Top 5, Episode IV: Books That Changed My Life

If Lavar says I can, then I can go freaking anywhere- anywhere dude

For this episode of Top 5, I’m going to rock the books that changed my life-course somehow.  I like reading a lot, but these books are as much about where I was when they hit me as they are just good books.  Just good books is next.  But anywhoo.

1. War and Peace- I’m not a big ‘classics’ buff (for instance, me and Nathaniel Hawthorne are not on speaking terms.  Both because he is a Romantic and thus, dead, but also because I thought the Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables both fucking sucked.  Not to be confused with the House of the Seven Gables, which also totally sucked.  And I had to read them both- thanks Ms. Bishop and Dr. Peterson!)  But War and Peace was not just a good book, it was a straight life-changer.  Thanks Dr. Johnson!  It predates another book on this list both by over a hundred years and in my order of reading them.  But its conception of history, destiny and spirituality- which Tolstoy just departs from the fucking narrative to explain, breaking the fourth wall like a complete baller- resonated powerfully with me as a lost teenager looking for some kind of cosmic force and rationale to look to for guidance.  Tolstoy gave me a degree of faith (or helped me cultivate it, whatever) that has been downright essential to persevering when times are tough and when doubt and self-critique lay me low.  Besides all the ‘it being an epic’ thing, it has a really fantastic array of characters and stories.  It all comes down to Prince Andre lying on the battlefield and seeing the vastness of the sky.  That or Natasha realizing as she looks at a soiled diaper/bib what’s really important (not gonna lie, there’s some conservatism going on- man sees glimpse of the almighty, woman sees domestic responsibility, are we noticing a busted binary here?  I got over it, but I don’t blame those who don’t).  Plus did you know that Yoda is actually based on an ancient, wise Russian peasant?  Tolstoy spends like a quarter of the book mercilessly fucking with Napoleon and exalting Kutuzov, who is basically a kind of snoozing general who knows that at the end of the day the will of the people and the land itself will prevail.  I make fun, but really, it is a very compelling work that really helps place my sense of history, my beliefs about the place of the individual and the community in the grander scheme of things, and manages to make me feel comforted in the warm embrace of fate, which is what I think religion has to offer at its best.  It’s also basically a series of eight or so soap operas about the Russian nobility, which provides a lot of the fun and comedy (of which there is actually a great deal).  Long, duh, but I found myself disappointed when I got to the half way point (page 754 or so) and realized I was almost done.
2. Les Blancs- The loss of Lorraine Hansberry at the age of 34 may be one of the most tragic blows to 20th century theater, and fuck it, art and thought in general, out there.  We are talking Jimi Hendrix/Duane Allman/Malcolm X/Fred Hampton/Rachel Carson class loss here.  Thanks to Caroline Jackson Smith for turning me on to this one.  Read Les Blancs and you’ll get a sense for the degree to which Hansberry was not just a brilliant writer, envisioner of theater, and all around thinker, but one constantly evolving and really bursting at the constraints of her form, of her social position, and her times’ limitations.  A true revolutionary and adaptive artist.  What I really like about Les Blancs is how it manages to give us characters in ultimate complexity and, I think, acceptance- while not negating the tragic necessity of conflict and liberation.  There are no demons in Les Blancs, but that does not lead to a status-quo-friendly paralysis.  Like Do The Right Thing, Les Blancs expresses the inevitability of liberation, it will happen, and its character will depend on factors all over the map, not the least of which is the character of the resistance.  Like War and Peace, Les Blancs also articulates some of the central issues of Western drama and art- fate, dissolution, conflict, and the individual’s placement within them.  Les Blancs I think brilliantly anticipates the explosion that would come with American government and society failing to adequately accomodate the liberatory impulse that just couldn’t avoid exponential growth.  Drinking Gourd and What Use Are Flowers? also rule, but Les Blancs will always be my favorite American play.  It came as a revelation to me, and I still turn to it when I need to reconcile my confusion over individual motivation and systemic inertia and oppression.  Lorraine Hansberry, you are deeply missed, you would have gone to heights even beyond those you’d already topped.
