to establish a consumers’ protection commission that will preclude future sub-prime loans and usurious credit card rates. Senator Chris Dodd is thinking of scuttling the whole idea. The bankers are determined to do it. Read Elizabeth Warren’s letter to her supporters, and then call your Congresspersons and tell them to take care of you and your neighbors and not the banking lobby. Call 202-224-3121.
Friends:
The story of the financial crisis has a thousand twists and turns, but the basic narrative is easy to follow. The financial industry wrote rules that allowed it to act recklessly. The industry captured agencies that were supposed to regulate it, taking cops off the beat and funneling enormous resources into the political process to make sure there wouldn’t be any new cops.
Then, with no laws to hold them back, the banks made hundreds of billions of dollars on the sales of deceptive products.
That went on for years, and the industry’s tricks-and-traps pricing got more and more out of control. Eventually, the sale and re-sale of deceptive mortgages and other dangerous products made trillions of dollars for Wall Street while bringing down the American economy. When the industry’s recklessness brought the biggest banks to the brink of collapse, Wall Street turned to the taxpayers for bailouts and guarantees, which put it right back into big profits and big bonuses. The industry got whatever it wanted.
Now we are coming to the final chapter of this story.
The final chapter will show whether we are going to let the industry continue to write the rules — to keep the cops off the beat — or whether the financial crisis actually changed something.
The fate of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency will be the best way to follow the story moving forward because consumer products were the most abusive and because the CFPA has real muscle to stop those abuses. The CFPA would hire new cops and change the way big banks do business.
We have all worked hard to make the CFPA into a reality, and the next few weeks will determine whether our hard work will make a difference for families or whether families will lose once again. The next few weeks will determine whether families will have to play by rules written by the banks and for the banks — rules that let the industry get away with anything. In my view, we cannot let families lose again.
Like you, I read last week that the consumer agency is dead. I also read the same thing last spring, last summer, last fall, and last month. And I’ve been warned about the power of the banks since I first developed this idea in 2007. We always knew this was a David v. Goliath fight, but I don’t believe that Washington can or will let Wall Street act like nothing has changed.
I am writing to ask you to make an extra effort these next few weeks to organize calls and emails into the Senate Banking Committee about CFPA, to organize op-ed and letter to the editor campaigns across the country, and to create visible, public support for CFPA. If everyone on this list called key Senators on the Senate Banking Committee, that would send a loud message — and if your members will do the same, the message will get louder.
This is not the last important moment in the fight for the CFPA, but it is a critical one. You can count on me to do my part. Please help.
Elizabeth
After Massachusetts, What?
We Tried To Warn Obama…But He Wouldn’t Listen
By Rabbi Michael Lerner January 19, 2010
The defeat of the Democrats choice to succeed Ted Kennedy in the U.S. Senate is being treated as though there is a decided shift of mass opinion to the Right in the U.S. But it is the Obama Administration, not the people who supported him in 2008, which moved to the Right–in the name of being pragmatists or realists– in the process emptying their own agenda in regard to health care, environment, human rights, social and economic justice, and global peace of the critical elements that made those programs sound hopeful, and leaving many of their supporters feeling confused, disillusioned, and unable to rally around the politics that seemed so very far from “the change you can believe in” that we had been promised.
Thousands of us saw this coming, and tried to warn Obama, but he wouldn’t listen.
On April 29, 2009, Tikkun and our education arm the Network of Spiritual Progressives bought the entire back page of a special supplement published in the Washington Post on the occasion of the 100th day of Obama’s presidency. We warned him that his presidency was in grave danger. Our point was simple and direct: “Your success depends on helping people believe that they can count on each other, that they are not alone in a ruthless world in which people are out for themselves, and there is a possibility of building a society based on kindness, generosity, and caring for each other. Unless your programs actually allow people to feel in their own lives that they are part of build a new society based on love and generosity of spirit, they will soon fall back into the older paranoid view-that we are all competing with each other and have to look our first for number one. And that will likely them right back into the hands of the most conservative forces in this society. It’s that simple, President Obama: if your policies do not give people a personal experience of caring and generosity, people will quickly succumb to the fearmongers who compete in the media over who can make people most afraid, most cynical, and most angry. “
Our add went on to tell President Obama that his supporters were beginning to feel mobilized because they cannot explain to themselves and others:
*Why you are bailing out the bankers and the Wall Street crowd rather than prioritizing the needs of people who have lost their jobs and homes
*Why you are not backing single payer (Medicare for Everyone) health reform but are instead preserving the interests of the health care profiteers and insurance companies that make our health care system so costly
*Why you are escalating the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, when you must know that these are no win situations, and when you have even agreed with Rabbi Michael Lerner that the best way to achieve “homeland security” is not by attempting to dominate others around the world in an insane “war on terrorism,” but instead by a Strategy of Generosity manifested in the Network of Spiritual Progressives’ proposal for a Global Marshal Plan introduced into the Congress by Congressman Keith Ellison
*Why you have failed to bring into your Administration more leaders of the peace, social justice, labor and environmental movements that gave you the critical support you needed to win the Democratic nomination for President.
