Organizing for America | Los Angeles for Obama

Los Angeles for Obama - CD 30

We are volunteers for Barack Obama in Westside LA, who are committed to getting Barack in the White House! We organize, canvass, and phone bank. We've been through CA, NV, TX, and next it's on to PA. Please search for "events" and join us! No prior campaign experience is necessary; just bring your time, talents and enthusiasm!

Volunteer Coordinator
Francesca McCaffery
fmccaffery@obamaca.com

Page 1 of 19 | Next | Last

Physical Responsibility and Thanksgiving

By "NERVIE" - Nov 25th, 2009 at 10:39 pm EST

Also listed in: 9 groups

Many people want to go to heaven but many people don't want to put forth the effort to practice the physical responsibilities that will get us here and I'll be the first to say that "the right activities" take commitment, persistence and practice. And this is taking into consideration that you believe that heaven does exist! I find that fighting for Democratic principals isn't any more simple.

Obama has a lot of responsibility since he came into office. Freedom doesn't come free, people who are going to Afghanistan is requiring us to share sacrifices to help them get to their victorious goals.

I am not a hawk, quite the contrary, however we need to get our butts out of Afghanistan and Iraq remembering that we owe the people in these countries those promises we made . . . getting out and leaving the people whole isn't an easy task but requires sustainability.

Tea Party members are projecting all that they can to be a force of negative force towards Obama. They are against any progress coming from him. The Republicans are looking for the unpopular war to continue, they are energized by the unemployment numbers falling, they aren't supporting the healthcare insurance reform because their politicial leaders are receiving huge contributions and donations when they run for office. This doesn't excuse those Democrats to too are fighting the insurance options and watering down the initial national healthcare bill. Whistleblower Wendell Potter, the former CIGNA marketing executive has said, "if there isn't a public option included in the insurance reform, then tha insurance companies have won" the healthcare battle. Many of us heard this and we believe since Potter wrote many of the policies that the insurance companies practice, that he should know truth from fiction.

Just another obstacle that OFA will have to overcome! It is profoundly amazing how so many people sat eight years watching our country go into absolute free fall and said nothing. And now that we finally have an opportunity to apply wisdom, commitment and arriving at the truth, the masses want to trash President Obama and those still seeking change.

We have always understood that change is gradual, requires time and persistence through: Voter registration, phone calling, writing letters to our politicians, letters to the editor, petition signing, community education, video presentations, resolutions, rallies, subject events, voting smart and continual strategic action...

May God provide Obama the guidance and wisdom to continue making decisions that lead to international alliances and to win the battle in Afghanistan and Iraq. OFA understands that there is no substitute to "victory". . . Obama has a strong hand to play and we hope he can find the money, resources and sustainability to pull our nation through . . .

Happy Thanksgiving . . . Peace out, Minerva and Todd Hoover, Santa Clarita Valley

Mail to a Friend | Link | Comments (0) | Report Objectionable Content

Book Report: "Working Class New York," by Joshua Freeman

By Stephen Siciliano - Nov 25th, 2009 at 3:59 pm EST

Also listed in: 10 groups

The narrative in "Working Class New York," grows less interesting along with the declining labor movement it chronicles.

That's no criticism. After all, Joshua Freeman did not write a novel, rather penned an important nonfiction and academic effort that tells the story of New York through its workers.

"Working Class New York," is wonderfully done and demonstrative, at every turn, with the author's passion for his subject.

But, for labor enthusiasts, the end can't match the beginning for excitement.

In the early chapters, the poesy of labor reigns as the Hatters, Printers, Furriers, Elevator Operators, Milliners, Bakers and Tugboat workers, representing a rainbow of crafts and productive industries, bring the world's mightiest city to a halt through mass strikes driven by the underlining goal of reorganizing society itself.

Freeman's analysis of New York's economic structure, and how it created a textured union movement unequaled in the rest of the country, is fascinating and as much a love letter to the unions as to Gotham itself.

Indeed, the author frequently asserts that the city's best face was the lined countenance of the laborer or craftsperson enlightened by their recognition of a shared destiny, on the shop floor and front stoop, with similarly situated souls.

"Working Class New York," meticulously follows the labor movement's progress and retrenchments, starting with its halcyon days in the post-war 1940s.

It makes no bones about the powerful impetus communist politics played, and the subsequent loss of energy that coincided with the reds being chased out of American labor.

Freeman illustrates how the union movement reflected changes in the city as it lost manufacturing jobs and embraced the financial and service-based industries.

His mapping of municipal unionism's rise has less of a workerist flavor and more of what the departed Allan Bloom called the "Nitzscheanization of the left," as ethnicity and cultural issues consumed unions' internal power struggles and drove their industrial strategies.

And the book details how the decline of labor in New York reflected its nationwide losses as the country grew more individualistic and market-oriented in the 1970s and '80s.

Freeman's chapter on how financial types used The Big Apple's fiscal crisis in the late 1970s to undermine and rollback the unions' hard-earned, and unique urban social democracy, is must-read for anyone interested in those dynamics affecting the American workplace for nigh on a generation now.

Mail to a Friend | Link | Comments (0) | Report Objectionable Content

Jerry Brown Does Sunset Blvd.

By Stephen Siciliano - Nov 23rd, 2009 at 5:14 am EST

Also listed in: 10 groups

California Attorney General Jerry Brown's Nov. 19 appearance at XIV on Sunset Blvd., was proof there is such a thing as being young at heart.

The former-governor-running-to-be-governor was in good form, voluble, humorous, and purposeful.

By way of confession, highwayscribery attended the event, sponsored by Generation for Change, with little enthusiasm for the budding Brown candidacy.

Covering the attorney general as a real-life reporter at press conferences, the highway scribe's alter-ego and rainmaker was left with an impression that, at 71-years-old, Brown had lost a step and gone mushy in his gray matter.

And besides, maybe it's time for some others to try. Politics these days, at least Democratic Party politics, have a transformational tinge that was reflected in the event itself.

Generation for Change, after all, grew out of Generation Obama Los Angeles following the president's triumph last November.

It is headed-up by two political operatives - Justyn Winner and Haroom "Boom" Saleem, still young enough to actually believe in all the Obama-inspired Hopela and energetic enough to convene a cabal of handsome, well-dressed, young professionals comfortable in venues like XIV (by Michael Mina) who, prior to last year' campaign were hardly worthy of political consideration.

And the kids are learning the hard way. Saleem noted that last year's ardor for change has given way to this years sen

se of disappointment.

Patience, grasshopper, patience.

For his part, Brown has always been more of a visionary type. His turns as secretary of state, Oakland mayor, and attorney general, while positive contributions, do not bring out the quest-like qualities in him that running for president and governor do.

For Brown wants to lead in big, system-changing ways and Generation for Change, thinks he has the stuff, and has come out early for him.

The ambience of confident cool hardly intimidated Brown who grabbed the microphone, and persuaded the crowd to separate itself so that everyone could see him.

He did not, Brown said, work from prepared speeches, "because they're boring. If you have something to say you should be able to say it without looking at some notes."

Freed from the tyranny of text on paper, Brown rambled on in an organized fashion only someone of his unique cast can.

He pulled the crowd, separated from him by decades of life lived, closer, talking about the nonpolitical part of his personal journey: "I've lived in Mexico and different countries of South America, I took Linda Ronstadt to Africa. I went to Japan and meditated for six months; not on the achievements of my life, but on the essential emptiness of it. And you're not going to find a lot of politicians who will do that."

Working the crowd afterward, Brown may have learned how few knew who Linda Ronstadt is (was?), but he's just getting going at this point, a

nd that gap could link his living legend to a time when California was truly a Golden State.

The day's backdrop was a University of California Regents meeting two miles away at UCLA. There, student demonstrators clashed with police while inside "the board" jacked-up their tuition 32 percent.

The campus was crammed with so many police it begged the question of whether cutting the force's size might improve the tuition picture. The university's shock troops, with the help of California Highways Patrol(ers) handled the students' in a typically over-the-top fashion: rude, violent, disdainful of the fact universities exist for the kids.

It was tense, and unpleasant, and sad for those who remember the state's halcyon days.

Things clearly need fixing and if Brown's audience represented a generation of "change," he suggested they had much in common since he's been accused by political enemies of changing all his life.

"And it's true. But I'm not ashamed of that," he said, "because if you're alive, and your mind is open, than you have to change."

They ate it up without fully understanding how true the claims were. Brown's politics have always invited intense debate. However, the inherent truth of his commitment, his advocacy, and his willingness to go a new way are agreed upon by friend and foe alike.

Perhaps the crowd sensed it.

The quintessentially Irish-looking pol enumerated the many offices he has run for successfully and not so successfully.

"Many of the people I ran against are dead," said Brown, hinting of his hand in their demise, "because I'm a stressful person, and some of these other people in this campaign for governor are going to find out the same thing."

And them's fightin' words of which the impromptu address contained more; perhaps a tip-off to the approach Brown may take in the campaign, running on his experience rather than away from it.

Brown said the country had been, 30 or 40 years ago, a productive one that lost its edge and then continually borrowed to maintain privileges no longer earned the old-fashioned way.

He did not, of course, use the words "old" or "fashioned."

Brown conducted a brief analysis of the financial "leveraging" that brought the state and country to its knees, and referred to the resulting fiscal crisis as "the greatest case of grand larceny in American histor

y."

Applause again.

The country's political system is, Brown observed, "in an advanced state of decay." He lamented the "wall of resistance" President Obama has run into at the hands of Republicans in Washington D.C. and said it was a symptom of that decay.

