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Nate (Wheaton/Glenmont, MD)

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Just a forum for me to express my views on what's happening in our movement for change, and to discuss those ideas with others in the movement.

Let's have real reform this year

By Nate - Dec 13th, 2009 at 1:33 pm EST

Also listed in: 8 groups

Dear Senators Cardin and Mikulski,

Let's have real reform this year, one that gives us real choice. Not the A or B, Coke or Pepsi, choices of a rigged private market controlled by an oligopoly of large corporations. This is not cars or stereos, this is whether people live or die. It is simply too important to leave to the private market alone.

I don't need subsidies to funnel more tax payer dollars to private corporations; we've already had $700 billion of that this year. I need a non-profit, publicly run, and publicly accountable option for my health care. One I can afford and trust. And I'd like to have it before the next time I get sick, so I can stop turning to charities for my medical care.

And let's be honest, this shouldn't be hard to do. The majority of Americans (and an even bigger majority of Marylanders) support a public option. So here's a great idea, why don't we give Americans of all ages and incomes the option to buy into Medicare instead of buying on the private market. No new, wasteful, bureaucracy needed, just expand what we have. If a person qualifies for the new subsidies they can choose to apply them to a private plan or a Medicare plan. Simple. Quality, affordable choices. Just like Barack said.

If the fact that I, as your constituent, am 40% more likely to die than you simply because I cannot afford health insurance (whereas my tax dollars pay for yours), and my employer does not offer me health insurance (the hiring freeze in Montgomery County, a result of the recession, means that I have been hired essentially as a permanent temp, instead of a full time teacher, and therefore do not receive benefits), is not enough to convince this Congress to fight for real reform, perhaps it is better we, the people, appeal to your self-interest instead.

So let me make it real simple for you. No strong public option (preferably Medicare open to all ages) = no vote, no canvassing, no phone banking and no donations in 2010 or 2012. And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only Democrat that feels this way.

Trading the public option for an expansion of Medicare by a decade, is of little consolation to the majority of us uninsured who are under the age of 40. Nor does it change the fact that I, and tens of millions of other Americans, will be mandated to buy a product we cannot afford while giving us no new options as to which product is available to us. So please, I beg you, if the public option is to be canned in favor of expanding Medicare, then make open to people of all ages.

So this holiday season, please, bail out the sick and dying, the laid-off and underemployed; don't bail out the insurance industry. Because again, it's simple math: universal mandate + no public option = insurance industry bail out. You would be forcing me to bail out the insurance companies by mandating I buy their over priced, insufficient products. At the end of the day working class Americans, of all colors and creeds, can no longer afford to “pay the bill for every major government program and get nothing or little in the way of return” (Mikulski, 1970).

How young people are treated by government today will shape how we vote for decades and generations to come. What FDR and the New Deal Democrats did for my grandparents - the children of poor, east European, immigrant factory workers, both Catholic and Jewish - is the inspiration which you, and I, and countless other Americans carry forward with us today.

Let us not forget that it was the critical support of people like us - the millions of first, second and third generation Americans, and their children, whose political views were laid by the haunting experiences of the Great Depression and the progressive agenda of the New Deal - which allowed Democrats to end segregation, to pass civil rights, and to create Medicare. And it was us, together with a new wave of immigrants, which elected not just our first African-American president, but also only the second in our history to have come from immigrant descent. We have now built the alliance of Asian, Latino, “white and black, white collar, blue collar and no collar based on mutual need, interdependence and respect” (Mikulski, 1970). And this time, with laser precision, our anger is generated towards those who have power.

It is time now that this coalition carry the torch forward for a new generation, and remind the people once again what Democrats are supposed to stand for. That is why the young cannot be left out of any compromise on health care, for so too then will we be left out of the experience which made my family, and your families, Democrats in the first place. The young generation is equally part of this new Great Recession; do we not then deserve to be part of this new New Deal? Let’s open Medicare to young and old, rich and poor alike. Let’s do it for our party and for our country. To honor those who came before us, and to lay the path for those to follow.