Our conclusion: “If the people who made your presidency possible stop feeling excited about your present direction, the populist energies that oculd be mobilized for fundamental change will instead by mobilized by the Right for reactionary goals, and you may find yourself without the base of support you need even for your scaled down goals.” And now our worst fears and prophetic predictions are coming true. [If you were one of the many members of the Network of Spiritual Progressives or subscribers to Tikkun who donated to make the ad we published possible, I want to thank you for your ability to see what was ahead--and your willingness to back your wisdom with the money we needed to publish that ad!]
But what could he have really done, many ask, given the way corporate interests seemed to have bought their way into power not only in the Republican party, but among Blue Dog Democrats in the House and Senate?
It’s true that if Obama had fought for the kind of change he led his followers to believe would be possible, he might have lost. But winning legislative battles is not the highest goal, as FDR and Reagan, the two most influential 20th century presidents, learned. The most important thing a president can do is develop a worldview and convince the American public of that. Obama could have spoken the truth, told what he saw happening in Washington rather than trying to be a clever inside manipulator-a game that he was destined to lose. Any legislative victory won by compromising away the heart of what you are fighting for isn’t worth much, and in any event, even good legislation can quickly be dismantled by the next president if you haven’t won over the minds and hearts of the American people–and to do that you need to speak the truth and tell people what we are up against in the system of global capital and its ethos of materialism, selfisness, and looking-out-for-number-one, and what it would take to dismantle it and replace that system with a more humane and caring, environmentally sane and ethically and spiritually coherent society. And Obama could have constantly reminded his supporters that the 2008 election had shown that their yearning for a world of peace and justice, of love and caring and community and real solidarity and democracy, were not the private dreams of an isolated minority but the real needs of the American majority. By making us visible to each other, he would have empowered people to fight for programs that manifested their highest values (if and only if his programs did in fact manifest those values, which unfortunately they often did not).
Now it’s up to us, the tens of millions of Americans who really showed in 2008 the powerful commitment we have to building a world of love, kindness, generosity, environmental sanity and caring for others. We have to reconstitute that movement without Obama’s help, before the disillusionment with Obama’s compromises leads to the resurgence of the Right’s policies, the surge of a know-nothing Tea Party movement, and the retreat into despair and self-imposed powerlessness by all those who are questioning whether there’s any real possibility of replacing corporate power, materialism and selfishness with a more ethically and spiritually grounded community of caring.
Please don’t let your disappointment at Obama lead you or your friends into political passivity…because the alternative if you do that is Sarah Palin and The Tea Party extremists and the haters and fundamentalists, all of whom are now momentarily dressing themselves in the language of populism, but all of whom will actually only give even more power to the elites of wealth and power.
That’s why it is so important for you to become part of our efforts to reconstitute the movement of hope–and we can do that with your help. We need your ideas and involvement–and so we’ve created two conferences, a one day event on the Monday of President’s Day weekend, February 15, at the McLaren Hall on the campus of the University of San Francisco on Fulton St. near Clayton; and a longer event June 11-14 at the Church of the Reformation on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. The conferences are co-sponsored by The Nation Magazine, Yes Magazine, Democracy Now, Op-ed News, Peace Action, 350.org, the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, and speakers will include Chris Hedges, Bill McKibben, David Korten, Congressman Keith Ellison, Riane Eisler, Rev. Brian McLaren, Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister, Peter Gabel, Rev. James Winkler, Rev. Conrad Braaten, Robert Thurman, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Rev. Gralan Hagler, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Jonathan Granoff, Marianne Williamson, Paul Wapner, John Dear SJ, John Nichols, Svi Shapiro, Bob McChesney, Rabbi Michael Lerner, and many more.
Please register for one of these conferences now at www.spiritualprogressives.org/article.php?story=2010conferences (to plan effectively, we need to know very soon if you’ll be coming!) If you cannot come, please donate to make it possible for us to afford to create these events (the amount we are charging will not even come close to covering our expenses: donate on-line at www.tikkun.org or by sending a check to Tikkun, 2342 Shattuck Ave,#1200, Berkeley, Ca. 94704).