The attorney general did not run away from Obama, rather suggested the president was a kindred spirit who could use some help with the heavy lifting out on the Left Coast.

He wove is merry way through about a 20-minute discourse, jumping from subject to subject, free-associating, joking, and holding the group's attention through the background chatter of the adjacent restaurant, and clatter of pots in the close-by kitchen.

California's budget deficit, large as it is, amounts to only 1 percent of its annual gross product and is fixable, said Brown.

He is, naturally, the person to do it. "These other people running don't know how tough it is to run the state. I've worked in it my whole life. I do."

For political junkies, the evening on Sunset offered a good sampling of what Brown is testing in the campaign's early phases.

His effort at tapping into the energy of a generation that knows little of him, but offers some of our best prospects, demonstrated the flexibility he claims to possess in real time.

More than anything, it was a tip of the hat to the hoary old notion that youth must be served...

...in very good restaurants.

Mail to a Friend | Link | Comments (0) | Report Objectionable Content

On Obstruction

By Stephen Siciliano - Nov 21st, 2009 at 3:30 am EST

Also listed in: 10 groups

Saturday's Senate debate has as much to do with Republican obstruction as it does with health care.

The Republican strategy of arresting any progress on the country's problems, of suppressing the will of voters who elected President Barack Obama and a attendant Democratic congressional majority, has begun to garner attention.

Which is why this post will be written more by other writers than the highway scribe, whose intention is to extend their reach and blow off a little steam at the same time.

Like Social Security, the weekend, paid vacations, and health care reform, the first volley came from the far left of the American spectrum in the form of a Nov. 11 "Washington Post," piece by Harold Meyerson.

In the "Do-nothing Senate" the one-time "L.A. Weekly" essayist referred to that body as "dithering heights."

That's pretty good and demonstrates how you need a sense of humor to make your ideology go down a little easier.

Meyerson noted that a few weeks ago, the Republicans thrice filibustered a measure to extend unemployment insurance. Once they relented, the measure passed 98-0.

"Just flexing their muscles, mind you," he wrote. "Establishing a new normal. If we have anything to do with it, nothing moves."

Indeed.

The filibuster, as we know only too well now, is an endless stream of B.S. meant to bury a bill under the Senate's terms of unlimited debate. It was not always thus. At the beginning, under rules drafted by none other than Thomas Jefferson, a senator was allowed to "move the previous question" and end floor discussion.

But Aaron Burr, the guy who shot Alexander Hamilton and came to personify American infamy (except for Gore Vidal), got that rule stricken and the filibuster was born. Its use was nil at first, but grew over the years.

During the Bush II debacle, Democrats used it with greater frequency, but typically infuriated their radicalized supporters with an urge to cooperate and get things done.

Under Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell (pictured), the thing has taken on a life of its own, since voters so reduced his caucus that filibusters are all he can use for leverage.

And use it McConnell has.

As Meyerson pointed out, "Unless you can get a 60-vote majority to end debate, all major bills (and some minor ones) are dead in the water."

He left out political and judicial choices, but on Nov 16, Michael Savage of the "Los Angeles Times," picked up on the meme, detailing a disparity in the judicial appointments made by his predecessor over the same time-period Obama has been in office.

"So far," Savage wrote, "only six of Obama's nominees to the lower federal courts have won approval. By comparison, President George W. Bush had 28 judges confirmed in his first year in office, even though Democrats held a narrow majority for much of the year."

The point being Democrats recognize the president's prerogatives, even when he garners less votes than his opponent and the Supreme Court shuts down a recount in a state governed by his brother (making him president).

On Nov. 17, one day later, the "New York Times" joined the chorus in an editorial generically entitled, "Obama's Judicial Nominations."

While noting the president has been tentative, the anonymous editorialist observed that Senate Republicans bear the blame on the confirmation side by, "doing their best to drag things out."

On Tuesday, a crack in the armor appeared over Obama's nomination of Judge David Hamilton to the U.S. Seventh District Court of Appeals.

The gentleman, who hails from a paternal line of Methodist ministers and enjoys the support of home-state Republican Senator Richard Lugar, apparently ran afoul of "conservative activists," because he worked for the American Civil Liberties Union before joining the bench.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) demurred in respecting the president's choice, saying "a common DNA" ran through Obama appointees in the form of an "ACLU chromosome."

And they say Republicans are "anti-science."

They tried to filibuster the nomination and, in the words of the "Washington Post's"Dana Milbank, got "Filibusted."

Which is pretty good, too.

His piece does a great job of detailing the suddenly changed views of Republicans who, just a few years ago, likened Democratic filibusters to obstruction.

By November 19, the big boys were taking a wider view of the filibuster phenomenon.

"The Washington Post's" E.J. Dionne came out with the "The GOP's no-exit strategy," which warned that it is "time to start paying attention to how Republicans, with Machievellian brilliance, have hit upon what might be called the Beltway-at-Rush-Hour Strategy, aimed at snarling legislative traffic to a standstill so Democrats have no hope of reaching the next exit."

On November 22, "The Post's" Fred Hiatt got into the act, further fleshing out the ramifications of what the "New York Times'" Charles Blow referred to as "the Republican's surprisingly effective obstructionist strategy."

Hiatt noted that, "more than a year after his electoral triumph, President Obama has filled only 55 percent of Senate-confirmed slots in his government. He has nominated few judges, won confirmation for fewer. The principal item on the agenda of the unions that went all in for him, labor law reform, is on hold. Almost everyone agrees that America's immigration laws are broken, yet no fix is in sight. Long after the collapse of our financial system, new systems of regulation have yet to emerge. There is no discernible trade policy."

Hiatt's point of departure was what all this looks like to friend and foe alike overseas. And what it looks like is that American democracy is in paralysis.

The Republicans, the party of flag-wrapped patriots, care a lot about America's image, but not so much as they do about regaining power. And they show no shame in their effort to do it.

For example, in "Help in Battling the Big Boys," highwayscribery lauded the efforts of Democrats, Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut in particular, for proposed legislation that would prevent credit card companies from imposing the arbitrary interest rates and fee increases they're dumping on customers before the new law capping such things takes effect.

But in "A Gift to Credit Card Companies," the "New York Times" reported that Sen. Thad Cochran of (R-Miss.), blocked a vote on the bill, "in yet another act of obeisance by Senate Republicans to the banking and credit card industries."

Thanks Thad.

"The Times" editorial on the judicial nominations noted that, "In March, every Republican senator signed an outrageous letter to the White House warning that they would filibuster any nominee from their home states if they did not approve the choice in advance."

That the Republican caucus is "outrageous," is not the point here. It's that "every" Republican senator signed the piece of trash.

Democrats have never enjoyed such lock-step discipline and as Meyerson and Dionne pointed out, "Blue Dog" or "centrist" or "spineless" Democrats (whatever you want to call them) are playing an important role in all of this.

Dionne said Republican use of the filibuster is making the majority look "foolish, ineffectual and incompetent." Moderate Democrats, by making their own narrow interests paramount on crucial matters like health care reform and climate change, "will only make themselves complicit in this humiliation."

The balky Democratic senators are not only betraying their own party, Myerson wrote, but simultaneously making a mockery of majority rule.

If they are "comfortable with the idea that elections shouldn't have consequences, they should say so publicly. If not, they should let the debate begin."

The word is out. Spread it around. Let's see what happens.

Mail to a Friend | Link | Comments (0) | Report Objectionable Content

Letter to Lieberman: America is a Public Option

By Stephen Siciliano - Nov 13th, 2009 at 2:07 am EST

Also listed in: 10 groups

Nov. 13, 2009

Senator Joseph Lieberman
706 Hart Office Building
Washington D.C. 20510

Dear Sir,

Recent news that you planned to support a Republican filibuster if the health care reform bill contained a "public option" was very disconcerting to me.

After all, as a life-long Democrat, I voted for yourself and Vice President Gore in the 2000 election. I remain convinced that it was an election of which you were robbed, setting in motion eight years of environmental degradation, preemptive war, and the abuse of our most cherished values and institutions.

All of which makes your choice of allies in this matter of the public option more perplexing. Their party filed the successful lawsuit to enjoin votes from being counted in Florida and deliver the presidential election to George W. Bush.

Your name was subsequently reduced to use in a trashy sobriquet on placards waved by rabble outside Mr. Gore's residence reading "Sore-Loserman."

I understand you've since endured some rough handling by Democrats over issues related to the Iraq war. All I can say is, you're entitled to your independence so long as you are willing to take the resulting heat.

Ours, since the debacle of Vietnam, has been the party of peace. When you decide upon hewing to a different path, the ensuing battle is of your making and not the Democratic Party's.

And for all that, you caucus with the Democrats through whom you reached your current status. They, in turn, were able to consolidate a filibuster-proof majority with your adherence.

The Republican Party is bent on defeating President Obama at any cost. Siding with them is no way to settle grievances most of us thought were smoothed over when you maintained your chairmanship of a Senate committee in spite of your support for Sen. John McCain in November 2008.

There is an amorality in your pledge to back a filibuster threatened by the party that denied you the vice presidency.

There is, senator, no two-thirds vote requirement for a measure's enactment by the Senate. Bills pass with the majority's blessing. Abuse of the filibuster has created an unfortunate state of affairs and gummed-up the nation's business, while giving a rump and regional party greater leverage than its reduced voting base warrants.

Your support of the filibuster on a matter of national importance, not parochial concern, diminishes the traditions of an institution to which you have dedicated a goodly portion of your efforts as public servant - the United States Senate.

