Washington Post: We Have the Hope. Now Where's the Audacity?

The Obama campaign mobilized a massive, committed volunteer base to win the White House. Where's the mobilization for health care? Two professors offer a to-do list to ensure that the role of profiteering corporations in deforming the debate is put front and center.

by Peter Dreier and Marshall Ganz. Published by The Washington Post, Sunday, August 30

On Aug. 25 last year, Sen. Edward Kennedy strode onto the stage at the Democratic National Convention in Denver and announced to a roaring crowd of party faithful the beginning of a new generation in American politics.

"I have come here tonight to stand with you, to change America, to restore its future, to rise to our best ideals and to elect Barack Obama president of the United States," he said. Comparing Obama to his slain brother, John F. Kennedy, the senator shouted: "This November, the torch will be passed again to a new generation of Americans. . . . Our country will be committed to his cause. The work begins anew. The hope rises again. And the dream lives on."

Eight months into the Obama administration, as we mourn the senator from Massachusetts, many of us retain the hope, but we are wondering what happened to the audacity that is needed to move the country in a new direction. In recent weeks, many progressives have expressed concern that Obama's bold plan to reform health care may be at risk. A defeat on this key issue could undermine other elements of his agenda. We don't believe that the president has changed his goals, but we wonder whether he underestimated the power necessary to bring about real change.

Throughout the campaign, Obama cautioned that enacting his ambitious plans would take a fight. In a speech in Milwaukee, he said: "I know how hard it will be to bring about change. Exxon Mobil made $11 billion this past quarter. They don't want to give up their profits easily."

He explained what it would take to overcome the power of entrenched interests in order to pass historic legislation. Change comes about, candidate Obama said, by "imagining, and then fighting for, and then working for, what did not seem possible before."

Obama observed: "That is how workers won the right to organize against violence and intimidation. That's how women won the right to vote. That's how young people traveled south to march and to sit in and to be beaten, and some went to jail and some died for freedom's cause."

But in the battle for health-care reform, the president and his allies are ignoring his own warning. The struggle for universal medical insurance -- one that Kennedy began pushing more than 40 years ago, and that looked winnable only a few months ago -- is in trouble.

For months the president insisted that any significant reform of the health-care system include a "public option" -- an expanded version of Medicare that would compete with private insurance companies, pressuring them to reduce costs and providing Americans with greater choice. Republicans have made it clear that they won't support any plan that competes with the insurance industry or challenges its runaway costs and irresponsible practices.

Obama would like, but doesn't need, Republican votes to achieve his goal. But seven conservative Democratic senators -- led by Max Baucus (Mont.) and including Blanche Lincoln (Ark.), Kent Conrad (N.D.), Jeff Bingaman (N.M.), Ben Nelson (Neb.), Mary Landrieu (La.) and Arlen Specter (Pa.) -- oppose the public option as well. So by shilling for the insurance industry, they've made it thus far impossible for Obama to take advantage of the Democrats' majority in the Senate.

In the past few weeks, Obama has hinted that he might settle for reform without a public option, thus assuaging the Baucus caucus and the insurance industry but angering many of his progressive supporters.

At the same time, Obama's readiness to compromise hasn't mollified members of the small but vocal right-wing Republican network who, egged on by the conservative echo chamber, have disrupted town hall meetings across the country, warning of "socialized medicine" and other impending catastrophes. This has made it harder for Obama to argue for his proposals and has hurt his standing in public opinion polls.

If the unholy alliance of insurance industry muscle, conservative Democrats' obfuscation and right-wing mob tactics is able to defeat Obama's health-care proposal, it will write the conservative playbook for blocking other key components of the president's agenda -- including action on climate change, immigration reform and updates to the nation's labor laws.

What went wrong?

The White House and its allies forgot that success requires more than proposing legislation, negotiating with Congress and polite lobbying. It demands movement-building of the kind that propelled Obama's long-shot candidacy to an almost landslide victory. And it must be rooted in the moral energy that can transform people's anger, frustrations and hopes into focused public action, creating a sense of urgency equal to the crises facing the country.

Remember that the Obama campaign inspired an unprecedented grass-roots electoral movement, including experienced activists and political neophytes. It deployed 3,000 organizers to recruit thousands of local volunteer leadership teams (1,100 in Ohio alone). They, in turn, mobilized 1.5 million volunteers and 13.5 million contributors. And throughout the campaign, Obama reminded supporters that the real work of making change would only begin on Election Day.

Once in office, the president moved quickly, announcing one ambitious legislative objective after another. But instead of launching a parallel strategy to mobilize supporters, most progressive organizations and Organizing for America -- the group created to organizeObama's former campaign volunteers -- failed to keep up. The president is not solely responsible for his current predicament; many progressives have not acknowledged their role.

Since January, most advocacy groups committed to Obama's reform objectives (labor unions, community organizations, environmentalists and netroots groups such as MoveOn) have pushed the pause button. Organizing for America, for example, encouraged Obama's supporters to work on local community service projects, such as helping homeless shelters and tutoring children. That's fine, but it's not the way to pass reform legislation.

One Obama campaign volunteer from Delaware County, Pa., put it this way soon after the election: "We're all fired up now, and twiddling our thumbs! . . . Here, ALL the leader volunteers are getting bombarded by calls from volunteers essentially asking 'Nowwhatnowwhatnowwhat?' "

Meanwhile, as the president's agenda emerged, his former campaign volunteers and the advocacy groups turned to politics as usual: the insider tactics of e-mails, phone calls and meetings with members of Congress. Some groups -- hoping to go toe-to-toe with the well-funded business-backed opposition -- launched expensive TV and radio ad campaigns in key states to pressure conservative Democrats. Lobbying and advertising are necessary, but they have never been sufficient to defeat powerful corporate interests.

In short, the administration and its allies followed a strategy that blurred their goals, avoided polarization, confused marketing with movement-building and hoped for bipartisan compromise that was never in the cards. This approach replaced an "outsider" mobilizing strategy that not only got Obama into the White House but has also played a key role in every successful reform movement, including abolition, women's suffrage, workers' rights, civil rights and environmental justice.

Grass-roots mobilization raises the stakes, identifies the obstacles to reform and puts the opposition on the defensive. The right-wing fringe understood this simple organizing lesson and seized the momentum. Its leaders used tactics that energized their base, challenged specific elected officials and told a national story, enacted in locality after locality.

It is time for real reformers to take back the momentum.

In the past two weeks, proponents of Obama's health-care reform finally woke up. They showed up in large numbers at town hall meetings sponsored by elected officials across the nation.

The president himself used his bully pulpit with more resolve, attending public events and addressing conference calls with religious groups, unions and others to urge them to mobilize on behalf of reform.

What's needed now is a campaign to shift the ground beneath Congress. First, it must concentrate on winning support for a specific bill that incorporates the key principles Obama has been advocating: universal insurance coverage, no denial of coverage for preexisting conditions, the public option and controls on exorbitant drug and insurance industry costs. The Limbaugh loyalists know what they are against. But Obama and his allies have to be clear about what they are for.

Challenging the right wing's framing of the issue, Organizing for America and the activist groups need to recruit volunteers to reach out to friends, neighbors and especially the "undecided" public with the same urgency, energy and creativity that they showed in the election.

Second, the campaign must focus attention on the insurance companies that are primarily responsible for the health-care mess. This means organizing public events across the country that can articulate Americans' frustrations with the current health insurance system and polarize public opinion against the insurance companies and their allies.

Americans who are paying the price of our failure to act -- people who lost family members because they were denied coverage for preexisting conditions, people who can't afford health insurance and fear that a medical emergency would wipe them out, families who went bankrupt and lost their homes because of out-of-pocket medical expenses, and businesses that suffer because of the high cost of insurance for employees -- need opportunities to publicly confront those responsible for their plight. It is time to put human faces on the crisis by contrasting their stories with the insurance companies' outrageous profits and top executives' exorbitant salaries and bonuses.

This requires "movement" tactics, from leaflets, vigils and newspaper ads to nonviolent civil disobedience -- such as occupying insurance company offices and picketing the homes of insurance executives -- to focus attention on the companies and individuals who are the major obstacles to reform. As long as the real source of the problem remains faceless (or can hide behind seven conservative Democratic senators), the right remains free to demonize "big government" rather than greedy corporations.

Third, the campaign must educate constituents of the Baucus caucus about their senators' political and financial dependence on the insurance industry and other opponents of reform. They need to ask these conservative Democrats: Which side are you on? If they won't support real reform, they should know that a primary challenge is likely.
This strategy could begin to restore the combination of hope and audacity that drives successful reform movements -- and that put Obama in the White House.

Kennedy understood that reforming health care is a moral obligation, and that the responsibility to heal the sick is at the heart of every faith tradition and is required for a civilized society. He was hoping to live long enough to see it happen. Obama and people of conscience cannot allow that victory -- and that tribute to the late senator -- to slip away.

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Climate SOS fights "worse than nothing" bill

There was some debate among environmentalists this summer over the American Clean Energy & Security Act (ACESA), which passed the House in June. Some claimed the bill was "the best that we could do." Others, including leading climate scientist James Hansen, said ACESA would “do more harm to the environment than doing nothing at all.”