Please help us spread the word–and let us know if you and your friends, colleagues, community members, would like to help us organize a “Support Obama to BE the Obama Americans Thought they were Voting For” conference in your area of the country! Please read the information at our website–this is not about trashing Obama, but about reconstituting the movement that made his presidency happen, and then moving together to bring about the changes that tens of millions of Americans and billions of people around the world desperately need to have happen.
***************************************
Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor, TIKKUN.
You Don’t Need 60 Votes! Get To Work!
The “Mr. Brown goes to Washington so now nothing can get passed because we don’t have 60 votes in the Senate” excuse is as tired as it is untrue. “51″ votes are required to pass legislation in the Senate, not “60″. Yes the minority can filibuster/derail, but those tactics can be overcome by a determined, significantly larger majority with the will to do so. It is in fact the will to do so that is and has been lacking on the part of Senate Democrats. The Republicans during the Bush years passed some of the most anti-American and socially destructive legislation in US history by simple majority. They had the will to do so, at one point even threatening to change Senate rules to eliminate filibustering entirely if they didn’t get what they wanted … and it worked, it worked.
60 votes in the Senate are unrealistic, unnecessary and don’t even exist now. The current supposed 60 Democratic Senator voting bloc includes Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson and others who demand that any legislation they vote for meet the Republican, military, for-profit standard before they will support it. There really aren’t and never have been 60 Senators voting as a bloc, and certainly not with any respect for the will of the mandate produced during the 2008 election. So by all means pass the legislation that needs to be passed with a simple majority. Let those who want to oppose it do so – but not secretly or quietly, make sure their opposition is quite public – and let the chips fall where they may.
The Democrats are now proposing to abandon the public interest, abandon the mandate they have been charged with, in the hopes that they can save their jobs as servants of the same voters whose interests are at stake. That will not work.
The Time has come to show resolve, backbone. Mr. Senator Brown be damned.
All About Marcellus Shale And Natural Gas
Greg Vitali is State Representative for many members of DelMontPDA, and on January 19 he hosted a forum on Marcellus Shale. Several of our members attended, and Jane Dugdale wrote this report.
Action recommendation: contact your state legislators to put a moratorium on further leasing of state lands for natural gas extraction until adequate studies are made regarding environmental impacts.
This is an aerial photo of a natural gas drilling project in Allegheny County. It is anticipated that there will be 5,000 wells drilled in the state forests.
The Marcellus Shale (porous rock) formation, which runs from Marcellus, New York (near Syracuse), under the Appalachian Mountains that cross Pennsylvania, and into Ohio, holds the largest source of natural gas recently known, and is closest to the largest market, NE USA (where the winters are cold), putting huge pressures on the state to allow growth of the industry. Mining the shale involves these steps:
Leasing land above the shale
Clearing the land to build well site pads, 6-10 acres each plus access roads
Digging down through the aquifer about a mile
Running a pipe down and letting it sit a while
Running pipes horizontally underground in many directions
Jamming water down to shatter the rock
Piping out the dislodged natural gas mixed with sludge
In addition to private lands, which represent 90% of the land being leased, PA state forests include 2.1 million acres above the shale, one third of which is currently leased (about 100 leases). In 15-20 years, there will be thousands of leases. In 2009 the PA General Assembly mandated that the state lease state lands in order to raise money to balance the budget, but they agreed not to apply a “severance tax” to industry profits.
Because of the large amount of land affected, the pressure to lease it, and the process involved, three issues are paramount for Pennsylvanians:
Water quality: how will drilling impact it?
State forests: will they become “industrial parks”?
Severance tax (approx. 5% of gross income): is it appropriate?
Eight experts from government, industry, and the environment shared their views on these issues (any mistakes on names or titles are mine):
John Quigley, PA Secretary of the Environment
Andy Lasan, Penn Lands Trust
Scott Flavell, general manager and geologist, East Resources, independent oil/gas
John Hines, Deputy Secretary of water quality, Dept. of Environmental Protection
William Muzinsky, Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC)
Grady Russell, Clean Water Action
Steven Rhones, East Resources
Sharon Ward, PA Committee on Budget and Policy
In addition, gubernatorial candidate Joe Hoeffel made a brief appearance to state his opinion that wastewater should be restored to drinking water quality (it is now being diluted and returned to the ground). He also supports the extraction/severance tax and opposes a similar tax on solar and wind energy profits, since they do not put the stress on the environment that natural gas extraction does.
John Quigley and others stressed that PA has been shaped by resource extraction in three waves – first timber; then coal (both handled badly by the state); and now gas – and the question is, will we do this one right. He thinks we will.