As for the public option, the respected magazine "Miller-McCune" reports that only 10 percent of Americans could utilize the feature as presently constituted in the proposed legislation.

I'd be one of them, senator, and resent your single-handed efforts to deny me the opportunity to gain a modicum of health and economic security, through a parliamentary maneuver.

If you want to oppose reform through your vote in the Senate, that's your business, although I would disagree with that act. However, supporting a filibuster that prevents health care reform from reaching the Senate floor would be a move both anti-democratic and not unlike the lawsuit that kept Florida from doing a proper ballot count in 2000.

An issue such as reform deserves a full airing in the nation's representative bodies, not some cheap, short-circuit shutdown.

I understand that Connecticut, your home state, has a high concentration of insurance companies and your are bound, in part, to represent their interests. But as the same article noted, by 2019, 168 million Americans will likely receive coverage through their employer, "no differently than they do today."

By supporting the likes of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C), you're throwing in with their Tea Partiers' interpretation that the public option represents some government takeover of health care.

It's not, because I prefer such a takeover and know it cannot be found in the the legislation.

These insurance companies are not to my, or many other Americans', liking senator. They gouge their customers and then stick them with the burden of pursuing reimbursements for treatments duly paid for through their premiums. They are an important reason the clamor for reform has accumulated lo these many decades.

Nonetheless, your colleague Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has noted that, "The bottom line is that the public option can't really hold private insurers accountable if it is only competing for 10 percent of the insurance market because private insurance companies aren't going to change their business practices if 90 percent of their customers can't take their business elsewhere."

Finally, as a policy matter, I'm advocating for the option because over the years the public space in our country has diminished and with it, our sense of engagement with one another.

America cannot prosper as a country of infinite privacies where people cultivate "My Music" and "My Videos" folders on their personal computers while walking the streets with earphones cutting them off from any awareness of the "us" and "ours" all around them.

There must be a commons, a public place and space, a civic way of being through which Americans can venture out from their gated communities and locked doors to meet and share in the life of this country. Otherwise what is the country?

The idea of America itself is a public option.

Regards,
the highway scribe

Mail to a Friend | Link | Comments (0) | Report Objectionable Content

Help In Battling the Big Boys

By Stephen Siciliano - Nov 3rd, 2009 at 12:21 am EST

Also listed in: 10 groups

Life's not easy when it is spent jousting with the Internal Revenue Service, Bank of America, and Anthem/Blue Cross.

As it is for many of you, it is thus for the highway scribe. The American struggle is a lonely one. It is a gauntlet run without the assistance of potent unions, affordable legal help, merciful tax rules, or simple health insurance policies.

For decades, policy has exalted the myth of our rugged individualism to the point where we have been left alone to tilt at behemoths against which we are no match.

Today, via the wonder of Web banking, Bank of America helped itself to $8.95 of the highway scribe's money for services that can only be guessed at. And that's because any time the scribe actually needs something from the bank, he gets nailed with a fee.

The relationship is simple wherein the bank serves as a brief holder and dispenser of the scribe's money while checks are deposited and quickly gobbled up by expenses associated with his humble existence. It's a pretty clean collaboration, which is why the free price originally offered for the account made sense.

One day, without any notice, the price went up to $5.95. highwayscribery called to find out what was up with that and got the stock response that such increases were included in the long, illegible text of a document he signed agreeing to a free checking account.

Which is not news to any of you.

Then, sometime after the Obama administration came into power, banks found themselves in the extremely rare position of having customer gripes funneled back at them through the White House.

In "Change New World," we expressed our initial shock at having the government do our bidding.

In "Credit Card Crookery" and "Credit Card Redux," this unique pleasure was extended, in particular, to the financial industry, which had it coming.

Of course, these companies didn't get richer than the rest of us by being stupider. Soon came their response to new rules reining in the parasitical abuses.

These involved arbitrary increases to most everyone's interest rates and general account fees. The companies also kept their promise on sticking it to credit cardholders who were on the up and up all these years.

That's around the time the aforementioned bump to $8.95 on the scribe's free checking account occurred. Bank of America stretched the terms of our original agreement by $107.40 per annum with nary a "howdy-do!"

Of course, on a sliding scale, a $107 heist is relatively small when compared with what happens when a bank does one the favor of paying a series of five $6 debit charges and then hits you for $35 on each.

Which is to say, the scribe absorbed it figuring nothing in life is truly free. Mired in a 1099 hourly wage reality, the effort in going over to the bank and getting the monthly fee reduced wasn't worth the time... financially speaking.

So it was with great pleasure that highwayscribery, in its ritual perusal of the "New York Times," on Tuesday, Oct. 2, ran into a charming slice of life on page B9 wherein Sen. Chris Dodd (D) of Connecticut was calling for an "interim freeze" on further fee increases of the type just detailed for your reading pleasure.

The author of the piece, Andrew Martin, by the way, does an excellent job on the myriad ways banks and credit card companies screw people. His pieces provide the consolation that you are not alone, and that someone with a decent megaphone is pointing out the abuses of usury to which we numbly submit.

But we digress with much territory to cover.

The article explains that Congress is only too aware of the run-up in fees and rates as banks interpret the interim between when the new law goes into effect, and now, as a window in which it’s okay to loot as many customers as possible.

A bill was recently reported out of the House Financial Services Committee that would close the window more quickly, on Dec. 1, instead of February 22 of next year.

Said Dodd: "At a time when families are struggling to make ends meet, jacked-up rates can quickly create crushing debt. People need to be responsible with their money, but they shouldn't be taken to the cleaners by outrageous fees."

What the Connecticut Yankee wants, in reality, is an old-time, 1970s-style price control. highwayscribery and others of his ilk love a good price control. They had fallen very much out of favor during the free market rage, but since that worked out about as well as it did in 1929, the price control may be making a comeback.

A fellow named Talbot from something called the Financial Service Roundtable said Dodd's desire is fired by the false notion that fees and interest rates are going up because of the new law to hold them down (if you follow).

Talbot added that the increases strem from the economy is so bad and people are having such a tough time paying their credit card bills.

But that's why taxpayers gave the big banks and brokerage houses those big bucks bailouts, so it won't wash. And thank heavens the Democrats are in power because we'd never have gotten this kind of love from the Tea Party Party.

Not to suggest the Dems are somehow holy and sacrosanct when it comes to protecting the naked consumer. They sat around for years bending to the will of marketeers and cultivated a lot of our current-day problems during the disappointing days of President Bill Clinton.

And that's because they're not as good as Republicans when it comes to loving their base.

GOPers can rush into a hotly contested New York congressional race and back the Conservative Party candidate (against their own!) without fear of...well, fear of anything.

National Democratic leaders jumping into a local race to back a socialist candidate, on principle, would result in their being sent straight to hell, or jail or worse. So they tend to take their left-wingers for granted because they have nowhere else to go.

Then they sit around waiting for independents and Olympia Snow (R-Maine) to give them cover.

Even as they have benefited from the change in our political landscape, Democrats have been slow to truly internalize it, which is why the public option was dead a month ago and now it’s not.

We've had 11 months of the Obama administration, but are into about the third year of the Obama era during which conventional wisepersons have seen their predictions upended again and again.

And so it goes with the public option. In his most recent column, David Broder wrote that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) finally decided upon the public option to satisfy the "labor-left" of his party. That's the highway scribe, who will avail himself of the benefit as soon as it becomes available.

But it's also a lot of other people, not necessarily for unions or anything else "left," but affordable health care.

Broder, like many in his field, think the Obama election happened in some weird vacuum that represented no shift in Americans' political thinking.

Reid thought that, too, and so did a lot of other people in Congress until the President did some decent explaining, the debate groaned on, and the public option concept grew clearer to the electorate.

The numbers don't lie. Reid can interpret them and feels safe in putting the idea forward.

But he needs some help, because oft-times, the peoples' will is thwarted.

Here's a petition asking Democratic leaders to strip any Senator supporting Republican filibuster efforts of their chairmanship.

highwayscribery calls it the "Lieberman Petition."

Here's Reid's petition asking you to help him out on the public option.

Here's former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, Robert Reich asking you, via video, to call your representatives on behalf of the public option.

Now, don't you feel better?

The "Times" ran an article on "Senate naysayer," John Cornyn (R-Okla.) who is hell-bent on stopping health care reform, because of the "financial ruin" it represents.

The article says he has a big "No," sign behind his desk in the Hart Senate Building of which he is very proud. The reason why is a secret of Cornyn's own keeping, but highwayscribery is willing to bet his tightwad ways don't extend to arms purchases and war packages.

And we're betting a yahoo like Cornyn, effective as he may be in gumming up the legislative works, won't be able to stop this thing coming down the pike.

Once achieved, health care reform is going to make life with or without Anthem/BlueCross a lot easier for a lot of people.

All of which, dare we way, represents something of a pending victory for President Obama whose Paul Krugman noted, "The seemingly impossible dream of fundamental health care reform is just a few steps away from becoming reality, and each player has to decide whether he or she is going to help it across the finish line or stand in its way."

Wow.

Which brings us to that final phantom, the IRS.

If you follow American politics very closely, you might come away with an impression that President Obama is not faring well. That people like him, but not his policies. That Republicans are poised for a comeback. You might have been caught off guard by news that he'd won the Nobel Peace Prize and swayed by those who say he has accomplished naught to deserve it.

In an Op-ed piece penned by U2's Bono in the "New York Times" a short while back, the singer attempted to explain why Obama is beloved in Europe, where they lack an entire network dedicated to the daily trashing of his reputation.