Climate SOS, a grassroots coalition of groups and individuals, sides with Hansen, and asks that concerned citizens contact senators over the recess to express their support for a stronger bill. The fear is that a Senate version of ACESA will be based on, and even weaker than the House bill.

To support proactive steps against a potentially bad bill, Climate SOS's “Green Bill or No Bill” tour will be reaching out to voters, and are asking for help with the tour, especially in North Dakota, Indiana, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. The tour will also hit New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, California, Washington and Oregon. Actions at the district offices of "fence-sitting senators are planned, and you can find out more on the groups's website at www.climatesos.org, or email them at contact@climatesos.org

ACESA

• Prevents the U.S. from making anything remotely close to its fair share of greenhouse gas emissions reductions - necessary for averting catastrophic consequences and forging an effective global strategy on climate stabilization.
• Uses public money to subsidize the most polluting industries like coal and nuclear, drawing much needed financing away from real climate solutions like renewable energy production;
• Adds more toxic and climate polluting smokestacks, especially in backyards of the poor, people of color, and indigenous communities across the U.S., by grandfathering dirty old coal plants, permitting numerous new ones, and subsidizing incinerators as a form of renewable energy.

Legislators are home through Labor Day. After that, call the Capitol at 202-224-3121. There's talking points at the "Read More" link.
Talking Points
1. The bill does not even aim for keeping atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration below 450 parts-per-million (ppm). Current science tells us that we must return to below 350 ppm. We are currently at 387 ppm and already experiencing serious consequences while the worst is still coming down the pipeline, due to delays in climate system amplifications of man-made warming. Let's take serious action before it's too late!

2. It relies upon a cap and trade scheme to reduce emissions. Cap and trade has been tried before—for example, in the European Union and elsewhere—and proven ineffective(1). Dr. James Hansen calls it "a subterfuge designed to allow business-as-usual to continue". Effective options (revenue-neutral tax and dividend, for example) for regulating carbon emissions should be implemented.

3. It allows carbon polluters to keep polluting if they buy offsets. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has faulted the credibility of the lucrative* CO2 offsets market, yet the bill continues to rely upon this dubious scheme.(2) Offsets are not an effective substitute for straightforward pollution reduction at the smokestack. Over half of the approved offset credits under the Kyoto Protocol have turned out not to meet the required criteria of "verifiable, additional or permanent".

4. It preempts the EPA authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. This important public agency, which exists to protect Americans from environmental harm, should be allowed to do its job.

5. It categorizes a host of destructive technologies, such as the burning of biomass and garbage, as "renewable," which makes them eligible for taxpayer- and ratepayer-funded green energy incentives. We should not be giving toxic smokestack and carbon-intensive incinerator technologies the same privileged status as wind, geothermal, and solar.

6. Industry-specific carbon accounting loopholes are written into the bill. For example, the CO2 from wood biomass burning, in a seemingly arbitrary move, does not get counted or capped at the smokestack, and when trees are harvested to feed biomass plants, the carbon emissions are not counted in the forestry sector either. Biomass burning should not get a free ride. Biomass burning results in carbon emissions that will take decades, potentially hundreds of years to resequester, if ever. We desperately need to be protecting, not burning, our forest and grassland ecosystems.

7. It grandfathers existing coal plants and will allow many new coal plants to come on line. Even though Carbon Capture and Sequestration technology is supposedly required years later, its existence can not be counted on, is much more expensive compared to solar and wind, and potential leakage makes underground storage of sequestered CO2 a serious threat to the integrity of climate mitigation and even public safety. We should be quickly phasing out coal plants starting now. We also need to invest in just transition pathways for utilities workers, coal miners and their families, so that the new energy economy is one that is rooted in community justice.

8. A letter to Congress, signed by over 200 organizations nationwide (initiated by the Center for Biological Diversity) points to many of the same concerns we identify, claiming …”we recognize the massive political effort that is necessary to pass climate legislation, but a bill with inadequate targets, loophole ridden mechanisms, rollbacks of our flagship environmental laws, and inadequate financing to help developing countries address climate change will move us in the wrong direction.”

In sum, this bill will entrench us in pathways into deeper pollution and poverty, and our last chance of averting the worst of climate catastrophe will be lost forever. Our most vulnerable communities both in the U.S. and around the world - predominantly working poor, people of color and Indigenous communities that have the lightest carbon footprints will be the first to suffer from the impacts of these failures.

More articles/resources:
1) http://www.grist..org/article/emissions-trading-a-mixed-record-with-plenty-of-failures/
2) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122244615963779185.html
(3) http://www.co2offsetresearch.org/policy/Market.html
*(Global CO2 offset transactions have been estimated at $7.2 billion in 2008, with transactions in the secondary market topping $25 billion. Under an ACESA type of bill this market will be greatly expanded)

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Boston Globe: Bottled-water scam finally feels squeeze

Bottled water sales are down; bottlers say it's in response to the recession. If you look at the survey on the Boston Globe's website, though, almost as many respondents cited environmental reasons for opting for the tap, rather than buying the bottle. You can read the GAO report that Jackson mentions in this article here.

by Derek Z. Jackson. Posted August 25 at The Boston Globe

We don't miss the water when the cash runs dry. Bottled water, that is. That refreshing news came recently as Nestle reported nearly a 5 percent drop in bottled water sales in North America and Western Europe. That company bottles water under the familiar names of Poland Spring, Perrier, S. Pellegrino, and Deer Park.

Pepsi’s Aquafina and Coke’s Dasani reported declining or weakening bottled-water sales as well. The president of Pepsi’s North American bottling group, Rob King, said in a July conference call, “In just a tough economic environment, one of the first things that a shopper can do is consume tap water as opposed to purchasing bottled water.’’

The sad part is that ending the bottled-water fad took a recession, when common sense should have kicked in long ago.

While some bottled water does come from the natural springs and mountain lakes depicted on the labels, most is just municipal tap water - water that is packaged and sold at enormous cost. Two years ago, the Earth Policy Institute estimated that each gallon of bottled water costs $10 a gallon to go from the groundwater to your lips. Each bottle of water kicks the environment twice, first with unnecessary plastic containers and then with the fuel that is burned to transport this heavy liquid load to your door, supermarket, or vending machine. The cost is currently four times the cost of a gallon of regular gasoline.

This sham is so ridiculous that the Government Accountability Office, which studied the issue for a House committee, reported this summer that the energy costs of delivering bottled water to a consumer in Los Angeles were 1,100 to 2,000 times more than the energy cost of tap water, depending on how far away the filled bottles traveled.

GAO researchers also noted that Americans say they drink filtered or bottled water for health reasons. Nearly half of state officials around the nation report that their consumers believe bottled water is safer than tap water. This obviously cannot be true when the bottled water is tap water.

Yet, annual bottled-water consumption more than doubled between 1997 and 2007, from 13.4 gallons a person to 29.3 gallons. Massachusetts requires the source of bottled water to be put on the label, the GAO noted, but more detailed information is hard to come by anywhere. The GAO found that in a review of 83 bottled-water labels, only one label contained limited water-quality or health information.

Such information was seemingly available on the Web or by telephone for 34 companies, but the GAO found that 13 of these water-quality reports - more than a third - were incomplete or unclear. The GAO concluded that the Environmental Protection Agency’s rules for tap water are generally stronger than the Food and Drug Administration’s regulation of bottled water.

So much for the illusion that bottled water is healthier than tap water.

Meanwhile, the bottles themselves remain a symbol of our wasteful times. Three-quarters of water bottles end up in landfills.

In House testimony last month, GAO’s director on natural resources and the environment, John Stephenson, said consumers would likely benefit from more information than they can find on the unhelpful labels on bottled water. Then again, if shoppers knew more about the product, they might not buy bottled water at all.

In one of the more outrageous examples of bottled-water scamming, the Merced (Calif.) Sun-Star reported in June how the Safeway supermarket chain turns Merced city water into an enormous profit. “In Safeway’s case,’’ the newspaper reported, “they pay more than $1,000 a month for more than a million gallons of water. The retail cost for that much-purified bottled water at Safeway is just under $3 million. Safeway would not say how much it costs them to produce their water.’’ Yet Safeway spokeswoman Teena Massingill told the Sun-Star, “We are providing a product that did not exist previously.’’

Last I heard, water existed before bottles, and before Safeway. Thankfully, consumers are beginning to remember that, too.

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Corporations and Democracy interviews Chris Hedges on spectacle and democracy

The most recent edition of Corporations and Democracy features AfD members Tom Wodetzski and Toni Rizzo interviewing Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author Chris Hedges. Hedges's new book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

In the book and in this wide-ranging conversation, Hedges examines commodity culture and the "cult of the self" and sees in it the roots of an illogical, unreflective society which is without compassion and ill-equipped to deal with environmental and economic challenges. Compounding the problem: liberal moral bankruptcy, a corporate media, the fading of print-based society, growing de facto and functional illiteracy. Totalitarian societies, say Hedges, are built around image and spectacle, and the health care debate and media focus on the fringe is an example. Will we learn to "grow up" and build a movement or will we turn to "saviors and demagogues?"

