"Die Ins" & Free Clinics in Insurance & Drug Company Parking Lots

Acceptance & Surrender works fine in 12-Step Programs...But not in politics!

As we sit in stunned disbelief (damn it sometimes cliches serve just because they are so freekin' apt!) while the Senate Democrats cower on their backs and whimper with little squirts of piss as "Benedict" Joe Lieberman commands them to fetch him a castrated health reform bill, which, in the long run will favor the very companies we set out to regulate, some Democrats are counseling that we should moderate our tone and accept what we can get.

I so disagree and see very clearly why progressives keep getting the nasty end of the stick. The faint-hearted among us are willing to accept the droppings from the table like cringing house dogs. Incrementalism and gradualism is anything but progress. It is rather like taking a step sideways when your opposition is racing full-tilt to the finish line.

Essential moral imperative, not to mention basic human decency, demands that we as a nation provide health, protection, wellness and succor for our poor, our disadvantaged, our children, our older people and all others needing help. And to say to these people, "Be patient, we're making progress" in the face of resistance from right-wing reactionaries, insurance Tsars and drug oligarchs is disingenuous and self-delusional at best and outright cruel at worst!

In court one might enter a "plea" and win. In life and politics, one gets what one demands. And, to effectively exercise one's demands one must have a base of strength and power...this ongoing health care fiasco demonstrates very clearly just how weak we are.

For way too long progressives and liberals and various forms of populists have acted as supplicants and in return we have been sneered at, vilified and/or over looked and neglected.

Frankly the time for patience and moderation is long past, those have availed us nothing. Unless we progressives get busy, active and involved at the precinct level of the Democratic Party and work to build a progressive strategy of getting "progressives" in party, and local, county, state and national elective offices we will continue to be sold out by country-club, Chamber-of-Commerce Democrats who are way too comfortable in the presence of bankers and corporate executives.

Someone, whom I respect and like, recently called me a zealot. Well, by name of the goddess, I liked that...because were it not for zealots, just quick a historical eye-blink ago, we would all be sipping tea and eating cucumber sandwiches at three in the afternoon.

Fine! Here we are at the watershed moment for our generation and the tail end of the depression and WWII generation failing our children and grandchildren through moderation and capitulation.

Kill the Bill! It is meaningless unless some White Knight emerges to save it. Kill it and prepare for "die-ins" on the home lawns of the opposing Senators, set up free clinics in the parking lots of the drug and insurance companies, and for the sake of whatever you find holy, find, recruit and get elected to party and political office progressives and liberals who will work for the people rather than against them.

OMG The Right-Wing Nutters Said What?

Okay, folks....change of pace today. Let us have some fun with the lunatic fringe and earn ourselves a sticker. Take this simple multiple choice test on what the wing-nuts are saying and doing now. Click HERE.

And, that's not all. No--no Ginzu knives and there's nothing up my sleeve...but each participant earns a 10-cent donation from Credo to People For the American Way!

Let me know how you score in the comments section of this post--please-thank you!

Senator Joe Lieberman is Toxic for Older Americans

Senate May Vote to Offer Medicare to Those 55 - 64
**************************************************

President Obama hailed a tentative health care agreement
announced in the Senate last week, saying that he would support
it, and majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) sent the proposal to
the Congressional Budget Office for cost analysis the next day.

However, Joe Lieberman announced that he would oppose the
"Medicare Buy In".  If you have not already, now is the time to
let Lieberman know that he is being watched by Older Americans.

      Click HERE to sign the "Stop Joe" petition.

      Click HERE to "Adopt Connecticut" and join with, and support
     that state's activists who are standing up to Joe!

According to The New York Times, the deal would allow some people
ages 55 to 64 to buy coverage through Medicare beginning in 2011.

At first, they would pay full cost. Eventually, the legislation would
allow them to obtain subsidies to help defray the cost. Senior
advocates view the Medicare expansion as a major step for people
nearing retirement who face some of the biggest obstacles to obtaining
insurance and pay some of the highest prices.

The agreement also calls for creating a menu of national insurance plans,
modeled after those offered to federal workers, including members of
Congress. The new, nonprofit insurance plans would be overseen by the
Office of Personnel Management, which now runs the Federal Employees
Health Benefits Program. The deal maintains the public option as a
fallback plan, to be "triggered" if private insurers do not step up to
offer the new national plans.