Among these virtues are Obama’s commitment to the Millennium Development Goals of halving world poverty by 2015. Obama, Bono notes, was not around when the goals were set, “but he’s there now. Indeed he’s gone further -- all the way, in fact. Halve it, he says, then end it.”

Such policies, wrote Bono, “are why I believe Mr. Obama could well be a force for peace and prosperity, if the words signal action.”

This does not mean the specter of the Internal Revenue Service and the crushing penalties it has visited upon the scribe's family will suddenly evaporate. Even Obama can't do that.

But, we hope, it means that WHAT we give to the government will be spent less on institutionalized violence and more on the promotion of peace, human harmony, and the vision of our better angels abroad.

And that's change you can bank on.

Mail to a Friend | Link | Comments (0) | Report Objectionable Content

Letter to the Guinean Ambassador

By Stephen Siciliano - Oct 7th, 2009 at 12:32 am EDT

Also listed in: 10 groups

Guinean Embassy to the United States
2112 Leroy Place N.W.
Washington D.C. 20008

Dear Sir or Madame,

I want to express my outrage at the behavior of soldiers in your country. We do not hear much of Guinea here in the United States and it is most unfortunate that we should become familiar with your country thanks to the savage acts of men whose charge, one would suppose, is to protect a country's citizens.

These stories and images of women being raped by military forces in the streets of Conakry are abhorrent. President Moussa Dadis Camara's protestations that he could not foresee this bloodbath are unacceptable. Either he controls his army or doesn't. They should all be stripped of their commissions. These are not soldiers, but thugs.

Perhaps I am naive, but there must be a difference between the two types of person.

This is why military coups don't work. Nobody can stand in the way of those with guns if there is no system of civil law to provide prior restraint. I don't see how the trauma and tragedy can ever be revoked, but the current government might do the whole world a favor and step down so that voters might have a chance to replace them with more responsible human beings. And I emphasize "human."

Shame on your government.

Regards,
the highway scribe

Mail to a Friend | Link | Comments (0) | Report Objectionable Content

Free Elliot Madison

By Stephen Siciliano - Oct 6th, 2009 at 3:10 pm EDT

Also listed in: 10 groups

Before you get upset about all those Iranian protestors being run through the wringer over there, you might turn your attention to those enduring similar treatment over here.

In "Twitter-Patter Revolutions," highwayscribery drew parallels between what governments do in Iran, and everywhere else, by framing examples of the violent way our own government has treated its dissidents.

highwayscribery reached back to the murder of four students at Kent State University in the 1960s and moved onto some overzealous police enforcement at Democratic and Republican national conventions over the past decade.

Now, we've got a fresh example from the recent G-20 summit and corresponding protests in Pittsburgh.

Similar to the way authorities responded to the Twitter-Patter revolution in Tehran, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents invaded a house in Queens, New York on Oct. 1, and rooted around its entrails for 16 hours.

That's not a misprint: 16 hours.

As part of the FBI effort in overkill, agents arrested a 41-year old social worker named Elliot Madison. It is not clear what Mr. Madison has done other than participated in the coordination of demonstrations around the G-20 confab.

Last we checked, which was just a few minutes ago, that's not a crime, rather a protected civil right.

His attorney, Martin Stolar told "The Times, "There's absolutely nothing that he's done that should subject him to any criminal liability."

highwayscribery agrees.

The article is devoid of evidence this fellow did anything other than occupy an improvised e-communications bureau that helped demonstrators divine the movements of the police details bent knocking the snot out of them.

The attorney said he'll know what the charges are when the affidavit empowering the FBI to disembowel his home is unsealed.

That's another anti-democratic feature of our democracy that drives the highway scribe nuts. The sealed court document. In his real-life job as a reporter, the scribe must comb the PACER system for federal court documents and they are often sealed, which is a way of keeping them from public purview without explanation.

Explanation, we posit here, is the essence of democracy. For a government by and for the people to take an action, it must explain the action to those same people.

The point being we have a ways to go here before pointing the figure at other places.

A criminal complaint against Madison, in Pennsylvania, said he directed, "others, specifically protestors of the G-20 summit, in order to avoid apprehension after a lawful order to disperse."

Of course, whenever a government issues an order to disperse, it's lawful, so Pennsylvania authorities are belaboring a weak point.

Emerson reminds us, "A good man obeys the law not too well," as in a case like this where your constitutional right to assemble for political reasons is questioned by a bunch of meat-headed, truncheon-wielding yo-yos.

Meant-headed, truncheon-wielding yo-yos, by the way, hate the Constitution because of the way it makes a crime out of venting their most basic and savage urges.
So what we're saying here is the same thing we said in "Twitter Patter Revolutions" and "President Obama and The Venice Drum Circle": Countries in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

If you want to argue that there is no moral equivalent between the enforcers in Iran and those in the United States, ask those who have to breathe the spew from their teargas canisters first.

If you think highwayscribery is getting all bent out of shape over something isolated, keep in mind that on the next page, same newspaper spread, it is reported that New York City will blow $24 million -- useful in forestalling foreclosures or paying furloughed teachers -- to install an "electronic bulwark" against "terrorists" in midtown Manhattan.

Hey, we're all against terrorism right? What's the problem with that?

The problem is that "terrorists" are not the only people the forces of order will be using their new electronic toys to watch.

How do you think they found Madison and his protesting friends in Pittsburgh?

And why is highwayscribery taking potshots at the police?

Because highwayscribery wouldn't trust a policeman farther than he could throw one, and because this article, also in next page of "The Times," regarding the impunity with which officers in that once free and anarchic city operate.

Screw 'em. We're with Madison and his ilk.

Mail to a Friend | Link | Comments (0) | Report Objectionable Content

Cantor's Song

By Stephen Siciliano - Sep 23rd, 2009 at 3:16 am EDT

Also listed in: 10 groups

Governing Governing and protesting are markedly different activities.

This from a daily newspaper article dated Sept. 22:

"The same actions to confront the same problems are reaping the same results: voluntary activism, heroic public protest, slogans and posters, militant loyalty and the concentration of hopes in the central figure of a leader who has yet to harness a national crisis into a viable alternative political and social organization through which multiple sectors and interests impacted by poor government can fight for more than sound bites and the next congressional elections."

A summation of the populist uprising fomented by Glenn Beck and FOX News?

No, words from the pen of "La Jornada" columnist, Julio Hernandez Lopez on the state of Mexico 's left-wing opposition.

But it crosses that screwy “virtual” border fence to sum up the Republican status quo pretty easily doesn’t it?

In yesterday's "Washington Post," another columnist, Dana Milbank, wrote a piece that might lead one to believe House Republican Whip Eric Cantor has been delving into some of Lopez's writing.

In "The Health-Care War Gets a Little More Civil," Milbank recounts the staid circumstances of a public meeting convened by Cantor on (what else?) health care.

The meeting was conducted under rather strict rules of conduct, that wouldn't be considered so strict had certain people demonstrated an ability to behave like responsible adults during this summer's nefarious health care town halls.

You can read the piece for yourself, but in summation, Cantor, a snarky, perpetual Young Republican, invited a colleague from the other side of the aisle, and the issue, to join him.

The usual cast of crazies who found the town halls such fertile ground for ranting about the president, the color of his skin and socialistic tendencies, materialized anew.

But Cantor informed them, after some predictable early outbursts, that this was not a town hall, rather a "public square" and that, "We are here today to talk about health care."

That was something of a shocking, if passive, admission that those who disrupted the town halls did everything but talk about health care.

The piece chronicles the disappointment of those who came to rumble over the fact that Cantor was more willing to engage those who came to discuss. They were aghast at the collegial treatment, once a hallmark of The Peoples' House, Cantor afforded his opposite number, Rep. Bobby Scott (D).

"I felt like pulling a Joe Wilson," one defrauded attendee told Milbank.

We know.

You have to wonder what Republican internal polls are telling them about the impact the Tea Party and 9-12 crowd's caterwauling has had on party fortunes.

highwayscribery thought he espied the first shoots of this new Republican tone when Newt Gingrich, the original braying backbencher, decided not to join in bashing the president’s school kids speech.

Let’s revisit the Mexico article and highlight the fragment which reads: "...has yet to harness a national crisis into a viable alternative political and social organization through which multiple sectors and interests impacted by poor government can fight..."

Columnists (and bloggers) can get very wordy, but that swatch of text can be reduced to: “Yelling loud is bringing us no closer to governing.”

And as we said in our opener, whether in Mexico or Richmond, Virginia (Cantor's redoubt), screaming, tearing down, and obstructing is something quite different from governing.

Gingrich, who couldn't match Sara Palin in "exciting the base,” had this epiphany and decided to make a run at being a serious, even-tempered alternative, because people don’t like to see their presidents yelling.

Just ask Howard Dean.

Cantor, as potential national leader, apparently came to the same conclusions Gingrich did. And he might have also noted, with his belated town square on the topic, that for all the media clamor about the August troubles, we're still talking health care.

Worse, for he and his party, it’s going to become a law, with all the ensuing ballyhoo and poll bumps one might expect from that miracle. There is a resolve becoming apparent and it has something to do with the guy in the White House.

The lesson here is this: The party with the votes is the party that makes the laws.

Back when highwayscribery was in the opposition he, and those of his political ilk, made a lot of angry charges about George W. Bush. This left us, or the highway scribe at least, watching the town hall ruckus with a sinking sense of (ir)responsibility.

