Notes from the Left Coast

Drummond Pike’s Blog

Like most people who have a moral sense of the world, I have rejoiced in the remarkable outcome of the year-long saga of Healthcare Reform in the Congress, despite the failure of the public option and the necessary capitulation to a mostly male group of hold-outs who almost derailed the entire thing in the interests of making sure that not a single federal dollar could find its way to supporting a woman seeking an abortion. These two shortcomings aside, history was made and I’m glad of it.

There was, however, an ironic twist of fate in the whole event, for it kept in the shadows a long-planned march for Immigration Reform that brought over 200,000 people to the Mall to bring home the necessity of fixing the very broken system, as President Obama promised to do on the campaign trail. Normally, 200,000 folks showing up in Washington warrants the notice of the press and the Congress, and hopefully would have reminded both of the remarkable outpouring of people into the streets several years ago. Sadly, though, a piece of legislation that pointedly excludes undocumented residents from its benefits, diverted our attention – something that has happened regularly for decades to undocumented immigrants seeking a path to citizenship. The problem, however, is far from going away.

Some 3 percent of our population lives without proper documentation. 12 million hard-working, tax-paying folks, many of whom arrived as infants or children of those seeking work or freedom. These poor souls, unfortunately, face a remarkably bleak future as they complete school, with virtually no ability to receive loans to support graduate school, and many jobs off limits since they can’t even obtain a driver’s license in most states. So each day, tens of thousands of people who have known no other home since before they can remember, are consigned to the shadows of the cash economy. On top of Sunday’s irony, there is the remarkable fact that by excluding this population from the reforms, we continue a system where millions are left out of normal care only to have their afflictions deteriorate from lack of attention and wind up in the Emergency Room where we all get to pay for the care – almost always more expensive than it would have been otherwise.

So I hope that this morning, when there will be many celebrations in the White House about signing Healthcare Reform, there will also be awareness that moving forward on Immigration Reform is the next big one to tackle. Right now, continuing deportations at a pace exceeding even the Bush years is no solution no matter how many shadows you try to hide it in. As important, this is an issue that truly should not fall into the partisan morass that is Washington these days. We should all agree that bringing people into the system, making them participants in both democracy and taxation, has advantages for us all.

One cannot escape the media frenzy about the sweet young 11 year old girl kidnapped for 18 years by some wacko in Antioch. Details cannot be minute enough to elude broadcast — what the tents looked like, the vacant stare of the victim’s daughter, fathered by the wacko, the way the victim answered phone calls for his printing business, and all the rest.

In contrast, we can’t seem to find an article that accurately analyzes the benefits that the proposed reforms of the broken healthcare system might produce, or the damages brought down on us by the unwieldy patchwork that is the current system. Instead, we seem deluged by scary stories about “death panels” and how “the government is going to pull the plug on grandma” and the like. Fox News, of course, treats this drivel as fact. The rest seem to treat it as reasonable debate with virtually not a word about how the current system does much worse.

Tides Momentum Conference Website

Crystal Hayling,
Roger Hickey, Anthony Wright, and Jacob Hacker, Momentum presenters.

At our Momentum Conference, beginning this coming Monday afternoon, we hope to bring some rationality to the conversation about healthcare. Last year, Jacob Hacker (author of the “public option” idea) laid out his view of the prospects for real reform if Obama were to win the General Election. Now that we are there, and this is the highest thing on the President’s agenda, we’ve witnessed, as we have so often, the devolution of an intelligent policy debate into a mud-slinging contest in which alarmists are decrying things that don’t exist (death panels and plug pullers) and progressives — ever the earnest ones — are trying to convince people through complicated rational arguments.

What seems to command attention on Fox are these senior citizens who want to “keep the government out of the health insurance business” but even more adamantly demand that Congress keep its hands off Medicare…one of those government-run healthcare programs. That media really don’t say that much in response to such irrational debate is fascinating…and sad.

