PDA Priorities: Mobilizing the Progressive Vote and Voice

PDA Priorities

1. End the War, Redirect Funding

PDA wants all troops withdrawn promptly, and war funds redirected toward social needs at home and humanitarian aid in Iraq. Toward that end, we call on the Democratic-led Congress to use its powers to 1) cut off funding that prolongs the military occupation of Iraq, and 2) fully investigate false White House claims justifying the invasion and occupation of Iraq. If such investigations lead to moves toward impeachment, so be it.

PDA is working closely with members of Congress to enact a fullyfunded, prompt, orderly withdrawal of all U.S. troops and military contractors from Iraq. We support stand-alone legislation or amendments to defense and appropriations bills that will accomplish that goal. And we support measures in Congress to prevent an attack on Iran and to renounce any interest in Iraqi oil or in permanent military bases in Iraq. We do not support Democratic leadership proposals with prolonged and porous timelines that allow tens of thousands of U.S. troops to remain in Iraq on vaguely-defined “training” or “anti-terrorism” measures. PDA coordinates its “Out of Iraq” efforts with dozens of Congress members, including Reps. Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey and Maxine Waters.

End the War, Redirect Funding

2. Health Care for All

It is immoral for a country as wealthy as ours to have 45 million people with no health coverage, and tens of millions more with inadequate or overly expensive coverage. It also makes no economic sense; despite spending twice as much as other industrialized nations on healthcare, our system performs poorly because the private U. S. insurance bureaucracy soaks up nearly one-third of all health care money in waste, profits, paperwork and advertising. Poor health and poor health care are drags on the economy and job creation; up to half of all personal bankruptcies are caused by health care crises.

PDA supports Rep. John Conyers bill, H.R. 676, which establishes streamlined, nonprofit national health insurance--enhanced Medicare for All--which would negotiate drug and treatment costs. By replacing private insurers and recouping administrative savings of up to $300 billion per year, this single-payer approach provides topnotch health care to everyone. Care would be privately delivered by healers and hospitals, but publicly financed--with no bills, co-pays, deductibles, denials or medically-induced bankruptcies. PDA also supports health care initiatives at the state and local level that move us toward a nonprofit single-payer system.

Single-payer Health Care

3. Economic Justice
When working people reject their economic interests and vote Republican on wedge issues of abortion and gay rights, it is partly because they haven't heard a Democratic economic agenda that speaks strongly to their needs. PDA proposes to win over "soccer moms," "NASCAR dads" and "swing voters" through an agenda of progressive tax reform, fair trade and economic security measures.

PDA calls on Democrats in Congress to roll back Bush tax breaks for the wealthy--so that the richest 1 percent of Americans (with yearly incomes averaging $1.3 million) will not pocket $300 billion over the next four years. Tax burdens on the middle class can be eased if the wealthy pay their share. PDA supports fair trade that protects workers' rights and the environment, while opposing wage-reducing "free trade" agreements that protect only corporate rights to globally exploit unprotected labor. This year, PDA will work closely with allies like Sen. Sherrod Brown to block renewal of "fast track" authority, which allows the White House to enact trade deals without Congressional amendment.

Along with unfair trade deals like NAFTA, attacks on the right to unionize are a key factor in the decline of America's middle class. PDA endorses the Employee Free Choice Act, which establishes unions in any workplace where a majority of workers sign up. PDA also supports middle-class job creation through federal investment, such as the Apollo Alliance for renewable energy, and investment in wireless Internet networks.

Employee Free Choice Act
Apollo Alliance

4. Clean, Fair, Transparent Elections
The U.S. election system is in crisis. Big-money interests dominate U.S. politics in ways unknown in other industrialized countries, with social and environmental progress often blocked by officials who cater to big donors to insure re-election funds. Incumbents are unfairly insulated by district gerrymandering and rules obstructing independent candidates and parties. In recent years, voters themselves have faced political and even racial obstacles in casting votes and in getting their votes counted.

Soon after its formation, PDA worked with Rep. John Conyers in exposing the 2004 election irregularities in Ohio that helped elect Bush. PDA activists engaged in "election protection" monitoring during the 2006 voting. We support federal legislation that bans the further use of touch-screen (DRE) voting machines for counting votes, establishes a paper ballot as the official record for deriving voter intent, and requires rigorous mandatory audits of elections. To eliminate big-money dominance, PDA supports comprehensive campaign finance reform at the state and national level, including Clean Money public financing of the public's elections, plus free TV time for candidates. PDA opposes the racially-biased disenfranchisement of felons who've served their time, and supports reforms like "Instant Runoff"/proportional voting, paper ballots which assure more accurate and broader representation than winner-take-all elections.

Clean Elections
Instant Runoff Voting

5. Stop Global Warming
No issue reveals more clearly the flaws of the U.S. political-economic system than global warming--the dominance of greed and corporate power over the public good, and the near-sighted focus on the short-term over the welfare of future generations. The departing Republican chair of the Senate's environment committee used his final meeting in December 2006 to blame Hollywood and the media for "alarmism" and for "hyping" the problem of global warming. But as shown by the stunning success of Al Gore's documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," the public is ready to act to save the planet and to protect our remaining wild places from further degradation in the pursuit of oil. PDA calls on the Democratic majority in Congress to lead boldly in reducing our country's oil dependence and use of fossil fuels by raising auto fuel economy and imposing mandatory caps on carbon pollution while investing in public transportation, energy conservation technologies and alternative energy development. (Such investments create good-paying jobs.)

Copyright © 2004-2008 Progressive Democrats of America • All text available for public use with appropriate attribution.

GREENPEACE USA

Call on Obama to restore science to its rightful place

In just a few hours, the House of Representatives will vote on global warming legislation that doesn’t live up to what the science shows we have to do to stop global warming. The American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) bill has been so heavily influenced by the coal and oil industries, that Greenpeace now opposes the bill.

President Obama vowed to “restore science to its rightful place” in his inaugural address, yet ACES all but ignores the science. Take action now and urge Obama to be a leader on global warming.

Here’s what’s WRONG with the legislation:

• The Nobel-prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that to avoid the worst climate impacts such as intense droughts, super charged hurricanes and increased heat waves, the U.S. and other industrialized countries must cut their emissions by 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020. This bill, as it’s currently written, only calls for a 4% reduction by 2020. And there’s very little chance those targets will be improved.
  
• These weak targets are made even worse by 2 billion tons per year of allowable offsets. Offsets allow polluters to put off for more than a decade real cuts in their emissions The offsets are so high that they will exceed the actual pollution reductions required until at least 2026 — that’s time we don’t have!
  
• Coal-fired power plants are the single largest source of global warming pollution in the U.S. In order to tackle climate change, we need to begin phasing out coal immediately. But instead of phasing-out coal plants, ACES will actually encourage the growth of a new generation of coal-fired plants! To add insult to injury, tens of billions of taxpayer dollars would be spent on the myth of carbon capture and sequestration — an untested and unproven technology that is decades away from full-scale deployment even by the most optimistic estimates.

