Earth to Congress: The current health care system sucks

In case you haven't seen the movie Sicko yet, the current health care system sucks. Insurance companies are evil. 40 million people have nothing. Now fix it!

I don't care how warped your ideology is. I don't care if you're the love child of Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, and Alan Greenspan (blech!). I don't care if you're the editor of the Wall Street Journal, you intern at the Cato Institute, and you work at the Plundermaxx Corporation. Your ideology has already been proven wrong and you are like a muttering homeless person who did too much LSD and you think you're at some free-market Woodstock dystopia.

Give it up. We both know the current system sucks. And Canada has a better one. You know what to do, you don't need me to say it. OK, I'll say it. Single-payer universal health care. I heard McGovern on NPR the other day, he said he could fix the health care system in a single line: Medicare is now extended to all Americans.

Did Hope last only 7 months?

At the climate justice march the other day, I was talking to a lady who said that it is a waste to support Obama, that he is the same as all the other corporate politicians. I disagreed and said during the 2008 election, I thought if Hillary had won it would be the same Dem centrist triangulation, but that Obama's young, multi-racial supporters would demand more progressive change, and that when Obama won, it was the signal that the Dean wing (anti-war) had beaten the Kerry wing of the party, something that should have happened in 2004.

Now I'm starting to see lefties get discouraged around (lack of) health care, and I'm surprised at how much media attention these current protesters are getting, while my recent 8 years of protests didn't seem to even cause a blip. What's up with that, "liberal" media?

A few quotes from a HuffPost article and comments show how disgruntled lefties have become:

"(for continuing to support Obama), what will we get in return? If the last six months are any indication, the answer is, "Nothing"...
"Obama is here to tamp down the aspirations of the people. To enact reforms that don't cause any fundamental change. To protect the profits for the big players."...
"warning folks to expect from Obama exactly what we have gotten so far - compromising with right-wing bullies, flip-flopping on most of his campaign promises and turning his back on his progressive base."

(back to my comments again)
I'd hate to be taken in again as naive, I'd like to view myself as more patient to get the change we need to believe in. But I can see people's point that the compromising and waffling and caving in can only go on so long, and at some point, I'd like to see Obama show some strength and twist some arms, and get what he wants. Pull out of Afghanistan, auction 100% of GHG permits, return dividends to consumers, put money towards clean energy, and not corn ethanol handouts to corporate agribusiness (offsets), stop caving in to Wall Street, and get real single-payer health care that is not a sell-out to big-pharma. It's not that complicated, is it? I'm willing to give some more benefit of the doubt, but at some point if we don't see progressive progress, the green party will get another influx of annoyed voters who are saying, "Never again," again.

Will Copenhagen be the "next Seattle"?

This December is COP-15, the international climate conference in Copenhagen, where the Earth will hang in the balance. Some people are saying it will be the "next Seattle" (a citizen's convergence where the people show the officials that it's time to take our demands seriously). I guess the big demand is 350 ppm, but I'd add in Contraction & Convergence, and Cap & Share too.

http://beyondtalk.net/

http://www.actforclimatejustice.org/

Senate can choose Dividends instead of House Climate Change Giveaway

The House strategy for Cap and Trade was 1) hand out allowances to utilities and other powerful lobbies, and 2) hope carbon costs will remain low (the so-called "postage stamp a day"). But many midwesterners, including North Dakotans Sen. Byron Dorgan and Rep. Earl Pomeroy are sceptical of the "postage stamp" strategy. High-coal states will face major costs, and the strategy puts supporters at risk in the 2010 or 2012 elections.

But the Senate still has time to choose an alternative strategy that sets aside Waxman and Pelosi's vision of realpolitik (that had almost everyone holding their noses by the end of House debate). An alternative strategy would be to level with the American people, tell them that costs might be high, but auction revenues will provide them with a dividend to help cover the costs. Perhaps Van Hollen's Cap and Dividend bill could be modified to limit the tradability of the auctioned permits, and then return the revenues to the people, bypassing the lobbyists and financial speculators.