Appoint Teddy's Successor. Now. Mere days before he died, Teddy Kennedy urged Massachusetts to change the law that governs how a vacancy in the state's representation in the U.S. Senate is filled, to permit the Governor to appoint someone to fill in until a special election is held, which could be as long as 160 days after a vacancy occurs. This would restore the procedure that was in place prior to a change in the law in 2004. Bizarrely, and hypocritically (surprise, surprise), Republicans in Massachusetts (both of them, I believe) are bitching and moaning that Democrats changed the law in 2004 to prevent the Republican Governor at that time, Mitt Romney (who whistled quite a lot of different tunes in those days from the tunes he claims are dear to his heart now), from filling a vacancy that might have occurred had John Kerry been elected President, and now want to change it back again to favor Democrats again:

Massachusetts House GOP Leader Bradley Jones said ... "Out of political expediency and convenience, the Democrats are again considering showing a complete disregard of the democratic process and the laws of the Commonwealth by contemplating a change to the law to serve their partisan interests, as opposed to simply what is the best and most appropriate policy."

Do Republicans actually assert that it is in the best interest of the people of Massachusetts to have only one vote in the Senate when every other state has two? Surely not. The people of Minnesota went months with only one Senator during the Coleman/Franken recount hassle, and didn't like it. No major legislation was being actively considered during those months. But hugely important legislation is due to be acted upon before a special election could be held in Massachusetts according to the terms of the present law. Universal healthcare is likely to be voted on before a special election can be held (145 days from Teddy's death at the earliest). The people of Massachusetts under Romney enacted a (very bad) universal healthcare plan, and this is a matter of great importance to them, not just because it was what Ted Kennedy regarded as "the cause of his life", but because they care about universal healthcare. At end, however, it simply does not matter why the people want the law changed. The fact is that they do want the law changed, and that is reason enuf to change it. And why would the Republicans complain that the Democrats now want to go back to a procedure the Republicans pretended in 2004 that they didn't want changed in the first place?
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Reasonable people can compromise. A new law could provide for a very-temporary appointment to fill Kennedy's seat only until a special election in three weeks rather than five months. Massachusetts has run elections for hundreds of years. I'm sure they can arrange an election with one office without five months' preparation. Moreover, legislators can make any law they pass now expire by its terms after the special election, and permit the prior law to become active again.
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Any law can be made to expire by its own terms. The Bush tax cuts pushed thru by Republicans in 2001 and 2003 are set to expire at the end of next year (December 31, 2010). Why can't an interim succession law expire after the election of a permanent Senator for Kennedy's unexpired term?
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I have heard, on TV, speculation that a changed succession law could be passed by late September. What? Why on Earth should it take a month — indeed, why should it take even 2 days — to pass and put in place so trivial a law? It would have ONE provision if it were an ordinary law, and the prior law could serve as an exact model as to provisions and language. There are a number of states that have similar interim-appointment laws, and legislators have access to the text of those laws and to model legislation proposed by groups of legislators, the national bar association, etc. There is NO original drafting needed, NO original thinking needed. This is not uncharted ground, a daring new initiative the implications of which have to be thought thru carefully and deliberatively, with hearings and public feedback! This change would merely restore the status quo ante the 2004 change.
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The largest number of provisions such an act need have is two: (1) restoring the prior way of filling an evacuated Senate seat; and (2) having the current legislation expire after the election of a permanent Senator (be it in five months or three weeks), and reversion to the current law — if the Massachusetts government decides that a special election is a better way to go in ordinary times.
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These are not ordinary times. The Federal Government is working on an extraordinarily important, truly historic piece of legislation that was crucially important to a man who served as Massachusetts' Senator for 47 years. The proponents of this historic change face cold-hearted, entrenched obstructionism by a criminal conspiracy of Republican Radical Rightwingers in the pay of the health-insurance industry. A Democratic voice and vote on the side of the people — of Massachusetts, of the United States — in the Senate is extremely important. We cannot wait five months. We shouldn't have to wait for even one month for a champion of "the cause of [Teddy Kennedy's] life" to be seated in the United States Senate .
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Legislation of such limited scope on so simple a matter should not take more than one day. Two days at most. The inability of government to act on even the simplest thing has produced enormous contempt for legislatures all over the Nation, from Congress to state governments to city councils.
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Message to Massachusetts: This is not rocket science. Do it. Do it now. Do it in one day, and prove that Government can respond quickly to a problem that if not acted on immediately will not be solved. If you don't give Massachusetts a second Senator before the Senate acts on healthcare reform, don't bother to act at all but let the current (unwise) law stand — and pay the price in public disgust during the next regular election.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,336 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM

 
That's Your Problem, Not Government's. Senator Tom Coburn was shown on last nite's Countdown with Keith Olbermann as stone-facedly telling a woman in the audience at one of his town halls who was crying because her husband is dying because their health insurance won't pay for nursing care he desperately needs,

Well, I think ... First of all, yeah, we'll help. The first thing we'll do is see what we can do, individually, to help you, thru our office. But the other thing that's missing in this debate is us, as neighbors, helpin' people that need our help. You know, we tend to — the idea that the Government is the solution to our problems is an inaccurate, a very inaccurate statement.

