I am in Williamsburg, VA, and yesterday I heard Thomas Jefferson say that there will always be differences of opinion among men but that civilized men with manners can always find a solution to these differences.    Poor old Tom would turn, no spin, in his grave if he knew how uncivilized politicians have become in our century.  And, particularly, how hostile, irrational and vicious a certain state senator in Missouri has become.

Background:  Missouri NEA and retired NEA members have been appealing to Republican legislators to represent the common good instead of taking their marching orders from the American Legislative Exchange Council.  ALEC’s goal is to dismantle our public education system in order to open up investment opportunities for private companies in the education business.  Although charter schools were originally a good idea, they are now being used by rich and powerful entities to divert public funds into private pockets.

One of my retired MNEA friends had a letter in our local paper a few weeks ago complaining that Sen. Brian Nieves was too busy getting ready to attend an ALEC meeting in Cincinnati to meet with his constituents who made the trip to the Capitol for that expressed purpose.

On Wednesday, May 11, that same friend and several other retired teachers went back to the Capitol to lobby on behalf of public school education.  They called and left a message asking for an appointment with Sen. Nieves but did not get a return call.   When they arrived at the Senator’s office, he was on the floor of the Senate, and his secretary was kind enough to turn up the speaker in the office so the retired teachers could listen.  Sen. Nieves was proudly proclaiming that his wife and three children were all skilled gun handlers and “excellent” shots.  This was in support of a bill to lower the age for carrying  hidden guns.

Shortly after his exhortation on behalf of the rights of citizens to bear arms, the Senator returned to his office, called the two retired teachers into his office and shut the door.  There on his desk was a copy of the newspaper with my friend’s LTE.   Two male aides stood on either side of the Senator, arms folded across their chests,  as the Senator began a screaming session that lasted close to 20 minutes.  His opening salvo was “You stupid f…..”   He shouted, shook the paper in the man’s face, walked around him several times all the while shouting obscenities and threats.  Sen. Nieves was in the Navy and ridiculed my friend for having served in the Army as if that had anything to do with the topic at hand.

My friend is a large man and could probably have decked Nieves but knew enough to restrain himself.  He tried talking sense to Nieves, but that just set Nieves off even more.  He called my friend “doughboy” pointing to his physique which is exactly what Nieves called the aide to his competitor last August in a similar verbal assault.    In fact, Nieves gave my friend a copy of the 12 page handwritten police report by the young man last summer.   Nieves’ point was that my friend had put his family at risk by noting in his LTE that Nieves was going out of town at a meeting.   (No, it doesn’t make any sense since Nieves is gone  3-4 days every week to Jeff City, but we are not talking about a rational person here.)

At one point, my other friend who was  “blindsided” by Nieves’ screaming  obscenities, held up his hands and asked if the three of them could sit down and talk quietly.  At which point, Nieves screamed at this man too.  Keep in mind these are well-bred gentlemen who are accustomed to civilized encounters with other people and who may never have experienced such low class behavior in their lives.  And they are both over 70 years old.

I asked the friend who was observing all of this why he didn’t take out his iPhone and record the episode, and he said, frankly, he was afraid to do so, especially with the two bodyguards glaring at them.  Personally, I’m not sure the two aides were there to protect Nieves as much as they were to keep Nieves from physically assaulting the two older men.  

When they were finally allowed to leave, the third friend with them was in the reception area and shocked.  He said he heard every word as did many people out in the hallway.  (I can’t imagine what life must be like for the two women who work in that office.)

My friend who was the target of Nieves’ attack called the Capitol Police to report the incident and was told that the police don’t file charges unless there is physical contact.  They then called the Senate Leader Rob Mayer who told them basically that this is how Nieves is and they shouldn’t have elected him if they didn’t want him to represent them.   Thanks a lot, Sen. Mayer.  So much for the gentlemen’s code of conduct in what passes for representative government in Missouri today.  

The men who conspired to secure their freedom from British tyranny left a record of warnings to future generations.  There will always be unscrupulous and greedy men trying to use the power of their elected position to enrich themselves materially or whose lust for power drives them to a state of mental incompetence.

