Day One of the Occupation of Freedoom Square

October 7, 2011 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

The Raging Grannies opened the day's events.

I had the best of intentions. I was going to come back after each day of the Occupation of Freedom Square and blog.

But we spent 12 hours in the sun, took the wrong train, came back, finally arriving back in the room at 11 p.m. After I finished uploading my photos and finished sharing my excitement with my tripmates, I was done in.

As soon as I got to Freedom Plaza, I knew I was involved in something historic. Yes, the feeling was there when I stood with Occupy Asheville, but that was 150 people and this was 1,500 before noon.

And the crowd was peaceful and in great humor. People are angry, but there’s a sense that we’re finally doing something. We’re out in numbers large enough to be noticed. When we marched to the US Chamber of Commerce, we were 2,000 or more strong, and when we stood outside chanting, “Where are the jobs!?” you could hear us for blocks.

As we walked back to Freedom Plaza, we chanted, “Tell me what Democracy looks like.” “This is what Democrascy looks like!” Drivers honked their horns and gave us the thumbs up; pedestrians waved, took photos and flashed the Peace sign.

I did see one older, well-dressed man scowling and shaking his head. I figure he’s a banker.

I’m on my way back to the square now for Day 2.

The revolution will be tweeted

October 4, 2011 a world of progress, progressive living No comments
At the kickoff of Occupy Wall Street Asheville. The event started with a memorial to Troy Davis, who was executed in Georgia despite doubts about the fairness of his trial.

I’m heading up to Washington tomorrow with a couple of friends and I plan to stay for the first four days of the October 2011 Movement’s occupation of Freedom Square. When I get back, I’ll hook up with the Asheville crowd.

I’ve said for years that we need to take to the streets, and now, finally, we’re doing just that. We’re telling the 1 percent that we, the 99 percent, aren’t going to roll over and allow ourselves to be abused any longer.

The beauty of this movement is that it’s nonviolent — at least on our part.

The Right has been saying we have no cohesive message, but we do. The problem is, our message won’t fit onto a bumper sticker because there are so many things wrong now.

For years, those in power have managed to keep people apart by attacking different parts of society: education, health care, wages, the social safety net and more. They have risked our national well being with dangerous and illegal wars and other adventures.

But we who want reform are finding ways to work together now, and we have coalesced into one huge group. We have united and we are working together.

At first they tried to ignore us with a virtual media blackout. A friend of mine who works for a newspaper has told me no stories moved from The Associated Press for the first two weeks except for a couple of short briefs.

The New York Times changed an online photo caption after 700 protesters were herded onto the Brooklyn Bridge by police and then arrested for blocking traffic. The first caption told the truth; 20 minutes later, the caption said only that 700 protesters were arrested for blocking traffic.

The media are owned by huge corporations and they have a stake in the failure of this movement. Fortunately, we have social media. There have been attempts to stop tweets and Facebook posts, but enough of us are getting through.

I will tweet from Freedom Square and I will blog from a hotel in the evenings, unless I get arrested, which is entirely possible.

Corporate personhood must be abolished, Wall Street must answer for its crimes and we the people must re-take the reins of government.

 

Numbers don’t lie

September 15, 2011 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

One of the things Republicans like to say when they argue that we can’t afford health care for everyone is, “Numbers don’t lie.”

Well, here’s a number for you: Official estimates by the US Census Bureau say that 49.9 million Americans now are uninsured, an incerase of about a million people from a year ago.

Statistics say that translates to about 5,000 more premature deaths every year, bringing the likely total to about 50,000 Americans.

“That’s one plane crash every day,” says Dr. Margaret Flowers of Physicians for a National Health Plan. “It’s the equivelent of another 9/11 every month.”

Most people are unaware of these numbers because they rely on the corporate media for information, Flowers says, and I agree with her. Instead of getting the truth, we get distractions and misrepresentations leading most Americans to believe we can’t afford health care for everyone.

For example, in Monday’s debate, Wolf Blitzer’s “hypothetical” man chose not to pay $200 a month for insurance. I don’t know anyone whose insurance costs are that low unless they have huge deductibles — $10,000 and more — and co-pays. Almost two-thirds of Americans don’t even have $1,000 to lay out for an emergency at any given time, so I don’t imagine our “hypothetical” man is being cavalier in making his decision.

