Rep. Weiner single payer amendment to be introduced today, after yesterday's attack on the scourge of government-run health care

Rep. Anthony Weiner's office says the single payer amendment will be introduced today--any last-minute calls will be welcome. See this post for a "whip list" of likely supporters. The full House Energy and Commerce committee membership is here.

Meanwhile, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) introduced an amendment to the committee yesterday--not a single payer plan, but a "put up or shut up" amendment to eliminate Medicare. It was a challenge to his retrograde colleagues who claim that competition by the private sector is the best way to expand coverage and that government "interference" would deform the doctor-patient relationship. He makes good points about why we need to expand the single-payer government-run system we have, and defends the common-sense view that most Americans would welcome enlarging Medicare to cover everyone. It's theater, but he deserves a round of applause.

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Obama: Renegotiate NAFTA as You Promised

Pressure from individuals, civil groups, and Congress must be brought to bear so that Obama makes good on a campaign promise to renegotiate NAFTA--and the upcoming SPP summit would be a good time to put that process into motion.

by Manuel Pérez-Rocha and Stuart Trew; edited by Emily Schwartz Greco. Posted at Foreign Policy in Focus, July 27

Starting my first year in office, I will convene annual meetings with Mr. Calderón and the prime minister of Canada. Unlike similar summits under President Bush, these will be conducted with a level of transparency that represents the close ties among our three countries. We will seek the active and open involvement of citizens, labor, the private sector and non-governmental organizations in setting the agenda and making progress.

- Barack Obama, in a February 20, 2008
Dallas Morning News op-ed

Though Mexican President Felipe Calderón and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper have done everything to maintain the status quo on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), President Barack Obama has promised to "push the restart button" on several trade deals. While it's debatable how much his administration actually differs from its predecessor in these areas, trade activists remain hopeful that Obama will stick to his promises to renegotiate NAFTA and reconsider its expansion through the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP).

Those promises include the above comment, which Obama made when he was still vying to become the Democratic presidential nominee.

Obama wrote those words shortly before the fourth annual SPP summit took place in New Orleans. By that time, the annual gathering of North American government officials and private-sector executives had become a lightning rod for criticism across the political spectrum and across borders. Indeed, the summits have been closed-door venues for pursuing a private sector-led agenda of deregulation and militarization, an agenda that calls for lowering environmental and consumer safety standards and curbing civil liberties, under the guise of making North America more "secure and prosperous."

Once Obama took office we became hopeful, despite the unwillingness of our countries' own leaders, Calderón and Harper, to widen the North American dialogue. However, more than six months into this administration, with the next North American leaders' summit coming up on August 9 and 10 in Guadalajara, trade activists like us are more in the dark than ever about what the United States would like to accomplish during the next phase of these trinational talks.

Will opening up the summits to greater civil society participation become just another forgotten campaign pledge? Will the Obama administration continue to ignore calls from concerned citizens in Canada, Mexico, and the United States to renegotiate a free trade agreement that increasingly serves only the slimmest of elite interests and needs a complete overhaul?

Security for Whom?
The Guadalajara meeting will be the fifth such gathering since the current three North American leaders' predecessors — former presidents Vicente Fox and George W. Bush and former Canadian prime minister Paul Martin — committed, in Waco, Texas in 2005 to deepen the NAFTA relationship and expand it into areas not covered by that agreement. The three leaders, nicknamed the "three amigos," called this new trilateral arrangement the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). It included different attempts to merge policies in the three countries on a number of areas: border security and anti-terrorism measures, energy sector integration, environmental protection, emergency preparedness, safety standards and more.

While regional cooperation in many of these areas is desirable, it became clear early on in the SPP process that the ultimate policy objectives were less so, at least for the public interest.

The SPP has meant the escalation of U.S.-led militarization in Mexico via the Mérida Initiative and other mechanisms that haven't stopped Mexico's growing human rights violations or the unstoppable violence in a failed "war on drugs." In Canada, new Homeland Security-RCMP policing operations (such as the Shiprider project on the Great Lakes and shared Pacific waters) blur traditional state borders, allowing armed U.S. Homeland Security officers to operate on Canadian soil.

Prosperity for Whom?
The SPP's economic agenda has included efforts to "harmonize" how and what all three governments regulate with the stated aim of "reducing the cost of doing business across borders."

Effectively, this business-driven demand has meant deregulation in areas as important as food safety — moving to industry self-regulation — and environmental protection, including increased pesticide residue limits on hundreds of fruits and vegetables.

Other corporate demands have resulted in plans to cut the "transaction costs of exports" — like NAFTA's rules of origin — by $100 billion, according to the leaders' latest joint statement (although a report from governments of how much has actually been cut is pending). Rules of origin can guarantee the inclusion of local and national content in goods traded across borders, and their elimination affects small producers who could use them, with the help of development agencies, to provide input in trinational trade. In practice, eliminating these rules means renegotiating NAFTA in closed-door ministerial meetings.

The SPP's "energy integration" provisions have meant churning out five times more dirty oil from Canada's tar sands and pressure on Mexico to privatize its state-owned oil and gas industry, which does nothing to help the North American region to transition away from fossil fuels, while further tying Canadian and Mexican resources to insatiable U.S. energy needs, and deepening U.S. dependence on foreign energy sources.

And finally, whose partnership are we talking about here? Our leaders have pursued these goals without any public oversight. Legislators haven't been consulted, and working groups often were dominated by big business. The North American Competitiveness Council, comprised of 30 of the continent's largest corporations, has been the SPP's only advisory body and the only group invited to the annual summits like the one coming up in Guadalajara. Business groups are currently waiting in the wings, ready to "offer strategic advice and support to the leaders," in the words of the Canadian and U.S. Chambers of Commerce, "either through the NACC or its successor mechanism."

Failed Model
The abject failure of NAFTA and its SPP offshoot to bring "security and prosperity" to North America is clear with the economic, environmental, and social crises now affecting this region and much of the world. Unemployment is high, global warming is escalating, and the need to transition away from carbon-intensive energy sources is irrefutable. Multiple food and consumer product safety scandals, notably the recent swine flu epidemic that has been linked to poorly regulated meat processing plants that have spread throughout Mexico since NAFTA came into effect, have called the bluff of business lobbies seeking further deregulation. So has the financial crisis — which resulted from unregulated trade in novel financial products totally detached from the real economy.

Mexico in particular is sinking into an unprecedented social and economic crisis. The drug war, perpetrated by Calderón with U.S. military help, has only exacerbated the nation's plague of violence. Since 2006, an estimated 12,000 people have died because of this war — the body count in 2009 so far is 3,363. There are also reports of a six-fold increase in human rights abuses also since 2006.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has just announced that while most of the world is seeing signs of recovery, the contraction of the Mexican economy this year will be double what was predicted just three months ago: a 7.3% rate. The fact that Mexico has become so vulnerable makes it crucial to critically analyze why NAFTA has not helped the country, even when trade and investment has increased.

New Model
The "free-market" ideology at the heart of NAFTA and its expansion to the realms of security through the SPP must be replaced with a people-focused model of sustainable economic growth that puts human rights, environmental protection, and job creation ahead of profits. These were Obama's promises as a candidate, when his refreshing new ideas tore through the language of "security" and "prosperity" to reveal the divisive policies these euphemisms hide.

Will the U.S. president turn back on his promise by simply reviving, even if it's under a new name, the failed Security and Prosperity Partnership dialogue? Or will he heed, for example, the advice of over 100 U.S. members of congress and civil society networks who want to revisit NAFTA, to strengthen environmental and labor standards and promote just investment rules and fair trade among other changes?

Maybe Obama hasn't made his mind up yet. In that case, we offer a simple piece of advice: In Guadalajara, make it clear that you will reverse the corporate coup d'etat that took over North American relations; announce that you're closing down the SPP and push the reset button. Agree with Calderón and Harper to start renegotiating NAFTA. Give us hope that another North America is possible.

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Kucinich amendment goes to House floor

Rep. Dennis Kucinich's amendment to the House health care reform bill to better empower states to enact their own single payer systems is heading toward a floor vote.

