Daily Archives: September 28, 2007

Health Care

Thousands of Nurses Strike Sutter Chain–For Everyone’s Healthcare

1 Comment

Thousands of RNs represented by the California Nurses Association will walk off the job October 10 through 12 in a strike against the mammoth Sutter Healthcare Corporation.  This is the largest strike by nurses in this country for at least a decade and the stakes are high.

This Sutter strike affects 5,500 nurses at 16 different facilities.  But it also affects each and every one of us.  Nurses are walking the picket line for the dream of better health care in this country.  Don’t take it from me-listen to the striking nurses in their own words in this video.

You know how you read stories about people victimized by the healthcare industry-[ http://juliepierce-s… say Julie Pierce]-and your eyes tear up and your heart gets heavy?  Registered nurses are on the front line of this crisis every single day and live these stories every day…watching innocent people die because their insurance claim was denied, because they couldn’t afford insurance mark-ups, because they didn’t get preventative medicine.

Sutter Healthcare is the “poster child” for cruel hospital chains.  They have figured out the scam…maximize hospital profits by slashing patient care to the bone.  Sutter takes literally hundreds of millions of dollars of profits out of the healthcare system each year.  Sutter shut down community hospitals that don’t achieve their profit margin-i.e., those serving sub-premium patients, who are sometimes known as poor people.

One of Sutter’s favorite ways to deny care for profit is by routine understaffing of their nurses.  Study after study has shown that nurse staffing is directly tied to patient mortality…if you leave patients alone in a bed, bad things happen to them.  If you make sure patients have access to nursing care, good things happen to them.

Unfortunately, at Sutter, patients are ringing their call button and there is just no nurse on shift to care for them.

That’s deadly for the patients-and heartbreaking for the nurses.  Jan Rodolfo, a pediatric oncology RN at Summit Hospital in Oakland, put it this way: “We are deeply concerned about the quality of care and the availability of patient services in communities that have long supported Sutter hospitals.  Inadequate staffing is a persistent problem at Sutter facilities. No one understands what staffing we need to provide safe patient care better than bedside nurses.”

Other hospital chains are not abusive this way.  Other hospital chains listen to their nurses and write patient safety into the contract.  But not Sutter, and 6,000 nurses have had enough and won’t take it anymore. 

You can help.  Call Sutter’s CEO Pat Fry and tell him you support the nurses-and safe care for all their patients: 916-286-6752.

And just in case you think that a major nurses strike will slow down our national advocacy on behalf of single-payer healthcare….Don’t worry.

…cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association’s Breakroom Blog, as we organize to make 2007 the Year of GUARANTEED healthcare on the single-payer model.

Uncategorized

Ding Dong the Dirty Trick Is Dead

8 Comments

(cross-posted on Daily Kos)

You killed it.  All of the noise you made.  The blog posts.  The donations.  The email forwards to friends.  The petitions.  The copies of the intiative you sent to Arnold. Everything.  The netroots mobilized, and the right-wing backed down.  This is a lone bright victory, in what has been a tough couple of weeks.

Absent some big rich right-winger stepping up with $2 million in the next few days, the attempt to put an initiative on the ballot to steal 20 of California’s electoral votes is kaput.  The main Republican lawyer for the California Republican Party, and the mastermind behind this has quit.  They can’t find anyone who is not a front group established in MO to donate.  In short, the campaign is in disarray.

The campaign needed to collect at a bare minimum 433,971 valid signatures.  In reality they needed to exceed that by 2/3rds to ensure that they would make the ballot.  At last count they were only 40,000 towards getting that done.  Remember they needed to be in by November to make it.  The likelihood of them being able to recoup at this point and make it on the ballot is slim.