Andy Lasan noted that the environmental impact of the drilling has not yet been studied, even though everything about it is huge. He pointed out that revenue currently flows from PA’s forested lands, which the state has been managing responsibly, and he wondered if we will kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. He advocates a moratorium until we understand the industry better.
Scott Flavell pointed out that water resources are already regulated strictly by three commissions. In any case, recycling water is an option, even if they are not sure how much of an option.
John Hines reminded us that Pennsylvanians are “rich in water” – unlike billions of other people on earth – and we have to “balance” its use, regarding withdrawal (impact on streams), mud placement, and water flowback (proper pollutant standards).
William Muzinsky outlined that the DRBC will be monitoring the water flowback for total dissolved solids (TDS) and chemicals, as well as for radioactivity.
Grady Russell stated that currently there is no plan for the consequences of drilling, and he urged PA to hold off on drilling until such a plan takes effect, since drilling will affect drinking water for millions of people. He also said PA laws are not strong – for example, they do not regulate industrial chemicals in drinking water (!) – and that industries’ track record cannot be trusted. He also stated that baseline testing, which costs about $35,000/community, should be state funded.
Steven Rhones stated that the industry is not in its infancy, but that we don’t know how easy it will be to produce from Marcellus Shale. However, he believes it may be “another Saudi Arabia”. He is against the severance tax because it might hamper capital investment, and the industry already pays high taxes (10% income). As an equity issue, other industries like solar and wind should also be taxed, he opined.
Sharon Ward stressed that we should learn from the past and decide now who will pay for the environmental and social costs (such as infrastructure use, police and education costs due to increased population), which have been swept under the rug in the past. The severance tax insures that these costs are borne by the industry and not taxpayers, who are still paying to clean up from coal extraction. In any case, the Commonwealth needs the funds now that the severance tax would provide.
In the question and answer session, the tax issue was pursued. Secretary Quigley related how the “Oil and Gas Law” repealed by the General Assembly last fall had been in effect since 1955 and was one of the most effective laws in the USA. Under it, all proceeds of land lease went to a fund dedicated to improving state lands. Now these proceeds are appropriated by the General Assembly.
Why has no impact study been done?
Secretary Quigley stressed the importance of such a study, since the number of well sites is going to explode. In the last 50 years, 750 wells have been developed on public land. In the next few decades, we may see 5,000. Steven Rhones defended the industry saying that we already have in place the most rigorous and thorough environmental laws, regulated by dozens of permits. The natural gas extraction industry “does not have the opportunity of the coal industry” and most industry people buy into the environmental ethic. Natural gas extraction doesn’t compare to coal extraction in any case because the horizontal drilling underground comes from up to ten wells on one pad, which lowers forest fragmentation. Grady Russell described the importance of funding to dramatically increase the number of inspectors that would be on site each time the fracturing is done because each step in the fracturing process is environmentally sensitive. Currently there are only 35 inspectors. John Hines noted that even though we know drilling will impact water resources, PA has no water regulations for drilling, so we must encourage water recycling, but if we polarize the issue we’ll get nowhere. Andy Lasan noted that even with regulations, we just don’t know all the problems that may arise; most of the problems with coal were not anticipated. Plus, even though the industry today is more regulated than coal was, there is questionable enforcement.
Can the radioactivity in the water be adequately treated by rural water systems?
Scott Flavell explained that the radioactive isotopes in the flowback (radium 226 and 228) are not soluble in water, but have an affinity for fine grains, so if the solids are removed, there is no communication with the water. John Hines commented that smaller treatment plants are not allowed to treat flowback and that regional treatment plants may be developed.
What is the positive effect of natural gas compared to other fuels, and will Marcellus Shale-produced gas be competitive even with the tax?
Scott Flavell answered that competitiveness will change, but the benefits are clear: natural gas has 44% less CO2 than coal; it is the cleanest burning fossil fuel on the planet and is a critical variable in providing a secure and stable electric base due to the inherently intermittent nature of wind and solar.
Any mistakes are my responsibility – submitted by Jane Dugdale
Coming Attractions
January 31 – Sunday – 6:30-9:30pm. Candidates’ Forum at the Rose Tree Fire Company, 1275 North Providence Road, Upper Providence. More than 15 Democratic candidates.
February 4 – Thursday – 7:39pm. Angela Davis on “Democracy, Social Change, and Civil Engagement”. Keynote Speaker for Bryn Mawr College Black History Month. Thomas Great Hall. 610-526-6594.
