MoveOn

Contract for the American Dream And The Emergency Jobs Bill

Dave Johnson — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 13:44:38 -0400

Rebuild The Dream

As I wrote earlier in Ten Years Ago We Were Paying Off The Nation's Debt. But Then We Elected Obama., the The American Dream Movement is rolling out their Contract for the American Dream. The Tea-Party-fascinated press is largely ignoring this, but this movement represents the majority of the public, and can't be ignored for long.

Today on a call with bloggers and the press to announce the The American Dream Movement Van Jones described the movement's origins. He has been traveling around the country giving talks and talking to people, and found that it seemed that the American people had smarter solutions to our problems than our politicians seemed to. So he helped set up an "open source" process to gather ideas from regular people. 131,203 participated, held 3,600 house meeting, and came up with 29,000 ideas. These ideas have been distilled down to the ten most popular ideas, which are now the Contract for the American Dream.

No Help From FOX News

Unlike the Tea Party, they had "no help from FOX TV or the billionaire Koch brothers." And unlike the Tea Party, which began with much smaller numbers, the American Dream movement is getting almost no press attention.

The Emergency Jobs to Restore the American Dream Act

Rep. Jan Schakowsky was on the call to talk about her upcoming Emergency Jobs to Restore the American Dream Act. She said this legislation reflects the spirit of the Contract for the American Dream. She said we have a jobs crisis, a disappearing-middle-class crisis, a disparity-in-income crisis. America is not broke, the top 100 make $27 million per household. This disparity means we have a shrinking and disappearing middle class.

She said that Washington is about cuts that will make jobs situation worse, and the economy worse. We have to grow our way out, there really is no other choice, and that means put people back to work so they become taxpayers.

The Emergency Jobs To Restore The American Dream Act creates 2.2 million jobs for 2 years to put the economy back on track. These are jobs for teachers, firefighters, cops, health care providers, maintenance, construction, and jobs for youth in parks improvement and other things.

This is paid for by her Fairness in Taxation Act, with new tax brackets 45% income over 1 million, 49% over a billion. This will generate about $800 billion over 10 years. This is not punishment or revenge, it is fairness. To have a robust economy Have to have a robust middle class, and care about our elders.. We have to make sure youth can go to college.

The Same People Who Led Us Off A Cliff

Economist Dean Baker was next on the call. He said it is amazing as an economist to follow what’s going on here. He couldn’t envision that after the collapse we would have the same people determining the policy agenda who just led us off a cliff.

Our huge deficits are the result of the economy collapse, now that is turned on its head that it is government spending, by people who don’t know the facts or just are not being honest. We have a big deficit because the economy collapsed, to fix it we get the economy going again. It is simple to show and in fact that is the history. To get the deficits down, get people working. We have 25 million un- or under-employed, if we don’t get them employed they fall out of the labor force, may never work again, politicians should be taking that very seriously. This has to be front and center and all polls show it is what is on people’s minds.

Will Serious People Take The People Seriously?

Justin Ruben of MoveOn.org was next on the call. He said that serious people in DC won’t take this plan seriously.
It represents 5 million MoveOn members and majority of the American people, and a majority of economists say this plan makes sense. None of this is seriously being talked about in Washington right now and that needs to change.

We already have a Tea Party downgrade and Tea Party recession and the government is about to enact even more economy-slowing cuts on the middle class. So people are wondering what DC is thinking. This is what is fueling the rise of the American Dream movement.

This movement began with people standing up to the attacks in Wisconsin. It is about people fighting back. We will take this contract into the streets in August, to Congressional town halls, and if they won’t do town halls we’ll find them wherever they are. We are going to make sure our elected officials in Washington hear that the American people want jobs not cuts, want everyone to pay their fair share, and want to get the economy moving again.

The American people are not giving up on the American dream.

America Can Be Great Again

Jeff Parcher of the Center for Community Change said they are joining this movement to raise the voices of low income people into the policy debates that affect them. They are going to address joblessness, poverty and material deprivation and change the conversation in Washington.

We have a revenue problem, by rectifying that America can be great again.

In Every Laundromat, Barbershop, Etc, People Will Agree

Van Jones then summed up: They have organized in every congressional district. This has been growing since Madison. The network, movement, has organized in every district in record time. They can take any one of those 10 points in the Contract for the American Dream, and because of such broad participation, we can take this into every laundromat, barbershop, etc, and people will agree.

