Send this to your friends who think right-wing media isn't at the root of some recent murders

I am just so busy in school right now, I have zero time for writing/posting. However, I ran across this today and want to get it onto my blog, because it's a terrific statement about the rise of right-wing hate in America:

Conservative evangelical Christians using the US military to "hunt people for Jesus"

Leaving single-payer off the table is "uniquely American"

Oh, for crying out loud. So now we are being told by key players in Obama’s forum on health care reform that the single-payer option is off the table because “we are the United States of America.” Seriously. If we were just now waking up from a long, three-year Rip Van Winkle-style nap, you’d think we were back in the halcyon Bush days of “you’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists.”

“We have to have our uniquely American health care solution …” So far, so good. That makes sense. We‘re innovative. We adapt. We‘re fired up and ready to change. “It has to be both public and private.” What?! Why the heck did you attempt that jump-shot, Basketball Boy?! It missed the hoop!

And then there’s my personal favorite: We don’t want to “create some system that’s going to scare people.” Thanks to Howard Dean, we can now add single-payer health care to that long list of scary things that pose “a mortal threat to American freedom,” along with radical Islam and passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.

Just looky looky at the mess privatization has made of our military endeavors in Iraq. Looky looky at the mess privatization has made with our public education standards and how we measure “success.” And looky looky at how well private energy interests have responded in timely fashion to global climate change. The list goes on and on and on and on ad infinitum. A pattern is beginning to form, Washington. Please notice.

Listen up, Obama dudes and dude-ettes tasked with changing health care, to these American values! Let’s agree that America be too smart to keep beating herself over her collective head with the same stick. Let’s agree to learn from our past mistakes. Let’s choose to not keep walking down the same proven-to-be-wrong path. If success in health care reform is what we seek, then private insurance “solutions” that have been disastrous over decades must at the very least be scrutinized by people outside the sweet little health insurance party that‘s profited so nicely from their own industry-driven policies. The days of “staying the course” are, like, sooo Bush-era!

Single-payer advocates are not demanding that we ram “socialism” down the throats of middle America. Please stop saying that we are. We are asking that the single-payer option be seriously and fully integrated with all reform discussions. That is a reasonable request, especially given that we all know that a full 59% of Americans right now support “government-provided national health insurance.” And while we’re mulling over that inconvenient-to-the-Obama-health-summit fact, why were a whopping 120 health care reform participants invited to your health summit to represent the views of the other 41% of Americans, while a measly two participants were reluctantly included in an 11th-hour invitation to represent the views of the clear majority of single-payer Americans? Why?!

Why are you not even considering a health care reform option that would create 2.6 million new permanent good-paying jobs, that would add $317 billion to the US economy, that would add $100 billion to employee compensation, and that would add $44 billion in new tax revenues for state and federal budgets? Why on earth aren’t you promoting closer scrutiny of a health care option that is supported by over half of all Americans and that is shown to potentially be an enormous economic boost for our nation?

There can only be one reason that single-payer has been kicked out of the game: Because the health insurance industry lobbyists have succeeded at convincing the White House basketball team that single-payer is only supported by far-left-wingnut fringe extremist wackos with an agenda outside mainstream America.

I’ve got news for you, Washington. We are not fringe extremists. We are mainstream Americans. We come from all walks of life. What sets us apart is that we are not afraid to say “no” to the drunk teen-aged drivers who are trying to intimidate and peer-pressure us into getting into their car after the party, because they insist that if we don‘t, we‘ll have to walk home in the dark. Yup, according to your key players in health care reform, to get into that car would be “uniquely American.”

That, President Obama, is a false choice. I am so disappointed that those you are surrounding yourself with are choosing to link anything-but-single-payer with the concept of America. Shame on them! This is a tragic mistake even for incremental change. Represent all Americans in your health care reform discussions. Otherwise, the health care policies we all end up with at year’s end will just be more of the same, will have little to do with the change you promised us so ardently during your long campaign, and will most certainly not reflect our will or our best interests.

Obama's 2.24 speech: the challenge of health-care

Read my "progressive activist's guide to explaining Obama's points in his 2.24 speech specifically about health-care reform" here.