February 17 – Wednesday – Noon. Monthly brown bag lunch vigil at Rep. Sestak’s office to call for withdrawl of all troops from Afghanistan and application of those funds to serious domestic problems in the United States. This is part of a nationwide demonstration. For details, contact Jane Dugdale: tjdugdale@verizon.net, 610-527-4170.
Location: Radnor Township Municipal Building, Radnor, PA (also aired live on Channels 10 & 30)???
Radnor Township’s Carbon Footprint Inventory A Step Ahead: How Haverford Township is Leading the Way
Your Personal Inventory: Assessing Your Home or Business’s Carbon Footprint Shrinking Your Home or Business Carbon Footprint
For more information contact the Radnor Conservancy (610) 688-8202 or radnor.conservancy@comcast.net [1]
March 13 – Saturday. Peace Of The Action (Cindy Sheehan) starts camping out at the Washington Monument in DC.
March 20 – Saturday. March on the Pentagon.
The Court’s Blow To Democracy
This NY Times editorial comments on the disastrous 1/21/10 Supreme Court decision freeing corporations to spend without limit on political campaigns. Congress can act to undo the damage but no useful bills are yet in sight. We must be prepared to work hard for them when they do appear.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/opinion/22fri1.html?emc=eta1
The American Empire
This is one of the best kept secrets today. Why more Americans are not interested and ouraged by this is hard to understand. The Empire obviously costs a fortune. But it also entangles us in local politics in hundreds of countries and at the same time commits our forces to the defense of these countries. Of course, what exactly we’re defending against is another good question.
In 2005, the Defense Department reported 737 overseas US military bases. These are not Marine posts at embassies. These are hardened self-contained bases worth, according to the Pentagon, at least $127,000,000,000. That number is what the Pentagon says it would cost to replace them.
Deployed at those bases were 196,975 uniformed personnel and an equal number of dependents and Department of Defense civilian officials. The bases employed 81,425 locally hired foreigners.
The bases, according to the Pentagon, contained 32.327 barracks, hangars, hospitals and other buildings which it owns and 16,527 which it leases.
The size of these bases, according to the Pentagon, is recorded in the inventory as covering 687,347 acres overseas.
These numbers do not begin to cover all the bases we occupy globally. It doesn’t include garrisons in Kosovo, the site of the huge Camp Bondsteel, built in 1999 and maintained ever since by KBR (formerly known as Kellogg, Brown, and Root), a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation of Houston, of which Vice President Cheney was CEO.
The Pentagon’s list does not include more than $5,000,000,000 worth of military and espionage installations in Britain, conveniently disguised as Royal Air Force bases, or the bases in Colombia. An honest and complete count of overseas military bases would top 1,000.
At its height, the Roman Empire maintained 37 overseas military bases. The British Empire had 36. We have more than 730.
Further reading:
Chalmers Johnson, Nemesis. New York, Henry Holt 2006.
www.americanempireproject.com
www.TomDispatch.com
www.commondreams.org/view04/0115-08.ht
This flier was prepared for the Delaware/Montgomery Progressive Democrats of America and Main Line Peace Action: www.delmontpda.wordpress.com.
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Gubernatorial and Congressional Candidates’ Forum Sunday, January 31st
The Mid-County Democrats are holding their annual Candidates’ Forum on Sunday January 31 from 6:30 to 9:30 at the Rose Tree Fire Company in Upper Providence, 1275 North Providence Road.
More than fifteen Democratic candidates will be present including gubernatorial candidates, Chris Doherty and Joe Hoeffel. Also in attendance will be Congressman Joe Sestak, candidate for the U.S. Senate, two candidates for Lt. Governor, three candidates for the 7th congressional district, and many local State legislative candidates. The candidates will have an opportunity to speak and will answer questions on their positions on important issues, as time allows.
Admission is free and donations are welcome. For more information contact Don Dix at dondix@comcast.net or Bill Thomas at wathomas2nd@verizon.net.
The American Empire
This NY Times story is about opposition to our base in Okinawa. The base houses half of the 50,000 U.S. servicemen in Japan. Can someone explain to us why we have 50,000 servicemen in Japan? That war has been over for 64 and a half years! The people of Okinawa want to move the base and the Japanese government doesn’t. It is putting a 
severe strain on US-Japan relations. Why do we have an empire?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/world/asia/25okinawa.html?ref=world
SEPTA Sues Goldman Sachs!
SEPTA is the South East Pennsylvania Transit Authority. It runs the trolleys, subways, busses, and commuter rail lines in the Philadelphia and Wilmington area. It is tired of watching its investment money go to the pockets of Goldman Sachs executives. So it’s sue
ing.