Courage Campaign’s Chair, Rick Jacobs wrote over at HuffPo:

As Howie Klein says,” It (‘s defeat) has more to do with the grassroots action against it, the organizing efforts of the Courage Campaign and the fact that the shady Republicans behind it, Californians For Equal Representation are a bunch of cronies of David Dreier’s from Missouri.” Paul Kumar , Vice President of SEIU’S United Healthcare Workers West, one of the online community’s best friends in labor, said, “Your work made it too hot for Schwarzenegger and other leading Republicans to handle and dried up our opponents’ access to money. The netroots was way out in front of the party regulars and big institutional players on this one and you deserve the credit for it.”

Courage Campaign and our online colleagues had support from a huge cross section of prominent leaders ranging from members of congress such as California Congressional delegation chair Zoe Lofgren, Hilda Solis and Jane Harman, members of the state legislature such as Karen Bass and Mark Leno, labor leaders such as Sal Roselli at SEIU and bloggers ranging from Arianna Huffington to John Amato and Jane Hamsher. We had folks from Hollywood such as Brad Whitford, Sherry Lansing and Judith Light as well as literally over ten thousand others.

I have to admit, this is a bittersweet day.  The thing is I know we could have beaten that initiative on the ballot.  Polling indicated that we just needed to get out our base, which we were already starting to do.  There was so much potential there for us to build a powerful new style people-powered campaign driven for and by the netroots that worked in coalition with a traditional media heavy campaign, the party and labor.  That had never been done before, but we were doing it.  We proved that it works. 

Heck today, there was an excellent diary here by Jo Etta from Show Me Progress that was digging into the shadowy MO donor connections.  I had people from MI helping with opposition research.  There were folks from all over the country on our phone call with Bradley Whitford on Monday.  It was that sort of crowd-sourcing that I was really looking forward to.  Quite honestly, we had an email all set up to go soliciting your best ideas for how to defeat this initiative.  Instead we get to celebrate… at least for this weekend.  For come Monday, it is time to get back to work.  There is too much we have yet to accomplish to let the foot off the gas pedal.

Like Rick says:

We beat the right wingnuts on this one. As the Los Angeles Times reports this morning, we demonstrated that with discipline, organization and speed we can defeat the bad stuff. As we build power, we’ll be there to support other progressives and remind those who claim to be what it really means to make progress.

Damn straight.  We take what we did here in a short amount of time and we build on it.  It’s time to play offense.  Courage Campaign is building progressive infrastructure for the long haul.  So stay tuned!

P.S. Did you see the fantastic article in today’s LAT entertainment section about Courage’s video of Josh Lyman Bradley Whitford?

Whitford admits that he usually cringes when he hears celebrities talking about politics. But, in this case, he had to get involved. “I feel like my children’s future is at stake,” he said.

He and Jacobs shot the video in his living room in an afternoon. “I realize this whole YouTube style is based on some quirky shut-in staring straight into the camera,” he said. “It’s interesting stylistically addressing the camera.”

In a way, it’s liberating. Without all the trappings of a Hollywood production, he delivered a simple message right into the lens. “You can’t out-hypocrite a Republican,” he said bluntly on the video.

Now it’s up to the YouTube audience to decide if it agrees.

“There are pendulum swings in the new media,” Whitford said. “It’s truly democratization by letting millions of individuals express themselves.”

Some expressions are bound to be more equal than others. And if Whitford’s example succeeds, there will be a lot more YouTube time in political Hollywood’s future

Health Care

Our Vision, Our Voice, Our Union: SEIU-UHW in full force

6 Comments

Drum performanceIt can’t be said any better than this:

Our Vision, Our Voice, Our Union

This weekend, SEIU-UHW is having a little get-together. Just a few friends getting together. 2000 healthcare workers, a quiet bunch, just trying to relax.

Ok, I jest just a little bit.  At about 9:30 this morning the lights went out and slowly the drums began. For fifteen minutes, the drums went on, slowly bringing the pitch to a crescendo, when several union members came to the floor, with those six words: Our Vision, Our Voice, Our Union.

