Five Facts for the Health Care Debate

1. The United States spends more money per person on health care than any other country in the world, by far.

2. The United States ranks 37th in the world in overall health system quality. (Just ahead of Slovenia and just behind Costa Rica.)

3. The top seven for-profit health insurance companies made combined profits of $12.6 billion in 2007.

4. 46 million Americans have no health insurance.

5. Americans die because they don't have health insurance.

5 Ways to Fight Harder For Employee Free Choice

Last week, moderate Republican Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) announced that he would reverse his position of the last six years and oppose the Employee Free Choice Act. Specter said he will even support a Republican filibuster to prevent the Senate from voting on the bill. 

Why is it even news that a Republican Senator opposes making it easier for workers to form unions? Because Specter was actually a co-sponsor of Employee Free Choice in 2003 and 2005 and the only Republican Senator to vote for cloture on the bill in 2007.

Specter's "flip flop" means Labor is still looking for one Republican to join with the 59 Democrats to prevent a filibuster this time around. (Specter was thought to be the most likely Republican defector.) Media outlets portrayed Specter's new position as the nail in the coffin of the Employee Free Choice Act. The Hill called it a "death blow" to labor's biggest legislative priority.

Oh well! Let's just forget Democrats' large majorities in both houses of Congress, our popular Democratic president, and the solid public support for Employee Free Choice. Mr. Specter doesn't like it so we better just take our toys and go home.

Hold on a second. The progressive coalition has barely even begun to fight for the EFCA. And that's our problem. The moderate Republicans that we need to persuade have not felt any real heat yet.

Here are a five things the Left should do to crank up the heat moving forward:

1. Demand leadership from President Obama. In the Senate, Obama was a co-sponsor of the EFCA. It's time for him to step up and do all he can as President to get it through Congress. He should start with a press conference or another Internet town hall meeting to discuss the legislation and dispel some of the common misinformation about EFCA. Next, he should begin a series of campaign-style rallies around the country to drive home his point and take control of the media coverage on the issue--similar to what he did pushing for the economic recovery package in February. He should, once again, wrap himself in the mandate from his election to push through a legislative priority. He should travel to Tar Heel, North Carolina, where workers finally won union representation (and wage and benefit increases) at the Smithfield Foods pork processing plant after a 15-year battle with the company. Bringing Smithfield workers on the stage with him, Obama should say that the Smithfield case demonstrates the EFCA, making it easier for workers to exercise their rights to form unions. He should highlight similar stories in several places around the country.

2. Increase Labor's on-the-ground efforts and target them in a few key states. We're talking knocking on doors, local TV and radio ads, rallies, letters to editors--all that stuff. Aim for moderate Republicans and particularly vulnerable Republicans. Here are four states to think about, each with varying prospects. (Feel free add to this list in comments.)

• Pennsylvania - Arlen Specter could at least be persuaded to vote for cloture. The guy is in a pickle. He is being challenged by a big business Republican in his upcoming primary, pulling Specter further to the right. And he just pissed of the Labor Left in a blue, union-heavy state. Specter is caught between a rock and a hard place. If it starts looking like he'll win the primary, he might want to start walking back his EFCA opposition to make things easier for him in November 2010.
• Maine - Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe are the Republican Senators here. The state doesn't have super union membership, but it's reliably blue and in the northeast, making it a fair prospect if Obama casts EFCA as an Obama vs. Limbaugh issue. The Maine ladies can keep winning as Republicans, but not if they are seen as thwarting Obama's agenda.
• North Carolina - In this new blue state, Republican Senator Richard Burr is looking weak for 2010. He is already trailing the leading Democrat in polling for that race. Burr might be persuaded to shake things up and cast himself as a different kind of Republican. It's hard to imagine him ever supporting Employee Free Choice outright, but he could possibly "oppose it" while voting for cloture (and thereby ensuring its passage). A big Obama rally in Tar Heel with the Smithfield workers would help.
• New Hampshire - Republican Senator Judd Gregg awkwardly rejected President Obama before. Let's see if he'll do it again on the EFCA. Again, blue state, northeast--even if it is kinda conservative compared to the rest of the region. Also, it's a small enough state that a massive ground campaign could make a big difference. 

