119 Million Americans Must be Wrong (about health care)

119 Million Americans Must Be Wrong

By Robert Parry
June 5, 2009

The peculiar argument that 119 million Americans must be denied the public option that they prefer has been made most notably by Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, which is one of two panels that has jurisdiction over the health insurance bill.

"As many as 119 million Americans would shift from private coverage to the government plan," Grassley wrote in a column for Politico.com. That migration, Grassley said, would "put America on the path toward a completely government-run health care system. … Eventually, the government plan would overtake the entire market."

Grassley's logic is that so many Americans would prefer a government-run plan that the private health insurance industry would collapse or become a shadow of its current self. That, in turn, would lead even more Americans entering the government plan, making private insurance even less viable.

Rarely has an argument more dramatically highlighted the philosophical question of whether in a democracy, the government should represent the people's interests or an industry's.link

We know we won't get single payer unless we work for it.

My first knitted sock,

Complete with many screw ups, but I'll go a bit farther and finish the heel gusset shaping, then I'll frog it down to the end of the cuff and start over. By then I should have learned by all my mistakes and a good sock should result.
Crossing my fingers!

The Big Take Over

Link, The Big Take Over
The entire article is worth reading. Comments in this article in the Rolling Stone include:

People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they're not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d'état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.

The crisis was the coup de grâce: Given virtually free rein over the economy, these same insiders first wrecked the financial world, then cunningly granted themselves nearly unlimited emergency powers to clean up their own mess. And so the gambling-addict leaders of companies like AIG end up not penniless and in jail, but with an Alien-style death grip on the Treasury and the Federal Reserve — "our partners in the government," as Liddy put it with a shockingly casual matter-of-factness after the most recent bailout.

The mistake most people make in looking at the financial crisis is thinking of it in terms of money, a habit that might lead you to look at the unfolding mess as a huge bonus-killing downer for the Wall Street class. But if you look at it in purely Machiavellian terms, what you see is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government into a kind of giant Enron — a huge, impenetrable black box filled with self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of individual profits at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders, previously known as taxpayers.

Boxer photos

 
 
 
 

I got a tattoo!

 

It needs hibiscus and plumeria around it. A memory of my favorite vacation, Kauai.

Feb. 19th already

Wow, not prepared for the year to go by so quickly. I am knitting a sock. If am luck it will be 2 socks. I really am slow at it, so maybe by mid spring one sock will be done??

Why the Obama girls need a boxer dog

 

Got some extra time and a few extra pennies?

I know that I have some free time since the election is over and I wondered what I could do, well here are some ideas I have come up with, anybody else have additions?

Some things you can do:

Donate and/or volunteer at a foodbank. Not sure where Boerne's is located, but here is the San Antonio foodbank which serves our area, it appears.
link

Perhaps we could hold a food drive?
Most Needed Food Items

Peanut Butter
Chili
Canned Stews
Canned Soups
Canned Luncheon Meats
Full Meals in a Can/Box
Tuna
Beans & Rice
Macaroni and Cheese
"Pop Top" Food Items
Full Meals in a Can/Box

Questions?

Contact
Monica Borrego
Food and Fund Drive Coordinator
210-431-8310
mborrego@safoodbank.org

I also found this, but perhaps our librarian can find a local group that does this? This group is in Colorado, website is:
Knitting for Our Troops (K*4*O*T) Caps Project 2009
Pattern Sponsors
We're still counting but so far 5,333 helmet liner hats have been knitted and donated to the Rocky Mountain USO!

Keep checking back this week for official marathon results.
Join the Knitting for Our Troops Project and help reach our goal. We want to send 5280 hand knitted hats from the Mile High City to our soldiers overseas.

Thanks to everyone who participated in our Knitting for Our Troops Marathon on January 23 & 24! Learn more about the marathon (PDF).


Knitting for Our Troops Project - We want you as a new recruit!