“The number of young people who can afford insurance and choose not to get it is very, very small,” Flowers said. “If you have these huge deductibles and co-pays, you’re going to go bankrupt if you get sick. So of you’re going to go bankrupt anyway, why shell out hundreds of dollars every month to a big corporation?”

So, Wolf Blitzer’s example is misleading to begin with, although you won’t get that information on CNN.

The money we’re spending on wars and the money we’re not taking in from the wealthiest Americans and corporations would more than pay for Medicare for every American. Instead, we tell people we can’t afford it and 50,000 people die every year — one every 11 minutes.

“It seems to me that’s morally reprehensible,” Flowers said.

So, here are a few of the true numbers you probably don’t know:

  • TheCensus Bureau says 55.3 percent of Americans were covered by employment-based plans in 2010, down from 56.1 percent in 2009. It was the eleventh consecutive year of decline, from 64.2 percent in 2000.
  • In Massachusetts, whose 2006 health reform is supposed to be the model for the Affordable Care Act, 370,000 people were uninsured in 2010, representing 5.6 percent of the population, a jump from 4.3 percent who were uninsured in 2009.
  • Some states saw more than a 3-percentage-point to 5-percentage-point increase in their uninsured rate (Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana and South Carolina). In terms of absolute numbers, Louisiana had the largest increase in the number of uninsured, 240,700, followed by New York (177,700) and South Carolina (173,300).
  • Among various population groups, the greatest loss of coverage was among working-age adults ages 35 to 64, people with incomes below $49,999, and people with disabilities.
  • Latinos continue to  face uninsurance disproportionately (30.7 percent), compared with blacks (20.8 percent), Asians (18.1 percent) and non-Latino whites (11.7 percent).
  • About 7.3 million children remain uninsured. Young people ages 19 to 25 had a drop of 1.6 percentage points in their uninsurance rate, a figure likely linked to the federal health law’s provision that allows dependent children to be covered under a parent’s health plan up to age 26.

I suggest you print this out and show it around. It’s what corporate America doesn’t want people to know.

The ‘hypothetical’ young man

September 14, 2011 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

My very un-hypothetical son, Mike, who died because he didn't have insurance.

I didn’t watch the GOP debate, but before I went to bed Monday night, I checked the headlines.

There it was: video of people cheering, “Yeah!” at the prospect of letting a “hypothetical” young man die rather than care for him. No one, not the candidates, not the moderator, not anyone in the audience reprimands them.

There is nothing hypothetical about it. About 45,000 people die every year — one every 12 minutes — because they don’t have insurance. The vast majority of them do not CHOOSE to be uninsured; they either can’t afford the premiums, or like my son, the insurance companies won’t sell to them.

My son had a birth defect, which is a pre-existing condition. It left him vulnerable to cancer, so he needed colonoscopies every year. He couldn’t get them, though, because he didn’t have insurance and he didn’t have the money to pay cash-up-front for them.

So, here is how it went for my not-hypothetical 30-year-old son:

First, he gets stomach pains. Eventually, they get bad enough so he decides to go into debt to see a doctor, who informs him he can’t have the medical tests he needs because he’s uninsured and he can’t pay the full cost, in cash, up front. The doctor writes in his medical record, “Patient needs a colonoscopy but can’t afford it,” and bills the patient for the appointment.

A week or so later, the patient goes to the Emergency Room, where he’s told it’s persistent gastroenteritis. Still no colonoscopy. The patient is unable to move his bowels and wonders why it would be diagnosed as gastroenteritis. He is billed for the ER visit.

A little more time goes by and the patient is still suffering, so he goes back to the ER.  This time the doctor says he has an ulcer and gives him an antibiotic. He is billed for the ER visit and the medicine.

Still a few more days and by now the patient has lost 30 pounds and is still in pain, still unable to move his bowels. His family is frantic with worry, but no one has enough money to pay cash up front for the colonoscopy. He goes back to the ER and is told he probably has diverticulitis. He is given a strong laxitive and sent home. He is billed for the ER visit and the medication.

The next week, the original doctor agrees to do a colonoscopy and bill the patient, who will be allowed to pay over several months. The patient is sent home without hearing any results. What he doesn’t know is that the doctor didn’t even finish the procedure because the colon was completely blocked. He never told the patient.