Posted July 28 at the Huffington Post.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus is pressing Democratic leaders to allow a vote on the House floor on a measure that would allow individual states to adopt a single-payer health care system.

"This could end up being one of the most important developments to come out of the bill," Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), the sponsor of the amendment, told the Huffington Post Monday night.

A vote on the bill isn't guaranteed, but progressive Democrats are working behind the scenes to make sure the House either pushes it through or puts representatives on record against it.

"If it doesn't stay in the bill, I think it's something that you can count on a lot of us asking that we have a stand-alone vote on," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), co-chair of the progressive caucus.

"Progressives have already given up what we really want. We want the single payer and by-golly we deserve to vote on it for our states," she said. Kucinich's single-payer option measure recently passed the full Education and Labor Committee.

The impetus for the bill stems from the fact that the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) could allow insurance companies or other stakeholders to sue a state that enacted single-payer health care. Kucinich's measure would give states the freedom to enact a single-payer program without the threat of legal action.

Any chance that the Republican Party, which traditionally backs states' rights, could sympathize with the Kucinich amendment?

"On our side you mean?" asked Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), a leading conservative voice. "No."

States' rights?

"No," said Pence. The vote would pit two competing principles against each other - states' rights and doing the bidding of their corporate overlords opposition to public health care. The latter wins. (sorry. it screamed for clarification. --blog editor)

"We believe that the cure for what ails health care in America is more competition, not putting government at the state or national level on the pathway to socialized medicine," he said.

Kucinich said he is "cautiously optimistic." He added that the measure is designed as a backup plan in case health care reform passes but fails in its objective of providing universal access to affordable care.

"There's been a very strong response to this once it passed the Education and Labor Committee," he said. "I would compare it to a lifeboat that saves health care if this plan somehow doesn't work and saves the right of a state to be able to protect the health care of its own residents."

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In Boston, Thursday July 30, Rally at the State House for Single Payer

On July 30th, Medicare turns 44. To celebrate, attend a rally to ask Governor Patrick and candidates Charlie Baker and Christy Mihos to give America the gift of Medicare For All!

Expanding Medicare to cover everyone in America would mean lower health care costs, better medical treatment, and improved access to vital health services for all of us. Join us to ask candidates to give the gift of universal health care to our country!

Thursday, July 30
12 Noon
Front Steps, State House Boston

For more information, call (860) 281-9792, or visit www.massjwj.net

Sponsors: Mass-Care, Jobs With Justice, Mass Nurses Association, Democratic Socialists of America, Boston Liberation Health Group, Physicians for a National Health Plan, Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action, Our Bodies Ourselves, Alliance for Democracy, UE Northeast Region, Progressive Democrats of America

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Obama held secret meetings with health execs

More information on negotiations between the Obama Administration and the pharmaceutical industry, and White House visits by top execs.

by Sharon Theimer. Posted on Capitol Hill Blue July 23

Administration officials began talking privately to major players in the health care industry within a few weeks of President Barack Obama's inauguration, a newly released list of White House visitors shows.

Obama on Wednesday night released the list of visits by health care executives after a government watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, announced it planned to sue to try to get White House visitor logs. Only names and dates were released, not the visitors' titles or employers.

So far, the Obama administration is following a Bush administration policy of refusing to release the logs, which are maintained by the Secret Service.

The list shows that Richard Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association, was at the White House on Feb. 4 and has been back at least a half-dozen times since then, most recently May 22. Other industry executives making February visits included health insurance company chief executives Angela Braly of WellPoint Inc. and Jay Gellert of Health Net Inc.

Gellert, a $500 donor to Obama's presidential campaign, was there Feb. 10, twice in March and on May 11, while Braly visited on Feb. 13.

In recent weeks, the White House has announced agreements under which hospitals and the pharmaceutical industry promised cost savings in return for an expanded base of insured patients. The deals were struck in private meetings, drawing comparisons to Vice President Dick Cheney's secret talks with the energy industry as he helped President George W. Bush draft a national energy policy. Cheney's 2001 meetings were criticized by Democrats throughout the Bush years.

During his presidential campaign, Obama promised to hold lobbyists at arm's length and make his administration the most transparent ever.

Obama was asked at a news conference Wednesday night about his administration's refusal to say who has been to the White House to discuss a national health care overhaul.

"On the list of health care executives who visited us, most of time you guys have been in there taking pictures," he told the assembled reporters, "so it hasn't been a secret. And my understanding is we just sent a letter out providing a full list of all the executives. But, frankly, these have mostly been at least photo sprays where you could see who was participating."

CREW said it was pleased that the White House had provided the list but that it didn't consider it a sufficient response to its Freedom of Information Act request for the visitor logs themselves. It plans to continue pressing for them.

"The actual visitor records likely would indicate with whom each official met, the administration official who requested clearance for the visitor, the time of the meeting, the duration of the meeting and, in some cases, the purpose of the meeting. In addition, no information was provided regarding any visits to the vice president's residence," CREW said in a written statement.

Gregory Craig, White House counsel, told CREW in a letter that the White House was continuing to review the group's open-records request, "as well as the White House's general policy governing the discretionary release of visitor records.

Other health care industry representatives named in the list and the dates they visited were:

Registered lobbyist Billy Tauzin, a former Louisiana congressman who heads the drug industry lobby, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. He went to the White House on March 5, the day of a summit on health care, and again on May 11, 19, June 2 and June 24.

Registered lobbyist Karen Ignagni, president and CEO of America's Health Insurance Plans, an industry trade association, March 5, 6 and 11, May 11 and June 30.

Dr. J. James Rohack, president-elect of the American Medical Association, March 25, May 11, and June 22 and 24.

William Weldon, CEO of Johnson & Johnson health care product and pharmaceutical company, May 12.

Jeffrey Kindler, CEO of drug maker Pfizer Inc., March 5, May 6 and June 2.

UnitedHealth Group Inc. chief executive Stephen Hemsley, May 15 and 22.

George Halvorson, head of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc., March 27, May 11 and June 5.

Thomas Priselac, chief executive of the Cedars-Sinai Health System, April 3 and May 11.

Richard Clark, CEO of the Merck & Co. pharmaceutical company, March 24 and May 11.

Wayne Smith, chief executive of Community Health Systems, June 4.

Registered lobbyist Rick Smith, a senior vice president of PhRMA, May 11 and 19 and June 2.

David Nexon, senior executive vice president with trade association AdvaMed, May 11.

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No markup, and no amendment on Friday

The latest from Rep. Anthony Weiner's office is that there will be no markup, and thus no amendment for single payer, today (Friday), or over the weekend.

Keep those calls coming and in the meantime, watch and read the following. The video is a more succinct edit of Weiner's opening remarks on Friday, July 17, which we posted last week. He ranks on the Republicans, but it's clear from both the Washington Post and "Blue Dogs Fill Their Bowls With Cash" that the Democrats have their own reasons to obstruct reform.

This article by Rep. Weiner was posted on Politico.com on Thursday.

It seems that big legislation isn’t complete until it develops a collection of catchphrases. (“Shovel ready,” everyone? “Cash for clunkers,” perhaps?) The effort to tackle the long list of failings of our health care system and the way we pay for it has been no exception. This time, we are arguing over the so-called public option.

The phrase has become something of a Rorschach test for lobbyists, commentators and legislators. To the president and to bill writers in Congress, the public option has come to mean that a government-run plan is the only way to truly keep private insurance companies honest, by guaranteeing that at least one provider is focused on something more than the bottom line.

To insurance company lobbyists and — from the sound of it — nearly every Republican, the public option is more a confirmation of their fear that the Obama administration is out to nationalize another industry. They argue that the public option would soon become the only option because it would have too many advantages in the marketplace.

Without acknowledging it, both sides seem to agree with the argument for a single-payer system. But instead of having a debate about its value, both sides have turned the idea into an odd punching bag. The right uses the term “single-payer” to condemn the White House approach, while the White House — and my colleagues in the House and Senate — quickly decry the scurrilous charge and concoct legislative language to make their public option look less, well, public.

