Howard Dean's Recommendation for the Current Senate Reform Bill

This comes from today's Washington Post Editorial by Dean. Oddly I couldn't find any share links on the article or I would have just posted it to Facebook. So I am putting it up on Greeleyville instead. The commentary I read initially covering Dean's role was a bit snippy. The impression I got was that the writer held that President Obama had stiffed Dean and left him out of the cherry roles in the administration. Therefore Dean is now playing the role of rogue liberal and can rally people to not back the bill rather than towing the party line.

I am not sure I buy into this analysis. It may be an odd concept but perhaps Dean is just stating the reality of how many people feel. I don't see it as a particular political strategy but it could certainly have those connotations to the inside circle. That is the problem with politics. It doesn't really matter whether the intent is there for Dean. If those "in-the-know" game players think the intent is there then they manifest it on the rest of us and the painting of a controversial relationship between Obama and Dean becomes our perception as well. A new reality so to speak. The real strategy, in my mind, is the need to create tension or increase tension when it already exists because that is what sells the news.

Here is my favorite paragraph from Dean's editorial. The whole thing is rather short and sweet but I thought this paragraph poignant. I hadn't realized that the preexisting conditions segment had been used for gain as well. Here is the link to the entire piece.

"Real health-care reform is supposed to eliminate discrimination based on preexisting conditions. But the legislation allows insurance companies to charge older Americans up to three times as much as younger Americans, pricing them out of coverage. The bill was supposed to give Americans choices about what kind of system they wanted to enroll in. Instead, it fines Americans if they do not sign up with an insurance company, which may take up to 30 percent of your premium dollars and spend it on CEO salaries -- in the range of $20 million a year -- and on return on equity for the company's shareholders. Few Americans will see any benefit until 2014, by which time premiums are likely to have doubled. In short, the winners in this bill are insurance companies; the American taxpayer is about to be fleeced with a bailout in a situation that dwarfs even what happened at AIG."

A Mood is Rising in America's Underclasses

Sixth grade gave me one of the loves of my life, history. I had a superb teacher in a small rural school. He traded his history book for a coach's cap during part of each day. But he certainly didn't mind mingling the two. He'd round us up, all eighteen students, and send us out on a sunny day to the green playground field for a game of "History Baseball". It could just as easily been known as the "Geek's Revenge". The kids normally chosen last during recess to be on a team we often clamored over and fought over when it came down to the fact that the only way to score a home run would be if one could name all of Britain's King Henry's eight wives and their religious and genetic heritage. I found simply amazing how fast political alliances could change in the twelve year-old's world.

I am reminded of this sensation of change by the political climate emerging in America these days.

Years after my sixth grade love affair began I found myself sitting in college absorbing every history course I could cram into my loaded schedule. I found a good history course to be a wonderful stress reliever for the pressure of college. But I was forever trying to fathom how the America I was growing up in had been the same America which bred McCarthyism, school segregation, and the likes of the Big Five oilmen and the banking crisis in the early part of the century.

It didn't seem like that much time had passed yet the society I lived in had passed through all these troubled times. I didn't see any scars. Where were the scars? Did people just forget? Did time heal all? Was it real or did the victors in history just have their way with the retelling? How could it be possible that my parents, grandparents, and people I passed every day on the street had carried such hatred in their hearts to have allowed these things to occur? What happened to those democratic ideals? Didn't the government work for the people? After all I had been raised to the standard that all human beings in America had this gift of equality bestowed upon them at birth. I was told that over and over and over again in school. I not only took that literally I took it to heart.

Yet, here, was evidence of time in which the world seemingly turned upside down and it wasn't so long ago.

Thirty years later I am finally resolving how societal norms and expectations can shift so rapidly. How a period of time can be defined by a beginning crisis and the ending result of the remedy of the crisis. This is how you title a chapter in a history book.

Suddenly I find myself looking backwards over my shoulder and realizing why, in each society, there is a certain period of time known as the "Golden Age". I thought it was just my art history professor's conjuring up his favorite artworks and tagging them as superior. So what if Rome declined thereafter--it still made great art for many years.

For the greater part of my life, by random chance of birth it would seem, I have lived through a time of great stability in America and, comparatively, one of peace. That time has ended. The "Golden Age" has peaked and what comes next appears to be in the hands of fate and in the simmering consciousness of the American underclasses.

Now that this particular era has ended, I see some signs that America appears to be going down that not-so-gilded path towards the giant salad bowl looking to toss it up into the air. The salad, so it would appear, has taken those years of relative stability, and decided to settle itself into fixed strata. The lettuce leaves are all stacked at the bottom with the tomatoes and cucumbers being squished in the middle whilst the chevre crumbles, bacon bits, and salad dressing are heaped on the top. A distinctively medieval European recipe. Not exactly what many people in this country expected to find on its table of feast.

I read an interesting article describing the mood in universities around the country. The basic suggestion was that students were full of jubilee about the idea of change coming to this country when Obama had been elected. They were one with many of us who felt that the system had expunged the clog in the lines and eliminated the need to detour around the corruption and the ruination of the concept of the rule of law. Sure a lot of work had to be done but surely the tools were at hand. The voters had spoken.

However the special interests, the elite, the corporate were not interested in the commentary the common man and woman had laid at their feet.

Fantastic I thought to myself after hearing of the student interest! After my second stint in college for an advanced degree a few years ago I had become dismayed at the passive, commercialized, attitudes of my fellow students in class. All much younger than I, whizzes with the electronic gadgets calculating in their hands, they tended to ask less questions, never raise an eyebrow, whined and complained when too much complexity and history was brought into a subject being discussed, and just mechanically went about having professor's zip open their heads and stuff data inside and zip it closed. They smiled. They picked up their paper at the end of their incarceration and went on to claim their birthright--a job. Not just any job but one that paid money and required minimal physical labor.

Comparatively to my earlier stint in college fifteen years ago this was rather like watching a a Twilight episode called the Stepford Students. One I wouldn't care to see again.

It was business school. The Stepford approach to capitalistic indoctrination. Maximum efficiency. ROI the school mascot.

When I first made the decision to go after my MBA I had called up my Alma Mater and spoke with the Commandant in charge of the Business School. "Could I write my own program with a dual major? Business and Ethics." A stern "No" came the reply. I sucked up the wounds of naivete and entered the program regardless. But I digress into the reality of the dark spaces behind the stage curtain.

The article I read went on about how the financial crisis we are facing invokes the need for reworking and remaking content for the university classroom. Ultimately a professor disclosed his opinion about how his students had grown cynical over the past year upon realizing that the institutions in America are not interested in changing.

Corporations have studied and prepared for this battle.

I read a great book in the 1990's recommended to me by an early-entry triple-scoop kind of technology whiz geek. Who, come to think of it, worked for a Texas based insurance company. One of the big five. The book "The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet" frequently gets panned still in reviews by reviewers with less geek on their lapels than my friend's. But these reviews miss the big picture of the book.

The book outlines how the infrastructure of western civilization, long reliant on coal, oil, and the auto industry to sustain their economy was about to undergo a radical transformation from these outdated sources of infrastructure and technology to, you guessed it, using the sun, the genome, and the Internet.

The student of history will easily point out that these cycles replay themselves over and over again throughout all civilizations and human population centers.