3. 1491: New Revelations Of The Americas Before Columbus- Okay, I’ll admit, it’s a little wack that my favorite book about American Indians (apologies if you prefer Native Americans, there’s a lot of terminological contention, so sincerely, I hope no one’s offended)… was written by a White dude journalist.  I’m kinda perpetuating the Avatar beef.  I’ll accept that and do some penance by reading some Deloria or something.  But all that said, this book changed the way I think about the environment, Indian societies (generalizing, I know!), and the meaning of sustainable development.  Charles Mann does some of the best science writing out there, and bears huge responsibility for my academic pursuits of both Anthropology and Environmental Studies.  Did you know that there are more extant primary source documents from the Aztecs than the ancient Greeks?  Did you know also that when Cortez ruined it, Central Mexico was by many accounts the most densely populated place on Earth?  Did you know that they now think the Amazon rainforest was in fact 1) inhabited by several chiefdom-civilizations with hundreds of thousands of people and 2) largely cultivated and managed by the original inhabitants, a la an enormous continent-spanning garden?  Did you know that they now think the first large-scale organized society on the Peruvian coasts was organized around cotton cultivation and intensive fishing and not just cereal-growth (what literally every other “developed” society depended on)?  This book gives a tiny taste of the catastrophe of the Americas, what I think is in many ways our responsibility to redeem ourselves for- one of the greatest losses of population, art, culture, engineering, economics, language, and sustainable lifestyles in the history of humanity.  While being aware of and vigilant against romanticizing, it gives just a glimpse of the full scope of what ‘we’ Westerners just don’t fucking know, and have to learn.  Both about Indian history, society, and how humans interact with their environments.
4. A People’s History Of The United States- Duh.  This is actually one of my more recent reads (as in, last summer- thanks Oberlin Public Library!), and isn’t so much significant for giving me new insights as giving me a new, more coherent paradigm for what I already believed.  The nature of power and what really advances progress and justice (people, specifically, people not named Kennedy, Jefferson, or Rockefeller).  The ramifications of really embracing the primacy of consent and self-determination.  The need for constant self-reflection.  Not much to say really, most who’ve read A People’s History will probably acknowledge how it changes perspectives (if it does its job right).  Like Power Shift, A People’s History provided me with a narrative that unified a lot of things I was concerned about- how class, race, and gender interact and bounce off each other, how hegemony operates.  I’d probably be smarter about this shit if I was a CAS major or something, but that being said- good book.
5. Angela Davis: An Autobiography- This book (and Ms. Brooks, thanks Ms. B!) is primarily responsible for me becoming an African American Studies major turned minor (shout-outs also owed to Dr. Lerner and the Brazil independent study), which got a whole lot of other shit started.  It’s exciting, it gives an awesome introduction to issues of prison-justice, legal system abuses, the roots and alternate (read: in their words) perspective on the Black Power movement, Black feminism, and a whole host of other things.  My African American Studies education has been absolutely essential to my conception of social justice and US society, and Angela Davis’ autobiography is a key part of that transition.