By conceding that the public option would have less overhead, be more efficient and have the freedom to focus on health care rather than profits, opponents of the public option are in fact arguing for it. Isn’t complaining about the marketplace “advantage” of the public plan just another way of saying that people are going to want it?

The public option would prompt Americans to ask a basic question of the insurance company that is chasing their business: “What is it that you guys do, exactly?”

Insurance companies don’t really do anything to make people healthier. They need to be efficient gatekeepers on behalf of their shareholders. Profits at 10 of the country’s largest health insurance companies rose 428 percent from 2000 to 2007. So if you think that the private “option” won’t be selected by citizens, it stands to reason that they want a public one.
Democrats who have been tasked with drafting the health care bill have been going to great lengths to assure everyone that it will not be a single-payer system. This is more a testament to a branding problem than a policy one. (Remember: It wasn’t a “bailout”; it was a “recovery.”)

But the arguments for a public option do leave you wondering why you would need or want a private insurance plan. We know that insurance companies rely on a formula to provide as little health care as possible for each dollar they take in. This isn’t because they are uncaring. It is because they are good business people.

With taxpayers, consumers and workers paying an enormous amount more than necessary because of this model, it seems odd that we would be so concerned about protecting it.

What would a public-only or a single-payer system look like? It would look like Medicare for everyone. We are all aware of the problems facing Medicare: looming deficits; incentivizing expensive institutional care rather than alternatives; squeezing doctors; etc.

But these are not a reflection of a failure of the single-payer system. They are failures to make smart decisions about what we pay for and how. There is no doubt that we must fix our present single-payer system, but none of its problems change the fact that Medicare is a popular, well-understood, amazingly efficient form of — wait for it — socialized medicine.

The dean of the House of Representatives, John Dingell, had it right when he introduced the notion of Medicare for all in 2006. We can correct the many gaps in today’s Medicare, not by buying stock in an insurance company or by staying on hold for a “benefits specialist” or by complaining to a state insurance commissioner. We do it by passing a law or a regulation that reflects the best interests of the nation.

Implicit in the Democratic plan — and the Republican opposition to it — is a tacit recognition that single-payer health plans like Medicare are the best way to go. I want to engage in this debate and will offer a single-payer plan to a vote as my colleagues and I mark up the health care bill. Maybe this issue is important enough that we can do the right thing even without a great catchphrase.

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The latest on the single-payer vote

The vote on Rep. Anthony Weiner's single payer amendment has been postponed to Friday. According to Democrats.com & Bob Fertik, House Energy and Commerce Committee chair Harvey Waxman is postponing the vote because it might pass, especially on the heels of the Kucinich Amendment for a single-payer state option, which passed by a healthy bi-partisan majority.

Fertik also points out that the truth about single payer is getting out, and it's not just the people who are telling it. Last night, during President Obama's press conference, he concurred with the medical community, the developed world, and common sense:

"I want to cover everybody. Now, the truth is that, unless you have a single-payer system, in which everybody is automatically covered, then you're probably not going to reach every single individual."

Democrats.com has a handy whip list of Dems on the Energy and Commerce Committee who are leaning "yes" on single payer, or who have not indicated their stand:

Lean Yes
Diana DeGette, CO01, 202-225-4431
Jane Harman, CA36, 202-225-8220
Christopher Murphy, CT05, 202-225-4476
Frank Pallone, NJ06, 202-225-4671
Bobby Rush, IL01, 202-225-4372
Peter Welch, VT00, 202-225-4115

Won't Say / "Not Enought Votes"
Rick Boucher, VA09, 202-225-3861
Bruce Braley, IA01, 202-225-2911
G.K. Butterfield, NC01, 202-225-3101
Lois Capps, CA23, 202-225-3601
Kathy Castor, FL11, 202-225-3376
John Dingell, MI15, 202-225-4071
Charles Gonzalez, TX20, 202-225-3236
Gene Green, TX29, 202-225-1688
Jay Inslee, WA01, 202-225-6311
Doris Matsui, CA05, 202-225-7163
Jerry McNerney, CA11, 202-225-1947
John Sarbanes, MD03, 202-225-4016
Bart Stupak, MI01, 202-225-4735
Betty Sutton, OH13, 202-225-3401
Henry Waxman (Chair), CA30, 202-225-3976

If these folks can be brought on board, the amendment will pass. Your calls are vital and they are working!

Democrats.com is collecting feedback from calls here. We'd also like to hear what your reps have to say--you can post a comment here. There's also a petition to representatives at the Democrats.com site.

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Capitol Hill Blue: Obama sells out to drug, hospital lobbyists

The Obama administration's negotiations with drug companies and hospitals are leaving some stakeholders out of the room--and raise the prospect that, like the Bush energy policy, industry is writing "reform".

by Sharon Theimer. Posted on Capitol Hill Blue July 22.

In cutting deals with hospitals and drug makers, President Barack Obama is giving a private inside track to special interests that's at odds with his promise to make policy in the open.

Obama promised Americans he would hold special interests at arm's length — that it would no longer be business as usual in Washington. He pledged to open government and let the public and press hold his administration accountable.

And just over two months before the 2008 election, Obama promised before an audience in Chester, Va., to hash out a health care overhaul in public. "We'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies," he said then.

That didn't happen.

Instead, the administration's multibillion-dollar deals with hospitals and pharmaceutical companies have been made in private, and the results were announced after the fact. Both industries promised Obama cost savings in return for an expanded base of insured patients; beyond that, the public is in the dark about details.

In some ways, it resembles what his party criticized President George W. Bush for doing with oil and gas companies as Vice President Dick Cheney wrote a national energy plan in the early days of the Bush administration.

As the Bush White House did, the Obama White House is refusing to release visitor logs that would let people see everyone going in and out during the thick of discussions over major national policies.

Just as environmentalists complained they were shut out as Cheney drafted energy policy, employers now complain that the Obama administration isn't giving them enough say in health care policy. Like the environmentalists, employers fear a new policy will come at their expense.

"There's beginning to be a little bit of, 'Where are all these deals getting us?'" E. Neil Trautwein, chief health care lobbyist for the National Retail Federation, said recently, referring to business concerns that the hospital and drug company pacts would force employers to pay more for workers' medical benefits. "Is this going to add to the process or subtract from it?"

The White House had no immediate comment.

So what happened to the promises?

When cutting special interests out of his campaign and then his administration, Obama targeted people currently registered as Washington lobbyists. He never said he would cut off the companies, unions, trade associations and others that employ lobbyists — just lobbyists themselves. And even then, he has made exceptions here and there.

Presidents, regardless of party, prefer to keep their dealmaking private, obscuring what's being said, what's being taken and given, and by whom. It's messier and less practical to open the door to a lot of public input, particularly on a national scale. It's much easier to use polls to gauge what the public thinks.

That means the interests whose ideas make it into national policy are usually those with the money and clout to press their case in Washington and the power to block any idea they haven't helped shape.

Sharon Theimer has been an investigative reporter in the AP's Washington bureau since 2001.

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Single payer on the Colbert Report

Last night's Colbert Report featured an interview with Aaron Carroll, director of the center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research at the Indiana University School of Medicine.

You can jump to the interview from today's Colbert Nation page by clicking on the video frame at the top of the page on the far right.

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Help the Mad as Hell Doctors take to the road

A message from Dr. Paul Hochfeld, emergency room physician and producer of the documentary Health, Money and Fear:

Dear Single Payer Supporters:

We’re mad! Aren't you? The Industry is blatantly manipulating public policy for profits. Despite the support of the majority of Americans and the efforts of PNHP, its members, and innumerable national organizations, Congress refuses to consider the only real solution: Single Payer Health Care.

What’s missing? We need a rallying event that both national and local media can easily and eagerly embrace. Enter: the Mad As Hell Doctors road tour.

The vision… Imagine a small group of doctors crossing the country in a wrapped motor home, expressing our outrage in public rallies, making TV/radio appearances, hearing peoples’ stories, uploading video, attracting serious media attention, and pulling into D.C. with a caravan of cars to raise Hell with Congress. We will demand that they put Single Payer Health Care on the table for the Congressional Budget Office evaluate, and put it to a vote.