WILMINGTON, Del., Jan 21 (Reuters) – A shareholder sued Goldman Sachs Group Inc’s <GS.N> board for excessive bonuses and wants bank executives to pay the $500 million in charitable donations that Goldman is making after being criticized for its compensation policy.
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One More Time – Why Are We Still in Afghanistan?
Ambassador Eikenberry in Kabul sent cables to Washington last November telling the White House that the Afghanistan government was “not an adequate strategic partner” and was virtually worthless in struggles against the Taliban. Our government’s response? Send in 30,000 more troops.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/world/asia/26strategy.html?ref=world
Angela Davis Comes To Bryn Mawr
Angela Davis will be keynote speaker for Black History Month at Bryn Mawr College, Thursday, February 4, 7:30pm in Thomas Great Hall. For Information: 610-526-6594. How to get there from Lancaster Avenue (Route 30):
Follow Morris Avenue as it curves left under the train-track bridge then bears right. Cross Montgomery
Avenue (at the traffic light). Continue to the next traffic light, the corner of Morris Avenue and New Gulph
Road. Turn left at the light onto New Gulph Road. You will pass a blinking pedestrian light at the top of
the hill. To your left is a small purple sign reading “Visitor Parking for Administration and Libraries.”
Immediately after the sign you will see a driveway to your left. Turn left and go straight onto the road in
front of you. This road will take you through the middle of campus. The building in front of you is the
library. The building next to it is Thomas (the venue). Bear to the left then to the right. The building on the
left is Thomas and the building on the right is the library. The parking area is pretty small. On the left there
is a handicap entrance. This is the easiest way into the venue if you have heavy equipment as it doesn’t
involve steps.
Campaign Finance Reform For Pennsylvania
A Populist Moment for Campaign Finance Reform in PAWashington Post columnist E.J. Dionne is onto something. He asserts that “we have reached a true populist moment in American politics.” The U.S. Supreme Court majority sniffed last week that the lure of campaign cash has nothing to do with the likelihood of public corruption or undue influence on our institutions and public officials. It’s just that corporations have the right to free speech (even without a mention of them in the constitution). And if the result is a torrent of corporate dollars contaminating the political process, which doesn’t exactly pass the sniff test as it is, we can all pay homage to the glories of the first amendment.Maybe the Supremes missed the health care reform stalemate in Congress. Health insurers and HMOs spent nationally more than $126 million in the first half of 2009 alone on campaign contributions and lobbying to fight health care reform. That’s a clip of nearly $700,000 per day.And they undoubtedly glanced over Pennsylvania’s recent state budget fiasco. Last year the interests that blocked adequate revenue from reaching the state’s coffers were many, but they all had one thing in common: big bucks “invested” politically. Want to tax the natural gas extracted from the Marcellus Shale? You say it’s a no-brainer from a policy perspective. Sorry. Governor Rendell backed away and the legislature ran for cover – maybe next year. The gas industry recently showered state senate leaders with more than $200,000 in campaign contributions and the governor was rewarded, too (all before the fact) .Disgusted? Let’s get the ball rolling on campaign finance reform in PA. Click here to sign a citizens’ petition to help get this issue some visibility in our state.What about taxes on cigars and smokeless tobacco? “Sin” taxes make sound policy, especially involving smoking, which pushes up the cost of health care for everyone. No cigar, not in PA. So what if we’re the only state that doesn’t tax cigars and smokeless tobacco? The tobacco industry donated more than $415,000 to political candidates and their committees in 2008. (Smoke-filled rooms aren’t for nothing.) Heard enough? Click here.Why not sensibly expand the sales tax to high-end business services like legal, accounting, engineering and consulting, perhaps with a dollar-value floor for applying the tax? (It beats taxing the struggling arts community.) No, that’s not going to work either, once you consider that powerful law firms across the Commonwealth have huge influence and are not shy about distributing largesse in the right places. In fact, since firms in these industries are generally partnerships, they even avoid the ban on corporate contributions and can make donations directly through their businesses. “Pinstripe patronage” may grease the wheels of government, but it generally drives them in the wrong direction.And then there’s the casino industry, whose generosity with political gifts is boundless. Gaming impresarios and their friends have dispersed some $17 million to PA politicians since 1991, according to a recent study by Common Cause PA. And what do they get in return? A new market in Pennsylvania - so what if it required overriding local government authority – and a chance to make their bid to operate casinos and make profits so huge that they’re positively thrilled to pay taxes. Plus, their latest jackpot includes the approval of table games, getting a helping hand for those downtrodden developers of Foxwoods who need some more time and other goodies. Giving and receiving – they go hand in hand in Pennsylvania politics.Well, could this be a genuine turning point like the one many thought we had a year ago last January 20? Maybe a paradigm switch to hard reality and common sense. A populist moment? Only if we’re serious about strengthening the voices of citizens, not corporations or the usual insiders. It’s not going to be easy to pass meaningful campaign finance reform in Pennsylvania, but experienced advocates believe we have a unique window to get it done this session. And now with the provocation from the extremists on the U.S. Supreme Court, this seems an increasingly doable proposition. Plus, there’s an opportunity for serious movement on the national level.