We still feel, naturally, that our caviling about Bush's questionable legitimacy was er, um, more legitimate, because he filed a lawsuit to stop votes from being counted, which made his claims to victory fairly transparent.

And furthermore, Obama won by a landslide, not by electoral votes delivered in a questionable tally by a state his brother (Jeb Obama) governed.

But we rant when we now recognize the corrosive effects of ranting.

For all our efforts to blow holes in the prior administration’s embarrassing run guiding the ship of state, at the end of the day, the Republicans and Bush always beat us because voters had delivered power unto them.

Yes, journalists fanned rumors of moderate Republicans disagreeing with how the (p)resident and Tom Delay were going about crafting some legislative package or other, but the bottom line is that they eventually got in line and passed the bill.

And so will moderate Democrats, because, once Republicans made clear they wanted health care to be Obama’s Waterloo, there was very little value in striking out independent of the president’s wishes.

And, of course, there are conservatives who play politics because they want to legislate and participate in the majestic process by which our system has unfolded over the past 230-odd years.

They, too, were going to have their say. Not at the top of their lungs, but in the hushed tones of the cloakroom and/or country club.

And like Obama, they wisely waited for the blowhards to run out of gas and the value of their shock tactics to wear thin.

Smart Republicans have faced up to the fact that they lost the election and that cooperating with the other guys is the only path to policy input.

The rants are giving way to something like Cantor’s sweet song.

We congratulate the Republican House Whip and welcome him to the real patriots’ debate.

Mail to a Friend | Link | Comments (0) | Report Objectionable Content

Book Report: "I Am a Teamster," by Terry Spencer Hesser

By Stephen Siciliano - Sep 5th, 2009 at 6:46 pm EDT

Also listed in: 10 groups

In recognition of Labor Day, highwayscribery presents this review of "I Am a Teamster."
If departed Teamster leader Regina Polk had been a book, a thorough read would have been required before any judgment was rendered.

Terry Spencer Hesser's newly released "I Am a Teamster" details the too-short life of a woman who forged striking personal contradictions into a hybrid hellion of unique force.

The union organizer's story puts the lie to Republican detractors who can't see "real Americans" in the country's progressive ranks.

It is a story with roots in a hardscrabble western existence begun in Prescott, Arizona. Her father was a farmer who roamed from spread to spread in search of that ever-elusive American dream.

The family ultimately settled in the Sierra Nevada town of Paradise, California where the credo was, "Less Government, More Responsibility, and -- with God's help -- a Better World."

But raising a child takes a village and, in the 1960s, the village was undergoing a transformation of the kind that permitted teenaged Regina to access the sexually-charged "Kinsey Report."

At her mother's urging, Polk applied to the rich girls' school of Mills College where she was caught up in the chaos that was nearby, 1960s Berkeley.

She was permanently affected by the crosscurrents of civil rights, feminism and anti-war activism that characterized the time and place.

Freed by cheap gas at the height of automobile era, the searching Polk wound up at University of Chicago where she enrolled in a masters program for labor relations, but it was her real job where she got the true schooling.

To pay bills she found work as a receptionist at the inappropriately named Red Star Inn. Hesser writes that Regina was a "knockout by anybody's standards," and enjoyed the concomitant privileges extended by management.

But the employer's treatment of lesser types -- dishwashers, busboys, waitresses and kitchen help -- stuck in Polk's politicized craw and she contacted Bob Simpson, organizing director of Teamsters Union Local 743.

In the book, Simpson recounts that Polk struck him, "as a hippie. The way she dressed and looked. She was for all kinds of rights. Worker rights. Civil rights. Women's lib."

Simpson, who had little interest in expending precious resources on organizing the Red Star, became one of many who learned that Regina Polk did not take "no" for an answer.

She set out to organize the restaurant's workers and, when management got wind of the effort, was fired. The union filed a grievance, the restaurant paid money to get rid of Polk, and Simpson hired her as a part-time organizer.

The rest, as they say, is herstory.

By 1975, American capital's move out of the manufacturing business was in full swing and the Teamsters' saw their primary source of dues-paying members evaporate. In search of greener pastures, union researchers identified a surging class of white, middle-class, moderately educated workers.

"To organize white-collar women," Hesser writes, "the Teamsters needed a different kind of organizer to lead them out of the mire of scandal and suspicion that surrounded them on a national level."

Enter Regina Polk.

She was a college-educated, floppy-hat-wearing fashion plate with a philosophical crush on Jimmy Hoffa. Polk possessed a cosmopolite's travel lust and a farm girl’s ear for country western. A serial savior of imperiled animals, she carried an ice pick for slashing tires in the old-time Teamster way.

A culinary epicurean, she walked into one of Southside Chicago's roughest neighborhoods so that her maid Johnnie Scott didn't go without a paycheck.

"I lived on Justine on the South Side," Scott remembers in the book. "At the time, it wasn't a suitable neighborhood. It was bad. And I remember lookin' out the window and here comes Regina walking by herself. Bringing me my paycheck. She wasn't afraid of nobody. 'Have a nice vacation,' she told me, 'it's better with pay.' That's the way she phrased it: It's better with pay.'"

The anecdote is indicative of Polk's approach to both organizing and contract enforcement, which focused on individuals. None of whom were too insignificant to benefit from her assistance.

"She defended ferociously her members when managers attempted to abuse them, believing that the union should do more than just guarantee a wage, that it should also see to it that its members were treated respectfully," Gary Mamlin, a University of Chicago shop steward, told the author.

In her under-appreciated "The Other Women's Movement," Dorothy Sue Cobble posited that in between the first wave of suffragette feminists, and the second-wave feminists spawned by the Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan five decades later, thrived a special breed of "labor feminists."

These women took root and cover in their unions during the 1930s when labor syndicates enjoyed a heyday in the United States.

Polk's religious dedication to union values, and fearless confrontations with the old boys in labor and management alike, suggest she was a unique mix of the latter two waves.

As such, she neither demeaned the value of domestic work nor avoided it.

"If she was coming home late or not at all," Scott remembered, "she would cook for Tom [her husband] a beautiful plate of lamb chops and peas and wrap his dishes before she left, leaving me instructions or telling him to eat it cold."

Classified by the famed political scientist C. Wright Mills as "weak insiders," unions typically groan under the weight of servicing the least fortunate with a dearth of resources

And so, the Teamsters promptly put Polk to work helping organize clerical workers at Blue Cross/Blue Shield in Chicago. She later reported to union bosses on the difficulty of getting "status-conscious" and "image conscious" women to join a "truck drivers union."

Nonetheless the Teamsters prevailed. The extent of Polk's contribution to the victory might be read in the 28-year old’s subsequent assignment to organize workers at the University of Chicago.

Faced with a recalcitrant university president who had successfully dislodged the union at Yale, Polk's campaign was conducted largely "underground" or secretively so as to protect those with the courage or need to join the Teamsters' drive.

The campaign prevailed, too.

"The university was stunned," writes Hesser. "It had failed to realize that over the previous twenty years the people who worked on campus were no longer faculty wives but bread-winners who needed the money. They were mothers, many of them single, whose paltry paychecks started looking worse and worse."

"I Am a Teamster," is no syrupy-sweet story about the virtues of organized labor. Hesser makes it clear that Polk had her detractors within the union.

"I think it was because she was so aggressive," said Simpson, "but I can remember specifically one guy saying to me, 'I didn't like her from fuckin' day one!' And that was exactly his words and this guy was a board member."

Regina also grew disillusioned with the union’s lackluster support of its members.

Nor is “I Am a Teamster,” the tale of perpetual triumph, because Polk's campaigns did not always prevail.

After one defeat, she came across her opposite numbers from a union-busting law firm at a local bar. One of the "bastards with briefcases," as she referred to such consultants, approached to share a conciliatory, post-battle drink. Instead, she took the one she was nursing and threw it in his face.

All of Polk’s fire was extinguished in a plane crash at the age of 32. Some years later, when her wrongful death suit was at trial, one of the jurors recognized Regina as the person who had donated the very clothes she was wearing.

Hesser's slim volume, 147-pages long, renders a large life with efficiency. The author commits the biographer’s forgivable sin of falling in love with her subject. She starts off unevenly, accumulating too many posthumous summations, inappropriate for a chapter on childhood, while applying enthusiastic adjectives to someone whose larger-than-life actions speak for themselves.

But as Polk's career takes form, so does the narrative, which is delivered in a no-frills reportorial form that leans properly on numerous interviews of people who were there at the time.

"I Am a Teamster," celebrates the difference one person, empowered and guided by the simple principal of solidarity, can have upon the lives of others through brute effort, consideration, compassion, and even joy.

One of her Teamster mentors, Ray Hamilton, eulogized Polk by saying, "She lived as she believed and felt that it was more important to actually help one person than to talk about saving the world."

Although she inspired fellow Teamsters, the union was never going to make a template of Polk from which a generation of like labor leaders could be modeled.

She was too unique and too individual. A real American if you will.

Mail to a Friend | Link | Comments (0) | Report Objectionable Content

"How far have we come??"