Denver library

Food for thought

Randi Rhodes' homework, a valuable resource for all of us. Some items include:
Weasels: Former Lehman CEO sells $13 Million Dollar mansion to wife....for $10
They raped our economy to get rich. They should be facing prison. Instead, former shark CEOs are still playing little games to keep their ill gotten goods
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/business/26fuld.html?_r=1&hp

Euro-trouble
The EC's powerful supereconomy is in deep trouble, with the vaunted euro at risk
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/23/AR2009012304172.html

The Foreclosure Tourniquette
Obama works fast to stem the bleeding
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-housing26-2009jan26,0,5664777.story

Venice, Calif: The RV Refugees
No, these aren't just hippies and college kids living in their RVs in this beach town....they're families with kids who go to local schools. Welcome back to The Grapes Of Wrath.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laland/2009/01/venice-resident.html

For more info, check Randi Rhodes daily on the radio and her website as well: therandhirhodesshow.com

Christmas 2008 with armadillo

 

Rove's IT Guru Warned of Sabotage before plane crash

I found this story very interesting. But, then we all know we have had criminals running this country for the past 8 years at least. Now, the question is, will anybody be investigated and/or go to trial? Here is just one more example:

Rove's IT Guru Warned of Sabotage Before Fatal Plane Crash; Was Set to Testify
Monday 22 December 2008

»
by: Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
Mike Connell, the chief IT consultant to Karl Rove, reportedly asked for protective custody from the government before he died.


Amy Goodman: A top Republican internet strategist who was set to testify in a case alleging election tampering in 2004 in Ohio has died in a plane crash. Mike Connell was the chief IT consultant to Karl Rove and created websites for the Bush and McCain electoral campaigns. He also set up the official Ohio state election website reporting the 2004 presidential election returns.

Connell was reportedly an experienced pilot. He died instantly Friday night when his private plane crashed in a residential neighborhood near Akron, Ohio.

Michael Connell was deposed one day before the election this year by attorneys Cliff Arnebeck and Bob Fitrakis about his actions during the 2004 vote count and his access to Karl Rove's e-mail files and how they went missing.

Velvet Revolution, a non-profit investigating Connell's activities, revealed this weekend that Connell had recently said he was afraid George Bush and Dick Cheney would "throw [him] under the bus." Cliff Arnebeck had also previously alerted Attorney General Michael Mukasey to alleged threats from Karl Rove to Connell if he refused to "take the fall."
full article here

Dana Perino gets black eye in shoe incident

link
So does perfect spokesmodel Dana get a purple heart???
Sorry, I feel quite snide about now.

Bush had SHOES thrown at him

Watch this first

and then the version shown on YouTube

and another version:

Listen carefully for the sounds of the reporter continuing to scream off camera. Not to mention the idiotic comments by the lame duck, who got what he wanted, oil

It's snowing !!!!!!

 
 

We woke the kids up and went outside to play, and had a ball! However, Lexi would not touch the snow, LOL. And, as of 0019 hrs it is still snowing. Wonder what the morning will bring?
Call me crazy but I love snow. I was the biggest kid of all.

Austin on election night...si se puede!

and in hard fought New Mexico...kudos to NM, our neighbors...

Obama sweater

Obama Knitter Girl
Originally uploaded by fyberduck

Found on a knitting blog, what an awesome sweater! Don't I wish I could knit with this skill!

The blog where I found this was Keep on knitting in the free world

Pennsylvania has HOPE

Pennsylvania has HOPE
Originally uploaded by a35mmlife

Found this on a knitter's blog, this was taken in PA! Go PA!

What now?

Barack Obama said the following, which sums up what we need to do now.

"The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. ... There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as president. And we know the government can't solve every problem.

But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And, above all, I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation, the only way it's been done in America for 221 years—block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand."

So, let's go!

Leonard Pitts: ‘We' are finally part of ‘We the People'

Leonard Pitts is right on target:

For most of the years of the American experiment, "we the people'' did not include African Americans. We were not included in "we." We were not even included in ‘‘people."

What made it galling was all the flowery words to the contrary, all the perfumed lies about equality and opportunity. This was, people kept saying, a nation where any boy might grow up and become president. Which was only true, we knew, as long as it was indeed a boy and as long as the boy was white.

But as of today, we don't know that anymore. What this election tells us is that the nation has changed in ways that would have been unthinkable, unimaginable, flat out preposterous, just 40 years ago. And that we, black, white and otherwise, better recalibrate our sense of the possible.

link to full article

How Universal Health Care Changes Everything

Well worth reading, and very true!

