“It would be a courageous act of political will to realign so dramatically.” ; courage is NOT the modus operandi for most Congress critters or Presidents; they leave that attribute to those they send out to kill others.

ubetcha, was not thinking of Congress in particular when I wrote that, but God knows it is true what you say. I was thinking of “in-the-trenches” leadership of progressives. Grassroots people willing to go into the even deeper grassroots out of principle.

Responsibility is the “ability to respond”. Also, true partnership and cooperation (bipartisanship in its best sense) I am hoping for among those on the left. Given the evidence with lobbying betrayals in both Congress and administration, I think the citizenry, the sane citizenry, needs to bond and put a dignified and, yes, righteous line in the sand. No more jerk-arounds. Getting down with dogs ya get up with fleas.

Patriarchal paradigm is about power and control and competition. Such realignments can’t happen. As with Cheney, the irresponsible patriarchs spout their righteousness even from the ditch or in his case more like the Grand Canyon they drove our bus of state into. But humanists can “respond” to the reality in front of them. They will be resourceful and respectful of their true platform.

Sanity is dedication to reality at all cost. The amount of desperately needed reform from Obama? Not so much I am seeing possible, unless we flex and make him flex. Especially with those enabling him as he enables others. He needs to be politically inconvenienced. His comfort zone, keeping the sell outs in their comfort zones, deserves to be disturbed. Otherwise I see a future of discomfort for all of us and our children.

FTW- “Sanity is dedication to reality at all costs” a quote or maybe paraphrasing from Scott Peck.

what is the difference between a “liberal” and a “progressive”

hi libby,

“It was like coming home to my conscience and heart.”

It sure is. That’s why it’s so easy to support HR 676 and so unmotivating to support the PO. Even a good PO like Jacob Hacker’s original proposal is nothing but a second rate measure that we should only accept when dragged kicking and screaming to it.

Drive by …

Thanks for this Libby

I miss Ian here. He still makes an immense amount of sense. I’ve tried to comment on Ian’s posts on Open Left but couldn’t for some reason

Amen! I have been writing and faxing for single payer for some time now.
I am also furious that OFA has been begging us to show support for the President’s plan when the President has not even told us what his plan even is. I am not holding my breath for the speech on Wednesday. I am so tired of being rolled, lied to, used and abused. No More. I will waste no more breath for a dwindling “public option” or feel any sense of relief if HR 3200 is passed.

The insurance company executives and profiteers should be in jail, not in line for a windfall boondoggle of mandated coverage. What a racket!

P.S. You can send free faxes at Health Justice -1 payer.net:

http://www.1payer.net/Campaign…..e-fax.html

libbyliberal your passion is inspiring. thank you for sharing it with us.

i hope that, like a diverse ecosystem, progressives can find a way to co-exist in mutual support and solidarity while following the path and doing the work their inclinations, their talents and yes, their passions call them do.

Provocative question, solerso, but I know I invited it with my provocative choice up top.

I guess in this context I think “liberals” are less compromising to political deal making.

But I am actually sorry I reduced the single-payer group in this diary to what I call “liberals” because the backers of single payer I have discovered run the gamut of the citizenry. They recognize and are committed to the worthiness of the single payer option and are fighting for it hard from their respective constituencies. Liberals, progressives, conservatives, independents. It is not about the “political team” I perceive. Maybe that is why they weren’t invited to the proverbial round table which is NOT round, since they — we — were NOT invited to it. Principle above political personalities or cronyism was the attraction of citizens to single payer.

It strikes me as so self-defeating, the systemic activism now set up, and thus our dividedness in action on the left. It serves the right, our divided energy and loyalty — even though we have good will for each other. There is a depletion of energy. Much of it has to do with our degree of hope left, maybe, for Obama’s vision and agenda.

Obama in my view turns his back on the left. The left turns its back on the far left. When Dems or lefties are acting like cats, independent and hard to herd, that is one thing. When they form the circular firing squads that is another. Or even worse, they are not attacking each other, but one group is minimizing and not acknowledging the will and intelligence and dedication of another group and that is demoralizing and the recipe for defeat.