Worst of all, ACES will actually remove the President’s existing authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act—an authority that was recently reaffirmed by the Supreme Court. Now that the House has proven that it won’t step up and stop global warming, President Obama’s power to regulate greenhouse gases is our greatest hope.

Urge your member of Congress to vote against this bill, and tell the President he MUST deliver on his campaign pledge to set climate policy based on science, not politics. Take action now!

Building the sustainable economy

Building the sustainable economy

by Marcin Gerwin

Tiger’s nest in Bhutan
Photo: Thomas Wanhoff

In 1994 the government of Haiti lifted tariffs and allowed imports of cheap, subsidized rice and other crops from abroad. This policy was recommended by the International Monetary Fund and urged by the U.S. government (1). Over the years this tiny change in policy led to an estimated 830,000 job losses, it damaged food security and rural livelihoods, and eventually led to food riots and hunger in 2008 (2). If people in Haiti were to decide by themselves on their country policy, would they choose the recommendations of the IMF that brought them into starvation? Would people of Ecuador allow toxic pollution in the Amazon for the sake of Chevron Texaco profits? Would people in India accept genetically modified seeds of cotton that caused crop failures, spiral of debt and hundreds of farmer suicides? And would people in the USA support bailing out banks with their own money in a way that is not transparent and does not lead to the recovery of the financial system? They wouldn’t. These things happen around the world because we still don’t have true democracy, where people set the rules for themselves.

Women sowing rice in India
Photo: Michael Foley

In 2001 twenty subsistence farmers, small traders, small food processors, and consumers, mostly women, and some of them illiterate, met in Indian village to decide on the future of agriculture in the state of Andhra Pradesh. They were chosen to represent the rural diversity of their state. They were presented three different models of development. The official plan, put forward by Chief Minister of the state, was backed by grants and loans from the World Bank and the UK government. The plan was to mechanize, consolidate and genetically engineer agriculture of the state to produce cash crops for export, and to reduce the farming population from 70% to 40%, to have more workers for industry. The second vision involved developing environmentally friendly agriculture to produce cheap organic products for domestic and Northern supermarkets and it was supported by the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements and the International Trade Center. The third vision was influenced by Gandhian and indigenous ideas, and involved increasing local self-reliance and sustainability in both agriculture and economics.

Each model was illustrated by videos, farmers and traders could hear the summary of the policies, ask questions, consult with government officials, scientists, corporate and NGO representatives from the state, national and international level. They also considered advantages and disadvantages of each vision, based also upon their own knowledge, priorities and aspirations. After one week they made a decision.

Tom Atlee writes:

In their recommendations (…) they said they wanted self-reliant food and farming, and community control over resources. They wanted to maintain healthy soils, diverse crops, trees and livestock, and to build on their indigenous knowledge, practical skills and local institutions. They wanted to maintain the high percentage of people making their livelihood from the land, and did not want their farms consolidated or mechanized in ways that would displace rural people. Most of them could feed their families through their own sustenance farming. They did not want to end up laboring in dangerous brick kilns outside of Hyderabad, like so many who had left their farms. They also rejected genetically modified crops and the export of their local medicinal plants. (3)

If we wish to make some meaningful changes in the world, we need appropriate tools for that. A number one tool in the earth repair workshop is community-based democracy. It is a key for unlocking the potential for sustainability. In most cities in the world we choose our representatives to manage them. They decide on our behalf what the taxes will be spent on or what new investments will be made. It may work well, it may be a disaster. However, we can make these decisions directly together, as a community. We can meet, discuss, consult with experts and decide ourselves what the future of our city or village will be like.

What can we decide about? We can make decisions regarding all the issues that are relevant for a municipality. We can set the priorities for the budget spending, plan the new investments, hire personnel, decide on the level of their salaries, give permissions for private infrastructure investments, set local taxation and monitor the work of the city council. In some countries municipalities can even write their own local law. It is very important to understand that it is the citizens who employ the city council and the whole administration, not the other way around. They are all our employees, we hire them! If you live in a democratic country it is already written in your constitution. We employ the local administration to help us manage the issues of a city or a village, and with a community-based democracy their jobs is to put our decisions into practice.

In democratic countries collecting taxes is nothing but a fundraising event, which aim is to gather money for the projects for common good. There is no reason why we shouldn’t have a say in what our money is spent on. And, even if we spent these funds on exactly the same projects as the city council, thanks to community-based democracy we could gain something more, something that otherwise may have not appeared – a sense of a common cause, a united action that brings people together, that can create a feeling of “us” - a real community. In the same city there may live people who share the same interests, who could be friends, yet, they usually don’t have the opportunity to meet each other. With community-based democracy this opportunity is created. People meet and talk with each other and that is a great benefit by itself.

Community-based democracy could be useful also in taking decisions on state-wide issues. It could work exactly the same as with decisions on local matters. People meet, discuss, consult with experts and talk to other communities to see what their opinion is like and why. After final discussions in communities people vote, votes are counted and decision is made, directly by the people. Currently there is only one country where people vote often in state-wide referendums, and that’s Switzerland.

How do you get started?

Parkowa Street in Sopot, Poland.
Photo: Marcin Gerwin

You need to check the constitution of your country first. In our Polish constitution we have an article that says that our country is a common good of all people and that people can govern it directly or indirectly through their representatives. If you have an elected government, then it all should be fine, as somewhere in the constitution it is written that power in your country belongs to the citizens. Then, you need a city council that will listen to the people. They need to agree to accept the decisions of the citizens taken in meetings. From the legal perspective these meetings can be regarded as a public consultation event, with a small difference – according to an informal agreement between citizens and the city council, decisions taken by the citizens are final. Most probably it wouldn’t require any initial changes in law. Participatory budgeting, which is a form of community-based democracy, has already been introduced in Brazil, Ecuador, Spain, France, Germany, Colombia, Portugal, Italy and the UK among others.

Next, talk to your friends or people who you think might be most interested in a community life. The process of starting a community initiative has already been designed by the Transition Towns initiative and you can learn a lot from their experience. What you need at the beginning is a steering group which should be designed for its demise from the outset. The steering group is the ignition and the catalyst of the process, it is the group of people that organizes the community meetings and awareness-raising events. If you are already involved in a Transition initiative, then community-based democracy could be a practical extension pack for you. Community-based democracy can release the budget of your community and redirect it towards sustainability. If you would like to start an initiative for community-based democracy from scratch, then you don’t need to worry about establishing an organization. When I was asked if our initiative in Sopot is an NGO, I answered “No, we don’t need to register an NGO. We already have an organization and it is called a municipality of Sopot. We have more than 39,000 members and a yearly budget of around 60 million USD.” It’s just that people are not aware of that.

