Republican Healthcare Fail

--John Sherffius

How many more must die before we change this system?

Peace.

Coons is In

The speculation may stop. Chris is in for sure.

I am pleased to announce to you, my friends and long-time supporters, my candidacy for Delaware's open seat in the United States Senate. In the coming weeks, I will formally kick off my campaign with formal announcements in each county.

People in Delaware are hurting, and they deserve a Senator who will wake up every day and fight for the people in our great state. That's what my campaign will be about. With your support and help, I can take my record of success here in Delaware and my vision for our future to the U.S. Senate.

Together, we can reach out across Delaware to share a positive message about creating jobs, restoring our communities, and keeping families safe. I can't do this without you. Your financial support and volunteer time is critical in making this campaign a success. Please visit my new campaign web site at www.chriscoons.com to make a contribution, sign up for email alerts, and volunteer on the campaign.

My family and I appreciate and are inspired by the calls and emails of support we received as we came to this important decision. We look forward to working together in the weeks to come.

Sincerely,

Chris Coons

Mighty Little, Mighty Late

News of NRG's closing three of four units at Indian River is good in the overall. Delays until 2013 for cleaning up the remaining unit are not good.

And there remains the issue of those ash piles. In every other place around the nation where contamination from ash piles has been studied the results are frightening. Will NRG ever allow that testing? If the testing is accomplished what will be done to clean up and end ongoing contamination?

Peace.

Hopeful News

Among other issues of the day there is good news.

John McCain is not President. What more need be said?

Peace.

Congress, Are You Listening

The loss of a longtime Democratic Senate seat in Massachusetts will be bandied about by the pundits for weeks to come. In my mind the message is clear, the public is tired of a Congress doing too little to aid the common man. We are tired of seeing Wall Street bailouts followed by huge profits and gigantic bonuses while people are losing jobs and homes. The voters want a Congress that gets down to work and does the job of putting this nation back on track.

The Obama administration was voted into office in part as an angry reaction to the Bush administration. The voters remain unsettled and are voicing their unrest by moving against the Democratic mainstream. People want to see change even if that change may not be best in the long term. Trouble is on the horizon. If or not government will respond is in the hands of our Congress, the very best Congress money can buy.

Peace.

Sarah Palin Debut on Fox News

From Clay Bennett



Some people really are at their best when they say nothing at all.

Peace.

Cheney on Obama

Tony Auth, Philadelphia Inquirer

What more need be said?

Peace.

Insurgents Hack US Drones

Today's Wall Street Journal has the story.

Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.

Given the new reliance on drones to fight this loser of a war we are in deep trouble now. And our military has known of this possible leak since the 1990's. How can we expect to win any war with a military organization functioning as low level as this?

Peace.

PS Read more about the Sky Grabber software used by the insurgents here.

Now It is Obama's War

With the announcement last night of an additional 30,000 troops headed to Afghanistan in coming months President Obama takes the losing war into his own hands.  No longer can we blame this mess on past President Bush.  The blame for loss or the credit for a good outcome will belong to President Obama.

While I remain a staunch supporter of the President in nearly all his actions, this one decision is wrong beyond measure.  The President listened to the same tired advice of too many years.  Our nation cannot afford to borrow more money to wage a losing war.  Never in the history of the Afghan region has an outside power managed to stabilize the area.  What makes America a winner today?

Perhaps the best we can hope is not to drag out this mess too much longer.  Eight long years in the nation without any measurable success is far more than enough. 

Peace.

Happy Thanksgiving

Yelnoc, Flickr, Creative Commons

Hope your day is a great one.

Peace.

Senate Healthcare Bill is Revealed

The Senate version of the healthcare bill(PDF) was released yesterday.  Given the title of the bill, The Patient Protection Affordable Care Act, we know already we are in trouble.  Any time these days our government offers good words we can know the opposite is meant.  The employer responsibility, individual mandate, and Medicaid expansion, the exchange, and the public option provisions are pushed back to 2014.  In other words the industry gets to keep the status quo in large measures and we get crumb and empty promises.

The howl from us consumers and voters needs to be loud and clear.  This bill is bad enough to be unacceptable.  A poor bill may be worse than no bill at all once people find out what they did not get.  We need real healthcare with coverage for every American.  Anything less is not going to move the nation toward the 21st Century.  We can ill afford to remain mired in the current deathcare situation.

Peace. 

They Are Coming Back

Military presence in the role of ROTC was banned from many college campuses in the 60's. Now as part of the military's ongoing effort to produce more soldiers a return to campus may be in the air. Return of ROTC may not be so much aimed at producing new officers as to integrate military affairs into ordinary life and so recruit enlisted persons.