The importance of this shift, grossly understated in this book when taken into political terms, can only be described, less than adequately, as enormous. Our grandchildren and their children for years will be reading about this period of time where America attempted to shift power gears and ended up blowing out the clutch. The powers in charge of these aging technologies were not quite ready to be put to bed yet and wanted to take out one last hurrah of final profiteering before the economy shifted. Hence, I'll argue, one of the reasons for backing the Bush Cheney Iraq war. Also the fight over health care.

The shift, for the American economy, got delayed for ten years--thank you to all the greedy profiteering self-interested executives and investors living in their castles on the hill and watching the peasants toil in the fields everyday looking up longingly for their opportunity to climb the ivory steps to their own gilded apartments in the high towers above those with "less".

Now here we are, the lower classes in America, left with the proverbial mess after the big party and taped to our besotted foreheads is the taxpayers' bill for cleaning it up. The gum crushed into the pavement, the litter strewn about here and there, people maimed and laying on the curb, the panties wrapped around streetlights, and all those little annoying party favors. Obama crushed and weighted down with the responsibility for coming up with a plan to clean it all up. The nobility of course demanding, and receiving, payment for showing the lower-classes how to party.

"Thanks for the good time. Don't call home when the baby arrives."

Isn't it funny how sometimes that one crucial, beautifully snapped, public tableau, like the party scene, can implant itself into the brains of an entirely unsuspecting generation... and fester. College is a special place for the incubating "Festers". Hence underfunding college for the less-than-elite-legacy players is a great idea for those specially interested in staying in power.

Fester like a wound improperly cleaned. Fester like a canker sore on a tongue so it hurts every time flicked. Fester to irritation like the pimple rubbed into a boil. Until suddenly the thought of the wound takes over everything and explodes into the consciousness so ripe and ugly that nothing else matters until it is cured.

Now I am beginning to understand, you see, how those periods of strife appeared within my naive ideal of America. Now I am beginning to see how an idea can exist in the unspoken consciousness of people but never emerge until the moment is ripe. Now I understand how political dynamics can change just as rapidly as they did in the minor experiment of sixth grade politics. Seemingly overnight when placed against the scale of human history.

The working class is restless in its slumber. The real question is whether or not it will awake. The students are becoming disquieted. The wind blowing across America's underclasses is not as temperate as it was yesterday. Now there is an air blowing that we have all been used. Duped. Taken advantage of. Our country seized by the powerful and wealthy and used to advance the big national corporate plunder. We, the common and average citizen, have been the mules to curry large amounts of wealth into the hands of the "handlers". The shadow thought of equality and democracy just a hand puppet figurine drawn on the wall to elicit cooperation.

How long will this brew take to boil? Or will it just allow a lid to be put on the wicked pot of thievery and placed back on the stove to simmer? It has happened before. The robber barons have been clocked. The peasants have taken back their country and reignited the idea of democratic equality. History has repeated itself more than once.

The only question is how to right the wrongs in a way which also upholds the integrity of the American ideal. This to me is what the real underlying fight for the public option in health care reform is all about. It isn't about the budget. It isn't about the Democrats versus the Republicans. It is about who owns this country.

The people or the corporate elite.

Time will tell. History will be written. Someday some teacher will ask his students the home run question. "What is the defining moment of American Democracy?"

The entire American public is about to learn if the investment being made into the public education system pays off and how that question will be answered now and in the future. The power of the vote is mightier than the sword. I learned that in sixth grade. Hopefully other students did too.

Shifting Tides of American Politic Rock Healthcare Boat

The tension is in the air. It is between friends. It is in the workplace. It is in the grocery store. We have a jobless economic recovery in our front window and a nasty ideological debate on health care going on in this country rattling all the other windows in our glass houses. Plus we have the latent and aging racists and monarchists in our society bubbling over the top of the kettle throwing scare tactics, guns, Fox News pundits, and labels around like the circus has come to town. Plus the media is ducking responsibility for any worthy journalism on the topic hoping to fend off being the next cartel in line after the insurance industry gets spanked.

None of the above, by itself, is my biggest worry though. I'm always a survivor. I crave a good challenge. But the above are simply symptomatic of the change afoot in the American current. The waterfall is just coming into view and I am not so sure I want to think about what lies ahead. However, what I figure I can't survive is the changing politic in America.

My biggest worry is that America has lost touch with those who struggle in ways those with wealth rarely experience. American institutions have such vast markets that these institutions and the supporting businesses do not have any need or real incentive to cover the lower end of market spectrum. There is plenty of profit to be had by carving up the middle and upper class and developing new markets around the world. Hence needs go unmet if you are on the lower end of the market.

The American economy has done a great job of covering the most people's needs during the 20th century. But now it finds itself, albeit the consequence of too much wealth and population expansion, rather than too little capital, in a parallel situation to third world countries. Stagnated economies or underdeveloped nations have long sufferred their citizens on the lower end of the economic stratum being clobbered by those above. Basically it is a consequence that few "above" care, or need to care, because their cash needs are being met without caring. This is self interested capitalism at its best. Couple, this cash based disconnect, with government stepping out of the arena and either removing or looking the other way on almost all economic regulation between the players under the proclomation of the free market and "government is never a good thing". The resulting consequence is the smoldering embers of standard discontent in a society become open flames.

Furthermore, I will argue, that emotional or intellectual needs in modern American society can mostly be purchased with enough cash so these societal checks and balances have also been substantially eroded. Just ask yourself the question how many families or neighbors you know would approve of their son or daughter currying favor in their job or relationship for monetary gain? There isn't a lot of need to look over the backyard fence at how the neighbors are doing anymore unless their McMansion casts a shadow on yours.

Instead of being pushed to perform in this society I simply feel obligated to produce cash. For myself and for others. There aren't really any ethics or scope of morality attached to the production of that cash just as long as the cash gets produced. This has become the ethereal societal expectation from my fellow citizens. Basically I can, and they can, do as they please as long as they don't harm any little children and as long as they are making money for others as well as their own good. If one is simply making money mostly for their nepotistic "own" that can be a little sketchy too. Especially if caught. Just ask Bernie Madoff.

Now maybe I grew up in the wrong household but as a child I was raised with the expectation that I would be a productive human being. That demand was inclusive of nurturing my own well being and paying my own bills and also giving to others whenever possible so that, together, we all could be safe, healthy, and potentially happy. Hard work was simply an expectation in my working class family. It was how you lived. Whether it produced a lot of cash or just enough to live on--if you did your job well and with integrity then you had met your societal obligation. My father may have been a raging abusive alcoholic but he got up every morning and put in a very effective eighteen-hour weekday six days a week. He helped make the owners of the company very wealthy over a number of years.

As an adult I have learned that people are raised with many variant expectations of their own contribution to society dependent on cultural, familial, and even geographical factors. I guess I just never assumed that this nation would turn its back on people who struggle every day to do their best but don't acquire a lot of wealth mostly because capitalism doesn't value their skills, or what they have to give, as much as they do the person's next door. We pay our sports heroes and bankers mega-millions yet we pay the people who still can dig a ditch, pick up our trash, or take care of our loved ones only enough to meet minimal needs.

First insurance became a response to disaster. Ben Franklin got it right. If your home burned down the potential for replacing the shelter was improbable in times when there was minimal capital in a community. Your neighbors meant everything in a disaster not simply for the immediate response but to stabilize your future. Insurance made a lot of sense to pool the collective capital and lower the risk.