By "NERVIE" - Sep 1st, 2009 at 11:12 am EDT

Also listed in: 9 groups

I ran into this blog that I had posted on another site of mine, I thought I'd share a few words because sometimes looking back you see how far you have come:

Saturday, January 31, 2009. I’m happy to hear that on last Thursday, the United States Senate followed the United States House in passing a reauthorization of a child health insurance bill. I do remember twice Bush vetoed this bill. Just imagine 4 million more children in America will have access to health insurance, isn’t that a huge post Bush phenomenon. Another positive sign that the boat has oars with a new helmsman anointed by none other than Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Chair, of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

Thank God for Kennedy, now hopefully Obama can step up to all the other healthcare needs called Universal Healthcare! Don’t know about you, but I am still praying for this major fete. Yeah, it may seem odd with my working for the industry now, however, AFLAC, I rationalize was created out of a need for additional healthcare costs. So technically, it wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the large “hole” in insurance coverage.

You see, the creators of AFLAC saw bankruptcy due to the illness of their mother who died of cancer. There were procedures the insurance company wouldn’t approve and even though the family had coverage, the costs were exorbitant so what they did have wasn’t enough. So you would think they would be on the side of the President, right?

Wrong, the new marketing director they told us in a Sheraton meeting that we needed to lobby the President to keep things as they are, our jobs were at stake, if there were any changes in the healthcare coverage we had much to lose, and if any of us were interested to see him after the meeting. I cringed. We are lobbying legislators for free? They aren’t paying us to be lobbyist? Is this part of the clean money concept? That was odd.

I thought we were the “good guys” in the insurance world. A promise I made to myself. I said if I ever go back to corporate, I wanted to work for a corporation that believed in “stewardship” as one of their core values and part of their mission statement, not gouging or "pretending to care" about customers, just to make money.

At various companies I saw how not being forthright, withholding information, to downright “verbal kung fu-ing” with the “bottomline concept”. Minerva, do you want to make money or not this week? When in the long run, the relationship with the customer would mean much more service, more referrals; new add ons (only if they needed them) and providing the customer the opportunity to choose what is best for them?) or was I back to the “gaming”, “selling” techniques and twisting the arm which could blow up in your manager’s face and they would ask you to “fall on the sword” because . . . they were the manager? Did I make that mistake again, or what? I really need to explore this new leadership more . . . hopefully I got the message wrong . . . I know the product does what it says it does, but why isn't the corporation supporting the president? Until I get a definitive explanation, I'm slowing backing away . . .

But could hope spring eternal and that even the Republicans are seeing change by having former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, an African American at the lead. Depending on which Republican media pundit you listen to, they would have you believe that Steele’s role is just for PR purposes. Bull. Last I heard the person sitting on the top of the Republican Party had to be a “damn good fundraiser”, and in this economic market where money isn’t falling from the trees anymore, even banks are standing in line begging for governmental support. Now how effective Steele will be with his moderate views makes politics so interesting. Yes, bedfellows in politics get a little weirder and weirder if you take the time to read, to listen and to watch.

Some republicans are trying to say that media commentators weren’t saying that Mr. Blago Bully was a democrat. Blago was voted out of office and out of politics by a group of his own peers and the fallout from the criminal charges are still left to be resolved. Yes, he is a democrat and his behavior based on the information that we were provided was horrible. But I don’t remember anyone NOT saying he wasn’t the democratic governor from Illinois. What does raise my eyebrows was that Democratic strategist James Carvell originally poo-pooed the idea that Blago was under scrutiny in the first place and he said “there is wheeling and dealing going on all the time”. So is this why Blago doesn’t think he did anything wrong?

Hopefully there won’t be large court scenarios but the way Blago went out was heartbreaking to see a man who doesn’t know when he is caught. And if in fact this was politics as usual, I’m sure there are folks scrambling to clean house. Speaking of cleaning house. . . How many flaws can you find in this write up? On reading the “White House Blog”, I found this little gem:

Photo of George W. Bush

43. GEORGE W. BUSH 2001-2009

George W. Bush, the 43rd President of the United States, was sworn into office on January 20, 2001, re-elected on November 2, 2004, and sworn in for a second term on January 20, 2005. Prior to his Presidency, President Bush served for 6 years as the 46th Governor of the State of Texas, where he earned a reputation for bipartisanship and as a compassionate conservative who shaped public policy based on the principles of limited government, personal responsibility, strong families, and local control.

President Bush was born on July 6, 1946, in New Haven, Connecticut, and grew up in Midland and Houston, Texas. He received a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University in 1968, and then served as an F-102 fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard. President Bush received a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School in 1975. Following graduation, he moved back to Midland and began a career in the energy business. After working on his father’s successful 1988 Presidential campaign, President Bush assembled the group of partners who purchased the Texas Rangers baseball franchise in 1989. On November 8, 1994, President Bush was elected Governor of Texas. He became the first Governor in Texas history to be elected to consecutive 4-year terms when he was re-elected on November 3, 1998.

President Bush worked with the Congress to create an ownership society and build a future of security, prosperity, and opportunity for all Americans. He signed into law tax relief that helped workers keep more of their hard-earned money, as well as the most comprehensive education reforms in a generation, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. This legislation ushered in a new era of accountability, flexibility, local control, and more choices for parents, affirming our Nation’s fundamental belief in the promise of every child. President Bush also worked to improve healthcare and modernize Medicare, providing the first-ever prescription drug benefit for seniors; increase homeownership, especially among minorities; conserve our environment; and increase military strength, pay, and benefits. Because President Bush believed the strength of America lies in the hearts and souls of our citizens, he supported programs that encourage individuals to help their neighbors in need.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, terrorists attacked our Nation. President Bush took unprecedented steps to protect our homeland and create a world free from terror. He was grateful for the service and sacrifice of our brave men and women in uniform and their families. The President believed that by helping build free and prosperous societies, our Nation and our friends and allies can succeed in making America more secure and the world more peaceful.

President Bush is married to Laura Welch Bush, a former teacher and librarian, and they have twin daughters, Barbara and Jenna. The Bush family also includes two dogs, Barney and Miss Beazley, and a cat, Willie. (http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/georgewbush/)

I thought it was an amazing play on wording and one day maybe I’ll meet the wordsmith who must have been having a hard time putting this together. See y’all later, Todd says there is no maid, so we have a house to clean today . . .

THE END

Oh well, I recall all of the comments being made about Kennedy, I do hope he rests in peace but I have to admit "his mantle" is really heavy.

Sorry, I never had the opportunity to meet him. But I'll never forget the time, I passed out when I saw President Kennedy on the corner of Rexall Drug Store, sitting on my daddy's shoulders dripping an ice cream cone! I passed out from the excitement it was like yesterday! Minerva

Mail to a Friend | Link | Comments (0) | Report Objectionable Content

The Liberal

By Stephen Siciliano - Aug 26th, 2009 at 4:12 pm EDT

Also listed in: 10 groups

He carried his personal flaws and tragic miscues in the same way he carried the liberal credo: slightly wearied, but unyielding.

His opponents linked them seamlessly.

If the health care debate reveals anything, it is that to believe in a government conceived with the purpose of serving the people places one in the company of someone who drives a young girl off a bridge, runs, and then hides.

Together, Sen. Edward Moore Kennedy and the large liberal constituency that thrives throughout this country, have trudged on, standing by tired platitudes that are no less virtuous for being time-worn and tested.

His loss is a terrible blow to Republican fundraisers, but not so much as it will be to an ungrateful and impatient people who take whatever they can get, while viewing the acts of sharing with or giving to the less-fortunate as foolhardy.

For those of us inspired and instructed by his political example, his like will not be seen for a long time, if ever.

Kennedy never saw a military intervention he liked. He taught, by his example, that such consistency is the stuff of being anti-war and pro-human, never falling for the slick trick of associating support for a missile system with a desire for peace.

Those of us who agreed with him were never disappointed - no matter how low the value of our philosophy sunk - when we awaited his lone and familiar voice to speak out with intelligence against organized and taxpayer-funded mayhem.

We were never disappointed when the corporations that run our lives, pirate our money and health, had come up with yet another new line of propaganda that succeeded by appealing to what was worst, rather than best, in the American spirit.

He was there, like a default setting; turning our helpless rage into articulate argument that we might carry forth onto the streets, into parties, and anywhere else informed public debate still percolates.

For those of us who retired at night, beaten by our own mistakes -- thrown into doubt -- Kennedy demonstrated how one picks-up and carries on.

The marvelous and masterful senator taught us that our questionable pasts and sorry records could be righted by doing one small thing tomorrow and another the day after and so on.

He taught us that our job is to get better at what we do and to not be undone by setbacks.

He did not define what it meant to be liberal because all of that came before his rise to power and fame. But Kennedy taught us what it cost to remain liberal, to endure the insults and continue the work of assisting those who need it.

Unlike his brothers, frozen in youth by martyrdom, his story encompassed the sloppy narrative that becomes all our narratives, which in the end, is the same effort at doing good while swimming against a current of so much evil.

Good bye you good Liberal.

Mail to a Friend | Link | Comments (0) | Report Objectionable Content

"YES WE CAN, HAVE A PUBLIC OPTION"

By "NERVIE" - Aug 19th, 2009 at 10:37 am EDT

Also listed in: 9 groups

President Obama asked us to turn the page. He asked us to believe in the change that we deserved. I can’t believe that all this GOTV, letter writing, phone banking, poll tending, volunteering, home parties, restaurant presentations, cheerleading for a year and a ½ to get him in the winner’s circle is causing a rise in my cynical interpretation. We understand that Obama has to be a worldwide respected, flexible American representation. We understand he wants to include all of America. We know deep reform in healthcare is necessary and a given. More than 75% of Americans want healthcare reform that includes the public option, universal healthcare, and single payer, whatever you want to call it. President Obama experienced the downside through his own mother’s dying. He had to know that there would be an all and out war with dysfunctional profit making, no holds bar, hundreds of billions healthcare making system. He knew the ravages in the financial system. In addition, yes, we see those fear mongering, hating, imposing gun packing/toting self-centered paid obstructionists at town hall meetings. So where is the line in the sand? We voted for “real change” not propping the industry, which disrespect our right to human healthcare. Take off the gloves, Fight Obama, Fight! Remember you are head of the United States military. CIA, FBI and Secret Service know the drills! Don’t lose your eye on the healthcare prize. Yes, we can!

