Show live from Bill Press's studio, Washington, D.C. Thanks to all the people there. Tomorrow the show will be from the UN, and Friday from the TALKERS Convention.
Quote: "A truly American sentiment recognizes the dignity of labor and the fact that honor lies in honest toil". Grover Cleveland.
A statue of Ronald Reagan is being unveiled today, the idea of Congressman Ken Calvert. Nancy Reagan is lunching with Michelle Obama.
Article: Ronald Reagan: Worst President Ever? by Robert Parry.
President Obama is in Saudi Arabia.
Max Baucus sent staffers on a listening tour of Montana, and they got an earful from his own constituents about ignoring single payer or a public option. He will meet some single payer advocate. John Conyers bill HR676. PDA are outspoken on this topic.
The real danger, call your representatives, tell them to say no to the trigger. Some Democrats came up with the idea of a trigger. Thom was on David Sirota's show in Denver this morning, he understood that the Obama administration had signed off on it. The trigger would allow the private for-profit health insurance companies to provide health care to all Americans, it would shovel as much public money to them as possible, or force people to buy insurance from them like in Massachusetts. And if health care rates don't go up more than a certain percentage, which has not yet been decided, and they don't refuse to cover everybody, and meet any other criteria, then no trigger happens and there will be no possibility of a buy-in to a public plan. They will be helping to craft this plan, it will be the health care industry's idea.
If they fail to meet the criteria the trigger is pulled and they will be threatened with a public option. They want to limit it to 7 years, so that if they behave for that long the public option threat will be dropped. This is a clear and obvious demonstration of the absolute insanity that is going on in Washington DC. We need to take back the Democratic Party. Medicare part D, the drug option with the donut hole, masterminded by Billy Townsend, a plan to bankrupt Medicare. The Democrats should have changed it by now. AARP and United Health are selling insurance for the donut, so are lobbying for it.
Bumper Music: Place Out On The Ocean, Jamey Johnson (video).
Article: Obama, Senate Dems Consider Public Health Care Option With A Trigger.
"Senator Chuck Schumer has insisted that, if anything, "reasonable criteria for triggering a public plan has already been met." "
Thank Senator Chuck Schumer. Call Harry Reid, your two senators, we want single payer or at least public option. Thom discussed with John Edwards how to get there 3 years ago on the show, backdoor, not-for-profit, publicly owned. Education has public options. Education is a right. A friend makes a living suing the education system for failing kids, keeps them honest. Other countries do it. They forbid insurance for basic health care. Switzerland is an exception, has to be not-for-profit.
Bumper Music: City Of Blinding Lights, U2 (video).
Article: Manuel Miranda: Latinos are ‘not like African-Americans. We think just like everybody else.’ .
"Manuel Miranda, who was busted for hacking into the files of Senate Democrats while he served as an aide to former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), is leading the conservative charge against Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court. ...
"Hispanic polls, Hispanic surveys, indicate that Hispanics think just like everyone else. We’re not like African-Americans. We think just like everybody else. When I was on the leader’s staff, someone called me once and asked me: ‘What’s Senator Frist’s Hispanic agenda?’ I said, ‘low taxes, better education, more jobs … what are you talking about?’ And that’s how Hispanics are. This is an opportunity to educate them on all of our issues and they will resonate in the way that they resonate with everyone else".
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Should the government have let GM go bankrupt a couple of years ago?
People on Medicare, may need to have supplemental insurance, and part D, so pay a lot, not single payer. It has been hacked to death. Thom thinks that if everyone was on Medicare, or could be, the constituency would be so large that the politicians would have to pay attention. We've got to become activists, PDA are doing great trainings.
Jeff in Denver, an activist whose story is told in the last chapter of "Screwed", said we need to become the office holders ourselves. You have about 18 months to the next election. Listeners could be come candidates and replace a lot of the incumbents, or become a legislative aide. Every Congress person is going to be running again. That's what the conservatives did in the Republican Party 30 years ago, organized from the bottom up, largely using churches. Progressive churches are generally smaller than conservative megachurches. There is a call for the non-profit status of Liberty University as they will not sanction an official Democratic club on campus. You can run for a position in your local Democratic Party. If you are unemployed, try for county clerk. Do it now. Build up your campaign now.
Another caller got involved, also got a job building their web site, gave the chair a copy of "Cracking The Code: How to Win Hearts, Change Minds, & Restore America’s Original Vision" and called Schumer about the health care trigger. Right Wing talk shows will get people slamming the phones with calls for it.
Bumper Music: Listen up!, The Gossip (video).
Bumper Music: Crazy, Gnarls Barkley.
Article: Car loses all four wheels on highway.
European limit on private healthcare, not just Europe. A for-profit could undercut for a while to gain market share. Dodge v. Ford Motor Co..
Max Baucus took funds from health care, so conflict of interest? Nelson, too.
How many small businesses could be created if people were not afraid of losing health care? It would be huge. Nowadays businesses are started by people young and healthy who risk having no health care.
No negotiation, copy the best foreign system, they are going to make it like car insurance. Senator Kennedy is meeting Max Baucus today.
Articles: Ricardo's "On labor" 1814, "On profits" 1816.
Guest: Dan Gainor, the T. Boone Pickens Fellow and the Vice President of the Business & Media Institute. You guys on the right, why worry? Obama sided with Saudi Arabia in a suit by families of 9/11, secrecy law, Republican John McHugh was nominated Secretary for the Army - his voting record. Their article about immigration, big corporations encouraging Democrats and Republicans to do what Reagan did and declare amnesty. Thom would like it if he was as bad as they feared. Corporations are not always right, they try to game the system they are given. Immigrants leaving, the US may have negative immigration now. If you don't hire people they leave. Thom disagrees with the right's positions, but also with the left when they say let everyone in. The old-fashioned progressive view, Ricardo's "On Labor", the iron law of wages. Wages will always fall to a subsistence level when demand does not exceed supply. Security. Border fence. A TV program last night predicted massive immigration because of climate change.
