The Egyptian Revolution: A Very Good Thing

The Egyptian Revolution: A Very Fine Thing

by Gary Leupp / January 29th, 2011

I’m watching live coverage of the Egyptian revolution on Al-Jazeera TV. Cairo is swarming with hundreds of thousands, defying the curfew, hurling stones at the police. The images recall the Palestinian youth waging their Intifadas. The National Democratic Party headquarters is in flames. Downtown Suez has been taken over by the people, two police stations torched. The security forces are out in strength and shooting into crowds. But the people have lost their fear.

Reporters and commentators on Al-Jazeera and other channels have no choice but to note that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is widely hated, and that those in the street are seeking freedom from a dictatorship. But they also keep saying “The situation is getting worse.”

Worse?

I think of Mao Zedong’s response to critics of peasant rebellion in China in 1927. He noted that “even progressive people” saw uprisings as “terrible.” “But it’s not terrible,” he declared. “It is anything but ‘terrible.’ It’s fine!”

Watching the live coverage, I see the people of Egypt, fed up with their oppression, and inspired by the revolution in Tunisia, doing something very, very fine. It is inspiring. It is profoundly hopeful.

The Obama administration line (as summarized by Joe Biden, interviewed by Jim Lehrer on PBS), can be summarized as follows: Egyptians have the right to protest. Many are middle class folks, with legitimate concerns. But we should not refer to Mubarak as a dictator. It’s not time for him to go. He has been a key ally of the U.S. and Israel, in the “Middle East peace process” and the War on Terror. Egypt is dissimilar to Tunisia, and it would be “a stretch” to suggest that a trend is underway. The U.S. should encourage those protesting and Mubarak to talk. Everyone should avoid violence.

The mainstream infotainment media spin can be summarized like this: The “unrest” in Egypt puts the U.S. in a difficult position. On the one hand Mubarak has abetted U.S. “national interests” and been Israel’s only Arab ally. (These two are always assumed to be closely linked; the notion that an Arab leader is a friend of the U.S. to the extend that he kisses Israel’s ass is never questioned.) On the other hand, U.S. officials have been saying for years that the Middle East needs “democratic reform.”

This puts in the U.S. in bind, we are told. The U.S. confronts a “dilemma.” The talking heads depict the U.S. as somehow a victim in this situation. (Isn’t it terrible, they’re implying, that the Egyptian people by their militancy in favor of supposed U.S. ideals are trying to topple the USA’s best friend in the Arab world? What a headache to have to deal with!)

Seems to me, however, that this is another of those instances of chickens coming home to roost.

The U.S. has supported Mubarak primarily in appreciation for his stance towards Israel. (The mainstream media is referring to him as an “ally” of Israel.) It’s not really because he’s been a “partner in the peace process”—because there is no real peace process. Relentless Israeli settlement activity on Palestinian land supported by the Lobby in the U.S. has insured that.

Wikileaks documents indicate that Mubarak has been content for the “process” to lag indefinitely so that he could represent himself as the vital Arab middleman while enjoying two billion in U.S. military aid per year. But Palestinians hate him for cooperating with the demonization of democratically elected Hamas and the embargo imposed on Gaza. And Egyptians hate him for, among many other things, betraying their Palestinian brothers and sisters.

Rather, the U.S. has supported Mubarak because he’s provided an Arab fig leaf for the unequivocal support for Israel that the U.S. has provided for decades. U.S. diplomats have, as Wikileaks reveal, at times expressed concern that the dictator might be causing some problems by his “heavy-handed” treatment of dissidents. But this is not a matter of moral indignation, or concern about the lives of Egyptians. It’s nothing more than an expression of concern that his fascistic rule might jeopardize his ability to help U.S.-Israeli policy in the region and keep the Suez Canal open.

And now that brutal rule has caused an explosion. The reaction from U.S. officials and political commentators is, “We never expected this.”

Well surprise, surprise! (These folks were dumbfounded by the Iranian Revolution of 1979 as well. Don’t they understand that people eventually fight back?)

I think of that old Langston Hughes poem:

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

Egypt is exploding. The deferred dreams of the Arab world are exploding. And even the corporate media acknowledges that the people are jubilant (while warning that none of this might be in “our interest”). But for people with some basic morals, concerned about the happiness of humanity in general, is this not totally fine?

Al-Jazeera shows viewers how U.S. officials are changing the tone of their comments, backing off more and more each day from support of Mubarak. They’re reiterating with increasing emphasis that the demonstrators indeed have legitimacy. (Did these people just figure this out?) What sheer opportunism!

Obama, always the centrist opportunist wanting to be everybody’s friend, wants to be the Egyptian people’s friend. He showed that in Cairo in 2009. In his celebrated speech to the Muslim world he on the one hand spouted platitudes about U.S. acceptance of Islam and on the other insulted everyone’s intelligence by calling the invasion of Afghanistan a “war of necessity.” He (accurately) described the vicious assault on Iraq as a “war of choice,” but said anything about how those responsible for such a crime ought to be punished. He does not support any investigation that would show how neocon Zionists in his predecessor’s administration faked a case for war that has killed hundreds of thousands of Arabs.

His real message is: the U.S. can lie and kill, and then posture as the moral exemplar (maybe even apologizing slightly when crimes are embarrassingly exposed). Even so, the people of the world are supposed to understand that alignment with the U.S. is their best hope.

And now Obama wants the best of both worlds: an ongoing engagement with Mubarak (if he survives), and a hand outstretched to the people of Egypt, tainted by so many other handshakes with so many dictators so far.

Demonstrators in Cairo note that tear gas canisters on the street are marked “Made in USA.” What should they make of that? Who’s really encouraging their dreams? Who’s caused them to defer them, decade upon decade? It’s the same foe that has caused the deferment of dreams here in this country and around the world.

I learned to say shukran in Cairo. To my friends there now, engaged in this fine, fine battle, I say that now.

Shukran, shukran for inspiring the world, showing that another world might be possible.

Gary Leupp is a Professor of History at Tufts University, and author of numerous works on Japanese history. He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu. Read other articles by Gary.

This article was posted on Saturday, January 29th, 2011 at 8:00am and is filed under Egypt, Obama, Revolution.

AlterNet.org


ENVIRONMENT

AlterNet / By Tara Lohan

Vision: 8 Reasons Global Capitalism Makes Our Lives Worse -- And How We Can Create a New Kind of Economy

A new film explores how globalization has resulted in crises of the economy, the environment and the human spirit -- and points the way to a new path.

January 16, 2011 |

To many of us, a society where no one goes hungry, where there is no unemployment, where people are happy and they have spacious homes and lots of leisure time seems like fantasy. But it's not a fantasy for Helena Norberg-Hodge -- she saw it firsthand in the tiny Himalayan region of Ladakh, a remote mountain community that borders Tibet.

During the course of 35 years there, she also saw what happened when Ladakh was suddenly thrown open to the outside world in the 1970s and subsidized roads brought subsidized goods to the region. The local economy was undermined, the cultural fabric was torn apart. Unemployment, pollution and divisiveness emerged for the first time.

"This was Ladakh's introduction to globalization," says Norberg-Hodge. The "story of Ladakh can shed light on the root causes of the crises now facing the planet."