Like a snake that can shed its skin, Sen. Nieves appeared at the Pacific High School graduation four days after his attack on mild-mannered retired teachers as if nothing had happened.  Glad handing, smiling, congratulating the graduates all the while conspiring to deprive future young Americans of a free, public education.

This man is a time bomb waiting to go off.  I just hope he doesn’t shoot somebody when he finally loses all control.  

In rummaging around Representative Vicky Hartzler’s (r) congressional website I happened upon a section on personal financial disclosure:

Financial disclosure statements for Representatives are available on the Internet on or about June 15 of the year they are filed. I took office on January 5, 2011. My first financial disclosure statement will be filed with the Clerk of the House on May 15, 2011, and will be available on the Internet through the Clerk’s Financial Disclosure Reports Database…

We’ll be looking forward to perusing that personal financial disclosure sometime around June 15th. Meanwhile, there are other interesting documents available from the Clerk of the House.

In this instance, a packet of disclosure forms concerning Representative Hartzler’s (r) trip [pdf] to California from January 27 through 29, 2011 (twenty-two days after taking office) for a Heritage Foundation conservative love fest. From Representative Hartzler’s (r) disclosure:

…Briefings on Congressional authority, federalism, regulation, welfare reform, entitlement reform, cutting spending, & national security challenges were attended. Also, the Reagan Library was toured and guest speakers…were heard…

Also, too.

…The Heritage Foundation is organizing all aspects of this conference. This is an educational conference with the purpose of discussing policy issues…

…Participation in this trip will give me background information and helpful policy materials important for conducting legislative business…

Maybe, like, you know, a Bill of Attainder?

There was this item in the attached program:

Really? It must be nice work if you can get it.

So, the question for Representative Hartzler is, does she think that Andrew Breitbart’s well-documented propensity for posting misleading videos qualifies him to be an expert on being a “great communicator”? Just asking. Especially since the latest hack job maligned instructors at two Missouri university campuses:

Everything You Need To Know About UMSL, UMKC Fake Video Debacle In One Easy Sitting

By Chad Garrison, Wed., May 18 2011 @ 11:39AM

Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, had University of Missouri – Kansas City professor Judy Ancel on her show yesterday.

As you likely know by now, Ancel and Don Giljum, a professor at University of Missouri – St. Louis, were targeted last month in a highly edited video appearing on the website of right-wing blogger Andrew Breitbart….

And what does this tell us about the quality of the content for the entire event if they let in any old hack as a presenter? Just asking.

Head smack. I was going to make a crack about John Yoo. It turns out he was a presenter [pdf] (at breakfast on January 29, 2011), too.

Who else attended from the Missouri Congressional delegation? Listed on the program: Todd Akin, Sam Graves, Billy Long, and Blaine Luetkemeyer.  

Today, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

CONTRIBUTION OF MORE THAN $5,000.00 RECEIVED BY ANY COMMITTEE FROM ANY SINGLE DONOR – TO BE FILED WITHIN 48 HOURS OF RECEIVING THE CONTRIBUTION

C001135 JAY NIXON FOR MISSOURI [pdf] 5/18/2011

James Blair IV

49 Manderleigh Estates Ct

Frontenac, MO 63131

Moneta Group Financial Consultant

5/18/2011

$10,000.00

Dollar, Burns, & Becker, LC

1100 Main Street Suite 2600

Kansas City, MO 64105

5/18/2011

$25,000.00

[emphasis added]

The money keeps rolling in.

I was overjoyed to learn that Rep. Todd Akin has finally announced that he is running for Claire McCaskill’s senate seat.  As a resident of the 2nd congressional district,  I can now look forward to a time when Todd Akin will no longer be my representative in Washington – and, if we’re all really lucky, Claire McCaskill will kick his backside (or, maybe Sarah Steelman will do it in the primary) and Todd can go home and lick his wounds, out of sight and, blessedly, out of mind. Of course, I’m still not out of the woods. It seems like all the classic, GOP super-crazies are lining up to try to take over Akin’s old territory.  We’ve got Crazy Ed Martin, Crazy Jane Cunningham (probably) , and, as per her announcement today,  Ann Wagner, who is mostly remarkable because her sanity is not consistently questioned.