Petaluma water report to be given on Mon. Feb. 23rd

Here's my letter to the Petaluma City Council in anticipation of the report that Mike Ban, Petaluma's water resources director, will give on our water outlook at 7pm Mon. Feb. 23rd, at City Hall, 11 English St.:

Dear Mayor Torliatt, Vice Mayor Barrett, and the other members of the City Council,

I just read in today's Argus-Courier that Mike Ban, our director of water resources, will give a report to the Council on Mon. Feb. 23rd re Petaluma's water outlook.

Every time there is a water rationing program, its "success" hinges on everyone cutting back on their water usage by the same proportion, usu. something like 20%. If all of us were consuming water prior to the rationing program at the same rate, then this plan would be reasonable, fair, and would probably go far to get us through a water crisis like the one we are entering. However, this is hardly the case.

Two very obvious problems come to mind immediately. First, requiring people to cut water consumption by a percentage of their prior use provides enormous incentive to make sure they're using a lot of water now, to lessen their personal sacrifice later. This is a fatal flaw. I hope our water resources officials will recognize the poor logic that goes into the 20% solution, and remedy it.

Second, my family, along with many others, already practices strict water conservation practices. We already do all of the things that our water resources officials are asking everyone to do to reduce water consumption. We have a low-flush toilet and a water-saving shower head. We do our laundry once a week and make do with what we have to wear for that week, not running extra loads because we want to wear a particular garment that is not clean. We only run our dishwasher when full. We turn off the water in our bathroom sink when brushing our teeth. And, we have a drought-resistant garden and do all we can to practice good water-saving techniques throughout the entire year.

When those who are over-consuming our water are asked to reduce water consumption by 20%, they can meet this requirement handily by adopting some of the conservation practices my family is already on board with. When those of us who are not over-consuming water are asked to reduce consumption by 20%, we must really stretch for additional ways to cut back, ways that go far beyond the ways over-consumers are required to adopt. It might mean that we simply cannot flush our toilet at all throughout the day, that we wash our clothes even less frequently than once a week, and that we shower possibly as little as once a week. This is not what our water resources people intend for us to be doing.

Here's a comment I saved from an article in the 5.15.08 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle made by a municipal water consumer who lives with his family in an East Bay community:

"I've got half an acre of lawn, a swimming pool and three teenagers. I can't afford not to cut back. But I'm not losing the lawn. My kids like it too much. And I'm not losing the pool. I like the pool."

That comment disturbs me greatly, because it indicates that we have a very long way to go to educate ourselves about our collective necessity to not use more water, or other scarce resources, than we "need," while we lack the long time it might take to get to where we do understand how dire our water situation is.

The 20% solution is not a solution. It does not reduce water consumption in the long run. And it does nothing to tamp the usage of over-consumers. Collective, habitual, sustained water conservation is the goal that all water districts need to set their community's sights on.

I ask our water resources officials to put immediate, serious effort into educating water consumers with pools, that the amount of water required to maintain a backyard swimming pool might strike some of us as being not as critical as another's water requirements to maintain minimum safe hygiene in our homes. If I'm required to not flush my low-flush toilet all day long in my sweltering house with no air-conditioning, to possibly not shower at all because that is the only means to achieve a 20% reduction, to wear the same sweaty clothes multiple days in a row, then pool-owners can suffer without a backyard pool for however long it takes to get through a drought that's serious enough to require water rationing.

I ask our water resources officials to suggest that people with lawns give them up. The water that is being used today to keep someone's half-acre green for their teenagers, is water that my family will not be able to use this summer for essential hygiene.

Our water resources officials must understand that a family that's already using a fraction of the water that another family of the same size is using, simply does not have the extra margin to cut into, and that a one-size-fits-all 20% reduction program forces undue hardship on that family. Pro-water conservation families should be rewarded, not penalized, for their initiative in becoming a part of the solution to our water consumption problem before being required to do so by public officials.

Because of my family's proactive, careful water usage, we spend less than $1,000 a year on water, while the family with a pool and a half acre that needs constant watering during the dry season and three teenagers who are apparently not being taught to conserve water is spending almost $17,000 a year on water. Surely, our water resources officials can see the problem here, and come up with something better than an across-the-board 20% reduction plan.

How about a per-person allotment? That makes way more sense than a 20% reduction.