The account of Ladakh's transformation opens the new film, The Economics of Happiness, created by Steven Gorelick, John Page and Norberg-Hodge, the founder and director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture. As Bill McKibben says early on in the film, according to a poll conducted every year since the end of World World II, happiness in the U.S. peaked in 1956. "It's been slowly downhill ever since," he says. "But in that time we've gotten immeasurably richer, we have three times as much stuff. Somehow it hasn't worked because that same affluence tends to undermine community."

Our consumer culture, driven by the engine of globalization, has resulted in an economic and environmental crisis -- and, the film's creators say, a crisis of the human spirit.

Through interviews with experts and activists like McKibben, Vandana Shiva, Zac Goldsmith, Richard Heinberg, David Korten, Keibo Oiwa, Samdhong Rinpoche, Balaji Shankar and Andrew Simms, among others, the film crosses six continents examining the pitfalls of globalization and how people are envisioning a more sustainable economy. It begins by exploring eight inconvenient truths about globalization.

1. Globalization makes us unhappy. More stuff and more wealth has meant less contact with community, rising levels of depression, jobs with longer hours, more time spent working at home and longer commutes. "Lonely people have never been happy people and globalization is creating a very lonely planet," says author and activist Vandana Shiva.

2. Globalization breeds insecurity. Corporations are raising our children and driving what they eat, buy, wear and what they care about. Identity that was once shaped by one's culture and language, molded by community leaders and family, is now filled by marketers. Across the world, sales of blue contact lenses are on the rise, along with products to lighten skin and hair as people try to fulfill a Western ideal and an emulation of American life.

3. Globalization wastes natural resources. Consumerism is threatening the planet, natural resources are stretched to the breaking point and yet we have an economic system that encourages us to consume more and more, says Norberg-Hodge. Consumer culture is increasingly urban and when rural people move to the city the food they used to grow themselves is now grown on industrial-sized chemical-intensive farms. Food must be trucked to cities, waste must be trucked out. Large dams are needed to provide water and huge centralized power plants must be fueled by coal and uranium mines.

4. Globalization accelerates climate change. Globalization's "success" is often attributed to efficiencies of scale, but mostly it is fueled by deregulation and hidden subsidies that make food from around the globe cost less than food from down the street. With efficiencies of scale, it's really the opposite, says British MP Zac Goldsmith, "Tuna caught off the east coast of America is flown to Japan, processed and flown back to America to be sold to consumers; English apples are flown to South Africa to be waxed, flown back to England to be sold."

Treaties like NAFTA promote international growth through economic trade, which sounds good on paper, except that you end up with countries importing and exporting nearly identical amounts of the same products -- which means we're needlessly shipping goods across the world that we are already producing at home.

5. Globalization destroys livelihoods. Pension funds are now at the mercy of speculation. In the Global South, small farmers are being displaced from their land and forced to move to urban areas where they become cheap labor for factories producing more goods.

6. Globalization increases conflict. In Ladakh, Buddhists and Muslims who lived side by side for 500 years without conflict turned on each other after globalization caused unemployment and stiff competition for new commodities. Around the world, competition for scarce resources and jobs has resulted in the demonization of differences that were once accepted.

7. Globalization is built on handouts to big business. "If there is one thing that political parties from the left to the right seem to agree on today, it is the power and value of the free market," says Goldberg. "But the irony is that the majority of really polluting things that happen today wouldn't exist in a genuinely free market -- nuclear power, for example, wouldn't exist without massive state support ... We're about as far away from a free market as it's possible to be."

Globalization has resulted in subsidies for some of the wealthiest multinationals as well as the deregulation of trade and finance. "It is basically a system that criminalizes the small producer and processor and deregulates the giant business," says Shiva.

8. Globalization is based on false accounting. Our current economic model is based on infinite growth on a finite planet, which is a recipe for disaster. Political leaders believe that more economic growth is the answer to all our problems -- bailouts to big banks, stimulus to make us spend more, carbon trading schemes -- but all these do is reinforce a system that is inherently broken.

Our way of measuring our worth is so twisted says Helena Norberg-Hodge, that when there is "an oil spill, the GDP goes up; when drinking water is so polluted we have to buy it in bottles, GDP goes up. War, cancer, epidemic illnesses -- all of these involve an exchange of money, so they end up on the positive side of the balance sheet."

A Different Path Forward

The first half of The Economics of Happiness provides a detailed reminder of why globalization has been a failure for the environment and for the economy. The second half of the film explores the movements that are providing us with an alternative. Instead of letting corporations dictate policy and regulation, instead of measuring the success of our lives by GDP, we can take a cue from countries like Bhutan. In 1972 the King of Bhutan initiated a measurement of Gross National Happiness and sought to embed that in his development policies.

Since that time we've also seen the advent of the Genuine Progress Indicator, which is based on "full cost accounting." How much does an item cost once you figure in the environmental and social metrics? The sticker price of what we pay for goods today is only part of the story. The GPI tells the whole story:

The things we measure and count -- quite literally -- tell us what we value as a society and determine the policy agendas of governments. The Genuine Progress Index (GPI) presents a better way to measure our societal progress and well being. The GPI assigns explicit value to environmental quality, population health, livelihood security, equity, free time, and educational attainment. It values unpaid voluntary and household work as well as paid work. It counts sickness, crime and pollution as costs not gains.

So how do we truly improve our standard of living -- including protecting our environment, building healthy communities, having a stable economy? Localize, the filmmakers say. We don't need to eliminate international trade entirely or be completely self-reliant, says Norberg-Hodge. But we do need to create "more accountable and sustainable communities by producing what we need closer to home."

This means that taxes, subsidies and regulations should not favor multinationals over local businesses. Studies have proven that more money spent at local businesses has meant more money staying in communities, which is a win-win. The benefits are similar with local food and energy systems.

Already there are examples of this in motion: Ecovillages, Transition Towns and Post Carbon Cities are working to rebuild economies with a focus on localization. The organization Via Campensina is "an international movement which coordinates peasant organizations of small- and middle-scale producers, agricultural workers, rural women, and indigenous communities from Asia, Africa, America, and Europe." It has members in 69 countries and represents millions.

Two new books build on many of the ideas in The Economics of Happiness. The Post Carbon Reader: Managing the 21st Century's Sustainability Crisis looks at the convergence of population, water, energy, food and climate threats. All That We Share: A Field Guide to the Commons shows how communities are reclaiming shared spaces and resources to better the economy and the environment.

Those books and the film bring home three essential points. First, we simply cannot continue to follow the trajectory we're on. Local economies are being decimated and the global economy hangs by a thread that will snap, likely in short time. Our planet cannot support our hunger for resources, our disregard for sustainability and our shortsightedness.

And second, there are alternatives to globalization and suicidal capitalism. As Asher Miller writes in The Post Carbon Reader:

Our starting point for future planning must be the realization that we are living today at a critical moment in the long arc of human history when numerous crises are not only converging simultaneously, they are interdependent and affect virtually every living thing on the planet. The sheer scale and complexity of the challenges at hand are unprecedented ... It may sound bombastic to say, but it's nevertheless the truth: The success or failure of the human experiment may well be judged by how we manage the next ten to twenty years.