The Contract for the American Dream

The Preamble to the Contract for the American Dream

We, the American people, promise to defend and advance a simple ideal: liberty and justice . . . for all. Americans who are willing to work hard and play by the rules should be able to find a decent job, get a good home in a strong community, retire with dignity, and give their kids a better life. Every one of us – rich, poor, or in-between, regardless of skin color or birthplace, no matter their sexual orientation or gender – has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That is our covenant, our compact, our contract with one another. It is a promise we can fulfill – but only by working together.

Today, the American Dream is under threat. Our veterans are coming home to few jobs and little hope on the home front. Our young people are graduating off a cliff, burdened by heavy debt, into the worst job market in half a century. The big banks that American taxpayers bailed out won’t cut homeowners a break. Our firefighters, nurses, cops, and teachers – America’s everyday heroes – are being thrown out onto the street. We believe:

AMERICA IS NOT BROKE
America is rich – still the wealthiest nation ever. But too many at the top are grabbing the gains. No person or corporation should be allowed to take from America while giving little or nothing back. The super-rich who got tax breaks and bailouts should now pay full taxes – and help create jobs here, not overseas. Those who do well in America should do well by America.

AMERICANS NEED JOBS, NOT CUTS
Many of our best workers are sitting idle while the work of rebuilding America goes undone. Together, we must rebuild our country, reinvest in our people and jump-start the industries of the future. Millions of jobless Americans would love the opportunity to become working, tax-paying members of their communities again. We have a jobs crisis, not a deficit crisis.

To produce this Contract for the American Dream, 131,203 Americans came together online and in their communities. We wrote and rated 25,904 ideas. Together, we identified the 10 most critical steps to get our economy back on track and restore the American Dream:

The Contract for the American Dream consists of 10 critical steps to get our economy back on track: (click through for details and ways to sign up and help)

I. Invest in America's Infrastructure
II. Create 21st Century Energy Jobs
III. Invest in Public Education
IV. Offer Medicare for All
V. Make Work Pay
VI. Secure Social Security
VII. Return to Fairer Tax Rates
VIII. End the Wars and Invest at Home
IX. Tax Wall Street Speculation
X. Strengthen Democracy

The Emergency Jobs to Restore the American Dream Act

Rep. Schakowsky is introducing the The Emergency Jobs to Restore the American Dream Act. This bill:

Creates over 2 million jobs to address the real crisis facing America: the jobs crisis.
Emergency jobs are created for two years, to provide time to get the economy back up and running.
Emergency jobs will meet critical needs to make American communities stronger.
Costs $221 Billion ($110.5 billion for each of fiscal years 2012 and 2013).
Can be fully paid for through separate legislation such as Rep. Schakowsky’s Fairness in Taxation Act, which creates higher tax brackets for millionaires and billionaires, eliminating subsidies for Big Oil, and through eliminating tax loopholes for corporations that ship American jobs overseas.

Here is a summary of what's in the Emergency Jobs to Restore the American Dream Act:

School Improvement Corps – Creates 400,000 construction and 250,000 maintenance jobs through new funding to public school districts for needed school rehabilitation improvements ($100 billion)
Park Improvement Corps – Creates 100,000 jobs for youth between the ages of 16 and 25 through new funding to the Department of the Interior and the USDA Forest Service’s Public Lands Corps Act. Conservation projects on public lands include restoration and rehabilitation of natural, cultural, historic, archaeological, recreational and scenic resources. ($400 million)
Student Jobs Corps – Creates 250,000 more part-time, work study jobs for eligible college students through new funding for the Federal Work Study Program. ($850 million)
Neighborhood Heroes Corps –
a. Teachers: Direct funding to states to hire, re-hire, and prevent lay-offs of 300,000 teachers. ($40 billion)
b. Cops: New funding to hire 40,000 police officers. ($10 billion)
c. Firefighters: New funding to hire 12,000 firefighters. ($2.4 billion)
Health Corps - Grants to hire at least 40,000 health care providers, including physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurses, and health care workers to expand access in underserved rural and urban areas. ($8 billion)
Community Corps – Creation of a new Community Corps that will create 750,000 jobs to do needed work in our communities, including energy audits and conservation upgrades, recycling and reclamation of reusable materials, urban land reclamation and addressing blight, including foreclosure and disaster-affected areas, rural conservation work, public property maintenance and beautification, housing rehabilitation, and new housing construction modeled after Habitat for Humanity. ($60 billion)

Standards for new programs:

Priority for jobs given to the unemployed, particularly those who have exhausted their unemployment benefits (the “99ers”).
Formulas will allocate fair distribution of funding and jobs among states, with targeting based on high unemployment and need.
Ensures that jobs don’t undercut the rights of other workers or lower wages.
Ensures work is additive and doesn’t displace current workers or take business from small/local businesses.
Includes trigger for phase-out if unemployment drops below 5%.