Here is Councilmember David Glass' response:

I agree with your conservation message. The amount to cut back if we hit mandatory rationing as I understand will allow a flat 65 gallons per day per person plus a certain amount over that figure for other use......It is my understanding that in mandatory rationing past high users will not be rewarded. Our water usage and sewer bill for the past two months was a total of 90 dollars for the two month period. There are two of us in the house now and our daughter occasionally when she is home from college. So it is amazing to me how much money and water is wasted by well meaning but unaware people. Thank you for your efforts to conserve. I will attempt to represent your perspective on this issue on Monday night. Thank you for writing. Sincerely, David Glass

Here is Mayor Torliatt's response:

Thank you for your email. The City of Petaluma purchases its water from the Sonoma County Water Agency (SCWA) which is the Board of Supervisors. The Sonoma County Water Agency delivered 58,000 acre feet of water last year to the 10 contractors including the City of Petaluma. SCWA is proposing to only deliver 45,000 acre feet this year. The City of Petaluma does not really have a choice when the Agency reduces the amount of water consumed. Petaluma is working with the other contractors to increase the amount of water up to the 58,000 acre feet again this year. With that said, you certainly bring up a good point and I believe when we look at water conservation and if we ever had to go to mandatory water rationing we would certainly look at the consumption per household as opposed to a 20% cut across the board. I appreciate your thoughts!

Here is Councilmember Healy's response:

Thank you for your thoughtful message. There are many complexities in equitably dealing with a water shortage. Another factor you should keep your eye on is the extent to which Petaluma can use its well system to make up SCWA shortfalls. This is a tricky & likely a contentious issue. Stay tuned,

Mike Healy

Americans should not stand for lock-down on single-payer discussion

(h/t to Laura Bonham, Deputy Director, Progressive Democrats of America)

I hope that whoever picks up where Tom Daschle left off realizes that a HHS Dept. that won't put single-payer on the table for serious, committed discussion is a HHS Dept. that's not committed to real change.

A study released this year by the Institute of Health and Socio-Economic Policy supports the following findings to add to our community discussions this weekend on economic recovery:

Single-payer health-care in America would:

(1) Create 2.6 million new permanent good-paying jobs that would be difficult to ship overseas. For perspective, this number exceeds the number of jobs lost in 2008.

(2) Add $317 billion to the US economy.

(3) Add $100 billion to employee compensation. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what this would do for consumer spending, not to mention taking the pressure off of America's working middle-class.

(4) Add $44 billion in new tax revenues for state and federal budgets. If you don't live in a state that's cash-strapped right now, then you're living in our new 51st state which hasn't been revealed to the rest of us yet.

So it's just flat-out wrong to claim that switching from our for-profit system to single-payer would somehow destroy our economy. And anyone who's out there repeating the "Americans don't give a rat's patoot about single-payer" mantra are beginning to look a lot like Joe the Plumber on FOX News out stumping for the Bush policies

When our policy-makers tell us that America's not ready for single-payer, that's just code for their lack of political will to take on the insurance industry and Big Pharma.

According to a CBS poll taken during the week of Jan. 11th, 59% of Americans today support government-provided national health insurance. So this is not a battle between disagreeing factions within the American population. It is, instead, a battle between the American people and the health-care industry, and which one of these two factions can influence national legislators to develop policy in whose best interests.

"If we're going to really reform health-care in this country, we're going to have to overthrow the power of the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies, the way they're structured. That's not going to be an easy fight. It's not going to be a bloodless fight ... all of history shows that you don't do big change without big fights. A power does not give in without demand, as Frederick Douglass might have put it." -- Mike Lux.

For other current pro-single-payer commentary:
The big, bad joke of health-care reform
Americans should not stand ...

Dear Tom Daschle,

First off, I just want to say that I admire and respect Tom Daschle, the former US Senator who now is the Secretary-designate of Obama’s Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS), the agency that’s theoretically going to change our “fragmented national health-care apparatus.” I hated how he lost his Senate seat in that nasty little Rovian gobsmacking he got back during the 2004 election. And I know he has America’s best interests in his heart, and that he’s going to work very, very hard as our next HHS Secretary. There is no other US politician that I would rather see in that position, at this point in the game.

Second, I apologize in advance if I seem short-tempered. I was up late last night with my daughter at a local urgent care center, while a doctor sewed seven stitches in her thumb after she cut it deeply on the lid of a can of refried beans. You see, her own pediatrician doesn’t do stitches, because they’re not profitable enough for his practice. So now I have a $1,500 hospital bill to contend with, since my health insurance carrier doesn’t pay for non-life-threatening emergencies. (It’s not profitable enough for them.) I’m a little short-fused right now.