Let me just say this up front, chills are kind of standard around here. Even ingnoring the over air-conditioned San Jose Convention Center, you can’t help but get the chills.  From the charismatic leaders like Sal Rosselli and Jorge Rodriguez, to rank and file members telling their success stories. This video, titled Winning in 2008, shows just how important this moment in labor history really is. Besides the elections that will determine so much, the union has an exciting year come up. Both of the old locals that merged together have been fighting for decades, and now with their vision of organizing along with high standards, they will be fighting for workers for a long time.

Over the next two days, you’ll be seeing some more posts about this event. Labor is so important to building a progressive movement in this state and the nation. The middle class of this nation cannot exist without a strong labor movement, or to put in Jorge Rodriguez’s words: “To rebuild the middle class, we must rebuild the labor movement.”

Coachella Valley

Palm Springs Village Fest – September 27, 2007

September 27, 2007 – Palm Springs Village Fest

Bob Mahlowitz showed at last night’s Village Fest in Palm Springs to hand out fliers to the crowd and to meet-and-greet.  Bob was quite personable and responded favorably when I teased him about being a closeted Heterosexual (thanks for the laugh earlier this week, Beth!).

More below the flip including an informal Drinking Liberally meet.
 

The Democrats were well represented with Desert Stonewall Democrats staffing one table thanks to Bob, Randy and Dean and Democrats of the Desert staffing another thanks to Eleanor.

We also had representation from the Sen. John Edwards campaign, the consensus winner of the Democratic Candidates Forum and so-called debate at Dartmouth College last night (represented by yours truly), from the fab Sen. Hillary Clinton campaign, from the also fab Sen. Barack Obama campaign, and from Re-elect Al Gor people (petitions to circulate shortly for inclusion of Al Gore on the 2008 California Democratic Primary ballot.  Jono represented the No-on-C measure.  Several new faces staffed the tables including Charlotte Murphy, M.D. for Obama (we traded war stories on insurance reimbursement nightmares).

The Repugnant women were out in force from the convention in Palm Springs.  Little do they know that Palm Springs is 40% Democratic and with the reliable Decline to State voters far outnumber the humbled Repugnants in God’s Country.  Only one or two Repugnant women were friendly (i.e., no snears, gestures, or vitriolic verbiage.  One was from NoCal and the Sacramento Valley who apparently likes former Sen. John Edwards and will vote for him should he gain the nomination (Consensus is also that if John Edwards wins the nomination, the Repugnants are sunk…this from anonymous Obama and Gore supporters)!

Observed lots of interest in campaign buttons and fliers and bumper stickers, more so than even the previous week!  Vast crowds of people milled through Palm Canyon as a sign of the upcoming peak season in Palm Springs.  Many new registered voters once again (I did not count the number of newly registered voters this time).

We had another impromptu unofficial Drinking Liberally party at Bongo Johnny’s (thanks to the generous two-for-one drink tickets from one of the owners and the boys-in-tow) with Randy, one of the Hillary people, Bob S., Tracy (Vets for Peace, etc.), one of the Gore people, and myself, teatotalers all.  Yeah, if you believe that, I gotcha.  Dean stopped by to grace the soire but buzzed off to Hunter’s…..

California

I Sent The Wrong Man To Jail

by Jennifer Thompson-Cannino

March of 1995 began like any other month for me.  The days were filled with chasing soon to be five year-old triplets, washing hundreds of pounds of laundry, kissing skinned knees and picking up toys, until the phone rang.  Captain Mike Gauldin, the detective who worked my case after a man broke into my apartment when I was a twenty-two year-old college student and raped me at knifepoint in Burlington, N.C. wanted to come see me with Rob Johnson, then the assistant D.A. of Alamance County.

They arrived before lunch and we sat on the deck enjoying the spring sunshine.  We talked about the weather, the kids, current events, and then quickly the topic changed. Ronald Cotton, the man sent away for life for attacking me, wanted a DNA test. They needed new blood drawn because my sample from the eleven year-old rape kit had deteriorated.