The comments by call-ins are terrific as well.

The sound quality at the beginning of the recording is a little rough this week due to some technical difficulties!

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Rep. Weiner on health care

From this morning's appearance on MSNBC. The clip begins with the wrap-up of a previous piece on Afghanistan. Health care starts around 4:40.

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Re-imaginging Economics, redesigned!

Arawak City (OH) friends of the Alliance for Democracy have redesigned their website, Re-imagining Economics. The home page features articles from alternative media and columns and commentary by group members, and the "Pamphlets and Papers" section now features a topic index so that you can find resources on particular issues and problems. Downloadable pamphlet versions of the papers are intended for easy distribution to advance economic literacy as part of a public education effort.

Topics include the commons, cooperatives, monetary policy, and non-authoritarian leadership, among others. Comments and suggestions are welcome--check out the site and see what you think!

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Brief filed in case that may permit direct corporate donations to candidates

Five groups have cited the appropriation of personhood rights by corporations in a brief filed in the U.S. Supreme court in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The groups' brief urges the court to uphold current laws preventing corporations from making direct political contributions in federal elections.

The brief was filed August 1 on behalf of the Clements Foundation, Democracy Unlimited, POCLAD, Shays2, and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, by attorney Jeff Clements, who represented all five organizations.

The brief argues that corporations are legal entities and were not intended to share the same protections as legal persons under the Bill of Rights. It also casts doubt on the validity of personhood rights granted to corporations under the 14th Amendment's due process and equal protection clauses. The groups' conclusion? Democratically enacted regulation of corporate participation in politics do not violate the Constitutional principle of freedom of speech.

Current election regulations draw the line at allowing corporations to cut checks directly to individuals' campaign committees (less direct means of influencing elections are, of course, rampant). However, the court could use Citizens United v. FEC to begin to overturn this ban. Citizens United appealed a previous ruling, based on a 2003 Supreme Court case, Austin and McConnell, which ruled that limits on corporate expenditures in elections did not violate freedom of speech.

According to Democracy Unlimited, "if the Supreme Court overrules Austin and McConnell, First Amendment rights claimed by corporations will be significantly expanded, and local, state, and federal governments will be further restricted in the ability to regulate corporations and corporate influence on our democratic processes."

“The notion that corporations have the same speech rights as people under our Bill of Rights is contrary to the words, history, spirit and intent of our Constitution,” said Clements in a statement issued by Democracy Unlimited. “Corporations do not vote, speak, or act as people do, but are products of government policy to achieve economic and charitable ends. As such, corporations need not be allowed to influence our elections if Congress and State governments judge that such influence is detrimental to democracy.”

The Supreme Court takes up Citizens United V. FEC in September. You can read the brief at http://www.clementsllc.com.

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Health care debate part II with Rep. Weiner and Joe Scarborough, tomorrow on MSNBC

Tomorrow (Monday) morning Rep. Anthony Weiner returns to the "Morning Joe" show on MSNBC. We've posted video from his first visit here. Weiner made a strong, clear case for single payer, and was invited back by the show's host Joe Scarborough to speak more. Tune in at 8am on MSNBC. For late risers the video will be posted on MSNBC's website shortly after the interview at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036789 /.

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Want to help the Hive? It's a click away!

The extraordinary artists at the Beehive Collective need you! They're in the running for a grant from the Nau Clothing Company, and you can help them win it by voting for their project on Nau's site. The deadline is August 31.

The grant will fund printing of 10,000 posters and several large-scale cloth banners to be used by grassroots organizers across Appalachia for the Collective's "True Costs of Coal" campaign, which explores the environmental and social consequences of mountaintop removal mining. You can see pictures here.

Please take a few seconds to support the Beehive Collective by visiting Nau's site and voting for the True Costs of Coal project. Here's how you do it:

1. Go to www.Nau.Com/Collective/Grant-For-Change/



2. At the top of the page, you will see "My Account: Sign in/Register"



3. Log in. If you do not have an account, take two seconds to create one. All it takes is your email address, your name, and a password of your choice.

4. Once you are logged in, you will be sent back to the G4C home page. You are now ready to vote/rate.



5. NEXT, follow this link to the Beehive Collective's Profile (listed under two of the illustrator's names)
http://www.Nau.Com/Collective/Grant-For-Change/Beatriz-Mendoza-And-Zeph-Fishlyn-507.Html

Remember, the deadline is August 31.

If you're hearing about the Beehive Collective for the first time, please check out their lecture tour schedule and fantastic work at www.beehivecollective.org, and support them directly through purchase of artwork, posters, patches and clip art cds.

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Sickforprofit.com links CEO greed with unmet patient need

If you missed it, here's Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films on the Ed Show, discussing United Health Care CEO Stephen Hemsley's bloated salary--$3.2 million last year with stock options of almost $750 million. And the profits that pay him come from denying care to people in need, and their stories are here as well.

This is not the free market at work, Greenwald says. "This is a manipulated market controlled by a few greedy profiteers who are literally making the money off of the backs of sick people."



Brave New Film's Sick for Profit site has more, while their War on Greed pages feature dispatches from the casino economy's payouts--the bailout, the bonuses, and resistance by labor and community groups. If you want to learn more about the economic consequences of massively subsidizing money-grubbing incompetents, this is a good place to start.

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Thousands join White House call-in for faith-based health care reform

More than 140,000 callers joined a conference call last night with Melody Barnes, White House domestic policy adviser, President Obama, and religious leaders last for a faith-based discussion of health care reform. For the thousands who could not get on the call, and for those who missed it, a recording is posted here. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/40mins4health (the recording may start on two players on the website; if it does, simply pause the second player.)

The call was sponsored by PICO, a national, non-partisan network of faith-based community organizations. Participants included pastors and worshipers from seven PICO affiliates giving testimony about the sometimes fatal delays in care they face as a result of the costs and limitations that drive health care industry profits.

Melody Barnes took questions from participants on health rationing fears, the cost of reform, federal funding of abortion, and affordability of coverage under an individual mandate, followed by representatives of congregations reporting on how their churches are educating and organizing for reform. President Obama portrayed the debate as its taking place among voters as a battle between hope and fear, something that was true of other groundbreaking government reform initiatives.

Participants were asked to take action over the next "forty days" to make sure that Congress reconvenes ready to pass comprehensive health care reform. Check faithforhealth.org for calls to action between now and the end of the recess. The call closed with remarks from the president on the moral imperative for health care reform, which he portrayed as a battle between hope and fear.

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When it Comes to Water, Can Corporations and Community Really Coexist?

Corporate control of the commons is the issue that unites anti-bottled water groups with farmers and environmentalists concerned with irreparable damage to aquifers. But communities need rights to protect the water they depend on.

by Peter Asmus. Posted on AlterNet, August 19

When drought brought a critical shortage of water to Kerala, India, anti-globalization activists placed part of the blame on Coca-Cola, which operated a plant there.

Critics contended that Coca-Cola failed to involve the local community in its plans, and the activists began building a substantial global movement against water privatization, employing the tactic of "brand-jacking" of the world's No. 1 brand--Coke--to make their point.

Coke's Kerala plant has since ceased operations, making it a casualty of the global pressure placed on the company. But the campaign against privatization of water resources by activist groups has only grown stronger on the campaign front.

Today, the focus is on bottled water, which critics point to as a wasteful, expensive example of water privatization -- companies taking public water, repackaging it and selling it back to us for a profit.

But the water wars have just begun. Bottled water may be today's popular target, but that battle has peaked. Now, activists are beginning to look beyond bottled water, setting their sights on much bigger objectives.

At stake, they believe, is whether water is recognized as a basic human right, or becomes simply another commodity controlled by giant corporations.

While the bottled-water controversy may have helped propel fresh water issues into the limelight internationally, the current hottest buzz phrase among water-policy-reform advocates, and a topic galvanizing the debate over privatization of water, is the wonky phrase "free prior informed consent" (FPIC).

Jonathan Kaledin, director of The Nature Conservancy's (TNC) global freshwater certification program, said: "Water has been so abundant. There has been an out-of-sight, out-of-mind attitude about it. As the risks of water shortages become more public, corporations that use a lot of water need to become more aware of the concept of FPIC."

In a nutshell, FPIC recognizes that communities have the right to self-determination. They have a right to give or withhold their consent for new production facilities that may impact local water supplies or prices.

From a legal point-of-view, FPIC is an evolving concept that is gaining wider acceptance by nongovernmental organizations, as well as a few private corporations. FPIC is now incorporated in some forms of international treaty law, especially when it comes to indigenous peoples and extractive industries such as oil and mining. What's new is that FPIC is now being applied to water.

In fall 2007, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the principle of FPIC for development projects, and momentum is building globally toward establishing FPIC as a principle of customary international law. The two key challenges for FPIC is an apparent conflict with the sovereign rights of nations to exploit their own natural resources (as they deem fit), and a lack of clarity about how to implement FPIC.