What are some books that changed your life?

Next up: books that didn’t necessarily change stuff, but ruled anyway.  It doesn’t have to be all deep n’ shit.

Peace,
Joel

NEW SERIES, Redefining America, Episode I: Tolerance And Mobility

This one’s for Vanessa.

In my new series, Redefining America, I take cherished qualities we hold dear and talk about how our policy and public opinion belie those qualities.  As with Profiles in Awesome (which, with rare exceptions a la Bernie Sanders, profiles ordinary people and organizations doing the work that keeps our country moving forward), I hope for this series to embody Howard Zinn’s spirit.  One of the most important things he brought us as a historian and thinker was self-reflection on a national scale- directly addressing the ways in which we bear responsibility for things and thus have the opportunity to affirmatively take action to make them better.  Our national myths only delay the point of time where we confront our issues head on.

Today’s episode highlights what is to me a disturbing degree of disdain for the working poor, as contrasting the US and Europe:

Before taxes, incomes in the United States are more unequal and more volatile, which would seem to call for more, not less, redistribution. Some argue that America has less redistribution because disadvantaged Americans find it easier to climb out of poverty, but poor Americans are actually less likely than poor Europeans to move up the income ladder.

We concluded that the redistribution gap between the United States and Europe could best be explained by America’s greater ethnic heterogeneity and more conservative political institutions. Countries with more ethnic diversity generally spend less on social programs.

Before welfare reform, US states with more African-Americans were significantly less generous to their welfare recipients. My colleague Erzo Luttmer found that people in the United States who live around poor people of a different race are more likely to oppose welfare spending. There is a long historical literature, written by scholars like C. Vann Woodward, documenting the role that racial divisions have played in blunting the appeal of populist redistributors in the United States and elsewhere…

Over decades, the success of the left in Europe and the right in the United States has led to wildly different beliefs about the nature of poverty and success. We found that 60 percent of Americans thought that the poor were lazy, while only 26 percent of European share that view. Fifty four percent of Europeans think luck determines income; only 30 percent of Americans concur. These differences don’t reflect economic reality. The American poor work longer hours than their European counterparts. They instead reflect the long-run ability of politics to shape public opinion. Institutions, like proportional representation, that empower the left do a good job of explaining which nations have opinions associated with the left, like the view that chance determines success.

A year ago, I wondered if the Obama victory signaled the declining significance of race and an American lurch to the left. But countries change slowly. In 2009, a Pew survey found that only 29 percent of Americans think that success comes from forces outside their control, as opposed to 52 percent of French respondents and 66 percent of Germans. No one should be surprised that American voters, even in Massachusetts, pushed back against a progressive agenda. By world standards, we are a conservative nation. Those who would change that fact need to dig in for a long fight.

I would actually disagree with the author’s final conclusion.  I’d say it’s more likely that yes, conservatives were empowered in Massachussetts but that that speaks as much to the fact that many of us are more progressive than the Obama agenda, more of us are disgusted by what are really conservative approaches to economics, and that progressives tuned out because 1) it was an off-election, 2) Coakley sucked, 3) the DNC sucked.

As with my post on conservative identity politics and bipartisanship, it’s not so much that we are a conservative nation as that we are a contradictory and often-selfish nation (which the article above affirms by showing how heterogeneity- living with others- decreases support for social spending, which is perceived as benefiting others).  But I may be arguing semantics at that point.

Peace,
Joel

Tom Tancredo Is A Steaming Pile Of Racist, Elitist Shit

Tom Tancredo on a charming day

Tom Tancredo: Obama Elected Because ‘We Do Not Have A Civic, Literacy Test’ To Vote

This is of course, resemblant of the old property requirements, poll taxes and stringent voting restrictions that effectively disenfranchised the majority of the Black community until the mid-60’s.

But of course, disenfranchisement continues today- and Tancredo is right to fear wider voting (aka, more democracy), because it would suck for Conservatives.  I link here to a really good piece on how ex-offender restrictions and disengagement by low-income people and people of color dramatically skews our electorate.  Let’s not even get into what liberty for undocumented immigrants would do for both our labor movement and our democracy.

Of course Tancredo hates democracy and the empowerment of cross-class-race voters- it doesn’t work particularly well for him.