This is a serious effort. "We" have already put up $15,000 of our own money to cover the cost of phase one, which includes hiring Gary Jelinek (Dennis Kucinich's National 2004 Campaign Organizer) and Adam Klugman (Jack Klugman's son who is a creative media consultant). Phase two is the trip.

If our road trip captures your imagination and you share our anger, we need your help. Not only do we need funding, we need people in communities like yours to help organize/publicize rallies and contact local media prior to our arrival.

Please, share this email with your chapter members. We can bring this vision to life. We can energize the Single Payer movement.

To find out more and support this effort, go to www.MadAsHellDoctors.com, or call Paul Hochfeld at 541-740-4065. (email: phochfeld@msn.com)

Best regards and be well. Being otherwise is very expensive.

Oregon PNHP:
Dr. Samuel Metz (Anesthesiology)
Dr. Joe Eusterman, (Retired Primary Care Provider)
Dr. Eugene Uphoff, (Family Medicine)
Dr. Paul Hochfeld, (Emergency Medicine, producer of "Health, Money and Fear")
Dr. Mike Huntington, (Retired Radiation Oncologist, co-convener Oregon PNHP)

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Wednesday markup postponed!

An email from Marie Ternes, Rep. Weiner's chief of staff:

I wanted to let all of you know that the markup for tomorrow has been postponed. So the Weiner single-payer amendment will not be offered tomorrow.

Keep the calls to Committee members coming. They have been very helpful.

We will keep you posted as we learn more.

Marie

We repeat: keep the calls coming! And thank you!

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The Ayes have it: Regional conventions on tap for 2009

Alliance members have overwhelmingly approved a bylaw change to allow regional biennial meetings as an alternative to a single national convention. Thanks to everyone who voted! Please keep an eye on our webpage and blog for updates on regional meeting plans, dates, locations and program.

The New England region is already planning a meeting, most likely in late October/early November. If you'd like to be added to the email list for planning and announcements, please contact the national office at afd@thealliancefordemocracy.org.

Other chapters should be announcing plans soon. If you're not close to a chapter but would like to get together with other members in your area, please email the office at afd@thealliancefordemocracy.org or call Barbara at 781-894-1179. We will help you locate fellow members and can assist with program planning, speakers, and other logistics. Events can be large or small, a chance to network with other groups across issues or focus more closely on corporate rule. Conventions are also an opportunity to review progress on national campaigns, propose resolutions and new campaign areas, and introduce candidates for national council.

So far, members have put forth the following suggestions for themes and organization:
Michael Moore’s new film, “Capitalism: A Love Story” is due out October 2, one year and a day after the U.S. Senate approved the first Wall Street bailout. 2009 is also the 10th anniversary of the Battle in Seattle – AfD was there (remember the ponchos?) and Obama promised on the campaign trail to re-think NAFTA and the trade agreements. These anniversaries could spark discussion of trade, regional or local economies, globalization and alternatives to current financial structures. Our most recent issues of Justice Rising has plenty of information and suggestions for actions: check out “Money for People not Corporate Plunder” and "Deglobalization/Relocalization"

October is also "Blue October," and a time to focus on water resource protection, the water commons, rights of nature, and local/regional decision-making. Many of these issues are key to recent work of our Defending Water for Life Campaign.

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Tapestry of the Commons for school kids in development this summer

AfD co-chair Nancy Price recently returned from a two-week residency on the theme of “water and the commons” at the Blue Mountain Center in up-state New York along with a group of artists, filmmakers, and writers and two other water activists. She worked on an outline for a public school curriculum for the Tapestry of the Commons beginning with the “water” and “rules” ribbons.

Nancy says: “I made good progress on the curriculum and am beginning to reach out to teachers I’ve met about using the Tapestry in their classrooms. If you have a friend or family member teaching in grades 4-12 who might be interested, please let me know at nancytprice@juno.com.”

Nancy also reports that she will be writing a monthly column on “any topic of her choosing” for The People’s Vanguard of Davis, the new on-line investigative newspaper and blog. “You can be sure” she says, “that I’ll keep the issue of corporate power and rule at the forefront” of any topic I address, just as we have in Justice Rising over the years on a range of important themes.”

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Vote Wednesday on Weiner Amendment!

Our office email is down and we just learned that the vote on the Weiner Amendment will be tomorrow, Wednesday, which means that it is not too late for you to call your rep on the House Energy and Commerce Committee or, if your Representative isn't a member, committee chair Henry Waxman at 202-225-3976.

The insurance, health care and drug industries have money. We have our voices and our votes. So pick up that phone now!

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Where your health care dollars go: "Industry Cash flowed to drafters of reform, key Senator Baucus is a leading recipient"

Baucus's senate finance committe is no friend to either single payer or public option--any guess why? If you've paid for a prescription or written a check for health insurance or a hospital co-pay, there's a good chance you've helped industry convince a legislator to deny you and your family better health care. Good graphic showing who got what as a percentage of the whole here, and a convincing case for public election funding, campaign finance reform, and a repudiation of "money = free speech."

by Dan Eggen. Published by the Washington Post, July 21

As liberal protesters marched outside, Sen. Max Baucus sat down inside a San Francisco mansion for a dinner of chicken cordon bleu and a discussion of landmark health-care legislation under consideration by his Senate Finance Committee.

At the table on May 26 were about 20 donors willing to fork over $10,000 or more to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, including executives of major insurance companies, hospitals and other health-care firms.

"Most people there had an agenda; they wanted the ear of a senator, and they got it," said Aaron Roland, a San Francisco health-care activist who paid half price to attend the gathering. "Money gets you in the door. The only thing the other side can do is march around and protest outside."

As his committee has taken center stage in the battle over health-care reform, Chairman Baucus (D-Mont.) has emerged as a leading recipient of Senate campaign contributions from the hospitals, insurers and other medical interest groups hoping to shape the legislation to their advantage. Health-related companies and their employees gave Baucus's political committees nearly $1.5 million in 2007 and 2008, when he began holding hearings and making preparations for this year's reform debate.

Top health executives and lobbyists have continued to flock to the senator's often extravagant fundraising events in recent months. During a Senate break in late June, for example, Baucus held his 10th annual fly-fishing and golfing weekend in Big Sky, Mont., for a minimum donation of $2,500. Later this month comes "Camp Baucus," a "trip for the whole family" that adds horseback riding and hiking to the list of activities.

To avoid any appearance of favoritism, his aides say, Baucus quietly began refusing contributions from health-care political action committees after June 1. But the policy does not apply to lobbyists or corporate executives, who continued to make donations, disclosure records show.

Baucus declined requests to comment for this article. Spokesman Tyler Matsdorf said the senator "is only driven by one thing: what is right for Montana and the country. And he will continue his open process of working together with the president, his colleagues in Congress, and groups and individuals from across the nation to get this legislation passed."

Baucus's fundraising prowess underscores the enduring political strength of the health-care lobby, which led all other sectors in donations to federal candidates during the last election cycle and has shifted its giving to Democrats as the party has tightened its control of Congress.

The sector gave nearly $170 million to federal lawmakers in 2007 and 2008, with 54 percent going to Democrats, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks money in politics. The shift in parties was even more pronounced during the first three months of this year, when Democrats collected 60 percent of the $5.4 million donated by health-care companies and their employees, the data show.

Many of these contributions have been focused on Baucus, Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and other senators in the moderate camps of their respective parties, whose votes could prove crucial in a final health-care reform deal, as well as the leaders of five key committees leading the debate. Grassley, the Finance Committee's ranking Republican, received more than $2 million from the health and insurance sectors since 2003. House Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) took in $1.6 million from the health sector and its employees over the past two years; ranking Republican Dave Camp (Mich.) received nearly $1 million.

But Baucus, a senator from a sparsely populated and conservative Western state who is serving his sixth term, stands out for the rising tide of health-care contributions to his campaign committee, Friends of Max Baucus, and his political-action committee, Glacier PAC. Baucus collected $3 million from the health and insurance sectors from 2003 to 2008, about 20 percent of the total, data show. Less than 10 percent of the money came from Montana.