Which brings up the third point: It's time to get going.

To find a screening near you, visit the Economics of Happiness.

Tara Lohan is a senior editor at AlterNet. You can follow her on Twitter @TaraLohan.

How to Avoid Polarizing Others

Thomas Moore

Has been a monk, a musician, a professor, a psychotherapist, an author and a lecturer

Posted: November 5, 2010 08:40 AM

How to Avoid Polarizing Others

We live in a dangerously polarized country, and we could all avoid being coerced into divided camps. You can resist being polarized, but you have to be alert and creative. Sometimes, when simply watching a football game, I try not to identify with either team. It isn't easy, but it's a good everyday exercise in staying in the tension between two competing groups.

When we choose to polarize, friendship, community and intimacy suffer. It happens in school, when teachers treat their students like they are on the other side of a fence; in marriages, when partners fail to work at their union; in medicine, when doctors and nurses forget that they, too, get sick and need help. And of course it happens in politics, when Democrats and Republicans fail to keep in mind their common objectives and treat each other as enemies.

Two elections ago I had an opportunity to address delegates at the Democratic convention. I urged them to resist the temptation to treat the opposition as the enemy. I recommended that they try to make connections rather than divisions, even if the other side shows no taste for such a lofty enterprise.

"It's difficult to find common ground," they complained.

"It's impossible most of the time," I said.

Maybe common ground isn't the best means of moving past bitter divisiveness. Maybe we should instead focus on our common humanity. I doubt that in most polarized situations common ground will solve the problem. It's too intellectual. It might be better to just see each other as human beings. Former U.N. ambassador and mayor of Atlanta, Andrew Young, once told me he often made progress in getting past sharp divisions by playing tennis with the opposition. I understand that it's one thing to feel camaraderie on the tennis court or golf course and another to join hands in politics, but the principle seems sound. Connect somehow, even obliquely, at a basic human level.

There's another way to deal with polarization: not falling into it unconsciously. It may help to have forged a philosophy of life for yourself, in which you decide to try to avoid divisiveness when it creeps into your life. Albert Schweitzer said that he had a three-word philosophy: "Reverence for life." He applied it whenever a situation called for it. You may need a slogan, too: "Division no, connection yes."

Writing this post will probably help me keep the philosophy of non-polarization in mind.
Americans, politicians included, talk frequently about ideals of unity and then indulge in polarization. So a simple personal slogan or even a developed philosophy of life won't work unless you take it seriously and live by it. It has to become a habit, so automatic that when divisiveness appears, your philosophy kicks in.

I'm not talking about agreeing with the opposition or losing or weakening important values that you hold dear. Polarization is usually more about feelings and issues that lie deeper than the matters being discussed. Republicans may keep their distance from Democrats because they see them as heathens. In turn, Democrats may imagine Republicans as aristocrats.

The polarizing may go deeper. One side sees any opposition as an attack on everything they believe and consider holy. A political party often operates like a religion: it's all a matter of belief, faith, dogma and morality. Of course, politics isn't, by nature, a religion, and yet a political party often acts and talks like a religious group defending its tradition.

A few years ago I came across a Christian fundamentalist professor who had attacked one of my books. I wrote to him and tried to dissolve the polarization, at least a little. I failed. Another time, I found myself being interviewed on the radio by a preacher who thought I was a fundamentalist. At first there was some tension, but I kept my philosophy of non-polarization very much in mind. That, combined with this man's basic good will, left us at the end looking forward to another conversation. A rare victory. But after the radio show I had to take a shower because I had sweat so much in the strenuous effort not to polarize.

A kingdom divided against itself cannot survive. I worry about America more because of its inner tensions than those with the outside world. It appears to me that each of us has to try hard not to polarize in our everyday interactions. If we stop doing it, maybe the politicians will catch the drift.

Most of the time in sports I want to root for my favorite team. But it's a good exercise once in a while to try to find joy in either team winning. That kind of extended, double vision comes in handy when someone comes along thinking and talking in ways that seem crazy to you. Listen to yourself. Your ideas are probably just as nuts and just as worth defending.

We live in a dangerously polarized country, and we could all avoid being coerced into divided camps. You can resist being polarized, but you have to be alert and creative. Sometimes, when simply watching a football game, I try not to identify with either team. It isn't easy, but it's a good everyday exercise in staying in the tension between two competing groups.

When we choose to polarize, friendship, community and intimacy suffer. It happens in school, when teachers treat their students like they are on the other side of a fence; in marriages, when partners fail to work at their union; in medicine, when doctors and nurses forget that they, too, get sick and need help. And of course it happens in politics, when Democrats and Republicans fail to keep in mind their common objectives and treat each other as enemies.

Two elections ago I had an opportunity to address delegates at the Democratic convention. I urged them to resist the temptation to treat the opposition as the enemy. I recommended that they try to make connections rather than divisions, even if the other side shows no taste for such a lofty enterprise.

"It's difficult to find common ground," they complained.

"It's impossible most of the time," I said.

Maybe common ground isn't the best means of moving past bitter divisiveness. Maybe we should instead focus on our common humanity. I doubt that in most polarized situations common ground will solve the problem. It's too intellectual. It might be better to just see each other as human beings. Former U.N. ambassador and mayor of Atlanta, Andrew Young, once told me he often made progress in getting past sharp divisions by playing tennis with the opposition. I understand that it's one thing to feel camaraderie on the tennis court or golf course and another to join hands in politics, but the principle seems sound. Connect somehow, even obliquely, at a basic human level.

There's another way to deal with polarization: not falling into it unconsciously. It may help to have forged a philosophy of life for yourself, in which you decide to try to avoid divisiveness when it creeps into your life. Albert Schweitzer said that he had a three-word philosophy: "Reverence for life." He applied it whenever a situation called for it. You may need a slogan, too: "Division no, connection yes."

Writing this post will probably help me keep the philosophy of non-polarization in mind.
Americans, politicians included, talk frequently about ideals of unity and then indulge in polarization. So a simple personal slogan or even a developed philosophy of life won't work unless you take it seriously and live by it. It has to become a habit, so automatic that when divisiveness appears, your philosophy kicks in.

I'm not talking about agreeing with the opposition or losing or weakening important values that you hold dear. Polarization is usually more about feelings and issues that lie deeper than the matters being discussed. Republicans may keep their distance from Democrats because they see them as heathens. In turn, Democrats may imagine Republicans as aristocrats.

The polarizing may go deeper. One side sees any opposition as an attack on everything they believe and consider holy. A political party often operates like a religion: it's all a matter of belief, faith, dogma and morality. Of course, politics isn't, by nature, a religion, and yet a political party often acts and talks like a religious group defending its tradition.

A few years ago I came across a Christian fundamentalist professor who had attacked one of my books. I wrote to him and tried to dissolve the polarization, at least a little. I failed. Another time, I found myself being interviewed on the radio by a preacher who thought I was a fundamentalist. At first there was some tension, but I kept my philosophy of non-polarization very much in mind. That, combined with this man's basic good will, left us at the end looking forward to another conversation. A rare victory. But after the radio show I had to take a shower because I had sweat so much in the strenuous effort not to polarize.