Happy Chanukah and Merry Christmas

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Abortion & Healthcare

By Nate - Nov 11th, 2009 at 3:07 pm EST

Also listed in: 7 groups

So let's be clear, I'm a progressive libertarian, I want single-payer healthcare (i.e. medicare for all), and I support a women's right to have an abortion. I do not, however, see anything wrong with Stupak's amendment, and it's certainly not worth weakening health care reform over.

First of all, if we're going to use government funds to provide for people's healthcare, which I believe we should (and I would personally prefer the government paid for all healthcare through a single-payer system), we have to be careful about how we allocate those funds so that it does not just turn into a rampant populism of who can snatch more government cash. For that reason, health care funds should only go to MEDICALLY NECESSARY procedures. Asking someone to give their tax dollars for elective abortions, from a fiscal perspective, doesn't make anymore sense than using tax dollars to pay for face lifts, or breast enlargement.

Secondly, many people in this country have a very understandable moral issue with abortion. If we believe in the right to make our own choice on this difficult moral question of when life begins, we need to respect the opinions of those who make a different decision than us. Pro-lifers have a right to their opinion too, and their opinion is that abortion is murder. Now they shouldn't have the right to force that conclusion on every other woman. But neither should they be required, in the name of health care reform, to fund an act they believe to be murder if it is not medically necessary to protect the life of the mother,

And really, in the grand scheme of medical costs, abortions are relatively cheap. Nobody is going bankrupt or losing their home over the cost of an abortion. And this is coming from someone who earns sub-poverty wages and has no health insurance.

Let's focus on things that matter here.

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Healthcare Letter

By Nate - Oct 21st, 2009 at 11:41 pm EDT

Also listed in: 10 groups

My uncle moved to Florida a little over a decade ago to help take care of my grandmother who was already living there. He runs his own small business, Martin Painting. Most of the work he does himself, occasional hiring local high school and college students to help him during the summer months. And for many years he was able to make a living wage, along with his wife who teaches piano lessons to local school children.

Then the housing market crashed. There were no newly built homes to paint, and many struggling home owners were putting off renovations on existing homes. He wasn't able to afford health insurance anymore. Just last month he suffered from a heart attack. The doctor told him he should avoid any cardiovascular activity for at least six months. But the following week he got an offer for a job. With the hospital bills he had just accumulated he needed the money even more than before.

So one week after suffering a heart attack, and despite his doctor's order, my uncle was back at work, hauling paint cans and industrial sprayers, climbing tall ladders. Our broken healthcare system has denied him what in our country has become the luxury to rest and recuperate after nearly losing his life. I just want my uncle to be able to get better.

That is why I believe it is of such vital necessity that we pass a universal healthcare bill that has, as a bare minimum for reform, a strong public option. And there’s a real easy way we can do it, without even needing any new bureaucracy. Let’s open Medicare to all Americans. Those 65 and older can still receive Medicare for free, while younger Americans could choose to buy their policies from either Medicare or the private market. All that’s left is to take the existing subsidies, such as Medicaid, and let low income families decide if they want to use them to buy Medicare or private insurance.

Any bill that mandates the purchase of insurance (whether with our own money, or tax dollar subsidies), but offers no public alternative to the private, for-profit companies – which have failed to negotiate in good faith with the reform process, which have denied needed treatment to millions of Americans, and which leave 45,000 Americans to die from preventable causes each year because they cannot afford the industry's over priced premiums – would not be reform. It would be an insurance industry bailout, in the form of 50 million new, though unwilling, customers, forced by government to buy their product.

Wealthy corporations have had more than their share of bailouts this year. The American people cannot afford to bail out insurers whose health care system now takes more American lives per year than Al-Queda could ever dream of. Fine me, jail me, water board me, I will not buy insurance from these companies whose practices continue to abuse, maim, and kill innocent Americans, while their profits continue to soar. I hereby boycott any and all private insurance. I demand another option.

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With Single Payer Preemptively Tossed Out, Public Option Clings For Life.

