Tag: barack obama

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, People Helping People, Politics Tagged with , , , ,

Since the Republicans have taken a few pages from the Saul Alinsky organizing playbook—Alinsky was the legendary Chicago community organizer who influenced Obama, known for such tactics as a fart-in—maybe it’s time for Barack Obama to ask himself “What would Alinsky do?

What he wouldn’t do is capitulate. Alinksy would know, as Obama should know, that if he lets health reform die now, his entire agenda will be sunk in a quagmire of intransigence, lies, and loud, even violent public opposition. He will have no legacy beyond this point, and that would be a tragedy.

Barack Obama, President should turn to the Barack Obama of the past: that community organizer and brilliant marketer who knows how to galvanize a crowd, frame an issue, and move the discourse.

The Barack Obama who understood from Alinsky the impact a group of low-income could have when they move from disenfranchised, socially alienated aloneness with their troubles to a cohesive community group able to press the power structure. The Obama who was a contributing writer to a book called “After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois.”

THAT Barack Obama would not be talking about taking the public option off the table. Instead, he’d make a speech something like this:

“Fellow Americans, for the past several months, we’ve been trying to move this health care system forward from the disastrous present where good solid working folks can’t afford to get treated, but healthcare executives live the high life. All we’re trying to do is create a system where health care is the right of every American, just as it is the right of the citizens of almost every other industrialized country in the world. But we are blocked at every turn. We’ve tried to meet them half way, and we have been rebuffed. We try to negotiate, to compromise. And instead, we’re shouted down, we’re lied to, and we’re faced with people who will not budge an inch because they want to protect their own perks.

“We will not allow this little group of small-minded selfish liars to control the dialogue. We made a promise to make healthcare not only affordable but he guaranteed right of every American, and we’re going to keep this promise.

“To get out of the stalemate, I am withdrawing the existing health reform legislation and replacing it with just one paragraph that everyone can understand, that can’t be misrepresented, and that will rapidly transform us to full universal coverage. I ask your wholehearted support of this clear and simple action plan. It uses the one part of our healthcare system that has been working, and working well, since 1964. It’s tested and proven.

“As of one year from the passage of this legislation, the effective age of eligibility for Medicare shall be lowered to age 55. As of three years from passage, the eligibility for Medicare shall be age 35. And as of five years from passage, all citizens of the United States shall be eligible from birth. Companies now offering healthcare coverage to their employees shall continue to extend coverage until they are Medicare-eligible or until an employee takes a position with another company that offers equal or better coverage.

“That’s it. Instead of hundreds of pages of confusing legal jargon, a single paragraph of enabling legislation to open the door to the right of healthcare for millions of Americans. Citizens of America, this is your birthright.

“I will introduce this legislation every year that I am in office, until it passes. And I will work with you to organize, community by community, until your Senators and Representatives, whether Democrat, Republican or independent, support this bill or are replaced by those who do.”

Let’s see this speech on every network, every blog, every radio show, and in every newspaper in the country. Delivered, as he surrounds himself on stage with the victims of today’s healthcare policy madness: those who can’t get treatment, get the wrong treatment, are marginalized or even see family members die because of the cost-first, profit-only, single-bottom-line narrow-mindedness of today’s system.

In 1979-80, Shel Horowitz advocated for single-payer healthcare as a staff organizer for the Gray Panthers of Brooklyn. His eight books include Apex Award winner Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First.

Source for the “fart-in story and Obama’s book contribution: Bill Dedman, “Reading Hillary Rodham’s hidden thesis,” https://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17388372

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in language, People Helping People Tagged with , , , , , ,

Along with a similar campaign around business ethics, I’ve long been on a campaign to reclaim “family values” as a value that progressives can rally around. And to me, that means seeing the family as inclusive. I am not concerned about whether a family has two parents, whether it has different genders or where/how/if that family chooses to worship–and much more concerned that a family be a place of peace, love, support, and very deep connection. And the Left needs to take a firm position in favor of these true family values-to say unequivocally that the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, domestic violence, and the ludicrous don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy are NOT in keeping with our family values.

And therefore I was delighted today to get a bulk email from none other than Michelle Obama, touting a 2-minute video of Barack Obama (and another father with four children) celebrating “responsible fatherhood”. Barack Obama noted once again that his father was largely absent in his life, and because of this, he’s made an intense commitment to be there for Sasha and Malia. Of course, Obama is a master marketer, and this video is an example of his marketing prowess. It shows him as not only charismatic but enormously likable.

