Thursday afternoon, I presented a resolution to the Board of Rio Arriba County Commissioners urging the President and Congress to speedily pass health care reform. It passed unanimously. I will pdf the resolution and forward it to New Mexico’s statewide papers, and will walk an orginal into the offices of Senators Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall.

The Commissioners discussion revolved around the need for our Senators to pressure Senate leadership into passing a sidecar “fix” through reconciliation to their HCR bill, enabling the House to support it.

Resolutions are often an excellent means of garnering press attention and telling your Congresscritters you are serious. Commissioners, Mayors, City Councilors represent constituencies and votes. Their resolutions matter.

Several years ago, Rio Arriba County became the first local government to pass a resolution condemning the leaked Patriot 2 document revoking citizenship of whomever for whatever. The resolution spurred a storm of statewide press, prompting a personal thank you to the Commissioners from constitutional advocate and then US Representative Tom Udall.

Of course, being a County Department head in a small rural county makes it easy for me to get the ear of my Commission. But you can, too. Try working through your county health department or through a locally well-known healthcare advocate.

I will post the text of the resolution below.

In a stunning announcement this morning, President Obama unveiled a detailed proposal to heavily regulate big banks (which he called “fat cats”), forcing savings and loans to divest themselves of the investment banks that gambled away taxpayers’ savings, and forcing the largest banks to be broken up. The most heavily impacted financial institutions will be Citibank, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and the like. It is probably not coincidental that these are the same banks that caused the near collapse of our financial institutions, sucked up billions in tax funds and then planned to hand the same amount out to top execs as bonuses.

Congressional Republicans obstruct this bill at their own peril. It is believed that Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, will make bank regulation an exception to his obstructionist strategy.

It is probably very significant that Obama made this announced flanked by Paul Volcker. Neither Geithner nor Summers were present, nor were they mentioned by name in the press release. Some of you may recall that Volcker, who advocated for increased regulation of banks and a large jobs bill, was frozen out of the administration at the outset by Geithner and Summers.

We lost a seat in MA, but we may have won the war. Certainly, we have won the right to engage in battle.

In other disturbing news, the Supreme Court ruled this morning that campaign finance restrictions are illegal, at least in the existing regulations. Congress is gearing up to pass new legislation.

It is unclear where health care reform stands. I am of the opinion that Obama’s very tough stance on banks will win him the cred he needs to finally pass a meaningful health care reform package, even if it means passing it in bits and pieces.

We moved him to the left guys! He’s very, very moved.

After spending most of my day wondering how the Democratic Party managed to pull off the stunning achievement of losing Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat to a far right wing former centerfold model, I am feeling reassured. The dust is settling and the panorama does not look so bad. In fact, the future looks far brighter to me than it has for weeks.

Obama has acknowledged that White House bears more than a little responsibility for the loss. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that he has scheduled a press conference tomorrow to announce his adoption of Paul Volcker’s strategy to break up and regulate “too big to fail banks.” (No this is not a hoax!)

President Barack Obama on Thursday is expected to propose new limits on the size and risk taken by the country’s biggest banks, marking the administration’s latest assault on Wall Street in what could mark a return, at least in spirit, to some of the curbs on finance put in place during the Great Depression, according to congressional sources and administration officials.

A push to break up and regulate the banks will be extremely popular with both progressives and independents. It will also place the party of “no” in the position of blocking reforms that their tea-party base are clamoring after. Plus, it will fix the economy.

While the White House and Harry Reid have announced they will not push through health care reform prior to seating Brown, this does not appear to be the act of capitulation that was initially reported. Barney Frank, who called on the Senate to drop health care reform efforts in the wake of the Massachusetts debacle, has retracted his remarks. He now says he will consider voting in favor of the Senate bill if Congress commits to amending the bill rapidly through reconciliation or other parliamentary procedures.

A radical change in the social infrastructure of any society must be preceded or accompanied by a change in its consciousness. I first posted this article analyzing the content of Jackson’s videos on Daily Kos and ePluribus Media after his death in July of 2009 .The start of the new year seems a good time to repost here at Tikkun. Perhaps this diary will add to the ongoing dialogue sparked by Avatar about the role movies play in the evolution of our collective awareness.

Jackson frequently invoked two powerful archetypes central both to the experience of PTSD, and to the evolution or maintenance of empire: playful Hermes, puer aeternus, child genius, trickster, thief, messenger, god of healing, the lyre and all that is liminal; and the more menacing Dionysius, lychenthrope, trickster, Lord of the Animals, Beast Within.