Among the key issues yet to be resolved are:

• How is "the community" defined? Is there a strict geographical limitation to "community," and are elected officials given greater or equal status to local citizens?
• If there is a lack of consensus within the "community," what process validates any decision-making (i.e. majority vote of local governing body; a referendum?)
• Absent a political process, what exactly represents an adequate level of consent?

David Shilling, a water expert with the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (IRRC) argued that FPIC is quite important in order for government and companies to make deals, because it is at the community level where water impacts will be felt. He went on to say:

The community involved has to be part of that conversation. The underserved deserve a place at the table, too. And human rights -- not technical issues -- should be the focus. Otherwise, the corporation will not have a social license to operate. Unfortunately, companies and government have a hard time with this sort of thing. Need to put these issues about water into a larger context, a tangible framework to get a buy-in and to help elevate discussions to the level of community consent.

Bridge Over Troubled Water?
Nestlé Waters has had its fair share of controversies over siting production plants. In Michigan, for example, private wells were allegedly impacted by withdrawals. In early July, a settlement between Nestlé Waters and Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation was reached, reducing the company's per-day pumping limits, with additional restrictions during spring and summer months.

Alex McIntosh, Nestlé Water's director of corporate citizenship, doesn't hold back when assessing how critics view his company's products. "Bottled water has become symbolic about the issue of who actually owns water. Is it fair for water to be priced and sold, and then shipped to us in plastic?" is the way he paraphrased how critics see his company's products. Bottled water is "literally a drop in the bucket," he said, pointing to stats that show bottled water represents a fraction of 1 percent of total water consumption.

Nevertheless, Nestlé Waters is moving forward on developing and implementing a "Siting and Community Commitment Framework." A key element to be examined is the notion of FPIC.

This move by Nestlé was prompted by a public outcry from the community on the McCloud River in Northern California when the County Community Service District invited Nestlé to explore a water operation, and some residents were concerned that the deal allegedly gave the firm a 50-year contract and priority rights to water that feeds one of California's premier rainbow trout and steelhead streams.

To its credit, Nestlé Waters has withdrawn the deal and is working with the community to come up with something better.

Community concerns typically revolve around fears that "the company will use all of our water, destroy the aquifer and change our way of life," McIntosh said. "The power differential is also an issue, as communities want balanced deals. Many have almost spiritual views of local water supplies and are just opposed to someone bottling local water and selling it."

Mark Hays, senior researcher for Corporate Accountability International (CAI), a 20-year-old organization well experienced with boycotts and a fierce critic of bottled water, is not very sympathetic to beverage companies such as Nestlé Waters or Coke.

"We see FPIC as being about democratic control of water," Hays said. "The impacts of bottlers on any local community are a tricky thing to deal with." But he put forth a few principles that could shape a FPIC protocol for water: 1) A full accounting of a project's impacts; 2) No undue influence on the general public's access to water; 3) No secret economic or political agreements with public agencies.

"We have a ways to go before asking for FPIC," Hays said. "Most of the times, the question of whether a facility will have impacts should be simple and clear. Absent good data, some 'stickiness' can occur." Hays's bottom line question on FPIC was this: "Will Nestlé Waters or other corporations accept 'no' for an answer?"

A Good Step Forward, But No Panacea
Without the kind of substantive participation that FPIC mandates, the tenured security of rural communities is always at the mercy of decisions made by others with more perceived power. It is well documented that such insecurity perpetuates poverty.

In contrast, with the bargaining power that FPIC provisions bring them, communities can demand direct compensation for damages or a continuing share of the profits of resource extraction. They can even require the backers of development to invest part of the profits from these ventures to meet community needs. In this respect, FPIC is a tool for greater equity and a natural pathway to a co-management role for local communities in large development projects

But FPIC is not a panacea. Consider these comments from Anil Naidoo of the Council of Canadians:

I do think that it is good to bring the community in on the first level of discussions about water. And the notion of water as a human right cannot be disassociated from these discussions. But even if employing democratic means, any consent or decisions should not give away the human right to water or the health of the environment for future generations. How do we respect intergenerational rights?

This whole process is still operating from an anthropomorphic view ... It is very important to have more transparency and to develop a set of guidelines of what is appropriate. But if you still give away all of the water to Nestle Waters, what good is that? I still have reservations about how FPIC will be used and for what.

Other NGOs, such as Amazon Watch, are much more open to making the business case for FPIC. "To give people and communities the fundamental right to have a say about what happens on their lands under FPIC is a good thing," Kevin Koenig of Amazon Watch pointed out. "To date, many companies are adhering to ILO 169, so companies are consulting with local communities. But sitting at the table and consulting is not enough, when the choice is 'yes or yes.' The community needs to have the right to say 'no,' they need to be able to have veto power."

Koenig says FPIC just makes good business sense. "If oil companies or other extractive industries do not have a social license to operate, they will experience project delays, bad PR, both of which aren't good for business. So far, no company has been able to say 'no.' "

But FPIC is at the heart of current U.N. declarations on the human right to water, and the new barometer of how companies will be judged in terms of CSR and the human right to water.

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Why single-payer is the only sensible health care reform

Another short, succinct run-down of why we need a single payer health care system and why halfway measures like co-ops or a public option are just going to prolong the pain. Look on Online Journal for other good op-eds--reward yourself with a good read after you spend some time organizing for single payer!

By Carmen Yarrusso, posted on Online Journal August 19

Health care is special

Health care services are in a special category of “services.” Unlike almost all other services in our “free market” economy, most health care services (just like police and fire services) are necessary for all residents -- often a matter of life and death.

Incredibly, we treat most health care services as if they were optional for some residents. The extreme costs, the multiple inefficiencies, and the shameful injustice of our current health care system are the guaranteed results of treating heath care services as optional for some residents.

As a civilized nation, we would never tolerate a system where police or fire services were treated as optional for some residents. To understand how utterly absurd our private health care system is, imagine life in America if we treated police and fire services the way we now treat most health care services.

If police and fire services were optional for some
Instead of groups pooling their resources and providing everyone with police and fire services, where each dollar spent provides a dollar’s worth of services (minus the cost to administer payments), imagine introducing a middleman -- police and fire insurance companies.

Like our current health care system, about 30 percent of every dollar we spend wouldn’t provide any police or fire services whatsoever, but instead would go to other insurance company expenses and profits.

Aside from administrative costs to pay for services, insurance companies would pay billions to shareholders as profits, plus spend billions more for advertising, lobbying Congress, huge executive salaries, and paying a large staff whose main job would be to find ways to shift costs to purchasers and providers and to maximize profits by minimizing services.

Like our current health care system, maximizing profits would mean charging the highest possible premiums (money in) while spending as little as possible on actual police and fire services (money out). This is simply smart business.

Insurance companies would compete to enroll residents likely to require the least police or fire services, while trying to avoid residents likely to require the most police or fire services. Like our current health care system, this would guarantee that residents who need these services the most would be the least likely to get them (this is simply smart business).

Those residents unfortunate enough to need services “too often” would be denied, dropped, or charged unaffordable premiums. Those who live in “dangerous” (low profit) areas would simply be denied police or fire services due to “pre-existing conditions” (this is simply smart business).

Insurance companies would have great profit incentives to find myriad ways to deny services or to shift costs because any money spent providing actual services comes right out of their profits. Like our current health care system, this would guarantee millions of residents would have no police or fire services at all (this is simply smart business).

In a civilized society, most health care services are no more optional than police and fire services. It’s patently absurd to put a middleman (whose profit incentives are plainly against the interests of the American people) between us and our health care providers.

A middleman makes no sense for health services
It’s clearly counterproductive to put a middleman between providers of necessary services and those who need these services. This guarantees disastrous results.

Providing real estate services using a middleman (agent) makes sense. A real estate middleman has profit incentives to provide purchasers with reasonably priced products because if prices are too high, purchasers won’t buy and the middleman gets nothing. There’s no profit incentives to deny purchasers what’s being provided. Thus, middleman profit incentives benefit both purchasers and providers.

But providing health care services using a middleman is an unambiguous con game. A health care middleman clearly has profit incentives to charge excessive prices precisely because these services are necessary (pay or die). But even worse, a health care middleman has great profit incentives to deny us necessary services because every health care service denied is pure profit (this is simply smart business).

In addition to diverting billions of our health care dollars to profits and other non-health-care expenses, encouraging excessive premiums, and making it very profitable to deny us necessary services, using a middleman also adds hundreds of billions to our health care costs by forcing hospitals and doctors to maintain vast armies of administrators who must battle hundreds of insurance companies (with thousands of different medical plans) all with great profit incentives to deny us as many health care services as they can get away with (this is simply smart business).

It’s beyond foolish to expect insurance companies to act against their profit incentives. A single-payer system is the only reform that can end this devastating rip-off of the American people.

A “public option” would only make things worse
A public option (or a co-op) would simply add another player to our inefficient, fragmented, dysfunctional, multi-payer system. The hundreds of billions we now waste on multi-payer administrative costs would continue unabated.

