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Do we daydream anymore?

  By About me, Life Stories

Do we daydream anymore? I’ve been wondering about that in the last few days after a conversation with a close friend in which we mutually confessed our penchant for daydreaming. My fear is that daydreaming is a lost art. But perhaps that is just a solipsistic point of view—just because we generally don’t see other people daydreaming, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. I want to write here about why daydreaming is so important to me, why I fear it may be a phenomena in decline and why my daughter gives me some hope for the future. Continue reading

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A blog / anthology of stories by, for, and about political organizers?

  By Philosophy, Politics

This is a proposal for a new blog for political organizers. It doesn’t have a name yet. And I’m not sure it’s going to happen. It depends on how the political organizers among you respond to the idea. The idea is based on a conversation I had with Hannah Miller which lead us to the idea of creating an anthology of stories by, for, and about political organizers. But the notion of starting with a blog and then creating an anthology of stories by and for political organizers is my idea. Don’t blame Hannah for it, or for the way I move to it in this post. But, if she likes the idea, she can have half the credit. Continue reading

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Tell the Blue Dogs to support the public health insurance option without a trigger. Today!

  By Health Care

It was two steps forward and one step back on health care reform yesterday. That’s why we need you to make a critical phone call to PA members of the Blue Dog Coalition-Congressmen Patrick Murphy, Tim Holden, Chris Carney, and Jason Altmire, this morning to ask him to reaffirm his support for a public health insurance option in the health care reform legislation being drafted in Congress? You can call toll free at 1-888-436-8427. Continue reading

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Health Insurance Company Concentration Causes Higher Premiums for Pennsylvanians

  By Health Care

The Pennsylvania chapter of Health Care for America Now released a new report today showing that consolidation in the private health insurance industry is creating skyrocketing premiums for both patients and employers. Pennsylvania’s two largest health insurers, Highmark and Independence Blue Cross control 72 percent of the market statewide. When looked at a local level, however, the situation is even worse, with three out of four local market ratings being dominated by a single company. From the point of view of the regional insurance markets, Pennsylvania has levels of concentration exceeded by only twelve states. This kind of consolidation means that an insurer can, without fear of consequences, raise premiums and/or reduce the variety of plans or quality of services offered to customers. This is what we have seen: from 2000 to 2007, premiums in Pennsylvania had risen 86 percent compared to a meager 13 percent increase in wages. This… Continue reading

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Yes We HCAN–rally and lobby day for health care on June 25th

  By Health Care

Health Care For American Now (HCAN) is holding a national Rally and Lobby Day—we’re calling it called Health Care ’09: We Can’t Wait—on June 25th on the mall in Washington. We hope to bring 1000-1500 Pennsylvanians to Washington for the rally. Free buses will be leaving from locations around the state. (I’ll be announcing those locations in a day or so.) The rally will be at 11:00. Then we will gather in one very large room for a Town Hall meeting at which we expect to see a number of our members of Congress. We will head by to Pennsylvania at about 6:00 pm. You can pre-register for the event at http://www.hcanpa.org/dc. Let me tell you why you should join us: Continue reading

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Specter's leadership on health care is a must

  By Health Care

May 28, 2009 The Morning Call – Freelance Everyone cares which side Sen. Arlen Specter is on and what difference it makes. In Washington, the focus is more often on his party. Here in Pennsylvania, however, the critical question is where Sen. Specter stands in the struggle to reform health care. Last week we got a little better idea when Sen. Specter signed a letter supporting many of the goals of Health Care for America Now (HCAN). Health Care for America Now is the largest organization working for health care reform in the country and one of the largest issue movements in American history. Continue reading

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Help Us Expand and Lift The Health Care Reform Bubble and Make History

  By Health Care

One of the bizarro aspects of being an issue activist is that you wind up in a bubble and sometimes forget that most people, most of the time, aren’t paying attention to the issue that consumes your life day in and day out. Given that the primary goal of a political activist is to find people who care about an issue and motivate them to become active in one way or another, you would think that it would be hard to forget that most people live outside the bubble. But activists spend time a lot of time with other activists, both professional and amateur, and with politicians and their staff members, and with members of the media. And we are all inside the bubble. If you are reading this, you at least stick you head inside the bubble once in a while. And from time to time, you take action… Continue reading

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Huge IBC rate increases show need for public health insurance plan

  By Health Care

Independence Blue Cross (IBC) has filed for a rate increase of up to 52% for the three insurance programs it offers to individuals in what the industry calls the “non-group market.” These shocking increases point to the urgency of creating a public health insurance plan to compete with private insurance. Senator Specter is inching toward support of such a plan. Click here to call him in support of a public health insurance plan. Lance Haver and I did a press conference about these rate increases yesterday. You can see an excerpt at http://tinyurl.com/obr7ns. Continue reading

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It's time to rotate ballot position

  By Elections and Voting, Philadelphia

After every judicial election someone makes this obvious point: it’s time to rotate ballot position from ward to ward. Picking a number out of a can should not determine who sits on the bench or who is elected to City Council or the General Assembly. The only unendorsed candidates who managed to win yesterday had the first or second ballot position. Some of them were also very well qualifed candidates who had other sources of support, such as Diane Thompson, and they might have won anyway. But some will be on the bench primarily because of ballot position. One endorsed candidate who deserves to be on the bench, Joyce Eubanks, had the worst conceivable ballot position. A few voters came out of the polls yesterday and told me that they “could not find her.” So you would think that now that the party has shown it’s ability to hang together… Continue reading

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Mark Alan Hughes is gone; Does his policy live on?

  By Libraries, Philadelphia, Taxation

Hughes has left the administration. I’ve not heard why although there is a rumor he is being blamed for Nutter’s political misteps, including the proposal to close libraries and the call for massive increases in the property tax. Closing libraries and raising the property tax to such an extent–and ruling out any increases in wage or business taxes or elimination of the tax abatement–certainly looks to be part of the Hughes strategy I criticized here a few months ago, that is, to focus city services and tax cuts on the happy half million middle class people in the city rather than on the miserable million working class and poor. Unfortunately, raising the sales tax instead of the property tax is just another way of doing the same thing as it is even more regressive than a property tax increase, especially one with a homestead exemption or circuit breaker. If Hughes… Continue reading