However, some comments Wagner made recently in an interview in the über-right West Newsmagazine* might suggest that she too is just a little out to lunch in that endearing GOP way. In what was possibly a bid to reassure West County conservatives that she represents continuity with the reality-challenged Akin, Wagner described her motivation for getting back into domestic politics. It seems that it all started during the four years that she spent in Luxembourg as the U.S. ambassador:

She returned to America at the end of Bush’s term and said she immediately got the sense that things in the country had changed with the election of President Obama.

“I was leaving one socialist continent and had the feeling that perhaps I was returning to another one,” Wagner said. “That worried me, so I jumped right back into politics.”

Aren’t we fortunate that we have Ann “Wonder-Woman” Wagner ready to go to battle with the evil socialists in Washington D.C. – just like all those rich socialists she saw in Luxembourg where people enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world? And she’s got her job cut out for her:

“Our country is near financial ruin,” Wagner said, “The federal government has put handcuffs on job creators and their policies are killing private sector jobs.”

I realize that that last bit is just regular old GOP boilerplate – I think they may be legally required to say that – but I do think, since she’s so worried about “financial ruin” in the U.S., that it’s too bad she couldn’t have made it home a little bit earlier and tackled the real architect of our financial woes. You know – George W. Bush, the guy who cut off vital revenue streams to give tax cuts to rich men, spent money like a drunken sailor on things like unnecessary and seemingly endless Middle Eastern Wars, while letting Wall Street drive the economy into the gutter.

*West Newsmagazine, May 11, 2011, pp. 40-41. The text of the interview does not seem to be available online.    

For instance, on Big Oil:

Senator Claire McCaskill (D): Good morning. In Missouri today most Missourians are suffering and thinking about gasoline prices. They are not worried about what committee hearings are being held in Washington and they’re not worried about what letters are written. They’re just really worried about their family’s budgets because gas prices have really delivered a gut punch to, uh, most of the people who, uh, live and work in my state.

There are actually three parts to the price of gas. One is supply, one is demand, and one is speculation. And today we want to focus in on the first of those three, supply.

In May of two thousand and ten the refineries in this country were operating at an eighty-eight percent capacity. In other words they were using almost, uh, ninety percent of their ability to refine.

So, why is it today that these same refineries are only operating at eighty-one percent capacity? It is not because there is not enough crude oil in storage. There is plenty of crude oil in storage.

Refineries are the gateway of supply of gasoline in this country.

That is why the letter has been written to the FTC [Federal Trade Commission] to drill down, pardon the expression, and take a look at the refinery decisions that are being made.

This diagram shows you the refiner’s profit margin at that point in the process. They have obviously enjoyed a great deal of increase in profit just because they decided to deliver less fuel to Missourians and Americans across this country.

I think, um, the American people have, have every right to be cynical about the Big Oil and its influence on Washington. And this is just another piece of the puzzle that we need to get at as we try to take away taxpayer subsidies to Big Oil and hold big oil accountable for whatever may be going on in the supply chain that is hurting the families that I work for.

And then, to contrast, there’s Representative Todd Akin (r) who wants to be the junior senator from Missouri starting in 2013.

On preserving the Section 199 domestic manufacturing tax credit for the five largest oil companies, you know, corporate welfare for “the five biggest most profitable corporations in the history of the planet”:

FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 293

H RES 245      YEA-AND-NAY      5-May-2011      10:59 AM

QUESTION:  On Ordering the Previous Question

BILL TITLE: Providing for consideration of H.R. 1229, to amend the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to facilitate the safe and timely production of American energy resources from the Gulf of Mexico; and for consideration of H.R. 1230, to require the Secretary of the Interior to conduct certain offshore oil and gas lease sales

—- YEAS    241 —

Akin

[emphasis added]

Yep, there is a difference.