Top out-of-state corporate contributors included Schering-Plough, New York Life Insurance, Amgen, and Blue Cross and Blue Shield; individual executives such as Richard T. Clark, chief executive and president of drugmaker Merck, have also made regular donations. Most of these companies, particularly major insurers, strongly oppose a public insurance option, which is favored by President Obama and top House Democrats but has not received support from Baucus's committee.

Baucus is a longtime centrist in the Democratic caucus, and his committee chairmanship has made him a key broker in the health-reform debate. Many former Baucus staff members, including two chiefs of staff, lobby on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry and other health-care players and have been closely involved in negotiations on the legislation.

John Jonas, a Patton Boggs health-care lobbyist who has attended a Baucus fly-fishing event and other fundraisers, said the Montana senator is "key to getting anything done" when it comes to health-care legislation.

"This is not an overwhelmingly liberal Congress, and it's certainly not a liberal Senate," said Jonas, whose clients include Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer and Northwestern Mutual. "I think Max is uniquely situated to try to accomplish that, because he's more of a centrist and moderate Democrat than others are."

But Jerry Flanagan, a health-care analyst with Consumer Watchdog, a California-based advocacy group, said the tide of campaign contributions amounts to "a huge down payment" by companies that expect favorable policies in return. "That is the cold reality of big-money politics," he said.

Baucus won easy reelection in the fall, but he has continued to hold fundraisers since then. In addition to the fly-fishing event, he held his "Eighth Annual Ski and Snowmobile Weekend" in Big Sky in February and celebrated the start of his sixth term with a $10,000-a-table dinner at the Washington Court Hotel later that month. Aides say another fundraiser scheduled for July 7 at Bistro Bis in Capitol Hill was scrapped.

Baucus's office declined to provide attendance and donation details about his fundraising events, and federal records laws do not require such disclosures. Starting in June, aides say, Baucus adopted an internal office policy to refuse contributions from health-care PACs and to continue doing so until after Congress passes reform legislation.

But new Federal Election Commission documents filed last week show that individual lobbyists and others with health-care connections continued to make contributions to Baucus committees throughout June. Examples from Baucus's Glacier PAC include $5,000 from the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America and $2,500 from lobbyists with U.S. Strategies, which represents numerous health-care firms. Overall, half of the $110,000 in donations to the PAC from April to June came from health-care firms and lobbyists, including Schering-Plough, Medtronic and New York Life.

Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for the Public Citizen advocacy group, said the continued fundraising by Baucus during the health-care debate is "very troubling."

"He's doing all this fundraising right in the middle of this effort to mark up a bill," Holman said. "When you put these events close to matters concerning these lobbyists, clearly it's a signal. You are expected to show up with a check."

Baucus and his aides strongly dispute any assertion that campaign contributions have an impact on the senator's policy views and proposals. Aides say he has frequently backed policies opposed by health-care companies, including support for greater availability of generic drugs, allowing drug imports from Canada and cutting payments to the Medicare Advantage plan.

During an interview earlier this year with the Missoulian newspaper, Baucus said that "no one gets special treatment." He added: "Your word is your bond back there."

Research editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.

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Australian town bans bottled water

A small town in Australia didn't want a bottled water company to pump a nearby aquifer. They took their object to its logical conclusion: a vote to voluntarily ban bottled water sales.

by Meraiah Foley. Published July 16 in the New York Times

BUNDANOON, Australia — When the residents here voted this month to stop selling bottled water in town, they never expected to be thrust into the global spotlight.

With a nearly unanimous show of hands at a community meeting, the people in this small tourist town touched off a worldwide debate about the social and environmental effects of bottled water that has put the beverage industry on the defensive.

State and local officials across the United States have been phasing out the use of bottled water at government workplaces in recent years, citing a variety of concerns, including the energy used to make and transport the bottles and an erosion of public trust in municipal water supplies. But as far as campaigners are aware, Bundanoon is the first town in the world to stop all sales of bottled water.

Set in the cool highlands southwest of Sydney, Bundanoon is a sleepy town of tidy gardens and quaint cottages surrounded by the weekend estates of wealthy urbanites. It is the sort of place where strangers strike up conversations on park benches along the picturesque main street and townsfolk leave fresh flowers on the local war memorial.

According to Huw Kingston, the owner of Ye Olde Bicycle Shoppe and a leader of the "Bundy on Tap" campaign, the ban did not begin as an environmental crusade. It started when a bottling company sought permission to extract millions of liters of water from the local aquifer.

At first, residents were upset at the prospect of tanker trucks rumbling through their quiet streets. But as opposition grew, Mr. Kingston said many residents began to question the idea of trucking water about 100 miles north to a bottling plant in Sydney, only to transport it somewhere else — possibly even back to Bundanoon — for sale.

"We became aware, as a community, of what the bottled-water industry was all about," Mr. Kingston said. "So the idea was floated that if we don’t want an extraction plant in our town, maybe we shouldn’t be selling the end product at all."

A dozen or so activists got together and called a community meeting. Of the 356 residents who turned out to vote on the ban by a show of hands, only one objected.

The ban is entirely voluntary. But with the support of the public, the town’s six food retailers have agreed to pull bottled water from their shelves starting in September. They plan to recoup their losses by selling inexpensive, reusable bottles that can be filled at drinking fountains and filtered water dispensers to be placed around town.

Some of the town’s 2,500 residents say they support the plan because they worry about the effects of chemicals in plastic bottles; some view it as a positive demonstration against the water plant.

Others, however, are skeptical that the local council could afford to maintain the new drinking fountains, while still others worry about the health implications of leaving only sweetened alternatives on refrigerator shelves.

"I don’t see why water should be picked on," said Trevor Fenton, a retired Bundanoon resident. "What I’d like is to see them get rid of all the soft drinks, but they’d never do that."

Environmentalists have been gaining traction in the fight against bottled water. In addition to the new restrictions by state and local governments in the United States, many high-profile restaurateurs have also begun replacing fancy imported water with tap water. Recently, a United States Congressional committee debated whether to step up regulation on the bottled-water industry after reviewing two new studies that questioned whether bottled water was any safer than that from a tap.

The attention has irked the industry, which is worth around $60 billion a year worldwide and about $400 million a year in Australia. Industry groups say it is unfair to single out bottled water when many other consumer goods — like disposable diapers and imported produce, cheese and wine — have an equal or greater impact on the environment.

In Australia, most bottled water is produced domestically, in recyclable bottles that make up a very small proportion of landfill waste, according to Geoff Parker, the chief executive of the Australasian Bottled Water Institute.

"We need to keep the product in perspective," Mr. Parker said. "There are tens of thousands of products in the fast-moving consumer goods sector, and we would suggest that there are a vast number that would have a larger carbon footprint than bottled water."

The issue has touched a nerve. The day of the Bundanoon vote, the state government in New South Wales announced that it would stop buying bottled water, prompting the federal environment minister to urge other states to follow suit. The moves set off a flurry of newspaper editorials over the weekend and set the lines ablaze on talk radio shows across Australia.

The shopkeepers of Bundanoon say they have been amused by all the attention the ban has brought their way, and have even been offered a supply of specially branded reusable water bottles from a major European supplier.

Outside his newspaper and magazine store, Peter Stewart said the extra focus on Bundanoon was worth the $1,200 a year he expected to lose on bottled-water sales.

"That a group of people can get together over a few months and make headlines all over the world, it’s just amazing," he said. "There’s a lot of pride in town."

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Rep. Weiner's single payer amendment will be introduced Monday

On Monday, Rep. Anthony Weiner will move to amend the Tri-Committee health care reform bill to essentially replace it with HR 676, thereby replacing the private health insurance industry with a single-payer national health insurance program.

The vote on the amendment will take place the same day it is offered -- Monday.

Hopefully you have responded to earlier alerts or postings and called your Representative if he or she sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, or contacted the Committee chair, Rep. Henry Waxman, in support of the Weiner amendment. If not, please call early Monday morning or send a free efax through www.1payer.net. Messages are editable and can go to your own representative so he or she can see that single payer has district support. Here's the url: http://www.1payer.net/faxapp/senders/add/cid:22

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Sued by the Forest: Should nature be able to take you to court?