Then insurance became a need generalized to other necessities and larger investments. It at least made a little bit of sense that if you had something worth protecting you wanted it protected. Especially so from those with nothing to protect who might be a little less careful about their approach on life. It also still serviced those caught unaware by natural or man-made disasters.

Then insurance became an institution. A distinguishing and stablizing concept especially rewarding and productive for the middle class. A requirement in many states to be held up by legislation created by those with secure housing, food and water supplies, and a good education. Many legislators simply members of the "Lucy Sperm Club" themselves. By far our legislators and representatives reflect people in our society who have been equipped, mostly by birth, with the assets that open doors to success and stability. The rest of us have to clear a path to the doors and earn our keys to the locks.

Once institutionalized insurance companies have been kissing home plate. The government stepped in to cover 9/11 victims, the vast majority already well healed, to augment and supersede their insurance companies from taking them to court, where it would be plainly pointed out that most those insurance contracts, now required, put a clause in regarding "acts of war" and, too frequently, acts of Mother Nature. The nation stood by watching the misfortunes of families in Katrina. Those of lesser economic means were left without the cash to hire effective attorneys. We stood by and watched while the Katrina victims' insurance companies twisted previous promises like writhing knotted snakes to get out of fulfilling those obligations.

A century ago American media made stars out of those who worked hard and struggled to overcome adversity. As the struggle of life became less and less a standard and the wealth accumulated in families to be passed on to the generations that followed our taste for common heroes rising through the ranks fell to the wayside. The national focus tended more to those whose status came with birth or had already been achieved. The process was not the point of interest any longer. The cool factor became less about the struggle and more about the glitz and glam of the perceived treasures. The glorification of the process and struggle of obtaining status faded as Americans began to live vicariously through the society and entertainment pages.

We drive the media and we become our media. It tends to be a closed ecosystem.

I, personally, cannot think of a group that emulates, in the majority, this modern American representation of paper made icons better than Congress itself. Our for-profit media has not missed out on following the societal trends for opportunistic gains as much as for public information. It has followed these political leaders and icons for decades and held them up for emulation. House and Garden, GQ, Money, INC., Lives of the Rich and Famous, People Magazine, and so on.

Now health care, hopping into bed with its sugar-daddy, has become an extension of the institution of insurance. The idea that people, when sick, should be tended and looked after to be made well again simply because they are a fellow human being has fallen by the wayside. Senator Max Baucus' finance bill wanted every person who could not pay for health care insurance to pay $3,800. as a fine for not participating in the good enrichment of society. The moral assumption reads "If you can't pay to stay alive then obviously your not worth keeping around."

Prisoners on death row get public paid health care. People who get minimum wage get the death sentence. Great idea Senator Baucus. When people are allowed to go homestead a piece of land, cut down their own trees, plant their own vegetables, and not be fined for doing so then maybe, just maybe, it makes sense to force people with little economic means in the first place to pay to participate in the great Baucus society twisted out of the one LBJ once stood over. At least they won't have to lose their homes or go without groceries to make you feel secure in your gilded mansions at night. Or is the general idea here to enslave or outlaw people without means? Can we make the ugliness we don't like to look at go away like the unwanted bags under our eyes? Can we simply pay for someone to make everything look good on the surface and ignore the reality of the situation?

This is what frightens me the most about present day America. Watching the powerful in the Congress and the Obama Administration who seemingly think that coming up with $3,800 is within every person's means. What happens to a nation when its leaders become so out of touch with the workers that actually make the infrastructure of the system go round?

In my world Senator Baucus should have been embarrassed to even whisper such a proposal behind closed doors. We take out public servants who admit to canoodling with lobbyists in the bedroom but we leave in those who would loosen the Hound of the Baskervilles onto the throats of good honest hard working people with less accumulated wealth. We care about the boundaries and civilities of sex and marriage but not ALL the people those marriages produce. Simply because the poor are asking to have a stake and share in the essentials that society demands BEFORE a person can be a fully fledged participant in the economy we are to be fined.

Of course that is only if President Obama manages to get his way and there is some type of viable public option. Which is what the Senate Finance bill is looking to ensure doesn't happen. Senator Baucus is going to make absolute sure that the unworthy, meaning those without accumulated wealth, will suffer some type of second class citizenship if the "Have's" will be footing any part of the bill.

Suddenly I don't need to be walking inside a Castle in the Rhineland to get a feel for what it was like to be medieval peasantry. I can get it all right here in America in 2009. If health care has become a requirement to participate in the education system, to get a decent job, to be allowed to board public transportation, and just to be treated civil in society then society needs to make health care readily available to everyone they expect to participate. If not then the poor should be allowed to stake out a living space where ever they please without fines and stigma. A street corner, under bridges, in tent cities, where ever they can survive. Participation in society is already not an option. Does it also have to come with a fine for not being able to afford membership dues when a person is being actively excluded on many levels from full participation? It doesn't make sense unless we go back to an agrarian society where Senator Baucus can have his own fiefdom.

The only marker of a decent man or woman is not the property he or she owns Senator.

As an alternative we could just put every one making less than a living wage in America on a bus and send them to Canada. It would make governing so much easier for the insurance-controlled Congressional elite. At least Canada has a sense of humanity toward their own even if they would turn the buses away. America used to be the champion of humanitarianism throughout the world. How low we have sunk that we can't even champion our own.

A poor person cannot create their own economy of scale to lower costs. Nor can individuals without many collective resources easily organize political power for their own benefit. Poor people have little representation in Congress because they cannot pay to purchase their senator and representatives ears or their integrity. And often, strangely enough, the lower economic classes suffer from roadblocks on the way to polling. Not to mention that Congress, the Senate the House Richie-Rich built, is heavily invested in the industries which make a lot of their wealth from the backs of labor. Businesses, banks especially, earn a large bulk of their wealth and profit by charging the poor excessive fees, surcharges, and usury interest rates.

Good credit has also become a need for survival. Try having a health care crisis and keeping your stellar credit rating. It has brought more than one middle class Joe into the sewers with the unwashed masses. In many jobs there are so many qualified applicants that the employers screen out those with health care issues and those with poor credit. The public education system has been repeatedly raped by financial conservatives over the past three decades so it can produce only the minimal cloned workers from the masses entering the system. Higher education has become increasingly more and more difficult to access.

In short, the competition for the higher status in society, is being systematically eliminated. Capitalism is all about competition and so is the innate shadow self of humankind. Check-mate goes to the wealthy elite and the others in this country whom they have managed to convince that government is never a good thing and thus compel these citizens in many cases to vote against their own true self-interest.

Left unchecked, both of these mechanisms, bring out cycles of destruction which the world has seen before. Let's just hope we are not doomed to repeat our mistakes of ego.

President Obama is right to make health care a moral argument. The problem still remains that he needs to let us know which side of the moral ideology he is keeping tune with rather than vaguely chastizing both ends of the spectrum. One end has all the power Mr. President and the other end has most of the day to day burdens and consequences.

If the Senate Finance Committee doesn't come up with a plan for all the people please don't just send them back to their room without dinner Mr. President. Publically expose their strategic posturing for what it really is--grotesque, devisive, and a fuedal elitism designed to reappoint and legitimize through the hands of government a second class citizenship for the peasants in America and a ruling first-class citizenship for the insurance industry, corporate monopolies, and the blue blood. Let them hang for social canoodling regardless whether a Republican, a Democrat, or a Republican in Democratic fuedal drag.

