The Carter Gilson Report

I was watching Meet the Press this morning (okay, afternoon), and what they had was a roundtable discussion on the healthcare debate. The two sides were actually balanced in representation. On the Right was Senator Tom Coburn, R-OK, and former Rep. and current head of Freedom’s Watch, Dick Armey. On the Left was Tom Daschle, once nominated for HHS secretary by Obama, and Rachel Maddow, one of the smartest (and most prepared) left-leaning TV hosts out there.

My wife and I watched the discussion, and the thing that struck me (beyond the arguments from the right boiling down to, if you think things are bad now, wait until the boogeyman comes) was that whenever the discussion turned to actual policy, Daschle and Maddow were the only ones talking. When what a public option would mean on a structural level was the topic, Coburn and Armey had nothing to say.

The reason for this is simple enough, of course. When it comes to policy, the Republicans aren’t interested. If they had any ideas, they could easily put up their own plan, but the only idea they have is to scare people into leaving things the way they are. Their hope is that the nebulous idea of “change” that won over the electorate will become frightening if they can tie it to their Soylent Green nightmares.

And why do they want that? Well, I can’t speak for anyone on the right, but this is what it looks like. They are looking out for the interests of insurance companies, and don’t care the slightest bit about any actual Americans. Worse, they are trying to push the binary politics of Republican vs. Democrat for the sole purpose of bringing their party back from the brink of irrelevancy.

Politics may have become binary, but policy is not. A public option for insurance is a relatively new idea in the debate in this country, but it’s a damn good idea. It’s the bridge between a Massachusetts-style personal mandate requiring the purchase of insurance and a single payer system where everyone is covered. It also uses the power of the market and competition to drive down costs, which you might think the Right would cheer, if you thought they were honest brokers.

August is half over. Congress comes back into session soon. The President has signaled that he’s open to compromise on the public option. But compromise only works when both sides are willing to give something up. The Right is intransigent. It’s time to give up on the notion of bipartisanship and actually have a good bill.

NYTimes:

As the health care debate heats up, the American Medical Association is letting Congress know that it will oppose creation of a government-sponsored insurance plan, which President Obama and many other Democrats see as an essential element of legislation to remake the health care system.

Considering the amount of support among doctors for healthcare reform, it’s time to ask whether the AMA’s progressive members need to send a message and quit the group.

The AMA is a professional association with a quarter million member doctors. The AMA provides a seal of approval to the nation’s medical professionals, but over the years they have always opposed any government involvement in healthcare, whether it’s Medicare or, now, the public option.

In a way, it’s understandable. Most doctors get paid mostly through insurance coverage, and a public plan would almost certainly pay them less. At the same time, their insurance costs (malpractice insurance and other costs of doing business) are through the roof.

But the AMA taking this stand for its members makes no sense to anyone for whom logic is a factor. You see, the idea of the public option is to make health insurance more affordable to every American, who would then be covered and wouldn’t have to rely on emergency departments for routine medical care.

It would make sense for the health of the nation, not to mention for the bottom line of medical providers, to support a public option, as in the current configuration the uninsured are an explicit drain on the system. Making the change to a Medicare-style public option for all Americans just seems like the most intelligent thing we can do right now.

Will it lead to single payer? Only if the medical insurers don’t offer competitive plans. In a way, public medical insurance may be the most free-market idea in medical insurance ever.

Republican Tom Price of Georgia posted this silly little YouTube clip today:

So, wait a minute, you think that the President only stands with some people and not others because he blasted the people who caused and exacerbated the global economic crisis we’re now facing? Because that’s what you’re saying here.

Just a tiny little suggestion, if you’re trying to win back the middle class, don’t make it quite so obvious that you’re standing with the investment firms and hedge funds whose greed necessitated the biggest government bailout of financial institutions in US history.

Early on New Year’s Day, transit police at the Fruitvale Oakland BART station detained several men involved in an altercation.  It’s now January 6th and I haven’t written about it yet because it’s a bit too much to get my brain around.

22 year old Oscar Grant, unarmed, handcuffed, prone, restrained held down by two cops, was shot and killed by a third cop. Grant’s death leaves behind a young daughter, a reeling community, and, oh, yes, amateur video aplenty.

That’s how we actually know that Grant was restrained and posed no threat.  The cop that shot him had a good view from directly next  to him, so there does not appear to have been any question about the situation.  The officer reached for his holster, drew his gun, aimed and fired.

One of the early theories put forth by investigators is that he thought he was reaching for his Taser and not his gun.  Nevermind that they are kept in different holsters on opposite sides and feel nothing alike, but what the hell would he have been using his Taser for anyway?  Grant had been subdued, he was pleading with the cops not to hurt him, that he has a young daughter at home.

And now that daugter will be growing up without a father because some kid with two years on the BART police force reached for the wrong holster when he shouldn’t have even been reaching?

Tough to get my brain around.  Tough to understand how something like this happens.  Tough to see how a cop killing an unarmed and handcuffed father disappears from the news, with hardly any national coverage. Google searching doesn’t pull up a whole hell of a lot of articles on this story, and I’ve seen far more reporting in blogs than in newspapers.