I waited out most of the 1980s in Japan, and had not seen any of Jackson’s videos before his death. I am prone to obsession with symbolic content. Before leaving for Japan, I watched An American Werewolf in London at least 20 times. Once I belatedly started watching Jackson’s videos, I could not stop. They were filled with archetypal content.

I’ve spent the last two weeks in a funk, listening to the debates about the future of health care reform. I am pleasantly surprised by two phenomena: 1] public dialogue around health care is both vibrant and incredibly substantive ; and 2] conservatives have absented themselves from discussion.

I grew accustomed to palliatives and drivel during the Bush years. (Remember when plastic sheeting and duct tape were promoted as public health policy? In the event of an epidemic, we were instructed to wrap our homes in plastic!) I am surprised at the enthusiasm and diversity of our civic dialogue. This is a huge positive change and a sign of our improved civic health.

On the other hand, the Republican Party has descended into utter moral and intellectual bankruptcy. They have determined that the only quick route back to power is to prevent legislative action, then brand Democrats as ineffectual. Their most fervent followers believe America is a white Christian nation under attack. As a result, they are opposing anything and everything. Jack Kemp, the Party’s self-described “bleeding heart conservative” passed away in May after a decade of political exile. As long as the far right wages primaries against Republicans who fail their ideological “purity test,” there will be no new Jack Kemp, no ideas, no discussion within the “big” GOP tent. Alert Democrats can capitalize on their failure to build.

Building the Ship of State

Actual dialogue has been confined to two progressive factions, and it is fueled by a structural question. Out of what material do we build our ship of state?

I’ve been reading various healthcare diaries from around Left Blogistan searching for a strategy to salvage healthcare reform. The most interesting so far are a pair dealing with polls that surfaced on Daily Kos.

fladem writes about the sudden collapse in support for health care reform as measured in the recent WSJ/NBC poll.

The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll coming out later today will show opposition to the health care bill growing — mainly from disappointed liberals, who are very much disappointed to see the public option getting thrown out.

The poll has 47% saying the Obama health care plan is a bad idea, to only 32% who say it’s a good idea…45% say it is not acceptable for a plan to not include a public option. But, 58% would find inclusion of a Medicare Buy in acceptable.

Daily Kos diarist arodb writes about a recent WaPo/ABC poll taken after the defeat of a proposal allowing the re-importation of drugs.

This poll also finds a significant drop in support for health care reform in response to the defeat of an amendment which would have benefited the American people.

But Obama and the Democrats have had decidedly less success convincing the public that their health proposals will bring positive change. More than half of those polled, 53 percent, see higher costs for themselves if the proposed changes go into effect than if the current system remains intact.

It looks to me as if the public is getting smarter and is becoming less willing to have smoke blown in their collective face. Chris Bowers at Open Left urges us to swallow our bitterness and help Obama to pass his sham of a bill.

I strongly disagree.

I believe that if Obama and Emanuel believe we progressives will stand our ground and if they begin to fear their ability to pass a bill will become endangered, they will find a new solution. In all likelihood, Lieberman will be thrown to the political lions, and progressive features will find their way into health care reform in some way, shape or form. But this won’t happen if we blink.

Normally I would make this brief post a comment and stick it on the end of my last article entitled,“Send Leiberman a Golem for Hanukkah,” but I’m too spitting mad. I have argued for a long time that an imperfect bill is much better than no bill. However, a useless bill is not.

Several blogs including McJoan at Daily Kos, Jonathan Kohn at The New Republic, and Carrie Budoff Brown at Politico are reporting that Rahm Emanuel is pressuring Reid to lose the Medicare Buy-in to quickly cut a deal with Lieberman.

The White House, of course, is denying it.

I don’t care who’s telling the truth. I say we send our golems to Rahm. And call him too. Tell the White House to grow some cojones.

The White House comment line is 202-456-1111.

The switchboard is 202-456-1414. Call ‘em both. Keep their lines tied up.

And their email is http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact.

To send Rahm a golem, copy and paste the following message: “Rahm. Stop blocking REAL health care reform or we will vote you and all your evil minions out of office. Here’s a golem for you. I hope you get the message you evil effing ba$tard.” Copy the embed code that appears in the top right hand corner of the box after the one-minute golem video has played into the message box.

Here’s what he will see:

Rahm. Stop blocking REAL health care reform or we will vote you and all your evil minions out of office. Here’s a golem for you. I hope you get the message you evil effing ba$tard!

Of course, you can send whatever message you like. You can write to him in Hebrew. Just be sure he gets the point. And the golem.

