The ghosts are in the machine: Has anyone here noticed that the Heritage Foundation (a virulent right-wing organization) is scheduling events to mobilize opposition and win converts from the Obama camp using the OFA website?
Check out their recent postings for events they are scheduling in October in the Twin Cities. Seems we need a strategy to counter. Anyone involved in deriving or applying one?
I received the following e-mail today asking for more money in the battle for health care reform!
Why the heck is OFA asking for more money when we already donated our time, money, sweat and tears to get President Obama elected with a mandate of the vote?!
Not only that, we helped give the Democrats a veto-proof majority in the Senate!
Why does anybody need more money? Enough already - they've been elected and they're already on the payroll!!
I say to the President and the Democrats in congress: "We gave you the mandate, now start acting like it and get to work for us by making sure a public option is in the final health care bill!"
Health care reform without a public option will be a BIG win for the Republicans and the Insurance industry. We didn't work our hearts out so that could happen.
FIGHT - FOR OUR RIGHT - FOR HEALTHCARE - WITH A PUBLIC OPTION!!!!!!!
My response to the letter below - "Not another cent until we get the guarantee that any final bill will contain a true public option!!!!" Karl --On Thursday, Vice President Biden called out the insurance industry's escalating war on health reform in a special message to OFA, and asked for your help in fighting back.Sure enough, the insurance industry is already stepping up the attack: Reports just leaked from a closed-door meeting where insurance industry lobbyists frantically warned Republican members of Congress that it was not in their interest to "ever vote for this thing" and said supporting reform is like "giving comfort to the enemy." USA Today is reporting that groups opposing reform are lobbying at "a record pace" -- and the Associated Press notes that they've already spent an astounding $32 million on TV ads this year.This is what we're up against. President Obama, Vice President Biden, and all of us together through OFA are fighting back -- but success depends on having the resources to win.Can you chip in $25 or more today to power our campaign?https://donate.barackobama.com/FinalRoundIn this fight, the insurance industry has their war chest and insider lobbyists. We have you. I know who I'm betting on.Let's win this thing.MitchMitch StewartDirectorOrganizing for AmericaPaid for by Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic National Committee -- 430 South Capitol Street SE, Washington, D.C. 20003. This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. Monetary contributions to the Democratic National Committee are not tax-deductible.
This email was sent to: keenekarl@hotmail.com
To unsubscribe, go to: http://my.barackobama.com/unsubscribe
Minnesota's March for Healthcare - in conjuction with the nationwide movement of marches on Sunday, September 13 to demand real healthcare reform.
In cooperation with TakeActionMN
Sunday, September 13, 2009 at 12 noon
Phillips Park
1530 E. Franklin Ave.
Minneapolis, MN
Speakers:
Congressman Keith Ellison
John Marty, State Senator and Candidate for Governor
Reverend Grant Stevenson
Erin Murphy, State Representative
For more information visit www.march4healthcare.com
email: mnhealthcarereform@gmail.com
[This event is not sponsored or affiliated with Organizing for America. It is a truly grassroots action at its most powerful! and finest!]
We Can Afford Reform, We Can’t Afford the Status Quo
Jared Bernstein, Chief Economist for the Vice President and Executive Director of the Middle Class Task Force, debunks the myth that we can’t afford health insurance reform. To the contrary, not only has the President demanded that reform not add to the deficit in the short term, but reform is the only way to get skyrocketing health care costs under control that will be devastating not for families , businesses, and for government deficits in the long term under the status quo.
Watch the Video
Earlier today, it was announced that President Obama will address a joint session of Congress on the issue of health insurance reform next Wednesday, September 9th. CNN reported:
It will be Obama's second speech to the full legislature since he took office in January, and the setting and rarity of such an event highlighted the importance the president places on his top domestic priority: overhauling the nation's ailing health care system.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid formally invited Obama to make the address, as required, in a letter issued Wednesday after news broke of the planned speech.
We'll have more information on this important speech in the days to come.
www.whitehouse.gov
Every issue that America faces, whether it's health care reform, war, the economy, crime, etc., also faces the students in Her schools. I am a public school teacher in Minneapolis, MN (7th grade math). The economy is having huge impact on the students in my school. Last year, out of 115 or so students on my 7th grade team, 71 were new students at the end of the year. I hope that gives you an idea of the turn-around rate of students in my room.