Fully Paid For

The steps in the Emergency Jobs to Restore the American Dream Act are paid for by Rep. Schakowsky's Fairness in Taxation Act, introduced in March.

The Fairness in Taxation Act asks enacts new tax brackets for income starting at $1 million and ends with a $1 billion bracket. The new brackets would be:

$1-10 million: 45%
$10-20 million: 46%
$20-100 million: 47%
$100 million to $1 billion: 48%
$1 billion and over: 49%
The bill would also tax capital gains and dividend income as ordinary income for those taxpayers with income over $1 million.

What To Do

Go to the Contract for the American Dream page and sign up.

Download the Contract as a PDF.

Print the Contract.

Distribute the Contract by leaving stacks of them everywhere, laundromats, barbershops, coffeeshops, etc.

Tell people to go to http://contract.rebuildthedream.com/

Highway Robbery and the Progressive Future

Zach Carter — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 09:27:33 -0500

Kevin Drum gives a pretty thorough analysis of President Obama’s open assault on the mainstream Democratic Party at yesterday’s press conference, and declares that “programmatic liberalism is dead.” I think that’s more than a little exaggerated, but regardless, it’s not a fair description of the policies at stake in Obama’s lousy tax deal. The tax deal is fundamentally about whether the United States still believes it has a basic commitment to protect its most vulnerable citizens from harm. For so basic an intuition to be the subject of political negotiation should be abhorrent to anybody of any ideological stripe in today’s United States. The deal is not a signal of strength or weakness on the left or the right, it is a symbol of rank political cynicism.

Protecting the most vulnerable members of society is not a liberal idea. It is the basic moral intuition of every philosophical and religious tradition but two: cruel interpretations of Friederich Nietzsche, and a brand of libertarianism far more radical than anything in contemporary American politics. Republicans were threatening to cut off unemployment benefits and a poverty tax credit for families with children. Let me emphasize: poverty relief for children.

These policies should never, ever be the subject of political negotiation. Obama could have raised a fuss, he could have publicly shamed his adversaries for threatening a basic moral building block of a decent society. Instead, he offered absurd giveaways to the rich that have not only been the ire of “the professional left,” but of the mainstream Democratic Party for almost a decade. Nearly every Democrat in Congress is now wondering if a primary challenge will be the result of support for this deal. And Obama now has the gall to chastise “the left” for being outraged.

A decent society takes care of its poor. Committing to conservative political thinking does not require one to believe that the poor should suffer for no reason. The number of poor families in the United States has gone up dramatically during the worst recession since the Great Depression, just as the number of unemployed parents has skyrocketed. These problems are caused by major structural economic problems, not by laziness or recklessness on the part of families (and even if it were only the result of laziness or recklessness, a decent society would not take that out on the children of the lazy and reckless). Amid mass poverty, any policymaker should support poverty relief.

This is a moral intuition even more fundamental than the commitment to equality of opportunity—the root belief that a decent society does not let its members endure extreme suffering needlessly. It is not egalitarian, it is not Marxist, it is not socialist, it is not liberal. It is just something a decent society does. It can be described with economic language, but it is not fundamentally an economic problem, unless short-term poverty relief somehow results in total economic calamity. Needless to say, the United States faces no such crisis from aiding its poor.

But Obama did not make this case. He didn’t even try. He entered a room with Republican leaders, and returned to declare they had been given everything they wanted.

Shortly before the deal was announced, Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story of The New York Times ran a numbers on how the Bush tax cuts affect Wall Street bonuses. For every $1 million in bonus payouts, they calculated, the Bush tax cuts allow Wall Streeters keep an additional $40,000 to $50,000 in income.

The price Republicans demanded for allowing the United States to participate in the basic moral foundation of every decent society the world over was $40,000 for every $1 million in Wall Street bonuses. That should be appalling to liberals and conservatives alike, and a President who does not go to the mat to shame his opponents under such circumstances is bound to lose respect among his followers.