Peace,
Joel

Which Is Why…

This is fantastic news, and will be the subject of many future ‘Do Democracy’ posts:

None the less, the White House is starting to make some noise about ending the filibuster.  Last week, when I asked David Axelrod about the possibility of ending the filibuster permanently, Axelrod told me “that is a  discussion worth having,” and that the White House “would have an interest in that discussion.”  Yesterday, Vice-President Joe Biden also implied an interest in permanently ending the filibuster (emphasis mine):

“From my perspective, having served here, having been elected seven times, I’ve never seen a time when it’s become standard operating procedure,” Biden said of the filibuster. “And I really mean this unrelated to the fact that Barack and I are sitting down in the West Wing now. For any president in the future, having to move through anything he or she wants, requiring a supermajority is not a good way to do business.”There are two important things about these statements:

1. By joining the calls to end the filibuster permanently, the White House is starting to build pressure on Republicans to stop filibustering.  The implied threat is “if you keep filibustering, we will work to get rid of the filibuster.”
2. The White House is articulating a case for why the filibuster is bad for Americans in general, rather than just for their own administration.  Biden points to “any President in the future,” rather than just his own.  Pfeiffer talks about the filibuster preventing “honest debate,” “progress,” job creation, and better health care.  The filibuster becomes an attach on the American people, rather than just a procedural obstacle that few people understand.

Combined, all of these statements actually come off as longing for a stronger, more prominent, grassroots movement to end the filibuster.  This is a movement the White House would not want to lead themselves, but which would give more weight to the implied threat in #1 and broader articulation of the arguments they are making in #2.

As difficult as ending the filibuster may appear, if it has become enough of a threat to the things the White House values, then it has certainly become a major threat to things other powerful Democrats value.  And, once it becomes a major threat to something the party values, then the party leadership becomes increasingly likely to join in an effort to defeat it. At this point, it seems to me that many in the party leadership are waiting for the grassroots to start building this movement, so they can jump in later on.

It’s also worth pointing out that the filibuster is of course, one of the least democratic institutions known to (Americanwhitemale) man. Anything that allows a single Senator, who is more likely to be elected for representing corporate interests than actual people, to completely derail the legislative process and block crucial executive branch position, is utter bullshit beyond being a hindrance to getting democratic work done.

Kudos to the White House for signalling possible interest here.  Let’s encourage it.

Peace,
Joel

Political Mythbusters, Episode III: ESSENTIAL Reading On Why ‘Bipartisanship’ Will Never Ever Ever Ever Ever-

Ever produce results any time soon:

Several years ago, I had an epiphany:  the core of conservatism is identity politics, not ideology or issues.  Oh, sure, there are ideological differences between conservatives and liberals, but those differences are substantially smaller than the gaps between who they vote for, as I discussed in my Dec, 2007 diary, “Collapsing The Ideological Overlap: The Gulf Between Issues and Candidates”.   But if that’s so, you might ask, why say that it’s conservatives who are responsible for the gap?  The reason is simple: conservatives are more likely to hold liberal policy positions and more likely to vote for candidates opposed to what they say they believe…

[Paul shows how in issue after issue, Republicans awkwardly- or not- flip flop heinously in order to oppose Obama]

On issue after issue, Obama naively believed that incorporating GOP ideas into his initial proposals-and systematically excluding ideas strongly supported by his base, so as not to make Republicans mad-was a sure-fired way to foster a spirit of bipartisanship.  On issue after issue he was wrong… for a very simple reason: When push comes to shove, conservatives don’t care about policy, they only really care about identity-and winning. Indeed, for conservatives, identity is winning, since conservatism is all about maintaining social hierarchy, elite rule, and conventional morality that keeps the lower orders in line, and virtuous conservatives on top.

For conservatives, a liberal proposing conservative ideas is simply acknowledging the natural order of things-and if he really acknowledges the natural order of things, then he ought to acknowledge that conservatives should be running the show.  So, if he doesn’t acknowledge that, then he’s not really serious–indeed, he’s downright deceitful, and everything Glen Beck says is true.  He’s really a socialist fascist Nazi out to destroy America.

In psychological terms, it’s very simple: The more he moves towards them, the more he threatens their identities as not-him, and the more hysterically they have to oppose him.  It’s a strategy doomed to failure from the start.

This isn’t really that surprising, right?  Conservative inconsistency on a host of issues (you want to cut the deficit but want to increase military funding/wars?  you want to cut the deficit but want to destroy the most cost-effective measure of reducing health care costs?  you are pro-life and pro-war but pro-economy of death?) is pretty well demonstrated, but what’s essential is what drives much of the inconsistency- the absolutely pathological need to oppose one’s enemies, who happen to be remarkably more consistent and reality-based.