Pennsylvania is one of only eleven states without contribution limits and there is a growing realization that our politics (see above) is substantially a product of our “wild West”/anything goes approach to campaign financing. At least four bills now in the legislature attempt to address the issue. But by far the best at this point was introduced in the House last summer by Rep. David Levdansky (D-Allegheny/Washington). It would institute tough but reasonable donation limits, close loopholes in the prohibition against corporate treasury funds to candidates and strengthen reporting requirements that together will change the dynamic across the Commonwealth’s political landscape. Whatever is ultimately passed probably will be an amalgam of those bills, and there is talk of the various bill sponsors (Reps. Levdansky, Josh Shapiro (D-Montco), Mike Gerber (D-Montco), and Babette Josephs (D-Phil.) coming together to iron out a way forward. Click here to learn more about the Levdansky bill and start making your voice heard. We’ll present the petitions in Harrisburg at the right moment.Not convinced? Try taking a corporation out for lunch for a heart-to-heart.Next up: a look at the specifics of campaign financing bills now in Harrisburg.
Steve Strahs
ELECTION REFORM NETWORK
www.electionreformnetwork.us
215-782-8218
“The only title in our democracy superior to that of President is the title of citizen.”- Justice Louis Brandeis
Victory For Single Payer
Chuck Pennacchio sent this out this morning. HB1660 and SB400 are not partisan efforts. This is a non-partisan movement, earning support on both sides of the aisle.
President Obama asked for “better ideas.” We’re it. Single Payer is it. On costs, care, jobs, and so much more. And yet, the WDC Dems have systematically marginalized SP. That’s why we focus primarily at the state level.
Military Spending Marches On
The President suggests cutting or freezing domestic spending but continuing to spend like a drunken sailor on the military. This from “Common Dreams.”
Opposing The War
Congressman Payne: I Won’t Oppose War Money Because Obama’s President
By David Swanson
Congressman Donald Payne (D., N.J.) has voted against war funding bills for years. Last summer he was one of 32 heroes to vote No under intense pressure from the White House to vote Yes. When I asked him a couple of years ago to sign onto impeaching Bush he immediately said “Sure!” and he did it.
Today I asked him if he would commit to voting No on the next $33 billion for war. I asked him privately, just after he’d given a long speech to a Progressive Democrats of America conference in New Jersey, a speech about how much he opposes the wars.
Payne told me that he didn’t want to commit to voting No on the next “emergency war supplemental” because Obama is president, echoing Jan Schakowsky’s comments last June when she made a similar reversal.
“Congressman Payne,” I said, “aren’t the bombs the same? Isn’t the dying the same?” He agreed and told me I was preaching to the choir.
“And is the only difference that a different person is president?” I asked. “Yes,” he replied.
When I had prefaced my question with praising him for standing strong last June, I had referenced the major promises and threats that other congressmembers had reported receiving from the White House. Payne said he had experienced the same. Yet somehow he had resisted, but is unsure about resisting further.
Earlier in the day, another Democratic congressman from New Jersey, Frank Pallone, had spoken to the PDA conference, and both PDA’s national director Tim Carpenter and I had asked him publicly to commit to voting No on the war money.
I thanked Pallone for voting No on war supplementals in 2004 and 2005 and expressed disappointment that he had voted Yes last June. He refused to commit to voting No, with the excuse that something good might be attached to the war money. Yet he had voted No in the past, despite the fact that good hard-to-oppose measures were always applied as lipstick on these bills.
Was Pallone’s real thinking that he wanted to obey the president? I can’t say for sure, but I can say that he took a lot of questions from PDA members about his positions, and he tended to answer by explaining what Obama’s positions are. And I can say that Pallone raised lots of rightwing reasons for not being stronger on issues like healthcare, and other members of the panel he was part of decisively refuted each point but had no impact on the congressman’s position whatsoever.
Joining Pallone on the panel were Carpenter and PDA board member Steve Cobble, Co-Chair of PDA’s Healthcare Not Warfare campaign Donna Smith, and the president of the New Jersey Industrial Union Council Ray Stever. They laid out the case and the strategy for shifting our resources from wars to human needs, especially single-payer healthcare.