Divide up and conquer as they say. We are divvied up. Can’t we show the Repubs you don’t have to be fascistic and lock-step as authoritarian followers. Can’t we work this out? And I guess I feel, seeing the double-dealing of the “compromising” … the single payers deserve their turn at bat. Back to the table. This time a ROUND TABLE. And since maddeningly so many seem to think single payer would be “too good to be true” … or “too good to exist in a country where selling out the citizens is the status quo” … well, I think we should not eat sh*t and smile but put up a decent fight for what we do deserve and tell them to take their status quo and shove it.

Are the liberals a subgroup of the progressives? Or are the progressives a subgroup of the liberals? Or are they all the same, just about a label, one embraced more than the other according to one’s age and/or past experience?

lets, john, dancing, selise … thanks so much for all you contribute!

selise, thanks particularly for Ian’s link! was so moved by it.

Like Obama, “public option” was presented to citizenry as a trust-us, abstract BRAND. The positive connotations of the words public option invited trust. But drug and health industries and Wall Street, as Bill Moyers points out, are the puppeteers, so the vague and ever-changing, ever appearing and disappearing, “incredibly-shrinking-in-value” public option is a post-kool-aid mirage.

Single-Payer — Medicare For All, is a workable STRUCTURE and can with intelligent vigilance and monitoring be expanded as a workable plan, that is, Medicare, before Medicare had “protections” inserted in 2003 by Bushco (not like Medicare Part D) — a plan that embraces all citizens and works and is not a Frankenstein monster morphing and disappearing.

Political feasibility to Obama and lobby bribed Congress means not biting the hands that fed them — unethically. Add that to the button-pushed hysterical wingnuts, some who enjoy Medicare and some will admit that but have projected sinister things to the public option when it is instead becoming ever more gutless and bland. (They are knee-jerk-misplaced-anger … jerks … distracting so much from sane communication, and are the bright shiny object the media focuses on and not ethics and ideas and relevance.

So Medicare For All Single Payer is a workable idea for our time. So why won’t the snookered progressives get angry and take the Single Payer blueprint and demand that? Why? Is it about political ego??? … please say it ain’t so. Obama’s ego? Public option hard workers’ egos?

Hard to make hair-pinned tours, but what do we have left. And it very well may SAVE Obama! “Make him do it!”

Progressive Caucus needs to pit their political capital, too, on Single Payer!!!! Public option is no longer ROBUST!!! So they need to switch that courage and commitment to SINGLE PAYER!

I am going to call them and ask them.

hair-pinned turns not tours …oops.

“Progressive” is what liberals are forced to call themselves when other liberals turn conservative but refuse to admit it.

Libbyliberal – an eloquent and compassionate voice on this. It will indeed be interesting to see what mobilization occurs ahead of the HR 676 vote.

Thanks ralph and spork. Here is some telling stuff from Ralph Nader on subject of single payer:

http://www.informationclearing…..e23408.htm

Mr. Obama has met countless times with the CEOs of large corporations, whose greed and callousness causes so much of this crisis. Though he believes in single payer “if we started from scratch,” he has yet to meet with any single payer delegation.

The White House has shown that it lacks smarts. The formless, waffling Obama health insurance proposal is being shattered by the Republican cluster of Limbaugh-driven lies and the Blue Dog renegades in the Democratic Party, who are busy cashing mounds of campaign checks from the so-called health business. By ignoring and excluding the majority-supported single payer approach, the White House stifles any kind of insurance reform worthy of the name.

Publicized lies are translating into fears among people who should be supporting full medicare for all. FactCheck.org reports that “a notorious analysis of the House health care bill contains 48 claims. Twenty-six of them are false, and the rest are mostly misleading. Only four are true. For example, false are claims that the bill includes an order for end-of-life plans or health care for illegal aliens or assertions that ‘your health care will be rationed.’”

So wild are the falsehoods, fueled by runaway internet traffic, that the Republican National Committee implied in a fundraising letter that Democrats may structure the overhaul in a way to deny medical treatment to Republicans!

[snip]

Mr. Sparrow is no arm-chair commentator. He has dug deeply into the enormously comprehensive frauds on medicare and consumers. He has found payments for medical services ordered by deceased doctors or huge payments in treatments for deceased patients—many gone for years.