Mail to a Friend | Link | Comments (0) | Report Objectionable Content

NO OPTION, ARE YOU KIDDING ME . . .

By "NERVIE" - Aug 18th, 2009 at 1:20 pm EDT

Also listed in: 9 groups

Barack Obama won by more than 7.5 million votes over the Republicans . . . How then can he be so wry in stating what he wants this healthcare reform bill? Obama won more votes than any other candidate. He even won Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina, Virgina, and handsomely, California (except Orange County).

Those of us who field the calls, go out to the malls, set up workshops, pass the word, produce pass outs, e-blast, twitter, and Facebook are interested in knowing why there is so little information regarding the strategy behind Obama’s statement that the “public option is just a sliver of the proposed objectives and may not be in the final bill”?

Obama-ites and individuals in need of healthcare who believe in the change necessary to stop the medical bankruptcies, to provide efficient, effective and standardized health delivery are supporting healthcare reform. Many understand the need for preventive care, which is to lower the costs of pharmaceuticals, doctors, hospital healthcare, which is strangling our weary seniors, and HIV/AIDS, cancer, diabetes and cardiac treatment. I believe we all know someone with a nagging irreversible illnesses requiring medicinal cocktails, patches, pills, shots, and tonics to make it through the day.

With the recent morphing of the Obama Plan, “NO OPTION”, many are raising their eyebrows regarding the “non information” getting to the front lines and this can be quite wearying when you are taking the “shots, the hits, the late night calls, and the hissing” from those who believe you are on some “blind ambition” that Obama can deliver.

So what is all of this hesitation, maneuvering and double speak that we are hearing? Are the Democrats just downright gutless wonders on an issue that affects us all? Bush is not around to kick this time. The media won’t allow us to be oblivious to the disruptive, gun toting and gun strapped, reddened, head-vein popping, bulging eyed, yelling “patriots” at town hall meetings. We understand that change is abominable to some and frightening to most when the government steps in. We know how groups take advantage of the “gaping loopholes” and “financial windfalls” due to poor planning and pencil pushing administrators who can’t think their way out of wet paper bags. Nevertheless, Obama et. al. says they have “studied the plan, they know what they need to shore up the gaps before execution.”

Won’t we, in the meantime, demand that our legislature stop taking money from the corporate entities that stand to lose when healthcare is spread throughout the United States? While legislators fully enjoy superior taxpayer-supported healthcare, paid in full, every year, on time, without denial for prior medical conditions, can’t we be vigilant and exclaim to our elected leadership that they represent us and our families’ future? What is wrong with us that a subject we all require to live each day becomes something not worth fighting for? Is it really something in the water? Will someone explain this to me?

Mail to a Friend | Link | Comments (0) | Report Objectionable Content

LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

By "NERVIE" - Aug 18th, 2009 at 1:17 pm EDT

Also listed in: 9 groups

Mail to a Friend | Link | Comments (0) | Report Objectionable Content

A Tale of Two Governments

By Stephen Siciliano - Aug 6th, 2009 at 9:06 pm EDT

Also listed in: 10 groups

Republicans and their wing-nut fellow travelers believe there are two governments in the United States.

One government runs foreign policy and wars and it is a government that never apologizes for America because America never commits a sin overseas.

It is a government never referred to as such.

It is just "America," a bright and shining example of all things good, that runs itself on the strength of its immaculate conception

The other government is the one that should never get involved with America's interior workings, should never monitor its businesses, and should never render any services, because it can't do anything right.

The two governments, of course, are one and the same. Republicans and their ilk consider the first one their particular provenance and shunt the other one off on Democrats whom they then deny the right to adminstrate as often as they can.

FOX News runs montages of President Obama committing the cardinal sin of admitting the first government's humanity and concomitant flaws before foreign audiences to the soundtrack of Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana."

It spends the remaining air-time lamenting Obama's attempt to lead the second government's "takeover of the health care system."

The argument is this: The same American government that should never apologize for actions overseas cannot be trusted to best the wild and woolly wiles of our entrepreneurial class.

That's the religion.

It's a religion, like many religions, with adherents who subscribe to the tenets against their better interests.

But as Michael Hiltzik of the "Los Angeles Times" noted the other day, the entrepreneurs handling of health care sucks.

Writes Hiltzik: "Throughout the heroic struggle in Congress to provide a 'public option' in health insurance, one question never seems to get answered: Why are we so intent on protecting the private option?"

And that's a whopper of an omission, which most of our elected representatives (in a rare demonstration of bipartisan comity), and cable news offerings on both the "left" and right, are all complicit in arranging.

Maybe some of you saw bumbling Bill Kristol's interview on "The Daily Show," not too long ago.

Host Jon Stewart observed how members of our military are the beneficiaries of government-controlled health care and Kristol, in his knee-jerk understanding of patriotism, noted that, because of their sacrifice, the soldiers deserved the best.

Stewart was on it, scribbling in a pad, "So you're saying a government-run plan is better than the sh*#t private insurance coverage the rest of us have?"

Kristol wanted to counter, but the knee had already jerked. He was nailed in the same way the rest of the hysterical right wing should be.

Republicans and conservatives are out to torpedo anything the Democrats might do to improve health care in this country. Not because they love getting reamed monthly by their insurer, but because they don't want the other "side" to have a victory.

This is an extreme example of what candidate Obama was talking about when referencing the corrosive impact of our divisive politics: Some Americans would rather forego better, perhaps life-saving health care, than let their opposite political numbers claim they had done something good for the country.

Full disclosure: highwayscribery hates his insurer Anthem/Blue Cross/Blue Shield etc. He views it as an adversary to whom he ponies-up the second largest chunk of his discretionary budget.

And it's not fair.

Taking his blogger's sense of the responsible citizen into the realm of health care, highwayscribery eats fruit salads every morning (except Sunday when he gets a sausage, egg, and cheese "McGriddle"), and salad (or gazpacho) for lunch.

At dinner, the scribe averages a single piece of meat per week, two fish meals, two pasta feasts, and some other culinary delights chosen for their salubrious balancing of his dietary intake (although he'd prefer more McGriddles).

He surfs three times a week, runs an average of 10 miles over the same period, and plays baseball with a six-year-old who can, and does, run rings around him.

The result is a low-cholesterol, low blood-pressure, clean bill of health for a middle-aged guy (don't ask) who asks little else of his health care providers than to confirm these positive results.

Last year the scribe paid $208 a month for his premium and this year it was raised to $248. No reason. Now the scribe is no Adam Smith, but he figures if the free market system our conservative countrymen are so worried about conserving actually functioned, a cut in premium would have been due.

But that's not what happened. What happened was the unilateral imposition of a considerable increase backed by a threat of financial ruin should the scribe walk away from this "relationship" and then be badly hurt.

What insurance really gets you, of course, is the right to pick a fight with your insurer once illness strikes, and it decides "the procedure is not covered."

Or as Hiltzik puts it: "For if the insurers have proved anything over the last 15 years as the health crisis has gathered speed like an avalanche roaring downhill, it's that they're part of the problem, not the solution."

the scribe wrote the Anthem/Blue Shield plan administrator and let him know exactly what he felt about the increase. He said the company should have paid him for the aforementioned custodianship of his own well-being and added that he hoped President Obama instituted a single-payer, government-run system that responded to public pressure because private insurers certainly don't.

Anthem confirmed the argument by not replying.

The premium stood, much the same way Bank of America's unilateral decision to increase monthly fees by $5 on the scribe's checking account did.

It's all one way. Big boy leans, little guy bends and breaks.

"The firms," Hiltzick writes, "take billions of dollars out of the U.S. healthcare wallet as profits, while imposing enormous administrative costs on doctors, hospitals, employers and patients. They've introduced complexity into the system at every level. Your doctor has to fight them to get approval for the treatment he or she thinks is best for you. Your hospital has to fight them for approval for every day you're laid up. Then they have to fight them to get their bills paid, and you do too."

That's what, no, that's who The Right is defending. These companies.

They are organizing (read: paying) people to attend town hall meetings on health care and disrupt the dialogue, shout down speakers, and insult their elected representatives.

Republican Party leaders at the national level such as Rep. John Boehner and Michael Steele defend these actions as if they were proper and worthy of a healthy civic culture. With the sophomoric smirk that has become their party's trademark responses to earnest policy, they mock Democrats as people who just don't get how badly Americans want to keep the crap arrangement currently in place...in place.

They should be ashamed of themselves.

Instead these purported loyal oppositionists gain succor from what passes for the left in this country, with the onerous Democratic senators Max Baucus (pictured) and Ben Nelson, from Montana and Nebraska respectively, doing everything they can to eviscerate or eliminate altogether the American peoples' desire to have a public option to these corporate crooks.

Hiltzick, in his excellent piece, makes the connection to these "Blue Dog" Democrats thusly:

"You've heard of the Blue Dog Democrats, those mostly rural conservatives who blocked a summertime vote on reform legislation on Capitol Hill? According to the Center for Public Integrity, the biggest backer of the Blue Dogs’ political action committee is the healthcare industry, which is on the path to pumping a total of $1.2 million into the PAC's maw in the current 2009-10 election cycle."