But worse, a public option would soon be overwhelmed with the sickest (most costly) residents. Why? Because insurance companies compete by discarding the sickest residents (while marketing to the healthiest), a public option would quickly shift even more of the costs of our sickest residents to taxpayers, while freeing insurance companies to compete for healthier (more profitable) residents.

We eventually pay for everyone’s health care anyway
The government already funds more than 60 percent of all health care spending. We taxpayers already pay a lot for “other people’s” health care. Tax subsidies for private insurance alone cost taxpayers nearly $200 billion a year. We taxpayers give insurance companies about $100 billion a year to provide health care for public employees (such as teachers and police officers).

We all pay when uninsured residents must use expensive emergency rooms. In most cases, had they been given regular preventative care, they would have required much less total health care and thus cost us much less.

An Institute of Medicine study estimates 18,000 Americans pay with their lives because they lack health insurance -- a shining example of how private health care “saves taxpayers money” (this is simply smart business).

An American Journal of Medicine study says 62 percent of all bankruptcies (about 2 million a year) are linked to medical bills (80 percent had health insurance). When we count the excessive burden our absurd private health care system adds to all businesses, and other such hidden costs, single-payer would be much less expensive and provide much better care (exactly what other countries with single-payer systems have experienced).

Multiple studies show there’s more than enough money in our health care system to serve everyone if it were spent wisely (e.g. 1991 GAO report, 1993 CBO report).

Preserving profits with lies, damn lies, and propaganda
Insurance companies know very well they’re running an extremely profitable con game. They won’t give up their massive profits without a ruthless political fight.

They tell us “government insurance” would mean rationing, bureaucrats getting between us and our doctors, and excessive costs to taxpayers. In fact, these things are much worse now in our private system. Insurance companies don’t really want us to carefully compare their products with single-payer Medicare, which is rated very highly by its 45 million users.

In a national Commonwealth Fund survey, Medicare users were significantly more satisfied with their health care than people using employer-sponsored plans (even though the elderly require by far the most intensive health care services among us). For example, 70 percent of those with single-payer Medicare said they “always” get access to needed care (specialists, tests, treatment) compared to only 51 percent of those with private insurance.

Doctors consistently report having few problems with single-payer Medicare, and frequent problems with private insurance companies. A “government bureaucrat” has no incentive to deny us necessary services because he’s spending “other people’s money.” If he denies us a service, the money “saved” just goes toward another’s care. But an insurance company bureaucrat has great incentive to deny us necessary services because the money “saved” goes right into his pocket.

Unlike honest “service” providers, who seek people needing their services, health insurance companies seek those who don’t need their services (while doing all they can to avoid those who do). Insurance companies pretend they’re in the business of providing health care, when their true business is denying health care.

Each year 2 million of us are bankrupted by medical expenses. Each day, 14,000 of us lose our health insurance. Most of us are just a pink slip away from this horror. Compare this to the peace of mind we’d have with a single-payer system that would always be there for us (all of us).

Why does this blatant con game continue?
Because our government is for sale to the highest bidder. Our government “representatives” thrive on special interest money. They would be severely punished politically (and lose millions) if they were to put the interests of the American people ahead of influential insurance and drug companies.

The health care industry is spending $1.4 million dollars per day to lobby against reform ($126 million in just the first quarter). This is precisely why our “representatives” (Democrats and Republicans) aren’t seriously considering the only sensible way to provide high-quality health care in America -- a tried and tested single-payer system.

Our “representatives” are diligently keeping single-payer “off the table” for one reason only: single-payer would easily win in any honest, open debate. Once again our “representatives” are selling us out to special interests.

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right -- Thomas Paine

Private insurance for necessary health care is just plain wrong and it’s been just plain wrong for a very long time.

We the people must unite and take back our government -- it surely won’t be given back voluntarily.

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Astroturfing...not just for health care!

Commentary from The San Francisco Chronicle's "Thin Green Line" blog on a story in the New York Times on astroturfing in the energy industry.

After bruising revelations that companies, notably ExxonMobil, had funded contrarian "science" on climate change, the industry claimed to get religion but actually only reduced its funding.

Then, as it appeared inevitable that carbon regulations would happen eventually, a group of corporations, including a handful of energy giants, formed the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, asking for clear regulation soon. (The devil you know is better than the devil you don't know.)

Yet, several of the companies in this partnership have hired a PR firm to coordinate an astroturf (or faux grassroots) campaign to protest the Waxman-Markey bill that, on paper, they support.

Greenpeace recently obtained a memo coordinating an effort, funded by the American Petroleum Institute, for energy companies to bus their employees to political events disguised as everyday Americans opposed to "Waxman-Markey-like" legislation (a generalization that I find somehow creepy). It appears that USCAP was at least aware of the campaign, if not an active participant.

Other bait-and-switch efforts include the coal lobby's recent forged letters of opposition to the bill, sent by yet another PR firm, to members of Congress, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's continued efforts to deny climate change, although most of its (paying) members acknowledge it and many support carbon regulation.

What is wrong with out political system that these bought-and-paid-for lies are allowed to dominate our public discourse, much like they have on health care? Well, one clear problem is that lobbying disclosure requirements are not expansive enough to include astroturf campaigns, so a company can spend $10 officially lobbying for a politically popular position—most Americans support climate regulations—and spend $10,000 working against that position in ways they don't have to disclose.

According to Greenpeace, $82 million have been spent by the fossil fuels industry openly opposing climate regulation.

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Progressive Populist: Stop Corporate Terrorism

Cullen's editorial gives the Democratic leadership a to-do list for bringing legislators into line and instituting meaningful reform, including the public option, and potentially a single-payer system. As for the behind-the-scenes actions of industry, remember that it's not really terrorism until it shuts you up.

by Jim Cullen, editor, The Progressive Populist, to be printed in the September 2009 issue

For sheer, unmitigated gall, it’s hard to beat the conservatives who are mounting a last-ditch campaign to derail meaningful health care reform.

First, the health insurance and pharmaceutical companies bribed Congress members with millions of dollars in campaign contributions to keep expansion of Medicare — the most efficient way to provide affordable health coverage to every American — “off the table.”

Then their allies in Congress held up the progress of a compromise health reform bill past the summer recess. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) continues to negotiate with Republican senators who have indicated that they will never support a final bill that liberal Democrats could support.

At the same time, rightwing organizers are coordinating mobs that have disrupted attempts by Democratic Congress members to discuss health care reform in their home districts. Protesters have showed up at congressional town meetings armed with Republican talking points that the President Obama’s plan would threaten Medicare and veterans’ health programs, put government bureaucrats between patients and their doctors and set up “death panels” to deny care for seniors and the disabled.

In fact, as Mike Madden notes in “Dispatches,” the “death panels” already are operated by private health insurance companies, who wield insurance-policy fine print to deny expensive treatments for stricken customers who thought they were covered. The bureaucrats earn bonuses and their bosses fatten their corporate profits at the expense of unlucky patients.

Wendell Potter was head of corporate communications for CIGNA, one of the largest for-profit health insurance companies, when he helped spearhead the healthcare industry’s campaign against Michael Moore’s movie, Sicko in 2007. But he told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! July 16 that he decided “it was time to go” after CIGNA later that year denied a California teenager, Nataline Sarkisyan, coverage for a liver transplant that her doctors had recommended. That forced Nataline’s family to appeal to the media, the California Nurses Association and others to put pressure on the company, which ultimately decided to cover the procedure, but it was too late for Nataline, who died just two hours after CIGNA told her family the transplant could go ahead.

Potter quit CIGNA and became a whistleblower with the Center for Media and Democracy (prwatch.org). He said Wall Street has forced insurance companies to dump more sick customers in order to increase profit margins since 1993, when Bill and Hillary Clinton were trying to reform health care. At that time, insurers spent 95 cents of every premium dollar to pay claims. Now, with the consolidation of the insurance industry into seven very large for-profit companies that dominate the market, the companies have gotten those payouts down to 80% of premiums paid. The savings go to the corporate bottom line.

In comparison, only 3% of Medicare expenses go to administration and there is no incentive to arbitrarily deny care. But that’s socialism!

Health insurance companies, health care providers and pharmaceutical companies are pouring $1.4 million a day into lobbying, to water down the reforms, delay their implementation or, better yet from their point of view, kill it off entirely.

“Of course, the thing they fear most is that the country will at some point gravitate toward a single-payer plan,” Potter said. “That’s the ultimate fear that they have. ... They fear even the public insurance option that’s being proposed, that was part of President Obama’s campaign platform, his healthcare platform. And they’ll pull out all the stops they can to defeat that.

The insurance industry’s game plan to defeat the current reform effort is based on scare tactics, he said. “They’ll be working with their ideological allies, with the business community, with conservative pundits and editorial writers, to try to scare people into thinking that embracing a public health insurance option would lead us down the ... slippery slope toward socialism and that you will be, in essence, putting a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor. ... They’ve used those talking points for years, and ... they’ve always worked.”