Bumper Music: For What It's Worth, Buffalo Springfield (video).
"Workers’ fear of losing their jobs restrains them from seeking the pay raises that usually crop up when employers have trouble finding people to hire.
Even if the economy didn’t slow down as he expected, he told a Fed colleague last summer, he saw little danger of a sudden upturn in wages and prices.
"Because workers are more worried about their own job security and their marketability if forced to change jobs, they are apparently accepting smaller increases in their compensation at any given level of labor-market tightness,” Mr. Greenspan told Congress at the time".
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In Setting Fed's Policy, Chairman Bets Heavily on His Own Judgment, Jan. 27, 1997, on Alan Greenspan.
In 1986 Reagan declared amnesty. They used to come just for the picking season. The Bracero Program. 90% of the solution is to enforce the laws saying workers have to be citizens. Decrease the labor force, drive up wages. The 40 hour work week was to increase wages, not for humanitarian reasons. Ricardo "On Labor", "On Profits". Thom does not agree with him on a lot of things. Nike shoes did not get cheaper when they outsourced manufacture to reduce costs. Greenspan quote in "Screwed" talking of a certain minimum necessary level of worker insecurity.
Bumper Music: Good as Gone, Little Big Town (video).
Bumper Music: You can leave your hat on, Randy Newman.
Article: Man sues strip club.
It's all about the money, wedge issues are ways to get people into their tent so they can control the money. We have created a nation of indentured servants - health care, student costs. Land of the wage slaves, health insurance slaves, frightened. Trade deficit. Corporations want cheap labor - illegal immigrants, factories abroad.
Rick Santelli's tea parties. Boycotts rarely work.
Children don't remember, know how it was possible to raise a family on a high school diploma in the past.
Book: "The Conscience of a Liberal", Paul Krugman.
Cheap workers that don;t vote. The U.S. is an escape valve for Mexico, whereas countries further south are getting more progressive.
Bumper Music: You're the Voice, Heart (video).
Bumper Music: Simply The Best, Tina Turner (video).
In Montana on Friday 6 cities are having rallies for national single payer health insurance programs.
Article: Single-payer health care supporters rally Friday.
GM is an analogy for America, it will continue as a shadow of its former self. A caller had finally had enough after working hard as a Democrat, if they don't pass the Employee Free Choice Act and don't get single payer or similar. Despair is not an option, that is what they want. Take negative emotions and turn them into action. Thanks for what Thom does.
Article: Cheney personally oversaw ’secret’ congressional briefings on torture: report.
Article: Christie wins GOP primary for NJ governor. He's a moderate and was running against a hard core right winger, winning with 55% of the vote.
They are now calling Sotomayor an anti-gun radical.
Article: Conservative Judges Echo Sotomayor in Gun Ruling By Robert Barnes.
"Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has been called an "anti-gun radical" by some gun rights activists for joining an opinion this year that said the Second Amendment does not prevent state and local governments from restricting arms ownership.
But yesterday a panel of conservative luminaries on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit reached the same decision. The unanimous ruling rejecting a challenge to Chicago's tough handgun law could complicate efforts to portray Sotomayor as a judicial activist trying to undermine the Supreme Court's landmark decision last year holding that the amendment protects the right to own a gun for self-defense.
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Article: Bush v. Gore lawyers take on gay marriage ban. Ted Olson and David Boies.
Guest: Melissa Etheridge. Singer, songwriter, progressive activist. California's prop 8. The most effective strategies, what should people be doing it. Gay marriage. Know it in your heart and speak freely about it. Tell those who are still telling lies, are afraid, that it is great, more states are doing it and no straight marriages are falling apart. Marriage equality makes us all better. Constitutional, political, scientific, spiritual dimension. The right has approached it on all dimensions. The left discusses civil rights, legal dimensions but not spiritual consequence of having state sanctioned discrimination. Law about love. They are putting another ballot measure on. A case trying to get before the Supreme Court, lawyers from Bush v. Gore. They are going to be organized.
Health care trigger. When Hillarycare failed, the Clintons walked away as the insurance companies said if you leave us alone we will do what needs to be done to reduce costs, so they have had their chance already. A trigger is useless without the rest of gun. Thom thinks the people for it are taking money.
Bumper Music: Don't Do Me Like That, Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers (video).
Guest: Lt. Dan Choi. Infantry, platoon leader. He took an oath. Honesty, truth and courage are not only army values but American values. Don't Ask Don't Tell is to lie, which is against the code. He got sick of lying. He transferred to the National Guard. Soldiers have a hard enough time as it is. His unit knows and does not care. The form letter said his unit had been adversely affected. Knights Out is West Point graduates, advocacy group, warriors for honesty. More than 20 countries let gays serve, all NATO except Turkey have it. Obama could suspend Don't Ask Don't Tell, or Congress repeal it. Why don't they? Is there a movement, legislation? HR.1283 says to stop firing soldiers, and we are at war, breaking up teams which are families.
Bumper Music: Democracy is coming to the USA, Leonard Cohen.
Guest: George Allen, American Energy Freedom Center. "Tell people the truthful story". Partner to a group funded by Exxon Mobil.
Cheney's saying he was for gay marriage was ignored. People are waking up faster than for previous civil rights issues.
Melissa talked in feelings, not talking points. 60-70% are visually oriented, the rest mostly auditory or kinesthetic. Choi reached out to visual people.