Wow, there's a surprise.

Maybe this time things will backfire. Maybe if the opponents of change yell loud enough and insult enough people, Americans will get past the cant about "socialism," or "bureaucrats" (as if health insurers didn't have them, too), and see that the only thing Republicans propose is doing nothing.

Maybe Americans will see that the President's opponents stand for nothing, but will fall for anything that does harm the largest number of Americans.

But don't wait for an apology. Their America doesn't do that.

Mail to a Friend | Link | Comments (0) | Report Objectionable Content

IF you haven't seen it . .. here is some ammo . . .

By "NERVIE" - Aug 5th, 2009 at 10:26 am EDT

Also listed in: 9 groups

This is hot off if the WhiteHouse.gov website.

I believe we need to know this facts when we are debating the healthcare reform issue.

The legislative recess is occuring and with that the BIG BOYS will be shooting out more advertising, lies, and misleading facts because the facts will be sandwiched between the untruths to confuse the average consumer who is probably not eating and sleeping these issues. The intend is simple to cause enough chaos to make the "average nonpolitico" scratch their heads and not get into the healthcare discussions. Hopefully we will all be able to stand up to this opposition. Here is some ammunition . . .

THE SECURITY YOU GET from health insurance reform:

No Discrimination for Pre-Existing Conditions
Insurance companies will be prohibited from refusing you coverage because of your medical history.
No Exorbitant Out-of-Pocket Expenses, Deductibles or Co-Pays
Insurance companies will have to abide by yearly caps on how much they can charge for out-of-pocket expenses.
No Cost-Sharing for Preventive Care
Insurance companies must fully cover, without charge, regular checkups and tests that help you prevent illness, such as mammograms or eye and foot exams for diabetics.
No Dropping of Coverage for Seriously Ill
Insurance companies will be prohibited from dropping or watering down insurance coverage for those who become seriously ill.
No Gender Discrimination
Insurance companies will be prohibited from charging you more because of your gender.
No Annual or Lifetime Caps on Coverage
Insurance companies will be prevented from placing annual or lifetime caps on the coverage you receive.
Extended Coverage for Young Adults
Children would continue to be eligible for family coverage through the age of 26.
Guaranteed Insurance Renewal
Insurance companies will be required to renew any policy as long as the policyholder pays their premium in full. Insurance companies won't be allowed to refuse renewal because someone became sick.

Here are a few words from Linda Douglass:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Facts-Are-Stubborn-Things/

Here are some of the facts:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/health-insurance-consumer-protections/

Mail to a Friend | Link | Comments (0) | Report Objectionable Content

The Homeless in New York . . .

By "NERVIE" - Aug 4th, 2009 at 9:43 am EDT

Also listed in: 9 groups

BLOG July 31, 2009 This morning I decided to listen to the CBS Colorado Progressive Talk AM-760 Radio. Michael Bloomberg, the famous mayor of New York, is sending the homeless a one way ticket to anywhere in the United States to be with their family in order to get them off of the New York homeless shelter payrolls. Doing so will allow money allocated for the homeless shelters will be applicable to the general fund needs. Are the actions of Bloomberg, a dangerous microcosm, a way of legitimizing the problem for other cities to take the idea and run with it. What happens if the person doesn’t have family in the US? Will they send them to other countries instead? Bloomberg says that New York is spending up to $36K on families (for 9 months of services). Couldn’t they use that money and find these individuals jobs? Bloomberg will send families by planes, trains and/or busses with a one way ticket anywhere in the United States. The money to fund this is tax payer's money. Bloomberg is a billionaire, he doesn’t have any friends or resources that can hire these people? The highest concentration of the movie stars, barons, and the wealthy are in New York. Is New York City really strapped? I understand it is a way to preserve the shelters and save money for the general fund especially when the population doesn’t like the homeless and they aren’t a voting block. Years ago, Oregon was doing the same by putting the homeless on the AMTRAK train and sending them to Seattle. They found that some of the homeless are mentally ill and on drugs. Giving rise to other problems. But homeless that are women and children need immediate attention and reach. The Homeless is a societal problem and not a nuisance. It is a residual of the society’s losing touch or inability to connect with all of its members. Some of the problems of the homeless happen in our own homes but haven’t spelled over into the streets. We are all one to two paychecks from being homeless especially with the progression of pension plan losses, stock portfolios upside down, college costs rising, home values dissipated, mortgage interests rising, jobs downsizing, layoffs, restructuring and closing. I won’t even bring up the mental effects of these radical changes . . . headaches, anxiety, anguish, depression, over eating, etc. Bloomberg says that the general population doesn't like the homeless. He has to defray and make draconian cuts to the homeless shelter program because other general fund programs are being cut as well. New York's mayor reports that it is estimated that $36K is spent on each homeless family each year. The usual family stays in a shelter up to nine months. To provide them an opportunity to go back to their original homes is a way of getting them out of New York, which everyone knows is very expensive to live. Some of the questions that crossed my mind, why can't they just create jobs for the family with the $36K? Couldn’t he just find a stimulus package to the homeless and assist these families with jobs? Remember Bloomberg being a billionaire has access to barons, movie stars, business owners the rest of the population doesn’t have access to. They can’t get their heads together to help those down on their luck? This may be great for the family who got stuck in New York or have family on the receiving end. But are the families on the receiving end doing any better? Throughout the country city managers may see Bloomberg’s response as an opportunity to have their homeless to start over again, by sending "them home", in an area that isn't as expensive as their cities? Is this the ultimate "gentrification" project? Is this a way of cleaning up a city? Are the homeless requesting these cities to go? Is this a panecea for other cities? Is this the ultimate way of assuring re-election? What is the moral equivalent or shifting responsibility? One of the callers, facetiously speaking, asked is this another way for the homeless to travel throughout the United States at no charge? Is this a problem that may snowball to another city? Is this the real sign of another Great Depression, where people move to an area believed to be full of jobs and opportunity when in reality they were looking for cheap employees? Remember Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath? How many of these people may choose to move to LA or other warmer climates? We all know that the homeless doesn't have a large voting block, but where is the outcry from New York's political liberal voices? Aren't we all a paycheck or two from homelessness? Where would we go if we were told "to move back home"?

Suppose you are from New York? Let me know what you think . . . HAPPY FRIDAY . . .

Mail to a Friend | Link | Comments (0) | Report Objectionable Content

Does anyone know the answer to this riddle??

By "NERVIE" - Jul 31st, 2009 at 11:28 am EDT

Also listed in: 9 groups

The question of whether Obama was legitimately born in the United States continues to stir considerable controversy. Reservist Major Stefan Cook of the US Army refused to deploy to Afghanistan, questioning Obama’s authority as commander-in-chief. Cook told the Army he needed proof that Obama was actually born in the US. Without such proof he believed he should not be compelled to follow the President’s orders to deploy to Afghanistan. To further exacerbate this, the Army subsequently rescinded his orders, leading many to hold this as further proof that Obama just may not be a US born citizen and should therefore be removed from office.

Why the army didn’t pursue further action against Cook and simply revoke his deployment does raise serious questions. This is certainly not in line with the Army’s normal procedure for those who refuse to follow orders. Consider the case of Lt. Erin Watada. Watada refused to deploy to Iraq on the ground that to do so would constitute a war crime, namely that of waging a war of aggression. The Army certainly did prosecute him. Although one of the charges got hung up on a technicality, there are still other significant charges pending against Watada, which will most likely have serious consequences.

It is undisputed that Iraq never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so. It is also undisputed that President Bush never secured the constitutionally required congressional declaration of war against Iraq. It would be difficult to find a better example of an illegal and unconstitutional war, which is precisely why Watada refused to obey orders to participate in it.

My father was in the service and always gave me the impression that the United States Military rarely backs off of an insubordinate soldier without providing an explanation. I would think that they would want to make an example out Cook. Did releasing Cook open the door for every soldier, sailor, and airman to get a free "get out of war" pass?

In the Cook case why didn't the Army pursue further action? Where did the order come from to revoke his orders? Under what conditions were these orders revoked? Why was there no explanation? Will the Army ever provide answers to these questions, or at least an explanation as to why his case is closed?

Respectfully yours,
Minerva L. Williams, Castaic, CA.

Mail to a Friend | Link | Comments (0) | Report Objectionable Content

Small Businesses and the Healthcare Reform . . .

By "NERVIE" - Jul 31st, 2009 at 11:23 am EDT

Also listed in: 9 groups

BLOG: HEALTHCARE REFORM: ANSWERS TO QUESTIONSWHAT ABOUT SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS? According to Obama’s healthcare presentation this week (mybarackobama.com): Small businesses will be able to provide insurance for their employees with tax credits and through the insurance exchange program.The employees who don’t have insurance can purchase it from the insurance exchange and choose the policy that best fits their needs. Americans cannot afford to keep waiting for legislatures, who have the Rolls Royce of insurance, paid for by taxpayers, to provide the citizens that they serve, efficient, adequate, and sustainable healthcare. This has been an ongoing battle for over 65 years. It is time that the citizens take full advantage and let their legislatures know that they are tired of waiting for a program that covers their healthcare costs and delivery systems. If you have any questions please write your question to: www.whitehouse.gov

Mail to a Friend | Link | Comments (0) | Report Objectionable Content

Page 1 of 19 | Next | Last

Posts

Content on blogs in My.BarackObama represents the opinions of community members and in no way should be interpreted as endorsed or approved by the campaign.