( – promoted by Robert in Monterey)

California Speaks:  We Want Single Payer
by Senator Sheila Kuehl

On August 11th, 2007, at the culminating and boisterous OneCareNow rally in Los Angeles, as well as eight coordinated “listening” events around the state, sponsored by Blue Shield and the California Endowment, among others, a random selection of thousands of Californians spoke out overwhelmingly in favor of major health care reform.

At the largest rally of the year, more than two thousand advocates, patients, nurses, doctors and universal health care fans gathered on the steps and lawns of the Los Angeles City Hall to excoriate a health care system that does nothing but devastate working families with systematic cancellations, denials and delays in care.  This doesn’t promote health, it isn’t care, and it certainly isn’t a “system”– it’s traumatizing and often deadly for people who thought they would be given care, but, instead, got nothing but a tangle of insurance red tape. 

Convinced that single-payer universal health care is the only hope for fixing our broken health care system, they gathered to support SB 840 (Kuehl), the only truly universal health care plan proposed in legislation that is shown to contain costs, improve health care quality and allow Californians total choice of their doctors and hospitals.

Perhaps by design, on that same Saturday, health care foundations (including Blue Shield Foundation, Kaiser Family Foundation and the California Endowment) spent over $4 million on an event originally spun as an exercise in “deliberative democracy”, but in reality was carefully structured to control discussion, in order to ask randomly selected participants to discuss and “vote” on their preferences for healthcare reform.

Naming the event CaliforniaSpeaks, organizers claimed the event would bring together thousands of Californians to discuss their perspectives on the current health reform proposals still under debate in Sacramento, yet the agenda was careful to exclude single payer from the discussion.  Organizers of the event told us the reason that they didn’t include single payer was because the governor said he wouldn’t sign it.

Apparently when they said the event was designed to give Californians the chance to set the health care agenda, what they actually meant was that the event would be an opportunity for the people to jump in line with the Governor’s healthcare agenda.  As is often the case, the people had a different idea-they did, in fact, jump; they jumped out of their seats demanding that single payer and SB 840 be included in the discussion, forcing the organizers to tack the issue on at the last minute at the end of the day.

The fact that participants were forced, on their own accord, to demand the inclusion of single payer at the CaliforniaSpeaks events clearly indicates that the conventional political message, mostly propagated by the health insurance companies, has yet to understand that two decades worth of traumatized patients and families, along with an even higher consciousness of our failings set out in Michael Moore’s new film, “SiCKO”, has changed health reform politics forever. 

Consider the overwhelming standing ovation that Steve Skvara received (http://www.youtube.c…) at last Tuesday’s Democratic Presidential Debate when he asked, chocking back tears, “What’s wrong with America?”, describing how his family lost their guaranteed retiree health coverage when the company who owed it to him filed for bankruptcy.  Skvara’s story immediately resonated with millions of Americans across the nation, and he became an instant online celebrity.  Why?  Because he clearly illustrated our broken health care system and the abuses of corporate greed.  Skavara’s story is one of thousands that are positioned to spark the simmering anger that a broad spectrum of Americans feel toward our insurance based non-system. 

California families are becoming so hurt and so incensed at insurance company greed and abuse that they are increasingly willing, like nurse Cynthia Campbell’s husband, to pick up a megaphone and plead “Don’t Kill My Wife” in front of Blue Shield’s headquarters.  And the transformation crosses the political spectrum.  Art DeWerk, the Police Chief for the central valley town of Ceres, spoke out recently in favor of single payer as he described the helplessness he felt after his wife was unable to get timely access to routine medical care as she battled cancer.

These and other stories are found all too often in a health care system where the only competition is between insurance companies focused only on how much risk they can avoid, instead of the more appropriate competition between direct health care providers for quality service, driven by a single payer system that allows total patient choice of doctors and hospitals. And stories like those set out above, as well as others, even worse, will continue until we ditch the “system” that spends 30% of every health care dollar simply to weed out those of us who are sick enough to need our coverage and move to a real universal healthcare system that eliminates the middleman and returns decision making in healthcare to doctors and patients.

By the end of Saturday’s “listening” event, after everyone had discussed the intricacies of the incremental plans, single payer surprised the organizers by polling better than the others, with significantly more people saying they would support it under any condition.  For those who supported a generic single payer system, but with conditions, SB 840 was, in fact, the only plan that actually met all the conditions set out by the discussants.  For example, 53% of the participants statewide said they would support single payer if they could choose their own doctors and hospitals.  SB 840 guarantees this.  In contrast, both mandates which define the Governor’s policy paper and the Speaker of the Assembly’s bill, AB 8, received support by the discussants only if there were caps on costs and premiums.  In fact, neither proposal currently includes this provision.