First thing next Tuesday, we are convening three very different folks to bring us up to date on where we stand — Anthony Wright leads Health Access California and has led numerous state and local campaigns for health reform; Crystal Hayling, CEO of Blue Shield of California Foundation and has worked tirelessly on healthcare delivery especially to women and children, and Roger Hickey, co-Director of Campaign for America’s Future, a leading advocate for national reform. It should be a refreshing session, especially if you are a Fox News watcher.

Why is it, I cannot help but wonder, that the current folks entrusted to oversee most covered people are getting off the hook in the midst of this swirling debate? The insurance companies are no one’s friend. Anyone you know who has dealt with a serious medical situation would hardly argue for the current system. These companies engage in terrible practices, trying desperately to pursue their business model that says they should collect as much money as possible and pay out as little as possible. How can anyone think this is going to lead to good health outcomes. Nor can anyone explain how having these companies provide health insurance to everyone will change anything. Yes, they may be forced to accept pre-existing conditions, but, bottom line, they will collect as much as they can, pay out as little as possible, and pocket the rest. The French, with their excellent single payer system, are laughing their heads off. Hopefully, though, we’ll move on from town hall meetings and get this thing done in some acceptable form. Tuesday morning at Momentum, we’ll be trying to figure out how that might be possible.

I’ve spent part of each of the past two weeks in DC - first for a Board Retreat of Island Press, and today for a meeting of the irrepressible Environmental Working Group. In both cases, these terrific organizations are dealing with complicated change. Island has to deal with the changing nature of the publishing worlds and the challenging economics of publishing books. IP, by the way, is one of the leading publishers of environmental subject matter in the country and have frequently published books that have directly led to policy changes and the like. Gretchen Daily’s Nature’s Services has literally shifted thinking about the economic role our natural systems play in our system. Alter them at our peril is one lesson you can derive. And Apollo’s Fire is helping people really understand the potential economic boom that can be fueled by agressively attempting to deal with climate change in our urban environments. Really good stuff.

In the picture above, you see Ken Cook, founder of the Environmental Working Group and his sidekick, Richard Wiles, who have built one of the most impressive environmental research and advocacy organizations in the country. Ken is holding forth on the prospects for their “Kids Safe Chemicals Act” idea which would change the way acceptable chemical burdens are measured. Kids just don’t do as well as adults in their ability to manage toxic accumulations, yet our regulatory system measures only adults. Crazy.

EWG also recently had a huge “win” when reports finally confirmed their long held argument that endocrine disrupters (now there’s a mouthful) can be toxic in even small amounts. There is a call in California to ban the use of one - bisphenyl A - which has made EWG the object of, how does one say….the close attention of the chemical industry. The industry’s association, by the way, changed their name to American Chemistry Council to sound less corporate. Needless to say, they don’t like the idea that groups like EWG publicize that humans are bio-accumulating toxics in our systems at quite a clip. Have you seen Ken’s remarkable “10 Americans” presentation? You won’t come away unchanged.

Also of interest:
http://www.youtube.com/user/EnvironmentalWG

How do you sign up to do torture? Where is that dotted line filled out saying that, “no, I don’t mind seeing another human being scream in agony, agony that I cause in the name of something or in the interest of ‘intelligence’?” The answer, according to Stanford’s Phillip Zimbardo, one of our nation’s experts on the subject, is that people don’t sign up. They absorb the permission from the system they are a part of.

At the recent TED Conference in Monterey, Zimbardo set forth his trim assessment that there are essentially no “bad apples”, which is how the military explained Abu Ghraib. In fact, he asserted, there aren’t even bad barrels. Instead, there are bad barrel makers – the designers of the system – that really hold responsibility. If you need any reinforcement for this argument, just read JoAnne Wypijewski’s extraordinary article in the March/April issue of Mother Jones. It will curl your hair. They have created a system that will not learn from its experience and will not accept responsibility for the wrong that was done. In so doing, they damage us all even more.