By Sara Robinson
With one fell stroke, giving Americans universal access to health care will undermine some of the deepest and most persistent myths of the conservative worldview.
We've worked hard to build a progressive political juggernaut that will, God willing and the creek don't rise, put us in control of both Congress and the Executive Branch starting just a week from now.
But it's one thing to get power, and another thing to keep it.
Someone (OK, it was Rick Perlstein) recently asked a group of friends to name the single most important policy step progressives could take to solidify a long-term grip on the government — the kind of extended run we had from 1932 through to the Age of Reagan.
There were a lot of good answers. Ending privatization was, I thought, the best answer of all. Reinvesting in education is important if we want to ensure that the next generation will support and sustain our work and values. (I like to joke that the reason they call it "liberal education" is that the more of it you have, the more liberal you're likely to be. It's not quite accurate, but it's true enough.) Ensuring that people's interactions with government are useful and positive was another: In a lot of states, one afternoon at the DMV is enough to make the most ardent good-government partisan turn into Grover Norquist. (Maybe we don't want to drag the whole government into the bathtub to drown it, but that SOB at Window 11 would be a fine place to start.)
But in the end, I settled on "provide universal health care—preferably single-payer" as my final answer. I chose this not just because health care is an important public good (though it is), but because I'm convinced that this single step will do more to rapidly and permanently undermine the conservative worldview than anything else we could possibly do.
How Universal Care Changes Everything: The Canadian Example
I've seen this happen, at very close range. Over the course of nearly five years living in Canada, I've been continually impressed by the durable, far-reaching role universal health care plays in expressing and reinforcing the entire country's political philosophy. It's probably not overstating things to say that the health care system is at the very core of the Canadian sense of national identity, right up there with the Mounties and the Hudson's Bay Company and well above the Queen. Every time my neighbors go to the doctor, the experience reaffirms a set of cultural assumptions that, over time, have made and kept the country unwaveringly progressive.
First, they're reminded that taking care of each other is a core Canadian value—a cherished piece of who they are. In the Harper era, the conservatives up here have tried hard to sell American-style rugged individualism and the belief that "you're on your own" (or should be), beholden to no one, needing no one. Most Canadians reject this as a peculiar form of insanity: Their interdependence is so patently obvious to them that it's like denying the existence of gravity. They're so proud of their health care system—and what it says about them as a nation—that, when asked to name the greatest Canadian in history a few years ago, they chose Tommy Douglas, the provincial premier (governor) from Saskatchewan who was the father of the first single-payer plan.
Second, they're reminded that their government does useful and important things that add immensely to their quality of life, and thus deserves their ongoing support. And their high hopes also lead to high expectations. They not only expect a lot from their health care system; they also expect that their police will be respectful and law-abiding, their city parks will be well-tended; and their public buildings will be beautiful. If it takes money to make that happen, they'll spend it—but those who've been trusted with it had better be damned careful. Where Americans believe in "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," the Canadian Constitution calls for "peace, order, and good government." And that set of aspirations is reinforced every time they walk into a doctor's office and get the treatment they need.
Third, they're reminded that certain rights are inalienable, and certain levels of inequality are intolerable—and that every Canadian has an intrinsic and equal entitlement to shelter, food, education, and health care. In the conservative era, America's hypercompetitive society has been very quick to throw away people who haven't made the cut in some way—people without money, connections, or education; people with disabilities that make them economically less viable; people who come from the wrong racial or religious group or the wrong part of the country. You only deserve what you, personally, are capable of earning. If you're badly equipped to do that, it's your own damned fault. If you can't afford health care, you deserve to die. In no case is it the taxpayers' job to step in and make it right.
That attitude is completely foreign up here. It's notoriously hard for immigrants to find good jobs here, but even immigrants get health care. There's a heroin problem in downtown Vancouver, but even junkies get health care. You don't lose your insurance just because you got sick, or got disabled, or had to quit your job; even the unemployed get health care.
Nobody falls through the cracks, no matter what condition their condition is in. Nobody is chained to a job they hate because they can't afford to lose their health care. Nobody has to pass up the chance to go back to school, or take a year abroad, or stay home with their kids. Nobody hesitates before starting their own business, either. The result is a healthier, more skilled, better-traveled, more fulfilled, more entrepreneurial and ultimately more competitive workforce.
A lot of Americans seem downright threatened by the idea that everybody deserves the same level of health care, delivered by the same doctors. It sounds like wild-eyed socialist ranting (all this crazy talk of "rights"!). For Canadians, though, that right is such a basic assumption that it's not even up for discussion. A civilized country does not turn any of its citizens away from the table. And that idea, once set, opens up a broader sense of what we owe each other. Health care is the social contract in daily action. Ultimately, having that contract reaffirmed so intimately and so often affects how my neighbors do business, how they treat the environment, and how they relate to the rest of the world. The effects of this affirmation ripple out into everything Canada touches.
Which brings us to the last observation: sharing a common health care system reminds Canadians that they're all in this together. From the richest to the poorest, everyone arrives and dies in the same hospitals, tended by the same doctors. It's in nobody's interest to let that system fail. (Prairie folks -- Canada's version of Midwesterners -- will tell you that the northern climate extremes also encourage people to look out for each other. And that makes some sense, too: denying help to neighbors and strangers during the winter in places like Edmonton or Winnipeg can all too easily become an act of negligent homicide. In extreme conditions, free access to good hospitals becomes a critical piece of that caretaking.)
The upper classes occasionally try to introduce privatization options in one province or another; but the citizens/patients, the government, and the health care unions have usually brought tremendous pressure to bear to limit or end these experiments. Everybody understands that if the wealthy bail on the system, there won't be the political will to keep the quality high. This conversation is ongoing—and the very fact that they keep having it also helps keep the symbolic importance of the system front and center. Everybody understands very clearly what's at stake.