To get right to the point of my writing to you … Tom, dump the health insurance lobbyists from your "let's change health-care" agenda meetings! Please!!! Do you honestly think those health insurance industry executive boards are going to be willing to give up their bloated salaries, their corporate perks, and their skyscraper office buildings for us “little people” out here who are struggling from sea to shining sea under the burden of the current health-care crisis? Hell no!

Look. I’m not going to hold it against you that they gave you $5 million over the past four years to tide you over while you figured out how to pay your mortgage and your utilities bill after losing your job in the US Senate. Believe me, I know how tough it is to get laid off and to then discover that there are no jobs out there to replace the one you used to have. Especially when you have to figure out how to pay for your health insurance premiums on your own now. I’m sure yours have risen just as sharply as mine have: a whopping 400% over the past decade. Youch! We can feel each other’s pain!

But seriously, Tom, when you don’t seem to be willing to go near that single-payer option, the option you know deep down inside is the best way for America to go, you know, I start wondering how much of my 400% increase in premiums went toward paying for your freebie car. Sorry if that’s a little blunt. You see, I’m hurtin’ right now, along with millions of others who worked our a***s off during the campaign to get change to happen in Washington. And nobody gave me a free car to use to get the job done. I gladly used my own car to drive all over one of our battleground states for two months, traveling back and forth to my home and family in California at even greater expense, to maintain some semblance of normality for my husband and kids, working to get Obama elected so that you could bring real change to our health-care mess. Heck, Tom. I even schlepped around all those exuberant twenty-something’s who didn’t have a car to do the campaign grunt work that won that historically red state for the Democrats. And no, I didn’t get to write this expense off my taxes. So you can understand why I’m being really generous here by not holding it against you that you failed to pay $140,000 in your taxes for the gifts you got from the health-care industry fat cats who now think you owe them and not me.

Well, according to my calculations, you owe me, Tom. You owe me and all the other volunteers who can only dream of one day having a federal tax liability that’s four times what we earn today, if we’re earning anything since the October financial meltdown. You owe all the other members of our struggling middle class, the ones who turned out to vote in this last election, after they made sure everyone else in their communities turned out as well. You owe all those disfranchised, impoverished people out there who we convinced to register to vote and then vote for change. Think about it, Tom. They won’t show up at the polls next time if you guys who are runnin’ the show now don’t come through like we assured them you would, and like we were promised you would.

This evening, Tom, I’ve set aside another chunk of my time for Obama, to be a part of his Organizing for America teletown hall meeting, to learn why and how he wants me to once again extend my time, energy, and money to help him pass his economic stimulus package. While I’m on that conference call, I’m going to be thinking of you, and wondering who you’re meeting with at that moment. The CEO of Blue Cross of California? So you can pick out what color SUV you want this year? So you can decide which gas company corporate charge card you’re going to get? Remember, it doesn’t matter if they’re your friends or not, Tom. Like I tell my kids, choose your friends carefully. Get some new friends. Like us. Nobody’s giving us “little people” any corporate perks to keep fighting for change, to keep fighting to undo the unfair influence that comes out of these meetings you’re having with America’s health-care captains-of-industry. Remember, I know that you know deep down inside your heart that single-payer health-care for all Americans is the best option out there. And by golly, I’m gonna support you to get that for us, even in the face of this odious little press gobsmacking you’re getting right now for being on-the-take from your lobbying pals.

You’re the best, Tom. I know you can do this, this being to dump your lobbying pals from the health-care change thing. If us “little people” can spend months out of our five-figure-income lives, at our own expense, using our own cars, paying for our own gas, paying for our own expenses out-of-pocket, without getting no tax write-off perk, to elect Barack Obama to bring about change to America, then by golly, you can give us the national health-care policy you know we have earned.

So please forgive me my sleep-deprived, financially-stressed short fuse today, as I have forgiven you for not paying your fair share of taxes and for taking bribes (AKA consulting fees) from political extortionists (AKA lobbyists). You betcha I’ll be on that conference call tonight, because somebody’s got to support you and the rest of Obama's team to make sure this whole change thing actually transpires.