Both the rally in Los Angeles and CaliforniaSpeaks showed us that the people of California are way ahead of the Governor, as well as the Speaker, with regard to healthcare.  At the end of the day, more participants felt that quality of care shouldn’t depend on how much money you have, that everyone should have access, and that greed should be kept out of the health care system.

Interestingly, and perhaps tellingly, later that same day, the Governor was quoted on a Fresno news station as saying he would sign SB 840 “as soon as we have the money for it”.  Of course, the Lewin Report, studying the factors set out in the bill, has already shown how the plan will be funded.  But, whether the Governor’s pronouncement signals a serious shift in his thinking, it certainly acknowledges the political momentum that SB 840 has garnered.  I welcome the conversation on funding, because we’ve got the money.  SB 840 can easily be achieved with our current health care spending, personal, employer and state and federal.  It would use the money wasted by the insurance companies on denying care to provide it, to all Californians, without co-pays or deductibles, for one affordable premium each year.  What we need is the political will to catch up with the will of the people of California.

One of the hardest things about being a California historian is watching the same tragedies repeating themselves, nearly every generation. Ever since the Anglo conquest in 1846, non-whites have faced the brunt of scapegoating during hard economic times. And in almost every case, this immigrant-bashing has turned violent.

California’s ugly history of racial terror spans all 150+ years of US ownership. It includes the attacks on Mexican miners (here legally under the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo) in the Sierra goldfields in 1850, the state-sanctioned genocide of Native peoples in central and Northern California later in the 1850s, the forced disposession of Latinos’ land in the 1870s, the violent assaults on Chinese laborers and communities in the late 1870s and early 1880s, and the forcible deportation of 1 million Mexican residents of CA, including many US citizens in the early 1930s.

Now, in 2007, it is returning, with an ugly vengeance. Last Friday, day laborer Artemio Santiago Garcia was savagely beaten in Seaside, a majority-Latino city next to Monterey. Prosecutors are calling it a hate crime. We can call it the leading edge of outright terrorism, a predictable evolution in the already ugly immigration paranoia. And it’s spreading.

From today’s Monterey Herald (linked above):

Rather than cleaning houses or mowing lawns, what he got was a severe beating to the head and upper body that made him lose consciousness and could have ended tragically, he believes, had he not come to and found a pipe to scare his assailant….

  Santiago Garcia’s assailant entered an abandoned house, and they both began walking along a hallway, the man pointing out the rooms and telling him things he didn’t understand. When they reached the rear of the house, his assailant pulled out a flashlight and turned it on.

“I was then standing behind him, wondering what we would do, when he turned around and slammed me on the head,” he recalls. “I immediately fell and lost consciousness. Later I felt more blows, to my head and to my upper body. Then he dragged me outside the house.”…

“I ran away and then I hid under one of the houses. I was afraid that if he saw where I’d run to, he would come after me. I was hidden for a minute or two, then I walked into the street screaming and asking for help. I was bleeding through my nose and mouth.”

Santiago Garcia told the reporter that he wasn’t the first victim of such an attack – that last year an older man, also from Oaxaca, was also beaten – but that he did not feel safe in telling the police.

The article goes on to note that other Latinos – regardless of resident status – are feeling more vulnerable to this kind of hate:

A recent study by the Inter-American Development Bank found that Latino residents are feeling more discrimination than before. Pollsters attributed the results to failed immigration reform policies.

“All we want is a work permit,” worker Jose Perez said. “We don’t even want residency. All we want is to be able to work.”

If this isn’t chilling enough, the incomparable David Neiwert, a Seattle-based author who has studied racial hate and the far-right on the West Coast and the founder of Orcinus, has now come across a video apparently showing a group of white bigots shooting and killing a Mexican somewhere along the border. They may or may not be related to a San Diego offshoot of Jim Gilchrist’s notorious Minutemen organization – the San Diego group’s violent harassment of Latino day laborers was charted by Neiwert earlier in the week:

  Halloween or not, the San Diego Minutemen take year-round pleasure in scaring immigrants. On Saturday mornings, when they travel to the sleepy suburban gas stations where immigrant day laborers go to find work, they create scenes that would play well in a show called “Nativists Gone Wild.” They call immigrants “wetbacks” and “Julios.” They pull out Mace and threaten passing motorists who disagree with them. Calling those who hire day laborers “slavemasters,” they’ve been known to slap flashing amber police lights on their SUVs and chase the would-be employers down. When they’re not busy physically intimidating migrants, they take to the airwaves and the Internet to accuse them, without a shred of evidence, of running child prostitution rings and practicing “voodoo Santeria rituals.”

