FOCUS, TRINITY

(Bill David Barnett, age 2.5, and Maggie, age 5, trailer park in Pecos, Texas, summer 1961)

Today my little brother Bill would have turned 51.

Which means he's been dead almost 9 years. Can't quite understand that.

He was waiting for health insurance to kick in at his new job: We'd watched how medical costs had starved our family when we were kids. So instead of being saddled with a "pre-existing condition", he lay down alone on that green-and-white striped couch and watched TV as a heart attack rolled on into cardiac tamponade and he bled out into his chest.

Universal health care for every human being, no questions asked, without profit linked to medical choices. Now. Get rid of any leader who caves, no matter what other distractions they toss up. The alternative is ongoing pointless death.

[Cross-posted at Group News Blog.]

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WILL FERRELL ON HEALTH CARE REFORM

Just out from MoveOn.org, this biting video on health care reform starring Will Ferrell, Jon Hamm of Mad Men, Olivia Wilde of House, Thomas Lennon of Reno 911, Robert Ben Garant of Reno 911, Masi Oka of Heroes, Jordana Spiro of My Boys, Linda Cardellini of ER, and Donald Faison of Scrubs.

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

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KEEPING CLEAR OF THE POD-PEOPLE: AFTER LAST NIGHT'S SPEECH

(Ant With Acorn from Tugboat Printshop)

I was once friends with someone who is a direct descendant of Edmund Ruffin. For those of you who don't recognize the name, Edmund Ruffin is the South Carolina slaveholding farmer who is credited with fining the shot which began the Civil War. My friend was, among other identities, an anti-racism activist. She spent a great deal of personal energy coming to peace with her family history, her white Southern identity, and her owning class roots.

According to my friend, her family's version of events is that Ruffin was definitely a fierce advocate of slavery and secession, but he was not a nutjob. In particular, they claim the men around him got him liquored up and then convinced him the Yankees were attacking in order to persuade him to be the first to fire. After the war, Ruffin committed suicide, and his family believed it was because of shame rather than an inability to adjust to a changed world.


But believing in slavery, advocating secession, and choosing suicide are all clear indicators of an inability to handle reality. They all exist on the continuum of crazy. So, alcohol aside, Ruffin was living in a particular zone of denial which won't allow his actions the excuse of an unforeseen accident. Any more than Republicans can claim there was no warning Al Qaeda would attack the U.S. in 2001 using domestic airplanes.

Richard Blair at All Spin Zone has a post up today which begins "It’s hard to believe the 'lone gunman' theory of Joe Wilson’s (R-SC) outburst yesterday evening during the president’s address to congress. Someone put him up to it. Low level hit men in crime families don’t freelance."

I agree with him. The larger point is that while there is a solid 30% functional delusional segment of our population (see my post of yesterday), there is also an organized, highly orchestrated effort being made by the Republican Party, their mouthpieces on hate radio, and the corporate elite who fund them to persistently exploit that Crazy 30% to keep change from occurring. They used fake terror alerts and trumped up wars during Dubya's tenure. Now they're relying on more "grassroots" means to scare the shit out of the rest of us and immobilize us enough to keep their dominion going.

What happens in a democracy when nobody listens to each other any more? What happens when guns and camouflage are commonplace sights in public settings? What happens when you can shout absolutely anything at an elected official? This is not protecting or promoting freedom of speech, this is tyranny by the few at the expense of information reception by the many.

And, let's be clear, the Right will be thrilled if the progressive response is to start putting curbs on public expression, because those laws will be enforced by the status quo and will not come down in our favor. (Just like hate crime laws, which I oppose because they are overwhelmingly be used against poor and/or nonwhite people rather than the most flagrant perpetrators of hate.) I think the best reaction is going to be one which comes from us, the masses, rather than through courts or g*d forbid taser-wielding SOA trained urban cops.

The tools at our disposal are education, thinking on our feet, humor, community, common decency, and, most importantly, our liberal belief that respect for the individual trumps blind adherence to authority.

There's a joke among lesbians of my generation that when you came out to your family, a day later it was as if you'd said nothing at all -- not through acceptance, but because the news was so disturbing to them, they blocked it from family consciousness. This would occur simultaneously with someone, usually your mother, saying "All right, but don't tell you're father, it'll kill him."

Alix Dobkin, famous singer/songwriter, became intrigued with this notion of lesbian as a word that is so powerful it passes by without registering and concurrently can strike men dead. As a result, she wrote one of her most famous hits, "View from Gay Head", which uses the word lesbian 22 times. The rollicking chorus goes
Lesbian, lesbian,
Let's be in no-man's-land
Lesbian, lesbian
Any woman can be a lesbian.