This year conservatives have mobilized cadres of “teabaggers,” the right-wing shock troops who first came on the scene in April to protest taxes and vilify President Obama. Organized by Washington-based lobbyists such as Dick Armey’s “FreedomWorks” and local Republican and Libertarian officials, the teabaggers showed up at town hall rallies to crowd out health reform supporters and shout down attempts by Congress members to explain their positions on health care as well as attempts by health reform advocates to make their cases.

Obama made a populist appeal for healthcare reform in Portsmouth, N.H. on Aug. 11, telling the bipartisan crowd about the pitfalls of private insurance and making it clear that people who think they have good insurance coverage should welcome reforms too: “I don’t think government bureaucrats should be meddling [in your health care], but I also don’t think insurance company bureaucrats should be meddling,” he said, adding, “Right now insurance companies are rationing care.”

He added that he is not promoting a single-payer plan, because it would be too disruptive. “I am promoting a plan that will assure that every single person is able to get health insurance at an affordable price, and that if they have health insurance they are getting a good deal from the insurance companies.”

Teabaggers (many of whom are covered by Medicare but are frightened by the scare tactics) protest that Obama is moving too fast, but we’ve been waiting for universal health care for more than 60 years, since Harry Truman proposed national health insurance after World War II. This past year’s election not only put Obama in the White House with a mandate for change but also put commanding Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. Independent polls consistently show that a clear majority of the public wants reform with at least a strong public option. (A New York Times/CBS poll (July 29) found Americans trust Obama over Republicans on health care by a 55%-26% margin and 66% support a Medicare-style public option for all Americans.)

It’s time to move on healthcare reform. Senate Democrats need to remind Max Baucus that his is merely one committee that is working on health reform. There are several points on which Democrats and Republicans can agree, such as defining a minimum package of benefits; prohibiting insurance companies from denying coverage or charging higher premiums because of a person’s medical history or health condition; and setting up health insurance exchanges, where people could shop for insurance and compare prices and benefits. The Senate health committee, chaired by Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) in the absence of ailing Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), has approved a bill that, in addition to these points, would set up a “public option,” administered by the government, to compete with private health insurance companies.

Republicans say they won’t allow a government-run public insurance plan to compete with private insurers. Fine. But Baucus and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking Republican on the finance committee, need to produce the best bill they can come up with, so Democratic leaders can merge it with the health committee draft, and send the resulting bill with a strong public option to the full Senate for an up-or-down vote.

If any Democrat supports a Republican filibuster, Majority Leader Harry Reid should make it clear they can forget about any Senate leadership role in the next session.

Progressive Democrats are in a lot stronger position in the House, where three committees already have produced bills that will be consolidated into one measure when the House comes back in September. Then a House-Senate conference committee will meet to reconcile the differences in the bills and send the compromise back to both respective chambers for final passage.

Democrats must pass strong health care reform this fall by any means necessary. They must not submit to the corporate terrorists.

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Rep. Anthony Weiner on MSNBC

Rep. Weiner renders "Morning Joe" Scarborough speechless by asking what value insurance companies add to health care in America.



Take aways?

First, right now no one party or point of view has the votes to pass any proposal. Which means that now is the time for people to both wonk out--read as much as you can so you can speak clearly to the skeptical and confused--and speak out--to neighbors and Congress.

The second part of the interview is below, discussing Medicare funding (with a break for news in the middle). Medicare going broke? Private health care costs are rising too, and faster. Weiner also mentions the economic benefit, long-term, of providing universal health care.



Scarborough says they'll have Weiner back on Thursday to continue what he says is the clearest statement he's heard so far on expanding Medicare and the public option.

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August 20: Hit the streets in Florida for health care reform!

A message from Floridians for Health Care! We know we have readers in Florida, and other readers with family and friends in Florida--make a call or send an email and turn people out tomorrow!

Did you want to come to the FLARA/FFHC August 20 Health Forum with Congressman Wexler at the So. County Civic Center but were too late to get a ticket?

You can still participate and make a difference for Health Care Reform.

The right wing crazies are planning to come out in force to demonstrate on Jog Road outside of the Forum with their message of lies and misrepresentations. Local TV cameras (and maybe C-Span) will be there filming the event. We do not want the opposition to be the only visual they put on tv. We are planning a counter demonstration in favor of health reform.

So, whether you support single payer or a public option, we need you! Will you volunteer today to carry a sign supporting health care reform out on Jog Road outside the Civic Center? It will take only 2 - 3 hours of your time (or as long as you are able to stay).

If you will, please email us back at FloridiansHealth@aol.com and give us your name, phone number and email address, then on Thursday, August 20th, come to the South County Civic Center, 16700 Jog Road, Delray Beach between 11 and 11:30 am.

Once you have parked, walk back to the entrance to the center on Jog Road. Larry Pius of www.HR676.org will be there wearing a yellow "Fight for Single Payer" T-Shirt. He will have signs for you to wave - OR, if you wish, you can create your own sign and bring it with you. Sheriff's Deputies will also be present to make sure everyone stays orderly and keep folks out of the traffic lanes for safety purposes.

Be a part of this historic event--don't let the right wing outshine us! America needs to see that more of us support reform than those who oppose it. Now is the time for progressives to get off our butts and hit the streets--volunteer today! Email FloridiansHealth@aol.com!

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Boycotts updated

Mixed news on the Fox News boycott, with retailers pulling ads from Glenn Beck but most simply moving them to other less controversial shows. Meanwhile, sales are apparently not down short term at Whole Foods--perhaps because most progressives already avoid the place in favor of farmers' markets, CSAs, co-ops, buying clubs, unionized supermarkets and locally owned health food stores. None the less, the boycott's Facebook group has some 15,000 members and a website: wholeboycott.com. The website has a list of links for people who are stuck for an alternative market, and a list of brands owned by Whole Foods. Meanwhile, CEO John Mackey has attempted an explanation on this blog post.

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Guadalajara: Obama Backpedals on Change

While not mentioned by name, the pro-corporate spirit of the Security and Prosperity Partnership still guided disappointing pronouncements from the North American Leaders Summit earlier this month. Be informed! Follow the "read more" link to statements from civil society groups, video, and official summit documents.

by Ben Beachy, Witness for Peace, and Manuel Pérez Rocha, Institute for Policy Studies

During the fifth North American Leaders Summit in Guadalajara, President Obama chose to backpedal on his stated commitment to change. Obama promised during his campaign (February 2008) that his meetings with the leaders of Mexico and Canada, “unlike similar summits under President Bush,” would be “transparent” and would involve “citizens, labor, the private sector and non-governmental organizations in setting the agenda and making progress.” By contrast, not only did the definition of this summit’s agenda not include civil society, the agenda was not even made public beforehand.

The summit’s outcome consistently reflected such disregard for civil society concerns. Mainstream media reported on Obama’s statements that the long-awaited overhaul of the broken U.S. migration system would be further delayed. Less reported was Obama’s suspension of the long-awaited overhaul of a treaty that has forced much migration: NAFTA. Obama’s refusal to even mention NAFTA during the summit is a major disappointment to people in the three countries who expected him to fulfill his campaign commitments to amend this and other free trade agreements. Retracting, two days before the summit Obama said that “given the weakened state of the U.S., Mexican and Canadian economies, this is not the time to reopen the NAFTA treaty for negotiations.” He missed the point: the very economic and financial deregulation policies contained in NAFTA have contributed to the present crisis, particularly in Mexico, whose economy is contracting worse than any other Latin American country. The economic crisis does not overshadow, but accentuates the need to renegotiate NAFTA.

Swine flu, another summit agenda item, also highlights the urgency of NAFTA renegotiation. While the three leaders gave collective pats-on-the-back for the handling of the swine flu outbreak, no mention was made of the epidemic’s causes. Evidence uncovered to date suggests a potential source of the flu: massive U.S.-owned hog raising operations in Mexico. Upon the implementation of NAFTA, the hog companies moved from the U.S. to Mexico so as to evade environmental and public health laws, permitting the large-scale disposal of untreated hog feces. Failing to address the trade model that facilitated this race to the bottom does not bode well for preventing future pandemics.

While saying little on trade, Obama said much on human rights. In a summit press conference, Obama backed Mexican President Calderon’s assertion that the Mexican government has a “strong commitment to protect the human rights of everybody…and anyone who says the contrary certainly would have to prove this -- any case, just one case, where the proper authority has not acted in a correct way.” Obama expressed “great confidence” that in Calderon’s ongoing antinarcotics assault, “human rights will be observed.” It is disappointing that Obama has ignored dozens of Mexican, U.S. and international human rights organizations that have repeatedly denounced the sixfold increase in human rights complaints since Calderon took office. Observing such an alarming upswing in violations amidst ongoing impunity, these organizations have asked the U.S. to withhold Merida Initiative funds destined to strengthen the Mexican military. Obama continued to turn a deaf ear to such concerns at the summit by reaffirming Merida Initiative support for Mexico’s failing “war on drugs.”

