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Seems that our "friends" on the right are having a problem with the defecit. "It's gone way too high," they say, "we are mortgaging our children's futures!"
Am I mistaken, or wasn't lesson #1 of Reaganomics "Defecits don't matter?"
I find myself having trouble with Republican and Democratic politicians who seem consumed by ensuring that health insurance companies do not have to compete competitively . . .
I'm writing to respond to yesterday's overall theme of calling our Congresscritters and letting them know about our support for the Public Option, if not Single Payer.
I live in Kansas. All of my Congressmen are Republicans. I called anyway.
When I got through, I asked the nice person on the other end of the phone if they knew whether or not that Congressman supported "Patient's Choice" in health care. Two said "yes", while the third, I guess I was stumbling over my words, which only served to confuse them. I then pointed out that, as a patient, MY choice would be the ability to buy into the Public Option, if not full-on Single Payer. And, of course, I stressed the need for the plan to be comprehensive, so I wouldn't have to "go fishing" for two or three other policies elsewhere just to cover everything.
There were no arguments or confrontations, and in every instance, they took my comments down, and I should hope, will pass them on.
And that's it. They're pushing the notion of Patient's Choice, and I let'em know that MY choice is the Public Option, if not Single Payer.
Take care, y'all!
Wildcat
The problems with SSI, VA and other programs is that they are intentionally underfunded by Republicans. (Okay, that is simplistic but you get the idea). In Texas, for example, we have a pretty good program for those with mental retardation. The only problem is, there is a 10 year waiting list. Want Medicaid, well, if you need it for a nursing home, it is a 4 month wait. If you need it for Assisted Living, it is about 1.5 years. The list goes on. It is not the fault of the program, it is a fault of the funding.
Thom,
You have probably seen by now the video of Liz Cheney denying President Bush ever suggested bring Gitmo detainees to the U.S. for trial in the U.S. court system.
So I posted the video of him saying just that (June 21, 2006)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HTAiW-B4WQ
The Daily Show has ramped up its ridicule of the "Main Stream Media". They had a hilarious segment last night where Jon Stewart takes on Joe Scarborough for the third straight show, mocking his credibility. In the second segment Jason Jones takes a behind the scenes tour of the NY Times. It’s really biting stuff. I thought it worth mentioning since Scarborough was just on your show. I’m so sick of all the mindless conjecture. Our society really needs to bring back the news and eliminate infotainment all together.
Richard,
Can you please explain then why Air America and Thom have such a small audience and have to fight for ad support?
I suppose you would have to walk in Thom’s shoes to know life on his side of the tracks; my guess is that life is pretty damn good. I give Thom credit, however, for fighting for the common man, like Charles Foster Kane. When asked by his Wall Street patron why he was upsetting his own applecart, Kane replied that someone with money had to look out for people without money, because he didn’t want them to turn on him.
Thom has disturbed me again by suggesting that if wasn’t for the “old dinosaurs” in this country, there would be no racism. This after he talked about the rise of far-right political parties in Europe feeding on nationalistic and racist paranoia. Thom seems to be suggesting that the ADL and SPLC are lying in recent reports that show a dramatic increase in the number of hate groups in this country over the past eight years , even during times of alleged prosperity, in part riding the wave of anti-Latino sentiment. The recent killings in Pennsylvania and Long Island that occurred in an atmosphere of racial hate fueled by local officials and the media cannot be passed off as mere “coincidence.”
I’d hate to think that Thom and his listeners are fooled by the fact that since there are not currently widespread lynchings in this country that bigotry is waning in this country. It isn’t. Besides the ADL and SPLC exposes, a study last month reported that there are as many as 10,000 sites promoting race hate on the web with millions of hits daily; many of these sites target young people, and have infiltrated YouTube, Facebook and other popular websites. Why would anyone check-out hate sites if they did not want to read or hear something along the lines of their own thoughts?
The Tacoma News-Tribune printed the following “letter to the editor” from someone with a very Irish name who quoted the following Irish poem, reflecting his thoughts concerning the Sonia Sotomayor nomination:
“May those who love us love us.
And those who don’t love us,
May God turn their hearts
And if He doesn’t turn their hearts,
May he turn their ankles.
So we’ll know them by their limping.”