Via a link to a prior post, Kevin defines “programmatic liberalism” as the Progressive Era of 1911 – 1919, the New Deal of the 1930s, and the 1960s. All of these involved significant restructurings of the United States government and its institutions. This is not the sort of thing under discussion in the tax debate. Not even close.

“Should the poor be sustained?” Is a much different question than, “Is it the proper jurisdiction of government to regulate X given recent events?” All kinds of ideological issues can play into regulatory questions. But for quite literally centuries, there has been a broad moral consensus about the right of the poor to live (this glosses over racism and sexism, of course). The “professional left” is not demanding new institutions or government functions. It’s demanding that our society actually be a society.

And so Obama’s assault on what he called “purist” and “sanctimonious” left cannot be viewed as anything but outrageous. MoveOn and DailyKos and FireDogLake are not actually demanding leftist positions on tax policy—their opponents are threatening outright brutality, and the President of the United States is not seriously challenging those threats. Obama’s willingness to capitulate does reveal the man’s fundamental human compassion—but it also portends serious dangers. The next major negotiation, as Matt Yglesias and Mike Konczal have emphasized, will be over raising the federal debt ceiling. If it is not raised, the United States will have no choice but to default on its debt, and the global economy will collapse. If Obama is willing to throw up the Bush tax cuts to preserve the basic moral foundation of society, then he will certainly offer anything to prevent mere economic Armageddon. With this deal, the President has signaled that whenever a difficult choice arrives, he will roll over.

Here’s a leftist tax position: restore tax rates on millionaires to Johnson-era levels of 90 percent, and use that money to guarantee free college education for the children of families earning less than $50,000 a year. Nobody on the “professional left” is demanding that right now. We’re demanding that the basic functioning of society not be ransomed away in the name of bigger bonuses, and that negotiations over economic and tax policy not allow the most vulnerable members of society to be used as bargaining chips.

So perhaps this is what Kevin means. Now that a Democratic president is willing to cave on negotiations about the moral foundation of society, liberals cannot hope for serious economic progress for several decades. I see things otherwise. Two years ago, pundits were forecasting the end of conservatism as it has been practiced for 30 years. “Liberal” thought is not dead. Our president is simply ineffective.

America "Speaks" On Saturday, But There's An Anti-Social Security Script

Richard Eskow — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 12:20:43 -0400

This Saturday an organization called AmericaSpeaks is sponsoring a "National Town Meeting" on the budget deficit in twenty cities. Although organizers claim to be non-partisan, a review of their materials reveals an ideological bias in some key sections - a bias that's likely to manipulate attendees into "spontaneously" deciding that the social safety net must be cut (with some limited tax increases possibly thrown in for camouflage.)

AmericaSpeaks (the odd formatting is theirs) is part of a well-coordinated media campaign. It's no coincidence that the self-described centrist group Third Way sponsored an event this week in Washington, just before this "town meeting," which also emphasized "defeating the deficit." That event was called "Back in Black," which happens to be the name of a song by rock group AC/DC. Given what's likely to happen if we slash spending even more in this troubled economy, they might have done better to name it after another one of the band's favorites: "Highway to Hell."

The "town meeting" is being touted as a politically-neutral chance for people to be heard but, while their materials are genuinely objective in some places, the presentation is manipulative in others. "America" may "speak" on Saturday, but organizers seem to be writing its script, encouraging participants to make the right statements for media consumption. The objective may be to promote the idea that "ordinary Americans" are more worried about the deficit than they are about jobs, health coverage, or financial security. Consider this table:

That Social Security figure looks shocking. But the table doesn't tell you that Social Security is a separate program, an independently-financed social insurance fund that can pay all of its planned benefits until 2037 or 2042 (depending on which assumptions are used), after which it can pay 75% of those benefits. For attendees who don't have that information - that is, most of them - it will look as if this self-funded and independent program is eating the Federal budget alive.

There's also this list of revenue choices:

Several, undoubtedly more popular options are missing from this list, like "restore taxation to pre-George W. Bush levels" or "increase taxes on the extremely wealthy." (You don't see an option for "taxing banks and hedge fund managers to pay for their bailouts" in there, either.)