The summit did grant one partial victory: the outward failure of the Security and Prosperity Partnership, a failure made evident by the fact that the Presidents did not publicly mention the SPP name during the summit. Yet, SPP logic still persists in the trilateral relations. The Presidents’ joint summit declaration calls for “modern borders to facilitate trade and the smooth operation of supply chains, while protecting our security,” “protection of intellectual property rights,” and a commitment to continue “reducing unnecessary regulatory differences.” As in the SPP, the Presidents try to ameliorate the deregulation agenda with rhetoric like “[we will] ensure that the benefits of our economic relationship are widely shared and sustainable” and “we will seek to promote respect for labor rights and protection of the environment.” And how, we ask, if NAFTA is untouchable?

Given that the mainstream U.S. press decided to pay little attention to the Guadalajara summit, please see the following documentation to become better informed. The information is grouped as: a) input from civil society and legislators prior to the summit; b) official statements; and c) post-summit analysis and declarations.

In solidarity,

Ben Beachy and Manuel Pérez Rocha


Links to documentation on Guadalajara Summit

A) INPUTS FROM CIVIL SOCIETY AND LEGISLATORS PRIOR TO THE SUMMIT

• Legislators’ Task Force on Renegotiating NAFTA Seek New Fair Trade Model for North America
• Tri-National Union Declaration on the Occasion of the NAFTA Leaders Summit
• An Open Letter To Prime Minister Stephen Harper (from Canadian organizations)
• Letter from more than 100 Mexican organizations to North American leaders (in Spanish), delivered to the US Embassy in Mexico
• Letter to Obama re NAFTA and Guadalajara Meeting from North American networks

B) OFFICIAL STATEMENTS

• “Obama says this is not the time to reopen NAFTA”
• Joint Statement by North American Leaders
• North America Leaders’ Summit: Energy Deliverables
• North American Leaders’ Declaration on H1N1
• Transcript to Leaders’ Press Conference in Guadalajara

C) Civil Society organizations, parallel Summit and declarations

• Guadalajara March Against the SPP and NAFTA Part 1 10 minutos
• Guadalajara March Against the SPP and NAFTA Part 2 6:68 minutos
• “Altermundistas: la cumbre de líderes ignoró la agenda del pueblo”
• “Same old false solutions and short-sighted North American vision from Guadalajara summit, 
say Canadian civil society organizations”
• “Canada, United States and Mexico Leaders Declaration on Climate Change and Clean Energy falls short on needed changes”
• Interview with Amy Goodman in Democracy Now: “Obama reverses campaign pledge to renegotiate NAFTA”

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Who's too comfortable?

Even though it's pushing a public option rather than single payer, Health Care for America Now raises an excellent point: those who are foot dragging on reform are likely weighed down by heavy donations from the health care industries.

This ad series targets a select bunch of Republicans, but some Democrats could easily be featured here. Political bribery is a crime of opportunity, and whichever party is on top at the time gets their share.

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Free guide to green building programs

From Orion Grassroots Network:

Free book! The Network was recently offered an unlimited number of the book "Ecological Design and Building Schools: Green Guide to Educational Opportunities in the United States and Canada" for free by its publisher to distribute to jobseekers, students, colleges, green building professionals and activists. Sounds like a great resource for anyone interested in a career or hobby in green building techniques.

While free to us, we still need to cover our shipping and handling fees! To claim a copy, send a check for $3.50 (shipping and handling) per copy (limit of two) with your name and shipping address to:

Orion Grassroots Network
187 Main St.
Great Barrington, MA 01230

(disclosure: AfD's a member of the network--not-for-profit groups can join for a small annual fee. Orion Grassroots Network is part of the Orion Society. The network offers webinars on organizing, a job board service; the society publishes a fantastic magazine; check it out online.)

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Amy Goodman: Health care reform needs an action hero

He may be best known as a renegade agent on Fox tv, but in the real world, Kiefer Sutherland has defended the national health plan his grandfather founded.

by Amy Goodman. Posted on Truthdig, August 11

Imagine the scene. America 2009. Eighteen thousand people have died in one year, an average of almost 50 a day. Who’s taking them out? What’s killing them?

Tommy Douglas,
founder of Canada's
health care system.

To investigate, President Barack Obama might be tempted to call on Jack Bauer, the fictional rogue intelligence agent from the hit TV series “24,” who invariably employs torture and a host of other illegal tactics to help the president fight terrorism. But terrorism is not the culprit here:

It’s lack of adequate health care. So maybe the president’s solution isn’t Jack Bauer, but rather the actor who plays him.

The star of “24” is played by Kiefer Sutherland, whose family has very deep connections to health care reform—in Canada. Sutherland is the grandson of the late Tommy Douglas, the pioneering Canadian politician who is credited with creating the modern Canadian health care system. As a youth, Tommy Douglas almost lost his ailing leg. His family could not afford treatment, but a doctor treated him for free, provided his medical students could observe. As an adult, Douglas saw the impact of widespread poverty caused by the Great Depression. Trained as a minister, he had a popular oratorical style.

He moved into politics, joining the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation party. After several years in Parliament, he led the CCF’s decisive victory in the province of Saskatchewan, ushering in the first social democratic government in North America.

Douglas became premier of Saskatchewan, and pioneered a number of progressive policies there, including the expansion of public utilities, unionization and public auto insurance. But Douglas’ biggest battle, for which he is best remembered, is the creation of universal health insurance, called Medicare. It passed in Saskatchewan in 1962, guaranteeing hospital care for all residents. Doctors there staged a 23-day strike, supported by the U.S.-based American Medical Association. Despite industry opposition, the Saskatchewan Medicare program was so successful and popular that it was adopted throughout Canada. While Tommy Douglas was fighting for health insurance in Canada, a similar battle was raging in the U.S., resulting in the passage of Medicare and Medicaid, giving guaranteed, single-payer health care to senior citizens and the poor.

Rush Limbaugh, Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck and insurance-industry-funded groups are encouraging people to disrupt town hall meetings with members of Congress. A number of the confrontations have become violent, or at least threatening. Outside President Obama’s Portsmouth, N.H., event, a protester with a pistol strapped to his thigh drew further attention with a sign that read, “It is time to water the tree of Liberty.” Thomas Jefferson’s complete quote, not included on the sign, continues, “... with the blood of tyrants and patriots.” Limbaugh says “24” is one of his favorite shows. He has even visited the set. Rush should learn from the real-life actor who plays his hero, Jack. Limbaugh and his cohorts may find truth not as satisfying as fiction.

In 2004, a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. poll named Tommy Douglas “The Greatest Canadian.” At a protest in 2000 against efforts to roll back the Medicare system in the province of Alberta, Kiefer Sutherland defended Canada’s public, single-payer system:

“Private health care does not work. America is trying to change their system. It’s too expensive to get comprehensive medical care in the U.S. Why on earth are we going to follow their system here? I consider it a humanitarian issue. This is an issue about what is right and wrong, what is decent and what is not.”

Maybe Jack Bauer can save the day.

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!” the daily international TV/radio news hour and co-author of “Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times,” recently released in paperback.

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A succinct q&a on single payer and health care costs

This question and answer interview with Dr. Marcia Angell in yesterday's New York Times is a great, short, succinct explainer of why single payer is the best way to provide universal care equitably and economically. Dr. Angell is a strong single payer advocate and drug company critic, whose bona fides include a current post as senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School as well as former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.

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Earmark info now on the web--see who pays to play

If you'd like to track information on earmarks and see if there's a connection between lobbying money going in and federal contracts coming out, you now have an easier way to do it. Taxpayers for Common Sense and The Center for Responsive Politics have released a comprehensive database linking $820 million in campaign contributions with more than $35 billion of earmarked spending by lawmakers.

"At a minimum, earmarks granted to lawmakers' friends and supporters merit scrutiny and indicate potential conflicts of interest," according to Sheila Krumholz, Executive Director of the Center for Responsive Politics. In recent years, corruption probes related to earmarks have increased, and earlier this year, one prominent lobby shop shuttered operations following an FBI raid.

The earmark data is available for fiscal years 2008 and 2009, and can be accessed through both www.opensecrets.org and www.taxpayer.net (at OpenSecrets, find the legislator you're interested in and click on the Other Data tab).

The two groups intend to continue to work together to compile earmark data for fiscal 2010.

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Single Payer Action calls for Whole Foods boycott

SinglePayerAction.org is asking that you stay out of Whole Foods supermarkets. In an editorial on CommonDreams, Russell Mokhiber, editor of Corporate Crime Reporter and founder of the group, notes that the corp's libertarian CEO, John Mackey, has added "stop single payer" to his to-do list, as evidenced by his recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, Sargento Cheese, Geico Insurance, and Men's Warehouse have pulled ads from Glenn Beck, although not off Fox News altogether. See FoxNewsBoycott.com for more.

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"Corporations and Democracy" radio show now archived on the web

We're going to be posting audio .mp3 files of the radio show "Corporations and Democracy," hosted by AfD'ers Steve Scalmanini and Annie Esposito on KZYX&Z, Mendocino County public radio. This first installment can be downloaded here. It aired last month and features an interview with John Foster of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, an educational non-profit focusing on progressive ballot initiative campaigns nationwide. He discusses the center's project on ballot initiative integrity, especially in relation to a petition for a major mall development in Mendocino County. You can learn more about how the ballot initiative process is being mis-used at www.stopballotfraud.org.