Let's just hope he gets a bill in front of him that can knit this nation of opposing forces and ideologies together for another two hundred years. Then President Obama will have done his job well, in my view, and delivered full value on his own obligation to society.

Health Care Cooperatives--Not Good Enough Mr. President

President Obama is from a big town. In a town like Chicago, big and cosmopolitan, the idea of health cooperatives meeting the public need for health care might look sane. President Obama is already on record as having said as much.

The Senate Finance Committee, where this health care plan for cooperatives is rooted, basically shows how completely out of touch with the needs of the average American the Senate has become. The Senate is made of millionaires. Even if one happened to land out of their mother's womb in a small town to begin with it is obvious they have no memory of it now. Perhaps, given this scheme, they may have landed on their heads. Why else would Congress promote a design which essentially leaves the insurance industry still in power over the public's health care needs. The idea of nonprofit health care cooperatives serving the public need is a shell game. It is a cloak over the public's eyes at the behest of the insurance company profiteers and the medical elite.

I say don't play the game and don't believe it. This "option" is not an alternative to the public option or the single payer system. It is a way for the insurance and private health company executives to retain control of the health care market and have it their way.

Here's why.

First and foremost any nonprofit, especially a membership based nonprofit, is like driving a bus. Whereas a private forprofit business is a zippy little red sports car. Well funded private business, like you find in the insurance and health industry, goes even further and resembles the famed Italian Maserati. They are sleek organizations, designed to hug the road, expensive, and represent loads of capital (cash).

President Obama has said he feels that the nonprofit cooperatives should have to compete for that capital. I like President Obama and empathize the heft of his burden but he is more the attorney and politician here and less the nonprofit business man.

In a nonprofit cooperative there is a board of directors. This board, although there are no definitive guidelines put out yet, most likely will be elected by the members of the cooperative. There are specific regulations which provide the directors with the structure for governance in a nonprofit. These have distinct differences compared to a forprofit organization.

The people who run for nonprofit board positions will be similar to the same people who run for local school boards and housing cooperatives. In private corporate business the board of directors are appointed more often than not. Directors receive nice annual stipends, pay, and perks for giving advice in their special areas of expertise or using their influence to get favorable legislation. It is a nice job in the forprofit world and someone wealthy with clout and experience lands the role and holds onto it--until death, or dementia, do us part. Meanwhile, back at the nonprofit, the assets of the nonprofit belong to the public and therefore the public representatives are assigned to watch over those assets on behalf of the membership of the cooperative. How many board directors, what regional representations might be assigned, how long their term of service, all has to be established in the nonprofit charter. Any remuneration will likely be limited and contained to expenses incurred while being a public community servant.

In this spirit, allow me to metaphorically introduce you, the person needing health insurance reform, to your new bus driver--your neighbor Joe the Plumber. Or perhaps Suzy the Secretary, Gary the Mechanic, Jenny the Accountant, and/or Carol the Hairdresser.

Basically the cooperative board of directors will be made up of people from your cooperative's community.

Now if you live in the community of Chicago the pool of potential nonprofit board candidates is bigger. The select educated elite and various professional backgrounds are naturally more diverse and better candidates can be drawn upon to serve. Your Chicago Cooperative might end up with Karen the Physician and Sam the Surgical Nurse for example. These options would, presumably, be better trained leadership for a health care cooperative. Lucky you--the Public Citizen.

At least for a while.

Then Karen and Sam's term of service will be up and new board members will come on. New board members who have never driven this particular bus before. New board members unfamiliar with the history of the bus, the patients riding the bus, and the mechanic's tinkering with the bus. Never having stuck their heads under the engine of the bus and never having kicked the tires of the bus these new board members will be seated. Not to mention these new board members, "drivers of the bus", will even have to become familiar with what road the bus is going down.

And there are a lot of bumps, cracks, and potholes in the road.

This, Public Citizen to whom I write, is who will be in charge of your health care in lieu of the government. A gamble at best. A tragedy in the making at worst. Because (play close attention to where the pea lands underneath the shell) while nonprofit cooperatives may be designed to be in lieu of the government being in charge of your health care they are not in lieu of the insurance company executives remaining in power. They, the insurance executives, are just scurrying under the new shell Congress has designed to maintain the status quo for the elites.

In the meantime, the insurance company executive will be driving on ahead of the bus, happy in the newly lightened and speedy Maserati. A few small tow lines attached to the Public Citizen bus at the initial camera-op, all for show, without any long lasting effects for the Maserati driver.

In fact, is that a smile I see on the Maserati driver's face?

Of course it is, since the Public Citizen bus will be full of riders that the insurance company executives don't want in their zippy little sport car. Public Citizens add weight and cost money in gas and repairs. Plus, the evil public riders tend to complain when they get dumped out on their heads in the middle of the road. It will take a little more conniving to get around President Obama's legislation on patient dumping--but with the Senate Blue Dogs on their side, no problem. So onto the bus with you!

A private forprofit organization can make quick stealth-like decisions. It can plan a long time in advance since it has a relatively stable market. It can control, to a great degree, how much supply it wants to give in order to meet demand. The forprofit insurance company is going to set, because it can and the industry is allowed to collude, how much profit it wants to put in the hands of its executives and investors. And the profiteering will always come first because that is what the company is designed to do, and it is what the executives get paid the big bucks for... doing what is best for the company.

Is there a great new technology on the market people are dying to pay for? Great let's adopt it and charge a 200% markup. Better yet let's buy up that company and roll it into our portfolio! Full speed ahead. The zippy little red Maserati doesn't even slow down for the turns or the bumps in the road--it generates enough money to negotiate successfully all the curves and bends in the road. And when it needs repairs it just charges anyone riding along more money.

Ah, the perfect life. Neck scarf blowing in the breeze and the Senate pumping gas into the tank.

Meanwhile, the Public Citizen bus is back here trying to figure out which way to turn next. The driver has stopped and is waiting to hear from all the passengers (members). The driver has to unfasten his seat belt and walk up and down the aisles of the bus to get every rider's ideas and thoughts on which way to go next. Then there is the time spent to show that process is being done and to take these thoughts into consideration. Next compare the new ideas with the old map, explain to everyone why that might be the wrong way to go, get the board to draw a new line on the map, and then finally he can get back in the driver's seat and go forward to make the turn in the road ahead.

Needless to say, if Public Citizen, wants to get anywhere soon he or she isn't going to get there quickly by riding that nonprofit cooperative health care bus.

Could you buy a better bus or a better trained driver or mechanic? Not likely. The nonprofit will never be able to, without the government's backing, outbid the private forprofit competition for the best doctor's, nurses, administrators, and technology. Even if the, ever-changing, board can get it together to understand the strategic need and are willing to work, being semi-paid, full time to raise capital. The forprofit insurance industry will have every reason to work around any regulations and to take shortcuts to ensure it stays ahead of the bus. Effectively undercutting any strategic advantage the nonprofit cooperatives may develop.

Just ask Fannie and Freddie--they essentially got into competition with the for-profit mortgage sector. It is a slippery slope leading to the eventual abyss.

Yet some buses might be better than others--true. Big polished city buses might have bigger gas tanks and better drivers than rural or small city ones--but they still will never be able to catch up to that tasty little red Maserati ahead. There are individual health care nonprofits that are bound to be rolled out as examples. An individual does not an industry make. Overall if the bus breaks down along the way and needs more gas, private gas stations are going to give their best supply to the Maserati owner because the Maserati owner obviously can always pay more. The Public Citizen will get the dregs of the tank and the mechanics straight from medical skid row. Running on dregs never makes for a good ride--for anyone.