What a lovely man. What Senator Coburn is saying is that one person's problems are his problems, not anyone else's, such that even if we could help, we have absolutely no moral obligation to do so. That is, if Government COULD help that man get the medical help he needs, it SHOULD NOT. I repeat: What a lovely 'man'.
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It's times like this that one is tempted to envy the Aztecs, who could cut out the heart of such a 'person' and hold it in the air, still beating. Of course, we would then transplant it to someone more deserving, but we'd have the momentary satisfaction of cheering at our ability to end the life of an evil man and thereby end his part in the public advocacy of inhuman policies.
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If you disapprove so whole'heart'edly of Government, 'Dr.' Coburn, why on Earth are you a U.S. Senator? I suppose it's easier to destroy the Government from within than without.
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By Senator Coburn's reasoning, society does not exist, only hundreds of millions of biologically and morally separate individuals, each of whose problems is their own. No one has the obligation to pay even one penny to help anyone else. Naturally, if one individual — such as a neighbor — chooses of his own, completely free will, to help another, that's fine, as long as everyone understands that what he does is an act of charity, not a moral obligation nor even practical arrangement for being part of a social compact: I help others in order to qualify to be helped, myself.
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If American hikers wander too close to an unmarked frontier and are seized by the Iranian Government, that's their problem. If five guys go out fishing in a 23' recreational watercraft and an unexpected wave flips the boat, that's their problem. Would Senator Coburn turn the same hard heart to those fishermen as to that woman's husband? Probably. We can't really be expected to maintain a Coast Guard at public expense to save recreational fishermen from a freak accident. Their misfortune is theirs. What about if a freak wave capsizes a billionaire's yacht filled with multimillionaire guests at a yacht party? Do we leave them to drown too? Senator? Frankly, if I had to choose which of those groups to save, I'd opt for the fishermen. They probably work for a living when not out on a weekend fishing trip. Their deaths would be a real loss. Not so the deaths of the idle rich.
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And if a fire breaks out or a burglar is breaking into your house or car, that's your problem, buddy. It is not for other people to shoulder the burden of protecting you.
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Senator Coburn would appear to believe, without an iota of doubt, in the philosophy called "Radical Libertarianism", an insincere point of view espoused basically only by people who are, for the moment, enormously lucky. They ascribe their luck — which is all it is, be it as regards good health, substantial wealth, emotional security, or anything else: only luck, and luck can change — to their own extraordinary virtue, and subscribe to a Calvinistic "Predestination". They are lucky because they are the Chosen of God, who, before they were even born, decided that they would have good things in life and then go to heaven at the instant of death. Why did God do that? Just on a whim. He could have chosen somebody else, but He chose them. They don't have any obligation to people for their blessings, because those blessings didn't come from people. No, all their good fortune came directly from God, separately from all other people.
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So the mere fact that the "little people" made them what they are in every single regard — that they wouldn't even have survived infancy if someone ELSE hadn't fed them, for instance; no, they fed themselves, even in their first two weeks outside the womb! — means nothing. They seem to feel that they grew all the food they eat; they built their own house; they created the schools they went to, and the telephone, water, electrical, and sewer systems they needed at every stage of life, and the roads, railroads, airports, airlines, and everything else they rely upon to achieve anything in life. And that's why they are entitled to everything they have and owe nothing to anyone else. They are their own police force and fire department, and they pay for everything they get. Never mind that they pay with dollars designated with our name, "United States of America", and their "money" would be useless paper were our name not on it, and the financial system other people created did not exist.
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If these people were sincere about their Radical Libertarianism, they would accept that if they are involved in a traffic accident or a fire races up the stairs toward their bedroom, they would have to accept with good grace that no one has the obligation to save them. No EMT need show up; no fireman need rouse himself from a sound sleep to carry him, unconscious, out the window and down a ladder. Because he did it all, all by himself, and he owes nobody anything, so nobody owes him anything.
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I have never heard of any Libertarian telling EMT's or firemen who are trying to extricate them from the twisted metal of a car crash, "No, that's all right. Just leave me here." Mind you, they'd leave other people there. There are few to no Radical Libertarians or billionaires working as EMT's or firefiters.
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I for one would be glad to leave Senator Coburn crushed in twisted metal, and just scrape the medical waste from the metal and glass before we recycle it.
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Let's follow Senator Coburn's line of 'reasoning' to its logical conclusion: there should be no Government and no taxes. Everything should be free market, and those who can afford services get them; those who cannot afford them, don't get them. This could work, they think, for everything, including private security and firefiting services under contract by each home in a gated community. But what about travel on public roads and such? How is an EMT or firefiter to know who has paid for their services? Do they ask for a contract number or to see proof of prior payment, current thru the date of an accident, before they'll provide rescue services? and let everyone who cannot provide such prior proof — for instance, because they are unconscious — die of their wounds or burn alive at an automobile crash site?
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What about national defense? Should we find some way to make that private too? Well, how about simply making payments for national defense optional, strictly voluntary. If people think that other countries might pose a danger to them personally, they can pay for the military. If other people think that they have nothing to lose by being invaded by another country, because the monster the United States had become should be destroyed, and any other system would be better, then they can withhold taxes for the Defense Department.
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On and on we can go. Governmental deposit insurance for bank accounts? Get rid of it. If a bank fails, that's the problem of the depositors. If a private insurance company wants to charge a yearly premium to cover bank losses, that's fine; those who feel they have too much to lose if their bank fails will pay for such insurance. People who are willing to gamble that the bank will not fail can save the premium but lose everything if that bank does fail. But what happens if the financial distress is so broad that the insurance company fails at the same time as the bank? Then even the rich who paid their premiums will lose everything. That's fair — right, Senator Coburn?
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Earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and other natural disasters? The rich can buy insurance to rebuild. But what about rescue services? Forget about lifeboats sent out by the fire department or national guard, or emergency personnel being lowered from a Government helicopter for anyone who doesn't have a prepaid rescue service. Such private services would be specific to a given property, but also apply to people who call from a cellphone and provide the necessary information — if they can. If they can't — the cellphone doesn't work because it got wet or the battery went out because the electricity went out yesterday before they could recharge, and the car is underwater so they can't use the cigaret lighter to power a cellphone; or all the antenna towers nearby were burned or knocked down — that's tuf, right Senator Coburn?
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And if the particular private emergency rescue or firefiting service is overwhelmed — or its facilities and equipment have themselves been destroyed by the disaster — well, that's unfortunate, but can't be helped. Well, it could be helped if these things were governmental, but we don't want government interfering with free enterprise, do we? So if there are only personnel enuf to save 10 mansions that afternoon, and you are in the 11th or 14th, I'm afraid that's your problem. You should have planned ahead and built a fireproof, floodproof, hurricaneproof, tornadoproof room within your mansion, and if you didn't, that shows damned poor foresight on your part. So you'll just have to die, as that woman's husband just has to die, and a bedrock minimum of 18,000 other Americans each and every year just have to die because their health insurance won't provide the treatment they need to live. Them's the breaks. Right, Senator Coburn? (Radical) Right?
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And if someone infuriated by Senator Coburn's monstrous hardheartedness takes a gun, drives to a town hall at which he is to speak, and points that gun at him, we have no obligation to save him from the fully foreseeable consequences of his own monstrousness, right? And if one of those "little people", in a police uniform, happens to be there and chooses not to risk his life to save Senator Coburn's, that's just the way things are. Why would any "little person" do anything to save anyone like Senator Coburn if it entailed even the tiniest risk of death or even injury (e.g., a hangnail)? Senator Coburn won't pay so much as a cent of money (that he can easily afford) to save someone else's life. Why would anyone at all, anywhere on Earth, risk anything at all to save him from the righteous rage of the world?
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,334 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:59 PM

 
Where Are the Horror Stories? Critics of the current healthcare system of the United States have shown that thousands of Americans die each year for not having health insurance, or having their health insurance ended because they got too sick. These critics also point out that a very large proportion of foreclosures on people's homes and of personal bankruptcies are the result of healthcare costs to individuals. Why is the public not hearing about such cases, in specific, human terms, relating to people in their own communities?
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The only people who are telling the horror stories to try to wake people up are unelected citizens like Bill Moyers and Michael Moore. What they say doesn't make the nitely news. But if the President, Senators, and Congressmen make these points, especially with guests in the audience whose true-life stories are told, those stories will make the news, and the lie that everything is just fine with our healthcare system will go down in flames — and tears of guilt. Absent clear and chilling exposition of the nitemare our healthcare system has become, Democrats are never going to show the backbone to defy the liars and con artists of the Far Right. With such horror stories constantly in mind, however, because their colleagues keep dredging them up — and there are plenty to go around, without repeating a single one — we might actually end the disgrace of letting the Radical Right claim that this country they are so fond of bragging is the greatest and richest country in the history of the world, is too poor to provide universal health services that countries not nearly as rich as we are, manage to afford easily.
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Every advocate of healthcare reform in Congress should be out in their home district (or State, in the case of the Senate) reminding people of why we are trying to reform health coverage in this country. Here's the kind of thing they should be saying.

Mary Williams, of Centerville, was denied a bone-marrow transplant for a life-threatening condition. The healthcare company said that altho a bone-marrow transplant was a well-established procedure for certain conditions, it was only an "experimental" procedure for treating her particular condition, and denied her that transplant. She died. Mary Williams was 16 years old.

Dave Edwards, of Springfield, got pancreatic cancer. His health insurer applied a rigid maximum payout to his case, and not only did he die prematurely, but his family was left with $59,000 in medical bills, in addition to a $6,000 funeral. They had already exhausted their life savings. Their kids, Sarah and Dave Jr., had to drop out of college long before graduation, which stuck them with tens of thousands of dollars in debt for student loans they will have to repay, even tho they didn't get a degree. The family had to sell their house, at a loss in a down market. Tammy Edwards, the widow, had already sold one car (Dave's, which he wouldn't need anymore), plus all her jewelry, including her engagement ring, wedding ring, and family heirlooms passed down thru four generations on her mother's side, and still couldn't pay the mortgage, so lost the house.