Three weeks later, the patient is down to 112 pounds. He is 6 feet tall. He is vomiting fecal matter and his kidneys are shut down. He is hours from death. The doctor realizes he probably could get in trouble for neglecting the patient so badly, so the patient is admitted to the hospital, where it takes five days to stabilize him.

By now, the patient’s cancer is Stage 3. It has spread. A charity pays the hospital, the doctors and the pharmaceutical company for chemo and radiation, so he at least gets treatment.

But six months later, the patient again is in pain and vomits up everything he eats.

This time, the doctors take a wait-and-see attitude, even though they know the radiation has caused another blockage. The patient drops to 104 pounds and family members threaten to take the story to the media as his doctors refuse to feed him intreavenously. They finally agree to feed him and a few days later, he is wheeled into surgery again.

The pathology lab finds “a few viable cells,” and the patient is told he will die. The doctors don’t bother to come talk to him about further treatment, even though he is on the oncology floor for another week. They don’t bother to treat a life-threatening infection in his incision.

The family searches and finds a doctor who will consult with the patient for about $400; as soon as he sees the patient, he knows he has to adopt him to give him any possibility of even short-term survival.

There’s more chemo — the patient has to leave his wife so the giant pharmaceuticals will get paid for his meds through Medicaid. The patient has no income because he has yet to be approved for disability, as though someone with his medical records might be scamming the system.

His family and friends gather round to support him, both financially and emotionally, but he was neglected too long, and he dies on April 1, 2009. His first disability check comes nine days later.

The doctors got paid by the charity; the pharmaceutical companies made hundreds of thousands of dollars from his chemotherapy. But the patient spent three years in horrible pain and in abject poverty. He was treated as though he wasn’t worth saving until he was adopted by a doctor with a heart, although by then it was too late.

His family still grieves, and always will. His friends still tell stories about his amazing courage, his gigantic heart and his decidedly off-kilter sense of humor.

He was not a bum; he was never lazy.

He was my son, and he didn’t deserve to be left to die.

For those whe cheer the thought of his death, I just want you to know I would never wish the same thing on you or anyone you love.

Sons-a-bitches!

September 6, 2011 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

So James Hoffa used the phrase “sons-a-bitches” in a speech to workers on Labor Day.

Big deal. Former Vice President Dick Cheney used the F-bomb on the Senate floor and the right never uttered a complaint. Bush was pictured flipping the bird to press photographers. Not a word. In fact, Most Americans never saw the photo.

But now the right is complaining Hoffa was vulgar and inciting people to violence.

Of course, if you heard the whole sentence, which most Americans have not, you know he’s talking about voting the sons-a-bitches out, not killing them.

Of course, Sarah Palin’s little targets on her web site weren’t there to signify a call to violence, nor were the words “lock and load.” The people who showed up at political rallies toting guns weren’t meant to threaten anyone.

But if the words or actions come from someone who’s worker-friendly, that’s different.

Thing is, if you celebrate Labor Day, you can thank the unions and the people who died to establish worker rights.

Before unions, companies owned entire towns. People were paid in company scrip — not money — which was redeemable only at the company store. Goods were expensive enough so that no one could afford what they needed, so workers were always in debt to the store, and to the company, which meant they couldn’t just quit; they had to keep working for the company until their debt was paid off.

Children as young as 5 or 6 went to work. Corporate people loved them because their little hands could fit into the machinery to untangle fabric or threads and get the machinery working again, and if they lost a finger or a hand in the process, there were always more little hands.

My grandparents both worked in textile mills in New England when they were children. My grandmother left school in the second grade to work in the mills. She taught herself to read and write and later taught my grandfather.

But workers toiled 12 to 16 hours, every day. There were no vacations or paid sick day, coffee breaks or retirement. There was no minimum wage, no Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. There was no Workers’ Compensation Insurance or Unemployment. There were few, if any, safety rules. Human beings were expendable.

Corporate thugs did all they could to keep the workers down, including beating them up and killing them if they tried to form unions or otherwise make working conditions better.

Those are the days big corporations, and the politicians they own, want to take us back to. You bet we want those sons-a-bitches out of government.

 

Maybe this is punishment …

August 27, 2011 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

Irene as it approached the US.

A Pagan friend of mine suggested that perhaps the earthquake was meant to shake up and dislodge some of our old and misguided ways and Irene is meant to wash them away so we can start anew.