Thus, one mechanism of oppression is preventing certain words or kinds of speech from occurring -- though not all restriction of speech is oppression. Oppression, remember, has to be part of a systematic and institutionalized imbalance of power, not simply reflecting a difference of opinion. Another mechanism is ignoring reality, such as how the corporate-controlled media is simply not reporting on the large numbers of people currently meeting for/organizing around their need for a public option in health care reform. On a daily level, this plays out in households when someone can reel off sports statistics in minutiae going back decades but cannot recall how to load a dishwasher or separate laundry. Such deliberately obstructed learning and listening is common currency to Republicans, and if it can be linked to an underlying vein of culturally-embedded oppression -- sexism or racism, for example -- it seems "normal" enough to often not be challenged as attempted domination.

Here's a few immediate actions you can take regarding the extreme disrespect and obstructionism displayed during last night's speech on health care reform by our President:

(1) Progressive Change Campaign Committee has launched a petition asking Congress to censure Rep. Joe Wilson: "Enough is enough. On an issue as critical as health care reform, it's time to stop the lies, the misinformation, and the uncivil disruptions. Rep. Joe Wilson went way over the line by yelling 'You lie' during President Obama's speech, and Congress should censure him immediately." You can sign it by going here.

(2) Since Joe Wilson's outburst on the House floor his Democratic opponent, former Marine Rob Miller, has received over 11,000 individual grassroots contributions raising over $414,000. If you want to contribute, you can go to his Act Blue page here.

(3) Make sure this is not simply attached to Rep. Joe Wilson, but that it is linked to the overall Republican effort to bring down Obama and stop ANY reform from occurring. Alex Koppelman, writing for The War Room at Salon.com, in his post Joe Wilson Wasn't The Only Disrespectful Republican points out: "There's video of Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., the Minority Whip, on his BlackBerry during the speech, for instance...When Obama addressed the charge that he plans 'panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens,' someone on the GOP side shouted out 'shame!' The president went on: 'Such a charge would be laughable if it weren't so cynical.' 'Read the bill!' someone shouted back. Obama mentioned those who accuse him of a government takeover of health care. 'It's true,' someone shouted back .... Even as Obama delivered a tribute to the late senator Ted Kennedy, Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga), a leader of House conservatives, perused his BlackBerry. Shortly before the speech ended, Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) walked out to beat the rush."

Call your Member of Congress today at (202) 224-3121 to express your outrage.

Longer-term, it's important to keep naming what's going on for what it is. Identify crazy when it is crazy, and don't let them shout you down that you're not being fair. The ability to scream at a President while s/he is speaking to Congress is not a right granted by the rules of that body. The assumption that this long-standing rule could be broken is NOT DIVORCED from the fact that the President in question is African-American and the Representative in question has been a member of Sons of Confederate Veterans. As researched by Dave Neiwert at Crooks and Liars, the Sons of Confederate Veterans is a white supremacist organization tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center which, among other things, defends slavery as a benign institution. What Wilson was calling a lie was Obama's denial there would be health care coverage for undocumented immigrants, a key recruitment issue for the Republican Party's white supremacist base.

It's also important to keep our eyes on the prize, which is not simply countering their terror, nor is it Obama's appeasement path (doomed to fail).

Our goal is No more loss of life or livelihood because health care is currently rationed by profit-obsessed death panels (called insurance companies) rather than being acknowledged as a basic human right.

[Cross-posted at Group News Blog.]

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STRONG PUBLIC OPTION: OUR RIGHT AND PREFERENCE

(Pouring Concrete V, woodcut 2000 by Linda Lee Boyd)

Everybody has to have health care. If you don't get it when you need it, you get sick or sicker. Your productivity drops, and eventually you either (a) go to a emergency room where indigent care is covered but the expenses are exponentially higher, for a condition which might have cost a few dollars if it was treated way back when; (b) you wind up on disability (if you're lucky); or (c) you die.

How can any of these options be called in the common good? More to the point, how can any of these options be called "profitable"?


A well-constructed national study, Medical Bankruptcy in the United States 2007 was recently published in the American Journal of Medicine. It begins "As recently as 1981, only 8% of families filing for bankruptcy did so in the aftermath of a serious medical problem. By contrast, our 2001 study in 5 states found that illness or medical bills contributed to about half of bankruptcies."

The study abstract states (emphasis added by me):

Since then [2001], health costs and the numbers of un- and underinsured have increased, and bankruptcy laws have tightened. RESULTS: Using a conservative definition, 62.1% of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medical; 92% of these medical debtors had medical debts over $5000, or 10% of pretax family income. The rest met criteria for medical bankruptcy because they had lost significant income due to illness or mortgaged a home to pay medical bills. Most medical debtors were well educated, owned homes, and had middle-class occupations. Three quarters had health insurance. Using identical definitions in 2001 and 2007, the share of bankruptcies attributable to medical problems rose by 49.6%. In logistic regression analysis controlling for demographic factors, the odds that a bankruptcy had a medical cause was 2.38-fold higher in 2007 than in 2001.

