Boston

On Halter the bottom line was easy to find.  He was opportunistic and ambitious, but no one felt there was any way that he was going to take a risk of rolling snake eyes in a primary and losing to Lincoln, and the odds for him to win would be huge.  He had dipped his foot into the Governor’s race when he first returned after a 20-year absence from the state, and within weeks was running for the relative safe haven of the lieutenant governor’s slot, which is a statewide post but with a light footprint.    He had a lot more dues to pay and the end of Governor Beebe’s time in 2014 was likely his best shot.

Furthermore the push for Halter to run would be to the left of Lincoln at least by a little, and all of the people I visited believed that Lincoln would end up voting for health care reform at the end of the day to give a vote to try and hold African-American and working votes against likely tough challenges from the right in the Republican list.  One of the most interesting points made by one of my friends was the belief that Lincoln’s elevation to the being Chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, a huge plum that partially fell into her hands with Senator Ted Kennedy’s death and the shake out of various lions of the Senate for new jobs, would not have come so quickly in September without a clear understanding from Senate leadership, meaning Majority Leader Reid, without a direct commitment for her vote on health care reform.  Simply put, as a Committee chair she’s going to need Reid, and need him a lot in the future, and in the classic expression of former Speaker Sam Rayburn, “you have to go along to get along” in Congress.

This will be as much as she gives between now and her re-election effort most observers feel, which spells tough luck for labor law reform though since Lincoln is known as the Senator from Tyson, there’s still a chance that Archie Schaffer and other Tyson hands who have been vocal advocates of more cheap, immigrant labor in Arkansas might be able to get a little something, something from her on this post-re-election.

My sources weren’t betting people, but push-come-to-shove, they felt Lincoln was a vote for the health package, even though that’s as far as she’s likely to go.

Washington

A promise to Senator Baucus around revenue has led to a taxing problem on so-called “Cadillac” benefits, but voices from Rich Trumka at the AFL-CIO and many others are point out that the tax would go to fairly thin programs including a lot of plans that are part of collective bargaining agreements.

There now seems a cadre of folks in the House and a smaller number in the Senate who are trying to hijack the bill based on stripping out abortion and taking a promise from the President as part of the license to do so.  Are we now throwing women under the bus as well?

The Times reported that some states, led by Arizona, are trying to act unilaterally to say that the state could “veto” an “individual mandate” that might come with a federal package.

The tactics seem to be overwhelming the strategy.  This is not a debate but a dog pile it seems.  Where’s the adult supervision?

Postscript!

My “friends” on the right seem to be using me as a source for an attack at yet another new target:  Patrick Gaspard, political director at the White House.

I have huge admiration for Patrick and have enjoyed my dealings with him over the years.  In almost 1400 blogs I’ve done, sometimes I don’t get it right, call it a senior moment or whatever it might be, but reading the blogsphere with me as a source took me back searching for whether or not I could be causing a problem here inadvertently.  Patrick was never on the staff of ACORN.  I double checked with people I still know there, and it appears that I dropped a stitch there.  Hopefully my misstatement won’t lead to the White House throwing him in front of the bus in this rush to neo-McCarthyism that has become so prominent. In this case, my memory tricked me.  I’m glad to carry the weight and simply say I made a mistake, and damned if I’m not sorry and hope no damage is done to a good man doing a hard job.

Let me quickly add, since I read Google alerts and have noticed that there is a attack squad at all manner of friends and associates I have had over the years, that for the formal record, I have NO friends.  If there’s a problem with me, then bring it on, but for the rest of you, if you see me on the street, just nod and pass on by, if you are worried about it.  Until we learn to all stand together and oppose this kind of blood sport political targeting, it’s going to be like this for a while.  I’m just not sure how long it will take.

Pittsburgh

All of this made me wonder about the comments in the papers that are putting real leverage around the healthcare debate in the hands of people like Senator Mary Landrieu from Louisiana where I vote.  Reportedly, Landrieu is buckling at the public option, and just as driving around Pittsburgh again made me wonder what was happening to the base, such a position in Louisiana is also a head scratcher given how many of the state’s citizens are working, but lower income, and have no insurance.

These perplexing “individual mandates” that might make lower income workers have to come up with a couple of grand per year as a penalty for not being insured would be a slap in the face to legions of voters especially in the cities of New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Shreveport, and Lake Charles who have been the margin of victory for Landrieu for years.  Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania is a “new” Democrat in the sense that he has come into the party recently to hand on to his seat, but I wonder if he hasn’t traveled the same roads through the neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, because the contrast with Landrieu is stark.  He’s saying he’s going to hold out for a “public option” to protect the poorest workers, and talking about reducing the mandate charges down to as low as 3% of income on the test.

Did I say this was all complicated?  Absolutely!  And, the more complicated, the more difficult it will be to make the deal.