3. Throw in some carrots with these sticks. Unions should consider floating a bargain to moderate Republicans:"Support the EFCA and, if it passes, we will not target you in your next election." They did this to some extent with Specter, but it might be tried with others.

4. Play tough with conservative Democrats. It's pretty much expected that every Democratic Senator will support the Employee Free Choice Act, but a few of them are sounding wobbly. (No, not that kind of wobbly.) The Senate Democratic leadership should whip these few into line in the normal ways. But in addition, unions should offer this warning to conservative Dems: 

"If you waver on Employee Free Choice, we will support a progressive Democrat to challenge you in the primary and/or support a third-party progressive candidate in the general election."

5. If all else fails and Republicans are going to filibuster, then let them filibuster... and filibuster and filibuster. Let the public see that 41 Republicans are willing to clog up the work of the Senate indefinitely in order to make it harder for workers to organize. If the filibuster is their only trick for the next 8 years, then let's wear it out in the first. Let the public watch Senator Cornyn read from the phonebook on the Senate floor, and let news anchors compare it to Strom Thurmond's longest-ever filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

I would like to see each of these five things before we start talking about a death blow to the EFCA. And even then, a "death blow" would only mean delaying it until 2011, when there will most likely be a filibuster-proof Democratic majority in the Senate.

Nine Accomplishments in Nine Days

President Obama's first nine days in office have been like the end of Lord of the Flies, when the naval officer steps onto the island and the rules of civilization suddenly return to the barbaric children. I don't mean that Obama is a messiah figure (and neither is the naval officer). I mean that normal, reasonable behavior from our president reveals how savage things had really become. 

Oh yeah, I remember civilization. It was nice!

What a relief watching Obama step in and quickly turn a number of things around. I know that the president's first acts are calculated for maximum perception management and that a lot of things are mostly symbolic, but these messages and symbols are good ones. They can be part of a change of perception about what is possible for us as a people, part of a long-term, general turnaround for our country. 

But it's not all metaphor and symbol. Mr. Obama is just finishing his 9th full day as president, and he already has 9 concrete accomplishments that we can be proud of. 

1. Obama makes CIA stop torturing people. On January 22nd, the president signed an executive order requiring that military and paramilitary organizations (read: CIA) abide by the Army Field Manual's rules for interrogations. The Army Field Manual says no waterboarding, no inflicting physical pain, no starving or dehydrating, no electric shocks, no nudity stunts or dark sexual things. Dick Cheney and his neocon friends are probably very sad about this. The order also lists "ensuring compliance with the treaty obligations of the United States, including the Geneva Conventions" as one of its main purposes. Abiding by international human rights treaties? We're kickin' it old school!

2. Obama shuts down CIA's secret prisons. Also on January 22nd, a new executive order mandated the closing of CIA's worldwide network of secret detention and interrogation/torture centers. The point of having secret prisons, in secret locations, holding secret detainees was so that torture and other crimes would stay secret. Another point was to try to stay beyond the reach of the law. I guess one of the underlying assumptions of Neocon theory was that waterboarding someone in Egypt or Romania is more just than doing it in New York or Nebraska. Well, no matter. An adult's on the island and civilization has returned, so cut that crap out.

3. Obama orders the closing of the infamous Guantanamo Bay prison, aka "Gitmo," aka "American gulag." The president's executive order requires that the prison be closed within a year. Now a review process has to determine where the detainees can be transfered and where they can be tried in court. It might actually take a year, because apparently the Bush Administration did not keep files on many of the prisoners. Hmm, it's almost like justice was never even the point. 

4. Obama brings back the Freedom of Information Act. Few things are as damning of the Bush Administration as its addiction to secrecy. The Bushies sent the message loud and clear to federal agencies that FOIA requests could be ignored or dismissed if the agency in question could think of any "sound legal basis." The Bush philosophy with FOIA was secrecy first, and when in doubt, err on the side of secrecy. Obama's order establishes the opposite philosophy: "The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails," and "the presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA." In other words, openness and transparency first, and when in doubt, err on the side of openness and transparency. 

5. Obama allows states to set stricter limits on greenhouse gas emissions. The Bush administration had blocked efforts by California and other states to set their own, stricter emission standards. Obama's order directs the Environmental Protection Agency to review that policy. (It'll be nice to see professionals at EPA able to do their jobs again.) You could sum up this new, radical philosophy as: When in doubt, err on the side of the will of the people and the good of the planet rather than on the side of the auto companies' short-term profits.