A kingdom divided against itself cannot survive. I worry about America more because of its inner tensions than those with the outside world. It appears to me that each of us has to try hard not to polarize in our everyday interactions. If we stop doing it, maybe the politicians will catch the drift.

Most of the time in sports I want to root for my favorite team. But it's a good exercise once in a while to try to find joy in either team winning. That kind of extended, double vision comes in handy when someone comes along thinking and talking in ways that seem crazy to you. Listen to yourself. Your ideas are probably just as nuts and just as worth defending.

POLITICO

Third Way aims for front and center

Third Way looks to play a central role as the Democratic Party comes to a 'major fork in the road.'

By JAMES HOHMANN | 11/2/10 4:07 AM EDT

The long-simmering battle between moderates and liberals for the soul of the Democratic Party is about to explode.

That presents a golden opportunity for Third Way, a five-year-old think tank that remains largely unknown outside the Beltway.

The group has spent months preparing to capitalize on this moment and take a more central role in the party.

And it’s coming down squarely on the side of centrism — and planning to vigorously challenge the left.

“The party is about to come to a major fork in the road,” said Jonathan Cowan, Third Way’s president. “A left turn at this juncture is a turn toward permanent minority status.”

The group’s efforts reflect the underlying tension President Barack Obama faces as he heads into the last two years of his first term. Liberals say there’s an enthusiasm gap with Republicans because Democrats are disappointed that the party was too timid about the size of the stimulus, compromised on the public option in health care reform and ran away from its accomplishments. Those closer to the middle say a more moderate face for the party is the only hope to win back independents, reelect Obama and retake the House in 2012, assuming it is lost Tuesday.

Cowan’s group wants to play a role in 2011 akin to the Democratic Leadership Council’s in 1995. Then, the last time Democrats lost the House, President Bill Clinton’s willingness to “triangulate” between traditional Democratic orthodoxies and the Republicans who controlled Congress led to welfare reform, community policing and a slew of smaller accomplishments that helped propel Clinton to a second term.

Third Way, with a staff of 35 and a $7 million budget for next year, has filled a vacuum left by the DLC’s loss of influence in the wake of founder Al From’s 2009 departure.

Third Way remains small compared with the Center for American Progress, the left’s most powerful think tank and the one most plugged into the White House. For context, CAP gets around $30 million a year in revenue and employs nearly 300 people.

Capitalizing on Hill turnover that will make high-level talent available, Third Way plans to hire several new employees.

The group is commissioning a post-election poll, to go into the field Wednesday, which will explore why people who voted to elect Obama president in 2008 either backed Republicans or stayed home Tuesday. A sample of 500 “flippers” and 500 “droppers” will be questioned about what they want to see from Democrats going forward. The results are due next week.

In addition, the group’s fellows and policy advisers will start rolling out memos and studies that offer a framework for how Democrats could reach common ground with Republicans. The economic team is developing a proposal that it thinks could win bipartisan support. It includes tort reform and incentives for research and development. And Cowan’s writing a paper with a colleague about “the danger of left-wing economic populism.”

With cap and trade effectively dead in a Republican House, Third Way will release a “Plan B” for energy reform. On Dec. 7, it’s hosting a summit on nuclear energy — one of the group’s big causes — with Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Obama energy czar Carol Browner.

It will come out with a paper on the need for changes that could save Social Security, which it presents as a direct challenge to economist Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist who has said Obama didn’t go far enough with the stimulus and other programs.

And the group will advocate for education reform that focuses on middle-class, not low-income, schools. Third Way is also pushing for more trade agreements and a new approach to immigration.

The biggest challenge facing the ambitious group: It’s not completely clear there will be an appetite from the left or the right for what it has to offer.

Republicans will probably be unwilling to cooperate on most of the group’s issues. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said in a recent interview that he sees his most important job as getting a Republican elected president in 2012. Would-be Speaker John Boehner must manage tea partiers who want bold moves, not compromise.

Third Way quickly built up its influence by working with moderate congressional Democrats. Two other cofounders, Jim Kessler and Matt Bennett, became close with several freshman and sophomore Democrats by offering messaging advice on everything from health care to national security at regular briefings organized by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

In addition, many of Third Way’s most sympathetic Democratic allies now appear likely to lose. Of 255 House Democrats, 102 are members of the Blue Dog or New Democrat caucuses. Only 38 of those running for reelection face non-competitive reelections, according to the latest issue of a monthly newsletter analyst Bill Schneider writes for Third Way (where he is a resident scholar).

Because of the reddish districts the new members represent, the moderates will suffer the heaviest losses. This means the Democratic caucus in the next Congress will be more liberal on the whole and thus potentially more leery of a third-way philosophy.

“A big tent is great but not just for the sake of having a big tent,” said Ari Berman, a contributing writer for The Nation and the author of “Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics.”

“What I don’t understand is: why is Third Way expending all this energy justifying people who are consistently voting against Obama’s agenda?” he said in an interview. “It seems to me like they’re using Democratic defeats as an excuse to once again blame the liberals, which happens pretty much every single time the Democrats lose.”

Bennett, the group’s vice president, rejects the criticism. “These two years do not have to be wasted, regardless of who is running Congress,” he said. “But if we follow the advice of folks who are counseling a return to the bunkers, then absolutely nothing will happen.”

The Third hird Way is helped by a few key relationships. Kessler was a longtime senior aide to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who could become majority leader if Harry Reid loses in Nevada. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who could become minority leader if Republicans take over the House, is one of many strong sympathizers. The senators they helped in 2006 and 2008 will still be around.

“We’re going to have to look at what we did wrong and figure out where we lost our way with independents and swing voters,” said an aide to a senior congressional Democrat. “Third Way — that is their wheelhouse.”

Regardless, 2011 is not 1995. Obama tacking to the center will be much easier said than done. Clinton had been chairman of the DLC before he ran for president. Third Way embraces Obama as one of them, a pragmatist eager to accomplish big things but willing to compromise to get results, but he won his party’s nomination largely by transcending the “new” vs. “old” Democrat debate. And he has no personal ties to the group.

Third Way’s leaders argue that the president and congressional leaders recognize moderates matter more than ever.“I believe Barack Obama is a believer in the art of the possible,” said Bennett, who served as the Clinton administration’s principal liaison to governors. “That is how he has lived his life. He believes not in compromising principle but in finding solutions even when the politics of a situation are changed.”

To be sure, there are other groups advocating center-left views. The Progressive Policy Institute, which spun off from the DLC, remains in the research and education field under Will Marshall. Simon Rosenberg, a former DLC field director, runs the NDN, previously known as the New Democrat Network.

While it’s not what it once was, the DLC hasn’t disappeared. They won’t disclose their budget, except to say they employ 15 people (including part-time fellows). Bruce Reed, who succeeded From as leader of the DLC before taking a leave of absence to become executive director of the president’s fiscal commission, will return in December.

“They have talented people, there’s no doubt about that, but I don’t think there’s a replacement really for original policy work,” DLC President Ed Gresser said of Third Way. “I think they do some, but what I see of their work is sort of political memos, ‘Here’s how you should talk about such and such an issue.’ Those are valuable, but they’re not setting an agenda.”