Rights-of-nature ordinances like the one Shapleigh, Maine, developed to protect local water from Nestlé and other potential exploiters, may lead to more robust legal protection of ecosystems.

by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow. Published July 19 in the Boston Globe.

Last February, the town of Shapleigh, Maine, population 2,326, passed an unusual ordinance. Like nearby towns, Shapleigh sought to protect its aquifers from the Nestle Corporation, which draws heavily on the region for its Poland Spring bottled water. Some Maine towns had acquiesced, others had protested, and one was locked in a protracted legal battle.

Shapleigh tried something new - a move at once humble in its method and audacious in its ambition. At a town meeting, residents voted, 114-66, to endow all of the town’s natural assets with legal rights: “Natural communities and ecosystems possess inalienable and fundamental rights to exist, flourish and naturally evolve within the Town of Shapleigh.” It further decreed that any town resident had “standing” to seek relief for damages caused to nature - permitting, for example, a lawsuit on behalf of a stream.

Shapleigh is one of about a dozen US municipalities to have passed measures declaring that nature itself has rights under the law. And in 2008, when Ecuador adopted a new constitution, it recognized nature’s “right to exist, persist, maintain itself and regenerate its own vital cycles, structure, functions and its evolutionary processes.” A campaign is also underway in Europe for a UN Universal Declaration of Planetary Rights, which would attempt to enshrine such principles in international law, following the model of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

These developments are part of a small but growing movement that aims to reorient the relationship between the earth and the law. Advocates argue that natural objects should not be treated as mere property, vulnerable to exploitation or destruction as owners see fit, but as rights-bearing entities with intrinsic value. The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit, works with communities such as Shapleigh to protect local ecosystems, and more towns are considering ordinances in the same vein. The Center for Earth Jurisprudence, established in 2006, works with two Florida law schools, developing a legal philosophy based on respect for the planet, and seeking avenues in current law to advance that goal.

“Someone needs to be able to represent the rivers,” says Patricia Siemen, director of the Center for Earth Jurisprudence. “Someone needs to be able to represent the forests.”

Of course, the notion will strike skeptics as preposterous. Would we need to worry about offending litigious shrubs? With a boulder, or a swamp, as a witness in the proceedings? Critics dismiss the idea as grandstanding that could clog the courts with frivolous cases.

But proponents see it as part of an ongoing progression, an expansion of rights that slowly brings about an increasingly just society. After all, not so long ago, slaves and women were in some legal regimes deemed property, just as nature is today. Now we all accept universal human rights. The concept of animal rights has also become familiar, if much more contested. Advocates of this agenda see the extension of rights to ecosystems as the natural next step. And they believe it could spark a profound shift in our relations with nature, leading to more effective environmental protections.

“The language of rights has a great deal of currency. It’s the most powerful of our ethical terms,” says John Baird Callicott, a philosophy professor at the University of North Texas. “Rights shift the burden of proof from those who are defending nature to those who want to exploit it.”

In the view of proponents, the idea is less outlandish than it may seem. Other nonhuman entities have long enjoyed certain rights under our legal system: ships and corporations are two examples of entities entitled to “personhood,” meaning they can bring lawsuits to court. What’s more, proponents say, the extension of rights invariably seems absurd before it happens. When the economy depended on slave labor, emancipation was unfathomable even to many who abhorred slavery. In retrospect, though, it seems morally imperative and historically inevitable.

Yet bestowing rights on nature poses considerable practical and philosophical challenges. In the case of the declarations in towns like Shapleigh, it isn’t always clear how they will be enforced. (So far, Nestle has not attempted to set up operations in Shapleigh, but it’s hard to say whether that is a result of the ordinance.) Granting standing - the ability to sue in the name of a natural object - is a more modest, specific goal, but stipulating “inalienable rights” strikes some legal experts as both vague and infeasible. Critics also argue that because the language of rights is indeed potent, we ought to be wary of diluting that force by spreading rights too thin. And they question whether the concept of rights and interests can be applied to nature in any meaningful way.

“All the interests in nature conflict. Trees fight each other for sun and water,” says Mark Sagoff, an environmental philosopher at the University of Maryland. “Granting rights to nature would just be a distraction from the policy progress we’ve made.”

The debate ultimately centers on the basis of legal rights. Historically, they have been strongly associated with human beings. All of the formerly rightless entities who now seem so clearly deserving of rights - infants, for example, or women, or African-Americans - share one conspicuous trait: they’re people. (Corporations and ships, it could be argued, represent conglomerations of people.) When extended to animals, rights have often been based on affinities with humans: sentience, the ability to suffer. The question is how starkly we distinguish between human and nonhuman life. Is membership in the biosphere alone enough to merit rights?

The notion of nature’s rights has long been cherished in environmentalist circles; the idea cropped up in the writings of Sierra Club founder John Muir in the late 19th century and the influential ecologist Aldo Leopold in the mid-20th century. But the first sustained legal argument is usually attributed to Christopher Stone, a law professor at the University of Southern California. In 1972, Stone wrote an article entitled “Should Trees Have Standing?”, which laid out the case for expanding rights that is now commonly cited. (The essay, originally published in the Southern California Law Review, will be reissued by Oxford University Press in 2010.)

Stone lamented that although one could sue to protect nonhuman life, one had to prove “injury” to humans. Damages, when awarded, went to compensate the human plaintiff, not to restore the natural object. He argued that natural objects themselves should be eligible to be plaintiffs (represented, of course, by human trustees or guardians). Furthermore, the natural objects should benefit directly from a favorable judgment - funds should go to restoring the damage wrought. Stone drew an analogy to the legal status of “incompetents,” such as children or senile elders, who may not be able to articulate their interests: guardians can make informed judgments about those interests and represent them in court.

As it happened, a highly pertinent case was before the Supreme Court at the time. In Sierra Club v. Morton, argued in 1971, the Sierra Club tried to stop Walt Disney Enterprises from building a ski resort in a pristine California valley called Mineral King. The Court decided that the Sierra Club itself lacked standing, although it could sue on behalf of its members, who could claim they suffered recreational or aesthetic injuries (for example, from the lost opportunity to hike in the area).

Serendipitously, Justice William O. Douglas had been slated to write the preface for an issue of the Southern California Law Review, and Stone had rushed his article into that issue, hoping that the justice would read it. The strategy worked: Douglas dissented, echoing Stone’s thesis. “Contemporary public concern for protecting nature’s ecological equilibrium should lead to the conferral of standing upon environmental objects to sue for their own preservation,” he wrote. “This suit would therefore be more properly labeled as Mineral King v. Morton.”

For a time, the idea appeared to gain some currency. In 1973, the Endangered Species Act became law, including a provision for “citizen suits” on behalf of listed species. The provision, Professor Callicott has argued, grants de facto standing to the endangered wildlife (although this view is controversial). In any case, the law implicitly recognized the worth of life that has no instrumental use for people.

In 1974, Laurence Tribe, the prominent Harvard law professor, elaborated on Stone’s reasoning in an article for the Yale Law Journal. He wrote that the legal system’s focus on human injuries reinforced anthropocentric values, creating a vicious circle that could further increase callousness to other life forms: “What the environmentalist may not perceive is that, by couching his claim in terms of human self-interest - by articulating environmental goals wholly in terms of human needs and preferences - he may be helping to legitimate a system of discourse which so structures human thought and feeling as to erode, over the long run, the very sense of obligation which provided the initial impetus for his own protective efforts.”

In 2008, Francisco Benzoni, then a business professor at Duke, published an article in the Duke Environmental Law and Policy Forum, citing Tribe’s paper and reviving the point. “The current jurisprudence on standing embeds a value theory without any articulation or discussion about whether that’s the value theory we should adopt,” says Benzoni.

In the intervening years, a number of lawsuits have named nonhumans, usually animals, as plaintiffs. The rulings have been inconsistent. In one oft-cited case, Palila v. Hawaii, in 1988, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals explicitly endorsed the standing of a bird, writing that it “has legal status and wings its way into federal court as a plaintiff in its own right.” In 2004, however, the same court (but different judges) dismissed that statement as nonbinding “rhetorical flourishes.”

