I've been working with Brave New Films on their Sick For Profit campaign, exposing the practices and rewards of the insurance industry. It's been pretty eye-opening, and we have a lot more stuff coming in the next few weeks. But we also decided to have a light moment. A couple weeks ago Brave New Films asked for submissions to give CIGNA a more appropriate tag line than their current "A Business of Caring" (in the words of Adam Sandler from the old SNL sketch, "Who are the ad wizards who came up with this one?"). Over 1,600 entries later, we have whittled them down to a few gems.
At Sick For Profit, you can pick the best tag line or submit your own. Here are the front-runners so far:
A business of caring less
Walk it off
Coverage to die for
We deny. You die.
Patients try our patience.
Denying care, one patient at a time
We love you... to death
Your pain is our gain
We put the "Hell" in healthcare
Bend over
With the winning tagline, we'll make CIGNA a new corporate logo, post it on Facebook, and send it to CIGNA execs. Which I'm sure they'll appreciate.
I'm not as interested in foreign policy/national security issues as I am other issues, but a lot of the writing on Afghanistan lately has got me thinking. Derrick Crowe has a good piece over at The Seminal discussing Obama Administration officials' unwillingness/reluctance to define victory in Afghanistan, and how so far the objectives of securing support for the regime have not gone well.
On the victory front, it's like they've learned their lesson from Bush's "Mission Accomplished" flap a little too hard. I give them credit for the strategy, to some extent- if you define victory, and turn out to be completely wrong, as Bush was, it blows up in your voice. If you even muse at what victory might look like, you risk, as Derrick argues, public discussion/debate on that front. I can see dozens of panel discussions and Atlantic magazine pieces on the topic.
On the other hand, if you refuse to define victory or publicly state goals, the questions over stonewalling become equally as bad. As do the concerns that we'll be stuck in a never-ending campaign there, spending billions of dollars to achieve an objective that isn't defined. That's where the Administration finds itself now, and it runs the risk of turning into a version of Iraq, which is what has me so concerned. The drumbeat has started.
In early July, Sen. Kerry pledged to hold hearings this fall as chair of the Foreign Relations committee. Before that, Rep. McGovern said this during the floor debate on the funding bill:
"I'm sick and tired of wars that have no exits, deadlines or an end," an anguished McGovern said. "We owe our troops and their families much better. "
"And I'm deeply concerned about how long we will be able to sustain and pay for an expanded military presence in Afghanistan. I simply want to know, 'What is the exit strategy that brings our servicemen and women home?'"
If you switched the word "Afghanistan" with "Iraq" in that statement, you wouldn't notice the difference. That's what concerns me so much. This pounding will only get louder on this topic, as it should. Robert Greenwald took a trip to Afghanistan recently and he and Brave New Films just released a new documentary on the topic (reminder, you can support our projects at OpenLeft by purchasing it through this link). Today, we find out the Administration is considering sending more troops, up to 20,000, there after committing another 21,000 this year. Does this have echoes of Iraq for anyone else?
Let me be clear: I'm for having the necessary amount of troops on the ground to win the war, within reason. My problem is with the Administration's refusal to lay out what is victory and how we will achieve it. If the phrase "no exit strategy" enters the American lexicon again, not only will it hurt Obama, it causes folks like me to become angry at an Administration that comes across as thinking the public isn't smart enough to understand global geopolitics and thus isn't entitled to a straight answer on the topic. Like Chris wrote today, Iraq was the major contributing factor to the GOP losing the 2006 elections. I believe the issue was not only defined by America losing the war and that being unpopular, but by the public being furious that there was no clear line of victory, and no exit strategy. I do not want to be swallowed by Afghanistan in 2010 for the same reasons.
Update: A new CBS poll comes out showing 48% approve of Obama's handling of the situation in Afghanistan, down from 56% in April. 40% say they want troops levels decreased.
Mike posted on this about a week ago, but I want to make sure folks saw it. There's two new great documentaries out, and one great way to support our work at OpenLeft.
The first is about the growth of MoveOn.org and its projects through the years, documenting its multi-issue approach to politics versus other single-issue siloed groups existing at the time. It's called MoveOn: The Movie.
The other is Robert Greenwald's new film- Rethinking Afghanistan- based in part on his recent trip there. Derrick Crowe- whose work is paid in part by Brave New Foundation- is going to be doing a fair amount of reporting here and elsewhere on the state of Afghanistan, so if you find it interesting, you'll like Robert's new film- and you can support Derrick's blogging at the same time.
The part I especially wanted to let you know about is that we here at OpenLeft have partnered with Brave New Foundation to help promote both our work and theirs. For each DVD you purchase, we'll get $5 towards our projects. If you purchase one of each, we get $10. It's a great campaign that helps build the kind of progressive infrastructure we care about, and I hope you do too. We're going to be expanding capacity in some new and exciting ways over the next few weeks- particularly on the Senate whip count Chris is heading up- and it helps us pay for the resources to carry that out. If you want a strong, robust public option in the health care legislation, we're working with you to make it happen.