I had already sat through two trials and I was furious, but I didn’t hesitate. “Let’s go to the lab right now,” I responded. Within hours Mike Gauldin and Rob Johnson were headed to the SBI labs with my vial of blood. I knew the tests would show what I had known all along: that Ronald Cotton was a monster. It was Ronald Cotton who threatened to kill me, who had chased me through the rain that night while I fled for my life.  And it was Ronald Cotton who I saw every night in my nightmares, who I prayed God would have killed, and who I hated each and every day of the last eleven years.

But when Mike Gauldin and Rob Johnson stood in my kitchen in June of 1995, they told me we were wrong.  It was not Ronald’s DNA found in the rape kit, in fact, it was a man named Bobby Poole, a serial rapist who had attacked and raped over a half dozen other women that summer of 1984.

With the delivery of the DNA results came an overwhelming shame and guilt. My mind began to question everything I had believed in. I pulled away from the world as I knew it; I had no answers.  Over four thousand days of a man’s life were gone and nothing I could do would ever change that.  Eleven birthdays, eleven Christmas mornings-gone. I placed the burden on my shoulders and began the slow process of moving through my days.

By the spring of 1997, the psychological toll forced me to act. In a small church no more then a few miles from where I had been brutally raped, I met Ronald and struggled for words I could say to him. How completely inadequate “I’m sorry” seemed.  As Ronald and his new wife, Robbin, came into the room I began to cry and shake. “Ronald, if I spent the rest of my life telling you how sorry I am it wouldn’t be enough,” I said. Ronald immediately took my hands and replied, “I forgive you.  I want you to be happy and live a good life.  Don’t look over your shoulders thinking I will be there because I won’t.”

For the first time, I looked into Ronald Cotton’s eyes and saw a compassionate man who gave me a gift of healing by forgiving me. I also saw a victim of a flawed system. If California’s Senate Bill 756 can help fix that system by putting better practices and procedures into place for eyewitness identification, we reduce the risk of wrongful convictions and mistakes like the one I made. A mistake I never saw coming.

Jennifer Thompson-Cannino lives in Winston-Salem, N.C.  She is currently working on PICKING COTTON with Ronald Cotton and writer Erin Torneo.  It will be published by St. Martin’s Press in 2008.

Uncategorized

Breaking: The Dirty Trick is Dead

Yipppeeeee!  The LAT has wonderful breaking news.  The dirty tricksters are in disarray.  They lost their funders, started in fighting and are now giving it up for a lost cause.

Plagued by a lack of money, supporters of a statewide initiative drive to change the way California’s 55 electoral votes are apportioned, first revealed here by Top of the Ticket in July, are pulling the plug on that effort.

In an exclusive report to appear on this website late tonight and in Friday’s print editions, The Times’ Dan Morain reports that the proposal to change the winner-take-all electoral vote allocation to one by congressional district is virtually dead with the resignation of key supporters, internal disputes and a lack of funds.

Wow.  All of the pressure we put on them, the noise we made, the bad polling, all resulted in this huge victory.  It could not have been done without you.  Simply great.

Uncategorized

He who pays the piper

  Isn’t it amazing
The Obama Campaign & Movement 

I bounce back and forth, first thinking of myself as a world-weary seen it all before realist to an almost child like belief in truth, justice and freedom. I think it may well be a rare form of bi-polar syndrome. But, I don’t really mind because I secretly believe if I was one or the other, I’d get stuck on the world-weary fatalist end and what fun would that be.

My latest bounce back episode was triggered by the revelation that GQ magazine given the choice of good bottom line or defense of free speech chose one over the other. Your guess as to which they chose will tell you alot about  your placement along the world-weary to bliss line.

The story version I heard was that the Clinton’s did not like a story about to appear in GQ that to them was not a fair take on Hillary. GQ and Bill Clinton already had reached an agreement that would put Bill on the cover. Get ready miss bliss, here comes something that will really upset you.

It seems that having Bill on the cover of anything, will generate additional sales of whatever is so adorned. Well, some Clinton detaill was assembled and marched over to GQ. They made an offer that was hard to refuse. GQ could spike the unflattering portrait of Hillary and keep Bill on the cover or the reverse. To spoil the surprise, look for Bill to soon adorn the cover of GQ.