I believe that poverty is the biggest social issue of our time. It is the biggest injustice there is. I believe that education is a key to ending poverty.
I hope that my future blog entries will inspire readers to act to promote social justice.
Thanks for taking your time to read this.
- Ken
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/273e8d0e-65b4-11de-8e34-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
In a 5-0 decision, the Minnesota State Supreme Court today declared Al Franken the winner of the state's Senate race. Shortly thereafter, Franken's opponent Norm Coleman officially conceded.
In an official statement, President Obama congratulated Franken, saying:
"I look forward to working with Senator-Elect Franken to build a new foundation for growth and prosperity by lowering health care costs and investing in the kind of clean energy jobs and industries that will help America lead in the 21st century.”
The foundation of every political system rests on its economics. One might even go so far as to say that every political philosophy is nothing more than an indirectly expressed economic theory. We are therefore very likely to soon experience vast waves of change in this country that have little to do with any voluntary effort or any agenda we can currently assign to the political party of our choice. At this stage, history is about to overtake us as America's currency loses its status as the worlds' international medium of exchange, and this will inevitably have a significant impact on the life of every single American citizen, rich or poor.
In my lifetime, the nation's police departments have been increasingly militarized; and laws increasingly repressive and narrowly constitutional. Its prison populations are the largest in the world --disproportionately for drug-related offenses-- while the air-waves have become saturated with drug commercials. Manufacturing capacity has been stripped and moved overseas, while the education system increasingly struggles for relevance and purpose. The list goes on and on, ad naseum.
Global poverty is at an all-time high and in America, homelessness has, incredibly(!), become commonplace in the erstwhile land of the free. And yet, all this has unfolded in recent decades in direct proportion to the total amount of money flowing through the world's capital markets. I don't think this is either coincidental or inevitable --except perhaps as the inevitable result of a fraudulent system that has been perpetrated on an unprecedented scale.
What has actually gone wrong here? For all practical purposes --and this is increasingly visible to the naked eye-- Wall Street has become the government and the true seat of power. And this has become possible solely because not one in a hundred thousand know or care how our monetary system actually works, nor knows that it was established as a deliberately conceived system of smoke and mirrors from the very beginning.
As Thomas Jefferson once wrote in a letter to Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin in 1802, "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by deflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."
Sound familiar? If so, it means the alarm is ringing and it's time to wake up. Anyone care to join me?
But this is only a small part of the story, for at the same time, most people are also unaware that the formal study of economics itself has never been able to produce a cohesive and comprehensive theory of economics. Does anyone else find this bizarre? As an anonymous staff member for the IMF website once expressed it with a sort of zen-like perfection: “Although money affects all our lives and we deal with it every day, we understand very little about the role and importance of money and the international monetary system.”
Do you see? In the final analysis, it's not really "economic conditions" per se that has bought us to the brink of economic and cultural collapse --but a state of profound and universal ignorance with respect to a very, very core subject.
No one therefore, can expect President Obama to make the necessary changes, even assuming that he understands or even sees the over-riding nature of the problem. Sadly, we have to doubt this even as we support his efforts, and even as we are forced to watch him play the part of Bush II and prop up and support the very system of debt and credit that has brought us to this point in the first place. No, only a grassroots movement of enlightenment will suffice.
To promote this possibility therefore, I thus have a two-fold agenda here:
The first part is to discuss the fundamentally fraudent nature of the Federal Reserve System (which, by the way, is neither 'federal' nor a 'reserve,' but merely a private corporation who has been given license by a clueless and corrupt Congress to print money at its own discretion which it then lends (!) to us at interest. This is not at all the same as a system in which the U.S. Treasury simply issues its own money directly.
[For a far more detailed and highly readible account of this, I strongly recommend Ellen Brown's new book, Web Of Debt.]
As to the second part, I hope to propose a uniquely fundamental solution to the problem of economic decline, because I discovered precisely why no one was previously able to provide a comprehensive theory of macroeconomics. Consequently --among other things-- I came to realize that it was possible to profoundly re-engineer the monetary system in such a way as to completely eliminate the practice of taxation --and yet support all of the vital functions of government that we have come to expect.