The workbook's section on "Changing the Health Care System" stacks the deck pretty heavily, too. It lists only three options: First comes something called "Premium Support," which paraphrases a radical privatization approach pushed by the Cato Institute. Then there's "Single Payer" (not the more popular phrase "Medicare For All"), which is given a three-sentence summary whose third sentence reads as follows: "Federal policymakers would make the major decisions about the health care services that Americas (sic) would receive and how these services are distributed among people of different ages, incomes, and so on."

Death panels, anyone?

The workbook repeats stale, misleading talking points from the health reform debate. It doesn't explain that "Single Payer"/Medicare For All would be no more intrusive on medical decisions than today's extremely popular Medicare plans, or that it would eliminate profit-driven corporate decision-making from the health process.

Their third medical choice was "More Regulation Under the Current System." It reads in part, "Policymakers would regulate this system much more, with government boards providing stricter rules on the service (providers) must deliver ..." Instead of presenting this mythical proposal, which no one has actually proposed, they could have described the real proposal from which this Frankenstein variation has been invented. It's called "evidence-based medicine," and it would involve discovering which treatments are most effective and encouraging their use. While there's a genuine debate to be held about evidence-based medicine, it shouldn't involve scare tactics.

Needless to say, there's no mention of other popular cost-saving proposals, like the public option plan that would put the government and private insurance in competition. Polls show the public option was supported by 71% of Americans and more than half of all Republicans.

In other words, the workbook's designed to manipulate attendees into rejecting "nutty proposals from the left and right" so they can be guided into conversations about cutting Social Security and raising premiums or out-of-pocket costs in Medicare and Medicaid.

Why? Why would anyone encourage the public to support slashing needed programs while so many people are hurting? Paul Krugman keeps dispelling many of the Social Security myths the organizers continue to repeat. He did it again a couple of days ago in discussing the President's Deficit Commission, which is one intended audience for Saturday's event. The AmericaSpeaks agenda flies in the face of recommendations from Krugman, fellow Nobel winner Joseph Stiglitz, and other economists who believe we need to stimulate the economy before moving aggressively on the deficit.

As Dean Baker explains, some of this posturing is probably intended to impress the bond markets. These bond markets include the speculators that recently crashed the economy and were bailed out with trillions of taxpayer dollars - trillions of dollars that AmericaSpeaks probably won't mention on Saturday.

Who benefits from this campaign? Anybody who makes a lot of money and doesn't want to pay taxes will benefit from slashing government programs. Corporations who can cut pensions even further once working Americans stop expecting financial security in their old age. And Washington insiders who, insulated from the public's pain, want to demonstrate their "courage" and "toughness" by demanding sacrifices from the least among us.

MoveOn is encouraging its members to attend the Town Meetings, in the cities listed here. either as enrollees or to participate in rallies held outside. In an email blast to its subscribers, MoveOn said that "we need a strong showing to preserve the promise of Social Security for generations to come" and suggested its members register. They're right. Saturday's event has been designed to lead well-meaning people toward some cynical conclusions, and other points of view will be needed to bring a more honest perspective to the proceedings.

"No More Secrecy": Open The Wall Street Negotiations and Empower Voters

Richard Eskow — Wed, 26 May 2010 21:18:53 -0400

The Campaign for America's Future (CAF), CREDO, and MoveOn have launched a petition campaign to ensure that the House/Senate deliberations on financial reform be "fully transparent." The good news? The government has the ability, the resources, and the talent to make this process the breakthrough in "open government" the President has long promised. The bad news? Anything less than "full" transparency will lead to a weaker bill, less public confidence in government, and even more anti-incumbent anger.

The goals must be clear: First, a truly transparent process should reduce the ability of lobbyists and other backroom dealers to influence the proceedings. Second, it must let the American people see which elected officials are defending them and which are carrying water for Wall Street. Third, the process should give the public both the time and the tools to make an informed decision about the final bill - and then express their feelings to their representatives.

Robert Borosage of CAF explained the reasons for the petition to Brian Beutler of TPM: "... (W)e want the legislation put online, the differences put online, the issues they're going to talk about put online." The urgency of those comments is underscored by the fact that conference participants have collectively received nearly $58 million from the finance, insurance, and real estate sectors most affected by this bill.

It is time for the President to weigh in, too. After all, he articulated a vision of open government - and promised to deliver it - during a forceful campaign speech in 2008: "I will make our government open and transparent so that anyone can ensure that our business is the People's business," he said. "I am going to make it impossible for congressmen or lobbyists to slip pork-barrel projects or corporate welfare into laws when no one is looking because, when I'm president, meetings where laws are written will be more open to the public. No more secrecy. That's a commitment I'm going to make to you as President: No more secrecy."