By Nate - Sep 13th, 2009 at 1:08 pm EDT

Also listed in: Citizens Concerned about Healthcare | Health Care for All - with Single-Payer - Discussion | SiCKO (Universal Health Care - HR 676)

So I'm looking through my Gmail account and while reading emails for healthcare reform efforts in my area, Google ads picked out all the healthcare related words in the letter and delivered me a link to the latest RNC attack video on the public option. The tag for the video: "The Democrats are in disarray over healthcare. Sign-up below to help end the "public option" once and for all."

It should be clear to everybody now what the effect of the pre-emptive compromise on a single payer healthcare system was: the public option ceased to be a compromise position because once the debate had actually begun it was the farthest left position remaining on the table, while the right's position remained unchanged. We now have to fight for the public option as if it was the left's progressive position, rather than a compromise from it (which it really is). This happens all the time, every time we try to reach out and move to the center, the conservatives pull further to the right, and in doing so pull the compromise position further to the right. We're being made fools of out there. We have majorities in congress bigger than any Bush or Reagan ever had, yet we can't seem to get anything done, while those guys were able to execute their ruinous agendas with almost free abandon. Democrats, we need to reframe this debate, the public option is not a compromise, it is a bare minimum for real reform. Anything less is an empty gesture.

Tossing the sick out in the cold, bankrupting the "pre-existing," the private health insurers have acted with as great a sense of reckless abandon as the worst of the Wall Street bankers who crashed our financial system. Except they weren't just playing with people's money, they were playing with people's lives. After the way these companies have abused the American people, we can accept nothing less than a public option. I was forced to give my tax dollars to bailout reckless bankers, but I will not be forced into bailing out these insurance companies that have toyed with the lives of innocent Americans. And if I am mandated to buy coverage without the option of a public plan, that is exactly what I would be made to do. To achieve universal coverage Americans would need to buy (with our own money, or with tax dollars, aka debt, if we qualify for subsidies) almost 50 million new policies from the very same companies that have profited off the sick and off crashing our healthcare system. We don’t need more bailouts for big corporations – least of all those which have so mistreated the American people – we need universal healthcare with a public option. Personally, I won't buy anything else. I hereby boycott any and all private health insurance.

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Warrantless Spying Continues - Letter to Obama

By Nate - Apr 8th, 2009 at 6:02 am EDT

Also listed in: 7 groups

This is a letter I wrote to President Obama in response to the Obama Administration's current attempts to expand the legal justification for the illegal warrantless spying program inherited from Bush (you know, the one Obama was supposed to disband rather than try and make new legal loop holes for).

I have a link to an article here, not the greatest news site, but they have links to the full text of the DOJ court filings to dismiss suits against the government, and severly limit people's ability to file future suits against the government to protect their Constitutional rights.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Obama_Administration_quietly_expands_Bushs_legal_0407.html

---Begin Letter---

Dear President Obama,

In February of last year you said: "There is no reason why telephone companies should be given blanket immunity to cover violations of the rights of the American people - we must reaffirm that no one in this country is above the law."

In July you then instead voted to grant immunity to those very companies while they were in court for violating the rights of the American people. You insisted this was a necessary compromise, and gave us the following assurances:

You supported the FISA court as the exclusive means of legal domestic government wiretapping:

"The exclusivity provision [of the FISA Amendment Act] makes it clear to any President or telecommunications company that no law supersedes the authority of the FISA court. In a dangerous world, government must have the authority to collect the intelligence we need to protect the American people. But in a free society, that authority cannot be unlimited. As I've said many times, an independent monitor must watch the watchers to prevent abuses and to protect the civil liberties of the American people. This compromise law assures that the FISA court has that responsibility."

You acknowledged that blocking legal action in the courts weakens deterrents against and accountability for illegal wiretapping:

"[The FISA Amendment Act] grants retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that may have violated the law by cooperating with the Bush Administration's program of warrantless wiretapping. This potentially weakens the deterrent effect of the law and removes an important tool for the American people to demand accountability for past abuses."

And you pledged to reform the system to prevent future abuses and protect civil liberty:

"I do so with the firm intention -- once I’m sworn in as President -- to have my Attorney General conduct a comprehensive review of all our surveillance programs, and to make further recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties and to prevent executive branch abuse in the future."