(For anyone who does not know what a golem is, and why a golem would mean something to Rahm, see this morning’s diary entitled “Send Leiberman a Golem for Hanukkah.”

I’m considering the possibility that Lieberman is not actually a human. I suspect he is a golem created by the insurance industry to terrorize the general public. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Jewish lore, a golem is a zombie created from clay during times of peril to defend persecuted Jews from Nazis, the Czar, etc. More on this below.

After telling Harry Reid that he would consider supporting a health care reform compromise including an expansion of Medicare, our favorite Senator decided to throw a wrench in the works on the Sunday morning talk circuit by announcing his plan to scuttle health care reform. According to the New York Times Lieberman said:

You’ve got to take out the Medicare buy-in. You’ve got to forget about the public option. You probably have to take out the Class Act, which was a whole new entitlement program that will, in future years, put us further into deficit.

It goes without saying that Lieberman would oppose a Class Act. In this instance he is referring to an insurance policy covering long term care: the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act. In other words, if Reid eliminates every last vestige of reform from the Health Care Reform bill, Lieberman will support it.

There are a number of actions progressives can take to combat Lieberman’s most recent assault on the Democratic Party while saving the health care bill. Senator Olympia Snowe currently objects to the Medicare buy-in because Medicare’s reimbursement rates to hospitals and doctors are disproportionately lower in rural areas, a perfectly reasonable objection for a senator from a rural state. Perhaps it is time to fix this problem.

Next, progressives can sign the 8,868 individuals who have signed a CREDO petition informing Senate leadership that today is a good day to strip Lieberman of his committee chairmanship. Such a move would likely force him into the Republican party which would not go over well with his constituency in Connecticut.

Then we can tune into a Daily Kos diary posted last night by Hlinko to collect pledges for donations to a Lieberman opponent in the next election if he fillibusters HCR. So far, Hlinko has collected $1.6 million in pledges from $30,000 people through facebook.

(You can pledge, too by becoming a fan and leaving your pledge in the comment section. To do this, follow the facebook link in the preceeding paragraph, and sign up for a facebook account by clicking the green tab at the top left hand corner. Tthen follow the link to the pledge page one more time and this time click the blue tab on the top right hand side of the page. Write your pledge into the empty comment bar in the center at the top of the page. Click the share tab below the comment bar and you’ve succeeded! If Lieberman persists in his threat to fillibuster, donate the pledged amount directly to his opponent when the time comes.)

However, there is a particularly Jewish protest Tikkun readers can engage in as well…one that might actually mean something to Lieberman. (Thank you to reader Laura S. for emailing your suggestion!) You can send him a golem of his very own.

For those of you who don’t know, a golem is a gigantic clay monster. According to Jewish lore, Rabbi Judah Loew ben Azalel, Chief Rabbi of Prague in the late 16th century, created a golem to defend his people from vicious anti-semitic pogroms. If you are feeling especially ambitious and are a pious practitioner of Judaism, you can create your own golem to send to Joe Lieberman by fashioning a giant man (at least three stories tall) out of clay and imprinting the name of G-d on his forehead (the clay man’s forehead, not Lieberman’s). Then tell him to go visit Joe. Complete instructions are available at this site. Or, if you are feeling lazy and you may work from the comfort of your own home.

Finally, for readers who do not want to risk dabbling in the occult, send him a pre-formed golem via video. (To do this, copy and paste the URL to the right of the video into an email message. You can reach soon to be ex-Senator Lieberman here.)

Finally, for your own enjoyment, here is a link to an entertaining one minute musical golem video that can’t be embedded. Another good but longer animated video is embedded below. Happy Hanukkah!

I owe an apology to all you Tikkunistas out there for my prolonged silence on health care issues at such an important time. My organization has received two new health care grants through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and I am snowed under with work. Coincidentally, I am also snowed under with snow which knocked out my internet and made it difficult to retrieve children from various undisclosed locations.

However, I’m back. I hope to blog soon about some of my personal adventures in healthcare reform. And about a few little known and very arcane regulation changes that will make a huge difference.

But tonight I will limit myself to a few very brief words about the Senate’s Health Care compromise. Of course, the devil is in the details and I haven’t seen them yet. But I like the bits and pieces that have leaked out.

Here they are:

ConnecticutMan1 emailed me an unlikely and highly entertaining article posted by Warranted Wiretaps. They have obtained an exclusive mp3 file of a conference call put together by “the national liberty movement” to improve the quality of right wing blogs.

Unfortunately for them, their call was crashed by a group of twittering humorists.