This is why (or one reason anyway- that our government is wholly unrepresentative of the people it governs, due to voter disenfranchisement, is another biggy), despite the fact that the welfare state has enormous support across lines of ideological self-identification and spending cuts for social spending are deeply unpopular, deficit hysteria (mostly among the political class, I see few normal people and good economists giving a rats ass about the deficit when we’re in the midst of 10% unemployment and 20% unemployment/underemployment- which beeteedubs, exacerbates long-term deficit) notwithstanding, we see absolute gridlock on jobs and social services, even as huge numbers of Americans suffer under the Conservative nightmare (see also, as well as- you know what, just read this).  Conservative politicians misrepresent the actual beliefs of the people they ‘represent’ because they are driven not by actual policy interest, but by narrow self-interest alone.

That’s not to say we’re not driven by it too.  We are.  I just happen to have a broader view of self-interest in which it’s impossible to hope for security for oneself if others are left in insecurity.  That’s just dumb.

But this is why ‘bipartisanship’ as it’s conceived right now is doomed to fail, because bipartisanship is wholly at odds with Conservative ideology- “Fuck you”.

Peace,
Joel

The Thin Green Line

Once jewel of Lorain's industrial crown- this could be you!

I’ve been pretty vocal on this blog about different visions of the green economy.  As I see it, the transformation from gray to green is an opportunity for political economic shift towards a more democratic and decentralized state of affairs defined by cooperation and environmental justice advocacy.  But it’s by no means always clear cut.

So I present to you the (still hypothetical) Lorain County aquaculture complex:

An environmental consultant for the owners of the former Ford Motor Co. Lorain Assembly Plant will explore the possibility of a new aquaponic farm at the site, which sits at the intersection of Baumhart Road and US 6.

Officials said yesterday the concept is in early stages and installation will depend on future financing.

“It’s very much in the planning stages,” Wayne Dorband, of Loveland, Colo., said. “There’s no commitments from anybody from a financial aspect at this point.

“There’s at least a potential that the site could have that end use,” he added. “Certainly this is a business we will be in. Now we have to see if Lorain is the right location and if we can get financing.”

Last week, Dorband and Bevan Suits, of Decatur, Ga., announced their intention to form Worldwide Aquaculture LLC to promote the aquaponic technology. Dorband has a doctorate in fisheries management and Suits is the author of “The Aquaponics Guidebook,” an online guide to the indoor fisheries and gardens.

The Ford plant owners, IRG Lorain LLC, declined to comment on the possible fish farm there because the project is in its early stages.

However, the project has created buzz online when at least one green news Web site, www.treehugger.com, published a story and bird’s-eye view diagram of the Lorain plan. The proposed layout would have 86,000 square feet of planting beds and 303,743 gallons of water for fish.

The Lorain project could involve investment up to $5 million and create up to 55 jobs when operating, Dorband said. The concept involves concurrent, balanced growth of plants and fish, according to the Worldwide Aquaculture plans.

The fish could be tilapia, which Suits described as the preferred aquaculture species worldwide. The fish grow from fingerlings to a pound in about eight months and a 500-gallon tank can produce 250 pounds of live fish.

Fish in tanks produce waste, which is ammonia that is pumped out to become nitrates that feed plants.

The plants, probably greens that mature quickly, grow in gravel beds that filter the water, which is then pumped back into the fish tanks.

“The system is completely recirculating,” Dorband said. “There’s no discharge for any potential pollution for any outside source.”

Americans generally eat food grown far away — an average of 1,500 miles away, Dorband said. However, the aquaponic proponents believe food production will become more local over time as transportation costs continue to rise, Dorband said.

“We believe that regional food production will become the norm long-term,” he said.