You can click here to purchase MoveOn: The Movie, and here to purchase Rethinking Afghanistan. The two new buttons in the upper right hand corner are also where you can go. Please help us out. And from all of us, thanks for helping support our continuing work here at OpenLeft.
As many of you know, I was involved with helping MoveOn get off the ground back in 1998, when I was at People For the American Way. Since then, they have come a long way to being a political force. A new documentary has just come out that Brave New Films is helping to promote, titled MoveOn: The Movie. The trailer is here, and it looks fantastic. It really documents the energy and the new strategy of doing multi-issue politics rather than single-issue siloed politics that has held the progressive movement back for so long. Since MoveOn's founding, many more groups, both at the national level like PCCC and at the state level, have seen themselves as part of a movement, and pitched in with various campaigns. MoveOn really has revolutionized progressive politics.
I'm telling you about this because OpenLeft has partnered with Brave New Films to help release both MoveOn: The Movie as well as Robert Greenwald's new film, Rethinking Afghanistan, based in large part on his recent trip there. For every DVD purchase you buy, OpenLeft will get $5, which will help us do our brand of multi-issue activism and building progressive infrastructure. It's a two-fer, and helps promote these great films. And I think you'll like both.
Please click here to purchase MoveOn: The Movie, and click here to purchase Rethink Afghanistan. And thanks for helping support progressive infrastructure (squared).
We're on the verge of a huge progressive victory for the antiwar movement. Jane Hamsher estimates we have 36 of the 39 Democratic votes needed to defeat the war supplemental bill in the House tomorrow--which leaves only three to go! We must make sure our Reps know we oppose the war, and remind them that everyone in the House in 2007 signed the pledge not to vote for more war funding unless there are provisions for troop withdrawal.
According to Hamsher, here are the vets who are "leaning No" and could use a boost of antiwar support:
Steve Cohen
Keith Ellison
Chakah Fattah
Mike Honda
Ann Kirkpatrick
Doris Matsui
Ed Markey
Jim McDermott
Gwen Moore
Jared Polis
Jan Schakowsky
Mike Thompson
John Tierney
Mel Watt
Anthony Weiner
Brave New Films has put together a series of messages from Director Robert Greenwald, targeting specific states where pressure is needed most: Massachusetts, New York, Maine, Colorado, Connecticut, Michigan, Vermont, Virginia, Texas, California, and Arizona. If you live in one of those states or know someone who does, forward them the appropriate video and ask them to call Congress: (202) 224-3121.
Here comes my coffee spit take for the day. Starbucks just settled its sixth labor dispute in the past three years! According to the settlement, Starbucks must now allow Minneapolis-area workers to discuss unions and post union materials in break areas, and the company can no longer kick union sympathizers out of its stores.
This is a huge win for the IWW Starbucks Workers Union, an organization of over 300 current and former Starbucks employees -- the David to Starbucks' caffeinated, union-busting Goliath. Though really, it's a big win for all Starbucks employees, since unionization would enable workers to negotiate set hours, fairer wages and better benefits for everyone.
Angel Gardner, a Twin Cities barista and member of the IWW Starbucks Workers Union, said, "This settlement proves that Starbucks executives are not above the law and cannot block hard working baristas from making positive change. How can Starbucks claim that it maintains a positive work environment when one labor case after another exposes its lack of respect for employees?"
Put down that grande non-fat caramel macchiato or whatever Starbucks concoction you're drinking. Turns out the coffee giant has a nasty history of being anti-barista, anti-union, and thus anti-Employee Free Choice Act as well.
The National Labor Relations Board has repeatedly found Starbucks guilty of illegally terminating, harassing, intimidating, and discriminating against employees attempting to unionize. Late last year, a judge ruled Starbucks had committed over a dozen violations of the National Labor Relations Act at a few New York stores. Starbucks has settled five such labor disputes in the last few years in New York, Minnesota, and Michigan, spending millions on legal fees to avoid exposing their anti-worker ways.
To make matters worse, Starbucks has led the charge on a so-called Employee Free Choice Act "compromise," joining Costco and Whole Foods to form the Committee for Level Playing Field. This Orwellian-sounding group has come up with a "third way" on Employee Free Choice, which would require 70 percent of workers to sign union authorization cards instead of the far more manageable 50 percent initially proposed by this legislation.