Brookings’ William Galston and Harvard’s Elaine Kamarck wrote the seminal studies that helped launch the DLC. Third Way is now paying the duo to complete a study about what moderates believe and what they want from Democrats. Both praise Third Way for filling a niche that’s otherwise unfilled.

“There’s no question,” Galston said, “about the fact that the DLC is not what it was and that Third Way, as sort of an operational entity, has filled some of the void opened by the downsizing of the DLC and its shift to a more modest and less visible mission.”

Read more about: Center For American Progress, Third Way, Democratic Leadership Council, Democratic Party, Progressive Policy Institute, Think Tanks

Swearing off the Rhetoric of Violence

Swearing off the rhetoric of violence

Can't we agree to stop urging supporters to "reload" or pursue "Second Amendment remedies?"

MSNBC

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords

We won't know for a while exactly why the gunman identified as Jared Lee Loughner, 22, shot 18 people, including Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, and we may never know why. From the shards of maybe-evidence he left behind – to my knowledge it's unconfirmed whether any of the MySpace, YouTube or Facebook posts being cited were created by the suspect – people can find reason to call him a right-wing nut-job or a left-wing fanatic. He supposedly railed against the government like Tea Partiers do, he was a gold-fanatic like Glenn Beck, but he also listed the Communist Manifesto as a favorite book on his alleged MySpace page.

But while we wait to learn the motivation behind Saturday's shooting, which killed six, including federal Judge John Roll, nine-year old Christine Taylor Green and Gabe Zimmerman, Giffords' community outreach director, is it really controversial to suggest that the overheated anti-government rhetoric of the last two years, with its often violent imagery, ought to be toned down? Really?

Sadly, to my knowledge, no conservative leader has yet called for dialing back the rage on the right in the wake of the Giffords shooting. Sarah Palin sent condolences to Giffords' family, but said nothing about her unconscionable SarahPAC map putting 20 House members, including Giffords, in actual crosshairs for supporting healthcare reform, or her infamous Tweet telling conservatives "don't retreat, reload." Giffords' 2010 Tea Party challenger, Jesse Kelly, hasn't apologized for inviting supporters to "shoot a fully automatic M16" to "get on target for victory" and "remove Gabrielle Giffords from office." Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle hasn't yet recanted her statement about the need to pursue "Second Amendment remedies" if political change lags behind the Tea Party's dreams.

Although there's no evidence Tea Party rhetoric had anything to do with Giffords' shooting, it can be no surprise that her father, when asked if his daughter had enemies, told the New York Post tearfully, "Yeah, the whole Tea Party."

Maybe in the days to come conservatives will listen to Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, who denounced "the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about the government" at a Saturday night press conference. The 50-year law enforcement veteran, who courageously bucked his state's anti-immigrant racial profiling law last year, declared that "the bigotry that goes on in this country is outrageous, and unfortunately…Arizona has become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry." Dupnik noted that Giffords had a meeting disrupted in 2009 when "someone dropped a weapon out of their pants," that a door was shattered at her headquarters after she voted for healthcare reform last March, and also revealed that "a suspicious package" had been delivered to her Tuscon office and is still being investigated.

There's no evidence tying Loughner to any of the right-wing rhetoric used against Giffords, but it would be crazy not to notice that such rhetoric has already claimed victims, and will almost certainly continue to. I'll never apologize for suggesting that Bill O'Reilly's crusade against Dr. George Tiller – and his dozens of segments labeling him "Tiller the Babykiller" – might have created the context in which Tiller was murdered in May 2009. It shocked me watching cable news all day Saturday that almost no one talked about anti-tax nut Joe Stack flying his plane into an Austin IRS building as the Tea Party's anti-tax crusade took off, or Glenn Beck fan Byron Williams driving into San Francisco locked and loaded to shoot up the obscure left-wing Tides Foundation, which Beck had repeatedly railed against on Fox.

Rebecca Traister wrote a moving tribute to Giffords today, noting that the Blue Dog Democrat was to her right politically (and to mine as well) but that her vote for healthcare reform, in a conservative district, took real courage. That courage was on display Saturday, while Giffords was fighting for her life in a Tuscon hospital, as MSNBC repeatedly replayed an interview with Giffords last March, discussing the attacks on her office as well as Sarah Palin's "crosshairs" ad. If you haven't seen it, you should. It is devastating. Chuck Todd and Savannah Guthrie go out of their way to defend Palin and the GOP from any attempt to link their rhetoric with the attacks on Giffords and other Democrats, "In fairness, campaign rhetoric and war rhetoric has been interchangeable for years," Todd insisted, and Giffords graciously acknowledged "extremes on both sides, frankly, not just on the Republican side."

But she delivered a poignant patriotic defense of American democracy, which is "a beacon to the world," she told Todd, "because we effect change at the ballot box, not because of these outbursts of violence." She had the courage to name Palin: "We're on Sarah Palin's targeted list, but the thing is that the way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district, and when people do that, they've gotta realize there are consequences to that action."

We have no idea why Loughner allegedly tried to kill Giffords Saturday. But the fact that a well-liked, centrist, pro-gun rights Democrat like Giffords faced threats and attacks for her healthcare vote, or that she was targeted with violent imagery by the 2008 Republican nominee for vice president as well as her 2010 GOP opponent, ought to make conservatives pause. More than pause, it ought to make them denounce those in their ranks who are using extremist, eliminationist rhetoric. Let's hope it does in the days to come. In the meantime, our prayers and good wishes are with Gabrielle Giffords and her family and all the other victims of Saturday's cruelty.

• Joan Walsh is Salon's editor at large. More: Joan Walsh

AlterNet.org

VISION

Hightower Lowdown / By Jim Hightower

Vision: 8 Ways We're Making America a Better Place -- in Spite of the Disasters Coming out of Washington

We can have the kind of economy, government, environment, and country we want, if we keep pushing, organizing, building, and otherwise doing the work of democracy.

January 1, 2011 |

Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Butch Hancock form the Flatlanders, a powerhouse trio of Texas singer/ songwriters now based in Austin. But each of them was raised on the West Texas flatlands (hence the group's name) around Lubbock. They were shaped, both musically and personally, by the full 'Lubbock experience,' which includes a few cultural oddities. Several years ago, Butch explained one of these on a national radio talk show that Susan DeMarco and I hosted.

He pointed out that growing up in the straight-laced, God-fearing Protestant churches of that region could be very confusing for hormone-driven teenagers like him. "They told us that sex was the most vulgar, nastiest thing on earth," Butch said. "And that we should save it for someone we loved."

Politics is not sex, but these days it can be almost as confusing. Obama and the Democrats are in power, but they've been unwilling to assert it with any boldness on the big issues America faces. Instead, they keep capitulating to petulant, recalcitrant Republicans in the vain hope of engaging these pious, right-wing fundamentalists in some sort of bipartisan Kumbaya.