Even more poetically or poignantly, however you want to look at it, the Maserati driver will get to dine at the White House with all the Senators long before the Public Citizen bus limps in. All the prime rib, shrimp, and organic greens will long be gone. Congress and the Maserati driver will be snuggled into the study smoking a few handrolled cigars and sipping cognac by the time the bus pulls in. In fact, the Maserati drivers may even, if they are clever enough, be able to arrange it so that the Public Citizen gets to the White House just in time to done a servant's outfit and wait upon the Blue Dog Senators and Maserati drivers in their cloistered study.

Guess who will get the bill.

Finally, after every one else has left, pockets stuffed full of goodies for the drive home, the Public Citizens can pick at the crumbs spilt on their uniforms before heading home to wait for that call from the Grim Reaper.

Yes, Virginia, this is a class war and Santa Claus doesn't really visit the little people in America any more. Not even for Show and Tell.

Let's just hope President Obama is playing chess with Congress rather than MouseTrap.

All the Kings Men are Insurance Company Executives and Hicks

Write. Don't call. Don't email. Write. Write every senator, representative, and any one of any useful power in the intimate health care circle in the White House. Write them today.

I have never felt so disappointed in my government in my life. When the time has come for Congress to stand up and fight for all Americans they have caved to the pressures of the elite. Without oil to win, provincial countries to plunder, or votes to be purchased they are turning their backs and covering their eyes on the common need. I feel I should sew a label onto my lapel that reads Second Class Citizen so I can appropriately be shamed when I go into public for being a person without the means for private health care.

To all those who have decried that the poor are poor by choice and should be entitled to suffer I have this to write to you

Just tell 'em you're gonna soak the fat boys and forget the rest of the tax stuff...Willie, make 'em cry, make 'em laugh, make 'em mad, even mad at you. Stir them up and they'll love it and come back for more, but, for heaven's sakes, don't try to improve their minds. ~Jack Burden from All the King's Men

And to all those who have spread the malicious fear, half-truths, and outright lies of government run health care while truly knowing the hurt and harm it heaps upon your neighbors

Now listen to me, you hicks! Listen to me, and lift up your eyes and look at God's blessed and unfly-blown truth. And this is the truth. You're a hick, and nobody ever helped a hick but a hick himself! ~Willie Stark from All the King's Men

Democrats Signal Embrace of Co-op Plans | 44 | washingtonpost.com

Health Care
Democrats Signal Embrace of Co-op Plans

By John Amick

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius signaled on Sunday a willingness from the White House to embrace insurance cooperatives as the main plank of health-care reform rather than pushing for a public option in the final version of legislation being debated in Washington and throughout town halls across America.

Quotes from Movie All the Kings Men :: Finest Quotes

Now listen to me, you hicks! Listen to me, and lift up your eyes and look at God's blessed and unfly-blown truth. And this is the truth. You're a hick, and nobody ever helped a hick but a hick himself!

Xenophobia Breaks Out Across Colorado

Speaking of Greeley students understanding mathematical relationships, it gets really depressing spending a Saturday afternoon reading the commentaries around the state on health care. Obama is in Grand Junction trying to raise the quality of debate amongst the provincials. Below the BBC has made an easy visual to chart the comparisons between the US system and three others. I thought I'd try a more mathematical approach to help squelch the xenophobes as everything I am writing comes up screaming my disenchantment with the perceptions people are willing to show they believe as fact. You can still dispute numbers but it gets less emotional. The arguments are limited.

Note that the day you are born in Singapore you have a better life expectancy. As a child I remember Singapore being a place my dad wouldn't buy things from because the quality was questionable. Now Singapore leads a comparison on certain health statistics.



I understand, being American, that we like to think we have the greatest, most magnificent, tremendous, biggest, bestest, most significant," everything in the world. But then again it isn't only my ego that participates in this society. The reality is that excluding better ideas that have better performance for more people is, well, a major risk factor behind the disease called xenophobia.

It is a horrid, horrid, horrid disease. Did I say horrid? Make that deadly.

I am growing weary of the health care debate and the tactics deployed. How you re-educate the over-forty crowd on doing the basic math? On unwinding the political complexities? How do you reeducate the over-forty crowd on the dangers of twisted perceptions of ideology? I have noted the young are not turning out for these rallies in any significant numbers so I focus on my own generation. The generation fed buzz words like socialism, McCarthyism, videos on nuclear explosions, and liberalism to fuel the power of the political elite. Now those words, these labels, taken out of context, have come back to haunt us all.

I fear the slippery slope if Congress does not include a public option. It will be difficult, at least for me, to have any faith in a system of government which has shown that it has compromised the throat of America by allowing the fangs of monster insurance industries and accompanying profiteers to thrive permanently embedded in American citizens' pockets. Insurance isn't an option any longer. It has been made a legal necessity to survive and operate in a manner expected by civilized society. The only option not to participate in having your blood sucked through the insurance tube is to be wealthy enough to cover all catastrophic events or poor enough to live under a bridge and own nothing at all. In essence the Lord of the Realm owns all the means of production and the Lord of the Realm isn't government.

If Congress fails in its duty to protect its people, all of its people, then the Insurance Industry will be known as the Lord of the Realm. Congress will be proven to be the jesters who dress up and dance for the Lord when called upon. The foolish plebeians will be, and are, the citizens with the pitchforks and hayforks who believe they will be saving something special for themselves by undermining the public option.

Legislative power should not be bought and sold to the highest more powerful bidder. This era of Congress should be known as the Blagoveckian Era.

This nation belongs to the people. All of the people. All of the time. We need to remind Congress who is in power here. Write. Call. Speak out. The mob can't win this one or we all lose.

BBC NEWS | Health | Healthcare around the world

Healthcare around the world

Healthcare figures

War: Leaches, Bankers, and the American Middle-Class

The rooster is sourcing out a new perch in the hen house. Dawn has arrived. For some time now, in my personal discussions with friends, I have made the argument that being poor in and of itself is a "tax" in this society. It is always nice to have some affirmation as I see more and more mainstream articles popping up about the systemic nature of modern poverty. Yes, Virigina, there really is a Santa Claus but he gets his mega cash flow for luxury goods in part by eating the meager rations off the table of the poor. And Robin Hood lost his popularity around redneckville ever since that "Men in Tights" thing.

Now the spotlight has been turned on again because suddenly the position of working man's enemy is up for grabs. The poor have lost pole position. And the government and the greedy rich are battling for first position.

Fees charged by American companies and private enterprise have been excessive for a long time. This tends to happen when the segment paying the bill is political milquetoast to argue against the highway robbery.

I had the pleasure of living with a roommate, a manager of the largest Bank of America branch in the area, about a year ago as he transitioned from college into his management position. Frequently he'd come home crowing about his monthly bonus. When queried it didn't take a genius to figure out that the bonus was largely based on hitting his fee targets from overdrawn accounts.

Naturally, being the lovable contrarian that I am, I noted that he was making his money on the backs of the poor whom the bank would never consider giving a legitimate cash flow loan to. Yet banks are required to service the poor. So astronomical fees to float a $2.50 overdrawing seemed fitting to the bank manager. Besides, he got to collect a healthy portion of the bounty. It didn't bother him a bit. Even though the man was living rent free at the time, claiming penury while drinking all the good wine in the house, deploring the need to pay off his student loans, it still did not make him think twice that a person of lesser means paying astronomical interest rates to get a $10 loan was inappropriate. Not in the name of profit of course but in the name of covering the banks risk. After all those fees were going into his bank account.

