Category: Public Policy

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Be There For Health Care: greet Obama supporters in Philly on Saturday

  By Health Care

Submitted by Marc Stier on Mon, 01/12/2009 – 3:34am. Be There for Health Care! Welcome people on Saturday, January 17th as they line up to hear President-Elect Barack Obama at the first stop of his train trip to Washington before his inauguration As a volunteer greeter on Saturday January 17th, you will be part of the largest mobilization of health care for all advocates Philadelphia has ever seen! Volunteers will: ·Work in pairs signing up folks as they wait on line to enter the speech venue. ·Ask everyone to sign a post card to Senators Specter and Casey – Calling for guaranteed, quality, affordable health care for all. – Endorsing the Obama / Health Care For America Now principles of health care reform that call for every American to be able to choose affordable health insurance either from their current insurer, another private insurance plan or a public plan open… Continue reading

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Library closings: they've never been mainly about the budget crisis

  By Libraries, Philadelphia

The hard thing in making the case against closing eleven branch libraries is that the fiscal crisis of Philadelphia is not a mirage. That’s why it is important to understand that the branch library closings have never fundamentally been about the budget crisis. The Mayor and Siobhan Reardon are misleading us when they keep insisting that we had to close libraries because of the city’s budget troubles. I’m not sure I fully understand what the library closings are about. But this is what I’ve managed to piece together from talking with librarians here and elsewhere in the country as well as with people familiar with some of the inner workings of the library administration. The proposal to close branches came from the library administration The library administration has wanted to close branch libraries for years. They proposed doing so under Mayor Street, when then Councilman Nutter along with Councilman DiCicco… Continue reading

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Hallwatch faxbank on libraries

  By Libraries, Philadelphia

Ed Goppelt has graciously agreed to set up a faxbank at his hallwatch website, so that you can contact your district council member and all the at-large members in one step asking them to join the lawsuit seeking to block closure of the libraries. http://www.hallwatch.org/faxbank/save_our_libraries I’m going to spare you the hard sell. If YPP readers don’t already know why closing 11 branch libraries is a horrible and unjust step, nothing I add here will convince you. I’m just going to ask all of you who share that opinion to go, NOW, and contact your council members. While having a member of council as a plaintiff on the suit may not be strictly necessary from a legal point of view, it might help overcome any challenge to the standing of the others bringing the suit. Continue reading

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Best practices on city taxation in a recession: a proposed project for YPP

  By Philadelphia, Taxation

Most of us here, and to judge from the poll Ray and Dan sponsored, most of the city, believes that we should not be cutting taxes when our services are being reduced so much. We should be, at least temporarily, delay the wage tax cuts. But what do you do when the strong mayor of our city totally disagrees and when the members of City Council who, in addition to having the usual disinclination of politicians to raise taxes, are also disinclined to pick a fight with the Mayor in his first (of most likely eight) years in office. Where do we get the leverage to move the debate in the city. The poll helped, but what do we do now? For one thing, we can keep pointing out that the rationale for cutting taxes–to influence the location decisions of businesses and residents–is substantially less important when businesses and residents… Continue reading

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Natural Childbirth is Medicated Childbirth

  By Love and Sex, Sexual and gender equality

An article in the Times has finally gotten me to write on a subject that has bugged me for a long time: our sexist denial of the pain of childbirth. The Times reports that some advanced thinkers are suggesting that not only should women be able to have relatively pain-free natural childbirth but that they should be able to have orgasms during childbirth. You see, if putting something into a woman’s vagina in the right circumstances—soft lights, relaxation, appropriate other forms of stimulation—cause orgasms, then why shouldn’t something coming out of the vagina do as well? Considering that it has only been in the last thirty years that we have gotten over the sexist notion that the only “mature” orgasm is one that results from vaginal stimulation, I am already suspicious of the notion that child birth should be a source of pleasure for women But not only does this… Continue reading

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Be there for health care at Obama house parties

  By Health Care

The movement for health Care reform is moving forward now. And it has to because defeating the insurance companies is going to take a massive effort. . President-elect Obama has a mandate for reform having made the issue central to his campaign. Obama spent over $100 million in health care television advertising and, in October, 86 percent of his total ad budget was spent on advertisements that mentioned the issue. And in case anyone was wondering whether the financial and economic crises are going to delay health care reform, the answer is “no.” As President-elect Obama said time and time again, reforming health care is critical to fixing our economy. That’s why the Obama team and Health Care For America Now is moving forward to build our movement now. President-elect Obama is asking people to hold house parties to discuss health care reform in the next two weeks. I’m holding… Continue reading

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FDR, Obama, and the Path to Health Care Reform in 2009

  By Health Care, US

I’ve been giving these remarks at talks around the state in the last few weeks, most recently at the Neighborhood Networks conference last week. My aim is to bring people up to date on the state of health care reform and inspire them to join our movement, In a day or so, Health Care For America Now is going to announce the next stage in our effort to build a powerful movement for reform. So this is a good moment to let you all know where things stand. Continue reading

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You Want to See Broken Politics: Just Look at the Casinos Revisited

  By Casinos, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

I wrote this post on December 5, 2006 when a series of bad decisions on the part of our Mayor and Council had reinforced the even worse decisions of our Governor and General Assembly and created a steamroller bringing casinos to our waterfront. Now, almost two years later, we have a steamroller bringing one of those casinos to the Gallery. I could analyze this shift more thorougly.  But it seems much simpler now to just repost this. For the new day, new way has not brought anything very much new in the casino siting process. Continue reading

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How much does this have to do with the new central library?

  By Libraries, Philadelphia

My understanding is that the library addition will costs around $130 million of which $100 million has been raised. Some of that came from the city’s capital funds. Some came from the state and some came from foundations. And some has come from major donors. But capital costs for the building are one thing. Paying the operating costs are another. I imagine that this high-tech library will be expensive to operate. Is that why library administration wants to get library operating costs down now? Is that why the library is taking a 20% hit when other agencies are taking no more than a 10% hit? Don’t get me wrong. The central library addition looks like it will be wonderful. It is being designed by Moshe Safdie who is a brilliant civic architect. (His City of Quebec museum is a wonderful public space as well as a wonderful museum.) But I’m… Continue reading