Meanwhile, the GOP's new wave of neo-Neanderthal leaders (Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Glenn Beck, the Koch Brothers, Jim DeMint, the entire menagerie of Fox TV's nattering nabobs, et al.) have plunged the party of Lincoln (and of Reagan, for that matter) headlong into the abyss of political absurdity. EXAMPLE: Obama, they insist, is not merely the centrist, establishment liberal that he has proven to be, but an Islamo-socialist-fascist-marxist Kenyan, a spawn of Satan.

Seriously. Heed the babbling of Newt, who was always strange, but has now turned scary, having loosened all of the nuts and bolts on his sanity to free his inner lunatic. In September, the former leader of the House of Representatives of the United States of America embraced the nutty 'birthers' to declare that Obama exhibits "Kenyan anti-colonial behavior," and that the President's long-dead African father is channeling revolutionary thoughts through his son to rule America from beyond. Remember Newt is a guy who actually thinks he can be elected your president in 2012.

We live in strange times, do we not? Perhaps it's no cosmic coincidence that the balloting for November's congressional/gubernatorial elections began only 31 hours after Halloween.

But now it's the holidays, which raises the big question: is there anything political in 2010 for which we progressive/ populist Americans should be thankful?

Happily, yes! As I've rambled from town to town this year (crisscrossing from Chico to New York City, Cape May to Santa Fe, Pittsburgh to Princeton, Fort Worth to Fort Collins, Buffalo to San Francisco, Portland to Portland, the Wisconsin Dells to my old home place of Denison... and points beyond), I've found that while people are vastly disappointed by the meekness of the Democrats and totally dismayed by the willful weirdness of Republicans, neither has deterred them from pushing on with the groundwork that still must be done to revitalize our country's democracy.

However, rather than looking to Washington for the changes America needs, progressives are now uniting locally, focusing on direct actions they can take in their cities and states. As a young woman in Colorado Springs put it: "We voted for change, but we see that the money monsters in Washington eat change for breakfast. We don't have the power to fix that, not yet, but that doesn't mean we're powerless. We can make a difference where we live, gain more strength, and show the way. A national movement has to come from down here."

She's right. First of all, don't forget that it was the grassroots organizing, energy, and enthusiasm of progressives (especially young people) that created the Obama candidacy and presidency, so the activist base is far more solid and extensive than the corporate and political elite (forgive the redundancy there) want us to realize.

More importantly, local activism and success is intensifying as fast as faith in national politics is dissipating. The media mavens don't cover it (being far too busy touting the 11 percent of the public who say they identify with the corporate-backed teabag groups), but progressives are forging surprising coalitions, not only in San Francisco and New York City, but also in such places as Iowa, Houston, Syracuse, central Missouri, New Haven, Ohio, and Rhode Island. Here, outside the country's media centers, people are producing new solutions and structural changes that add up to real hope for a progressive America. On issues big and small, there's much we can be thankful for... and build on.

Wall Street

Rarely does the plutocracy reveal itself to the hoi polloi as crudely and flagrantly as it has done with Washington's ongoing bailout and shameless coddling of the Wall Street greedheads who wrecked our economy. While Republicans and Democrats alike have loudly decried the greed, they continue to reward the narcissistic barons and increase the power of the monopolistic financial giants.

Obama Democrats passed a meek reform bill that allows top bankers to keep grabbing obscene bonuses for continuing to run their banks as casinos, while letting the banks gain a tighter grip on our wallets and get away with no requirement to invest in productive enterprises, middle-class jobs, and housing. Worse than meek, Republicans are mendacious, having shamefully and openly tried to kill even the modest reforms offered by Democrats, in exchange for getting millions of dollars in campaign cash from Wall Streeters. Then comes the Tea Party, which initially rose from the public's red-faced outrage at banker greed, but got co-opted by GOP operatives. Far from going after Wall Street, the party has largely put its electioneering clout behind a host of congressional candidates taking banker money (often indirectly) and wailing about "big government" efforts to "punish" rich bankers.

Is there anyone who'll push honestly for justice and real change on Wall Street? Yes--the people themselves! Here are a few important grassroots efforts underway and gaining oomph:

1. National People's Action.

This is a growing network of more than two dozen community organizations across the country (workers, farmers, small business owners, retirees, students, clergy, homeowners, et al.) focused squarely on the unchecked greed of big banks. They have successfully confronted Federal Reserve honcho Ben Bernanke and bankers who secretively finance and profit from payday lenders (who charge 400 percent interest for 30-day loans). Deploying more than 200 organizers, their Showdown In America.org campaign seeks to break up the too-big-to-fail banks, decentralize Wall Street power into small and medium-sized banks, impose a moratorium on home foreclosures, and recover some $140 billion of bonus money being siphoned off this year by banker elites.

2. Financial Speculation Tax.

Having poured trillions of the public's dollars into the rescue of Wall Street, the Republicans, 'Blue Dog' Democrats, and Tea Party leaders insist that there is no money left for the bold job creation initiatives (such as a nationwide program for green jobs and for repairing and extending our country's essential infrastructure) that America and the middle class desperately need. Disingenuously, they ask: where would you get the money?

Easy. Get it from where it went--the pockets of Wall Street's high-rolling, casino-style speculators. They do nothing but game the system for their own fast-buck profits, dumping trillions into rapid-fire computer trades involving such nonsensical, unproductive schemes as credit default swaps. Put even a tiny tax on these gaming transactions (ranging from 0.02 to 0.25 percent), and America could recoup over $100 billion a year for job creation and deficit reduction.

After all, we tax Las Vegas' casinos, why not Wall Street's? This is nothing new--for 50 years, up until 1966, the US had a transaction tax in place, and it was doubled in 1932 to help recovery efforts in the Great Depression. Also, England has a very successful one working for it today.

Such groups as the AFL-CIO and SEIU are mounting a major organizing campaign behind the FST. Called 'Make Wall Street Pay,' the effort already has congressional backing, and is gaining strength. As usual, the media isn't covering this, but a growing number of activist groups are joining the call for this policy of common sense fairness. For more information and action suggestions, check out the 'Action Center' at www.banksterusa.org.

3. Elizabeth Warren.

Grassroots clout has already produced one bright spot in Washington's dim response to Wall Street greed. The Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection survived a ferocious onslaught of banker lobbying to be included in the otherwise lukewarm reform bill.

This idea came from a levelheaded, plainspoken, populist-minded bankruptcy expert, Elizabeth Warren. A Harvard professor of law, Warren also is a graduate of the University of Hard Knocks, having seen her own hardscrabble Oklahoma family endure bankruptcy. "I learned early on what debt means, how vulnerable it makes people."

By rallying outsider progressive forces to the cause, Warren became a major inside player, pushing relentlessly to get this important consumer position included in the final law. Having the position is nice, but who would fill it? Bankers wanted one of their own, but consumer and community groups had sprung into action even before the bill passed, organizing tens of thousands of regular folks to demand that Obama name Warren herself to head the agency. Despite furious pressure from bank lobbyists, the people were clear: the President had to give us this one. Warren accepted, but--showing the savvy she'll need to be effective--she agreed to be named special adviser to the President in charge of overseeing the new agency. This avoided the long, brutal, and iffy confirmation fight that the financial giants would've mounted to kill an outright nomination. As a result, she'll probably have a shorter tenure, but she starts right away, allowing her (and us) to fend off the lobbyists and give the fledgling bureau a strong, consumer-oriented beginning.