This is Edgardo Molina. His wife Luisa got breast cancer because they didn't have health insurance, and couldn't afford the regular mammograms that might have detected her cancer early. Luisa had to have a double-mastectomy, or she would surely die. They couldn't afford the surgery, so didn't have it done. Luisa died, leaving three small children motherless. As it is, the hospital bills for her last few days before death came to $24,000, and Edgardo had to liquidate the family's mom-and-pop business, a gardening service, to try to pay off that debt. Without Luisa as bookkeeper and sales agent, the business wouldn't have been able to continue anyway. Two part-time helpers lost their jobs in that liquidation, spreading the economic misery from the Molinas to the Johnstons and Nakamuras. At this point it looks as tho there is no way in the world Maria, Juan, and Billy Molina will be able to go to college.

Over in the McKinney Gardens townhouse project right here in Adams, we have the case of Theresa Heilbronner. She was driving her son and five of his friends home from a church picnic just before dusk when a drunk driver crossed over the line and hit her SUV head-on. Four of the kids, including her son Tommy, were killed instantly, and she was trapped in the car for over an hour until "the jaws of life" could free her. The remaining two kids were critically injured, barely clinging to life. Two days later, one died, with his parents by his side. On the third day, the other died. His father couldn't even be there because he was serving in a remote outpost in Afghanistan and couldn't make it home until five hours after his son died. Theresa suffered two broken arms, one broken leg, a severe brain concussion, and serious internal injuries. Her spleen had to be removed.

You all saw this story in the papers or on TV. What you might not have seen is the total cost to the families of this tragedy: $197,000 in expenses not covered by insurance. That doesn't even speak to the cost of funerals for six kids and rehabilitation expenses for Theresa that are expected to exceed $150,000 beyond what insurance will pay.

This is happening right here, ladies and gentlemen, not just out there somewhere else in the country. Our neighbors are being killed and ruined by the present healthcare mess. These things are happening all over the Nation, in town after town, neighborhood after neighborhood. Will it happen to you? Theresa Heilbronner didn't think it could happen to her. One minute she was driving home at the end of a great day, the next she was trapped in twisted metal and her son and his friends were dead or dying. Could it happen to you? Couldn't it happen to you?

We can't do anything about sudden, unpredictable accidents, but we can do something about the costs to repair the damage done by them, or by grave illness and long-term care. We can extend healthcare assurance to everyone, so that when bad things happen, we don't let health insurance megacorporations make them worse.

If you don't think there's anything wrong with a system that produces hundreds of thousands of horror stories like this EVERY YEAR, and you work to stop us from ending the conditions that produce such stories, then you share the guilt of the insurance companies. You are attacking your neighbors and causing them pain.

All we want is for everybody to be secure from economic devastation following health devastation. As a Nation, we enacted Social Security in the 1930s, and Medicare for the elderly in the 1960s. Now it's time to step up and provide Health Security in 2009. We can do it. We should do it. We must do it. It's time.

Is that so hard to say?
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,333 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 8:30 PM

 
Reverse-Negotiating on Healthcare. It occurs to me that the Democrats should embark on the type of bargaining that some comics have shown in comedy skits. Instead of the ordinary get-closer approach, they go farther apart, to force the weaker party to accept an even less advantageous position than they started from. That is, Bob Smith offers to buy something from Randolph Jones but the two do not initially agree on price. Jones wants $100. Smith offers $50. Jones comes down to 90; Smith comes up to 60. Jones down to 80; Smith up to 70. They agree at 75. That's the way striking a deal is usually done. The comic version is Jones asks 100. Smith offers 50. Jones counters with 110. Smith offers 60. Jones demands 120! Smith jumps to 90. But Jones goes on to demand 150! Smith panics, and realizes that if he is to have any chance at all of buying something he really wants, he will have to grab it at 150, $50 higher than the first price offered!
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That's what Democrats should do with Republicans on healthcare. To date, everything has been going down and down and down, to the point that Democrats have almost nothing left to give, because Republicans have gotten just about everything they wanted. The only step down that still remains is to abandon healthcare reform entirely for at least this year, and possibly for the remainder of President Obama's (first) term. It's time to reverse-bargain.
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If the Republicans demand any further weakening, the Dems should retreat up one step higher toward their ultimate goal of single-payer, as to cooperatives organized by the Federal Government rather than by private parties. If Republicans are puzzled by that and still try to scuttle any measure, the Dems should go higher still, to a publicly owned, quasi-governmental health insurance corporation, the "public option". If Republicans don't grab that deal while they have the chance, but try to weasel out of that and down again toward no action this year, the Dems should raise the demand to single-payer! And if the Republicans don't cave in then, they should threaten full-scale "Socialized Medicine", Government takeover whereby all doctors, nurses, EMT's, hospital administrators, etc., are made Federal employees, to receive a fixed salary paid by Government check!
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That's an outline of the way the Dems should work. (I initially mistyped that as "Demos". That's appropriate: Greek for "the people". That is whom the Democrats are supposed to represent: the people. They must never forget that.)
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The steps I show are few and blunt, not finely gradated, because I don't know if there are proposals intermediate to the major points of contention I mention. If there are 10 or 15 points on the continuum rather than 5 (do nothing, private coops, public option, single-payer, full Governmental takeover of healthcare), each step of the reverse-negotiation can go a shorter distance toward the extreme, uppermost limit (Government takeover), and end up winning for the people the single-payer system they want or, at very worst, public option. The way Dems have permitted Republicans to play them, however, in phony negotiations — Republicans offer as the only consideration for Democratic concessions, Republican votes for the final legislation that they have no intention of delivering, no matter what proposal is offered — the Dems have almost nothing left of their original proposal, and thus nothing left to offer to try to get Republican votes except total cave-in and either total abandonment of legislation this session or a bill that is so watered-down as to be essentially useless and pointless, whereupon Democrats won't vote for it.
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My way, the Democrats would play the Republicans, with an offer to let them in on the credit for a reform that Democrats are perfectly capable of passing over Republican objections. If Dems do have to pass reform over Republican stonewalling, Democrats will have a mace with which to smash the Republican Party in midterm elections and onward. Because real reform will save the typical family hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year, and the Democrats can use the refusal of Republicans to vote for the measure that saved them so much money, and even their house and car, to bludgeon the Republicans in 2010 and 2012.
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It is absurd for Democrats to negotiate, in good faith, with people who are only pretending, in manifest BAD faith, to negotiate. It's time for Dems to reverse-negotiate and force the Republicans to go ever farther up the chain of alternative proposals toward single-payer. When they see that a real reform that will achieve striking change that the electorate will LOVE, can pass without them, the Republicans will have only one choice: sign on, or consign themselves to the trash heap of history, and face voters who will punish them for voting against the people.
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At end, a great many Republicans will have to tell their masters in the healthcare megacorporations that they can't stop change, and if they even try, they will be thrown out of office. "We won't be able to help you at all, ever again in the future, if we lose our jobs trying to save your most extreme agenda. You are going to have to accept what we have to accept: when it's time for a sea change, you have to go with the flow or be drowned."
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,331 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM

 
Party Discipline: Crack the Whip for Single-Payer. Barack Obama has done with healthcare what seems second-nature to him: abandoned his principles at the first sign of entrenched opposition. Principles don't seem to matter to him. They do to me, they do to American Liberals / "progressives", they do to the people of the United States, and they do, most particularly, to the people who voted the Republicans out and the Democrats in. They didn't do that for nothing. They wanted change — yes, "Change We Can Believe In". We believe that massive, basic change must take place if this country is to avoid disaster and do justice. Obama, however, does not. Indeed, it's hard to see what Obama does believe in.
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It's time for the people who put Obama and the Democratic majority in place, to make very plain that what we gave, we can take away. Do what we elected you to do, or we will get rid of you. It's time for a show of bare, unabashed power by the American people. We want single-payer. Give us single payer, or we will give you a comeuppance unlike anything you have ever seen in life.
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It's time for the true keepers of the flame — if any remain in the Democratic Party — to lay down the law to hesitant Blue Dog Democrats (conservatives, mainly from the South): vote the Party's program, or you're OUT OF THE PARTY. You will lose your seniority, you will lose the right to caucus with other Democrats and, thus, your rights both to be heard and to be considered an ally and friend to whom some consideration, some quid-pro-quo is due. You will lose all funding from the Democratic National Committee and other Party organizations in your next election. You will win, instead, dedication by all Democratic Party organs and celebrity fundraisers and endorsers to unseating you in the primary. We will find an opponent, fund him or her richly, and campaign in person and in media for your ouster from your job by a real Democrat. The President and other major Democratic politicians will tell your voters that you are no Democrat but an enemy of the very most basic stances of the Democratic Party, which focus on helping the little guy against the abusive rich.
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Don't even think about going over to the Republican Party. Oh, they'd be glad to have the votes against Democrats. But they can't count on your fealty, can they? If you are unfaithful to the Democrats, the party in whose name you ran, they must expect you to be unfaithful to them too. They don't give their members free will. To be a Republican nowadays, you have to toe the party line, and their line is simpleminded, Radical Rightwing service to the rich, no questions asked. It is not for you to challenge the Republican leadership by asking stupid questions like, "Won't this hurt my constituents?" or "Won't this weaken the United States?" or "...ruin millions of the most vulnerable Americans?" "Yes, of course it will. That's why we want to do it. Because the poor and middle class are the natural enemies of the rich, so we must hurt them to make them obey the commands we obey. Whatever the rich want, we will do. No questions asked."
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Democrats should tell Blue Dogs, "We are going to give you the benefit of the doubt here, and say that you don't want to vote without thinking, and you do care about that concept in the Preamble of the Constitution, 'promote the general welfare'."
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Do not for an instant think that the presence of Blue Dogs will force the Republican Party to change, to be more thoughtful and more generous to the poor and middle class. Ain'ta gonna happen. The "Party Of No" (which should be the new acronym, P.O.N., for what is still, for the moment, called the "GOP") isn't interested in trying to legislate with a majority in Congress. They know that the President is a Democrat who will veto any legislation that springs from PON principles, and will confess to you that "we won't have the votes to override, even with the addition of Democrat [note: "Democrat", never "DemocratIC"] votes." And yes, you will always be regarded as a Democrat by Republicans. They will never trust you, at least not for five or ten years after you make a switch. And in all that time, they will talk about you behind your back as "that Democrat turncoat", or words to that effect.
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All that the Republicans are hoping for is Congressional gridlock, in the expectation that they will escape public RAGE at a Congress that can't get anything done. Can you sleep the sleep of the just, secure in the knowledge that your voters won't blame you for gridlock that would be impossible without you?
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And don't think that going over to the Republican Party would save you from disgrace and defeat in the next election. Your constituents put a Democrat into office. They expected that Democrat to stay a Democrat. Two wiseguys in the New York State Senate changed parties, from Democratic to Republican, in mid-2009, which threw that state's legislature into chaos for a month. Both turncoats returned to the Democratic Party when their constituents made clear that they were FURIOUS and would vote them out the very next chance they got. The voters might STILL vote them out because of their thuggish and unprincipled behavior, and utter untrustworthiness.
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The people of the United States want single-payer healthcare. Period. They don't want a "public option" or healthcare cooperatives. They want single-payer. And they are right to want single-payer.
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It is your job to do what the people want, unless the people want something preposterous and unconstitutional, like rounding up an unpopular minority and putting them to death in gas chambers. Enacting universal healthcare paid from general revenues and funded by increased income taxes on the rich and super-rich is nothing like that. It's not monstrous but good. It's not foolish but wise — a lot wiser than you are.
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The people want simplicity and fairness. Sick people have enuf to worry about without humungous medical bills being added to the mix. Single-payer will let them put all their energy where it is needed, on recovery and becoming productive members of society once more.
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The Democratic Party has run into unthinking nihilism by the worst people in the Nation, the scumbag servants of the rich that the Republican Party has become. That nihilism was, until Democrats started giving in to it, looked upon with disdain, distaste, and active contempt by the overwhelming majority of the American people. Now, with Democrats abandoning fundamental principles to try to accommodate the phony "grassroots" movement the Radical Right has created to fool media and the public about 'widespread opposition' to 'socialized medicine' — a movement termed "astroturf" by Liberals to show it is phony grass that has no roots — some people are genuinely confused by the lies and disinformation. This is especially a problem among old people with memory problems who should be wildly enthusiastic about single-payer because they HAVE IT, in Medicare. Seniors have, instead, been led to think that universal healthcare would not just destroy Medicare — rather than merely extend it to others, like their children and grandchildren — but even lead to extreme measures to control costs, as by "pulling the plug" on them! And all this is your fault, you faithless, worthless, piece-of-crap Blue Dog Democrats.
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Well, we're done with disloyalty. You can be a Democrat and vote for the Democratic program that intends to do what the people want us to do, enact single-payer universal healthcare funded by increased taxes ONLY on the rich and super-rich, who can easily afford it. Or you can leave the Democratic Party. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.
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[Aside: on August 8th, I said here: "Don't worry about the rich. They can afford it, EASILY. They have all the money in the world, and we're just going to use some of it for better purposes than an 11th house, 2nd yacht, 13th car, 21st Armani suit, 37th designer gown, or 260th pair of shoes." At the time I thought some people might think that hyperbole, tho I knew it to be realistic. Then I saw a mention of Joan Rivers' new cable show, "How'd You Get So Rich", in which the wife in a nouveau-riche couple, who had only $50 million, which doesn't even remotely qualify them as members of the super-rich, had just bought her 260th pair of shoes! 260, the exact number I used in my example, when I hadn't seen that episode nor even yet heard of that shoe, um, show!]
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[Returning to what the Democratic leadership should say to Blue Dogs] Perhaps you and your Blue Dog colleagues think you can go your own way and form your own party. But third parties don't, historically, do very well in this country.
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Perhaps you think you won't let us tell you what to do because you can always just go over to the Republican Party, which will welcome you with open arms, because they see you as the hammer with which they can beat down the Democrats, and defeat single-payer and every other reform of the monstrous and unsustainably burgeoning healthcare-finance system that threatens to ruin the Nation. If you dare to move into the Republican camp, expect to find yourself out of work in January 2011 — if you even survive, biologically, to 2011, once your constituents, many of whom own guns, realize that you played a role in defeating something they feel very, very strongly about. People who lose their house, but not their guns, to medical bills may decide to make an example of you. More power to them.
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We are not asking for your advice. We've heard it, and reject it as cowardly and contemptible. We are concerned with and will now listen only to the Nation's will. We will move the question, single-payer or bust. We will join the rest of the industrialized world and end the healthcare nitemare the people of this country now suffer, in which millions don't go to the doctor in time for preventive medicine to catch and cure problems before they can kill, and doctor and hospital bills ruin people's lives, force them into bankruptcy (or worse, such as SUICIDE), and make it nearly impossible for U.S. employers to operate in the United States but 'force them' to outsource everything because health insurance is, literally, prohibitively expensive.
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We will urge people thinking about suicide because of health-related problems that could be solved by universal, quality healthcare, to think assassination instead. We will identify the enemies of universal healthcare, and say, "Don't kill yourself. Don't kill us who want to help you and everyone like you. We're not to blame. You know who IS to blame? Here's a list." And we will put your name on that list.
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Don't play us, because we will not be played.
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Don't defy us, because we will not be defied.
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Don't go over to the other side, because you will not find a better deal from the Republicans, and your constituents will not forgive being betrayed. President Obama will be re-elected in 2012, and you won't even be hired to lobby Congress if the electorate expels you from office in 2010, because nobody in the President's party will give you so much as 36 seconds of our time.
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We will not let you defy the insistence of hard-pressed Americans on universal healthcare via single–payer. You will vote for the Democratic single-payer plan, or we will EXPEL YOU FROM THE PARTY, and devote the foreseeable future to DESTROYING you.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,331 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM

 
Why No "Buy American" Requirement in "Cash for Clunkers"? President Obama went to Mexico last Sunday and was told about concerns from Mexico and Canada about "Buy American" provisions in bailout legislation. But then we hear that Congress inserted no such provision into the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) program, and 55% of all of that U.S. taxpayer money went to FOREIGN companies! Mind you, the Government OWNS large blocks of stock of American car companies, but gladly sends BILLIONS of dollars to Japanese and Korean car makers rather than to American companies that might use some of that money to pay us back!
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How on Earth could this happen? What the HELL was Congress thinking? And why didn't the President VETO legislation that would further subvert the long-term viability of American auto manufacturers?
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This is the kind of thing people should be demonstrating in the streets about, but no, there has been absolutely no protest of any consequence to this vast transfer of money out of American taxpayers' pockets into the coffers of foreign corporations. Why not?
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I am endlessly astonished at the absolute absence of nationalism in the United States except when it comes to foreign wars. Foreigners dare to judge American contestants on talent shows with names like AMERICAN Idol and AMERICA'S Got Talent. Foreign accents, mostly British, fill commercials for American products. Many of the best roles in films and television shows are given to foreigners, even AMERICAN roles. Foreigners put on American accents and are preferred over Americans. Nobody seems to mind that the best jobs in the country are being given to foreigners. No, they object that the worst jobs in the country are being taken by illegal aliens. What about all the legal aliens? How on Earth did foreign ACTORS get into the United States? There's no actor shortage in this country. What there is in Hollywood is a shortage of roles for AMERICAN actors, because everything is given to foreigners — Brits, Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders. And hundreds of thousands of Americans don't get a chance to show their stuff, because traitors in Hollywood give everything to foreigners.
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Now 55% of the money for the Cash for Clunkers program is being sent thousands of miles outside the United States, because the traitors who fill Congress to overflowing refused to put a "Buy American" provision in the CARS legislation. Appalling.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,331 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 12:59 AM

 
Fiting Assholery. On last nite's episode of MSNBC's Countdown, both Keith Olbermann and Eugene Robinson said that the Obama Administration made a key mistake in linking universal healthcare insurance to cost-cutting because it supposedly opened up the healthcare discussion to lunatic and dishonest assertions that the Government is proposing "death panels" to save money. That is very much akin to saying to someone whose house was broken into, "Well, you did leave your door unlocked" or "You may have locked your doors and windows, but you didn't have window gates or a burglar alarm or an electric fence — or minefields or machinegun emplacements — on all sides of your house"!
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There is no obligation to cast about for ways to try to avoid assaults from liars and con artists. Liars will lie, con artists will con — that's what they do! — no matter how many preventive measures you may throw up to dissuade them.
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And when the Radical Right invents crazy frauds to fool stupid people, intelligent and honest people at the Center and on the Left have an absolute obligation to explode the myths and expose the liars as the liars they are, and the morons who believe them as the morons they are. In short, we need to fite assholery to the death, not give up on ever getting the truth out because 20% of the people are uneducated fools who cannot and will not believe the truth. If at the end of a campaign of crystal-clear exposition of the truth, some assholes still believe crazy nonsense, that can't be helped. It nonetheless remains the obligation of responsible public officials to ram thru blameless legislation to fix the problems the Nation wants fixed.
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Howard Dean also appeared on that episode of Countdown and was not taking excuses. He told Olbermann that end-of-life counseling will be in the final bill, and Democrats will (just have to) ram the bill thru without Republican votes if they must. They have the votes, because the electorate gave Dems the votes to legislate without any Republican input whatsoever, and over objections from every single Republican in Congress, if need be. Again, Howard Dean comes out as principled and courageous. It's a pity that the media contrived to oust him from consideration for President in 2004. He made one silly move, that odd yahoo "scream", that was magnified into the worst mistake anyone ever made but was actually preposterous trivia. Had I made such a mistake, I'd have made it my tagline and ended every speech with it, found a way to spell it and then emblazoned it on teeshirts (perhaps over a slogan like "Enthusiasm counts"), and urged my supporters to defy the media and other critics and shout it themselves, at rallies, at demonstrations, in the convention, whatever. But Dean did not have THAT much courage, when he needed it, so perhaps he is a better adviser than he would have been President. Let him advise Democrats now as I advise:

Damn the assholes! Full speed ahead!
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4.331 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 5:19 PM

 
Message to Bernie. I felt compelled to write (via feedback form at his website) to a U.S. Senator I saw on television, to comment not just on universal healthcare but also on part of what is keeping us from enacting it, the insane Senate rule that permits filibusters.

[Subject:] End the Filibuster as an Institution

I saw you speak on MSNBC's Countdown Monday about getting healthcare reform thru the Senate. You matter-of-factly mentioned trying to defeat any attempted Republican filibuster, as tho the filibuster is a legitimate tactic in a democracy that in itself does not warrant criticism. Why don't we admit what has been plain for generations: the filibuster is an evil, antidemocratic institution that has prevented the people from passing legislation that the majority wants enacted? Why must ordinary legislation require 60 votes in a chamber of 100 — a 60% supermajority — when 52% of California's electorate were allowed to take away a fundamental human right, the right to marry? Why is it that the final legislation need pass by only a simple majority, but ANY step along the way might require a 60% supermajority? That's INSANE.

The filibuster must GO. Democrats must abolish the filibuster, just chop it out of the Senate rulebook FOREVER. If Democrats do this when Democrats are in power, they will understand that the filibuster will not be available to them when Democrats are in the minority, so show their bona fides, for being perfectly willing to let the chips fall where they may, according to the will of the people, in any and every future election.

Republicans and the Nation will know that the Bad Old Days of Congressional gridlock, when a tiny minority of supermilitants can defeat any legislation any time they want, are OVER, and Congress will do the people's work according to lowercase-D democratic rules, whether Democrats be in the majority or in the minority, because democracy means nothing if tiny minorities can thwart the great majority. The people DESPISE Congressional inaction, and have an extremely low opinion of Congress BECAUSE of things like the filibuster, which show Members of Congress to be more concerned about each other's perquisites than the people's needs. Don't work around filibusters or threats of a filibuster. Don't accept the nonexistent legitimacy of an antidemocratic rule that regards the 100 members of the Senate as more important than the 300 million people of the Nation. ABOLISH THE FILIBUSTER FOREVER!