Bryan Wucher (pronounced wooker) just took eight weeks off from his job at Dierbergs Supermarkets. His union contract allows him to do that if he is taking the time out in order to educate voters. And did he ever educate a lot of them. Wucher has been knocking on doors in St. Charles County, Wildwood, Pacific, and South St. Louis County, to name a few of the locations.  He worked from 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., usually six days a week. In all weathers. He was deprived of time with his wife, who teaches, and his two young sons. His wife had to take up a lot of slack at home, but she understood and did it cheerfully. Now that the legislative session is over and Missourians are more or less safe from Republicans for another seven months, he can go back to work at Dierbergs. It’s going to seem cushy after what he’s been doing.

He and other AFL-CIO workers started by talking to people about the Right-to-Work (for Less) bills that the Corpublicans were pushing. When it became obvious that that attack was going nowhere in this legislative session, the union workers began educating people about the Paycheck Protection Deception bill.

Wucher laid out for me its two basic requirements. First, it would have levied a fee against every member of a public employee union. The unions would have had to pay, for each member, a sum that was a percentage of the employee’s dues or else $8, depending on which was less. AND, just so you know that this was not about raising revenues for the state but about punishing unions, note that the unions would have been forbidden to raise their dues by $8 per member to compensate for the loss. The point was to deplete political action funds for those unions. So the lege was talking about taxing teachers, policemen, firefighters and a host of people in other helpful professions, like nursing and social work, if they worked for public entities.

Let me say it again: this was not about getting funds for the state. It was about ideology. It was pure partisanship to try to grab money from unions even as Republicans shoveled state funds into the hands of businessmen. The Missouri Budget Project noted that Nixon has announced a state budget shortfall of $90 million for Fiscal Year 2012. That problem results in part from this giveaway:

The Office of Administration, Division of Budget & Planning estimates that phasing out the state’s corporate franchise tax, as approved by the Legislature this session, will reduce state revenue by $25 million in FY 2012 (increasing to a cost of $87 million annually when fully phased in).

Consider my cynical eyebrow raised.

But I digress. So consider my knuckles rapped. And let’s return to what Wucher told voters.

He said that the second problem with Paycheck Deception was that it required public employee union members, every year, to reauthorize the use of their dues for political purposes. What you do, if you’re a Republican legislator, is just keep chipping away at people’s rights: whether it has to do with unions, abortion, or voting. Set up barriers and institute bureaucratic red tape. Freedom my sweet patootie. They are not about freedom.

Paycheck Deception was Wisconsin again … only a little further south.

Wucher told me that as he talked to voters about Paycheck “Protection”, he offered, regardless of whether they agreed with him or not, to let them use his personal cellphone to call their state rep and comment on the bill.

All his work paid off. The bill failed.

In fact, all the Republican attacks on workers failed. Here are the most notable of them: Right-to-Work-for-Less failed. Paycheck “Protection” failed. Attempts to undo minimum wage protection failed. An attempt to expand charter schools and eliminate teacher tenure failed. Nixon vetoed a bill that would have reduced human rights in the workplace. The only dark spot occurred in the budget process because Republicans refused to replenish the workers’ compensation second injury fund.

Thanks to the Bryan Wuchers in the union movement, Missouri workers are safer than they would otherwise have been. And he can go back to Dierbergs–knowing that next spring, AFL-CIO workers will have to hit the pavement again.

Crossposted from Antemedius

While the silence from most of US mainstream media remains deafening, the print and online news publication for physicians published by the American Medical Association – American Medical News – reported yesterday May 16 that Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin has scheduled a bill-signing ceremony for May 26 during which he will sign a bill approved by the Vermont Democratic-controlled legislature, with the state Senate voting 21-9 to pass it on May 3, and the House adopting it on May 5 with a 94-49 vote “that paves the way for the state to launch a health system approaching a single-payer model later in the decade and to create a state health insurance exchange”.

The measure creates a powerful five-member Green Mountain Care Board, members of which will determine the benefits and craft a funding plan for Green Mountain Care, a state universal health plan. The board would have wide authority over state health spending and health system reform. The bill requires the governor to nominate Green Mountain board members by Oct. 1 and the Vermont Senate to confirm them.

All Vermonters would be eligible for the plan, which would cover hospital services and prescription drugs.

Shumlin had pledged to enact a single-payer health system during his January 6 inaugural address, saying “Let Vermont be the first state in the nation to treat health care as a right and not a privilege.”