All to which I pointed out the poor, with credit checks, are trapped audiences the risk to the bank minimal. You can't just change your bank these days Toto. The Wicked Witch has monkey spies everywhere to protect the middle class from those wicked evil poor people living in munchkin land who ride in on a horse of a different color.

To see the London Financial Times covering the topic of fee raking (see the article at the end of the post) is indeed a sign of the times or a warning that the elite's brand image is in trouble. I can only hope this if it is a sign, it is not the only sign on what, traditionally, has been a lonely road.

In my world, after struggling for years to raise two loving children and go to college, I came out the ordeal, educated, but very aware of how the system has slowly been tweaked against the poor who yearn in America to be more. You kind of, at some point, begin to see yourself in the paint the community around you colors in. The poor serve as a blight on the middle class affluence of the neighborhood. The ranks close in to pull damage control. Nothing personal of course.

Your children get screened out of day care and scuttled by the side of the road when it comes to after school "enrichment" programs. When your kid itches their head in school they have lice and a bad parent rather than having engaged in a misfortunate misplacement of desks like the other twenty head-scratchers. The personal development programs get gutted from the public schools in the name of cost savings and then youth league athletic programs only let you have two years of grants to cover fees then the kid is "out" before they get to home base. The teacher sends home snotty notes when your kid doesn't upgrade to the binder with four holes rather than three or pay the 1/3 of your food budget needed to cover the arts program. The organic produce may look great but the canned pesticidal stuff comes home with you every time.

Gosh, with such a wonderful life, isn't it plain to see why the poor like wallowing in this life style, refusing to work, and longing to rob your house and steal your car? Definitely you should vote against their interests at any opportunity before they take over the world. Shrew the day the poor obtain political clout! Is it any wonder that the illegal drugs, used to blind the poor and ignorant from this turned-upside down reality, drives much of the crime the politicians use the fear of to pass legislation on? The very same criminal activity that somewhere, someplace, makes the rich richer, and the wealthier more elite. It is all in the name of profit after all. Somewhere someone is making a buck and raising their status with the right car, the right political donations, and the smart looking house. And in the center of those houses is an arsenal armed with legal drugs to keep the occupants with money safe from the ravages of the war on poverty.

Don't you feel better now? All snug like a bug in a dirty rug.

Of course the kids don't really mind all that much. They realize that poverty isn't a disease and that it is pretty cool you have parents who will still let you go play baseball in the street parking lot while your friends are stuck watching COPS on TV and waiting to be victimized by the next "poor drug fiend" in the neighborhood. But I digress as the stereotypes spill over in prime time money making deals.

This war is a war of the adults. The kids just get hit by the fallout to become the walking wounded.

It always was the adults with the pearly steel gates locking their drives and their politicians making legislation to protect "them" against the perception of "you" that I felt had gone to war. Of course it hasn't been a spontaneous war. It isn't a new war. But in modern times, I'd argue, it has been a convenient war. One political in its design and a duplicitous intent at its heart. And one that has gone too far and needs to be curtailed back into the boundaries of the true skirmish it has always been. Hopefully before the poor are legislated into genetic and digital nonexistence.

Frank Rich's brilliant comments on Obama Punking America shouldn't be taken casually. It the shot of the United Nations coming over the hill after one side has been thoroughly throttled and left to be fodder under the hooves of the elite feet. Basically the poor get pushed under the bridge, legislated to stay under the bridge, and then as the Barbara Enreich's column yesterday noted--arrested for being under the bridge. I thought it was going to be different in my new working class town of Greeley Colorado.

It isn't. Special interests have total control and the voters are all riding the same hay wagon of hate and fear--voting against their own long term self interest in the name of color and perceived social status.

The only force I know of to change the tide is education. Education of all the people. Education of the check and balances on the elite regulators and governors. But I am at a loss what to do when an entire community sees little value in educating any one other than their own. Or what to do when the community special interests seat management who seemingly make the decisions in the interest of "their own".

Poetically I like to bring up to my wealthier friends when we get into this conversation (which by the way always ends when my favorite Canadian once again reminds me "The poor in America don't vote." and I reply "And the almost poor vote with the rich.") that at one time the poor were seen with much less stigma in America. They were the working background, the labor, the farmers, the service workers trying to hold two board together with string and a paperclip so they could go out the next day and work to feed their families. What happened? How did we become so disconnected with the people we loved who worked so hard to achieve so much?

The subtle building of a mindset that wealth comes to the hands of the pious and good and appropriately colored happened. The radical social affirmation based on isolated cases that the poor don't work. They lay under bridges and do drugs stolen from the rich happened. Excuse me for a moment here while I get my insurance covered legal Prozac out of the bathroom, happened. The steel gates guarding culture more than wealth, happened. The overwhelming mass media representations that the poor exist only for a moment to knock down wealthier doors, steal and do evil things to prettier wealthier children, rob society of their savings with their unrelenting need for food, shelter, water and medical care, happened. The fear of the future--the robbing of the very soul of everything they, the almighty middle-class righteous, had worked so hard to obtain, has happened.

Cause and effect of course are not to be overlooked here...

The initial cry of insecurity, heard across the land if you held a politician's ear to a glass to a wall containing a community treasure chest, did not go unheeded. Men and women of the knowledge of this real weapon of mass destruction, when faced with using it, didn't blink a golden eye of shame in deploying said weapon. With the battle against the tide of red subsiding as the Soviet Union collapsed, McCarthism a distant memory before Rush reemerged on the scene, and closeted racism drawing its votes less in the North and more in the South, a new enemy was needed to keep the reigning feudal society of the Have's versus the Have-not's in place.

Desperately. And Thomas Jefferson be dammed. Except for a quote for political cover now and then.

Needed by those willing to do anything to gain those seats of representative power and keep the money and favors clinking into their own pockets. The poor. The have-nots. The lesser-thans. The Reagan Homeless. The Shelter Families. All became representatives of an America that couldn't quite elevate itself far enough above those "other" countries and create a decent quality of life for all. A small scab on the knee of America needing to be eliminated in order to finally achieve the height and breadth of the power that we, as the best in the world, deserved to be. All we can be.

Besides, since the poor didn't really want to work, and they enjoy being at the bottom of the barrel and being scraped off the soul of American Congress. It wasn't too far for society as a whole to leap over this segment of society and just try to forget that other humans, beside "them", exist. The perfect narcissistic juggernaut.

Just like the hormone stretching mind-boggling teenager, America began its ride into a young adulthood of narcissism. The Me-First generation emerged with the appropriate tacit leadership approval given--wealth became the new glory mill. Fewer competitors for status. Only those with wealth can possess it. Fuel came running to the fire in the form of the technology revolution and its instant millionaires plus excessive wall street growth. The Bonfire of the Madoff Vanity ignited.

So now, here we are in 2009, and all the bubble-gum has popped all over our proverbial national face. Turns out that the rich speculators of the finance world, the insurance industry, Congress, and Wall Street were the bad guys really looking to loot middle-class America before the poor got its mitts on the surplus. Oh and the poor are not to go blameless in my rant either. They missed the bus or refused to get on it. Unwilling, unable, too trained to follow the rules rather than to make shortcuts with dire consequences, I don't know. But for some reason they missed the bus ride on gaming the American middle-class. They missed that important right turn to taking a short cut on the road to status in America. Who'd have guessed--those icons of fear turned out to simply be interested in food, shelter, water, education, and, god-forbid, health care.