How do we plan to change the way our city is governed? In 2 years we will have new elections for the city council. We will ask the candidates for the mayor, if they would agree to accept the decisions made during the community meetings. If yes, then we will vote for them. If no, then we will not vote for them. If the situation gets desperate you can always have your own candidate, but it is important that the initiative for community-based democracy is not run by a political party, but by a movement. Will we succeed? I don’t know. It all depends on how many people will decide to participate directly in community life. But we will try.

How you organize the process of decision making in your community, depends entirely on you. We plan to use Open Space Technology for running meetings and setting the agenda and the KJ method for selecting priorities for the budget. In some cases formal voting may be necessary, in others consensus can be made. The city of Porto Alegre in Brazil has 20 years of experience in participatory budgeting (830kb PDF), so you can find out how they designed their process of managing the city budget.

The next step is creating a common vision for the future of a city or a village. It is a good moment to learn about sustainability and to consult with experts on your plans. Citizens may not necessarily be specialists in renewable energy or in designing public transport, they may not be aware of peak oil or climate change and may plan for highways or want to build new coal fired plants. Can you make them choose sustainable solutions? No, you cannot. They are free to choose any solutions they find most appropriate. We take this risk in Sopot as well. When I told a friend about this initiative, she said: “You know, that is very dangerous. There are some guys who may want to burn down the forest in our landscape park.” In theory they could propose that. But in practice, in our city at least, the rest of the people would not let them do it anyway. So, besides introducing community-based democracy, it is a good idea to run awareness raising events and educate people about sustainable living.

Women serving tortillas on a parade
in Cotacachi. Photo: feserc

The experience of participatory budgeting in Cotacachi canton in Ecuador is a very encouraging one. It is a small and ethnically diverse canton that stretches from the Andes to the lowland tropical areas. In 1996 the people of Cotacachi elected a new mayor (a native Kichwa), who introduced participatory budgeting there. People decided to use their budget to improve health care services and invest funds in education and electrification. Cotacachi was declared by UNESCO the first illiteracy-free area in Ecuador and the quality of healthcare is one of the best in the country (4). All people are invited to take part in the planning process, regardless of age, gender or ethnic and economic background. They decide on the use of 100% of investment resources. Decisions are made after meetings in the working groups that focus on health, education, tourism or children and youth issues. In 2000 the people of Cotacachi decided that they would like to live in an ecological canton, the first of this kind in Latin America (5).

The advantage of this system of governance is also that there is no conflict of political parties, there are no clashes for votes between left and right. We, the people, have already won the elections. No one is going to throw us out of the office in 4 years. We don’t need to prepare for the next elections. We are already there. We can sit down and decide what is best for our communities.

It seems to me that community-based democracy could fit very well with Transition initiatives. Democracy can provide involvement of the whole community, funding and a real influence on decisions made, while the Transition approach could provide a direction - sustainable living, adapting for peak oil and localizing economies. Democracy alone is not enough to create a sustainable world, we need a clear direction to understand where we would like to get to, and Transition initiatives provide just that.

Towards sustainability

When you have a community-based democracy in your city, or better in the whole country, then you can start changing the economy. It is vital that localizing and greening the economy is not imposed on people, but instead, it is something they choose themselves. Sustainability is not an abstract idea that only environmentalists can comprehend. It is just common sense, based on the understanding of how nature works. You don’t need a Ph.D. to get it. If you cut trees in the forest faster than they can grow back, sooner or later the forest will be gone. A child in a kindergarten can understand that. Adults can understand it as well and what’s more, they can do something about it. Yet, sustainability is not just about survival and living within the limits of our environment. It is about maximizing happiness, about flourishing communities, thriving nature and a wealth of natural resources.

We need to redesign our economies in a way that we will be able to feed ourselves with nutritious and healthy food, provide clothes, housing, clean water and a good life for all 8 billion of us in the next 20 years. That’s quite a challenge, but it is doable. It is doable if we have a real democracy. If we don’t, then the corporations and politicians may successfully defend the global market economy. If you have real democracy, than people can pass the law that is in the interest of their common good. They start to think about the economy, about what is really best for them and, I hope, they start to act responsibly, if they are told what the environmental consequences of their actions are and what impact it will have on their future.

The way the economy works, the very economic model, has an influence on human relations and the environment. Modern capitalism, for example, is based on self-interest. As Adam Smith points out: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” Another important feature of capitalism is competition in the free market that is supposed to keep the prices low and provide an incentive for innovations. Hmm, since everyone is concerned with their own interest, then how can capitalism help to create healthy communities where people help one another? The answer is: it can’t. That’s just not what it was designed for. It was designed for increasing profits and minimizing costs for the companies, while the invisible hand of the free market was supposed to help the rest society to improve their material standard of living. Unfortunately, the struggle for profits encourages polluting the environment to keep the costs down and saving on work conditions. There is no doubt that capitalism can increase Gross Domestic Product fast. But it does so at the expense of social life and the environment. Yet, ever increasing GDP doesn’t have to be the aim of the country’s policy anyway. How about a good life instead? In Bhutan the national policy is focused not on GDP but on GNH - Gross National Happiness.

McDonald’s in Tokyo
Photo: nicolacassa

Economic globalization, which is associated with modern capitalism, didn’t happen by chance, it is not unavoidable, as if it was winter or gravity. Economic globalization was designed at the end of the World War II by US planners and it was officially launched with the international conference in Bretton Woods in July 1944. The main objective of the design was to allow US corporations to enter foreign markets and to allow US control over the world economy by removing trade barriers, allowing free exchange of currencies and setting up a system of fixed exchange rates that would minimize the risks involved with exchanging foreign currencies. Over the next years three institutions were established: the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and later on the World Trade Organization, and their job was basically to enforce free trade rules in as many countries around the world as possible and to dismantle local self-sufficiency. Governments that didn’t want to cooperate were encouraged in a more informal way, which is described in a book written by John Perkins “Confessions of Economic Hitman”. Economic globalization can be reversed with a simple flick of a pen, if people decide to raise tariffs on imported goods.

Socialism, as it was experienced in Eastern Europe or in Soviet Union, has many flaws as well. First of all it was not a democracy. Even now, there are no free elections in Cuba nor in China. There is no free press nor freedom of speech. The country is not run by people, but by an authoritarian government, which cannot be changed after 4 years. Common ownership of resources is good, but in a classic socialist country, “common” doesn’t mean that it belongs to people. It belongs to the government. If a factory is run by state, than in practice it means that it belongs to no one, and if the workers get paid, they don’t really care what they produce nor if the quality of what they do is good. The manager may be incompetent, but he is a friend of the Minister, so he gets a job. There is no direct public oversight of the commons. The country is vulnerable to corruption and cronyism. Bureaucracy is rampant. Not so cool.