If to do so would itself require breaking a filibuster, then BREAK IT. Run the Senate 24 hours a day, for as many days as it takes. CRUSH Republican obstructionists. Send them all to the hospital for extreme exhaustion, and when they're away from the floor, move the question and abolish the filibuster. The Nation has grave challenges and cannot afford to have antidemocratic saboteurs veto the will of the people.

By the way, Senator, I am ASHAMED of the United States' not having nor even seriously considering single-payer. The Liberal-Left needs to say that the healthcare system CANNOT work and costs CANNOT be brought down to any significant extent without single-payer; all the rest of the industrialized world has single-payer; and we should be ASHAMED OF OURSELVES for letting people die because they don't have health insurance. Health insurance company executives whose denial of services causes people to DIE should be charged with MURDER, put on trial, and EXECUTED upon conviction. Maybe THEN we'll get single-payer.

One more point: single-payer would pretty much END preposterous awards in malpractice actions, because there would be no expensive medical care to pay for. So fields that have seen many practictioners flee because of the cost of malpractice insurance would once again fill to natural levels, instead of the artificially depleted levels produced by our present healthcare and malpractice conditions.

(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,331 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 9:01 PM

 
Censored But Not Stilled. ABC News Niteline last nite posed as its "Closing Arguments" topic Hillary Clinton's outrage at being asked, as she put it, to "channel her husband" in regard to some policy issue. I went to that website and offered a comment, but it did not appear, despite my seeing a notice that it had been received. (Comments offered earlier in time and later were, however, published.) So I guess I was censored by the moderator — perhaps a low-paid Radical Feminist who knows she is being exploited by a "glamor industry" that underpays women because it can. Little did s/he know that I have a blog, so don't need to rely upon a lowly production assistant (or whatever) at ABC to have my remarks reach the Internet. That ABC News area presumably reaches a great many more people than does this blog, but I reach whom I can. Here is the banned comment:

Hillary Clinton is NOBODY. She is a MESSENGER, not entitled to pronounce on policy from her own point of view. Her sole purpose is to represent the PRESIDENT's views, and she is NOT the President -- the electorate saw to that. Nor, hopefully, will she ever BE President. Her husband is important in his own right. (And, by the way, you don't "channel" living people. The absurd term "channel" in the sense Hillary used the word is from charlatans who pretend to tune in to the dead.) Hillary's only importance, ever, is that she was the wife of an important man. She is hated widely, at home and abroad, and her dyky clothing and behavior is NEVER going to influence foreign leaders favorably. The great preponderance of important people in the world are and in all likelihood always will be MEN who DO NOT TAKE ORDERS FROM WOMEN. The choice of Hillary as Secretary of State was STUPID, and consigns us to be looked upon with contempt all over the world, as a bunch of pussywhipped losers. Real men control other countries, and actively disrespect American "men". We have had three female Secretaries of State. All have been appalling failures. Insensitivity to the reality of the world guarantees that the United States will continue to FAIL to change the world for the better, in large part because the world doesn't want to become a pussywhipped monstrosity like the United States, where men are victimized by divorce laws and endlessly demeaned by movies and TV shows that hundreds of millions of people in many countries look upon with horror. Were the only choice available to them to be between the Taliban and a castrated culture like that of the United States today, at least 85% of the world, and 97% of the Third World, would choose the Taliban. Indeed, if the truth be told, real American men have mixed feelings about Taliban-style male assertiveness. They agree that it goes too far, but the idea of men being respected appeals to men who respect themselves.

(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,331 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM

 
Ludicrous Hypocrisy from the Radical Left. The abortion-on-demand-even-at-term crowd is indignant about a babykiller being executed by a hero of the antiabortion movement. Keith Olbermann, normally a decent man, has signed up for "late-term abortions" — killing viable babies as a matter of "right". Last Thursday, he gave publicity to "Dr." Warren Hern, a murderer of children, when that babykiller said of Bill O'Reilly in an interview with Esquire Magazine:

I think O'Reilly is a Fascist, and he would fit right in in Nazi Germany as far as I'm concerned.

Astonishing. Olbermann has repeatedly criticized the Radical Right for portraying President Obama in recent days as a Nazi, but indulges in the same kind of rhetoric as regards Bill O'Reilly! Can we have some consistency, please?
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For a 'man' who is proud to commit "late-term abortions", "Dr." Hern is the supreme hypocrite. Speaking of the private execution of a fellow late-term abortionist, Olbermann quotes Hern in saying:

Tiller's death was the result of 35 years of hate speech against doctors who performed abortions, like the drumbeat on Fox about Tiller the babykiller. He says more than that. Quoting him:

... This is not a debate, it's a civil war. And the other people are using bullets and bombs. [Then the quote above about Bill O'Reilly.]

To kill with bullets or bombs is wrong, but to kill with medical instruments is fine. Killing one childslauterer is extremist evil, but slautering millions of babies is morally unobjectionable. Astounding.
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As for Nazis, they declared some people "untermenschen": subhuman, who (or, they might say, "which") can be killed with impunity as absolutely permissible morally. "Dr." Hern, and, appallingly, Keith Olbermann (hm, a German name) plainly regard the unborn, even babies on the way out of the birth canal at term, as "untermenschen" that can be killed with medical instruments and there is no moral issue in that killing whatsoever.
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This is called the Big Lie technique, expounded by Adolf Hitler: you call somebody else what you are and the people will assume you couldn't be what you condemn. Any outrageous lie will be believed if you say it loud enuf and often enuf. Thus abortion is decent but opposing abortion is criminal. Killing babies as subhuman trash is valuing life but executing murderers is a crime against humanity.
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Talk about moral confusion! No one can possibly believe that it is morally permissible to slauter babies even when they are medically viable and perfectly normal, just because the mother doesn't want them. Who next, the elderly living alone and "unwanted"? Bums in the street? Blacks? Jews? TV commentators? Who is next to be declared "untermenschen" and exterminated as of right?
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Of the world's 6.7 billion people, at least 5 billion, a huge majority, would regard abortionists as subhuman scum, to be slautered on sight. The same 5 billion would as well gladly flog or put to death all the apologists for mass murder of the unborn, and feel not merely justified but elated to be able to wipe that stain from the word "human".
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All "doctors" who perform abortions that are not absolutely necessary to save a woman's LIFE — no lesser standard will do — commits MURDER, and the penalty for MURDER in ALL civilized countries, including the United States when it was civilized, has always been DEATH. If we need a civil war to end our Auschwitz, by all means let us have a civil war. We are five inches from one anyway.
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The problem is drawing the lines right. Ordinarily decent people, who want only the best for people already born, have accepted the insane notion that anyone who has not been born and started breathing on his or her own is less than human, so can be killed without moral issue. These same people defend the equality of blacks, Hispanics, and homosexuals — as long as they have already been born. They would even be hostile to a Government program to abort all unborn black and Hispanic babies to keep the United States white, but some would have problems with the issue of whether a mother, or both parents in consultation, would have the right to abort a baby they believe will become homosexual. Genocide isn't necessarily genocide, you see, if the people haven't been born yet. Or is it?
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If a black woman doesn't want a baby she is carrying, she is somehow entitled to kill it. But if Government doesn't want the baby she is carrying to be born, Government is not entitled to kill it. How does the one case differ from the other? A baby's right to life (, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) is not morally dependent upon whether its parents, or just mother — fathers have no rights in the Brave New World of Radical Feminist madness that much of the industrialized world has fallen into — want that baby or do not.
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A child acquires the right of life at the instant it is conceived, be it in a womb or a petri dish far from any womb. The instant two human gametes join to form a new individual, with its own DNA configuration different from both parents' DNA, that individual becomes human, entitled to all the protections that human society gives its members, for the very practical reason that if one person's life has legal value only if somebody else says so, each of us can be killed with impunity. Each and every one of us, whether we have committed a crime or not, just because someone wants us dead. The will to death is superior to the right to life in the United States today.
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Abortion on demand has produced in the United States — a society that used to be dedicated to rugged individualism, and the absolute rights of the individual as against all comers, Government, society, their family or anyone else — instead a society in which life is cheap and your rights depend on the feelings others have toward you. Babies are thrown into trash bins immediately after birth, even in states where Safe Haven laws have been enacted, because babies don't mean anything. Life has no meaning. Innocence has no meaning. The guilty and the innocent are almost equally valued, except that the guilty, if already born, have superior rights to the innocent if the innocent person has not yet been born, because we don't have capital punishment anymore except for babies. Babies can be killed for the crime of being conceived.
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I would much rather we kill murderers, including abortionists, and defend babies with every ounce of strength that society can muster. Exterminate the criminal class and we can leave our doors unlocked all over the Nation. But kill babies and toss them in the trash, and we get a society in which the most disgusting, inhuman crimes are normal and normative. That, alas, is the United States today. And it is that way today because abortionists hide behind rhetoric about Nazis — whom they more closely resemble than does anyone else in society — and we continue to slauter the innocent and defend the most vile mass murderer with nearly hysterical fervor. It's as tho Charles Manson became our most exalted moral leader, the equivalent in our culture of the Dalai Lama in Tibetan culture.
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Abortion on demand is human sacrifice at the altar of the supreme goddess, Feminism, and abortionists are the high priests of the cult of Radical Feminism, the supreme value in modern American society. Never mind that Radical Feminism makes women unhappy. That whole "pursuit of happiness" thing is a pile of crap, just like "the right to life". The only part of the trio of values to which the Declaration of Independence dedicated us that matters now is "liberty": everyone must be free to do anything they want, even if it kills the innocent. But killing the guilty is forbidden! Alice was never in such a murderous Wonderland.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,330 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:27 PM