It amazes me how our bubble-gum-smeared face in the mirror on the morning after is looking rather different now. A jobless recovery, corporations across America shedding those middle managers they kept on during the technology boom, few and far between weak-hands reaching out to help, the great lilly-white backs of a blue-spined Congress turned from the pale cheeks of the common man and woman, those "thems" being turned out of the homes they so diligently protected from the scummy invasion of "us" now becoming "us"... and suddenly, slowly, being poor isn't such a crime any more when you look at it through a mirror. The hate and distance in the room are gone. Suddenly it is just the person in the mirror and the reality of the society standing around it. Behind it all a circumstance with external drivers disconnected to the dirty grimy souls of unproductive bridge dwellers.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall is it a disease or is it a circumstance? Or is it, just plain stupidity, after all.

Going beyond the mirror. People may not deserve a lot of pity and but they can sure use some help. Long over due student loan regulations are coming on board. Thank you President Obama. Long over due credit card regulations are coming on board. Thank you President Obama. Executive pay is having its toenails trimmed. Thank you Corporate Wall Street raiders for rolling over on your backs and allowing Congress to make a show of it anyway. And Obama is dropping in the polls. Thank you media for doing due diligence and putting pressure on Obama to change his evil outreach to the common man. Let's cover some more of these town halls stooges and hire more half-prozac-baked pundits for Fox News.

Now, in the meantime, could we please get those idiotic credit checks as an icon to end all icons of the true value of a future employee to stop? And maybe, as Barbara Ehrenreich writes, could we get a world where people who hand out food to those starving under the bridge do not get arrested? And, oh yeah, while your at it stop those insidious payday lending institutions that charge a 400% interest rate to the poor simply because, well, they can.

Let me go one step beyond my cheeky observations above. Could we please restore to the up and coming American generation the concept that they are something more than digitized data points on a chart of gold. Could we, together as a nation, make it so personal and corporate intent has meaning rather than being isolated from profiteering actions. Could some corporation somewhere rebrand personal integrity to the tribe and make it valuable again. Please? Could some Congressional power broker please stand up for what is right for humanity and dignity rather than what is best for profit and their own personal greed?

Could someone please paint the blue back into my black sky? It's dark down here towards the bottom of the pole and it has been lonely a very long time. Come down here and take a look for yourself and you might learn a thing or two.

Somehow when I see people yelling in these town hall meetings on health care "This isn't my America" I wonder just how much of America they have really seen and experienced beyond their own backyard. It isn't "your" America. It is "our" America. That is the WHOLE point.

Once you've experienced the stigma, the bias, and the discrimination of poverty as well as the power of being middle class you never forget the road connecting the two. It isn't the same road you see when looking down on it from the superhighway of privilege. The giant gaping holes leading to deep muddy dark trenches and the missing steps on the ladder are not the waltz in the park some tell it to be. The true tale of the trench warfare to status in modern America can only be seen from both sides of the war. Some lucky ones find a hand up now and then and point to how easy the climb out can be. Others just stay silent for they know no one sitting in the meadows above will ever understand the true reality of social class wars.

Somehow when I see people yelling in these town hall meetings on health care "This isn't my America" I wonder just how much of America they have really seen and experienced beyond their own backyard. It isn't "your" America. It is "our" America. That is the WHOLE point.

It would be really nice if this administration and the people of America looking into the-morning-after-mirror would repair the ladder and offer some hope that, as a society, we have matured and moved beyond the feudal system class wars we seem want to fix everywhere but home. The closer we all are together the less fear we make. The less fear we make the more powerful we become as an organized and well governed nation.

Divided we fall. And the politicians feed on our dead carcass.

Well I guess it doesn't matter the reasoning as long as the help comes. Perhaps someday there will be a cure for "them" versus "us" but I don't think I'll hold my breath waiting for it to come. For the here and now it is a case of the people, to whom the end has been applied to, justifying the means. If it gets the job done it gets the job done.

I have my own biases I am working on. I don't like politicians.

Leaches are leaches and they should be pulled out of the murky water and left to battle the sunshine for survival.

FT.com / Companies / Banks - Banks make $38bn from overdraft fees

Banks say that the fees compensate for the risk they incur when they pay on behalf of customers who do not have enough money in their accounts. “Overdraft fees are there for a reason, we take on a lot of risk,” a senior banker said. “It’s a service to our customers, they want us to pay their overdrafts.”

The highest overdraft fees were charged by the largest banks, said Mr Moebs. At banks with assets greater than $50bn – a group including Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo – the median overdraft fee is set at $33.

At BofA, a customer overdrawn by as little as $6 could trigger a $35 penalty. If the customer does not realise they have a negative balance and continue spending, they could incur that fee as many as 10 times in a single day, for a total of $350. Failing to repay the overdraft within a few days results in an additional $35 penalty.

BofA said that the bank was “committed to ensuring that our fees are transparent and predictable. We have a range of tools and services to give customers more control over their accounts and to prevent these fees”.

Chase has tiered overdraft fees – the first overdraft within a 12-month period is charged at $25, the second to fourth at $32 and the fifth at $35.

Barbara Enrenreich "Is it a Crime Now to be Poor"

In defiance of all reason and compassion, the criminalization of poverty has actually been intensifying as the recession generates ever more poverty. So concludes a new study from the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, which found that the number of ordinances against the publicly poor has been rising since 2006, along with ticketing and arrests for more “neutral” infractions like jaywalking, littering or carrying an open container of alcohol.

The report lists America’s 10 “meanest” cities — the largest of which are Honolulu, Los Angeles and San Francisco — but new contestants are springing up every day. The City Council in Grand Junction, Colo., has been considering a ban on begging, and at the end of June, Tempe, Ariz., carried out a four-day crackdown on the indigent. How do you know when someone is indigent? As a Las Vegas statute puts it, “An indigent person is a person whom a reasonable ordinary person would believe to be entitled to apply for or receive” public assistance.

Frank Rich: Is Obama Punking America

Yet there is real reason for longer-term worry in the form of a persistent, anecdotal drift toward disillusionment among some of the president’s supporters. And not merely those on the left. This concern was perhaps best articulated by an Obama voter, a real estate agent in Virginia, featured on the front page of The Washington Post last week. “Nothing’s changed for the common guy,” she said. “I feel like I’ve been punked.” She cited in particular the billions of dollars in bailouts given to banks that still “act like they’re broke.”But this mood isn’t just about the banks, Public Enemy No. 1. What the Great Recession has crystallized is a larger syndrome that Obama tapped into during the campaign. It’s the sinking sensation that the American game is rigged — that, as the president typically put it a month after his inauguration, the system is in hock to “the interests of powerful lobbyists or the wealthiest few” who have “run Washington far too long.” He promised to smite them.

Health Care: Jared Polis A Republican in a Blue Dog Suit

Jared Polis should be in theater. He has crafted a wonderful disguise of being a liberal through, highly-crafted, public relation work. I'd ask Mr. Polis if he truly understands the meaning of liberal. Because you are rich and come from Boulder doesn't make you liberal Mr. Polis. Funding a foundation focused on education and "questionable" interest in the lower income segments of the community doesn't make you a liberal either.