The President outlined a clear vision of open government in that speech:

"When there's a bill that ends up on my desk as President, you, the public, will have five days to look online and find out what's in it before I sign it so that you know what your government is doing. When there are meetings between government lobbyists and a government agency, we will put as many of those meetings as possible on line for every American to watch. When there's a tax bill being debated in Congress, you will know the names of the corporations that would benefit and how much money they would get, and we will put every corporate tax break and every pork-barrel project on line for every American to see. You will know who asked for them, and you can decide whether your representative is actually representing you."

Chairman Barney Frank of the House Financial Services Committee promised televised hearings back in March, saying "nothing will be ratified without a public debate." But he appeared to roll back his pledge somewhat this week. "“The negotiations will go on in private,” Frank said, “but the results of any discussion are going to have to be voted on."

Off-camera negotiation is more business as usual. Up-or-down votes on pre-agreed deals is not full transparency, no matter how much speechmaking is allowed beforehand. Elected officials could still wheel and deal for Wall Street in private and then strike a populist pose in public.

Chairman Frank also said that conference participants won't have much personal power. "I believe that we... will be more the agents of collective decision-making than autonomous deciders," he said. That means the real dealmaking will take place in the caucuses, especially the Dems'. If the parties won't open their caucuses to public scrutiny, then at a minimum both parties should express their "collective" positions well in advance of the conference sessions.

The White House can help ... and it should. First, it should use its voice and its influence to push for full transparency. Then it should provide any technical resources needed, since it has much greater resources than Congress. The public should be able to save and review portions of the televised debate online, with links to the same documents, briefing books, and memos provided to the conferees. Beth Noveck, the Administration's Chief Technology Officer for Open Government, would be an ideal candidate to lead the effort. She's not well known to the general public, but she's one of the most interesting and imaginative thinkers operating in government today. Novick, or someone like her, could marshal the resources needed to deliver on the public's behalf.

Given that the Administration's a major player in the proceedings, their actions should also be visible to the public. If, for example, they're expressing an ambiguously-phrased coolness toward Lincoln's derivatives amendment in public, we should know how they're addressing the issue in negotiations. (White House participation would also help clear the air after criticisms of its level of openness during the health reform process, from Nancy Pelosi and other progressives as well as Republicans).

Some of these suggestions may seem like "blue sky" ideas, although they're easily executed with the technology now available. At the very least, however,"full transparency" must mean 1) holding all the meetings in public, 2) giving the public online access to each and every document and memo provided to the conferees, and 3) giving the public five days to review the final bill before a vote is held.

Please sign this petition to demand that these minimum requirements for public transparency are met. Voters of the future may thank you. Your checkbook probably will, too.

Progressives have Caved on Health Care

Berry Ives — Mon, 04 May 2009 23:34:33 -0400

I submitted questions to moveon.org's online interview with Howard Dean, trying to nail him down on single-payer. My questions were not among those selected.

I found the whole show to be very disappointing because the single-payer concept was never addressed.

But at least there were two questions from Texas coming from the point of view of supporting single-payer health care. Dr. Dean either doesn't understand what that is, or else he was very disingenuous regarding the single payer alternative. He said we will still have the choice of "single-payer" under the proposed Obama plan. He seems to assume that single-payer is the same thing as having a public option. Far from it.

I don't think he is so stupid as to not know the difference. I used to have some respect for him, but that has now paled into oblivion. He is either inexcusably ignorant or else he is a liar. Single-payer is not the same thing as a public option. He says you can still choose single-payer (the public option), or you can choose a private insurance plan. And if you can't afford the private insurance plan, then we will subsidize your private insurance.

Please Dr. Dean, what about single-payer is being able to choose the public option OR a private? It's just not the same thing, and surely you must know that. As you must have heard somewhere along the line, one of the chief advantages of single-payer is eliminating the inefficiencies of private health insurance. For god's sake, single-payer IS SINGLE-PAYER! It's not multiple payers!

Universal health care was once on the progressive table, but no longer. I can hear the death knell. And if we do manage to cover the presently uninsured, the cost of the whole program will exceed the cost of single-payer by some $350 billion per year.

So do all you so-called progressives feel proud of yourselves for caving in to the insurance corporations and the Obama "bipartisan" political philosophy? What we needed was NON-partisan rational policy formation, not a compromise with far right-wingers who do not support any kind of universal health care. And, you know what, they are winning.