The rising cost of healthcare for Vermont’s middle class and small businesses provides an equally daunting threat to economic prosperity. Just ten years ago our little state was spending $2.5 billion a year to stay healthy. Today we spend over $5 billion. That increase represents an enormous hidden tax on families and small businesses across our state. If left untethered, the rising cost of health insurance will cripple us.

That’s why we must create a single-payer healthcare system that provides universal, affordable health insurance for all Vermonters that brings these skyrocketing costs under control. Let Vermont be the first state in the nation to treat healthcare as a right and not a privilege; removing the burden of coverage from our business community and using technology and outcomes-based medicine to contain costs. By doing so, we will save money and improve the quality of our care.

Some will say it can’t be done. The special interests; insurance companies, pharmaceutical industry, medical equipment makers; the same lobbyists that spent hundreds of millions of dollars to make sure that real reform withered in Washington can be expected to exercise their will to protect their enormous profits.

Shumlin went on in his inaugural address to make clear that the current system of private health insurance is a job killer:

Others will say reform will destroy our existing healthcare system. But logic suggests – and our experience shows – that our current system is unsustainable; that underfunded reimbursements starve our doctors and hospitals; that duplication, waste, inefficiencies and rising costs will drive more rural providers into bankruptcy and destroy our quality of care, which is the very best in the land. I ask the defenders of the current system to explain how small businesses, municipalities and taxpayers can sustain double digit premium increases year after year.

The AMN article notes that:

The measure approved by the Legislature has three major parts:

• The Green Mountain Care Board, a five-member panel appointed by the governor with Senate confirmation. The board would design the state’s universal coverage plan, develop state health care budgets, and carry out health cost containment and payment reform.
• The Vermont Health Benefit Exchange, a state marketplace for health insurance as called for under the national health system reform law. The exchange would start operating by 2014 and could become the main source of health coverage in Vermont by 2017.
• Green Mountain Care, the state’s universal coverage plan, which could launch by 2017. The state would need federal approval to use federal health funds to help finance the plan. The state is expected to adopt payroll or income taxes to help pay for the plan.

…and goes on to note that:

the bill does not meet the strict definition of a single-payer plan, in which the government is the sole third-party payer for health care. “But it is as close as we can get at the state level,” said bill sponsor [Vermont Rep. Mark] Larson.

The measure would allow private health plans to continue in the state indefinitely. “You give up a significant part of the administrative savings by doing that,” said David Himmelstein, MD, founder of Physicians for a National Health Program. The organization, based in Chicago, advocates for a single-payer health system.

A true single-payer plan should have separate operating and capital budgets, Dr. Himmelstein said. It should require a single insurance fund to pay all claims, he said.

Green Mountain Care – greenmountaincare.org – is the official State of Vermont website for health insurance. It includes plans such as Catamount Health, Vermont Health Access Plan (VHAP), Dr. Dynasaur, Medicaid, and a number of pharmacy assistance and premium assistance programs.

Plan eligibility and cost is based on household size and income. There may be a program for you, no matter how much you earn. Call 1-800-250-8427 or complete the Green Mountain Care Screening Tool to find out which plan is right for you!

Each program has different eligibility requirements. Eligibility for these programs is based on your application. You do not need to apply for a specific program. We will screen you for the health care program for which you are eligible.

Click here to learn more about eligibility, covered services, and the cost of each Green Mountain Care plan.

Vermonters who need long-term care services may qualify for financial assistance through Choices for Care – Vermont’s Long-Term Care Medicaid Program.  Click here to go to the Department for Children and Families’ website for details about the program and how to apply.

Hopefully the new Vermont plan will begin the same kind of momentum for the U.S. that led to the  development of true national single payer health care in Canada, and go a long way towards redressing the inequities Holly Dressel illuminated forcefully in a 2006 Yes Magazine article…

  Publicly funded health care has its problems, as any Canadian or Briton knows. But like democracy, it’s the best answer we’ve come up with so far.

   Should the United States implement a more inclusive, publicly funded health care system? That’s a big debate throughout the country. But even as it rages, most Americans are unaware that the United States is the only country in the developed world that doesn’t already have a fundamentally public–that is, tax-supported–health care system.