In a comment to Rabbi Lerner’s post Kucinich Denounces Health Care Sell Out by House Dems, Jill Schmidt asked:

I don’t get why insurance companies aren’t for a bill that will get them 21 million more clients. If anyone out there gets it, please reply.

Jill poses an excellent question that is shared by hard-working, thoughtful Americans from coast to coast. Fortunately, Goldman Sachs revealed the answer in a perverse ten page report posted in its entirety by Huff-Po reporter Sam Stein. (Kudos to Sam for his excellent work!)

The Goldman report projects Earnings Per Share (or EPS, a measure of the profits allocated to an individual share) for the five largest insurance companies currently traded on Wall Street: Cigna, Humana, Well Point, United Health and Aetna. Goldman Sachs views health care, not from the perspective of an individual seeking care, but from the point of view of a prospector assessing the potential of an undeveloped mine.

Much has been made of a so-called “Republican Comeback” by rightwing pundits and the mainstream media. If they are to be believed, Obama’s overly liberal policies have been rejected by the independent (i.e., suburban and ex-urban white) voters who were responsible for his victory in the first place.

This analysis is blatantly false. And if we fall for it, we will fail to take advantage of a marvelous opportunity to push the White House to the left.

I posted an action diary yesterday morning telling readers how they can become involved in the fight to pass a public option (with links). I encourage my readers to pressure Harry Reid to pass a public option.

Deborah Phelan asked a great question in the comment thread that merits a complete response. She asks:

One other issue I think needs addressing in this is why none of this legislation (correct me if I’m wrong) is going into effect until 2013….. That is 4 years away! Am I wrong? Are there just sections that don’t go into effect? And if this is true, why is there this rush to get legislation passed this year?
UN:F [1.5.4_809]

First of all, we need to pass the bill now because we can. We have the votes. Let’s not wait until the opportunity passes.

Secondly, insurance regulation will go into effect immediately.

Ezra Klein states that the delayed start up allows Congress to allocate $140 billion per year as opposed to $100 billion. Because congress and Obama have arbitrarily set a ceiling of $1 trillion over ten years, a start up date of 2013 allows Congress to spend more in perpetuity.

I believe there is a second at least equally important reason as well. The federal government is a huge bureaucracy and the infrastructure required for a program of this size is not in place. There are huge gaps in our delivery and information technology infrastructure.

I have noticed from comments on this and other blogs that many people seem to believe we have an excellent health care system that is only available to wealthy people. This is not true. We do not have an excellent health care system. We have no system at all.

To give you a few examples from my own experience:

The battle for health care reform remains fluid. Various proposals have been working their way through Congress. At each stage of the process, a different sort of concerted action is required to insure a meaningful bill and a robust public option. We have reached another critical juncture, and your help is badly needed.

After sitting on its hands for months, Senate Finance finally passed a bill out of committee last week, enabling the process to move forward. At this point in the Senate, the Finance proposal (which is the weakest and perhaps most expensive of all the draft bills) must be merged with the bill drafted by the Senate HELP (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) Committee. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will be key to our success.

Here are some facts, links and tools that will help you to contribute to our effort.

1) The bills will be merged behind closed doors by a small team composed of three Senators and a few top White House Aids. Politico reports that Reid is limiting participation to Senator Chris Dodd (who helped usher a bill through HELP), Senator Max Baucus (of finance), himself and the White House. Senator Dodd has been outspoken in his support for the public option. Senator Baucus has been notable for his obstructionism and chumminess with insurers. If we want to influence the bill, we need to focus on Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid.

2) There is already an organized means of doing so. Reid is currently polling poorly in Nevada which has been hard hit by the recession, and which is ranked among the bottom ten in terms of health care provision. Congressman Alan (“the Republican Health Care Plan is to die quickly”) Grayson recently delivered a petition with 90,000 signatores (and presumably, 90,000 potential donors to a primary challenge) to the office of Harry Reid. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), a project of ActBlue and the originators of the petition, are raising funds to air television ads for the public option in Nevada. Here is one of their ads:

You can donate in order to air this ad in Nevada here.

And, if you have a few moments, you can watch Alan Grayson and PCCC deliver their petition, which demands that Reid revoke the chairmanship of any democrat who does not vote to block a fillibuster of the public option:

You can also call Harry Reid’s office directly to inform him, that if he does not produce and pass a bill with a robust public option, you will donate money towards a democratic challenger in the next primary. His phone number is 202-224-3542.

Happy calling! (And don’t forget to pass this link along to all of your friends!)