I hope all of you who are making the decisions at moveon and CAF and others feel good about this disaster for progressive health care, which would mean universal health care. I certainly don't, and if I were in Congress, I would vote against it.

Real Change Happens Off-Line

Sally Kohn — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 07:21:23 -0400

Today's American young people feel a deep connection to people in Tibet and Darfur, want to hold corporations accountable to environmental standards and worker justice, and value the role of government in meeting our shared needs. Yet the Internet tools that help Millennials appreciate our interconnectedness may actually erode the community values they seek.

The Millennials, or the cluster of young folks born roughly between 1980 and 1995, were raised between two conflicting phenomena. On the one hand, they have grown up with new technologies that have helped the world connect more easily; on the other hand, they have been raised alongside the rise of hyperindividualism in American culture that has isolated us from each other and the world around us.

As the Millennials were learning to walk, Ronald Reagan proclaimed that the only "excuse government has for even existing" is to protect the rights of individuals, not the larger, common good. Having once played a cowboy on the silver screen, Reagan helped transform America into a radical Darwinian Wild West. Industries were privatized, public school budgets and other social programs slashed, Wall Street given free rein. Reagan's British counterpart, Margaret Thatcher, went a step further, declaring, "There is no such thing as society." In the neoconservative political vision of the era, people were left to fend for themselves.

At the same time, the world became more interconnected than ever. Technology allowed the Millennials not only to imagine the children in Ethiopia, but to actually see them and, eventually, become their friends on Facebook. Changing demographics made the new generation more comfortable with difference and diversity than their parents. Plus, technological connectivity opened the door to economic interdependence.

Today, workers in China rely on shoppers in Chicago; investors in Boston track the latest trends from Bangladesh. And, via their cellphones, the Millennials are plugged into it all.

The political aims and vision of the Millennials clearly buck the Reagan "rugged individualism" in favor of the community values of connectedness, inclusion, and mutual responsibility.

But social movements are based on collective action. The American Revolution, the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, and every significant social change movement in between and since has relied on community organizing, building mutually responsible communities to challenge the status quo.

On their own, for example, none of the activists in the civil rights movement had sufficient power and influence to end segregation. Coming together in local committees, led mainly by young people, they used the tools of face-to-face community organizing, developing shared strategies to address shared problems. And they took shared action; in sit-ins and Freedom Rides, they formed groups that were more than the sum of individual parts.

By contrast, Internet activism is individualistic. It's great for a sense of interconnectedness, but the Internet does not bind individuals in shared struggle the same as the face-to-face activism of the 1960s and '70s did. It allows us to channel our individual power for good, but it stops there.

This is great for signing a petition to Congress or donating to a cause. But the real challenges in our society -- the growing gap between rich and poor, the intransigence of racism and discrimination, the abuses from Iraq to Burma (Myanmar) -- won't politely go away with a few clicks of a mouse. Or even a million.

Millennials are poised to lead us all to reject the hyperindividualism and isolation that has dominated our recent past and recognize the deep interconnectedness and mutual responsibility that is our present and future.

The lone cowboy story was a myth. Our greatest accomplishments, as individuals and as a nation, have almost always come from hitching our wagons to others and working together, not just in going it alone.

To avoid eroding the values Millennials so appreciate, and to truly influence the world around them, they must transform their online activism into off-line communities and build an effective movement for change. From church basements to campus meetings to voters' doors, Millennials need to add face-to-face action to their innate sense of community.

Sally Kohn is a senior campaign strategist with the Center for Community Change, which runs Generation Change, a training program for the next generation of community organizers.

Scott Manley

Scott Manley — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 08:30:56 -0400

This blog evolved from my interest in spirituality and politics. My interest in politics started in the 60's. As a child, I used to march with my father in anti-war candlelight vigils and in spirited civil rights open housing demonstrations with Father Groppi in the mid-west. My intrest in spirituality began in high school in the early 70's, when I started soul searching. I read Ralph Waldo Emerson and quoted him in my journal. "The only literature worth reading is transcendental or extraordinary." Emerson was heavily influenced by Eastern thought, especially the Bhagavad-gita. In 1979, I was initiated into the Vaisnava tradition of India, and lived as a celibate monk in a farm community. In the early 90's, I moved to Pittsburgh, and got married. During the last election I became much more involved in politics.