   That means that the United States has been the unwitting control subject in a 30-year, worldwide experiment comparing the merits of private versus public health care funding. For the people living in the United States, the results of this experiment with privately funded health care have been grim. The United States now has the most expensive health care system on earth and, despite remarkable technology, the general health of the U.S. population is lower than in most industrialized countries. Worse, Americans’ mortality rates–both general and infant–are shockingly high.

   …

  The United States spends far more per capita on health care than any comparable country. In fact, the gap is so enormous that a recent University of California, San Francisco, study estimates that the United States would save over $161 billion every year in paperwork alone if it switched to a singlepayer system like Canada’s. These billions of dollars are not abstract amounts deducted from government budgets; they come directly out of the pockets of people who are sick.

British Columbia is one of three of the ten Canadian Provinces that charges a monthly premium for health insurance. In the other 7 provinces there is no monthly premium – the entire program is covered from general tax revenues.

Also, in British Columbia,

there are two premium assistance programs that offer subsidies to those in financial need: regular premium assistance and temporary premium assistance.

Regular Premium Assistance

Effective  January 1, 2010, the regular premium assistance program was enhanced to  allow more British Columbians to qualify and to allow persons already receiving  a partial subsidy to qualify for a higher level of assistance.

Regular  premium assistance offers subsidies ranging from 20 to 100 per cent, based on  an individual’s net income (or a couple’s combined net income) for the  preceding tax year, less deductions for age, family size and disability. The  resulting amount is referred to as “adjusted net income”. See the Monthly Premium Rates chart below for details of premium assistance rates.

In 2004 Morton Mintz writing for The Nation put together a very long and exhaustive analysis of the economic impacts of single payer health care, stating among other things that:

Publicly financed but privately run healthcare for all–including free choice of physicians–would cost employers far less in taxes than their costs for insurance. Universal coverage could also work magic in less obvious ways. For example, employers would no longer have to pay for medical care under workers’ compensation, which in 2002 cost them more than $38 billion. Auto-insurance rates would fall for them–and everyone–if the carriers were no longer liable for medical and hospital bills. You’d think that in its own selfish interest, Corporate America would be fighting to replace the existing system with universal health coverage. Yet it doesn’t lift a finger.

[snip]

“Double-digit increases in healthcare costs are a drag on economic growth,” says Henry Simmons, president of the National Coalition on Health Care, an alliance of groups working for healthcare reform. They “slow the rate of job growth,” “suppress wage increases for current workers,” “undercut the viability of pension funds,” “put American firms at a steep disadvantage in world markets” and produce “severe long-term budgetary problems” for the federal and state governments.

Two unrelated but mutually reinforcing reports coming out on a single day, August 19, validate the economic-drag theory. First was a study that found a “relationship between job growth and health-care costs” in eighteen industries between 2000 and 2003. It was done for the Kerry campaign by Sarah Reber, assistant professor of policy studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Laura Tyson, dean of the London Business School and former head of President Clinton’s Council of E
conomic Advisers and National Economic Council. The evidence, the authors write, “suggests that employers have reduced hiring in response to rising health insurance premiums,” and that rising premiums have led to a deterioration in the quality of jobs. In industries where health-insurance benefits accounted for a comparatively large share of total employee compensation, job growth was slower than in industries where they accounted for a smaller one. Thus, in the accommodation and food services industry, “benefits constituted about 12 percent of total compensation for workers…and jobs grew…by about 2.5 percent. In manufacturing…the benefits share was 18.5 percent and job losses topped 18 percent.” [Emphasis in original.]

This picture was reinforced by a New York Times article based on “government data, industry surveys and interviews with employers big and small.” It said:

employers big and small…remain reluctant to hire full-time employees because health insurance, which now costs the nation’s employers an average of about $3,000 a year for each worker, has become one of the fastest-growing costs…. Health premiums are sapping corporate balance sheets even more than the rising cost of energy.