The need to frame arguments in terms of their human effects has led to some almost comically contorted claims. In Animal Welfare Institute v. Kreps, in 1977, several environmentalist groups sued to stop US firms from importing baby sealskins from South Africa, asserting that their members suffered aesthetic, recreational, and educational losses from the brutal deaths of the seals. One of the members announced a plan to visit South Africa. Remarkably, the groups won the case on appeal. But some who applaud the outcome question the method.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, just sue in the name of the seals,” says Stone, the author of the seminal paper on rights for nature. “The seals are being bludgeoned to death and somebody’s saying, ‘I want to be seeing seals.’ That’s not what it’s about. It’s a very backwards way of getting the case into court.”

Some champions of nature’s rights see a glimmer of promise in a recent ruling. In the 2004 case Cetacean Community v. Bush, about the effect of the Navy’s use of sonar on whales and dolphins, the Ninth Circuit, which is one level below the Supreme Court, denied standing to the creatures. However, the opinion left an opening, noting that “nothing in the text of Article III [of the US Constitution] explicitly limits the ability to bring a claim in federal court to humans.” It would be up to Congress, the judge suggested, to stipulate that the nonhuman life under a law’s protection has standing to sue. Some environmentalists, such as the staff at the Center for Earth Jurisprudence, now hope Congress can be persuaded to do just that - and their ideal legislation would not be limited to animals, either.

Among scholars with environmentalist sympathies, there is vigorous debate over whether standing for natural objects is the most sensible approach to defending ecosystems. After all, it’s possible to enlarge the scope of our concern and protection without granting legal rights per se. Rights advocates contend that presenting legal cases in terms of human impacts is too anthropocentric, but critics invert that logic. They say we are projecting onto nature our assumptions about its interests. Ultimately, in their view, even the most radical environmentalist embodies human values, and we should just say so.

Richard Stewart, a law professor at New York University, believes that inanimate objects such as trees and rivers do not have interests or values. Rather, he says, the argument really concerns “human ideas about what’s good for nature.”

The distinction can be subtle. It doesn’t mean we must diminish the worth we assign to nature; it just means acknowledging that we as a society are assigning the value. We could, for example, liberalize standing for humans - make it easy for people to sue to protect nature, without granting official standing to the natural objects. If we could sue to preserve a valley because developing it offends our moral sensibilities, this would indicate that nature matters beyond its strictly instrumental uses. But, according to this perspective, it matters to us humans, not in some transcendent way that is independent of our judgments.

Indeed, some critics ask, how do we know what nature prefers? Perhaps Mineral King wanted to host a ski resort, Mark Sagoff has suggested; perhaps a beach wants to welcome tourists, or a river wants to make electricity. As Sagoff puts it, “Old Man River might want to do something for a change, other than just rolling along.”

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Water warrior speakout in Maine

Emily Posner, Maine organizer for the Defending Water for Life campaign, is the first featured speaker at this event in Waterville, Maine, in conjunction with the premiere of "Tapped."

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Rep. Weiner's opening statements on Friday

Another reminder from a congressman to colleagues that they should be working for their constituents and not just for the industries with the deepest pockets. His remarks were made Friday as the House Energy and Commerce committee started mark-up of HR 3200. Rep. Weiner plans to introduce an amendment to adopt a single-payer plan into the bill.

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AfD Secretary Dr. Peter Mott on what's wrong with the Obama health plan

by Dr. Peter Mott

Why would many of us who worked hard to make Barack Obama president now work hard to oppose his health plan?

The explanation is quite simple: There are three possible directions to take with our complex, confusing, expensive, and failed health care non-system in the US – but only one of them is affordable. If our leaders choose one of the other routes they will vastly increase our deficit and we will find ourselves back in the old quagmire of rationing, with the same questions raised: Who will we exclude from receiving medical care? Which elderly citizens should not have major surgery – and at what age? Which should not have unlimited nursing home stays?

The three main options before us are:

• Continuing the current mix of hundreds of private insurance corporation plans and several public programs;
  
• A single payer system; and
  
• The Obama compromise – a public/private option.
  

The Obama plan proposes that everyone should choose among all existing insurers and a competing public plan. The latter would be similar to our current Medicare. The government would help low-income families either to buy private insurance policies or join the public plan. The 50 million uninsured Americans (plus an estimated 40 million under-insured) would have that choice. Everyone would be covered. The insurance companies would love having millions of new customers.

The cost of the Obama plan, however, would be huge. Total health care costs in the US now are nearly twice that of any other industrialized nation per person per year; and our costs are rising at a rate faster than any other country each year. Imagine the total cost if, added to all this, we help pay for those same 90 million under- and un-insured people. What if we add long-term care insurance for nursing home or home care – which most Americans do not have now? On 7/17/09 Congressional Budget Director Elmendorf stated that the proposed Obama plan legislation “significantly expands…health care costs.”

The President’s hope is that a competing “public option,” on the model of expanded Medicare for All, would attract enough customers to force down overall costs. However, if the premiums for the private and public options are equal – and the insurance corporations will push for this – a majority of citizens probably will choose the private route. Then overall costs will go through the roof.

The “single payer” proposal is easiest to understand by looking at the bill now in Congress called HR 676 or “Medicare for All.” Everyone would be covered. We would have free choice of doctor and hospital. All needed services would be covered at no charge, including regular care, preventive care, emergency services and chronic, long-term care. Health care would be planned and organized by regions. The single plan would be paid for by a progressive income tax and an excise tax on corporations. Such single payer public plans have been shown in careful studies to save money over our current health care costs. After a transition period there would be expected savings of $350 billion per year. Administrative costs of the current Medicare program are only 2-3% - compared to those of private insurance corporations that are from 15-30%, largely because of advertising costs, shareholders’ profits, and high pay/benefits for executives.

Why does President Obama – who previously favored single payer – now push for a compromise? Because he wants to win Congressional votes – and the gigantic insurance corporations control many of those votes. Is this anti-democratic? Yes, indeed! But Congress won’t care about that unless there is a groundswell from the grassroots demanding what is best for America.

Seventy per-cent of the public have expressed support for national health insurance. Now that 70% must speak out. The stakes are high: public good vs. corporate profit. Battling the insurance corporations, their lobbyists, and the propaganda which is already spreading - will be tough. But when was democracy ever easy?

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Paul Krugman: The Joy of Sachs

Goldman Sachs made the bailout work for them, but what's the consequences for the rest of the nation? Do bailouts mean we own Wall Street, or do they own us?

by Paul Krugman. From the July 17 New York Times

The American economy remains in dire straits, with one worker in six unemployed or underemployed. Yet Goldman Sachs just reported record quarterly profits - and it's preparing to hand out huge bonuses, comparable to what it was paying before the crisis. What does this contrast tell us?

First, it tells us that Goldman is very good at what it does. Unfortunately, what it does is bad for America.

Second, it shows that Wall Street's bad habits - above all, the system of compensation that helped cause the financial crisis - have not gone away.

Third, it shows that by rescuing the financial system without reforming it, Washington has done nothing to protect us from a new crisis, and, in fact, has made another crisis more likely.

Let's start by talking about how Goldman makes money.

Over the past generation - ever since the banking deregulation of the Reagan years - the U.S. economy has been "financialized." The business of moving money around, of slicing, dicing and repackaging financial claims, has soared in importance compared with the actual production of useful stuff. The sector officially labeled "securities, commodity contracts and investments" has grown especially fast, from only 0.3 percent of G.D.P. in the late 1970s to 1.7 percent of G.D.P. in 2007.

Such growth would be fine if financialization really delivered on its promises - if financial firms made money by directing capital to its most productive uses, by developing innovative ways to spread and reduce risk. But can anyone, at this point, make those claims with a straight face? Financial firms, we now know, directed vast quantities of capital into the construction of unsellable houses and empty shopping malls. They increased risk rather than reducing it, and concentrated risk rather than spreading it. In effect, the industry was selling dangerous patent medicine to gullible consumers.