As one who spent time in the U.S. military I can attest to both the benefits and the downsides. Today I remain staunchly opposed to continued expansion of our military as the forces are being put to the wrong usages. Our military as a peacetime protective force could be much smaller and less expensive than the current armies of occupation.

Peace.

DKos Calls Out Tom Carper

Hunter does one fine job of describing Senator Tom "Corporate" Carper as the dog he really is these days in a post at DKos.

Tom Carper, who is the number one recipient of corporate cash vs. individual contributions of all Democrats in the Senate, with about 44 percent of every one of his campaign dollars coming from corporate PACs -- a feat that required him out-grubbing all four of the other top corporate go-to Democrats on that list, Blanche Lincoln, Kent Conrad, Ben Nelson and Max Baucus, all of whom have already gone to great and much-publicized lengths to make sure that any bill passed by the Senate is as much of a cash cow for private insurance companies as possible, and who have become regular fixtures in the attempt to gut, water down, or carve away anything that might be the slightest bit inconvenient for those companies.

That is the guy being allowed to push an alternative to a real public option in healthcare.

We, the people of Delaware and the nation deserve better than this. Senator Corporate must not be allowed to have his way and the next election he needs to hear from all of us as we express our disdain.

Peace.

International Study of Healthcare Paints Ugly Picture of Affairs in the U.S.

A study of physicians in 11 countries around the world paints a pretty sorry picture of the state of U.S. healthcare.

Fifty-eight percent of primary care doctors in the U.S. report their patients often have difficulty paying for medications and care, and half of U.S. doctors spend substantial time dealing with restrictions insurance companies place on their patients' care.

Democrats, Listen Up

Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos and I often find room for disagreement but last night he hit the nail right on the head. In considering the Virginia, New Jersey, and other elections yesterday Markos summarizes points for us Democrats to understand.

1. If you abandon Democratic principles in a bid for unnecessary "bipartisanship", you will lose votes.

2. If you water down reform in favor of Blue Dogs and their corporate benefactors, you will lose votes.

3. If you forget why you were elected -- health care, financial services, energy policy and immigration reform -- you will lose votes.

We as a party need to return to our base and begin to look out for the people. If party leadership continues to pander to the right and to corporate interests more and more elections may be lost in the future.

Peace.

Shauna's Hope

Shauna Kaufman died in an automobile accident in June of this year. In her honor a new program is being put in place in Delaware.

New Policy Supports Life-Saving Donations in Delaware

Shauna Kaufman recently wrote a poem where she compared her actions to ripples in the water, noting how they seem to continue endlessly and how they can affect others. She hoped that her actions, in turn, would produce positive ripples.

On June 18, 2009, Shauna’s life was tragically cut short, following a car accident that occurred in southern Delaware. But legacy of the 17-year-old will in fact create positive outcomes for countless others, thanks to a policy aimed to facilitate the life-saving opportunity of organ donation.

“Shauna’s Hope” is a new policy enacted by Delaware’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner (OCME), in cooperation with the Kaufman family – her parents Ian and Amy, and sister Holly – along with Gift of Life Donor Program – the nonprofit organ procurement organization that covers Delaware, eastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey.

At the time of her death, Shauna’s family looked to honor her wishes to be an organ donor, but unfortunately, the call to Gift of Life was made too late for the donation opportunity to occur.

As part of this new policy, the OCME mandates that Gift of Life be contacted in the instance of every scene death that meets certain criteria. This collaborative effort will ensure that a timely referral is made and will therefore preserve the donation opportunity for every person.

“Shauna was a remarkable young woman who always looked to help others and treated every person equally,” Amy Kaufman said. “The ‘Shauna’s Hope’ policy continues her passion by making the world a better place not only through organ and tissue donation but through the kindness and compassion that the policy allows for the newly bereaved.”

The OCME has shown a tremendous amount of support toward this measure, signifying its commitment both to those who have made the decision to be organ donors, and those who are waiting for the gift of life.

“Our primary responsibility is to be a voice for the deceased and to ensure that medical and legal issues are appropriately addressed. However, we have a societal responsibility to enhance the health of citizens and administer a key role in the transplantation process,” OCME Deputy Director Hal Brown said. “Enabling increased levels of transplantation through ‘Shauna's Hope’ is one of the few opportunities we have to directly save and improve lives.”