This isn’t Rodney King; we aren’t joining an excessive beating in the middle.  The video that has emerged shows Grant to be agitated but complying.  And then it shows him being murdered.  Shot in the back while restrained.  What the fuck?

corrected some facts with strike-outs above; sorry for the sloppy

[pause]

Pinter’s dead.

[pause]

Eartha Kitt too.

[pause]

Well, Crap.

Alas, quite a bit of the middle is still missing.

Christmas is Coming–missing
A Baby Just Like You–missing
Deck the Halls–missing
When the River Meets the Sea–missing
Little Saint Nick–missing
Noel: Christmas Eve, 1913
The Christmas Wish

Unionized workers are having to resort to actions not taken since the Great Depression. Chicago’s Republic Windows and Doors closed down this Friday. The union, under the United Electrical Workers, has decided to use peaceful, yet forceful, means to highlight their situation.

Workers laid off from their jobs at a factory have occupied the building and are demanding assurances they’ll get severance and vacation pay that they say they are owed.

About 200 employees of Republic Windows and Doors began their sit-in Friday, the last scheduled day of the plant’s operation.

Leah Fried, an organizer with the United Electrical Workers, said the Chicago-based vinyl window manufacturer failed to give 60 days’ notice required by law before shutting down.

Workers also were angered when company officials didn’t show up for a meeting Friday that had been arranged by U.S. Rep Luis Gutierrez, a Chicago Democrat, she said.

So, workers are staging an action over severance, back vacation pay, and most of all, the WARN Act. The WARN Act provides that in a situation like this, where a mass lay-off will be happening, the workforce will be given 60 days warning. Long enough for many to find new jobs, get training to change careers, and then the company must provide a severance of some kind.

When I was working at RCN and they closed my call center, that is exactly how it happened. 60 days before they gathered us and gave us the news. At the time, it seemed unbelievable, but it also seemed like a long time, time enough to find something new. Some did, many did not. I was unemployed for six months from September 2003 to March 2004.

The workers at the Republic plant did not get this time before the doors were to close. So they are keeping the doors open.

During the peaceful takeover, workers have been shoveling snow and cleaning the building, Fried said.

“We’re doing something we haven’t since the 1930s, so we’re trying to make it work,” Fried said.
…
Police spokeswoman Laura Kubiak said authorities were aware of the situation and officers were patrolling the area.

In other words, they’re hardly engaging in malicious acts. This is a modern sit-in, they won’t be cowed, and I kind of want to bake brownies for them. Alas, delivering them would be tough.

Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman has what may be among the most important columns about the negatively-aged Obama administration to date:

Barack Obama should learn from F.D.R.’s failures as well as from his achievements: the truth is that the New Deal wasn’t as successful in the short run as it was in the long run. And the reason for F.D.R.’s limited short-run success, which almost undid his whole program, was the fact that his economic policies were too cautious.
…
This history offers important lessons for the incoming administration.

The political lesson is that economic missteps can quickly undermine an electoral mandate. Democrats won big last week — but they won even bigger in 1936, only to see their gains evaporate after the recession of 1937-38. Americans don’t expect instant economic results from the incoming administration, but they do expect results, and Democrats’ euphoria will be short-lived if they don’t deliver an economic recovery.

The economic lesson is the importance of doing enough. F.D.R. thought he was being prudent by reining in his spending plans; in reality, he was taking big risks with the economy and with his legacy. My advice to the Obama people is to figure out how much help they think the economy needs, then add 50 percent. It’s much better, in a depressed economy, to err on the side of too much stimulus than on the side of too little.

In short, Mr. Obama’s chances of leading a new New Deal depend largely on whether his short-run economic plans are sufficiently bold. Progressives can only hope that he has the necessary audacity.

FDR nearly failed because he didn’t go far enough.  That’s almost blasphemy, but it’s true.  Obama needs to do more, and do it fearlessly.

A new WPA based on a new power infrastructure is a first and necessary step.  Our current power grid is not just prone to failure but vulnerable to an attack.  It was just a few years ago that most of the eastern seaboard was shut down by a single outage, and we haven’t fixed it enough since then to avoid the same thing happening again.

Also, a new power grid could more efficiently transfer electricity generated from new sources.

This would need to be coupled with a reinvestment in physical infrastructure, the roads, bridges, railroads, waterways and other ways that we get our selves and our stuff from place to place.  It’s been 50 years since the last major project, the Eisenhower highways, and Obama has indicated that this is something to invest in.

These two projects alone would generate many jobs and a lot of revenue which would then fund more structure reinvestment.  America has been in a terrible accident, but we can rebuild her.  We have the technology.

In advance of the Republican National Convention, police in the Twin Cities have been taking it upon themselves to make sure the Law and Order party have lots of order, if not law.  State, local and federal law enforcement are making raids on the protesters.

Via Glenn Greenwald, a first-hand report of Beij–er, St. Paul:

This is Eileen Clancy, one of the founders of I-Witness Video, a NYC-based video collective that’s in St. Paul to document the policing of the protests around this week’s Republican National Convention.

