Progressive Media Advocates
Barack Obama has created the best opportunity to enact universal health care with a public option since Truman’s presidency. He has made a strong case for the public option, and used his personal popularity to drive the issue. But it is now up to constituency pressure to get the job done.
Even as Obama takes his case for comprehensive health care reform to the country, only a cockeyed optimist could believe Congress will soon produce anything remotely resembling the universal healthcare.
If you’re able and willing I’d urge you to descend on Washington the moment Congress returns from recess. There is nothing quite as persuasive to a member of Congress as real live constituent demanding real reform.
Ultimately, the progressive’s “grand plan” involves an ambitous legislative agenda which seeks to remove barriers to quality health care and fix the broken immigration system through separate pieces of legislation because they are in fact two very different goals.
A surtax is easy to administer. And the whole idea is easy to understand. Tax the wealthy to keep everyone healthy. Not even a bad bumper sticker.
Quality health care is tied to wealth, work, and wellness, none of which seems to find its way into the black community on a parity basis.
If bills aren’t passed in the House and Senate before August 7th, the fights in both chambers over the public option and money will carry over into the Fall, where they’ll become more intense and more prolonged.
No Nonsense Census — Carl Matthes Illusion, Reality & Courage in Iran — Carl Bloice Experts Wrong: Newsom Clear Beneficiary of Villaraigosa Non-Entry — Randy Shaw Iran’s Youth and Women’s Movement — Herndon Davis The Politics of Mourning Michael Jackson — John Delloro What’s With Cable’s “All Jack-O All The Time” News Coverage? — Charley [...]
The traditional media — surprise, surprise — is now trumpeting the argument that the United States cannot “afford” to provide universal healthcare. The Congressional Budget Office estimate of a $1.6 trillion cost over 10 years is said to be a “game changer,” even though the Senators complaining about this expense are backing the wasteful F22 [...]
Momentum for universal health care is slowing dramatically on Capitol Hill. Moderates are worried, Republicans are digging in, and the medical-industrial complex is firing up its lobbying and propaganda machine. But, as you know, the worst news came days ago when the Congressional Budget Office weighed in with awful projections about how much the leading [...]
President Obama and his progressive supporters are at a turning point. The heart of Obama’s progressive policy agenda — universal health care — is confronting increasing opposition, and the grassroots activists that put Barack Obama in the White House must pressure wavering Senators to back the Change We Need. But mobilizing is proving difficult, as [...]
Last week, the American Medical Association came out against a public option for health care. And later in the week the President reaffirmed his support for it. The next weeks will show what Obama is made of — whether he’s willing and able to take on the most formidable lobbying coalition he has faced so [...]
It’s the kind of thing I expect to hear from deficit hawks and chicken littles — from the self-described “fiscally responsible” right, from the scolds Ross Perot and Pete Peterson, from my former cabinet colleague Bob Rubin. But yesterday I was shown slides developed by the putatively liberal Center for American Progress intended to make [...]
In an interesting piece in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, Matt Bai suggests that the White House has learned the main lesson of Bill Clinton’s failed attempt at universal health care, which is not to deliver a finished product to Congress but instead give Congress a set of goals and let it decide how to [...]
In so-called “public service” ads appearing on TV and radio, or in print and on the intertubes, many health insurance companies urge people to stay healthy by quitting smoking. The company that provides a supplemental policy to me that covers things not paid by Canada’s national health even e-mailed a helpful PDF brochure with a [...]
The New York Times reported Saturday morning that a major split between Senator Ted Kennedy – back on the Hill as he fights brain cancer – and Senator Max Baucus over the shape and form of universal health care. Kennedy, long a proponent of a single-payer system, is teeing up against Baucus who is negotiating [...]
Single-Payer Health Care versus Individual Mandates: A Dilemma for Democrats. –Gene Rothman What’s Not Being Said About the Obama-Netanyahu Talks. –Carl Bloice A White Gay’s Guide for Dealing with the Black Community. –Jasmyne Cannick Lieutenant Dan Choi Takes “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Directly To Obama. –Linda Milazzo A Tip Without An Iceberg: Americans, Not Canucks, [...]