4. Move Your Money.

For your own private rebellion against the financial finaglers and manipulators, withdraw your money from them--and tell them why you're doing it. Viable options for stashing and investing your funds abound, including credit unions, community banks, and socially responsible credit card and investment firms. MoveYourMoney.info is a spreading movement that literally helps you move, allowing you to escape the tainted tentacles of Wall Street. In addition to your personal funds, look into shifting the accounts of your business, union, church, co-op, neighborhood association, and other organizations into financial institutions closer to home... and much closer to your values. After all, it's your money --why let the bastards have it? Talk it up with friends and family, write letters to the editor, send emails, post blogs, and find other ways to expand the movement.

5. Dog Poop.

It's worth recalling that even the smallest dog can lift its leg on the tallest building. Indeed, when trying to change the world, even small steps can make a big difference, so turn your creative impulses loose.

Take the 'Park Spark,' built by Matthew Mazzotta, an artist in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At his local dog park, he thought about all that canine excrement being bagged and tossed into trashcans. A bulb lit in Mazzotta's head: why not convert the waste into poop power?

He put two 500-gallon oil tanks, painted a cheery yellow, in the park where people can deposit their pooch's poop. Microbes in one tank digest the waste and send methane gas into the second tank, which fuels a gaslight lantern to illuminate the park. Mazzotta's functional sculpture tidies up, provides free renewable energy, and helps us think differently about what's in front of us, including seeing waste as a resource.

6. De-Paving.

Another small step with a big progressive payoff is being taken in such cities as Boston, Davenport, Houston, Portland, and Seattle. People in these places have come together to address the seemingly pedestrian matter of pavement (this is but one of many freewheeling ideas for local activism spun from the fertile mind of enviro-maestro Bill McKibben, who has prompted thousands of local folks to form 'work parties' that come up with hands-on solutions for their communities--check it out at www.350.org). In this case, the problem is that cities simply have too much of their land locked under pavement, which causes flooding, toxic runoff, heat, and an inhuman disconnect from nature. Thus, the rise of a de-paving movement.

Somerville, Massachusetts, for example, has 77 percent of its land coated in asphalt, concrete, and other impervious slabs. So teams are volunteering to free the land, bit by bit, reclaiming green spaces in yards, school grounds, traffic medians, etc... It's hard, hard work, and it's slow, but the payoff is tangible as gardens, parks, and life emerge. A similar group in Oregon has put up a website (Depave.org) that offers planning tips, a list of tools, and step-by-step instructions for others who want to uncover the joy of the green earth. As one de-paver says, "There's some-thing really empowering about literally taking things into your own hands and restoring your community."

Buying Our Democracy

This will sound loopy, but I think we must also be grateful to the Koch brothers this year. Yes, the billionaire, laissez-faire extremists whom we outed in the February Lowdown, detailing dozens of front groups (including the Tea Party) that Charles and David funded and orchestrated in a secretive, long-term effort to impose corporate rule over our nation.

We owe them a huge "thank you," because their political excesses and ideological overreach have finally shredded the cloak of secrecy around these front groups. Now, even such establishment media outlets as The New Yorker are covering the Kochs (see Jane Mayer's extensive, well-written story in the August 30 issue). The brothers are turning into the bobblehead dolls of the emerging plutocracy. Thanks to these free-spending zealots, the public is beginning to see that there really is a vast right-wing conspiracy to undermine public supremacy over corporate power.

The Federalist Society, Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, and Mercatus Center are just a few of the brothers' creations that for years have tried to remake the judiciary into a governmental monkey wrench to undo our people's democratic authority. In January, this perfidious effort culminated in the constitutional coup that five Supreme Court corporatists pulled off with their decree in the hoked-up 'Citizens United' case (Lowdown, March 2010). As you'd expect, congressional Republicans applauded the coup, and, while Obama and the Democrats have merely complained about this raw power grab, they've essentially accepted it as a done deal. That would be that--except for one thing: you. Ordinary people, who usually pay little attention to arcane court decisions, grasped the import of this one from the moment it was issued, and 80 percent oppose it (including 76 percent of Republicans). This has fueled two important, though little reported, uprisings across the country:

7. Amend the Constitution.

Amending is not easy to do, though it's hardly impossible (twelve amendments were added in the past century), and it is the definitive way to halt the Court's enthronement of corporate money. Also, the very attempt to amend can be a big positive, for the process educates and enlists people in a historic democratic cause that is worthy of them.

Several pro-amendment coalitions have come together to work on this important issue. FreeSpeechForPeople.org includes Public Citizen, Voter Action, the Center for Corporate Policy, and the American Independent Business Alliance. The MovetoAmend.org coalition includes such groups as the Program on Corporations and Law in Democracy (POCLAD), the Alliance for Democracy, Family Farm Defenders, Reclaim Democracy, the National Lawyers Guild, the Center for Media and Democracy, and the Liberty Tree Foundation. The coalitions press for a broader approach that would eliminate the fiction of 'corporate personhood,' explicitly stating that only humans are persons with constitutional rights. MoveOn.org, Common Cause, People for the American Way, and other groups are also working on this issue.

8. Clean Elections.

Long overdue, this would bring the public financing alternative (which a growing number of states and cities have successfully implemented) to all Congressional elections. Maine, North Carolina, Arizona, and New Mexico are among the pioneers of this system, which disarms the corrupt, pay-to-play lobbyists by giving candidates the ability to forego the corporate campaign funds that influence peddlers dole out in exchange for legislative favors. This is a game-changing, structural reform that works, which is why it's getting vehement opposition from Republicans and only lip service from the Obamacans.

Despite this, the idea is on the move. Thanks to a grassroots coalition organized through FixCongressFirst.org and to a national network of clean election experts and organizers called PublicCampaign.org, the Fair Elections Now Act is moving through Congress. It has over 25 co-sponsors in the Senate and 160 co-sponsors in the House. The bill made it out of a House committee last month.

Shine Where You Are

The message here is simple: we can have the kind of economy, government, environment, and country we want... IF we keep pushing, organizing, building, and otherwise doing the work of democracy. Producing change we really can believe in is up to us--not to Obama or the Democratic Party. They are not the progressive movement, we are.

It's never easy to confront the corporate order, to challenge the moneyed powers. As Henrik Ibsen instructed us long ago: "Never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth."

But fight we must, for freedom, truth, justice, and democracy don't just happen. We The People have to produce them. The good news is that even when the national political scene momentarily darkens, we can be thankful for the thousands of candles, torches, and other lights beaming with such promise all across the country, lit by people like you. In fact, you're probably already one of those hopeful beams, so we're thankful for you, too. If not, become one, and join with others to keep America's grassroots shining bright.

Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the new book, "Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow." (Wiley, March 2008) He publishes the monthly "Hightower Lowdown," co-edited by Phillip Frazer.