My husband joked that perhaps God is punishing us for being so conservative.

You can be certain that eomeone will say in all earnestness that God is punishing us for being open to allowing gays and lesbians to marry, but I like to twist that up a bit. If the devastation is punishment, maybe it’s because of our mean-spiritedness toward people who need help: the elderly, people who are poor or have disabilities, children, the working class, people who can’t get health care without help.

Instead of asking the wealthy and huge, multi-national corporations to pony up and pay their share, we villify the poor and middle class and because the corporate media control information, many of us believe we  are  to blame for the country’s financial troubles. We believe people who are out of work and collecting unemployment are lazy, and that teachers make too much money and we can’t afford to give everyone access to quality health care. We believe the wealthy are “job creators,” even though they’re sitting on more money than at any time in our history, and they’re looking for ways to amass even more at the expense of the poor and middle class.

Most of us feel powerless in the face of all this abuse — the abnsed often do feel that way, like there’s no way out.

Of course, I don’t believe in a god who throws thinderbolts around, but I do believe a little bit in what the Bea Arthur TV characrter, Maude, used to say: “God’ll get you for that.” You reap what you sow, in other words. In some way, your mean-spiritedness will come back and bite you in the ass. I don’t need revenge; I just need to believe that somehow, some way, there will be asses chewed.

Call it God, Karma or the Way of the Universe, your ass will get bitten, Koch brothers, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, et al. Stay safe through the hurricane because We the Paople are coming in October and we’re staying until you’re willing to listen.

Fighting for restoration of the American Dream

August 15, 2011 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

I had the great pleasure of meeting Dr. Margaret Flowers during Sunday’s AWOP Radio show. Dr. Flowers is a pediatrician from Maryland who has pretty much left the practice of medicine to advocate for health care for all through Physicians for a National Health Plan.

Recently, she has expanded her advocacy to include ending the war in Afghanistan, supporting a living wage for all workers, stopping the attacks on unions, fully funding education, making corporations and the nation’s wealthiest indivuduals pay their fair share in taxes and developing clean energy sources.

Of course, all these issues are connected, and they’re all about social justice.

We in America haven’t seen such a huge divide between the rich and the rest of us since the Gilded Age of the Industrial Revolution. Unless we take action, that’s where we’re going.

Dr. Flowers has a new effort, The October 2011 Movement (www.october2011.org), which will sponsor an occupation of Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC, starting on Oct. 6, the 11th anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan. This isn’t just about health care, which is where she stared; this is about all the places we Americans have lost ground to the huge corporations that effectively rule our nation now.

I’ve called it the We the People effort. That’s because it’s our country, and it’s time to take it back.

This won’t be easy because the corporations and their lobbyists own the media, so we have to work harder to get the truth out there. You won’t see anything about October 2011 in the media; it probably won’t get a lot of coverage as it begins.

But if We the People can muster the courage to speak up and not go away until our stories are heard, we can make a difference.

Margaret Flowers is organizing the effort, but we all have to support it. There will be local efforts in addition to the Washington event. As progressives, we all need to be involved. Go to www.october2011.org and find out what you can do to take back our country.

I joined October 2011 because health care is my passion, but it is only part of the whole. We need to unite to work together for the betterment of our country. Together, we will be heard.

The cuts were a choice

August 11, 2011 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

At the state and federal level, programs that help the poor, the sick and the elderly are being slashed, as is education, which was supposed to put all people on a level playing field. Of course, that hasn’t been the case, as schools in wealthy towns were able to fund their schools better.

But now everyone is affected as class sizes increase and teacher aides, custodians and administrators are laid off. Money for new buildings and upkeep of older buildings is disappearing, and it will be all of us who suffer as children don’t get the education they need.

Education has been under attack for 30 years as legislatures have cut spending and standardized testing has increased. Teachers have little or no time to be creative or to help students develop critical thinking skills. And people with a lack of critical thinking skills are much easier to convince they should vote against their own best interests.

Too many Americans really think we can’t pay for education, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. I call it the politics of scarcity, and it’s wrong.

We are not broke.

Legislators in Raliegh, in other state capitols and in Washington have chosen to make these cuts. They have slashed taxes on the people who can most afford to pay. They call them the “job creators,” but there are no jobs. US corporations are sitting on a nearly $2 trillion surplus that they’re not investing back into the economy.