Bill O'Reilly's attack on homeless veterans was arguably one of the nastiest, most noxious news stories FOX News spewed during the Presidential election cycle, which is saying a lot. In January 2008, O'Reilly went after John Edwards for calling attention to the 200,000 homeless veterans sleeping under bridges and on the streets. It was a figure substantiated by the Department of Veterans Affairs and the National Alliance to End Homelessness, but O'Reilly didn't let a little thing like the facts prevent him from saying there weren't homeless vets out there. When O'Reilly eventually back-tracked, it was only so far as to state that if there were homeless vets, there weren't many of them. What's more, he said their homelessness was due to their own addictions and mental illnesses, not our economy.
Brave New Films and groups like Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America immediately fought back. We released FOX Attacks "Non-Existent" Veterans" along with a petition demanding O'Reilly apologize to homeless vets, which over 17,000 people signed. Of course, when homeless vets attempted to deliver the petition to the FOX building in New York, they were denied entrance and ambushed by an O'Reilly camera crew--one of FOX's favorite faux journalistic practices.
Flash forward to last night, when O'Reilly continued to blame everything from homeless vets to Rush Limbaugh's incendiary comments on the "Far-Left Smear Machine," as he likes to call us. O'Reilly even used a handy little Far-Left Smear Chart to illustrate exactly how the machine works.
I did a quick hit on this yesterday, but this is too important to let scroll away so quickly. There's a new video out from Brave New Films and ACORN that directly exposes the truth about ACORN--that it scares the right wing, because their power depends on people not voting. Yup, they have footage here of Paul Weyrich saying precisely that. There's also a brief clip of Andrew Sullivan talking about the delegitimation-of-an-Obama-presidency angle. So, it sets the political context, and then it goes into the facts. It is, in short, the perfect way to bring someone up to speed--fast:
Over the last week, I've been documenting the struggle between workers and residents of the Atria assisted living facilities chain, and Bruce Wasserstein, CEO of the Lazard investment firm, who has reaped enormous profits from an affiliated fund's holdings in Atria, while the workers endure low pay and terrible conditions, the residents suffer neglect, and the shareholders continually lose value in their investment. If you've been reading thus far, you're probably asking yourself, "Okay, this is a terrible situation. What can I do about it?"
Of course, what the story doesn't tell you is how much this is connected with the media's own complicity in hyping McCain, as was so thoroughly documented in Free Ride: John McCain and the Media. The media's complicitly is explicitly invoked by at the end of "McCain's YouTube Problem Just Became a Nightmare" and is directly tied to the pitch to help spread the video to others.
The Times story doesn't completely ignore the core problem for McCain-his complete lack of candor, credibility and integrity that the media scrupulously hides from public view. But it steers away from any reflection on the media's own culpability, and in doing so, it invokes a whole series of tired narrative conventions that serve to illustrate how the media "covers" the news-as in keeping it under wraps. You'll see what I mean on the flip.
U.S. contractors in Iraq have stooped to a new low by covering up a gang-rape of an employee by her co-workers. The young woman claims the U.S. government has failed to prosecute and that crucial evidence has gone missing since being handed over to her former employer Halliburton/ KBR.
by Justin Krebs
The Los Angeles chapter of Drinking Liberally had a special guest host on Tuesday night: Robert Greenwald, of Brave New Films, whose filmmaker activism has given us Iraq For Sale, the "Fox Attacks" series of shorts and, most recently, "When the Saints Go Marching In," marking the second anniversary of Katrina, which he screened and discussed with the crowded room of liberal Angelenos.
You can see the video here:
It's a natural for Robert to show his latest short to a DL crowd -- because Brave New Films doesn't just produce films...they socially organize around films, giving us the chance to become more than "viewers." We become participants in a conversation, activists for a cause and members of a movement...and for Robert, as for DL, the key ingredient is the community.
When Iraq For Sale was released on DVD, 4,500 house parties screened it in one week. Just as powerful films about Iraq were released on the big screen (The War Tapes) and HBO (Baghdad ER). But what do you do when the lights come up in the movie theaer, or when the credits roll on premium cable? It's not easy to start a conversation with a stranger in the cinema...and too often the energy of the experience dissipates on your walk through the parking lot.
Brave New Films offers an alternative. In Robert's own words:
Working with Drinking Liberally is part of BNF's DNA. Our ongoing commitment is to screen our work in every possible venue from church to school to pizza parlor to bowling alley to of course, Drinking Liberally. The shorts and the films serve to bring people together and in the process, community begins to emerge, activists energize others and our stories serve as means to encourage people to take action. Screening the films and shorts in group situations has a consistent impact in terms of getting more focus, more commitment, more passion for change from the group social dynamic.
Iraq For Sale is just one example of a new model for organizing around films (one that chapters of Screening Liberally are exploring further every month)...the happy hour gathering to view "When the Saints Go Marching In" and remember the impact of Katrina is another. In a private home, or a crowded bar, the effect is the same: you're not watching alone...and soon you are doing more than just watching, and you're doing it together.