Solution: End the Insurance Gap for People With Preexisting Conditions

Solution: End the Insurance Gap for People With Preexisting Conditions

Wednesday 29 December 2010

by: Dina Rasor, t r u t h o u t | Solution

(Photo: takomabibelot; Edited: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t)

In this Solution, Dina Rasor takes on a little-understood but truly draconian provision in the massive health care reform bill. The provision, requiring the most sick and most vulnerable to forgo any medical insurance coverage for six months in order to qualify for government coverage, could have devastating economic and social consequences if it is not addressed.

-Matt Renner, Truthout

For the 12.6 million Americans who have preexisting health care issues and have been turned down by insurance companies in the past three-plus years.

The good news: The health care reform law's stopgap Preexisting Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP) program will get you to 2014, when discriminating by preexisting condition will be illegal.

The bad news: You have to put your health problems on hold for six months.

In 2014, it will be illegal to discriminate against any American who has a preexisting health condition when applying for health insurance. Since there are millions of Americans with preexisting conditions (over 57 million of us under the age of 65 - one in five of us), the health care law set up a high-risk pool in each state to allow those who have been turned down by insurance companies to buy insurance at a reasonable cost until the full enactment of the law in 2014. There were political fights about these pools - some people viewed them as a sneaky way to create a public option - and a recent Washington Post article suggests that there might not be enough money allocated to the programs. The states had a choice between creating the pools themselves or letting the government set them up, and the feds were pleased that they were able to set up all the pools within six months. But as of November 1, 2010, only a little more than 8,000 people have qualified for the pools.

One of the reasons that enrollment is so low could be that the law has a serious Achilles heel: You can't be accepted into the PCIP high-risk pool until you've gone six months without any health care.

What is the world is that all about? There were fights over this provision, which was inserted into the bill because some in the Senate Finance Committee were afraid that people with preexisting conditions who already had health insurance would dump it for the high-risk pool's potentially lower premiums. In the House version of the bill, people were concerned that employers or insurance companies would dump their employees or enrollees with preexisting conditions onto the government pool to lower their existing insurance costs. The House bill suggested that companies and insurance providers be fined for attempting that maneuver. The Senate, determined to prevent sick individuals from "gaming the system," decided that these people would have to pay the physical and financial price of not having health care for six months.

Here is how FOX news reported the dilemma while the bill was being debated:

"If you are a cancer patient and have cancer now, you can't wait six months to go into a plan because your condition can go from bad to death," said Stephen Finan, a policy expert with the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network. He called the waiting period in the Senate bill "unacceptable."

…"If you are somebody with cancer or a heart condition who needs immediate coverage and immediate treatment, that's not very helpful," said Karen Pollitz, a Georgetown University health policy professor.

Senate Finance staffers say the restriction is meant to prevent people switching from more expensive coverage to take advantage of government assistance.

But the House health care bill unveiled last week by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., doesn't include a waiting period. Instead, it would require insurance plans who "dump" seriously ill patients to repay the federal pool. "The House provision will provide immediate relief for people with high-risk conditions who have no alternative for coverage," said Finan.

The Senate version won. Now we are stuck with an untenable situation for potentially millions of sick Americans: no health care for six months.

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For those who have a chronic or potentially fatal disease, who are just one job loss away from no health care, this is a scary situation. Having a preexisting condition can be viewed as a civil rights issue, because most of us who have one have no control over it, just as we don't have control over whether we are black, white, Hispanic or Asian, or whether we are male or female.

During the health care debate, Jonathan Alter of Newsweek, a cancer survivor himself, put it this way:

The core principle behind health-care reform is - or should be - a combination of Social Security insurance and civil rights. Passage would end the shameful era in our nation's history when we discriminated against people for no other reason than that they were sick. A decade from now, we will look back in wonder that we once lived in a country where half of all personal bankruptcies were caused by illness, where Americans lacked the basic security of knowing that if they lost their jobs they wouldn't have to sell the house to pay for the medical treatments to keep them alive. We'll look back in wonder - that is, if we pass the bill.

Because of the provision requiring six months without health insurance, this discrimination against people with illness will continue another three years.

Beyond the personal dilemmas faced by people with preexisting conditions, this provision will produce serious unintended consequences that will weigh on our economy and American society as a whole. If these individuals cannot get insurance for six months, they can try to pay for the treatment themselves, avoid any treatment and risk deeper illness or even death, bankrupt themselves and their loved ones in order to afford the expensive health care that can keep them alive and functioning, use their mortgage money to pay for treatment and lose their homes or, if all else fails, go to the emergency room and put the high cost of their fight for life and health onto the people who do have health insurance - and we'll all pay higher premiums.

During those six months, these individuals could become too sick to work. They may never return to work or pay taxes again, leaving them on the unemployment and disability rolls, or they may go bankrupt or have foreclosed homes: three problems that we know are already bedeviling our economy. These are very real possibilities, because an astounding 62 percent of bankruptcies and 23 percent of foreclosures in this country are due to medical bills.

The six-months-without-insurance requirement was passed in such a way that the executive branch can't regulate it away. The Obama administration has adjusted the preexisting pools to give them more options and lower premiums, but the six-months rule must be changed legislatively.

In this new hyper-charged political atmosphere, in which many new Congress members will be trying to eliminate the health care law altogether, it may seem a tough undertaking to introduce legislation to eliminate this last vestige of discrimination against people who get sick. However, I think that there may be a way to convince a majority in each chamber that this is not only the compassionate thing to do, but also the fiscally responsible thing to do.

My solution to this problem would be for one or several members of Congress to ask the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to use its best economic modeling to project the cost to the federal and state governments and to the economy if, during the six-month waiting period, a reasonable portion of at-risk Americans stop working and paying taxes due to increasing and untreated illness, go on unemployment insurance or disability, go bankrupt, lose their homes or visit the emergency room, with those costs draining the rest of the health care system. The model should project those costs over the three-year period until 2014 when the discrimination ends, and should also consider that many baby boomers are reaching the age when a majority of them will have a preexisting condition, which may be as simple as high blood pressure or as deadly as treatable cancer that is allowed to progress to stage four.

In a Congress that promises to be consumed with cost scrutiny rather than compassion, I believe that this study would show that the cost to the government and the economy far outweighs the cost of lifting the rule. Armed with facts of the expensive consequences of this provision, a new bill could be introduced that would lift the perilous and expensive six-month waiting period. The bill could incorporate safeguards from the original House bill to prevent employers or insurance plans from dumping individuals onto the government, by making the fine for such action higher than the cost of keeping individuals with preexisting conditions on the health plan.

While the cost of the 12 million people who have been rejected from health plans could make a severe impact on our wobbly economy, there is a larger group of people with preexisting conditions who are just one job loss away from making the costs of this six-month wait even more ominous. Consider this study from Families USA, as reported in Politico:

Approximately 57.2 million people under the age of 65 - more than one in five (22.4 percent) of America's non-elderly population - have a diagnosed preexisting condition that could lead to a denial of coverage in the individual health insurance market, according to a report released today by the consumer health organization Families USA.

Whether you point to the civil rights and humanitarian consequences of waiting six months for insurance or illustrate the fiscal costs to our government and our society, this rule needs to be eliminated legislatively for the next three years until we, as a nation, finally put an end to this discrimination against those who suffer. There is no hold button on disease.

Will there be courageous members of Congress who will step up to the task?

This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.