Forget about the stock market, or even foreclosures: The economic threat to working Americans is lack of affordable health care. We do NOT have the "best health care in the world", not unless you are rich or a member of Congress whose government-funded medical plan is phenomenal.

We out here know this, of course. I'm not telling you anything you don't already lie awake nights worrying about. But the debate that is going on is, as usual, full of distortions and "compromises" that are no such thing.

Bottom line: Strong public option or else. This means if a law is passed insisting you have health care insurance (as exists already for car insurance), one of your options is to buy it at an affordable rate from a government-run program, or have it provided free a la Medicare if your income qualifies. You will not be denied coverage for any reason, such as pre-existing conditions, and your insurance will be accepted at any public facility in the nation. It will be completely portable, not linked to a job or living in a particular state.

What Republicans want is to force us to buy insurance from private companies -- the same companies who are already making millions in profits by denying us coverage, cancelling coverage if we get ill, or delaying payment so long we die before we get the care we need. The crisis in health care is currently caused by private insurance plans linked to PROFIT.

Republicans, and Democrats who work as lobbyists for the insurance industry or have major contributions from said industry (cough cough Daschle), claim that insisting on a public option will mean too many people will choose that instead of private insurance. Some of their mouthpieces are pushing a "co-op" option, knowing full well that states with small populations will never have enough clout to create co-ops that survive against private insurance. Other mouthpieces complain about the competition that will force private companies to lower rates and provide better coverage. In other words, they want corporate welfare once again.

They also claim it means a government worker will decide what kind of treatment you get. Well, currently those decisions are being made by cubicle drones for private insurance companies who receive bonuses for denying you care. Your disability and death have no impact on their bottom line. But a "government worker" will have no such incentive to keep you away from necessary treatment, and in the big picture, having more citizens alive and productive is better for the government's bottom line. You tell me which one looks more attractive.

And to help you, check out this video of the Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations hearing on "Terminations of Individual Health Policies by Insurance Companies." Of particular interest is the practice of recission, where insurance companies are cancelling coverage for tens of thousands of patients who developed cancer or other serious conditions, a cancellation which makes these patients liable for medical expenses retroactively. None of the three insurance companies who testified -- Assurant, UnitedHealth Group, and WellPoint -- would commit to stopping the practice of arbitrary recission unless there was intentional fraud in the patient's application. [Starting at 4:48 in the video.] They all indicated they will go on putting profit ahead of patient well-being. Until we demand the government stops them, of course, or we find an alternative to their own cancerous death-grip on our medical system.




The time to act on this is now, before we get sold out again by so-called moderates who are actually far to the right in many human rights aspects. All it would take is for President Obama to say he will not sign a bill that doesn't include a public option. Speaker Pelosi responded this week to a question from Huffington Post about whether she she would allow a reform package without a public option out of the House: "It's not a question of allow. It wouldn't have the votes."

HuffPo states a bill without the public option "would lack the votes because the GOP generally opposes Democratic reform proposals, and the 77 member Congressional Progressive Caucus -- rarely heard from on the Hill -- has been particularly vocal in its commitment to oppose any reform that doesn't include a public option. The public plan's popularity extends beyond progressives and is broadly popular with the Congressional Black Caucus, Congressional Hispanic Caucus and even two-fifths of Blue Dogs, the conservative Democratic coalition."

Dr. Howard Dean and Democracy For America have created an explanatory video and petition for a strong public option in health care reform, available at Stand With Dr. Dean. On the same page is a list of other actions you can take with DFA.

Senators Dick Durbin, Patrick Leahy, and Chuck Schumer have created an online advocacy effort to build support for real health care reform that includes a public option. You can read about it and sign their petition at Citizens For A Public Option.

Organizing For America has a Health Care Action Center page where you can enter your address and zip to find your Representative and Senators' phone numbers, along with some calling tips.

We only need 50 votes to get this done, or a President who won't sign a bail-out to the insurance industry. (If he caves on this, you can kiss off the rest of his term.) 76% of the American people want the public option, which is ALREADY all the bipartisan support necessary. Write, call, do your bit. And be well.

ADDENDUM: This issue, what constitutes a human right that should not be determined by profit margins, reminded me of a song by the great lesbian-feminist singer/songwriter and Red Diaper baby Alix Dobkin, written in the late 1970's. I've just received the correct lines from her and share them with you now:

How the patriarchy scars us
From the moment we are born
Heavy hands are interfering
From our mothers we are torn
Everyone's a victim at the hands of men
They've stolen childbirth, they profit on our lives
Through to our earthly end
It's so outrageous to think about it
I have to think about it
I have to think again...

[Cross-posted at Group News Blog.]

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