Gift of Life, as an organization, remains committed to facilitating every possible donation opportunity, as the means of helping those waiting for a life-saving transplant. Currently, in this region alone, nearly 6,000 people are waiting for the gift of life – joining the more than 100,000 people nationwide.

“We believe that every person deserves the opportunity to be a donor, no matter what the circumstances are,” said Richard D. Hasz, Gift of Life’s vice president of clinical services. “The state’s OCME and coroner’s offices have been dedicated partners in our efforts for many years, and we look forward to continuing this collaboration with the new policy. We hope that other medical examiners and coroners throughout our region see this as a stellar example and enact similar policies.”

About Gift of Life Donor Program: Since 1974, Gift of Life has served as the link between donors and patients awaiting life-saving transplants in the eastern half of Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey and Delaware. In that tenure, the OPO has coordinated more than 28,000 life-saving organ transplants and hundreds of thousands of tissue transplants.

For more information on organ and tissue donation, please call the Gift of Life at 1-800-DONORS-1 or visit its website, www.donors1.org.

What better way could there be to honor the life on one so young but so very wise? The gift of life is one we all should revere.

Peace.

Healthcare Resolution--Progressive Democrats of Sussex County

The following resolution was drafted by the Progressive Democrats of Sussex County, DE and is supported by the State Executive Committee of the Party along with various other organizations and individuals. Please consider submitting the same or similar resolution to your own organizations and to your own Congressional members.

Many thanks.

WHEREAS, 20,000 die each year in the
United States because they cannot afford to see a doctor, 700,000 go bankrupt because of their medical bills, almost fifty million Americans lack any health insurance at all, and millions more who do have private coverage pay increasingly unaffordable premiums; and

WHEREAS, every developed country except the United States has concluded that providing health care for all their citizens is a right not a privilege; and

WHEREAS, health care in the United States is now in major crisis and affordable health care for all Americans is a matter of the utmost urgency in our time; and

WHEREAS, despite efforts by well funded extremists to disseminate false and misleading information about health care reform, public polls show that an overwhelming majority of Americans want health care reform to include, as a matter of choice, a robust public option similar to Medicare in order to create, as President Obama has said, significant competition for the medical insurance industry; and

WHEREAS, co-ops or so-called "triggers" are inadequate in and of themselves to generate either the kind or the amount of competition needed to keep medical and insurance costs down;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Progressive Democrats of Sussex County urge
Senator Thomas Carper, Senator Edward Kaufman and Representative Michael Castle to vote for only such healthcare reform proposals as contain a robust public option at all stages of the legislative process including conference and reconciliation, and encourages legislators to use any available parliamentary means to pass such reform;

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Progressive Democrats of Sussex County shall send a copy of this resolution to all members of Congress who represent its members.

Peace.

Health Care in Hawaii

The NYT today has a front page article in the dead tree edition concerning state mandated healthcare.

Hawaii law requires employers to offer standardized health plans with low co-pays, no deductibles and few out-of-pocket costs. Cliff Cisco, a senior vice president at the Hawaii Medical Service Association, said that having a standardized and popular benefit has helped keep administrative costs to just 7 percent of revenue, among the lowest in the nation.

If Hawaii can do this why not the nation?

Peace.

Real People for Real Health Reform

As the healthcare debate continues day by day the Progressive Democrats of Sussex County are leading the parade for real reform. In the News Journal today is a Delaware Voice piece signed by Joanne Cabry entitled "Real People for Real Health Reform".

However, just as our resolutions have grown stronger by gathering more supporters, we are resolved to work until all Americans have affordable, quality health care. In 2010, 45,000 of us will die because we didn't have insurance that would pay for a cholesterol screening or a mammogram. We are resolved to see this is the last year we watch as 45,000 of us die.

The writing makes me proud to both a Progressive Democrat and a member of the Progressive Democrats of Sussex County. Wonderful stuff, Joanne. Keep up the good work.

Peace.

Healthcare Snowe Job

The Senate Finance Committee passed its long awaited measure yesterday with the support of one Republican Senator, Olympia Snowe. Now the conference committee must reconcile the House version (which will likely contain a strong public option) with the Senate option which more likely contain a "trigger" instead of a public option. All this in order to keep the support of a single Republican and claim bipartisan support.

The noise in response to Senate Democratic Party fail on this one should be loud and clear. The majority of Americans today know enough to support a public option. All the ongoing conversation about "triggers" and other ways of killing real reform need to be buried in an avalanche of public outcry. If we fail to get real reform with a robust public option from day one we may not have another chance in our lifetimes. We have waited too long for this reform. People are dying on a daily basis as a direct result of delay.

Peace.