Is this guy “subtle” or what? Either he’s been listening to too much Limbaugh and Gingrich, or he’s just your typical low-level Irish bigot; yeah, I remember that photograph of a black lawyer being held by those Irish Bostonians while another was planting that flag pole in his belly.
Discrimination, of course, is the silent partner in all of this; a president, popular athletes and entertainers do not disguise the dark underbelly of real life. African-American unemployment has historically been twice that of their white counterparts, but as high as it is doesn’t tell the whole story: incarceration, homelessness, dropping out and “working” on the street places the jobless rate at least double that. Perhaps some people also recall the Texaco case, when executives denied they were discriminating against minorities until a manager taped a meeting where they discussed their efforts to cover it up. The whistleblower was later charged with illegal wiretapping.
Because of what Thom said, I began to wonder if he was going to try to marginalize Brian Tackett as someone who is “evidence” that hate groups are fighting a “losing” battle, rather than someone who realized that sitting in prison was no way to live one’s life. But the fight against hate goes on, largely because of attempts to marginalize the perpetrators and pretend they don’t exist. It was reported back in February that residents of a Nashville neighborhood received KKK leaflets inserted in their mail circulars, reminding them of the “ongoing” race war; these leaflets could only have been inserted by an employee or employees of the company that put together and distributed the circulars.
ejohn,
I beg to differ with you, Mr. Hartmann was factually correct and his analysis was dead on. It makes no difference that recessivists are labeling Republican Party politicians as failures and attempting to distance themselves from the Party. The Republican branding over the last 130 years has been sucessful in marrying them to the recessivist movement. They ARE your leaders and Mr. Limbaugh is their voice. In the end, 60 milion folk can bob them heads up and down to the drone of Mr. Limbaugh bloviating BUT there are 270 million other folk who realize that he is full of shit.
The best way to call Washington officials is with Goog-411. (800-466-4411) This is a free service from Google. After you call, a voice asks the name, city and state of the "business" ("Senator Bernie Sanders, Washington D.C."), then you'll be connected directly. The call is no more expensive than any 800 call you make... in other words, it's free!
This service is roughly like having the Yellow Pages in your phone, and is on my speed dial. A very nice thing to have if you're trying to find a business... or contribute your voice to democracy!
Prof. Harvey Kay of U. Wisconsin-Greenbay, author of "Thomas Paine and the Promise of America", brought up Paine's so-called progressiveness and his proposal to "tax the landed rich". Actually, a flat-rate tax on land is built-in progressive since the curve of location value from the sticks to downtown is so very steep. Thom Hartman could do this powerful reform for good a great service by discussing a bill in the Oregon legislature, HJR 47, to allow local governments to convert property taxes into a site-value tax. Progressives in BC (Canada) got a carbon tax passed by coupling it with a dividend. We could do that in Oregon, too.
I have been fighting for SSD for 8 years! And I've had legal help most of that time. One of the main problems I have run into is there has been no "label" for my condition and I have complications from that condition. Due to lack of proper health coverage I have not been able to see the proper specialist, like a diagnostition, to sort through all the symptoms and do the proper tests to find the right diagnosis. SSA seems to require a clear-cut diagnosis they can label in their decision. Also, the way they determine approval is unrealistic and doesn't take the individuals' real-life situations into consideration. They just say there are jobs one can do in the "national economy" without even considering whether there are employers in the local area that would even hire a person with multiple health issues or whether the person could even get to and from a job (not just transportation, but ability to get up and prepare for work everyday). I am totally disabled, unable to even function in everyday life, so I have to continue to fight in court, while my husband and I barely make it financially. I am sure I am not alone in this! They need to make getting approved easier and more efficient for people that really need and EARNED it!
Ya, about the caller that disageed..He is pissed because his wife can not get social security...The disability part of SS is for people who get disabled..like blind, wheel chair, cancer...etc...Im not down playing his wife's pain, but everyone can not just put in $200 a week for 20 years, then collect $1,600 a month for 40 years cause they have really bad back pain at the age of 47
i want to invite mr. boldan to speak about his fight for truth and justice. i a member of the sgi/usa a peace organization based on buddhist principles. we have a speaker series where we invite different people to speak i feel mr.boldan life and his strugle for justice is one that can inspirer others to fight and stand up for justice and truth. i will have to let our public affairs person know my intention on this to get the ok. the great thing is we have a center in chicago
Re; long waits to get into Social Security Disability
Isn't a major point of Single Payer that everyone is covered. You don't have to wait to get in because you're already in.