How Guaranteed Health Care Could Change America
If we could get Americans thinking along similar lines, all manner of impossible things will become possible. With one fell stroke, providing universal access to health care will instantly undermine some of the deepest and most persistent myths of the conservative worldview. People will, very quickly, remember that we cannot function as a democracy unless we're deeply invested in common wealth and a common future—that "you're on your own" is simply a conservative lie that allows the rich to divide and conquer. We'll be startled at first to see just how much a single well-run government program can actually deliver—and then, as our confidence grows, we'll start expecting more of other government efforts, and become more willing to experiment with other kinds of programs. It's quite likely we'll start asking hard questions about programs that divert taxpayers' money away from these essential goods, and re-prioritize our spending. Thrown together into a shared health care system, we may even learn some compassion for each other, and start to heal some of the deep social and political rifts that have divided us for so long.


If it works in the U.S. half as well as it does in Canada, the conservatives will be forced to give up on all those plans for that big 2012 comeback they're so eagerly anticipating right now. With roughly a third of the country either uninsured or under-insured; and everybody else at risk of losing their coverage at a moment's notice, the sheer relief at having that burden lifted from 300 million souls is going to make the old conservative nostrums sound absolutely insane. Anybody who suggests that there's something wrong with universal care, or that it was better the old way, or that this is that Pure Communist Evil they've been warning about since the days of McCarthy, is going to be dismissed out of hand as an ideological crank. Because only people who buy their Kool-Aid by the barrel could even think about going back to the awful way things were in 2008.
It's all happened just this way before, of course. Social Security did all these same things in its time. It shut up the economic royalists and reintroduced Americans to the value of social contracts and a belief in the common good. Americans accepted these ideas so completely that liberals were able to seize control of the country's political discourse, and dominate it for the next four decades. On most issues, the conservatives had no choice but to follow their lead.

Unfortunately, though, all this happened over 70 years ago—so far in the past that most Americans can't even imagine what life was like before we had a guaranteed retirement income. We take that much too much for granted now. Creating a long-term 21st-century progressive renaissance depends on our ability to bring these same lessons home to a whole new generation in the most vivid and unforgettable way possible. Guaranteed health care will do that. It has the potential to become the catalyst for a new season of American progressivism that could last another 40 years.
This notion is no secret to conservatives, who figured out 15 years ago that universal health coverage could well become their undoing. In the heat of the 1993 debate over the proposed Clinton health care plan, Bill Kristol wrote a famous strategy memo in which he argued that "passage of the Clinton health care plan in any form would be disastrous. It would guarantee an unprecedented federal intrusion into the American economy. Its success would signal the rebirth of centralized welfare-state policy at the very moment that such policy is being perceived as a failure in other areas."
Conservatives are already acutely aware that if we get health care that works, they're going to be shut out of power and out of the conversation for decades to come. They also know that, come January, they may find themselves too weak to put up a fight.
Presidential candidate Barack Obama knows it, too, which is why he's made universal health care a central part of his agenda. If he succeeds, I think people are going to be surprised at the depth and speed of the resulting leftward shift in American values. Seeing the government deliver such an essential and powerful good to so many people will permanently discredit many of the most fundamental assumptions of the conservative worldview—and in doing so, will make it much, much harder for the cons to ever make themselves politically relevant again.
There's nothing else that will do so much for so many so quickly—and, at the same time, lay down the sturdy foundation for a long, strong progressive future.

link