La Paz, Bolivia.
Photo: Jessie Reeder

Socialism, as it is emerging in Latin America, in Bolivia, Venezuela or in Ecuador, is different. There are free elections and people can influence policies in some ways. Public participation was allowed, for example, in Ecuador in 2008 when a new constitution was drafted. More than 3,500 organizations presented their proposals to the assembly, and thousands of public meetings were held in schools, universities and communities to decide what the new constitution should include (6). Whether these new forms of governance in Latin America will be successful, depends very much on how much public oversight will be agreed upon - in other words: how democratic these countries will be. If in Bolivia, for example, the state decides to run a gas company, who will hire the manager? Who will monitor the company’s performance? Will people be able to fire the manager at will, if they decide he is not doing his job well? Who will decide about what the revenue of gas sales will be used for - the people or the government? If people, then they may use it well. If the government, then these funds may be used for buying votes or for funding projects that people don’t really need.

Do we have other choices besides capitalism and socialism? We sure do. Just what’s important to remember is that both capitalism and socialism may be very different from one country to another. Capitalism in Sweden, for example, with public healthcare, public universities and very high taxes is not the same as capitalism in the USA. The economic model of Sweden is still capitalism, but it is different from the latest US version, because the state budget in Sweden is used to help people rather than to support corporate gains.

Prayer flags near Leh in Ladakh
Photo: ReefRaff

OK, but what if we wanted to create a society based on cooperation and sharing, rather than on self-interest and competition. Could it work? Of course, it did work for thousands of years in traditional communities all over the world, in communities of the Yanomami Indians in the Amazon, in Ladakh in the Himalayas, among the San Bushmen tribes in South Africa or in traditional Aborigine tribes in Australia (7). Economy based on sharing is also present in the industrialized countries now, and it is, for example, open source software (Linux or Wordpress), open encyclopedia (Wikipedia), posting scientific research on the internet, voluntary fire brigades, food banks where people donate food or even uploading photos on Flickr with a Creative Commons license. The formal name for an economy based on sharing is a gift economy. Its taste is very different from capitalism.

In many cultures people still work for free for the common good or simply to help their friends. In Ecuador, when people in the Indian communities meet to accomplish some task together, like weeding a garden or cleaning around a school, it’s called “minga”. In Sri Lanka, when people meet to build a road or a new well, it’s called “shramadana” – a gift of labor. A whole network of 15,000 villages, where people work together on various projects for the benefit of communities, has evolved there (it’s called Sarvodaya Shramadana). And when people in the cities in Australia meet to establish a permaculture garden, share skills and have fun, then it’s called a “permablitz”. All of these are forms of a gift economy.

When designing an economy in your area, you can choose elements of any economic system and mix them as you please. For example, you can have a communal forest in your village, but keep private housing (some tribes in the Amazon live in long communal houses). You may have a communal garden, gather food and cook meals together, but sell ginseng from this garden as a cash crop to the pharmaceutical company 100 miles away. You can also trade without money exchanging goods and services directly (barter) and, for example, you could supply fresh salads to the urban community in exchange for dental care. You can have a free market, but set caps on companies so that they stay small and share the market with each other rather than compete endlessly for customers, and besides that promote cooperative ownership by special taxation or financial incentives. Corporations could be given charters for one or two years for activities, that could be renewed if necessary, and their stakeholders could be directly responsible for any corporations’ wrong doing. Not all things can be produced locally, like hard disks or cameras, and in some cases a big producer could be an advantage.

You can also choose a cooperative economy, where people decide on what needs you have and then share responsibilities – who does what – grow food, cook, teach in school, run a kindergarten. It’s teamwork. A good example of a cooperative economy is Gaviotas, a village on the Colombian savanna. The economic model you choose depends on the personalities of people living in your community. It depends on how much individual and how much community life you would like to have. You need to talk it all over together. Don’t push it.

Going local

Let’s imagine a community that decided to begin a transition to a sustainable economy. They have just voted for a community-based democracy, they have mobilized more than half of their citizens and now would like to plan their budget expenditures. What can they do? What can they spend their money on? Boy, this is an exciting perspective! There are so many things you can start in just one year! After many meetings, discussions, community parties and consultations with experts, people decided on the following: they want to have their local currency to keep the money circulating in the local economy and they want their own bank that will issue this currency and provide credit at a 0% interest rate. This bank will also be able to issue credit in the national currency, however, since it is owned by the community, it will keep the credit rate at the minimum level and provide credit only for investments that are agreed upon by the community. The maximum amount of credit available per person was set to keep the inflation down and consumption at a sustainable level. Local currency is a top priority in this community due to a high unemployment rate, and equally important is access to land.

The municipality owns several hundred acres of agricultural land that is not privatized. This land is leased to citizens who want to grow their own food in exchange for land stewardship and supplying part of crops for school meals. There are more people willing to have a garden than land available, so 40 more acres were bought with the money from the city budget. Contracts have been also made with local farmers to supply various vegetables, fruits and grain to city shops. A discussion sparked about how to manage distribution of this food and it turned out that it was easiest to work together with local grocery stores, rather then to built a special warehouse.

Bicycle hire system in Paris
(Velib). Photo: Filo.mena

Two buses with electric engines were ordered from the factory (there was a long waiting list, so they will arrive one year later) and a credit line was opened for cab drivers who wanted to exchange their internal combustion engines for electric ones. A car sharing club was established with just 4 cars for a start and a public bicycle hire system. To provide clean electricity a plan for a transition to completely renewable sources of energy was developed in 6 months, and the purchase of the first vertical wind turbines, photovoltaics and small hydro generators was scheduled for the next spring. Since it was the citizens who managed the municipality there were no problems with obtaining permission for placing them. All large generators were to be owned by the community and electricity was to be sold at the cost of maintenance.

Vertical axis wind turbine installed in London
Photo: thingermejiq

A local law was passed to allow reuse of grey water in gardens and the use of compost toilets. All food scraps were to be collected, composted and sent back to farms and gardens. Environmental standards were set for all new buildings, and from now on only passive houses were allowed to be built in this municipality. A large sum was designated for insulating school buildings and installing solar collectors for water heating, but it was calculated that increasing energy efficiency will eventually bring yearly savings in heating. People in this city also decided that they would like to help other communities around the world, especially in developing countries, so they earmarked part of the budget for this purpose. In the first year they have chosen to support organizations that teach people how to establish forest gardens in tropical countries, how to purify water using plastic bottles placed in the sun and those that promote family planning in poor districts.

Magic ingredient

How does it happen that one company that makes carpets cares about the environment, uses recycled materials, reduces its energy use and cares for its employees, while the other dumps toxic waste to the stream, pays such meager salaries that people hardly make ends meet and burns tons of coal without any thought about climate change? How is it possible that in one community meetings are peaceful and people manage to find solutions that can be accepted by all, while in the neighboring community, just 10 miles away there are always conflicts, people are divided and everyone sits on the meetings with arms crossed? There is a magic ingredient necessary for the community and environmental projects, one that makes their success possible. It does magic, because it makes people listen to and help each another, it makes people plant trees or work to save humpback whales. Do you know what that magic ingredient is?