The experiences that Thom has related in several European countries demonstrates that. He and his family didn't enroll in the medical care or health insurance programs of those countries. But when they needed health care, they got it at no or extremely low cost.
Hi Thom Re: The guy who called to disagree with you about single payer whose wife was having problems getting Social Security Disability. I've had the theory that some people who have fallen through the cracks or are about to fall through the cracks by losing their jobs have figured out ways (ala lawyer etc) to get SSD thus leaving seriously ill people who cannot or will not hire a lawyer in desperation. Single payer will help all concerned!
This is in reference to your comment on KPOJ this morning. Newt is nuts Thom. Appears the Newt has selective Nationalistic choices. The Newt only picks certain aspects of Nationalism to discuss. However, the forum he doesn’t select is Our Trade Policy. I don’t hear him say anything about reforming NAFTA; CAFTA or WTO. If anywhere we want to be Nationalistic is changing our trade policies and reinstating tariffs. The Right doesn’t want to come anywhere near tariffs in order to appease the International Corporations.
We don't want to be seen as protectionists. How sad.
Thom,
On the health care debate, I really believe that many people do not realize that we already have a single payer system here in the US for people over 65 and it's called Medicare. Thus, I think that when you receive calls from people like that caller who was against single payer because of his negative experience trying to obtain Social Security disability benefits, a good response would be: "you're going to have government provided health insurance when you turn 65, so why are you so afraid to have it now? "
Legislators on My Cell Phone
Thom I keep my state and federal legislators' telephone numbers on my cell phone. That way when I hear something or read something calling for action I just flip open my cell phone and call to leave a comment. The other day I was stuck for a couple of hours at the Secretary of State's office, so I spent my time calling my senators and representative advocating for single-payer health insurance. This is a great way to do something in a timely way.
By the way, I often follow up my phone calls with letters.
The point made by the caller about waiting for Long Term Disability being like what government health care is off the mark. Wait to be approved for SSDI lately has turned into a nightmare. I applied for SDI in 1996 and I was approved in 6 weeks. Recently A family member applied with more advanced disease, in facte several diabling diseases. It took her over 6 months, more like 1 years to be approved and she desperately deserved and needed it. Seems like things changed around 2001, hhhhmmmmmm. A coincidence? Or is it a scheme to make it possible for more lawyers to get in the picture with assitance that entitles them to get their hands in the pockets of deserving disabled people before they can get their needed benefit? SSDI approval has nothing to do with how Medicare/Medicade are run. I would much rather be on Medicare then private insurance right now. We just need to increase payouts to providers.
Did the caller Joe say that when he calls some elected official(s) they act like he's speaking Esperanza? I think he meant Esperanto. Esperanto is language that is named after Dr. Esperanto, which is the pseudonym for its inventor a Polish doctor named Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof. (Aren't you glad it wasn't named after his real name!)
Esperanto invented in the late 1880s with the "hope" that it could become the second language of everyone in the world. It was designed to have simple and consistent grammatical rules (as opposed to a language like English). There were several languages that were invented with that hope in mind, but Esperanto was the most popular by far.
At the height of it's popularity, in the early 1900s, there were about 3 million Esperanto speakers worldwide. They would have large conventions and many books like the Bible and Shakespeare were translated into Esperanto. I'm not sure, but the second most popular artificial (as opposed to organic) language might be Klingon.
Both Esperanza and Esperanto come from the same Latin root (which I don't remember) word for "hope". Esperanza is the Spanish word for "hope" and is also a female name. Esperanto means "one who hopes", though probably only in Esperanto.
Today, English has pretty much become the de facto universal language on this planet.
we are living in pottersville. we need to get back to bedford falls
(its a wonderful life reference)
Richard Adlof,
Try this:
http://www.actblue.com/entity/fundraisers/12839
Act Blue - The online clearinhouse for Democratic action: Joe Sestack, Jr.
did cheney have anything to do with the anthrax?
Phone lines busy? Faxing our reps is a great option. Dianne Feinstein's office told me to fax here: 415 393-0710 and then try calling to confirm 415 393-0707.
Boxer's fax is 202 228-3865 (there is no local fax).
Letters have to go thu Homeland security and can be weeks late, so- fac and confirm! gets you a double hit!
THX for your community organizing, Thom!