The IRG site has highway access, lots of space and plenty of water, while Lorain is located near Cleveland and the northern Ohio market, Dorband said. His son is working on a similar shrimp farm near Beaufort, S.C., which would be close to the Charlotte, N.C., and Savannah, Ga., markets, Dorband said. Additional details could become available in the next few months, Dorband said.

“The biggest constraint in any of our projects right now is financing,” he said.

What do you think?  If there are any local food advocates or people from the labor community reading (unlikely, but you never know) I’d love to hear thoughts.  My only concern is a wary one, in that I wish there could be something that would be a little more labor-intensive.  That plant used to support a lot of workers (I wish I knew where to go for a count), and 55 jobs, while great, is not everything the doctor ordered for my erstwhile Obie-home.  It’s probably too early to say, but I was intrigued and warily amped about it, and I’d like to hear other reactions.

At the end of the day, I’m so interested to see how this turns out because it’s just another example of the experiment we’re engaging in out here in the frontiers of the green economy in the Midwest.  That Ford plant is a pretty solid metaphor for the predicament of much of this area.  It stands a testament to the once-prosperity, prosperity we know won’t come back exactly the same way.  Green offers an opportunity, but it depends on how we do it.  There are huge stakes involved in how the hell we transition the Midwest from what it was to what it will be.  We’re laying down that pipe and writing that script right now.  It’s interesting and terrifying, and in no small part why I stick around here, why I’m so excited and lucky to be here.

Peace,
Joel

A Point

I talk a lot on this blog about how much I think the Democratic leadership are shooting themselves royally in the foot and how much they push bad policies that ‘alienate the base’, and how they are bad coalition-buddies in that they don’t give progressives (as opposed to corporatists) our proper due.  And I do think those things.

But I should point out that as Chris Bowers suggests on Open Left, at the end of the day most people are likely not following the minutiae of health care and clean energy, who is or is not the chair of the federal reserve (pop quiz, who is the chair of the federal reserve?  second pop quiz, who was the previous chair?)  Most people are normal, and are probably only peripherally concerned with the deep political interplay going on every day, and are focusing on their actual everyday lives.  The economy sucks and there may be some rumblings that the Democratic party is weak and also corrupt, but for the most part, the reason for immediate Democratic electoral failure is… the economy sucks and the Democrats haven’t come up with a more compelling narrative than “the economy would sooo be worse if the Republicans were running the show.  Look at us try and appeal to Republicans to help us fix the economy!”

Does that mean policy isn’t super-important?  Of course not.  I think more progressive policy, which I think would have been better and I think also was more eminently achievable than most people hold the Dems accountable for, would have made the situation better only in as much as those progressive policies are better safeguards of more peoples’ livelihoods.  But while I’d like to believe everyone is as obsessed and furious as I am, I know that’s just not true.  Why should they be, most people have more things to take care of than I, an immediate post-grad.  So I’ll keep on keepin’ on, but I think perspective is important, if not always uplifting.

Peace,
Joel

Blog Updates

What’s up yall?

I’m doing a bit of blog-cleaning, and hope to be doing more in the future so as to make it more useful and representative.

I’ve taken out some links on the side that I just don’t use anymore, and added some new ones for some friends that have gotten into the online publishing community (check out Amelia over at Small Joys as well as Billy Wimsatt’s blog.  I got the feeling we’re gonna disagree about some stuff, but Billy is a hell of an organizer and a dedicated citizen once-obie, so it’s a decidedly welcome and healthy disagreement).

I also took out the ACES and EFCA center tabs from the top because frankly, I don’t feel comfortable talking about them anymore.  What I used to feel pretty confident about, I don’t now, and I don’t want to misrepresent.  While the Ohio EJ center is not up to date, it has served as a useful guide to others in the past and I hope to keep it around in case it gets looked at.  I hope for other tabs in the future that can be useful (there’s a Top 5 in the works about underrated awesome bills), but for now, I’m keeping it pared down.