References:

1. Haitians blame U.S. for food shortages, Marketplace, American Public Media, http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/05/08/haiti_food_cri..., accessed on 01.02.2009.
2. Hunger in Haiti, photo gallery, Guardian.co.uk, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2008/jul/22/haiti?lightbox=1, accessed on 01.02.2009.
3. Tom Atlee, “Tao of Democracy”, Chapter 13.
4. Tatyana Saltos, “The Participatory Budgeting Experience: Cotacachi – Ecuador”. See also: “Interview with Leonardo Alvear: Participatory Democracy Part I, Cotacachi’s Participatory Democracy Revitalizes Politics in Ecuador”, http://www.pro-ecuador.com/participatory-democracy.html and “Cotacachi Democracy in Action: Choosing Good Health”, http://www.pro-ecuador.com/Cotacachi-democracy.html.
5. Environmental Management Intersector Committee, http://www.cotacachi.gov.ec/htms/eng/asamblea/nosotros.htm, accessed on 28.01.2009 and The Rainforest Information Center, http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/projects/anja/anjacoto.htm, accessed on 28.01.2009.
6. Helga Serrano, Eduardo Tamayo, “Change Triumphs in Ecuador’s Constitutional Referendum”, Center for International Policy, http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5571, accessed on 02.02.2009.
7. See: Helena Norberg-Hodge, “Ancient Futures”.

A Model of the Democratic Worker Cooperative Movement

Grassroots Economic Organizing (GEO)

The Replication of Arizmendi Bakery: A Model of the Democratic Worker Cooperative Movement

By Joe Marraffino, Arizmendi Development and Support Cooperative

Since the mid-1990s a group of worker cooperative organizers in the San Francisco Bay Area has been developing a new model for cooperative development. Our organization, the Arizmendi Association of Cooperatives, is a network, incubator, and technical assistance provider that is owned, governed, and funded by the member workplaces it creates and serves. Our primary activity is to replicate and offer continuing support to new retail bakeries based on a proven cooperative business model.

This new model seeks to work around some barriers to the growth of the cooperative movement. One of these barriers is the tendency for cooperative development work to be done in contexts that have high rates of failure. When the Association is ready to develop a new bakery cooperative, we find a new site, draw new capitalization loans, recruit new worker-owners, and face the risks that any new enterprise faces. However, these risks are reduced by what is not new: the enterprise adapts the same business plan that existing member bakeries have used, it offers a tested product line using the same recipes, it has a similar name and co-advertises to nearby markets, it uses proven governance structures, and it shares the cost of support services with other members. It even houses some of the same sourdough starter culture. Building on these similarities, the new worker cooperative bakery will cost less, start faster, and be more resilient than an unprecedented business. This initial advantage is reinforced by a network of similar businesses offering mutual aid, and by enduring technical assistance.

Another growth barrier of the worker co-op movement this model addresses is the limited and irregular availability of funding for co-op development organizations. Development funding for the Association comes from member workplaces who contribute a percentage of their net income as membership fees. If the workplace is not profitable yet, they pay nothing for membership but still receive full technical assistance services. As workplaces mature, the income to the Association increases, and with it the funds available for development increase. The income projection for the Association curves upward: the more profitable businesses we develop, the more contributed fees are available for development. The Association has developed three businesses in a decade without any external philanthropic contributions, and is poised, now in 2009, to develop another.

As a member of this association, I'm happy to describe some of our model here, with the hope that others in the worker cooperative movement may find elements to borrow.

The Origins of the Arizmendi Association
In San Francisco during the 1970s a wave of small worker cooperatives self-organized, and several local organizations formed to develop and support democratic businesses. The InterCooperative, a regional network, began publishing a directory listing scores of cooperative and collective businesses. The Alternatives Center published a newsletter on cooperative activities, and sold technical guides and videos on cooperative process. The Democratic Business Association offered legal and organizational consultation. Some new cooperatives branched off from existing ones. The Cheese Board Collective, a retail artisanal cheese and bread store cooperativized in 1971, and then split the organization into two internal cooperatives when their pizzas sales grew formidably. During its history members left and opened a cooperatively-run restaurant, a juice bar, and another cheese shop. With each of these divisions, the Cheese Board lent money to the new developments, but did not hold equity in them or require any future organizational relationship to them.

Few of the small cooperative businesses had the resources to pay for technical support. By the mid-1990s only a handful of co-ops listed the 1970s directory were still operating, and few of the support organizations were active. During this period, there was renewed interest in organizing cooperatives in the Bay Area. A new regional federation, the Network of Bay Area Worker Cooperatives, began to meet informally. Women's Action to Gain Economic Security (WAGES), a nonprofit business incubator, was formed (See article on WAGES in this issue). In 1995, the Arizmendi Association of Cooperatives, a cooperative corporation, was founded. The organizers of the Arizmendi Association were three alumni of previous support organizations, and included a veteran member of the Cheese Board.

The organizers sought to overcome some of the obstacles made visible by previous worker cooperative development projects. One was the negative feedback dynamic of a fee-for-service income model: the more a cooperative needs help, the less they are likely to pay for it and get it. This influenced their strategy for membership and dues. The organizers also realized that attempting to develop an expertise in many different kinds of businesses was labor intensive and increased the chances of failure. They decided to choose a thriving worker cooperative, to become experts in that one business model, and to replicate it many times. In doing so the development and support services would get more efficient as more cooperatives were developed, not less, as they would if every business were very different. With that in mind, they recruited the help, and founding membership, of the Cheese Board Collective.

In the 1995 the organizers approached the Cheese Board with the idea of helping to create "the largest possible number of decently-compensated work opportunities in democratically operated businesses that function as part of an interdependent economic framework." With great generosity, Cheese Board Collective members offered their recipes, their organizational structure, startup funding, and use of their name in marketing. Over a decade later, when customers realize that the Arizmendi Bakeries are connected to the Cheese Board, the bakeries enjoy an immeasurable boost in value and legitimacy due to the "mother" store's reputation.

The Replication Cycle
The replication process can best be seen by looking at the structure of the whole organization.

The Arizmendi Association of Cooperatives is a cooperative corporation with two membership classes. At present there are four corporate members: the Cheese Board, and three "Arizmendi Bakery" replications of the Cheese Board model that the Association developed. These businesses are independently owned, and are members of the Association on a voluntary basis - however, the use of the name Arizmendi and the right to trade secrets, such as recipes, are restricted by contract in the event a business should want to leave the Association. Each corporate member elects two delegates to sit on the board of directors of the Association, which we call the Policy Council. The Policy Council determines the aims of the Association, the level of fees required, and the services the Association will provide to its membership. The other membership class is for an internal staff cooperative known as the Development and Support Cooperative, or the DSC. This group also sends delegates to the Policy Council.