Unfortunately, it is not a great step to go from physically intimidating migrants, to beating them in an abandoned building along Monterey Bay, to shooting at them in hopes of killing them outright.

And how did this terror come about? Is it some ugly tangent to a more mainstream dialogue about immigration?

Sadly, that is far from the case. Ever since this current round of immigrant-bashing began around 2003, it has been driven by paranoia not about lost revenue or lost jobs, but about racial fears. Victor Davis Hanson’s 2003 book Mexifornia began the wave, stoking fears that California was somehow being “overrun” by Latinos who were going to undermine our civilization with their supposedly dirty, third world ways. From there these sentiments have taken off, with many immigrant bashers speaking of immigration as a kind of “invasion” or, in Michelle Malkin’s favored terminology, a “reconquista” to overturn the Anglo conquest of 1846-48.

An example comes from the comments on an article by Peter Schrag on the California Progress Report yesterday, where one “Steve” started off by citing poll numbers about border security but then threw in this telling item:

Also, it’s suggested that Californians don’t notice the ‘browning of our complexion’ anymore. Hmm. I wonder about that…. He [Schrag] then comes to the conclusion that Southerners and Midwesterners won’t mind handing their states over to the Latinos in the end, either.

While it is absolutely true that immigration reform is necessary and should be discussed sensibly, too much of the conversation is dominated by openly racist sentiments like this. And as we sit idly by while racism is spewed forth, it becomes easier for this hate to go mainstream, and for others to start acting on their violent xenophobia.

Why is it that the immigration debate stirs up this kind of terrorism? Precisely because of its origins in racist thought. Behind every moment of immigrant-bashing in California’s history is a belief that this state and its economic benefits are reserved for whites only. To adherents of this belief, the presence of people of color is to be tolerated at best and actively fought when they deem it necessary.

Some might argue that this violence against immigrants is the product of a fringe mentality, that the mainstream and “serious” anti-immigrant voices would never condone it. So why, then, are conservatives like Lou Dobbs and Debra J. Saunders campaigning to free two former Border Patrol officers who admitted to and were convicted of shooting a suspected drug smuggler?

Voices like these conflate smugglers and immigrants; they are all lumped in together as “lawbreakers” in their terminology. As long as they continue to cast immigration in terms of an “invasion,” condone the acts of the Minutemen, speak openly of racist fears, and call for the further intimidation of immigrants and Latinos by the Department of Homeland Security, they are not excused from their responsibilities either in the emerging anti-immigrant terrorism.

As reported earlier this month by voiceofsandiego.org, Mayor Jerry Sanders’ second quarter fundraising resulted in zero dollars (pdf).  This, presumably, was at least partly to do with a perceived lack of credible challengers for next year’s mayoral race.  But after two weeks of being picked apart over his role in the illegal Sunroad project and his apparently dishonest defense, things may be changing.  The Union Tribune is reporting that Mayor Sanders’ two major challengers from last time, City Councilwoman Donna Frye and businessman Steve Francis, “champing at the bit” over the prospect of a rematch.  So what’s going on?

Sunroad Enterprises was busted for exceeding federal height limits for its development near Montgomery Field airport, and questions have been flying around town as to just who it was who let it happen.  City Attorney Mike Aguirre was one of the first out of the gate, accusing Mayor Sanders of corruption over the situation, noting that Sunroad executives played notable fundraising roles in Sanders’ election.  Sanders has vehemently defended himself against allegations of corruption, but recent revelations has called his side of things into question.  Before citing multiple discrepancies between Sanders’ explanation and official records, The Union Tribune over the weekend explained:

Memos show that then-Development Services Department director Gary Halbert, assistant director Kelly Broughton, and James Waring, the chief of land use and economic development, all knew about the problem in June 2006 – before the building had reached its halfway point.

Yet Sanders has insisted that neither he nor Waring knew about the controversy until October, when the structure had reached its full height and City Attorney Michael Aguirre was preparing to issue a stop-work order on the project.

The Mayor’s investigation into the matter was initially run by retired Navy Rear Adm. Ronne Froman, serving as the mayor’s chief operating officer.  She quit in mid-investigation, explaining “her work at City Hall was completed.”  James Waring has recently left his position either via firing, forced resignation or regular resignation depending on who you talk to.  This after his visit last week to Donna Frye, supposedly without the mayor’s knowledge, to negotiate a height compromise.  Frye went public with the attempted negotiation and Francis (Sanders’ presumptive challenger from the right) has correctly pointed out that Sanders is either lying or running an out of control office.  And neither is good.