Goldman's role in the financialization of America was similar to that of other players, except for one thing: Goldman didn't believe its own hype. Other banks invested heavily in the same toxic waste they were selling to the public at large. Goldman, famously, made a lot of money selling securities backed by subprime mortgages - then made a lot more money by selling mortgage-backed securities short, just before their value crashed. All of this was perfectly legal, but the net effect was that Goldman made profits by playing the rest of us for suckers.

And Wall Streeters have every incentive to keep playing that kind of game.

The huge bonuses Goldman will soon hand out show that financial-industry highfliers are still operating under a system of heads they win, tails other people lose. If you're a banker, and you generate big short-term profits, you get lavishly rewarded - and you don't have to give the money back if and when those profits turn out to have been a mirage. You have every reason, then, to steer investors into taking risks they don't understand.

And the events of the past year have skewed those incentives even more, by putting taxpayers as well as investors on the hook if things go wrong.

I won't try to parse the competing claims about how much direct benefit Goldman received from recent financial bailouts, especially the government's assumption of A.I.G.'s liabilities. What's clear is that Wall Street in general, Goldman very much included, benefited hugely from the government's provision of a financial backstop - an assurance that it will rescue major financial players whenever things go wrong.

You can argue that such rescues are necessary if we're to avoid a replay of the Great Depression. In fact, I agree. But the result is that the financial system's liabilities are now backed by an implicit government guarantee.

Now the last time there was a comparable expansion of the financial safety net, the creation of federal deposit insurance in the 1930s, it was accompanied by much tighter regulation, to ensure that banks didn't abuse their privileges. This time, new regulations are still in the drawing-board stage - and the finance lobby is already fighting against even the most basic protections for consumers.

If these lobbying efforts succeed, we'll have set the stage for an even bigger financial disaster a few years down the road. The next crisis could look something like the savings-and-loan mess of the 1980s, in which deregulated banks gambled with, or in some cases stole, taxpayers' money - except that it would involve the financial industry as a whole.

The bottom line is that Goldman's blowout quarter is good news for Goldman and the people who work there. It's good news for financial superstars in general, whose paychecks are rapidly climbing back to precrisis levels. But it's bad news for almost everyone else.

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Kucinich amendment passes!

On Friday, the House Education and Labor Committee made instituting state-level single payer a little easier by approving an amendment by Rep. Dennis Kucinich that would allow states to waive the application of the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), which has in the past been used to nullify efforts to expand state or local government health care. The committee approved the Kucinich Amendment by a vote of 27-19, with 14 Democrats and 13 Republicans voting yes.

California, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington have active state-level campaigns for single payer. Under the amendment, a state's application for a waiver from ERISA is granted automatically if the state has signed into law a single payer plan. With the amendment, for the first time, the state single payer health care option is shielded from an ERISA-based legal attack. The goal now is to make sure this amendment is included in the final version of the bill.

Rep. Kucinich has proposed other amendments to HR3200, including an amendment adding complementary and alternative medicine to standard coverage, an amendment to stop insurers from increasing premiums at times when subscribers are not permitted to change health plans, and an amendment to daylight insurance industry expenditures on advertising, marketing and executive pay.

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Waterville (ME) Opera House packed for World Premiere of “Tapped”

More than 250 people packed the Waterville Opera House for the World Premiere of “Tapped” on Sunday, July 12. Stephanie Soechtig’s debut feature is an unflinching examination of the big business of bottle water.

The timely documentary examines the unregulated and unseen world of an industry that aims to privatize and sell back the one resource that ought never to become a commodity: our water.

From the plastic production of bottled water to North Pacific Ocean Gyre where millions of these bottles end up, Tapped trails the path of the bottle water industry and the communities which were the unwitting chips on the table.

The movie features grassroots stories from Fryeburg and Southern Maine where local residents have waged long campaigns to stop the Nestlé Corporation from mining their communities groundwater to resell under the Poland Spring brand name.

“Tapped reflects the reality of our Maine communities as we are forced to put aside our daily routine in order to fight to maintain public control over our most basic need: water,” says Emily Posner of Defending Water for Life in Maine. “Our growing water justice community recognizes that our state’s unique culture, ecology and economy is intricately dependent upon clean water and healthy watersheds. The line in the sand must be drawn to stop the massive exploitation of our state’s natural legacy for the lining of corporate coffers.”

Photos from the premiere: V. Kelly Bellis

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Kucinich amendment to health reform bill would allow states to pursue single payer plans--call to support!

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) has proposed an amendment to the House health care reform bill that would remove potential legal impediments for states to pass single-payer bills by waiving federal exemptions that apply to employer-sponsored health plans. The committee is expected to vote on the amendment later tonight or early tomorrow.

A similar amendment on the Senate side proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, was not approved.

You can find a list of Committee members here. A quick call in support of the amendment is in order--it will likely be voted on today.

The following legislators especially need to hear from you!
Rep. Dale Kildee of Michigan: (202) 225-3611
Rep. Susan Davis of California: (202) 225-2040
Rep. David Wu of Oregon: (202) 225-0855
Rep. Carolyn McCarthy of New York: (202) 225-5516
Rep. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii: (202) 225-4906

You can also click here to send a free e-fax through 1payer.net. It's easy, fast, and will go to your own members of Congress if you like.

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Whip Count--almost-progressives need a push off the fence!

The Congressional Progressive Caucus's whip list for health care reform leaked out--an explainer is here on Joan McCarter's Daily KOS diary. Basically, this is the list of reps who won't back a health care reform bill without a strong public option, and Joan lists the non-negotiables. There are other CPC members who have indicated they might not back a weak bill but haven't firmed up their position, and others who are still undecided or have refused to take the CPC position.

While no one's done a side by side comparison, it's very likely that most of the CPC are also cosponsors of HR 676, and some, such as Reps John Conyers, Eric Massa and Dennis Kucinich, are strong and outspoken proponents of a single payer plan.

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Amendment brings single payer to House committee vote! Call now in support!

Today in his White House press conference, President Obama said he was going to move forward on health care. Bills are at or near completion in both the Senate and House. Today, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions approved their bill, The Affordable Health Choices Act, and, as you know, Rep. John Conyers has sponsored a universal single payer bill, HR676, for several years.

On Tuesday, House Democrats unveiled the Tri-Committee Health Reform Bill.

This is not HR 676. This bill mandates individual coverage and while it offers a variety of public plans, it will cost an estimated $1 trillion over the next ten years while still leaving millions of Americans uninsured or underinsured. And this is before the bill is watered down by conference committees and backroom deals to protect the for-profit health care industry.

This Friday or Monday, but possibly as early as Thursday, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) will introduce, in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, an amendment to substitute Rep. John Conyers's HR 676 single payer bill for the current compromised Tri-Committee bill. The committee, one of three that has jurisdiction over health care, will vote on the amendment the same day it is offered--which is why your call is needed as soon as possible to support Weiner's amendment and the institution of the only truly fair and economical form of universal coverage--a single payer health care system.

Does your representative sit on the Energy and Commerce Committee? If so, contact him or her immediately to say you want them to vote YES on Rep. Weiner's amendment.

You can call toll free at 800-473-6711. Ask for your representative's office. Then ask to speak to the legislative assistant on health care.

Here's a script: "Hello, My name is __________, and as your constituent, I urge the Representative to vote YES on Representative Anthony Weiner's single-payer, HR 676 amendment to the Energy and Commerce Committee's healthcare bill."

Weiner's amendment shows that grassroots pressure can push back against the estimated $1.4 million that the health care industry is spending daily on lobbying and other activities to protect their profits.

HR 676 would create a single payer health care system by expanding a greatly improved Medicare system for everyone. HR 676 ends deductibles and co-payments, and would save hundreds of billions annually by eliminating the high overhead, bureaucracy, and profits of the private health care industry. In the current Congress, HR 676 has 85 co-sponsors in addition to Rep. Conyers, most recently Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania. That a congressman from a relatively conservative district is sponsoring a single payer health care bill shows that our movement is growing--and that other reps from similar districts can be encouraged to sign on too. The companion Senate bill, introduced by Bernie Sanders, is SB 703.

If you don't have a representative on the committee, please call committee Chairman Henry Waxman at 202-225-3976 and tell him to vote YES on the amendment.

Keep up the good work by making another call today!

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