[snip]

Canada has had a single-payer system for more than thirty years. (Australia, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Sweden and Taiwan also have one.) American executives who have run Canadian subsidiaries see it as a business boon. Take General Motors. In 2003 its costs of building a midsize car in Canada were $1,400 less than building the identical car in the United States (the comparable figures for DaimlerChrysler and Ford were $1,300 and $1,200). Such savings are no mystery. Canadian companies pay far less in taxes for health coverage for everyone than the premiums they would pay under the US system to provide their employees with comparable benefits.

Highly placed Canadian business executives affirm that single-payer nurtures free enterprise. A. Charles Baillie, while chairman and CEO of Toronto Dominion Bank, one of Canada’s six largest, hailed it in 1999 as “an economic asset, not a burden.” He told the Vancouver Board of Trade, “In an era of globalization, we need every competitive and comparative advantage we have. And the fundamentals of our health care system are one of those advantages.” He added: “The fact is, the free market…cannot work in the context of universal health care. While health care could be purchased like any other form of insurance…the risk and resource equation will always be such that, in some cases, demand will not be matched by supply. In other words, some people will always be left out.” (A recent report by the World Bank ranked welfare states like Denmark, Finland and Sweden high in international competitiveness. An author of the study said, “Social protection is good for business, it takes the burden off of businesses for health care costs.”)

In 2002, top executives of the Big Three automakers’ Canadian units joined Basil (Buzz) Hargrove, president of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) union, in signing a “Joint Letter on Publicly Funded Health Care.” At a press conference with Hargrove, Michael Grimaldi, president and general manager of GM Canada and a GM vice president, called single-payer “a strategic advantage for Canada.” The joint letter, also signed by Ford’s and DaimlerChrysler’s presidents and CEOs, Alain Batty and Ed Brust, said that while providing “essential and affordable healthcare services for all,” single-payer “significantly reduces total labour costs… compared to the cost of equivalent private insurance services purchased by US-based automakers” and “has been an important ingredient” in the success of Canada’s “most important export industry.”

[snip]

Corporate America is blowing a supreme opportunity to do well by doing good. Enlightened self-interest this is not.

……….

Read it all here…

Single-Payer: Good for Business

Morton Mintz, The Nation, October 28, 2004

Via The Hill:

Ex-Sen. Feingold says Lieberman, McCaskill, Hoyer fit for ‘shame’

By Michael O’Brien – 05/17/11 12:03 PM ET

Former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) has tabbed two Democrats and Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman (Conn.) as fit for “shame” for being too beholden to corporate interests.

Feingold, the former liberal senator who leads a new PAC called Progressives United, singled out House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Lieberman (Conn.), an independent who caucuses with Democrats, for a close relationship with corporations.

“This culture of corporate influence and corruption is precisely what we at Progressives United want to change. So we’ve decided to take on those legislators who are unwilling to stand up to corporate power, and we’re naming names,” Feingold wrote in an email….

I dunno, do you think it’s fair to lump Claire McCaskill in with Joe Lieberman? Oh, wait, maybe so. Never mind.

As of about 11:05 central this morning, Kansas City became a city without peer when Google announced that they were bringing their ultra high-speed fiber-optic broadband service to Kansas City, Missouri. Today’s announcement followed the announcement earlier in the spring that Kansas City, Kansas had won the honor of being the very first site selected for the new service, and Google said then that they were just getting started. Today, just two short months later, they followed through on that promise by announcing that they were bringing the service to Kansas City, Missouri as well.

Of course, they had good partners to work with. Once it was known that KCK would be the first place to get ultra high-speed internet, the newly-elected James administration (the new Mayor was sworn in on May first) and City Councilwoman and now Mayor Pro Tem Cindy Circo joined with KCP&L and started wooing Google into expanding here as well.

And speaking of KCP&L, they are pretty forward-thinking for a utility company. They have embraced the notion of carbon offsets and partnered with the Sierra Club to pioneer an offset program. They have also developed smart grid technologies around a first-of-it’s-kind Green Impact Zone in inner-city KC, and they have introduced all-electric vehicles into their fleet.

As part of the agreement, KCP&L offered Google access to their polls and infrastructure, including existing fiber-optic networks. By allowing Google access to existing infrastructure, service can be delivered faster and cheaper than building a network from scratch.