In her step by step excavation of the way the military has “held itself accountable”, she outlines in detail what we all know: the grunts on the ground paid a heavy price – many with years in prison. But NONE of their commanding officers has had anything more than a hand slap. It is truly remarkable, and, surprise, surprise, the press is oblivious. No coverage. No outrage. No accountability.

At one point, she recites what we may recall from early press reports – Secretary Rumsfeld received daily briefings on the intelligence gathered. He was focused on Abu Ghraib and had urged the use of the “strong” tactics used to achieve the intelligence as has often been reported. Everyone in the military knew that he and the Vice President believed in harsh tactics. That virtually all the intelligence was garbage seems beside the point. That no one holds any responsibility nor has been held accountable for one of the worst chapters in American history, and, arguably, one of the contributing factors to America’s precipitous decline in international circles.

Somehow, the defender of liberty and freedom and democracy has become the perpetrator of inhumanity, violence, and torture in the name of the emergency of terrorism. How was it that the Nazis explained why Jews needed to be rounded up? What emergency deprived them of their civil liberties?

Military necessity is used to justify the harshest measures of the state – the deprivation of a citizen’s rights. Has it ever been proven worthwhile? Outside of the mind-numbing, fiction of “24” on television, I don’t think so.

Help The Tides Center Body Positive project receive $25,000, by taking 2 seconds to vote for Connie Sobczak in the Volvo for Life Awards:
http://www.volvoforlifeawards.com/cgi-bin/iowa/english/vote/quality/index.html

We have one month left before the voting period ends (January 7th), so please VOTE, VOTE, VOTE! The rules state that you can VOTE AS OFTEN AS YOU’D LIKE, but no more than once per minute, otherwise your votes won’t count. Vote NOW, vote OFTEN and SPREAD THE WORD!

About Body Positive:
Many therapists and counselors in the psychological community are labeling the current state of eating disorder illnesses in this country as an epidemic. This project provides education on eating disorders and awareness of body-image issues to Bay Area pediatricians, middle and high-school students, teachers, school administrators and staff, as well as to the community-specific support systems for schools. The Body Positive believes the epidemic of eating disorders among teens warrants thoughtful, practical, effective change in the shape of a preventative awareness education approach.

Through 21st Century Foundation (a grantee of Tides Relief and Reconstruction Fund), Tides Foundation is part of the Gulf South Allied Funders, a group of committed donors moving resources to grassroots groups in the Gulf Coast Region. On behalf of this group, Jason Sanders played the role of key convener and host for this Tides briefing that was designed to:

• Inform current and potential donors about the challenges and opportunities of rebuilding along the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast for the long-haul;
• Give attendees a clearer sense of approaches that are working and strategies that are needed;
• And feel inspired to pledge to rebuilding efforts thru 21st Century, and/or Tides R&R Fund.

The briefing moderator was:
Donna Edwards, Executive Director, Arca Foundation
(Donna is running for a US Congressional seat for Maryland too.)

The activist panel included:
Derrick Evans, Turkey Creek Community Initiative (JBL Awardee);
Derrick Johnson, NAACP of Mississippi;
Judith Browne-Dianis, Advancement Project;
Steve Bradbury, Louisiana ACORN;
Patricia Jones, Lower Ninth Ward Neighborhood Empowerment Network Association (LNWNENA) .

Participants also viewed a video clip from Spike Lee’s documentary, When the Levees Broke.

The briefing preceded an awards dinner honoring community heroes rebuilding the Gulf Coast. Jason reported that, “Both the donor briefing and awards dinner were great successes and folks walked away sober, fully engaged and excited about partnering opportunities.”

So…why WAS there a FEMA trailer in front of Tides?
One of the activists brought this trailer — the kind that folks are still living in on the Gulf Coast — for our viewing. For those of you who missed the chance to walk through, here are some pictures taken by Courtney McFall. This only begins to provide a real sense of the serious hardship still being faced by so many survivors of Hurricane Katrina two years ago (in 2005).