An article authored by Eli Zaretsky entitled A Bill to Cut Health Care Spending appeared yesterday on Tikkun Daily, ostensibly to assist in the creation “an independent left.” Zaretsky argues that the current health care proposal is actually an effort to cut spending by eliminating Medicare. Not only is his premise blatantly false; it is a repetition of right wing talking points introduced by the insurance industry to kill health care reform.

We at Tikkun should be asking ourselves, “Do I want to demonstrate my left-leaning independence by repeating everything Glenn Beck says?”

Yesterday, I wrote about an unusual British gag order in a diary entitled “Free Speech News Round-Up.” The UK Guardian had mysteriously reported that a parlaimentarian had asked a question that was tabled until the following week. According to the October 12 issue of The Guardian:

Today’s published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations.

It seems that an aggressive band of bloggers and twitterers solved the mystery and forced Carter-Ruck to rescind the gag order within a matter of hours (Thanks to Mary O’Grady, who commented on my story yesterday, for the tip!).

Today’s post: a news round-up of noteworthy stories that are not being widely reported elsewhere in the mainstream media or blogging world.

Police attack peaceful protesters in Rochester.

This BlipTV episode appearing on buzzflash was reported by all over the board. A small cohort of students gathered in a park in Rochester to protest military recruiting practices in public schools and to demand an end to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. About a hundred young people waving colorful banners chanted and banged on drums while marching in a peaceful and orderly fashion down a street.

Twenty seven police cars suddenly appeared, sirens wailing. The students, including several small children, walked around the cars. At this point, the police jumped out and began to arrest and physically assault protesters.

[WARNING! DO NOT TRY TO LINK TO CONSERVAPEDIA FROM DAILY KOS, HUFFINGTON POST OR THIS DIARY...A BLOCK MIGHT GO UP...maybe its a coincidence, maybe not, but I can't access the site from this computer anymore after linking. I will type out the address so you can cut and paste into the toolbar...]

Remember Phyllis Schlafly, the Queen of conservative religious “feminism” from the late 60s through the 80s? Well she’s got a son (Andy, BSE, JD, ABCDEFG), who is funnier than David Letterman. Except the poor guy is trying to be serious.

In 2006, Andy burst onto the scene with Conservapedia, a right wing version of wikipedia minus its “liberal, anti-Christian bias,” (not to mention all structural defects that encourage “liberal” biases such as fact-checking, offering proof, etc.).

About six months ago, Andy drew international attention to Conservapedia, when he challenged Dr. Richard Lenski’s groundbreaking study of the evolution of e coli bacteria.

Lenski found, after 20 years of painstaking research, that one descendent generation of his original e coli colony mutated, enabling it to feed off of a citrate solution, where as other descendant strains did not. Shlafly did not like the assumption that e coli evolves. He fired off a letter, artfully combining breathtaking arrogance with ignorance to Lenski demanding that the scientist produce his data.

Lenski responded to Schlafly by politely suggesting he actually read the article as it included the data. Undeterred, Schlafly actually posted a second equally idiotic letter and was decimated by a decidedly less polite, but extremely funny Lenski response. The entire dialogue can be found here.

I had the good fortune to travel to Washington, DC., and interview Senator Jeff Bingaman on September 18 about Medicare for All, the Baucus Bill and other topics related to health care reform.

Everybody’s favorite diarist, Land of Enchantment, was kind enough to edit my video and post it on YouTube.

Thank you LoE for putting up with me and editing the video which is embedded after the fold. A summary (not a transcript) of Parts One and Two follows the videos for the YouTube impaired.

I had the opportunity to interview New Mexico Congressman Ben Ray Lujan in his Washington office on Thursday September 17. Limited internet access while traveling, unfamiliarity with mp3 files, Rosh Hashanah and the complete failure of our household plumbing conspired to prevent me from posting the interview and transcript until today. I apologize in advance for the poor sound quality.

And I must add the following disclaimer: I am not a hard-nosed professional reporter, but rather a constituent of Congressman Lujan. I like the policies he supports. What follows is a friendly dialogue about health care between a Congressman and a constituent.

Several main points of interest emerged.

1) Over the recess, despite the hysteria about death panels and birth certificates and forced government circumcision, five new co-sponsors signed on to HR 676, the Single Payer Bill. Congressman Conyers’ office confirmed that five had signed on during the recess. I was told that they had become supporters of Medicare for All as a result of public pressure from constituents. I looked up the Library of Congress list of co-sponsors and could not find anyone who signed on during the recess. I will continue to investigate to confirm the claim. If this is true, it indicates that despite a media storm of negative publicity, support for Medicare for All continues to grow.