Highlighting the widespread fraud on medicare by criminal behavior, he argues that these actions should be treated as “a crime problem” not just a “claims-processing problem.” Without criminal prosecutions, there is no deterrent stopping this massive robbery.

How massive? Read these words in recent testimony by Professor Sparrow: The units of measure for losses due to health care fraud and abuse in this country are hundreds of billions of dollars per year. We just don’t know the first digit. It might be as low as one hundred billion. More likely two or three. Possibly four or five. But whatever that first digit is, it has eleven zeroes after it. These are staggering sums of money to waste, and the task of controlling and reducing these losses warrants a great deal of serious attention.

In the early 1990s, the Congressional Government Accounting Office estimated that billing fraud accounts for 10% of health care spending annually. That would be about $250 billion this year. In 1993, Attorney General Janet Reno declared that health care fraud was the number two crime problem, after violent crime in the country.

With someone as carefully authoritative as Malcolm Sparrow, the Democrats can make this crime spree front and center during the health care debate. People want to be assured that their health insurance dollars are protected. Instead the “license to steal,” which is the title of Mr. Sparrow’s groundbreaking book, continues. And the Republicans continue to sidetrack priorities for action with seedy prevarications.

Obama has an opportunity to be the honest sheriff, cleaning this mess up. Instead he is playing apologist. Medicare and a Medicare for all progream would work awesomely, if they were regulated sanely and efficiently. If this young new administration would exit the ACCOUNTABILITY COMA!

But the foxes are the architects of this hen house apparently. We need to get rid of them.

I’m praying FDL and House Progressive Caucus will help!

libby, I’ve been making the argument for some weeks now that even if someone wants and prefers a Jacob Hacker type of PO what they should be doing now is supporting HR 676, or (with a bow to Blub) an improved version of it, because that is the best way to get a good PO. It was the best way when this fight started, and it is still the best way. It is just madness to ask 185k for a house you want to sell for 185k. Unless you’re in a seller’s market, that.simply.never.works. If you ask for a good PO, you’ll get a bad PO. And if you ask for a bad PO (i.e. HR3200, and Senate HELP), you most likely won’t even be able to get a PO at all. This is just not rocket science, folks. Why, ever, pre-compromise.

ralph, I think what really happened is that liberals didn’t fight the conservative campaign to demonize liberalism, and part of their not fighting was to run away from the label “liberal” and move back to the progressive label. which pre-dates “Liberal” at least in the modern, rather than the 19th century sense of that term.

!!! $250 billion in outright fraud! a real Sheriff could hammer the grifters by denouncing this to the public . . . but we know where the President’s sympathies really lie, unfortunately.

btw, on a minor, narrow tactical quibble, certain folks around here have something like a histamine response at the mention of Mr. Nader – Naderitis, I call it, so if there is a way of presenting the massive fraudulence without triggering it, folks might actually read the quote.

lets, I do see the sense of what you say and a “robust” public plan was a compelling promise. Ah, the use of “words” to keep it abstract with that trust-us seduction.

though single payer has THE structure and the way of sweepingly reducing overhead and saving that $400 million was it with the single payer and no public plan could promise that efficiency.

pre-compromise is the right word. Obama was so eager to use his community organizer skills, but he was dealing with sharks. and you don’t keep rewarding as a method of inducing cooperation. if the pattern is they take a mile with every inch, you don’t keep rewarding. patience is no virtue in this case.

thanks, spork, I just noticed that on the lake and put in some kind words for Ralph. Ah well. I often read information clearing house and he is one of their frequent contributors and it resonates. What can I say. The man does his homework on the dirty rotten scoundrels.

its great to bring good info from taboo sites like informationclearinghouse, Counterpunch, and AntiWar.com into FDL and see if it can find appreciation . . . but too many folks have a tendency to shoot the messenger, even if the messenger is bearing plain old truth, and Ralph gets that treatment a lot.

kudos to your efforts here – you and selise strike a great tone. Great posts from letsgetitdone as well. Strong!

thanks spork… :)

I’m with Ian Welsh and Libby and all the rest. Now is the time for the PO supporters to accept that their pre-compromise strategy has failed and to get behind Medicare-for-All. Single Payer is On The Table.