In my book being a humanist makes what people brand as a liberal in modern times. Being able to weigh the externalities of the health care debate and translating them into future good, including economic and financial good, makes you liberal. If you are all about the here and now and what looks good at the top of the ladder--you, sir, are of no liberal mind. You have no vision and you certainly are not representing all your community--even if the median income in Boulder is higher than average for the state.

liberal (adj.)

c.1375, from O.Fr. liberal "befitting free men, noble, generous," from L. liberalis "noble, generous," lit. "pertaining to a free man," from liber "free," from PIE base *leudheros (cf. Gk. eleutheros "free"), probably originally "belonging to the people" (though the precise semantic development is obscure), from *leudho- "people" (cf. O.C.S. ljudu, Lith. liaudis,leod, Ger. Leute "nation, people"). Earliest reference in Eng. is to the liberal arts (L. artes liberales; see art (n.)), the seven attainments directed to intellectual enlargement, not immediate practical purpose, and thus deemed worthy of a free man (the word in this sense was opposed to servile or mechanical). Sense of "free in bestowing" is from 1387. With a meaning "free from restraint in speech or action" (1490) liberal was used 16c.-17c. as a term of reproach. It revived in a positive sense in the Enlightenment, with a meaning "free from prejudice, tolerant," which emerged 1776-88. Purely in ref. to political opinion, "tending in favor of freedom and democracy" it dates from c.1801, from Fr. libéral, O.E. originally applied in Eng. by its opponents (often in Fr. form and with suggestions of foreign lawlessness) to the party favorable to individual political freedoms. But also (especially in U.S. politics) tending to mean "favorable to government action to effect social change," which seems at times to draw more from the religious sense of "free from prejudice in favor of traditional opinions and established institutions" (and thus open to new ideas and plans of reform), which dates from 1823.

enlighten

1382 (O.E. had inlihtan), "to remove the dimness or blindness (usually figurative) from one's eyes or heart," from en- + lighten. Enlightenment is 1669 in the spiritual sense; 1865 as a translation of Ger. Aufklärung, a name for the spirit and system of Continental philosophers in the 18c.

"The philosophy of the Enlightenment insisted on man's essential autonomy: man is responsible to himself, to his own rational interests, to his self-development, and, by an inescapable extension, to the welfare of his fellow man. For the philosophes, man was not a sinner, at least not by nature; human nature -- and this argument was subversive, in fact revolutionary, in their day -- is by origin good, or at least neutral. Despite the undeniable power of man's antisocial passions, therefore, the individual may hope for improvement through his own efforts -- through education, participation in politics, activity in behalf of reform, but not through prayer." [Peter Gay]

The make-up you are wearing isn't very appealing Mr. Polis, and I fail to see where the more educated Boulder citizens and Coloradoans who put you in office are going to forgive you for actively sinking the public option on health care and possibly the Obama Administrations ability to be effective in the future. Of course, by my stereotype, you don't need the wealth of office, just the power. Perhaps your underlying plan is to move into being lobbyist after being defeated. But the least you could do for the good people of Colorado is to take off the Red-Riding Hood Cloak and show those big eyes and big teeth. Do your job as a self-proclaimed liberal or at least don't hide behind the skirts of the Blue Dog democrats. It could easily be said that you, and your wealthiest friends, essentially purchased your office in 2008.

Jared Polis (D)
(60% of vote)

Raised:	$7,353,034
Spent:	$7,323,502
Cash on Hand:	$29,533
Last Report:	December 31, 2008

	PAC contributions	$24,250	(0%)
	Individual contributions	$1,310,022	(18%)
	Candidate self-financing	$5,992,550	(81%)
	Other	$26,212	(0%)

Industry contributions from the 2008 campaign both above and below

Jared Polis (D)

Industry	Total
Democratic/Liberal	$429,390
Securities & Investment	$116,217
Retired	$84,850
Computers/Internet	$60,730
Real Estate	$49,660
Misc Finance	$42,200
Lawyers/Law Firms	$39,828
Printing & Publishing	$26,030
Business Services	$23,900
Candidate Committees	$21,250
Misc Business	$17,350
Health Professionals	$12,055
Construction Services	$10,600
Lobbyists	$9,900
Pharmaceuticals/Health Products	$9,900
Non-Profit Institutions	$8,650
Hospitals/Nursing Homes	$8,600
Retail Sales	$8,150
Misc Energy	$7,300
Civil Servants/Public Officials	$7,300

NOTE: All the numbers on this page are for the 2007 - 2008 House election cycle and based on Federal Election Commission data available electronically on Friday, July 17, 2009.

Do you seriously think sinking the Obama administration will get you re-elected in 2010 after you held on to his coattail in 2008?

From the upcoming 2010 campaign cycle tracking below

Jared Polis (D) *

Contributor	Total
National Assn of Retail Druggists	$2,000
Henry Cueller for Congress 2002	$1,000

Jared Polis (D)

Industry	Total
Health Professionals	$1,000
Candidate Committees	$1,000

Your comments are rather transparent in the strategic game of politics. Creating a defense for voting "no" on the main issue of our modern times--for the sake of those holding and hoarding wealth--reeks of a Democrat in Republican drag. A Conservative in the cloak of a Liberal--if you insist on PR labels. And you, sir, have just outed yourself in prime time media.

I hope the good citizens of Boulder and Colorado check you at every turn and make you accountable. You can start Mr. Polis by fully disclosing the relationships you have had, the discussions you have had, and any increase in funding or tacit support you have received from the health care industry, private PACS, the insurance industry, and their associates. Names and amounts Mr. Polis. Update your electorate please. Don't skimp on the details.

And before I go, yes I am on a rant, let me remind you of your "nonprofit foundation's" mission. You are willing to recognize the inequalities in America pertaining to education. My guess would be it is a very important strategy to get those soccer-moms to the voting polls. I'd give you more credibility behind your actions if it just wasn't so illogical and convenient for you to vote against the same families in their pursuit for well-being, health, and equality in our democratic society.

Jared Polis Foundation

Mission: Our mission is to create opportunities for success by supporting educators, increasing access to technology, and strengthening our community.

General Overview: The Jared Polis Foundation was established in 2000 to support educators and students, involve parents and families, and strengthen Colorado’s schools and communities. Located in Boulder, we are funded primarily by Jared Polis and focus our resources on giving low-income students and families access to technology through our Community Computer Connection program, contribution to public discussion of important educational issues and innovations through the Jared Polis Education Report, acknowledging and recognizing the outstanding contributions and dedication of educators through our Teacher Recognition Awards, and creating new opportunities for under served and out of school students to receive a high-quality education through the start-up of the New America Schools and the Academy of Urban Learning.

*Note: All campaign contribution details come from www.opensecrets.org

Feel free to distribute or cite this material, but please credit the Center for Responsive Politics. For permission to reprint for commercial uses, such as textbooks, contact the Center.

Jared Polis gets top Dems rethinking health care : Nation and World : Boulder Daily Camera

At the heart of the skirmish is the question of how to pay the trillion-dollar cost of health reform, one of the trickiest questions of the debate and one that is already dividing Democratic lawmakers. The House version of the bill raises about half that money from a new tax of as much of 5.4 percent on families earning more than $350,000 or individuals earning $280,000.

Polis led a mini-revolt of House freshmen last week against the surtax, circulating a letter that gained 21 Democratic signatures and claiming that it would take a heavy toll on small-business owners, many of whom don't file as corporations