Corporate members contribute a portion of their income to the Association, the formula for which is set as a percentage of net profit for the first several years. This is a relief to the newborn cooperative when it has no profit in the first year or two, and also an incentive for the Association to create businesses that will become profitable as soon as possible. As the business matures, the formula transitions to a percentage of sales, modeled loosely on a franchise relationship. Often this means that the cooperative pays least when it requires the most help and more when it requires less help.

Annually the Policy Council mandates and budgets for the activities of the DSC. The DSC provides bookkeeping, legal aid, new member educational workshops, facilitation and conflict resolution services, organizes cross-Association communication, and contracts with outside professionals to offer the members tax advisement and other professional services. (Because of its special role as the original business model, the Cheese Board's fees and the services they use are negligible compared to the other members.) At present, the DSC's total labor hours hover around the equivalent of one full-time worker, currently divided by four members. While there is no fee-for-services equation to the fees contributed, there is also no limit to the intensity of services a member might request. A disproportionate amount of the budget might be used to help a struggling member if needed. Barring such a crisis, the Policy Council budgets for a surplus after offering support services. This surplus is used for another of the organizations aims: job creation.

When the Association is ready to develop a new cooperative, its staff enlarges to include trainers from the existing member bakeries. These trainers work in the new store for as much as six months, in order to communicate skills and demonstrate democratic communication to the new workers. At the end of this period, the trainers withdraw to their home bakery. The Association pays both for this training and for DSC development services, such as facilitating the work of an architect and contractor, negotiating loan and lease terms, incorporating the new cooperative, recruiting members, and offering financial and organizational training. The Association also puts in place a Contract of Association defining the relationship between the new and existing cooperatives. Finally, the DSC facilitates the lending of startup capital to the new cooperative. The debt will not be incurred by the Association, but by the new, independent business.

Starting with only the Cheese Board and the DSC, the Association has replicated the business model three times in a decade. It accomplished this without the philanthropic grants; though it did receive some startup money from the Cheese Board and unsecured loans extended in good faith by individuals in the Cheese Board's community. Each development cycle has exhausted surpluses generated by member fees, and a fallow period without development activities has followed. These fallow periods will diminish as the Association develops more members.

In the future, there are different ways the Association could develop. While this structure has done well for us, it has also been a creative experiment adapted as needed. Our current strategy is to saturate the Bay Area with the one business model, as it is the most efficient use of our still-limited resources. However, the market for neighborhood bakeries is not unlimited. Before we are able to sense such a limit, the member bakeries themselves will probably choose to restrict replication, in order to protect their perceived territories. Some members envision selecting another business model to replicate. Others envision reaching a critical mass of bakeries such that we might create jobs vertically - a flour mill, for instance, or an equipment maintenance team, or even a lending institution to offer capital to new developments. In another vision the Association would replicate itself and begin to create Arizmendi Bakeries in another city ? but because the efficiency of our support services increases with our density, and because trainers for new developments have historically worked part-time in their own cooperative and part-time in the new business, such distant start-ups would pose new creative challenges.

Steps for Replicating a Worker Cooperative using the Arizmendi Association Model
Our Association's steps to starting a cooperative differ in some ways from those outlined by popular worker cooperative organizers' guides. Perhaps the most significant difference is that much of the groundwork for the new cooperative is laid before members are recruited. This would appear to contradict the need to inventory members' skills, objectives, and economic needs to assure that the cooperative will benefit them. To make this leap, we assume there are pools of potential members whose abilities and needs match those that the cooperative requires and offers. Because of the density of our urban area and the high competition for decent-paying food industry jobs, this leap has been easy to make. While it is still important to include founding members of a new co-op in decision-making to foster group cohesion and democratic initiative, for the sake of efficiency the Association makes some of the early business decisions for the new co-op. For example, in our first replication founding members worked together to discover and negotiate for a location. In the development now underway, the location will be established before members are recruited.

Below, our replication process is loosely laid out in steps, intended as a rough guide for those who might like to use our model. The process is based on a long-term vision but has evolved improvisationally over time. Our cooperative association model will inevitably be refined according to the needs and desires of the member cooperatives that govern it.

1) Establish an organizing group. This group will facilitate replication, but will not necessarily own the developed cooperative. In our current case the organizing group, the DSC, started as a volunteer study group. The DSC still works only part time on development, as our financial capacity to start a new business is not constant. One of the four of our current group has worked in a member bakery; the others have legal, financial, and organizational expertise.

2) Choose a business model to replicate. This involves not only choosing the right cooperative business, but also convincing its members to allow you to replicate it. What's in it for them? Would the replication compete with their business? Would it increase their visibility and therefore revenue? Is there any financial return? In our case the Cheese Board had the financial strength to request very little in return. The creation of more democratic jobs did align with their values, and the Association can now offer support services to them, but their willingness was primarily an act of solidarity and generosity. For other replications, including future business models the Arizmendi Association may pursue, the organizers may not be so lucky.

The business model we chose has many good things going for it. One was that it entails a lot of customer service, an area in which worker-owners out-perform employees, often establishing lasting relationships with customers. The product is high quality and relatively inexpensive, helping generate a large customer pool by word-of-mouth. The model can be replicated many times in the Bay Area before saturating the market. Morning bakeries function as neighborhood civic spaces, which reinforces the community spirit of the collective. One downside was that sale of imported cheeses brings lower returns than bread, and requires more intensive training. Because of this cheese sales were all but eliminated in our replications in favor of pizza, bread, and pastries. Another downside of this business model is that it does not create a large amount of jobs. Each of the three Arizmendi Bakeries is owned by around 20 members.

3) Decide what relationship the new cooperatives will have to the older co-ops. Our model is described above, but our structure has not come about without some challenging questions. Who will own the replicated businesses and the debt of their startup loans? What will their relationship to each other be? How will the replication process be funded, and how can this funding continue or escalate over time? What incentive is there for the new co-op to stay involved with the ones that generated it?

The Arizmendi Association model uses the analogy of an "upside-down franchise." The new cooperatives stay involved because they are offered the kinds of services most efficiently provided centrally: financial, legal, educational, and other technical assistance services. The cooperatives govern and define these services, determining the rate of fees they contribute. Owned independently, the cooperatives are given the autonomy to adapt creatively to their needs. As owners of their own debt, they have incentives to make their business succeed. Meanwhile, non-debt development expenses are covered collectively by the Association and fees are contributed, in part, to perpetuate the development cycle. As more members come in, resources to create more members also grow.

4) Set up the "turn-key" operation. In preparing to open a new worker co-op, the Association incorporates the new co-op prior to recruiting new worker co-op members. Thus, members of the Association are temporarily also the membership and officers of the new co-op. They must find a site for the new business and acquiring capital from a bank or a group of individual lenders in order to buy equipment and renovate. Getting a bank to lend to a business whose real members are not yet known can be difficult, and because the Association does not own its member cooperatives, it has little collateral to offer banks as security. Our track record and the social missions of the lenders we have worked with have helped to overcome this obstacle. For a new Association without any track record, lenders within the worker cooperative community may be needed.