All of this simply continues a disturbing trend for Jerry Sanders.  He has systematically set out to restrict public access and input to the city charter revision, has embraced the “strong mayor” principle after cosigning the argument against it, and has completely forfeited any credibility he might have had surrounding his pledge of an “era of openness” in San Diego government.  He has, essentially, insisted that he should be trusted because only he really understands what has to be done (kinda like a certain president).

Presumably Jerry Sanders is not going to be raising zero dollars again anytime soon.  But as his credibility starts to fade, it gives opponents a clear line of attack in a city still weary of corrupt governance.  Timed with a report that the Board of Supervisors will likely not be competitive, it looks like we can mark down at least one legitimate race in San Diego next year.

Now Cross-posted at D-Kos and OpenLeft

One of the things that Republicans learned to do really well in the early 90s was branding.  In the modern era of marketing, the impact is really hard to overemphasize. People are increasingly relying on branding information where they were once using real data. That stinks, but it's the way the marketing game is played these days. So, we either play it or get steamrolled by it.  I bring this up to point out our own failings within the state to build the “Democratic” Brand. So, I poked around a few Congressional (electoral websites) for some good practices and some bad practices. 

I’ll start with one of my favorite Congress critter, Rep. Barbara Lee. Barbara Lee really does speak for me, in many ways. Unfortunately, she doesn’t speak for the Democratic Party very well. There are few mentions of the party on the site, and she hardly mentions that she is a Democrat. The website, overall, isn’t bad. It’s fairly well organized, but more could be done in terms of activating her great base.  But, as I said, she could be doing much more to increase the Democratic Brand to her fans.  All that being said, Rep. Lee’s district is overwhelmingly Democratic, and so the greatest way for her to boost Democratic fortunes is for her to just turn out the vote.

Next, let’s take a look at Loretta Sanchez.  Her Orange County District is D+5, and she’s been relatively safe for quite a few years. In terms of politics, her Progressive Punch Score of 84.53 puts her pretty much in the  middle (#143 in terms of progressiveness) of Democrats in the House. Her election website hasn’t changed since the 2006 election, but we can still take a look for its branding.  The word “Democrat” does appear in the metatags of the site, and in reference to a few of her initiatives on secondary pages.  However, the name of her party does not appear anywhere on the front page.  While some would argue that in her relatively swing district that this could damage her.  However, I would argue that the point of this exercise is to build the Democratic brand to the point that the fact that you are a Democrat is a strength, not some sort of weakness (perceived or otherwise).  So, particularly in a district that could conceivably be called “swing”, we should make sure our more prominent Democrats help other Democrats in the area by promoting the brand. If Loretta Sanchez is the ideal Democrat for Orange County, then she should be using herself as the poster child for the Party.  I’m not sure why she has chosen not to do so in the past, but if a truly great Democratic leader understands the need to foster other Democratic leaders in the Region, even if that possibly causes a few voters to think “Eww, she’s a Democrat, like that Darn Pelosi”. 

Now to a few who are good. And, unfortunately, really good examples were pretty hard to come by in the California Democratic Congressional Delegation.  I’ll start with Bob Filner (D-San Diego/Imperial County).  While the Page doesn’t say in big letters “Bob Filner, Democrat for Congress” like I would like to see, the home page does have a really great little message about why Democrats are great:

The Democrats have taken back control of the House and Senate and now we can get our country headed back in the right direction!  We will refocus on what’s most important to working men and women; bringing our troops home, creating jobs that pay living wages, ensuring quality education and health care for all, and protecting our environment.

That’s pretty cool.  All Dems should have a similar message about why Dems are better than Reeps.  Now, unfortunately for more good examples, I was pressed into looking at Reeps. Now, I’m not saying that I looked at all of our Representative’s websites (of those that even have them), so if people know of more good examples, point them out.  However, probably the best example of branding was from a California Republican, and I thought it should be pointed out.  It is the homepage of Rep. David Dreier (R-Glendora).  The site has your normal mish-mash of great quotes about him.  (For some reason, I don’t see anything about “family values” on there…I wonder why that is, Rep. Dreier?)  But what he does well? Well, he takes a swing at the Dems while glorifying Republicans.  More Democrats should be doing the opposite.

Congress has been run by the Democrats and Nancy Pelosi for more than six months and approval is at an all-time low. That’s because they have blatantly broken virtually every promise that they made in last year’s campaign and have, true to form, pushed for more spending, higher taxes, increased regulation and capitulation in our effort to achieve victory and bring our troops home from Iraq.