Lets move from this one case to the larger implications.

It is accepted orthodoxy that celebrity and notoriety sell. But now that power to sell is being used to determine what products will be sold. He/She who pay’s the piper, indeed will choose the tune.
 

Uncategorized

Dirty Tricks dead already? – updated

16 Comments

(Wow!! We did it. You did it. Amazing. We drove them into disarray. Awesome work everybody!! – promoted by Julia Rosen)

Here’s the full article from the L.A. Times: GOP electoral initiative dealt major blows. I’ll highlight this paragraph:

There remained a chance that the measure could be revived, but only if a major donor were to come forward to fund the petition drive. However, time is short to gather the hundreds of thousands of signatures needed by the end of November. And backers said Thursday that they believed the measure was all but dead, at least for the 2008 election.

Well. That was quick. The L.A. Times is reporting that the BREAKING NEWS: Electoral initiative backers give up

Plagued by a lack of money, supporters of a statewide initiative drive to change the way California’s 55 electoral votes are apportioned, first revealed here by Top of the Ticket in July, are pulling the plug on that effort.

In an exclusive report to appear on this website late tonight and in Friday’s print editions, The Times’ Dan Morain reports that the proposal to change the winner-take-all electoral vote allocation to one by congressional district is virtually dead with the resignation of key supporters, internal disputes and a lack of funds.

Uncategorized

A World Apart

  Isn’t it amazing
The Obama Campaign & Movement 

Fifty years ago today my universe was beginning to open at the speed of sound. I had survived the seldom easy transition from childhood to the first step on the stairs to adulthood. I had made it to the 8th grade. And I was virtually dizzy with the array of outward bound paths that had suddenly surrounded me. And everyone had a “yellow brick road” quality. Where would this one lead? What about this one; or this one? Who cared about that. The excitement was caused by the fact that they all pointed toward a way out.

Not that I had anything to run from…except for the ties that bind. Heck, even that lucky son-of-a-gun, Ricky Nelson was beginning to exhibit a wanderlous quality. And, he had it all. The looks, the girls, the big brother, two adoring (although admittedly over-bearing) parents. If Ricky could peek at the horizon, then, by golly, so could I.

I attended “neighborhood school”; I had always attended such schools as did all my friends. My friends were the entire student body. And, the best part, new freedoms were being granted like so much confetti at a new years eve celebration.

Not that there were no dark clouds on the horizon. Although our school was totally desegregated (roughly, 1/3rd white; 1/3 black and 1/3rd asian) it was simply a reflection of the affordability of the houses there. If you were a WW II veteran, and who wasn’t, you could and did buy your family a home of their own. A first for just about everyone.

Given this context for my take on the world, I was bewildered by what I saw on TV about what was going  on across the states in the south. Separate but equal was an oxymoron to my way of thinking. How could separate be equal. Why was one color poor and the other color less poor. (Truth be told, that all looked considerably poorer than anyone I knew.)

Then, 50 years ago today, the Little Rock travesty was recorded and shown to the Nation. Dogs, powerful waterhoses, a lynching mentality were used by one color against the other color. The horrors of the civil war were being re-enacted for each of us to see. I was shaken to my core and nauseated in my heart. Why, why, why? My yellow brick roads were much less appealing then.
 

Uncategorized

Would you rather win or govern

  Isn’t it amazing
The Obama Campaign & Movement 

HRC is on the record on this one. No qualifiers or disclaimers. Pure and straigt forward. “I am in this race to win” she declared in her announcement of her candidacy. Given the licking of lips over in the grand old party, it is hard to imagine either the willingness or even feasibility that governing will be an option were she fulfill her committment to winning.

Obama comes at the question from the other perspective. If governing is not possible, what is the point of winning. That is why his campaign continues with the same message that it started with. It is time to turn the page; is it time to come together for the common good.

Which message do you think is reasonating outside the “beltway”? You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know the answer. Do you?