6. Obama moves the nation toward better fuel efficiency.  In another environmental executive order, Obama directed the Department of Transportation to set rules for implementing a 2007 gas mileage law that the Bush administration ignored. The new rules would cover 2011-model cars. Doesn't it feel strange seeing government encouraging progress rather than prohibiting it?

7. Obama creates the strictest lobbying rules ever. The new rules include a ban on administration officials accepting gifts from lobbyists. They also say that lobbyists taking jobs with the executive branch can't shape policy affecting their former employers or clients for a period of two years and can't take a job in an agency that they lobbied within the last two years. And officials leaving the administration can't lobby the executive branch for two years. These rules, had they miraculously gone into effect in early 2001, would have barred most of Bush's high-level appointments to regulatory agencies from ever happening. 

8. Obama begins crafting withdrawal from Iraq. He was never going to make a bold proclamation on Iraq his first week in office. Instead, he made a high-profile visit to the Pentagon to meet with military leaders, as part of a review of how to wind down the war. All indications are that he is sticking to his campaign pledge of all combat troops out of Iraq in 16 months. We'll see. The same people who got us into the war are going to be trying to keep us there. The same people who told us that if we didn't support the war, then we didn't support the troops are going to tell us that ending the war is losing the war.

9. Obama signs the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law. This law closes a loophole opened in 2007 by the Supreme Court which drastically weakened workers' rights under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Ledbetter law means companies that engage in pay discrimination against an employee on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin are no longer off the hook if they manage to keep the initial act of discrimination secret from the employee for 180 days. Yep, it was that stupid. Now it's fixed. Now an employee can bring suit within 180 days of any act of unlawful discrimination. In other words, Democrats had to overcome Republicans to pass a law saying that every crime is a crime, not just the first one.   

Oh yeah, law! Civilization! We remember these things. As we enter into them, the island of savage children that was the Bush Era is going to look more and more barbaric in comparison. In some things, we can snap back to the reasonable world quickly. But it took an adult to step down onto the island and announce:

"The time has come to set aside childish things."

7 Things I Learned at the Inauguration

1. Logistically, this event was a few islands of order in a sea of chaos. As my wife and I walked from southeast Capitol Hill toward the Mall, there were inauguration volunteers everywhere, in their red beanies, directing people to the appropriate gates for entering the Mall. I thought, wow, if they are this organized 10 blocks from the Capitol, we're in good shape. Our tickets directed us to the "Silver Gate," at Independence Avenue and 3rd Street S.W., where we found that the line already stretched a very long way back. We spent at least a half hour (maybe more) following a river of people, trying to find the end of our line, which snaked around many (I lost count) city blocks in southwest DC. When we finally reached the end, we were amazed at how quickly the line continued to grow behind us. But in the direction that counted, the line was painfully slow moving and was sometimes hard to discern at all from the general crowd. In one spot, the line came close to an insanely long line of people trying to get into Starbucks, which caused a period of confusion for everybody.

Based on the time and the look of the line, we pretty much accepted that despite our tickets, we would not be seeing any inaugural ceremonies. Not even close, at that pace. But in a weird way, I appreciated the sheer magnitude of the scene and was impressed at how ordered and generally cheerful everyone was. I thought, "If we're not going to see any of the ceremonies, at least it's because so many millions of people are down here trying to do the same thing, and there simply isn't space."

This is when things took a turn in the Lord-of-the-Flies direction. The line had grown so rapidly that the end had meandered around a few blocks and crossed back through the middle. Our line made a loop. You can imagine the confusion. People in were yelling back and forth, "We're in the Silver line," only to be answered, "No, this is the Silver line!"

In all of this mayhem, a couple of red-beanied volunteers showed up and just started shouting, "3rd and Independence! You wanna go to 3rd and Independence!" 

I thought, "Yeah, duh, that's where our gate is. That's why we're standing in line."

But everyone around me took it to mean that we should abandon the line and make a dash straight for the gate. My wife and I watched the line dissolve around us, while further up we could see thousands of people who had not heard the yelling and were still waiting faithfully in line. We joined the defectors, and I felt a smidgen of guilt. I am certain that the people who stayed in that line never got on to the Mall.