Ralph Nader is a man of principle who has been unwavering in fighting for the public interest and empowering citizens for more than forty years. Too bad Obama didn’t learn more about commitment to principles when he worked as an organizer for the Nader-inspired NYPIRG.
http://www.nypirg.org/goodgov/obama.html

lets, again, so well thought out. I think you are right. Instead of embracing the word and what it means, it was a sad retreat colluding with the invalidators.

Thanks, Evelyn. What a great tidbit of Obama’s history. Ralph would be perfect for him to use to clean up govt. When Obama was campaigning and drawing on specifics from Hillary and John Edwards to put him over, talking the talk, I prayed he would even just read Edwards’ brilliant blueprint for America he had compiled. This thing, too, where he won’t meet with Single Payer people who know first hand the problems. Won’t ever include them at the “round table” that is not round since they are not invited. Willful. Krugman, Kuttner, Reich have great ideas for economy and he embraces the enablers of the meltdown! He should use Gore for the environment. Feels like there is a callowness of ego and at the same time over-placation to the intimidating ones. He minimizes his own power. Or is he just long time puppet and we are all so to speak screwed. Congress is as lost to us as him it feels like.

Do we have to go through his presidential, seducation-of-joe-tynan, sophomoric period and he will snap out of it as JFK did, at least to a degree, or is he so enthralled by big money, powerbrokering daddies, we are long forgotten as his constituents and the ones who believed in him and whom he actually works for. The exclusive money club power brokers ruining the entire globe have got him. He can’t keep rewarding them believing they will play nice.

Just to emphasize again, libby. I’m not for any PO. For me, a Jacob Hacker-type strong PO just a last ditch compromise at the end of a long process of trying our level best to get Medicare for All.

Thanks sporkovat, We’ve been developing quite a group here supporting Medicare for All. Perhaps someone should do a post with a list of people and some quotes to flag the now very sizable FDL Medicare for All community. There must be 10-15 of us here now.

The only thing I never liked about Ralph Nader is his commitment to balanced Federal budgets. That never made sense to me, and still doesn’t. One of the most damaging things many Democrats did during the period of Jimmy Carter was to convert to the pre-Reagan Republicans old-time religion on the balanced budget.

In doing so they rejected Keynes and also common sense since any businessman knows that there are things that you go into debt for and that what counts are is your debt to equity ratio, not your debt in some kind of vacuum. They also tied one hand behind their backs, since they could do very little to invest in health care, education, and reinventing the oil-based economy, when everything they did was always subject to tests of whether it was revenue-neutral. Democrats are still doing it. Look at all the contortions we’re going through to ensure that health insurance reform is revenue neutral when the problem is not that. It is reforming to things to upgrade health care quality, while at the same reducing the proportion of economy that is devoted to health care to 10% or less. Of we can do that, I don’t care if the Government program that accomplishes that costs a $trillion per year, beyond the tax revenue we raise to fund it.

Do we ask whether the Iraq and Afghan war are revenue-neutral? Why is health care for every American any less important?

Thanks libby, I don’t know if we can easily go back now. But perhaps if and when Government has some new successes in leashing the private sector so that it doesn’t destroy all of our economic lives; we’ll be able to rehabilitate one of our favorite words. I think you and masslib for already trying to do that.

lets, yes, I get you. Sorry. Why am I arguing with one of the leaders of the choir on single payer? And I do appreciate your pragmatism on this and your overview about the politics. Kucinich amendment in 3200 that gives states the right to choose single payer – medicare for all is the one kernel that seems still to be alive in workability with the PO. But I think health care industry people if there is a single payer plan could be transitioned into the jobs that surround single payer-medicare for all. It is the fat cat execs and their lobbyists and bribed health workers that are bottlenecking real communication and Obama needs to have a round table. Doesn’t he see the hypocrisy. Let the good guys into the negotiating room with the vested interests people.

lets, great idea. there are a lot of PO progressives out there, and i hope on the lake, who want 676 to succeed. My question is are they and will they make those vital calls to the House Reps and WH demanding it before that crucial vote. Nancy P would support with that much support and a nod from the WH, which is maddening, but we can do our part of it.