5) Recruit and train new workers. We recruit new workers during renovations about six months before the anticipated opening. The recruiting committee is made up of veteran members of existing bakeries. For the first months we do weekly organizational trainings, and several of the new workers are placed in internships at the existing bakeries. Working committees are formed during this time to do marketing, establish relationships with venders, and prepare other aspects of the startup. Once renovation is completed, new workers will train in baking bread for about two months before the store opens.

Our training team is made up of bakers from the existing member businesses. These bakers will work part-time at their home bakery and part-time in the new development. Having a pool of trainers available part-time every few years when development is in motion is a great resource, eliminating the need to hire an external team. The trainers oversee new members' work, working alongside of them for as long as six months. They demonstrate best practices in production, and set the tone of shop-floor communication and problem solving. We often think of this as a "sourdough" method of education: the culture of the veteran workers is the "starter" that creates the flavor and structure of the new workers' culture. Toward the end of the training period, the new workers will form a committee to recruit replacements for the trainers, who return to their home bakery.

6) Repeat. Every replication will teach valuable lessons about what to do and not to do. Make sure to have a good evaluation of the process which included the views of the developers, the training team, and the new cooperatives members. Consider the long term as you hone your process.

Challenges
It has been a slow journey. Originally, the organizers of the Association had hoped to develop a new bakery once a year. Instead it has been at around a quarter of that speed. Our model has been very resource efficient, but has a slow growth curve. For many years only the first replication was contributing significantly. The Association staff, the DSC, could only afford to work very part-time or as volunteers. A decade later, three member cooperatives are now contributing significant fees. As we grow into a more robust organization, our former lean years will seem more and more foreign, but for organizations following in our footsteps adaptations may be available to accelerate the development process.

Conclusion
The replication of the Cheese Board Collective model into three Arizmendi Bakeries (with a fourth in progress) has been successful. All of the businesses are profitable and have support services ready should they falter. The quality of the food is high, earning multiple critic and reader awards in the local press. The average labor compensation is almost twice the industry average. Worker turnover is low. The original generosity of the Cheese Board and the excellent business model they offered (which itself was refined over several decades) has helped put the Arizmendi Association in a good position. We will continue to replicate bakeries for the next several years, and when we reach a saturation point we will adapt and innovate.

Joe Marraffino is a cooperative organizer for the Arizmendi Association of Cooperatives, a network of worker-owned bakery cooperatives in the greater San Francisco region of California. He is also a worker-owner of the Arizmendi Bakery in San Francisco. He is a board member of the California Center for Cooperative Development, and former board member of the Network of Bay Area Worker Cooperatives. He has a Master's degree in Culture, Ecology and Sustainable Community.

When citing this article, please use the following format: Marraffino, Joe (2009). The Replication of Arizmendi Bakery: A Model of the Democratic Worker Cooperative Movement. Grassroots Economic Organizing (GEO) Newsletter, Volume 2, Issue 3, http://www.geo.coop/node/365

The Organizational Structure of the Arizmendi Association and the Cycle of New Co-op Development

1. The organizational structure of the Arizmendi Association. There are four bakeries in the Association. In addition there is an independent Development and Support Cooperative (DSC) that provides legal and business services for the bakeries and plans and organizes new startup bakeries. Each of the bakeries and the DSC elect members to the Policy Council which manages the Arizmendi Association.

2. The relationship between the policy council and DSC. The Policy Council mandates the goals and policies for the services offered by the DSC. The DSC provides legal and business services to the bakeries.

3. Starting a new bakery. The Policy Council decides to start a new bakery providing some of the start up cost and a contract of association. The DSC organizes the startup. Startup activities include such activities as choosing a location for the new stores, arranging for startup capital, and coordinating training of the startup co-op?s members. Established bakeries provide trainers for the new co-op.

4. The new bakery joins the Arizmendi Association and elects members to the Policy Council.

Health Care '09 rally and lobby day in DC today

CAMPAIGN for AMRICA'S FUTURE

Progressive Breakfast: Prime-Time Public Plan Pitch

By Bill Scher

June 25, 2009 - 10:29am ET

President Holds Prime-Time Health Care Town Hall

Health Care '09 rally and lobby day in DC today, organized by Health Care for America Now!

Jonathan Cohn on presidential prime-time health care town hall: "...he used the occasion to hammer away at a key point--one that, I increasingly believe, holds the key to the entire reform debate. On at least three separate occasions, Obama pointed out rising costs--left unchecked--are going to destroy the health care system. You might like your current insurance arrangements, Obama suggested, but there's no reason to think they'll be in place a few years from now. At best, your plan will simply become less comprehensive and/or more expensive. At worst, it will no longer be available to you. Or to put it more simply, change may be scary, but no change is even scarier."

Highlights from President Obama's health care town hall:

Prez stands up for public plan option that provides less expensive coverage:

I think there are some legitimate questions in terms of how the public option is designed. One thing I have to say, though, is, it's not an entirely bad thing if, as long as they're reimbursing doctors in an adequate way, and -- and -- and so not being oppressive on -- on health care providers, and as long as there are not a whole bunch of taxpayer subsidies going into a public plan, if the public plan can do it cheaper and provides good quality care, that's the competition that we talked about. I don't think you're going to get a lot of complaints from people if the deal is a better deal. If it's not a better deal, then people aren't going to choose it. And -- but what we think is, is that we can set up a system in which you are expanding choices for individuals as opposed to constricting them.

Prez reminds CBO is resistant to presuming cost savings from reform ideas, though still pledges "deficit-neutral" bill:

all of this money that I just talked about, those are hard dollars. We know where they are and so we know that this would not add to the deficit. It doesn't count all of the savings that may come from prevention, may come from eliminating all of the paperwork and bureaucracy because we have put forward health IT. It doesn't come from the evidence-based care and changes in reimbursement that I've already discussed about. And the reason is, is because the Congressional Budget Office [is] not willing to credit us with those savings. They say, that may be nice, that may save a lot of money, but we can't be certain. So we expect that not only are we going to be able to pay for health care reform in a deficit-neutral way, but that it's also going to achieve big savings across the system, including in the private sector where the Congressional Budget Office never gives us any credit. But if hospitals and doctors are starting to operate in a smarter way, that's going to help you even if you're not involved in the government system. That's how we can end up achieving cost. But it requires all of us making some up-front investments. And I think we can find a bipartisan way to do that. .