The mob ruled. The dash was on. We followed the flow of the crowd, unsure if we were doing the right thing or if the beany people had just been confused. I was sure of one thing: We were definitely going to see the ceremony now. This enormous, determined rush of desperate people would not be turned back by barricades and cops. Too many people would be too pissed to turn around. This was the only time all day when I thought the giant crowd had the possibility to turn into something dangerous. 

We reached the gate, which was surprisingly wide and quick-moving. We breezed through. The guard seemed disgusted that I wanted to show him my ticket. Was the whole ticketed, color-coded sections thing a sham? 

When we got on the Mall, between the Washington Monument and the Capitol, there was still plenty of open space available. We had a great spot, with a good view of the Capitol and a jumbo-screen. 

It's sad to think of the many thousands of people who had traveled a long way for the inauguration, who had tickets, who had shown up several hours early, followed all directions, AND DID NOT GET IN. (Here's one account from just such a person. It sounds like he's describing a bad dream.) I don't know what exactly the problem was. But that long, narrow, meandering line was not necessary for such a wide gate. 

2. The crowd loved progressive Democrats. As we watched the dignitaries being seated on the stage, the crowd cheered or booed nearly everyone the camera showed. In my area, John McCain received polite applause. Fake Democrat Joe Lieberman got the worst boos, besides of course the taunting given to Bush and Cheney. Outside of the Obamas, Bidens, and Clintons, Ted Kennedy got the biggest cheers. Progressive Democrat Rep. Henry Waxman also got a lot of love.  

3. People were quiet and respectful--you might even say prayerful--during Rick Warren's prayer. Whatever controversy there might have been in Obama picking this mainstream Protestant Christian to deliver the invocation, there was no sign of it from where I stood.

4. Before the official ceremony began, the eerily beautiful sounds of the choir echoing off the buildings, combined with giant flags hanging all around and the millions of people waiting expectantly, made the whole event feel strangely like the crowning of Aragorn at Minas Tirith, in Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.

5. The big toes on each foot were the coldest parts of my body. 

6. President Obama's speech was good but not mind-blowing. I didn't catch any "We have nothing to fear..." lines on the first pass. I know that's an unfair standard. I'll definitely have to re-read the speech at some point. I felt like he said great things and set the tone for his administration but didn't really pound anything home. I did love the historical perspective in which he couched things. But I was waiting for something that would be a little shocking in it's bluntness and as a hard break from the Bush Era. 

He did say, "We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." 

But he did not say:

"As your president, I promise you this: America will never again torture another single human being. Never again. I will do everything in my power as Commander-in-Chief to make sure of it. It is a tragedy and a disgrace that America is even debating torture in the 21st century. I will direct the Justice Department to review all of the previous administration's policies and actions on torture, and if warranted Justice will prosecute Bush Administration officials for war crimes." 

7. The sign I referred to in a previous post was a big hit. More on the sign in a follow-up post soon to come.

Bush Shopping for Stocking Stuffers

"Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat.

The President does favors for the big fat cats."

Well, Christmas is fast approaching (and so is the Obama Administration), so President Bush is out looking for some last-minute goodies for his BFFs. A little perusal of the tubes shows ten things on his shopping list: 

1. Making it easier for coal companies to dump rock and dirt from "mountaintop removal" mining into nearby streams and valleys.
2. Letting federal agencies and industry bypass consultation with scientists before building roads or dams in areas with endangered species.
3. Barring federal agencies from stopping a construction project because its emissions might contribute to global warming.
4. Peeling away federal safety limits on how many consecutive hours truckers can drive.
5. Making it easier for employers to deny employees family medical leave. 
6. Opening up nearly 2 million acres in the mountains of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming for the mining of oil shale and reducing the royalties the oil companies pay for the mining. 
7. Letting factory farms police themselves regarding wastewater runoff standards and air pollution from animal waste.
8. Making it harder for the government to regulate toxic substances and hazardous chemicals to which workers are exposed on the job.
9. Making the commercial fishing industry largely responsible for assessing the environmental impact of federal ocean management decisions.
10. Easing safeguards against lead-poisoning from industrial pollutants. 

Impressive list. I was thinking about asking for uranium mining in the neighborhood park. Or arsenic in my tap water.

So what do you want for Christmas?