But, the fine senators in every state need to take a look at their base and step up and represent finally!  The negotiations in the Senate may make great drama, but I bet the accountability back home is going to be real if the base is ignored.

Niagara Falls

Shribman did a good job actually.  I hope he is as clear spoken in Pittsburgh as he is in Toronto.  He nailed the issue on the head as not really being about health care at all, and it is easy to forget that right-left and middle all to agree that the system is not a system and is badly broken.  He zeroed in on the fact that the firecrackers and the fight are all about power.  Power and pent up anger at war, bailouts, and Bush.

The conservatives are unhappy that they are losing power and are desperately fighting back.

He quotes a Professor Sandel of Harvard in this way:  “This is the standard debate about the role of government in ensuring fundamental rights and equal opportunities for all citizens, but it is also a frustration with government that goes beyond the debate about markets and gets to a sense of powerlessness.  People sense that the forces that govern their lives are beyond their control, and I think this sentiment – a persistent theme in American politics – is not ‘right’ or ‘left.”  It was reinforced in recent times by the financial crisis and the bailout and the sense of outrage about the help given to the wealthiest institutions and the wealthiest Americans.”

Real wisdom and insight as Canada looks at the USA from a higher plane and a good safe distance.

I’m taking a deep breath as I come back to America after a week with my Canadian friends.

Baltimore

Governor Deval Patrick said that this program would cost the state about $40 million, so they have still saved $25 million on this mess.  I’m not sure how much of that savings has to do with the fact that for many of these families they will not be restored to this level of healthcare, even though less than they had before, until December.  Originally, the report had indicated that 35,000 legal immigrants were being denied coverage.  This announcement says 31,000 will be covered.  I also have no idea what will happen to the 4000 families not mentioned, but maybe this is what they call a “rounding error” in Massachusetts now.  To get a savings at the level of $25 million means that for these Massachusetts residents there will be no hospice care, no skilled nursing care, and a huge increase in co-pays for everything imaginable.  But, I guess the view in the Bay State is that this is better than nothing, and indeed who can argue with that, especially poor families who seem to still be caught in the nothing bind.

As a footnote to the national debate, clearly the hiatus in coverage and the cutback in benefits comes “thanks” to a deal Governor Patrick was able to make with a no-name, unknown Missouri health insurance company.  If ever there were a case for the “public option,” as it’s called now, this might be it.

Being a Citizen Wealth guy, I’m still stuck though on the other part of this budgeting fiasco, and this is the push out of the poor from automatic enrollment.  What are we doing about that Governor Patrick?  Where’s the care and compassion for the least of our citizens in the great state of Massachusetts?  Where are their voices and who will help their feet hit the pavement in protest?  The silence is disheartening to me, but their lives have equal value and need equal effort in finding a solution, be it temporary or permanent.

Dauphin Island As vacation is slowly going out like the tide on this barrier island, dispatches from home included the mail and the Times-Picayune.  Flipping through them while watching Clive Owen and Naomi Watt in The International with the tribe, I was pleased to recognize two pictures on Friday’s Metro page of the paper with the headline:  “Cao is ‘leaning’ toward Democrats’ health plan.” Heaven help the newly minted Republican congressman from New Orleans if he is not going to stand for health care for our desperate city and its beleaguered cities.

The pictures held the drama of the event and showed good tactics rather than the strong arm stuff that has been grabbing the news.

Sally Stevens (who the newspaper in the picture caption identified “as a woman who identified herself as Sally Stevens” –huh?) is a “Facebook friend” of mine.  She often comments on various postings on my wall and has become a good barometer on a number of issues.  She works for CulturePAC.com in the city and is a campaigner for fair and equitable economic development in New Orleans.  At the town hall she seems to have gone up to Congressman Cao and dropped a load of medical bills addressed to her and demanded that Cao pay them for her, if he wasn’t going to stand for doing what needed to be done.  She then left the hall.  One thing for sure, they will send her bills every month without fail so she didn’t lose anything here.  She may have helped gain a vote for health care reform.

The other picture had our old friend and colleague, Austin King, identified as a resident of the Irish Channel throwing a fastball question to the Congressman.  Austin is a former politician himself as a member of the Madison (WI) city council and more recently director of the ACORN Financial Justice Center  until leaving a month or so ago en route to NYU law school. 

New Orleans folks know how to make a town hall work and flipped a good vote here.  Props all around!

Washington

The organizing is somewhat impressive and a good reminder of the committed, activist base that is red hot and ready to trot when they get the call.  Also impressive is the right’s ability to use their media tools so effectively to mobilize their base through Fox News, websites, and various radio commentators.  They turned out.  They were loud.  They put on the heat.

I wonder why we aren’t doing more of that for these same issues that we are so desperate to pass into legislation?  If this were sports, we would be accused of playing conservative ball and trying to protect our lead.  What lead?!?

Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal chimed in with some ridiculous cheerleading that started with reprimanding the President that he shouldn’t have ever gone there.  That somehow it was a mistake to think that one should try to reform healthcare.  Huh?