Now, barely two months into office, your DOJ has done exactly the opposite. It has filed to dismiss suits against the government involving warrantless wiretapping, and further expanded the corrupt Bush interpretation of state secrets and sovereign immunity. The abuse of executive power you pledged to prevent in the future, your DOJ is now expanding. The warrantless wiretapping program created by Bush to circumvent the very FISA court you agreed was the exclusive legal means of wiretapping American citizens, is likewise now deemed to be legal by your DOJ. And since the previous immunity for telecoms didn't weaken deterrent or accountability for illegal spying enough, the grounds given for dismissing the cases against the government is that the government can't be sued, even for actions which are willfully and intentional in violation of existing law, unless the government willfully disclosed the information they illegally obtained.

Given this track record so far I guess we can expect your continued protection of Bush Administration officials against torture charges and investigations. We can expect you to keep hiding the Bush torture memos instead of releasing them to the public. We can expect you to merely relocate Guantanamo detainees in new places, closing the prison only in name. We can expect a trillion more dollars to be thrown at CEOs while we get laid off by them (Geithner and Summer's PPIP plan is just more privatized profits with socialized risks, and it stinks of corruption). We can expect more promises of European style services without admitting they will require European style taxes. We can expect future bailout programs to be crafted, like the current ones, behind closed doors and without the input of other ideas or people outside the Wall Street/Washington bubble your administration is quickly falling into. This isn't what we campaigned for, and it's certainly not what we voted for.

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Back to Virginia

By Nate - Jul 23rd, 2008 at 6:43 pm EDT

Also listed in: 5 groups

It's been about two weeks since my disillusionment over the FISA vote. I have been brewing over things in my mind and talking with other people. And the more time that passes the more I feel guilty for putting this campaign on the back burner.

Don't get me wrong I'm still upset at Obama, and many other Democrats including one of my Senators here in Maryland, for their capitulation on this issue. But the more I see people suffer under today's economy, or see reports of how we're loosing control of the real war on terror (the one in Afghanistan), I realize that in the mentality of "holding Obama accountable" we are not punishing Obama, we are punishing all those who will suffer as a result of four years of McCain.

So regardless of whether we feel Obama deserves our help now - after abandoning our cause that he had promised to champion - I must ask whether the people of this country, indeed the people of this world deserve McCain. The answer of course is they do not, and they especially don't deserve McCain as a result of a mistake made not by themselves but by Obama.

So while there is no doubt my passion and enthusiasm has been curbed a bit, this weekend it is back to the streets of Virginia to register voters. I'll put off worrying about holding Obama accountable (if that's even really still possible at this point) until after he's in office. I just can't hold the people accountable any longer for this admittedly gross misstep by Obama.

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My Letter to Obama on FISA

By Nate - Jul 10th, 2008 at 6:14 pm EDT

Also listed in: Open Source Advocates for Obama | President Obama, Please Get FISA Right | The Grassroots Movement

There are some nasty accusations that have been going around concerning Obama supporters who are upset about his FISA vote, so I'm posting the letter I wrote to Senator Obama the night before his vote because I want people to see where we are really coming from. I will NOT vote for McCain and I certainly won't do anything to help McCain get elected. Indeed I may very well still vote for Obama, because I know he will be much better on the economy than McCain, and I believe he is still committed to ending the war (despite the spin about him flip-flopping from the media). In fact on Iraq, the Supreme Court cases, faith-based programs, etc I don't think he has moved to the right at all. But on FISA it is undeniable.

As I mentioned in my post "The Bottom Line on FISA" he made a public statement saying he was committed to fighting any bill with immunity and would lead a filibuster, four months later he voted to kill the filibuster and pass the bill with immunity. I don't care if he nuances his positions, or makes appeals to centrist or conservative voters, he is not the nominee of the Progressive Party, and I understand that. And I, in fact, am conservative myself on certain things. I support faith-based programs in the same way Obama does (as long as public money isn't used for programs that discriminate based on religious views), I was opposed to the gun ban in D.C., and I do think we need to be flexible in how we withdraw from Iraq.