Activists rallied outside the Senate last Thursday (December 10),
pressing senators to drop a tax on higher-end insurance plans. At issue
is a proposed 40% excise tax on health care plans costing more than
$8,500 annually for individuals and $23,000 for families.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who spoke at the event, has introduced an
amendment with Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) to strip out the insurance
plan tax. "The House approach, which would raise income taxes on
individuals making more than $500,000 a year and couples making more
than $1 million, would not have the detrimental effect on coverage for
retirees and older workers that the Senate's excise tax would," said
Barbara J. Easterling, President of the Alliance for Retired Americans.

On the Senate floor on Thursday, Sens. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and John
McCain (R-AZ) pushed an amendment to allow U.S. pharmacies and drug
wholesalers to import Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs from
Canada, Europe and a few other countries. 

See my blog immediately below this.

A vote is likely to occur on Early this week---Maybe today!  Be ready
to call your Senators and ask them to support Drug Re-importation.

Drug Re-importation - It's a Good Thing, Let's Support It!

The U.S. Senate may vote as soon as Monday, December 14 to allow
the safe re-importation of drugs from other industrialized
countries.

Senators Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) have
introduced an amendment to the Senate health care legislation
to allow safe drug re-importation.

Americans pay the highest prescription drug prices in the world,
five times more to fill their prescriptions than consumers in
other countries such as Canada. Retirees and older Americans are
particularly hard hit by high drug costs because they have more
acute and chronic illnesses. In addition to consumer savings,the
Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Dorgan-Snowe
Amendment would also save the government about $19 billion
over 10 years.

This is a win for retirees and all taxpayers.

For several years, the Alliance for Retired Americans sponsored
bus trips to Canada for seniors who are forced to make the trips
to purchase prescriptions that costs hundreds of dollars less than
in the United States. However, bus-trips are not a solution. The
Dorgan-Snowe amendment, with rigid safeguards to ensure
quality control, is a necessary measure to reduce ever-increasing
prescription drug costs.

Click SPEAK OUT! to send an email to your U. S. senators

today and urge them to vote for the Dorgan-Snowe
drug reimportation amendment.***

It's Back! Social Security Privatization to Seep Into Health Care Debate!

So you thought the current recession, banking, automotive-industry, housing, credit-industry, and Wall Street investment firm debacle along with the slow, lingering, death throes of newspapers, were enough to forever dry up the notion of Social Security Privatization. Right? And if not forever, at least for one generation. I know I did, and boy was I ever wrong!

The Whack-A-Mole "Friedmaniacs" are already popping their beady-eyed, nose-twitching little faces up and into the health care reform debate with an insidious ploy to rein in budget deficits through a committee to study entitlements, whose formation would be attached to a final health care reform bill. Just a rhetorical aside here, Why are there never committees to study tax dollars pissed away on wars, the defense industry, congressional perquisites and earmarks?

New Hampshire Republican, Judd Gregg, (a long-time proponent of Social Security privatization) said in October, ...the Democrat's efforts to extend coverage to millions of uninsured Americans "creates a brand-new entitlement without at the same time controlling the cost and expenditures of existing entitlements", such as Medicare, Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program. We should have been listening, because that sentiment has found its way into the health care reform debate and threatens to find "bipartisan support". Dubious bipartisanship at best, but enough to earn the label.

Here is the form that it is taking.

Gregg is joined by infamous, anti-public option, Blue Dog Democrat, Kent Conrad of North Dakota in proposing an attachment, to health care reform legislation, which would create a committee to study entitlements, which actually translates to searching for ways to cut entitlements, including Social Security. Both are on record as supporting some form of Social Security Privatization. If these two are not enough to send a chill from your butt to the base of your skull consider some of the others joining in this infamous venture: Even Bayh, Diane Feinstein, Joe Lieberman and Mark Warner.

Now that I've given you a chill, let me suggest a scenario which should give you a permanent hand tremor and nervous twitch of the mouth: President Obama, in all likelihood, cut a deal with Conrad to allow him "to tinker with" Social Security in return for Conrad's ceasing opposing some form of public option. That's the word around Washington...we'll see how long it takes to become an open issue!