One of the few Republican ideas brought up at Thursday's Health Care Reform summit that seemed to be really popular with both parties was suggested by Senator Tom Coburn. The idea basically is to have people go and visit doctors, and try to get them to break Medicare rules. I presume that if they created such a program for Medicare they would try to see to it that it was applied to Medicaid as well. It has been compared to the practice that many fast food restaurants and retail clothing stores have been employing for a while now, commonly known as "Mystery Shopping". This is a horrible idea for several reasons, and the comparison to the Mystery Shopper, is frankly weak and ultimately inaccurate. More importantly I have a suggestion that contains none of the yuck factor of Under Cover Patients, and could potentially play a significant role in changing the way that doctors and patients relate to one another.
Like most of Paul's articles these are very thought provoking. But there's more to be said. It's certainly true that right-wing organizations have out-organized us, but they have a lot more money and that's really what it comes down to. We certainly need better organizing, but we have to face reality. And the reality is encouraging as well as depressing, because there ARE serious cracks in the armor of our enemies and serious divisions among them that cannot be papered over.
With respect to the Tea Parties and especially the summer's town-hall meetings, a key corporate titan appears to be Koch Industries of Wichita, Kansas. Fred Koch (pronounced "coke") founded the company in 1940 as an oil business but it has expanded into natural gas, pharmaceuticals, fertilizer, and many other areas. He helped create the John Birch Society in the late 1950s and died in 1967. His two sons who run the business now, David and Charles, have foundations that donate millions to conservative and libertarian causes and groups, including notably the Cato Institute. One Koch-funded group used to be called Citizens for a Sound Economy. It became Americans for Prosperity (AFP) in 2003, a group that has advocated limited government and opposed climate change legislation. Earlier this year, Americans for Prosperity launched a Web site called Patients United Now, which ran frightening television ads opposing health care reform (showing, for example, a Canadian woman who supposedly couldn't get treatment for a brain tumor in her native country). . . . The AFP helped distribute signs and talking points at a town-hall event hosted by Virginia Congressman Tom Perriello. . . .
This dovetails very nicely with corporate lobbying groups whenever there is a need to block progressive reforms:
It isn't just conservative (c)4 groups that backed the town halls. America's Health Insurance Plans, or AHIP, is the enormous lobbying organization for private health insurance companies headed by Karen Ignagni, who makes frequent television appearances discussing health care. According to ThinkProgress's Lee Fang, AHIP mobilized 50,000 of its employees to attend town-hall meetings and otherwise lobby against the inclusion of a public health insurance option in the reform. AHIP's effort was coordinated by Democracy Data & Communications (DDC), which has helped various corporate clients set up front groups. DDC is headed by B.R. McConnon, who was once an employee of the Koch-funded Citizens for a Sound Economy.
This one-two punch is what's really effective. Normally, business and conservative groups are subsumed into the Republican party. However, in 2008 something new happened that hadn't happened since 1965: an actual "liberal" Democrat took office with the intention of enacting some progressive legislation -- and he was popular!
You see the immediate result. The instant that Obama tried to operate within the institutional framework that existed up till 2008 he found himself fighting an unprecedented coalition of business groups who refused to be bought off, and right-wing political activists like Grover Norquist.
Our favorite irascible media tyrant is in the news once again, and once again it's time for me to bring you a story of doing one thing while wishing for another.
We have heard a lot about the...how can I put this politely...challenges Murdoch seems to face associating factual reality with his reality, and we could have lots of fun going through his factual misstatements-but instead, I want to take on one specific issue today:
Rupert Murdoch says he hates it when people steal his content from the Internet to draw readers to their sites...which is funny, if you think about it, because he has no problem at all stealing my content (and lots of yours, as well) for his sites.
I notice a lot of 'pronoun problems' when it comes to business interests talking about the Employee Free Choice Act.
Washington apple packers are worried about their workers losing the right to private ballots when voting on whether or not to join a labor union, a chief lobbyist for the apple industry says.
It's nice to have a lobbyist for an industry talking about the interests of apple packing workers. Of course, they often mix up 'us' and 'them'.
"People in the apple industry say they work hard to treat workers well and think they should have a private right to decide if they want to unionize or not," Foster said.
Get it? They're all just one big group of people in 'the apple industry'. Some of them pick fruit in the rain all day and some of them are cushy lawyer lobbyists, but they are all dedicated to apples and secret ballots.
With the election over, the discussion turns to how to keep progressive momentum going outside of the campaign. We need to do this to move a liberal agenda in DC; to keep newly-energized activists engaged; and to overall shift the debate in this country.
Pushing progressive values with your vote is one step; funding those values with your wallet is another. And with the holiday season coming up, it seems like this is a good opportunity to promote -- and support -- progressive businesses.