Naturally, this has profound political implications. America may be in serious state of advanced decay, but a complete transformation is not only possible, it's already in the cards.
But this is merely an introductory note for this blog, so I think I'll leave it at that and elaborate a little further down the road.
Here are some of the things we will be discussing at the Health Care Forum on May 12th. I hope you can make it!
Did you know:
Consider the following facts:
· 50 million people are uninsured and many more are underinsured;
· 37% of Americans report rationing care due to a lack of healthcare coverage;
· The uninsured are more likely to go to the emergency room for care and 20% more likely to be admitted to intensive care;
· 20% more likely to die when receiving intensive care within Intensive Care Units (ICU);
· Many of us go without psychiatric care;
· 18,000 people die each year because of a lack of medical insurance;
· Health care costs are rising at two times the rate of inflation (a major contributor to foreclosures)
· Administrative costs account for 31% of healthcare expenditures (by comparison, that is double the proportion in Canada).
SOURCE: Did You Know, MN Universal Health Care Coalition
We're going to be discussing the Minnesota Universal Health Care Initiative at this meeting. Then we're going to talk about ways to support it or alternatives. All are welcome.
President Obama has issued an executive order establishing the White House Office of Health Reform intended to oversee "the federal government's comprehensive effort to improve access to health care, the quality of such care, and the sustainability of the health care system." Governor Howard Dean, M.D., and Democracy for America have launched the "Healthcare for All" campaign at StandwithDrDean.com, and over a quarter of a million people have enthusiastically joined in, spreading the word.
Both initiatives will help spur on reform in the health care insurance industry, and not a moment to soon. According to a recent article from Maggie Fox of Reuters,
"U.S. government economists predict that public and private health spending will hit $2.5 trillion this year, taking up a 17.6 percent share of gross domestic product. Yet studies suggest Americans get poorer care than people in other industrialized countries that have national healthcare plans, and 46 million Americans have no health insurance at all."
While Howard Dean is a visible and credible public face, the effort requires your commitment, too. Change doesn't come about in Washington unless politicians know their constituents are paying attention to an issue. You've got to keep writing to them, and to newspapers, and inform your friends, neighbors, and co-workers about the shabby state of affairs caused by insurance company profiteers siphoning off lavish pay and bonuses that drive up all our costs but add no value to the health care industry.
Even if you're not the sort who writes letters to the editor, you can help financially to provide the backing Governor Dean needs to spread the message.
This is critical,
Please let help him pass this budget! He needs our help! Washington DC seems to luck that support. Petition letters or talk to our representantives.
Good luck everybody!
It's possible you haven't heard from me since the election. I've not been idle. I had a house party in December. I hosted a service event on Martin Luther King Day which was wildly successful, collecting over two tons of food for Neighborhood House Food Shelf and 25 plus units of blood for Memorial Blood. I recently participated in a recap/potluck regarding that event hosted by fellow volunteer Linda Zwicky. During that party, I discovered what I'm doing next. Ever since the election, I haven't been settled or sure of what the next step for me personally would be with respect to our new administration. I am keenly interested in community gardening and have taken steps to educate myself in this area in hopes of fostering community gardens all over the Twin Cities. My thought was to throw myself wholly into the urban gardening movement and consider that to be my contribution to the new administration. After all, food democracy was a worthy and concrete endeavor and with the economic crisis looming, it seemed like a justice issue as much as a health and environmental issue. So when I attended the recap of our service event last weekend, I wasn't prepared for the epiphany I experienced. We were talking about what to do going forward. Lots of smart people in the room, as usual. We talked about how we were all waiting for the Obama Administration's organizing arm, Organizing for America, to lead us. An astute observer nixed this concept. No, the administration was waiting for us to lead them. Huh?
Much as I wanted to forget about door-knocking and phone banking, I had to admit this was still a powerful calling. I had to reconcile myself--can I pursue urban gardening and continue to organize for Obama? Yes, simple as it sounds and it was oft repeated during the campaign, change happens from the bottom up. Reminded of this at the meeting I attended recently, we agreed we wanted to continue to meet to try and bring change to our communities and to our country with the help of OFA and the Obama administration. We agreed that we wanted to continue to meet face-to-face on a monthly basis. We agreed that our activities could include a broad range of activities, from the community gardening projects I am interested in to lobbying legislators for health care or door-knocking and phone calling as we did during the campaign.