However, what happened in regards to FISA is that Obama reneged on a promise he made to all of us to lead a fight. This would have been the opportunity for him to really show himself as the leader of the Democratic Party and he let many of us down. That doesn't mean we suddenly like McCain, or want to see him President. But while mentioning that McCain didn't even show up for the vote does make McCain look worse, it doesn't make what Obama did look any better. So read the letter I sent him, we were not some radical left faction trying to take control or make demands of his campaign, we were just asking that keep his promises.

Letter to Senator Obama on H.R. 6304 - July 8th, 2008

Dear Senator Obama,

I would like to start by saying that I have been an ardent supporter of yours since the beginning of your presidential campaign. To this effort I have donated a few hundred dollars of the little money I earn as a substitute teacher, and have and continue to canvass in states ranging from the Carolinas to Ohio, New York, Maryland and Virginia.

I remember being appalled during the primary season when people tried to portray us as some sort of cult members. They said we were young and uninformed, and had merely "drank the kool-aid" following you as some sort of messiah. As we all know, this could hardly be further from the truth. That so many of us have voiced our opposition to the FISA bill you now support is clear evidence of that if anyone still doubted. Unfortunately I feel this debate has devolved to some degree into two equally appalling and inaccurate stereotypes. The first being the aforementioned, that those who accept or justify your new position on FISA are just blind followers. And the other, those that oppose it are merely some far left faction willing to stab the campaign in the back at a moments notice.

That is why I wanted to talk to you a little and how I, and many others, feel about this issue. As I'm sure you know there have been many claims in the media of your "moving to the center" and of progressives being outraged by these moves. I for one think this is merely political spin in most all cases.

On the Iraq war, I don't not see how your position has changed at all. You have always said you would assess the situation on the ground while making any withdraw, and this is common sense. We obviously need the flexibility to rethink strategy as these moves are being made, and I am still confident that you will involve the American people in this process, that you will take seriously the advice of people who disagree you, and that your commitment to ending the war is an earnest one. To portray this as flip-flopping is out and out deceitful on the part of the McCain campaign and the media. And if some diehard MoveOn members are willing to buy that line, then so be it.

On the Supreme Court cases, I might not agree with you fully, but that's OK. I for one do not support the death penalty in any cases, because the courts can always make mistakes, and death cannot be reversed. On the gun ban decision, on the other hand, I am in full agreement. Some claim you were switching positions on guns and the death penalty to pander to conservative voters, and I guess really I can't say I know that for sure to be false, I can't read your mind, but frankly I don't really care. At the end of the day, the Supreme Court made its decision, and I am confident you have enough respect for the rule of law to abide by it. And I am further confident that should there be any openings for the Supreme Court during your time in office that the nominations you make would not only be far better than those McCain would make (because that really isn't saying much), but better than those most other Democrats would make.

All that being said, I think the FISA issue is quite different. Your pledge to fight against telecom immunity was one of the big reasons I believed you could be an effective agent of the change and reform we so desperately need. It was one of the big reasons I kept canvassing in Maryland even as my canvass sheets were disintegrating from the sleet and freezing rain, why I drove on my last gallon of gas through those icy conditions to take voters to the polls, why I almost caught frostbite in the streets of Cleveland. It signaled to me that you were willing to fight against not only the Republicans who sought to circumvent the rule of law, but equally those Democrats, leadership included, who were complacent in allowing them to succeed. That you were willing to challenge the establishment, and the status quo it created and endorsed, including the establishment of your own party. It is what made your presidency the change I could believe in.

The United States and Europe are currently negotiating an agreement to share private information (the kind a wiretapping program would gather). One of the biggest contentions, for which European leaders have been holding out, is that their citizens have the right to take alleged surveillance abuses to court in the United States. Yet we would now consider pulling the plug on Americans who are doing just that.