Mayor Sly James, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II and Mike Chesser, CEO of KCP&L

Milo Medin of Google and Mayor Pro Tem Cindy Circo

Kansas City is already a great place for entrepreneurship, thanks to the Kauffman Foundation, and we are already a center of innovation in science and research, thanks to Midwest Research Institute, the Stowers Institute and two major research universities in the heart of the city.

We have a lot to offer, not just a company like Google but all of the businesses that will be drawn here because of the access to ultra high-speed broadband — including one of the best community college systems in the country that can train the workers for those high-tech businesses that will follow the fastest internet in the world to Kansas City, where we already perfected Jazz, the Blues and Barbecue.

Folks, fair warning. This is going to be a rant. I just saw a post at FiredUp! that got me worked up. The gist:

Roy Blunt, who declared during his U.S. Senate campaign that “there isn’t any real science to say we are altering the climate path of the earth,” has cosponsored legislation to completely eliminate the Environment [sic] Protection Agency.

Why am I so exercised by this same ol’, same ol’ posturing? I just finished reading Hot: “Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth, by long-time climate reporter Mark Hertsgaard. It didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know, but it broke it all down, tracing the trajectory of changes that are already taking place, that cannot now be stopped, only mitigated. It painted a clear picture of the world my dear nieces and nephews and all the lovely children and grandchildren of my friends will have to face.

So what’s the world, literally, coming to? Nothing is absolutely, picture-perfect sure, of course, except that the world I know, that formed the experience of my father and his father will disappear. My beautiful California, the incomparable Central Coast where I grew up, is likely to dry up and blow away as the Sierra snow pack that waters the state continues to disappear. Low lying cities such New York and Miami will have to hustle to ward of the flooding that threatens them as sea level continues to rise. You doubt me? It’s already beginning to happen along the Atlantic seaboard. Island nations in the South Pacific are  already disappearing.

We will see more extreme storm activity, floods like this spring’s will be more commonplace – but may well alternate with equally debilitating droughts. You think Missouri farmers who oppose cap-and-trade have a point about somewhat higher immediate energy costs? When their farms are part of the new dust bowl, ask them if they maybe should have listened to the scientific Cassandras who carried the warning, instead of politicians on the energy industry dole, or those quislings who worry that climate change isn’t a winning political issue.  

Plants and animal species will die out or migrate, upsetting a biological equilibrium that has endured for millenia. Think there’s a problem with economic migration right now? Wait until whole populations are displaced by drought, flood, and loss of land mass. Think about starvation, disease and war in the underdeveloped areas, and diminished quality of life in the richer countries – nobody will get off free.

Do I really believe this or something like it will happen in the next 50 plus years? Absolutely – although the effects may be lessened if people begin now to plan on how to adapt to the coming changes – and to mitigate the rate of change. The weight of genuine authority, the word of people who have made the study of this issue their life’s work, is overwhelming.

For example, take the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, in the words of the Washington Post, “the country’s preeminent institution chartered to provide scientific advice to lawmakers.” A new report released by the National Research Council presents findings that indicate that:

Climate change is occurring, is very likely caused by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems.

Guess ol’ Roy just decided to ignore these experts charged with making their expertise available to guide his decisions. But that’s par for the course – stop and think about who always disputes the effects of climate change and the need to address it? As the Washington Post observes, we have been misled, and the most prominent culprits are just too dumb to hide:

None of this should come as a surprise. None of this is news. But it is newsworthy, sadly, because the Republican Party, and therefore the U.S. government, have moved so far from reality and responsibility in their approach to climate change.

Seizing on inevitable points of uncertainty in something as complex as climate science, and on misreported pseudo-scandals among a few scientists, Republican members of Congress, presidential candidates and other leaders pretend that the dangers of climate change are hypothetical and unproven and the causes uncertain.

To put it in local terms, think about ex-insurance shill, Blaine Luetkemeyer, and his war against the IPCC. Or good ol’ boy auctioneer Billy Long and all the other clowns who, get this, voted to refute the fact of climate change.

And then there’s always the oil exec’s best friend, Roy Blunt. I hope he enjoys the thirty pieces of silver he got from his big oil cronies – because if there is actually something like an afterlife, I’m sure he’ll get a very warm, make that blistering, reception.