From Nader:

It is up to the people of our country to “make him do it” whether this year or next. A mere one million immediate calls to members of Congress by one million assertive citizens will start sobering up these legislators who think they can get away with another sale of our public trust.

The Congressional switchboard is 202-224-3121. The full Medicare, single payer bill (backed by nearly ninety legislators) is H.R. 676. The go-to citizen group for your sustained engagement is singlepayeraction.org. The rest is up to you, the majority, who want to put the people first.

Four toll-free switchboard numbers for the Senate and House: 1-800-828-0498, 1-866-338-1015, 1-866-220-0044, and 1-800-473-6711.

One million of us Ralph Nader calls on. If one of 300 of us do some homework for this country we can make a huge difference for our lives and the lives of our children and their children. I remember that old 60’s slogan, “If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.” Let’s join the first group.

Michael Moore on his website has a wonderful index of all our House Representatives and their stances on HR 676 (link below). I am committing to leaving at least one to five calls or voice mails a day in support of HR Bill 676 to House Reps until the HR 676 vote is taken in the fall.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/si…..tion=print

selise. how are ya doing?

Thanks libby.

I’ll certainly make calls and write notes and do other things. But I don’t think HR 676 will pass with a nod from the WH. They’ll view it as reducing their flexibility. which it certainly does. The progressives have to be insistent enough that Nancy leaves Obama on this one and joins with them. If there’s anything that can get ger to do it, it’s health care.

What is a ‘liberal’ ?

What is a ‘progressive’ (but given the msm’s use of the word liberal, what do you think is going on? strictly rhetorical as I know the answer)

What is a ‘populist’?

… I think health care industry people if there is a single payer plan could be transitioned into the jobs that surround single payer-medicare for all. It is the fat cat execs and their lobbyists and bribed health workers that are bottlenecking real communication …

Got it

Health Care by the Numbers

From the April Harpers

Estimated number of jobs that would be created under a U.S. single-payer health-care system : 2,6000,000

Ratio of this to the total number of U.S. jobs lost last year : 1:1

From a study by Univ. of California; The Albert Einstein College of Medicine; Boston Univ.; Harvard Univ. among others (pdf)

* 2,613,495 Million New Jobs,
* $317 Billion in Business Revenue,
* $100 Billion in Employee Compensation, and
* $44 Billion Increased Tax Revenues

thanks, lets!

one more litmus test about the degree of corruption and abandonment of our Congress, or one more chance for them to begin to make amends to the citizenry.

interesting stuff. thanks so much. I like the word liberal, and want to “undirty” that word. shows what name-calling does and how the media enabled the dissing by repubs! and once again, it was members of the dem party that enabled the power of the nasty repubs by evading the issue rather than fighting back. Teddy was the “liberal lion”. Certainly gave positive connotations to the word on the Dem side of the aisle. “bleeding heart liberal” I remember being called. Appreciated that. Back when EMPATHY wasn’t considered a SIN. :)

John, this is SOOOO useful! Thank you!!!! Now if we can get people to hear it. And the fact that it has been factored in and is a serious, empathetic consideration is a strong gesture if it can get air time. lib

I think something that needs to be emphasized, at least occasionally, is the fact that the health care system is going to expand or contract to the size of its market. Its market is the people who can afford to pay for it. That segment of our population is now something like 2/3 to 3/4 of us. Will there be doctors, nurses, and facilities enough for everyone else? Not if they can’t pay.

I suspect that’s what the Harpers article is saying. Universal health care expands the health care market.

Can’t remember right now, but that info might be this pdf link

Also here’s an easy to understand youtube for your friends and family on SP

Both are in my link at 38

Big Companies (WellPoint, United) intimidating and coercing employee political activity against health care reform. No surprise. Jerry Brown in Calif. looking into.

“If we can do that, I don’t care if the Government program that accomplishes that costs a $trillion per year, beyond the tax revenue we raise to fund it.

“Do we ask whether the Iraq and Afghan war are revenue-neutral? Why is health care for every American any less important?” –

Totally agree. The whole “unfunded deficit” — “Medicare will be broke” – thing is a Framing Issue. What a ridiculous way to talk about a government’s obligations to its citizens. You pay what you gotta pay. No one says – “Well, we can only afford so many wars because the defense department is going to run out of money.”