The house where I-Witness Video is staying in St. Paul has been surrounded by police. We have locked all the doors. We have been told that if we leave we will be detained. One of our people who was caught outside is being detained in handcuffs in front of the house. The police say that they are waiting to get a search warrant. More than a dozen police are wielding firearms, including one St. Paul officer with a long gun, which someone told me is an M-16.

We are suffering a preemptive video arrest. For those that don’t know, I-Witness Video was remarkably successful in exposing police misconduct and outright perjury by police during the 2004 RNC. Out of 1800 arrests, at least 400 were overturned based solely on video evidence which contradicted sworn statements which were fabricated by police officers. It seems that the house arrest we are now under and the possible threat of the seizure of our computers and video cameras is a result of the 2004 success.

This isn’t Beijing getting ready for the Olympics.  This is St. Paul, Minnesota.  What the fuck is going on here?

This was a fantastic speech. About the only thing that would have made it better is if she had given it on Tuesday, but we’ll take it.

One thing I noticed, right off the bat, is that Hillary Clinton looks more relaxed than I have seen her in well over two years. Her campaign is over, and no matter where the chips fall, that’s a huge weight off her shoulders. As someone who has run for office and been forced (due to a lack of funds and a lack of time) to bow out, I have some idea of the relief she is feeling.

It’s not that she wasn’t successful; she ran a campaign that in any other year probably would have won. She knows that, and it’s why she took so much bad advice at the end. But when it becomes obvious that you’re not going to win, when you give in to that, it’s a huge relief.

This is quite possibly the strangest bit of World Series memorabilia that I’ve seen. I saw it for sale at the local Shaws.

I was looking at the Fellsway in Medford on Google Maps Street View, and they seem to have caught the portal to another dimension.

View Larger Map

Now I’m going to be terrified when I need to get bedding for the guinea pigs.

There is no question that the convenience of Wal-Mart has led even the staunchest of Robert Greenwald fans darken their doorstep on occasion.  It’s only because Target is far closer that Mary Ellen and I have not been to a Wal-Mart in months, if not more than a year.

Wal-Mart has done many despicable things over the years.  Whether Sam Walton himself would have condoned what his company is doing we may never know.  However, the poor environmental record, anti-union practices and bad health care plans for employees are just the sort of banal evil that large corporations are prone to as a way to keep the bottom line in the black.

But Deborah Shank is another ball park entirely.

Deborah Shank worked for Wal-Mart in Missouri in 2000 when she was struck by a tractor trailer.  The crash and the resulting injuries have left her unable to take care of herself.  She has difficulty remembering new events.

After the accident, her Wal-Mart based insurance paid for her medical expenses as you would expect.  The Shanks’ auto insurance successfully sued the trucker’s insurance and received $417,000 which was put into a trust fund to help pay for Deborah’s ongoing care.

However, Wal-Mart, whose profits are measured in the billions of dollars per quarter, decided that it needed to recoup the expenses it had incurred in taking care of Deborah Shank.  Those expenses ended up being $469,000.  $50,000 more than she had received in the settlement.

This story is bad enough, but Wal-Mart adds so much value to everything, even this story has a twist. Deborah Shank’s son Jeremy, a US Army Corporal, was killed in Iraq on September 6, 2006.  Because of her condition, Deborah does not remember his death, or attending his funeral.  A year and a half later, the news of her son’s death hits her just as hard as it did the first time.

But as long as the half-million bucks that was spent on this woman’s care is recouped by the gigantic corporation, all’s well in the United States of fucked-up.

Mary Ellen, my wife, is the most important person in my life. She supports me when I dive in over my head, she pulls me back from the ledge, her love makes me want to make a difference in the world.

When I started this race, Mary Ellen and I made a pact with each other. If it got to be too much, for either of us, emotionally or financially, we would pull out of the race. We came to that point this weekend.

And so, I am officially announcing that I will not seek the nomination to be the Democratic candidate for State Representative. I would like to thank you for your support over these past few weeks and let you know that you helped keep me going as long as I did.

All is not ashes, however. Just because I’m not running anymore doesn’t mean that I won’t be involved. I am still very interested in keeping the 32nd Middlesex squarely in the Democratic column. For that reason, I am endorsing Katherine Clark for the Democratic nomination.

I knew Katherine was a strong progressive from her run for State Senator in 2004, but passion and drive are sometimes hard to gauge in local races. I met Katherine in person this past Wednesday, and I have no doubts that she is as passionate about the issues facing Melrose and Wakefield as I am.

From meeting Katherine Clark, I knew that if it came time to leave the race, that the district would still be in very good hands. She has my enthusiastic endorsement, and I will be working hard over the next few months to make sure that she is elected to the House of Representatives.

Please come out to Katherine’s kick-off gala tonight (December 12, 2007) at the VFW Hall at 428 Main Street in Melrose. It begins at 6:00 pm, and features the Commonwealth’s Attorney General Martha Coakley.

Thank you again for your support, and I urge you to support Katherine Clark.

Jeffrey Carter Gilson
Melrose, MA