It is not only a slap in the face to Americans who have had their privacy violated (and all us of could be one of those Americans without even knowing it yet) but I can’t imagine it would help the information sharing deal with a European continent that is very concerned about the privacy of it's citizens. What good is the right to take alleged abuses to court if the Congress will merely grant immunity to the perpetrators before the legal proceedings can be completed? The Europeans aren't about to forfeit this right for their citizens, yet we are willing to do so for ours? How far we have come indeed since the days when millions of Europeans, like my great grandparents, would flock to our shores in search of a life of liberty.

Can we not at least put off immunity until we have investigated the matter thoroughly, until we actually know what we'd be granting them immunity for? You said you plan to conduct an investigation into the wiretapping program when you take office. So what then, if during the process of your investigation, it becomes clear the telecoms did in fact violate the law knowingly and willingly? They just get let off the hook because we granted them preemptive immunity?

I am not saying the companies are automatically guilty, they may very well have reasonably believed their actions to be legal and have wanted to cooperate out of patriotism. If that is the case then perhaps we could consider immunity, once we know more clearly what they have done. But to grant immunity to as of yet unknown actions, what could possibly be the justification for that?

I understand that in politics you have to make compromises to get things done and to avoid gridlock. You can't get everything you want out of every bill. But there is no compromise being made here. We are giving the Bush administration more or less exactly what they want. And lets be honest, not passing this bill does not threaten our ability to gather intelligence. The only powers which have expired are those of the Protect America Act, which you rightfully voted against. Under current FISA law, the government can continue to conduct surveillance through legal court sanctioned channels. Indeed according to Judge Walker's recent ruling these are the exclusive means by which the government can legally conduct electronic eavesdropping. And with a grand total of 5 rejections out of more than 18,000 request for warrants from the FISA court, I believe it is safe to say this does not hinder the NSA's or anyone else’s ability to gather intelligence.

FISA also not only grants immunity to companies which are given a court order to turn over information, but legally obliges them to do so. How could their cooperation with the government be compromised if it is required of them by law? The only cooperation compromised, would be cooperation with unwarranted spying which is illegal. Is that not exactly the sort of cooperation we want to prevent, the kind which circumvents existing law?

Now some say this is a relatively small issue. The other pressing concerns of this campaign should trump this easily. After all if you’re not a terrorist what do you have to worry about? This could hardly be further from the truth. Unregulated domestic spying on the part of the executive is a threat to our democracy itself, as Watergate proved. And pre-empting the legal process currently taking place to address the potentially illegal acts committed is an unprecedented blow to the power of an independent judiciary. As Senator Dodd said, it is essentially Congress handing down a pre-emptive innocent verdict in an ongoing investigation, and it’s result will be to forever keep hidden the true role these companies played in illegally spying on millions of Americans. And on top of all that we’re expanding the spy powers of the very same president who created this illegal spying program.

It is important for us to remember why court review of domestic spying is so necessary and why FISA was created in the first place. And the reason is because before, when the judiciary was left out of these decisions, we had COINTELPRO spying on people like Martin Luther King and we had Nixon spying on his Democratic rivals to sabotage them and ensure electoral victory. Given this history, and given the actions of this administration, is it really so far fetched to believe that the information gathered through the president's program was targeted at more than terrorist groups? Were antiwar groups who opposed the president’s policies targeted? Were community activists targeted? Were Barack Obama supporters and campaign headquarters targeted? These are the things that we think about when we oppose the FISA bill in its current form, because we are afraid that with the immunity provision we may never know the answers. It's not that we believe "our country's intelligence analysts are more concerned with random innocent Americans than foreign terrorists overseas," as Senator Hatch suggested, it is that domestic spying powers can and have been used numerous times to attack one's political enemies. This is not an "irrational fear of government," quite the opposite, to think an administration wouldn't employ these tools towards political ends is an irrational disregard of historical fact.

I know this is a difficult fight, but you are precisely the person who can lead that fight. You have the attention of the media, you are the de facto leader of our party, and you have a unique ability to explain these issues in a way that makes sense to the American people. We don’t have to be labeled “soft on national security,” for standing up for civil liberties. We need to stop being soft on Republicans and the abuses of power of this administration for fearing of looking “soft on crime/drugs/terrorism/communism/etc.” Democrats voted to authorize the war out of this fear, they voted for the PATRIOT Act out of this fear, and they voted for the Protect America Act out of this. And Lyndon Johnson likely continued our failed war in Vietnam for this very same fear. But I am confident that if Americans are given the facts on this issue they will not see defending the Constitution as being soft on anything. We need to stop acting on our fear and reframe the debate, and you are precisely the person who can do that.