AndI realized that my urban gardening project, once I really understood it fully, would fit neatly into the new organizing paradigm. Service projects for kids in the garden, help in the garden on planting day, invitations to the community on harvest days all would fit into Organizing for America.
The one thing that we all seemed to agree is that this group needed to meet face to face. It wasn't enough to communicate via email or online blog postings. We gained sustenance from EACH OTHER and so once a month meetings were imperative.
Thus, Face to Face for Change - Twin Cities was created. Its goal seemed simple--to meet on a monthly basis to exchange ideas and plan for change in its many shapes and forms. We will be there to support OFA and this fledgling administration's agenda, in much the same way we supported its agenda during the campaign.
I'll invite you to join as soon as the site has approved our group. We hope to organize for the next phase of this Movement--the part where the lion's share of the work will be involved--creating permanent change we can believe in. I hope to see you there. Katie McGee
President Obama is intelligent (we finally have a president who was at the top of the class) but also down to earth like "We The People". He will/has come up with a Blueprint America Needs NOW. It will be done systematically, thoughtfully and AFTER listening and HEARING EVERYONE on the subjects. Also he has the character and values of caring for ALL people that we need to get our nation back on the right track.
He strongly believes, as do I, that we will NOT Get Out of the "huge mess we are in" to become what we need to be unless we face head-on the issues of Health Care, Energy and Education Reforms AND DO IT NOW.
Oh Yes, I do hear the "chattering heads" of Congress, the media and all around us saying "WHY NOW? We have too many other problems. We need to focus on them first." I say that kind of talk is part of what got us into "this huge mess"--IGNORING--WAITING--AVOIDING "closing our eyes" so as to make the problems go away. SORRY that did not work for me even as a child AND it sure WILL NOT WORK now for our country.
We will not solve "the other problems" UNLESS and UNTIL we REFORM these 3 areas as President Obama plans to do. The money inefficiently spent on Health Care and Foreign Oil will get us into a deeper hole if it is not addressed NOW. The education of our children is what we must count on to survive and compete in a global economy. They are our nation's future. AND we must give them tools NOW for our country's sake and our world.
I am a psychiatric RN who is becoming more and more frustrated with the amount of time I spend on the telephone attempting to get medications approved for patients. This is a decision made by their insurance company EACH of which has totally different rules about which medications can and and cannot be paid for--not always taking into account what is best for the patient. Something must be done so that we ALL are able to receive the best medical care.
I attended a meeting in MN where a group has been working on Health Care Reform for some time. They have researched different ways to find the most effective and efficient manner to have EVERYONE insured. I did not think I would agree that the form they advocated was the best. BUT after this informative session I was totally in agreement that the Single Payer System would be the best.
This is their web site. http://www.muhcc.org/home.html check it out. Rebecca
Minnesota FoodShare's annual March Campaign kicked off on March 1st and your generous donation can play an important role in tackling hunger in our community.
In 2008 the Brian Coyle Food Shelf distributed more than 113,000 pounds of food to residents in the Cedar-Riverside and Seward neighborhoods and has a goal this year of collecting 5,000 pounds/dollars to restock their shelves. Non-perishable goods or financial contributions (checks made payable to Brian Coyle Food Shelf) will be greatly appreciated by the more than 900 families who visit the Brian Coyle Food Shelf each year.
Drop off hours are 2:00pm until 6:00pm on Sunday, March 15th, at the home of DonnaMarie Woodson, who was one of the tireless metro area Obama volunteers. Even one can matters, every little bit helps.
The Coyle Center, named after former vice president of the Minneapolis City Council Brian Coyle, is also proud to host a Farmer's Market once again this summer! Local farmers will sell fresh produce at the Coyle Center on Mondays from 3-7 p.m. beginning July 7th through September 29th, 2008. The Coyle Center is creating choice, change, and connection, one person at a time.