Once the Senate puts aside the irrational fracas over Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court – she eats spicy food, her name doesn’t sound American, she can be quoted out of context, she’s a secret socialist – and confirms her nomination, Congress can turn its attention to dealing with genuine problems such as providing [...]
Put on your seatbelts. Many Republicans have been itching for this fight. They figure if they can make Sonia Sotomayor appear “too liberal,” “too activist,” or “intemperate” — and cause Obama to withdraw her nomination, or if they can defeat her outright — they can slow the Obamomentum that’s leading to universal health care, cap-and-trade, [...]
During the presidential campaign, I thought Obama made only one big policy mistake. He criticized John McCain for proposing to tax all employer-provided health benefits. McCain’s overall health plan was regressive – he would have turned the savings into tax credits for purchasing health care – but he was right about where the revenues should [...]
Some activists excited about Barack Obama’s community organizing background forget what this fully means – namely, that he expects groups seeking progressive measures to mobilize their base. Community organizers do not expect politicians to challenge entrenched interests absent grassroots pressure, and President Obama is not about to spend political capital on issues like Afghanistan, the [...]
During the last weekend of April I attended the annual convention of the California Democratic Party. In much of the convention we heard various state and federal office holders deliver speeches, some of which were informative and even, occasionally, inspiring. Others tended toward platitudes. But I was disappointed that none of our leaders there — [...]
It’s no accident that as Congress returns this week from its two-week recess and begins debate on the $3.5 trillion budget plans for the fiscal year starting in October — which may or may not include a provision that fast-tracks Obama’s health care proposal by allowing it to pass the Senate with a mere majority [...]
Despite Barack Obama’s victory and polls showing strong support for a progressive agenda, the traditional media is “staying the course” in presenting the news. While the blogosphere pokes fun at the FOX News-created “tea parties” on April 15, CNN and other media are giving wide coverage to these fake protests, ignoring legitimate protests and rallies [...]
Although progressives have already won two major victories – the stimulus package and the budget – and a reversal of a number of Bush anti-environment policies, most activists are focused on the troika of universal health care, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), and comprehensive immigration reform. Having asked activists across the nation over the [...]
The March employment numbers, out this morning, are bleak: 8.5 percent of Americans officially unemployed, 663,000 more jobs lost. But if you include people who are out of work and have given up trying to find a job, the real unemployment rate is 9 percent. And if you include people working part time who’d rather [...]
There are two ways to see Obamanomics. The first, much preferred by the White House, is as a set of initiatives so modest as to hardly merit a raised eyebrow. Yes, steps must be taken to deal with the current economic crisis. But assuming the economy recovers next year, Obama’s budget projects that government spending [...]
After presiding over the Democratic Party’s most successful national grassroots mobilizing campaign since the New Deal, Howard Dean is returning to Democracy for America, the organization he founded nearly five years ago. Dean’s return to DFA got scant attention in the traditional media, which has underestimated the former Vermont Governor from his 2004 presidential campaign [...]
As President Obama follows a $800 billion recovery act by proposing nearly $700 billion for universal health care, and financially ambitious programs for energy independence and education, the United States is experiencing 1935 all over again. That’s the year that followed huge Democratic gains in the 1934 election, and which saw Congress enact the two [...]
It’s allegedly better to be lucky than good. Barack Obama has great political skills, but it took luck to give him the chance to replace a tarnished Tom Daschle with a far more credible Kathleen Sebelius as Health and Human Services Secretary. The Kansas Governor is slated to be appointed to the job, and will [...]
RJ Eskow: Dimon isn’t the cause of our economic problems. He’s merely a symptom. He’s no more responsible for the wreckage he leaves behind than a surfer is responsible for the undertow of the wave he’s riding. Dimon may lack moral sensitivity, but then, that’s the character that got him where he is today.
Randy Shaw: Garcetti kept the progressive base he earned from this City Council record and combined it with conservative San Fernando Valley voters angry at the Valley-based Greuel for her campaign receiving million of dollars from unions representing Department of Water and Power workers.
Hollywood Progressive/LA Progressive film critic/historian Ed Rampell will introduce the movie and lead a post-screening discussion.
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