Legilsators can choose to raise taxes on the wealthy and leave the social safety net in place. Instead they have chosen to cut taxes and let the nation’s most vulnerable drop through what’s left of the net.

This was a choice. It was not the choice most Americans wanted. The majority of people in the United States don’t want Medicaid, Medicare or Social Security touched; they don’t want our children’s education compromised by injudicious cuts.

But our legislators have chosen to ignore the will of the people.

Don’t forget this come election time.

After all, we have a choice, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When jobs mattered

August 5, 2011 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

I went to Cleveland, Tenn., this week to watch my granddaughter dance in a national competition, and on the way back I decided to do a little sightseeing.

US Route 74 travels along the Oconee River for awhile, the site of three dams built in the 1930s by the Tennessee Valley Authority. The first one (the westernmost) is the biggest, so I stopped to look and take a couple of pictures.

Standing by the map of the TVA dams was an older man who was telling everyone how his father helped to build this and several other dams in the region. He pointed some of the dams out, describing the work his father had done.

“Got to the point he knew as much about building dams as anyone,” he said. “He was gone a lot, but we had food and a place to live.”

Building these dams and other projects, including the Blue Ridge Parkway, were a way to put people back to work during the Great Depression.

The jobless rate now is approaching what it was then, if you count all the people who have been unemployed longer than 99 weeks and aren’t part of the statistics, plus the people who have had their hours cut back from 30 to 10 because they work part-time and have no bargaining rights. And let’s not forget the people who are working at menial jobs for $8 an hour because they can’t find anything in their field.

Last week, Congress and the President made matters worse by codifying the Republican desire to withhold money and services from the people who need them instead of increasing taxes on people who can well afford to pay.

There will be no TVA for this job crisis, no Works Progress Administration, Blue Ridge Parkway or schools construction. The current Congress believes it’s better to squeeze the poor and let our nation’s infrastructure crumble, our electrical grid disintegrate and our people starve.

If we don’t care that people are losing their homes at an alarming rate and that children are going to bed hungry, then we ought to care about national security. How can we as a nation compete in a global market when our roads and bridges are unsafe and our electrical grid antiquated? Our children’s education is lacking and it’s getting worse as budgets are cut at the local, state and national levels.

Once upon a time, we cared that people were out of work and that we needed a better power grid and roads. We spent money on those things and built a great nation that could compete and even excell on every level. We trained engineers and laborers and we built roads, dams and electrical lines. These jobs weren’t just busy-work, they were important, and much of the word done during the 1930s stands today as a testament to the power of government to make people’s lives better.

It’s awe-inspiring to look at the Oconee 1 Dam and know that families were housed and fed because of the honest work its construction provided.

Today, the richest Americans hoard their wealth and ignore the needs of working people as the nation crumbles around them.

Patriotic? I thimk not

The budget deal is a raw deal for Americans

August 1, 2011 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

So, we have a “deal” to precent the United States from defaulting on its debts.

I might be willing to call it a deal made in good faith if the thing had contained any tax increases on the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans, or maybe if it had closed a few tax loopholes on big corporations.

But the last-minute deal to raise the debt ceiling — which many Constitutional scholars say is unconstitutional itself — did nothing for everyday Americans. It tied the hands of those in Congress who do give a damn about the jobless, homeless and sick people in this country, making it nearly impossible to do anything to help those in need.

And the crisis it averted was manufactured by right-wing idealogues to disable the government’s ability to do its job.

They keep talking about the debt as though it’s the most important thing and it isn’t. The most important thing right now is to get the economy back on its feet.

The Tea Party has won another victory in its effort to destroy our Democracy, and the rest of us have nothing to be happy about.

Why President Obama refused to just sign an executive order to raise the debt ceiling using the authority of the 14th Amendment, I don’t know. It seems he’s afraid of offending the very people who are destroying his presidency and this nation.

The economy is a mess because of hedge fund traders and other immoral, greedy Wall Street executives, who continue to make record profits and pay lower tax rates than their secretaries. They manage to villify people who are out of work and those who work harder and harder for less and less of the economic pie, they control the message to the point that many Americans believe they themselves are at fault for the troubles.

And President Obama caves to them as though he’s being blackmailed.

This deal is not good news. It’s more of what’s destroying us. I think it borders on treason.

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