The conference rooms were packed, and everyone involved was eager to get to work, including a lot of people new to PDA’s organizing. Joanne O’Neil and the other leaders of New Jersey PDA were pleased with the conference, but far from satisfied with the positions of the two congress members who attended.
To their credit, however, everyone was focused on lobbying, challenging, and pressuring until their representatives agree to represent the people of New Jersey rather than taking their orders from a president who has three more years in office even if his followers get themselves voted out this November.
I expect more congress members from New Jersey, possibly even Payne and Pallone, to be joining those committed to voting No on the wars they claim to oppose: http://defundwar.org
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Bring Single Payer Back To The Table
From The Pen.
It’s FINALLY Time For The People To Be Heard On Health Care
What a sad tragedy, that the Democrats had to trash the Senate seat
in Massachusetts just to be willing to start to listen to their
constituents on health care reform. But this is what President Obama
said in his State of the Union address:
“But if anyone from either party has a better approach that will
bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured,
strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses,
let me know. Let me know. Let me know. I’m eager to see it.”
That’s what he said.. OK then, so NOW we the people need to TELL him.
Single Payer Push Action Page:
http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1031.php
What are we supposed to do? Not tell him?? He just invited us to the
table. What are we supposed to do, not show up, so he can say the
people did not respond to his invitation?
No, we need to flood the White House and Congress with more messages
than they have ever seen in their lives. We need everyone who has
ever submitted an action on this to do it again, and again, and again
if necessary, until we build the numbers that will force them to
listen whether they actually and sincerely wanted to or not.
There is a reason why the drug and insurance companies fought so hard
to keep single payer health care, like a Medicare for All system,
from even being considered as an option. It is precisely because they
know it is the only thing that will reduce their outrageous profits.
In other words, this proves THEY know it is the only thing that will
actually work, to reduce health care costs for the American people
and their government treasury.
If corporate insurance companies, with their ridiculously high
overhead, can stay in business charging the premiums they do, then
why cannot the existing economical and efficient Medicare system take
in more people at more reasonable rates, and remain solvent until the
end of time? The logic is inescapable to anyone even willing to
CONSIDER good public policy.
Single Payer Push Action Page:
http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1031.php
We the people demand: 1) open up the Medicare system to ANY American
citizen who wants to buy into it, 2) eliminate the ERISA loophole
(Kucinich amendment) that makes it more difficult for states to
create their own single payer systems, if that is what they want, 3)
ban the various insurance company bad faith denial of coverage
dodges.
Of course we still have the “Economical and Efficient Single Payer
Health Care” caps available. And you can get one from the return page
after you submit the Action Page above.
For Facebook on this one go to
Single Payer via Facebook:
http://apps.facebook.com/fb_voices/action.php?qnum=pnum1031
And the Twitter reply for single payer is
@cxs #p1031
Remember John Maynard Keynes?
There is so much talk again lately about the federal deficit, as if the government’s budget is analgous to your Aunt Minnie’s household accounts. Keynes told us in the 1930’s that it is not only not necessary to balance the national budget, it is usually better not to. The best course is to run deficits when there is an economic slowdown (a stimulus!) and not cut government spending until the economy gets rolling again. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about Keynesian Economics:
Keynesian economics (pronounced /ˈkeɪnziən/, also called Keynesianism and Keynesian Theory) is a macroeconomic theory based on the ideas of 20th-century British economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynesian economics argues that private sector decisions sometimes lead to inefficient macroeconomic outcomes and therefore advocates active policy responses by the public sector, including monetary policy actions by the central bank and fiscal policy actions by the government to stabilize output over the business cycle.[1] The theories forming the basis of Keynesian economics were first presented in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published in 1936; the interpretations of Keynes are contentious, and several schools of thought claim his legacy.
Keynesian economics advocates a mixed economy—predominantly private sector, but with a large role of government and public sector—and served as the economic model during the latter part of the Great Depression, World War II, and the post-war Golden Age of Capitalism (1945–1973), though it lost some influence following the stagflation of the 1970s. As a middle way between laissez-faire capitalism and socialism, it has been and continues to be attacked from both the right and the left.[2][3] The advent of the global financial crisis in 2007 has caused a resurgence in Keynesian thought. Keynesian economics has provided the theoretical underpinning for the plans of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and other global leaders to rescue the world economy.[4]
In 1973, even Richard Nixon said “We are all now Keynesians.” The sort of laissez faire economics promoted by Reagan and Bush led to the Great Recession. And yet already, people are forgetting what Keynes taught us 75 years ago.
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