We are fighting hard to win the War on Terror, secure the border, grow the economy by reducing the tax and regulatory burden, pursue energy alternatives and encourage individual initiative and responsibility. That’s our positive vision.

As Republicans continue to work hard to earn back our Majority, I welcome your thoughts and ideas.

I welcome your comments on this one. If you know of good (or bad) Congress Critter sites, post them here.  This is something that we need to talk about if it is to get better.

I wasn’t able to get to a vomitorium that was open early until just now, so I’m finally able to post about this ad Jeff Denham’s putting out:

He’s fighting to protect teachers, you see.  And kids!  He’s touting this amendment that would do nothing but prolong the budget battle.  He’s counting on the low-information voter with this one.  But in the Central Valley, they’re not buying it.  They would rather not see child care centers and services for the poor shut down to feed one man’s ego (and to stop any meaningful regulation on global warming issues, let’s not forget.  Here’s Assemblywoman Caballero:

Senate Republicans argue that the $3.4 billion reserve in the Assembly budget is not enough. Yet Republican senators voted for last year’s budget, with a reserve of $2.1 billion – 40 percent less than this year’s reserve. They argue that they don’t like CEQA, California’s premier environmental protection law. CEQA is not a budget issue and never has been.

The Assembly did its job; we compromised and passed a budget. The hold-up is in the Senate. Only one Republican – Senator Abel Maldonado, from Santa Maria – was willing to compromise. One more vote is needed, and the remaining Republican senators are refusing to provide it, even though the governor has asked for their support and made promises to make more cuts.

It’s time for all Californians to tell the 14 Senate Republicans, including our own Sen. Jeff Denham, to put personal ambition aside. Tell them we need to get Californians back to work. Tell them it is real people that are being hurt.

I think Denham’s losing the plot on this one.

As a side note, a big thanks to Health Net of California, which provided an interest-free loan in a time where there’s a real credit crunch to keep two rural county clinics in Tulare County open.  Would that the Republicans had such compassion.

UPDATE:  The response video!

I’m supposed to tread with the utmost sensitivity when discussing religious issues because of some distorted version of political correctness created by the religious right.  Because they want to reserve the ability to cry “you religion-hater” when you simply report on what they’ve been doing lately.  To wit:

Last week, (Pastor Wiley S. of the Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park) Drake got out his church letterhead again, and announced his endorsement of Mike Huckabee for the GOP presidential nomination — an endorsement he repeated on his radio show, just in case anyone missed it. “I announce,” wrote the pastor, “that I am going to personally endorse Mike Huckabee. I ask all of my Southern Baptist brothers and sisters to consider getting behind Mike and helping him all you can. First of all pray and then ask God, what should I do to put feet to my prayers […]

Americans United for Separation of Church and State struck back quickly. Yesterday, they filed a formal complaint with the IRS, documenting Wiley’s actions as a clear breach of tax laws that prevent churches and ministers from endorsing political candidates […]

Wiley’s retort to AU was swift, ferocious — and bizarre. Caught dead to rights, he didn’t even try to respond to particulars of AU’s IRS complaint. Instead, he immediately launched into the kind of wild-eyed, paranoid magical thinking you’d expect from any embattled cult leader. Which is to say: In a press release issued yesterday, he ordered his flock to petition God, who in turn would avenge this attack by smiting AU’s staff with poverty, starvation, scattered familes, and death.

No shit, the guy actually names specific staffers to target through prayer.  Go read the whole thing.

We’re not supposed to talk about this, we’re supposed to “give the church a break,” when obviously I’m talking about a specific situation of intolerance, bigotry and hatred that doesn’t reflect on every religious man or woman in the country.  If we are silent about these things that do matter, we allow these views to fester and grow.  There is no difference between what this pastor in Buena Park is doing and what Islamists did in calling for the head of Salman Rushdie, for example.  And this possibly falls under the legal standard of harrassment.

These fundamentalists, who believe they own the ultimate moral authority, are now showing what they plan to do with it: they would call for the summary execution of anyone who disagrees with them or points out their faults.  That’s the danger we face with theocrats like this and it should be spotlighted.

UPDATE: I forgot to note the funniest part: Drake got the staffer’s name wrong.

Here’s the rub: Drake asked his followers to “target Joe Conn or Jeremy Learing.” Except, Jeremy’s last name is “Leaming.”

So, here’s the theological question of the day: if a bunch of people pray for God to punish some guy named “Jeremy Learing,” who had nothing to do with this incident, does it still count? What, if anything, happens to Jeremy Leaming?