 
Picking Up the Gauntlet. Rightwing Republicans are willfully misrepresenting the currently proposed healthcare legislation as imposing a single-payer system, and have persuaded a lot of simpleminded people that the "public option" provision is at least a euphemism for and at worst a Trojan horse for enacting "single-payer" by stealth. Democrats are spending enormous amounts of time trying to undo the harm done by the Republicans' malicious lies. That is wasted effort. They can talk till they're blue in the face and not persuade anyone who wants to believe that Congress and the White House want single-payer.
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What Democrats need to do is say to the Republicans, for all the Nation's people, of all classes and income levels, to hear:

OK, you want to debate single-payer? Fine, it's on. You say "public option" means "single-payer"? It does not, but we're thru with that. You don't want "public option". Fine. "Public option" is off the table. We ARE going for single-payer now, and we are going to ram it down your throats, because we have the votes, and the people want the simplicity and fairness of single-payer. We are going to pass this, and once it is in your throats, you will say, "This is DELICIOUS!"
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Single-payer is simple; single-payer is efficient, single-payer is fair. Single-payer is cheaper for the Nation overall, and not just for individual payers of health insurance premiums, than what we have now, and gives the government the power of mass purchasing power and the authority to set maximum payments, which will finally bring down the preposterous and economically indefensible increases in healthcare costs — three times the rate of inflation overall, including increases in healthcare — that the "private option" has given us, this catastrophic nitemare of a "system" that has killed hundreds of thousands or even millions of Americans, and ruined millions financially and emotionally.
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No longer will people die because they can't afford an organ transplant or bone-marrow transplant. No longer will people lose their house and suffer heart attacks from worry about medical bills from other medical conditions. The United States is going to join the civilized world, whether the savages among us on the Radical Right want it to or not. We are going to fite you on single-payer, and you are going to lose. We are going to use hard figures, dollars and cents, to show people how much the present "system" costs THEM as against how much LESS it will cost both them individually and the Nation as a whole to institute single-payer. We are going to show them how much easier it will be just to show up at your doctor's office or a hospital emergency room and simply give your name and Social Security number — that's it, no onerous forms to fill out except medical history, which you do ONCE and it follows you around to every hospital or doctor's office in the Nation thru electronic recordkeeping, so you never have to fill out another medical-history form for the rest of your life. You feel bad, and resting and eating right and drinking fluids doesn't solve the problem? You go to the doctor or hospital, tell them your name and Social Security number, they take care of you, and you go home — with NO BILL, no co-pay, nothing. Nothing arrives in the mail a few days later with astronomical charges to give you a heart attack or ulcer, and ruin you financially and even force you to sell your house and car to pay for healthcare. And all the money comes out of what you are already paying in income taxes, Social Security taxes, Medicare taxes, excise taxes, and anything else you are already paying to the Federal Government. Any higher cost is taken care of by the rich and super-rich, whose taxes will go up. Don't worry about the rich. They can afford it, EASILY. They have all the money in the world, and we're just going to use some of it for better purposes than an 11th house, 2nd yacht, 13th car, 21st Armani suit, 37th designer gown, or 260th pair of shoes.

Why are Democrats pussyfooting around single-payer? Confront this issue head-on. Speak directly to the public:

Why would you want to defend a system that costs you a king's ransom, is insecure — you lose your job, you lose your insurance; you change your job, you may lose your insurance, or get a plan that costs more and provides less — and can let you die because the limits don't permit an organ transplant or ongoing care for an aggressive form of cancer? Do you own a health-insurance company? Do you even own stock in a health-insurance company? If not, why would you defend an industry that is content to have hundreds of thousands of Americans — maybe someday YOU — DIE each year so they can protect their PROFITS?
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How much do you pay for health insurance each month? How much do you cough up for a "co-pay" each time you visit a doctor? How much does it cost you to go to the emergency room if you have an automobile accident or fall off a ladder while working at a Do It Yourself project at home? What portion of the cost of your prescriptions is left for you to pay after your insurance has covered as much as it's going to cover? Do you avoid going to the doctor, even when you feel really bad, because you don't want to or don't have the money to lay out for an extravagant co-pay? Has your share of your employer's healthcare coverage gone up in recent years? By how much? Have you multiplied thru by 12 the amount you pay each month, to see what it comes to in total, and compared that to your pretax and after-tax income?
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Has anyone you know been denied health insurance by private companies? Has anyone you know of, in your community, had their health insurance run out when they needed extended, expensive care for an extremely serious disease or accident? Has anyone you know of DIED because a private insurer wouldn't pay for what the company called "experimental" treatments, or they cut off their reimbursements because the limit of coverage was exceeded?
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Why should you care if the private health-insurance industry goes out of existence, or is reduced to providing supplemental insurance for catastrophic illness or injury above what single-payer will pay — if indeed there is anything single-payer won't pay? Why would you care about a greedy health-insurance company or the jobs of bean-counters who deliberately cut people off, even retroactively, so the company can make a few more cents of profit per share of stock?
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Do you perhaps feel some kind of loyalty to a company you have been paying thousands of dollars to each year for years? If so, that is extremely misplaced loyalty. The company feels absolutely no loyalty to you. If you get too sick, they will cancel your insurance in a heartbeat — even if that means that your heart will stop beating soon thereafter. They don't care about YOU, not your health, not your life. Why would you care about THEM — and not even their health nor life, but just their PROFITS?