Hello MN Change Agents!As Communications Director of the MN CAN (Community Action Network) I’ve been asked to help get the word out.
By way of introduction, as a tail end baby boomer, I have lived and worked in Minnesota my entire life. More specifically, that currently means living in White Bear Lake but I grew up in Coon Rapids and Anoka school districts, and have lived in Burnsville, Bloomington, Maplewood, Woodbury, Mankato, Golden Valley, and NE Mpls, as well. (For what it’s worth, I also have immediate family in Ham Lake, Andover, Blaine, Lakeville, Minneapolis, St. Paul, St. Cloud, St. Joseph, and Hastings:) Some of you may remember me as we biked—quite literally pedaling thousands of miles—together in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s throughout greater Minnesota with the Jaunt w/Jim (Klobuchar) Ride sponsored by the Minneapolis STRIB.
Others of you may be familiar w/my online efforts during the 2008 campaign, but I also travelled to Indiana and South Dakota to knock on doors during the primary and spent the summer working as a grassroots organizer for the Obama campaign in St. Cloud—where we gathered together to watch then Senator Obama accept the DNC nomination for POTUS at the largest Watch Party in the state of Minnesota. Like many of you I’ve also been hosting and/or attending smaller scale house parties in support of Change for the last two years and feel invested, not to mention heard, in the political process for the first time ever.
My right hand in CAN is Tom Hayes, a tireless self described “non-partisan synergist” for Change who spent hours blogging during the campaign. Tom was an Obama precinct captain in Northfield, worked closely with the metro campaign volunteers and ObamaWorks. In addition, he helped moderate and maintain the Rapid Response group on BarackObama.com. You can learn more about Tom’s leadership/philosophical approach in one of his latest online articles: If You're Not Part of the Solution.
By now you may know a little something about the CAN groups. To be clear we are not OFA 2.0 but a grassroots Community Action Network born of a strong desire to show support for our new President; helping in any way we can to DO SOMETHING about the state of the union inherited from the Bush legacy. So we requested, and graciously received, permission to build out within MyBO throughout the U.S. If you have any specific questions, please feel free to write one of the original founders, LisaLindo@aol.com, for clarification.Someone said it’s impossible to give Barack Obama too much feedback: But we’re going to try anywayJ I believe the phenomenon of this movement for Change evolved as a result of many factors coming together in this time; none of which would have been possible w/out the type of leader we find in President Obama—who has fought hard to provide everyone of us w/access to the information/tools we need to connect the dots. Now, as Tavis Smiley observed on Larry King this evening, their accountability is our responsibility. Thus, we need your help to organize and to put together action events throughout Minnesota to support our President and your communities statewide. (If you are presently located in a different state and want to stay in the loop for local activities, just let us know so we can get you connected.)
In any case we hope you’ll join us on http://My.BarackObama.com/page/group/MinnesotaCAN
We are building out this infrastructure to organize America in support of our new Leader. Please “come out” and join our (virtual) national Barn Building Party for President Obama. Our grassroots teams, in an effort to support Barack, are rolling out Grassroots Government 2.0. before the snow melts!
Our first and foremost immediate objective is to form ranks. To get involved, these are the instructions:1. Join these two groups:o http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/MinnesotaCANo http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/USACAN
2. Update your Personal Profile on MyBO with real contact information so we can interact accordingly.3. Do your part to help us develop this robust nationwide project: All MyBO members who want to participate in Grassroots Government 2.0 need to join their respective State CAN group.
To give you a heads up, a call has been put out for each county across the country to have their second CAN meeting Saturday, March 7th. (In your county, it may be the first meeting as we gear up.) At these face to face meetings in each county across MN we will elect officers, assign issue teams by individual interests, and connect people who share local concerns to work across CAN; joining forces and implementing solutions. This is the plan we make in support of President Barack Obama's upcoming legislation and programs; which are detailed in the President’s Blue Print for Change and posted at www.whitehouse.gov. Please pass this on to your friends, fellow Obama Supporters, list serves et al: The more voices people hear about how important it is to meet up in each county, in each community, the better chance we have of getting bodies in those seats, votes in those polls, and voices in the National Conversation.“We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek..” --Barack Obama
This is not a drill: Now is the time!