Some interesting comments from past by Ralph Nader (I know, spork, here I go again :)) Worth a watch:

Nader on corporate tax:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..re=channel

Nader on a “corporate state”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..re=channel

Nader (on Russert) pre-election re Obama:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..re=channel

Nader on Iraq War:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..re=channel

Evelyn, you are so right. And we have such a bloated budget for military, now adding more bases in Columbia. 800 bases globally and liquidating some of them would release plenty of money for health care. Our bases cause us increased unpopularity often, with sexual assaults that go unaccounted for by military personnel and environmental contamination we do not control and clean up. And the militarism going on right now, when the will of the people was clearly to withdraw, is disturbing. In Afghanistan, my question is why are the women of Afghanistan anti-US, if we are there fighting the Taliban which treats them so badly, what are we and our puppet leader doing that makes them willing to risk and endure the Taliban and get rid of the US presence? Undoubtedly the deaths from drones, etc, is one thing. Probably Karzai corruption.

thanks for those phone numbers. and for the diary.

i’ve always liked nancy pelosi, and i think she would support single payer with enough demand from we-the-people.

Thanks Evelyn,

This is an old point of view, of course, made popular by the post-war keynesians and John Kenneth Galbraith. It became unpopular in the wake of the resurgence of market theory in the 70s and 80s, and the Democratic Party’s conversion to balanced budgets led by people like Jimmy Carter, Paul Volcker, Alice Rivlin, “Dollar Bill” Bradley, Dick Gephardt, and, of course, Bill Clinton. Nothing like folks who like to govern with one hand tied behind their backs. No wonder they never had any money for poor people.

I like her too. I just wish she was tougher on Barack and Harry Reid. I remember when the Speaker of the House was someone to be reckoned with in DC. And I want those days back.

And I want those days back.

i’m with you on that.

confession: i not only wanted impeachment of both bush and cheney because they deserved it, but also because i really really wanted a president pelosi.

hipp and lets. I was not that familiar with Pelosi. Will pray she asserts for the common good.

hi libbyliberal. i’m hanging in there. how ’bout you?

Re our earlier discussion on liberal and progressives one of my brothers offers this:

The term “progressive” is today often used in place of “liberal”. Although the two are related in some ways, they are separate and distinct political ideologies.

According to John Halpin, senior advisor on the staff of the Center for American Progress, “Progressivism is an orientation towards politics. It’s not a long-standing ideology like liberalism, but an historically-grounded concept… that accepts the world as dynamic.”

Progressives see progressivism as an attitude towards the world of politics that is broader than conservatism vs. liberalism, and as an attempt to break free from what they consider to be a false and divisive dichotomy.

Cultural Liberalism is ultimately founded on a concept of natural rights and civil liberties, and the belief that the major purpose of the government is to protect those rights. The progressive school… tends to advocate center-left or left-wing views that may conflict with mainstream liberal views, despite the fact that modern liberalism and progressivism may still both support many of the same policies.

American progressives tend to support interventionist economics: they advocate income redistribution, and they oppose the growing influence of corporations.

Progressives are in agreement on an international scale with left-liberalism in that they support organized labor and trade unions, they usually wish to introduce a living wage, and they often support the creation of a universal health care system. Yet progressives tend to be more concerned with environmentalism than mainstream liberals, and are often more skeptical of the government, positioning themselves as whistleblowers and advocates of governmental reform.

Finally, liberals are more likely to support the Democratic Party in America and a Labour party or Liberal Party in Europe and Australia, while progressives tend to feel disillusioned with any two-party system, and vote more often for third-party candidates.

Interesting stuff. I think I had an emotional and sentimental bond with the term “liberal” from its assaults of condescension from the Right long ago, but the progressive definition really resonates! Hmmmm.

selise,

read some eye-opening things last night about the gutted ghost of public option and posted them today.

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/7886

i visited one fdl thread and was concerned you as messenger were taking some unfair heat being champion of single payer. was sorry to see that. wish i had been there earlier. thanks for responding!

best, libby

thanks. (((libby)))

actually was shocked by it. if honest dissent, or in this case even questions, are treated with hostility then we can not claim to be liberals.