Please leave a comment to let us know if transcripts of the show would be useful to you!

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Alternet: Right-wing turncoat gives the inside scoop on why conservatives are rampaging Town Halls

Bankrolled by right-wing players with deep pockets and spotty pasts, and egged on by media demagogues and internet hysterics, angry citizens have gone on the attack this August recess, disrupting town hall meetings from Massachusetts to Arizona. An ex-evangelist offers his view of the mindset driving the behind-the-scenes leaders of this supposedly populist revolt.

by Francis Schaeffer. Posted August 7 on Alternet

The Republican Old Guard are in the fix an atheist would be in if Jesus showed up and raised his mother from the dead: Their world view has just been shattered. Obama's election has driven them over the edge. Consider Former Congressman Dick Armey. Several far right foundations and the multitrillion dollar health-insurance industry have teamed up with him  to organize the far right foot soldiers of the Republican Party to  intimidate people speaking on behalf of health-care reform.  They are using my old shock troops -- given many of these folks were first energized by the Evangelical pro-life movement that my late father and I started in the 1970s. What we did to clinics they are now doing to congressmen and others speaking out for health care reform.



Having failed at the ballot box, having watched their Fox News-organized "tea parties" fizzle the intimidation tactics which the Republicans have embraced are being used in a well-financed, top-down orchestrated fake grass roots campaign by corporate interests to try and protect  the profits of the insurance business. Armey's FreedomWorks is  organizing against health care reform. Armey's lobbying firm represents pharmaceutical companies including Bristol-Myers Squibb. Armey's lobbying firm also represents the trade group for the life insurance industry.  FreedomWorks is supporting the status quo at all costs. (They are also fans of fossil fuels. Armey's lobbying firm represents Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Prime Minister of the UAE, on energy related issues.)



Last year, the Wall Street Journal exposed FreedomWorks for building "amateur-looking" websites to promote far right interests of Armey. FreedomWorks represents a top-down, corporate-friendly approach that's been the norm for conservative organizations for years. How do I know this is the norm? Because I used to have strategy meetings with the late Jack Kemp and Dick Army and the rest of the Republican gang about using their business ties to help finance the pro-life movement to defeat Democrats. I know this script. I helped write it.
 

Democratic members of Congress are being harassed by angry, sign-carrying mobs and disruptive behavior at local town halls. It's the tactic we used to follow abortion providers around their neighborhoods. "Protesters" surrounded Rep. Tim Bishop (D-NY) and forced police officers to have to escort him to his car for safety. We used to do the same to Dr. Tiller... until someone killed him.



How Can The Right Stoop So Low?


I used to know Dick Armey quite well. One of my sons even worked for him as an intern. I knew Armey in the context of his being a fan of my late Evangelical Religious Right leader father Francis Schaeffer. (Back in the day when I was a right wing "pro-life"  organizer who has long since quit the Republicans in disgust at their -- our -- descent into extremism and hate.) Armey was once a decent guy, whatever his political views. How could he stoop so low as to be organizing what amounts to America's Brown Shirts today?



I think I know what happened to him, Gingrich and the rest: They can't compute that their white man-led conservative revolution is dead. They can't reconcile their idea of themselves with the fact that white men like them don't run the country any more -- and never will again. To them the black president is leading a column of the "other" into their promised land. Gays, immigrants, blacks, progressives, even a female Hispanic appointed to the Supreme Court... for them this is the Apocalypse. 


The last presidential election (to paraphrase Bart Simpson)  "broke their brains." What else could explain their embrace of intimidation -- rather than discourse -- over the health care debate and such unsavory moments of madness as the Republicans accusing Obama and Judge Sonia Sotomayor of racism, knowing full well that they'd just destroyed their chances with the Hispanic community forever?



The "Scorched Earth Policy"


Dick Army and company have been driven mad by their reversal, not just of political fortunes but of seeing that they've wasted their lives. They now know they were wrong: about the country, the free market, war for fun and profit, and what the American people really want. They made their best case and were rejected by the American people-- and by history. Bush was their man and he turned out to be a fool. So now all the the Republican gurus have left is what the defeated Germans of World War Two had: a scorched earth policy. If they can't win then everyone must go down. Obama must fail! The country must fail!

The Lobbyist-run Groups "Americans for Prosperity " and "FreedomWorks"/Dick Armey-Orchestrated Memo


Here is a leaked excerpt from the folks organizing the intimidation campaign:

Artificially Inflate Your Numbers: "Spread out in the hall and try to be in the front half. The objective is to put the Rep on the defensive with your questions and follow-up. The Rep should be made to feel that a majority, and if not, a significant portion of at least the audience, opposes the socialist agenda of Washington."

 

Be Disruptive Early And Often: "You need to rock-the-boat early in the Rep's presentation. Watch for an opportunity to yell out and challenge the Rep's statements early."

   

Try To "Rattle Him," Not Have An Intelligent Debate: "The goal is to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda. If he says something outrageous, stand up and shout out and sit right back down. Look for these opportunities before he even takes questions."

The Last Republican Tactic: Outright Lies 


A barrage of outright lies, wherein the Democrats are being accused of wanting to launch a massive euthanasia program against the elderly, free abortions for everyone, and "a government takeover" of health-care is now being combined with physical intimidation that in several cases has required police escorts to protect pro health-care reform speakers surrounded by angry plants sent to disrupt public forums on the health-care issue. Demonstrators hung Rep. Frank Kratovil (D-MD) in effigy outside of his office. (Missing from the reporting of these stories -- with the notable exception of Rachel Maddow -- is the fact that much of these protests are coordinated by public relations firms and lobbyists who have a stake in opposing President Obama's reforms.



There is no daylight between the Republican Party, the health-care insurance industry, far right leaders like Dick Armey, the legion of insurance lobbyists, and now, a small army of  thugs. All we're missing is actual uniforms, otherwise we now have a full blown American version of the Nazi Brown Shirts.



No, I don't believe that these people are about to take over the country. No, the sky is not falling. But the Republican Party is. It is now profoundly anti-American.



The health-insurance industry is run by very smart and very greedy people who have sunk to a new low.  So has the Republican Party's leadership that will not stand up and denounce the likes of Dick Armey for helping organize roving bands of thugs trying to strip the rest of us of the ability to be heard when it comes to the popular will on reforming health care.



Conclusion: the Fascist Formula


Here's the emerging American version of the fascist's formula: combine millions of dollars of lobbyists' money with embittered  troublemakers  who have a small army of not terribly bright white angry people (collected over decades through pro-life mass mailing networks) at their beck and call, ever ready to believe any myth or lie circulated by the semi literate and completely and routinely misinformed right wing -- Evangelical religious underground. Then put his little mob together with the insurance companies' big bucks. That's how it works -- American Brown Shirts at the ready.  



What's the results of the fascist formula for the rest of us? Well, think how this "method" worked against Dr. Tiller's abortion clinic and how that story ended. In this case a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to save our economy from going bankrupt because of spiraling health care costs may be lost, not because of a better argument, but because of lies backed up by anti-democratic embittered thuggery. The motive? Revenge on America by the Old White Guys of the far right, and greed by the insurance industry.



What Can Be Done?


It's time that this whole shabby (and insane) business be exposed, vilified in run out of town on a rail by whatever responsible Republicans -- if any -- that are still in the party and who want to see the fortunes of their party revived. Republican leaders taking insurance industry money via lobbying firms and using it to organize what amounts to roving bands of thugs not only need to be exposed but thrown out of the public debate forever.  They should become absolute pariahs.  

It's time to give this garbage a name: insurance industry funded fascism.

Alternet Editor's note: Stephen C. Webster writes for Raw Story the latest example of extreme right-wing demagoguery in Tampa on Thursday, this time inspired by right-wing Fox News's Glenn Beck: "In a stunning display of anger, Florida Republicans and fans of Fox editorialist Glenn Beck turned a Tampa healthcare forum into a “near riot,” one reporter said, as they attempted to enter the meeting hall and drown out a group of community organizers and a member of congress. There were at least two reports of violence at the forum. “The meeting which was scheduled to begin at 6:00 at the Children’s Board of Hillsborough County drew hundreds of people who quickly began to overwhelm staff and event organizers at the front entrance,” reported Tampa news station 10 Connects:

“Thursday’s forum/near riot was sponsored by state Rep. Betty Reed, D-Tampa, and the Service Employees International Union, who apparently had hoped to hold something of a pep rally for President Obama’s health care reform proposal,” noted St. Petersburg Times reporter Adam Smith. He continued: “Instead, hundreds of vocal critics turned out, many of them saying they had been spurred on through the Tampa 912 activist group promoted by conservative radio and television personality Glenn Beck. Others had received e-mails from the Hillsborough Republican party that urged people to speak out against the plan and offered talking points to challenge supporters.” Such “mobs” have been denounced in recent days by Democratic lawmakers, while journalists like MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow have revealed the corporate interests and Republican operatives that bankroll and organize these town hall disruptions.

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