Let us know in the comments thread. At Living Liberally, we're working on a project called The Liberal Card that, as among other goals, aims to promote these businesses. We remember what a good resource Buy Blue was after the last election, directing us to businesses that leaned our way and warning us against those that didn't (and are happy that Advomatic will be reviving that program in the future). What was a good idea in '04 is an even better idea now. So suggest a few businesses to us (or offer yourself up if you are one) -- as we get ready to buy blue this holidays season.
Judd Apatow has done it again. He's really done it. Pineapple Express is downright awesome.
I wouldn't call it a game changer like say The 40 Year Old Virgin, it's not going to spawn a whole new genre of films. But it's a rock-solid movie, and a great combination of classic Apatowian comedy and some pretty great ashtray-flinging fight scenes, foot through-the-windshield car chases, and a great bromantic escape sequence. Everyone, the writers, actors, directors, special effects dudes, I mean everyone does a really excellent job.
In short, Pineapple Express is a strictly business kind of movie. No visionary new ideas. Just a get-in, get-out solid genre film.
This "strictly business" attitude is key issue that the film deals with. When we first meet Seth Rogen's character Dale Denton, he is calling into a talk-radio show about how drugs should be legal because dealing with skeezy drug dealers is really really awkward. This awkwardness is exemplified in his relationship with his own dealer Saul Silver, played brilliantly by James Franco.
Dale is mildly entertained by Saul but for the most part wants to keep their relationship strictly business. As the movie goes on, and as their adventure escalates, they find that their relationship is more than just about a business deal. It's about friendship, love and making sure they don't get killed by vicious drug lords and their henchmen.
There are many places in our lives where we'd like to keep things strictly business. Whether it's at the store, the office, or the world of politics. We like to keep these situations and the relationships developed within these situations out of our personal lives, but in reality, they can't be separated.
(This diary is from the US Chamber of Commerce. - promoted by Matt Stoller)
A few days ago Elliott Petty wrote a diary on Safeway CEO Steve Burd's efforts on health care reform. It was actually pretty responsible in highlighting the real innovations that Safeway has instituted in recognizing and rewarding personal responsibility in healthcare. Elliot dropped the ball in the last sentence, though, we he said "Clearly the corporate sector are reading the tea leaves and feel compelled to find solutions to America's broken health care system. Will we leave it in their hands, or push a universal plan that works in other parts of the industrialized world?"
Huh? The fact is that for about 60 years the U.S. business community has been at the absolute forefront of finding innovative solution to providing - and paying for - good healthcare. (One example, Kaiser Permanente, which traces its origins to prepaid health plans for Kaiser shipyard and smelter workers in the 1940's.) After all, businesses want and need healthy employees, and they also pay most of the healthcare bills in this country. Business has been talking about a "broken health care system" for decades.
The Republican Party, known since the late 19th century as the party of business, is losing its lock on that title...
Some business leaders are drifting away from the party because of the war in Iraq, the growing federal debt and a conservative social agenda they don't share. In manufacturing sectors such as the auto industry, some Republicans want direct government help with soaring health-care costs, which Republicans in Washington have been reluctant to provide. And some business people want more government action on global warming, arguing that a bolder plan is not only inevitable, but could spur new industries.
There are roughly two cultural parts of the business community. One is the 'managerial' sector, the corporate group that took power during the Reaganite era and is basically illiberal in orientation. These are the people who are running companies like General Motors into the ground of out fealty to ideological right-wing class solidarity. Here's Atrios.
GM says it needs to cut costs. Perhaps it would like to work with the Democrats and the Unions to get universal health insurance. It would be good for their workers, good for the country and good for the bottom line.
This is true. The failure of big business to step up in this area has long mystified me. It can't be explained by anything other than cultural biases of the men with money.
These people are becoming independents or depoliticized. Their ideas don't work, and their very identities as masters of the universe is shown as a sad and tragic lifelong fraud. People like Tom Tauke of Verizon, who probably believes that Verizon isn't censoring political speech, fall into this camp. Defense contractors, franchise restauranteurs, telecom executives, PR companies, agribusiness, health insurance and pharam execs - that's where these people live, roughly speaking.
The second group is 'entrepreneurial' in culture, not large and corporate. This is the group that sees new industries in green technology, and will swing to a liberal model of governance. In fact, this is the group many of us belong to, though the institutional isolation of 'the left' makes people in various Web 2.0 and sustainable energy businesses make it hard to recognize. The new ideas and new economic and cultural structures that can govern a 21st century economy are being designed in this sector, which combines philanthropy in the form of corporate structures like Google.org and Good Capital with sustainable business practices and new companies that incorporate the customer as an integral and democratic piece of the profit chain.
This sector is where our new governance models are going to come from, though the political piece is really our job and the policy details will come from emerging public spiritedness in academia. Building the bridges between the business left and the open left is going to take 20 years, but it's starting to happen.
STATE BLOGS