Properly framed, a debate on single-payer must end in crushing defeat for private health insurance and a total victory for single-payer. So why is the Democratic Party unwilling to go all-out to give Americans what the citizens of every other industrialized country in the world have?
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Republicans characterize the present plan as single-payer, and somehow lead people to think that would be a bad thing, whereas it would actually be a WONDERFUL thing. So scrap "public option", which is willfully mischaracterized as "single-payer" anyway, and go for single-payer NOW. The typical American knows s/he is paying a fortune for health insurance, can lose coverage at any moment, either by losing their job or getting too sick. Almost no one has any vested interest in keeping for-profit health insurance companies rolling in dough. Democrats have nothing to gain from avoiding "single-payer", and everything to gain by taking it to the max. No guts, no glory.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,330 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:14 PM

 
Keith Olbermann Is Too Kind. This past Monday, August 3rd, Keith Olbermann of MSNBC's Countdown attacked a bunch of politicians, both Republicans and Democrats, for opposing the present attempt at almost-universal healthcare because they are bought and paid for by the insurance and health industries (hospitals, nursing homes).
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Olbermann's condemnation is all well and good, but why aren't the Democrats, why isn't Olbermann, pushing insistently and without compromise for single-payer? A half-assed, bastardized reform is just not good enuf.
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A fellow liberal from my city, Newark (NJ, the only Newark that much matters), sent me link to a video of Olbermann's remarks. I told him that I regularly download the entire episode of Countdown from the MSNBC Podcast webpage (right-click on the appropriate button, and choose "Save Target As..."), so I would see it in context. (Why, pray, isn't Countdown on broadcast TV, now that NBC has more than one channel in digital broadcasting per major market? The Chris Matthews Show is aired on our local (NYC) NBC station, at channel 4.2. Why not Countdown?)
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After regaling/appalling viewers with numbers for the vast amounts of money that various Members of Congress, both houses, have received from healthcare and health-insurance companies, Olbermann concludes his Special Comment thus. (Tho the text suggests he is talking only to "Blue Dog" Democrats, I think he intends his warning to apply to all opponents of universal healthcare.)

I warn you all ... If you fail to pass or support this legislation, the full wrath of the progressive and moderate movements of this country will come down on your heads. Explain yourselves not to me but to them. They elected you, and in the blink of an eye, they will replace you. If you will behave as if you are Republicans, as if you are the prostitutes of our system, you will be judged as such, and you will lose not merely our respect, you will lose your jobs. Every poll, every analysis, every vote, every region of this country supports healthcare reform and the essential, great leveling agent of a Government-funded alternative to the unchecked duopoly* of profiteering private insurance corporations. Cross us all at your peril. ... Because, ladies and gentlemen, President Lincoln did not promise that this Nation shall have "a new death of freedom, and government of the corporation, by the corporation, for the corporation shall not perish from this Earth."

Empty threats, anyone?
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(* The term "duopoly" as used above is puzzling, since it implies there are only two major health-insurance companies, tho surely there are far more. Perhaps Olbermann originally intended to refer to a duopoly of insurance and for-profit healthcare providers, or of insurance companies with for-profit providers on one side and Big Pharma on the other side. Whatever he may have intended, and perhaps edited out for the final presentation, the term "duopoly" doesn't make very good sense in the final context.)
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I wrote to my fellow Newark Liberal after viewing the podcast:

The Special Comment did say "Medicaid" instead of "Medicare" [an error that appeared in a brief quote in advance of the broadcast that Michael Moore sent out to his mailing list], but was otherwise very good. As for "the wrath of the progressive movement", where is that movement (I prefer "Liberal") now as regards "single-payer" rather than "the government option"? And where is it as regards moving troops out of Iraq and into Afghanistan so we can defeat the Taliban and Al-Qaeda decisively there?
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I think too much latitude is being given to Obama, and too little being done apart from him, or even in opposition to him, on the feeling that he is "our man in Washington", when he is NOT as principled as we would like him to be. "Single-payer" is UNHEARD in the public discussion, because the Liberal/"progressive" movement has fallen silent and is consenting to a half-assed "system" that will leave 15 million people without health insurance (that's what covering only 95% of the population leaves), and probably impose onerous costs upon people who don't want health insurance because they are healthy and don't want to spend money they can't afford on something they don't use. The manner of funding is unclear in the things I have seen and read, and it is UNCONSTITUTIONAL to tell people they have to buy insurance, or a car, or a house, or anything else the Government thinks they should have just as a condition to living in the United States. If anything is to be done in the public's name as a public program, it will have to be in the form of a government program funded by a TAX, and that TAX should be progressive, such that the poor and much of the middle class pays nothing more than they are already paying in income, SocSec, Medicare, excise, and other taxes, but everything comes out of the pockets of the rich and obscenely rich/super-rich, to redistribute DOWN what has in recent decades (since the Reaganite Plutocratic Revolution of 1986) been redistributed UP.
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Where are the demonstrations in the street? the March on Washington for Single-Payer Universal Healthcare? Has any leader of the "progressive movement" even proposed such a March? Cheers.

There supposedly was a march on Washington for single-payer, June 25th of this year. I didn't hear a thing about it until today, when I did a Google search to see if there was any mass demonstration being planned, for just before the Senate votes in September. The June 25th effort did not make any splash on even the Internet, much less in major media. So where is this "progressive" movement that will defeat Members of Congress who don't support universal healthcare?
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Congressmen and Senators are realists. They are not intimidated by idle threats. The "progressive" movement has to bring real pressure thru a real March on Washington for Single-Payer Healthcare, bringing to the National Mall a million and more Americans angry about the ruination being visited upon this country by the thieves in health insurance and healthcare megacorporations, or Congress will pay no attention to the cries for socioeconomic justice in this matter any more than in the matter of the income tax code.
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If the logistics of a National March are too difficult to arrange before September — but why should they be? Surely we have had enuf experience with such marches to make one work if there be the will to do it — then the "progressive" movement should assuredly be able to coordinate local mass demonstrations on the same day in hundreds of cities and towns nationwide. If, however, they can't do even that, then Senators and "Representatives" who vote against the present bill — much less for single-payer, which is what the people really want — have nothing to fear from the electorate. Who will challenge them in the 2010 primaries? How well will challengers be funded? How are would-be challengers going to overcome the intrinsic advantages of incumbency?
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Disorganized individuals and unorganized disaffection count for nothing in politics. Only marchers in the streets, candidates in primaries, money in the coffers of the opposition, and votes to punish malefactors count in American politics today. And I see no evidence whatsoever that "progressives"— who don't even have courage enuf in their convictions to call themselves "liberals" (with or without a capital-L) — have either the will or the wherewithal to force what the Nation really wants, single-payer, over the entrenched opposition of the servants of the rich.
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We have the spectacle of latter-day happy slaves singing and dancing after their workdays in the fields, in the Rightwing version of the poor people of the Nation fiting for their freedom to be uninsured! Happy white trash singing and dancing all the way to the morgue because they can't afford the surgeries or medications that would keep them alive! Can even the most uneducated Mississippian really be so stupid as to think that somehow the tribal solidarity that the Republican Right appeals to, requires them to die so the rich don't have to pay higher taxes? Do they really think that Liberals who want them to have the best care the Nation can provide are somehow their enemies, to be stopped from getting them first-class medical care paid for by the rich? It may be that stranger things have happened, at some point in history, but I am hard-pressed to think of even one.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,330 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:28 PM