There are other edits that are due (I need a way of linking quickly to the series I run consistently and want to clean up the categories to make searching the archives easier), but this is a step in the process of keeping this blog fresh, useful, and representative.

But anyway, I mostly just wanted to highlight Billy and Amelia (and as always, check out Women’s Glib, to whom my eternal gratitude is owed) and make it clear that, to those who want to know where I get most of my news and commentary, the sidebar is now pretty accurate.  There’s other great shit out there, but I just don’t have the time for it all.

Peace,
Joel

VICTORY! And Thanks

There’s of course no way of knowing (short of asking their staff directly) whether calls in made any kind of difference, but as of this writing, three Ohio Representatives have signed the letter calling for passage of a public option using the reconciliation procedure, which would bypass a Senate filibuster!  This brings us to 107!

Thus, I thank the three badass lady Representatives (figures) for their leadership: Marcy Kaptur, Betty Sutton and Mary Jo Kilroy.

But just as importantly I officially thank everyone who, whether at Citizen Obie’s behest or not, called in to voice their concerns and advocate for themselves.  Democracy has gotta happen outside of the voting booth, and this small side-path of health care reform will hopefully bring results.  It remains to be seen.  But every action is important, if only in changing citizens’ perceptions of their own power and importance, as well as the politicians’ perception of same.  If you called, be proud of yourself (god damn it!), and if you didn’t- there are plenty of other opportunities to do your thing.

Peace,
Joel

ps. now on to Kucinich, Fudge and Ryan.  Cleveland stand up!

Do Democracy, Episode IV: Tell Your Rep To Follow Through, Demand Public Option Through Reconciliation

Update: We are up to 81 signers now, still no Ohioans.  This is getting embarrassing, make those calls people!  The Senate is broken and the House is putting forward a solution, let’s get on it!

A weird thing happened.  A number of months ago, a bunch of Democratic Representatives in the Congressional Progressive Caucus (I know right, progressives are organizing now?  What are those audacious fuckers gonna think up next?  Governing? *rimshot*) signed a letter affirming that

“Any bill that does not provide, at a minimum, a public option with reimbursement rates based on Medicare rates- not negotiated rates- is unacceptable.  It [shitty Blue Dog agreement] would ensure higher costs for the public plan, and would do nothing to achieve the goal of ‘keeping insurance companies honest,’ and their rates down…  In short, this agreement [Blue Dog reduction of subsidies to low- and middle-income families] will result in the public, both as insurance purchasers and as taxpayers, paying ever higher rates to insurance companies.  We simply cannot vote for such a proposal.”

Dope, right?  Marcia Fudge, Dennis Kucinich, and Marcy Kaptur all signed that letter back in July.  They basically kept the public option alive, making it impossible to pass health care without it, and showed the Dem leadership that we’re not idiots and we’re not weak.  Then they did it again!

Flash forward.  Public option gets dropped to negotiated rates, then gets dropped six feet in the ground.  All because some odious asshole threw a shit-fit.

But then, in a weird twist of fate, another odious asshole won a contest making the earlier odious asshole’s shit-fit completely meaningless, effectively invalidating said earlier odious asshole’s necessity to the process (did two wrongs just make a right?)

And now, some champs are circulating another letter, this time saying that the public option needs to be there, that the previous reason for not having one is gone, and thus, we should pass this bill through reconciliation with a public option.

As yet, no Ohioan has signed on.  Not Marcy Kaptur, not Dennis Kucinich, not Marcia Fudge.  Despite the fact that 78 Representatives (more than the first letter!) have.  This is bogus.  Please call your Ohioan Representative (particularly in Northeast Ohio, but anywhere if you are… Amelia, my lone non-NEO friend) and demand that they honor their earlier support of the public option by signing the new letter, initiated by Chellie Pingree and Jared Polis, which urges the inclusion of a public option passed through reconciliation.

We are at a very key point here.  I don’t think I’m mistaken in my guess that this is where we see whether Dems have the will (not the capacity, they always had the power) to get things done.  They better.  And we better make them.

Peace,
Joel