These people are all elected not for some honorific sinecure, but because they are all supposedly willing to strap it on and fight for their constituents (us!) and maybe even fight for what they believe.

Congressman John Dingell from Michigan was quoted as saying a little yelling is not going to change his position about the need to have healthcare coverage for everyone.  Another story in the Journal, focused on a newly elected Democratic Congressman from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Frank Kratovil.  He was looking for 30 or so more than 300 packed the room.  He knew enough to say that he was glad to hear what people had to say.

What’s worrisome to me is in a swing district like his that had been republican for more than 15 years before his election, if someone like Kratovil feels the fear and hears the herd charging up behind him, and doesn’t see folks like all of us who are as committed and passionate about real reform, where is he going to stand when asked which side is he on?

The right may not have all of these tactics under control yet, but they are reminding us that you don’t win any of these issues in the Beltway.  They are all won at the grassroots in hand to hand combat.

Speaker Pelosi maybe nailing folks as “Astroturf” protestors, but I’m not seeing us take the gloves off on healthcare, employee rights, immigration or anything else to let Congress really understand the grassroots demand for change from our side either.  We are not going to win these fights on the sidelines.

The first flurry of emails assumed that we had been punked by Fox News documentary folks with whom we had interviewed and that despite their pledge they had shared footage with Beck and his crew.  Quickly it became clear that this was shaky, barely focused handheld footage, and the guys on the Fox contract at the Octavia Books signing for Citizen Wealth were total professionals, so there was no way they had sloppy stuff in the can.

Marie Hurt, Louisiana ACORN’s state organizer, quickly nailed the issue.  This was bound to be film from the two young white guys who claimed to be visiting New Orleans from Michigan, but were bloggers about healthcare, had seen the Times-Picayune picture of me and the notice of the book signing, so came on by.  I forget who brought them up to the signing table, but they asked if they could get some film for their blog and ask me about the need for national healthcare.

The film piece on YouTube of the “interview” ran a couple of minutes, I must be really jaded, because there didn’t seem to be anything there?  It shows me signing books while answering a question about whether SEIU is determined to win healthcare reform, and I replied, you bet – DUH!?!  The asked whether or not ACORN was committed to healthcare reform, and I said that before I left we were part of HCAN, an important coalition pushing Senator Mary Landrieu and others to do the right thing on health care.  I think they then asked a question of Marie Hurt, off camera about whether ACORN is still part of HCAN.  You can hear her answer, “yes.”  I think say that ACORN is up to its eyeballs or words to that effect in committing to work for healthcare reform.  I can’t believe that there is a single one of Beck’s Fox-fanatics who didn’t already know that?  So, what, you might wonder?

John Anderson from ACORN Canada was also helpful in tracking down this teapot tempest.  He put a link on his “tweet” (http://bit.ly/gWWbM) that took me right to Beck’s REAL interview with a young man named Kyle Olson, who sorta looked like the guy in short pants at Octavia.  Olson is a director of this right front website called “acorn cracked.”  He had a nice copy of Citizen Wealth on the table in front of him.  He mentioned the book several times by name and pointed to it – on behalf of Berrett-Koehler (www.bkconnections.com), I thank you!

I had problem following the trail here, but it seemed to be that on one hand they were trying to link me to Organizing for America, but Olson said he didn’t think ACORN was involved in that.  Somehow they pulled the strings together to say if Organizing for America, which is connected to Obama somehow, was also involved with HCAN, and ACORN and SEIU were involved in HCAN, then it was all hell to pay.  Like I said I couldn’t follow this part, but it seemed to be a slog to a blind alley going nowhere.

The more frightening thing Olson and Beck seemed to find came from a question Olson or his confederate had asked during the remarks before the book signing, where I talked about my advocacy in the book of a campaign to achieve maximum eligible participation, meaning that everyone eligible for benefits, had a right to those benefits, and should be automatically enrolled, and until that solution was achieved, then there was a role for all of us as citizens, including churches, unions, businesses, and so forth to make sure we made the ways and means for access and enrollment universally available.

Beck was horrified it seemed that I would advocate for Americans to get their rights.  Pleeeeassseeee!  Get a life!  This is America, we have rights and the ability to fight to make sure they we achieve them.  My call for a citizens’ “army” to enlist in a new “war” on poverty he tried to claim was horrifying to imagine.

Sorry, Glen, I’ll stand for rights and their enforcement, and you can rant, bully, and intimidate.

And, as for the sneak attack, well that was a bought lesson for me, but I guess that’s the price of admission into the “flesh eating machine” these days.  It was a public event.  It was an open question period.  Stuff happens, so that was a fair play.  The lying tale of being bloggers from Michigan was deceitful and these boys certainly embarrassed that great state, but I gather on the conservative right these days, lying comes more naturally to the tongue than the truth, so I’m sure it was second nature to them at this point.