Preserving the fourth amendment (which means holding those who violate it accountable, not granting them immunity) is NOT being soft on national security. Iran-contra was being soft on national security. The funding and arming of the Mujhadeen and Bin Laden in the 1980s was being soft on terrorism. Selling weapons to Saddam to fight Iran was being soft on national security. Administration after administration of Republican presidents putting the interests of war profiteers over the security of the American people, is being soft on national security. Taking intelligence resources so vitally needed to protect our country and using them to spy on political enemies, THAT is being soft on our national security.

In conclusion I just want to say I am NOT threatening to vote for McCain or anything of that nature, I don’t cut off my nose to spite my face. But I did want you to know clearly where I stand on this issue, and how strongly I feel about it. I don’t expect that you will simply change your mind based on my or anyone else’s letter. I just want you to keep these things in mind. There is still time to get this thing right. You have said you will work with Senator Dodd and others to eliminate Title 2 [granting immunity to the telecoms] from the compromise. What I am not clear on is what you will if Title 2 is still included, I only hope that you remember the promise you made to us on fighting retroactive immunity, and all of us who came out and gave it our all for your campaign as a result, and why we feel so strongly on this issue. So please, vote your conscience.

----End of Letter----

So where do I go from here? I am not sure yet. As I said I have no interest in voting for someone like McCain, and am still probably more likely to vote for Obama than anyone else. But when you've been abandoned in a fight by the very person who was supposed to lead it, it is hard to feel inspired to volunteer one's free time, or give away one's hard earned money to that person, regardless of how bad his opponent maybe. It will be hard for me to get over this lack of judgment, for it was his judgment to oppose Bush’s war and not cave in to fear back in 2002 that made me so convinced he ought to be our nominee over Clinton. Yet now that he actually has to cast the vote, he votes with the “soft on Republicans” wing of our party. Maybe as time goes on and the election grows closer this wound will heal, I don't know.

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The Bottom Line on FISA

By Nate - Jul 10th, 2008 at 2:43 am EDT

Also listed in: Open Source Advocates for Obama | President Obama, Please Get FISA Right | The Grassroots Movement

Obama Statement on FISA - Tuesday, February 12, 2008 - source: http://obama.senate.gov/press/080212-obama_statement_122/

"I am proud to stand with Senator Dodd, Senator Feingold and a grassroots movement of Americans who are refusing to let President Bush put protections for special interests ahead of our security and our liberty. There is no reason why telephone companies should be given blanket immunity to cover violations of the rights of the American people - we must reaffirm that no one in this country is above the law.

"We can give our intelligence and law enforcement community the powers they need to track down and take out terrorists without undermining our commitment to the rule of law, or our basic rights and liberties. That is why I am proud to cosponsor several amendments that protect our privacy while making sure we have the power to track down and take out terrorists.

"This Administration continues to use a politics of fear to advance a political agenda. It is time for this politics of fear to end. We are trying to protect the American people, not special interests like the telecommunications industry. We are trying to ensure that we don't sacrifice our liberty in pursuit of security, and it is past time for the Administration to join us in that effort."

Barack Obama's Vote in the Senate - July 9th - source: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/person.xpd?id=400629

Votes aye on cloture
Votes aye on passage

First he votes for cloture thus ending debate and therefore killing the filibuster he had pledged to lead. Then he votes to pass the bill with immuntiy for those who violated the Fourth Amendment. If you were part of that "grassroots movement of Americans who are refusing to let President Bush put protections for special interests ahead of our security and our liberty," how would you feel about it? This is very different than the media spin that's been going around about Obama's Iraq policy, opinions on Supreme Court decisions, public financing, etc. Here we have to at the very least admit this is a complete reversal of his previous position, a position which pushed many of us out onto thr cold streets of the primary season.

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