Prez signals compromise on taxing employer benefits:

What is being discussed in Congress right now is capping those -- that deduction or that exclusion at a certain level. I continue to believe that's not the best way to do it, because I think that what you would see, certainly if you eliminate it completely, essentially employers would stop providing health insurance. And then we would really have to have either a public plan or what John McCain was proposing, everybody just gets that money back in wages and then -- or tax credits and you go out and you shop by yourself. The problem is that the amount of money you're getting back is not going to be the same as the cost of an average insurance plan, especially if you're not in a pool. What's being -- that's not what is being discussed right now in Congress. They're saying, at a certain level, whether it's $13,000 or $17,000 a year, which is what they consider to be a high-end or a "Cadillac plan," maybe your deduction would phase out. I continue to believe that the better way for us to fund this is through the capping of the itemized deduction. But I think there are people, you know, in good faith who are saying a cap would at least prevent these "Cadillac plans" that end up having people over-utilizing the system. That's a debate that is taking place in Congress right now. I'm pushing my idea, other folks are pushing their ideas. There is going to have to be some compromise at the end of the day.

Senate Finance plan will have that tax. Bloomberg: "Baucus ... says the best way to pay for a $1 trillion overhaul of American medical care would be to tax health benefits provided by employers that are more generous than those offered to federal workers -- including lawmakers like him. The government benefits are worth $4,200 for individuals and $13,000 for families ... Yesterday, Baucus and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad of North Dakota, a Democrat, said a bill being drafted by the panel would contain the tax."

CQ reports Senate Finance looking to lower costs by preventing business from dropping coverage: "The problem is that some employers might choose to drop the insurance coverage they currently provide, or workers might find a better deal on the exchange. That would mean higher spending on subsidies, which CBO has said will drive up the overall cost of the package, pushing it well past $1 trillion. One proposed solution has been to either force businesses to offer coverage or offer incentives for them to do so. But business interests, led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have opposed any mandate that they provide health care coverage ... Employers would not have to provide coverage under the ["free-rider"] proposal, but there would be pressures on them to do so: They would have to contribute to the cost of covering workers on Medicaid because of their low income and those who got coverage in the subsidized insurance exchange. In return, workers would be allowed to leave their employer-provided insurance only if the coverage available through their jobs was unaffordable."

House Dems looks to lower price tag of reform by upping doctor payments. The Hill: "House Democrats are considering a budget maneuver that would reduce the headline cost of restructuring healthcare by $285 billion ... eras[ing] the cost of the Medicare physician payment increases by making the change but not having it be subject to pay-as-you-go budgeting rules that would require the spending increase to be offset with tax hikes or other cuts."

NYT reports that "Senators" are worried "that in offering subsidized health insurance to millions of individuals and families, they could inadvertently speed the erosion of employer-provided coverage." BUT NYT only quotes right-leaning Dems,ignores new statement from 120 House and Senate members: "ROBUST PUBLIC OPTION A MUST."

Huffington Post's Sam Stein reports MoveOn pressuring Sen. Feinstein to support public plan option.

TPMDC finds potentially disingenuous GOP support for "co-op" plan: "Enzi supports the Finance Committee's process, which he said has been more transparent and bipartisan in spirit. He says the co-op proposal sounds promising, but he needs to learn more about it before he offers his full support to the provision ... This is a common position in the GOP, and, frankly, a common legislative tactic in general. It's not necessarily a wink and a nod toward a 'no' vote, but it raises concerns among Democrats--or at least it should--that Republicans might try to weaken the bill only to turn around and vote against it."

How's that free market insurance treating ya? W. Post: "Health insurers have forced consumers to pay billions of dollars in medical bills that the insurers themselves should have paid, according to a report released yesterday by the staff of the Senate Commerce Committee."

Optimism for Climate Vote Friday

McClatchy reports backers predict passage in House tomorrow: "[Rep. Ed Markey] who helped draft the sweeping climate bill that limits greenhouse gases and improves the nation's energy efficiency predicted Wednesday that the legislation would be approved by the House on Friday.

McClatchy also finds opponents still using phony numbers: "[Rep. Eric] Cantor in a statement on Wednesday cited a Massachusetts Institute of Technology study that Republicans said shows the bill would cost $3,100 per household. The author of the study earlier said the GOP misinterpreted the study to derive that amount. Another opponent of the legislation, the American Petroleum Institute, said the recent CBO study, which found the average household would pay $175 per year if the bill passed, was too rosy. It didn't include gasoline price increases that could cost $800 per family per year..." [Ed. note: it didn't include the benefits we would get from averting a climate crisis and making clean energy affordable.]

W. Post poll finds support for climate bill's provisions: "Three-quarters of Americans think the federal government should regulate the release into the atmosphere of greenhouse gases ... 56 percent would back cap and trade if it resulted in a $10 [monthly] increase in utility costs..."

Grist's Kate Sheppard on hopes for strengthening the bill later: "Environmental groups are downplaying hopes that their allies in Congress will be able to strengthen the American Clean Energy and Security Act once the House begins debate on the bill later this week, though some officials from climate action groups remain optimistic that the bill can be strengthened later in the legislative process."

Get Energy Smart Now and Open Left's Chris Bowers speculate that environmental groups are resisting attempts to amend on House floor, for fear of breaking up the tenuous coalition.

Bloomberg rounds up who is lining up for and against: "Gore, the former vice president who now focuses on environmental issues, is set to appear today on Capitol Hill to endorse the bill. Buffett, the chairman and chief executive officer of Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc., took to the airwaves yesterday to call the legislation 'regressive.' ... About 100 environmentalists and labor leaders rallied on Capitol Hill yesterday in support of the legislation. They were joined by venture capitalist Sunil Paul of Spring Ventures in San Francisco and Bill Keith, founder of St. John, Indiana-based SunRise Solar, who praised the measure ... The American Petroleum Institute, which represents oil and gas companies including Exxon Mobil Corp., asked lawmakers to vote against the bill, saying it would raise fuel prices. American Farm Bureau Federation President Bob Stallman called the legislation 'seriously flawed'..."

Politico profiles the remaining fence-sitters in Congress

Wall Street Preparing to Fight Regs

Wall Street plots image overhaul to counter populists. Bloomberg: "Wall Street’s largest trade group has started a campaign to counter the 'populist' backlash against bankers, enlisting two former aides to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to spearhead the effort. In memos of confidential meetings with top financial executives, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association said it began this month the 'execution phase' of the operation, which pledges to 'embrace change' and accountability."

Bloomberg reports banks to fight consumer commission: "U.S. banks are fighting the Obama administration plan to create a consumer agency for financial services as they seek to protect fees, such as credit-card penalties that have almost doubled to $19 billion in five years."

LA Times and McClatchy finds congressional Republicans making the same arguments as the banks.

Fed role in Merrill Lynch purchase under scrutiny. McClatchy: "The Federal Reserve sought to keep other regulators in the dark about problems last year with Bank of America Corp.'s Merrill Lynch & Co. purchase, according to sources familiar with documents obtained by the House committee probing the deal."

Terrance Heath contributed to the making of this Breakfast