Oddly enough, I just finished re-reading the complete Harry Potter series. Harry’s parents are killed when he’s a year old, and late in the series he castigates another character for wanting to stay and defend Harry rather than being there for his newborn child. Harry tells him that if he can be his child, that’s where he should be.

Anyway, the video is very sweet.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Ethics in Government, General Commentary, Marketing Trends/News, Media Ethics, Politics, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , ,

Been spending some time on Huffington Post this morning, always a fascinating place. Here’s some of what I’ve been reading:

Oregon’s Senator Jeff Merkley on Republican strategist Frank Luntz’s plan to derail health reform. What he doesn’t talk about is single-payer, which I believe could engage the strong support of the American people and roll right over all the roadblocks put there by industry lobbyists–while piecemeal “reform” would gain no such support. I do not understand why mainstream Democrats aren’t pushing this issue. It’s key to a raft of economic boosts that would help, for instance, both US automakers and labor. It’s little-talked-about that because most governments around the world, at least in developed nations, provide a real health care service, foreign competitors to GM, Ford, and Chrysler aren’t stuck with that enormous cost.

Robert Borosage on the general climate of business corruption in Washington. And on how that corruption has caused us to fail in such areas as mandatory sick leave, which then in turn makes the “stay home” response to swine flu impractical for those at the bottom of the ladder, who might lose their jobs and would certainly lose their pay.

Apparently some right-wing pundits have nothing better to do than attack Obama as elitist because–are you sitting down?–he likes Grey Poupon or Dijon mustard on his burgers! Give me a break! You can buy the stuff for two dollars a bottle at a discount store, and it sure does taste a lot better than the yellow glop that’s largely turmeric. I say unto them: get a life!

Stephen Colbert’s very funny video spoofing the big too-big-to-fail bailouts; no commentary necessary from me

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in General Commentary, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , , , ,

If you’re under 35 and you watch the video of Steve Jobs introducing the first Macintosh, in January 1984, you might wonder: what’s with all the cheering, it doesn’t do much. But it was revolutionary for its time.

Before that, you talked to computers by typing arcane commands. Text was displayed all in one font, and if you were lucky, the font had descenders (the stalks on the g, p, and q actually went below the bottom of the other letters)–so you could even read it. If you weren’t lucky, it was a squiggly mess. My first laptop was like that (a Radio Shack Model 100, which I bought in 1986). Graphics? You want graphics? They were sooo primitive, and not easy for the casual user to generate. To do that detailed MacPaint picture of a Japanese woman that Jobs shows on an early IBM PC or an Apple II would have been pretty much impossible.

The Mac, from day 1, allowed multiple fonts, bold and italic (and other less useful effects) with a simple click, included a graphics program that anyone could use, and even had sound.

I had one of those early Macs: my first computer, which I bought in April, 1984. It had 124K (not meg, and certainly not gig) of RAM, 64K of ROM, and a single 400K floppy drive. The startup disk included the operating system, a word processor, paint program, and a bit of room for data files. There was no hard drive, and backing up those data files was a major PITA involving multiple disk swaps. Oh yes, and a 9-inch monochrome monitor; color Macs didn’t come along for quite a while. I bought a second floppy drive for $400, and about a year later, a 20 MB hard drive for $700. Now you can get several gigabytes on a thumb drive and pay $40.

And before personal computers, computing was reserved for the specially trained, who talked to their machines by laboriously keypunching a line of code at a time, starting over if they made an error. Processors were in a central location, and you used a terminal to talk to them–a terminal with almost no computing power of its own.

So first, PCs swung the culture away from those centralized computers, to having power on your own desk. But then the Internet reversed the trend. Once again, a lot of our processing is done someplace else. Which means everyone’s personal comptuers have access to enormous resources: the world’s knowledge available in seconds.

And the Internet as a commerce platform means we can shop, pay bills, raise and contribute funds for causes, manage databases far away from the comfort of our own home, or from any far-flung corner of the world

And among the many other things the Internet changed is our definition of community. We’ve completely separated community from geography.

For social change and environmental justice activists, the possibilities are enormous. Especially considering we’re probably at the Model T stage. The Internet as a commercial venture is only 13 years old; the Mac, 25 years old; personal computing, about 30 years old. The practical gas-powered automobile was created in 1886; Ford introduced the Model T (not his first car, by the way; he had at least three earlier models, starting in 1903) 22 years later. Just as no one could have predicted the enormous impact the automobile has had on society, so, no one can predict just how far the Internet will stretch.

Building on the Howard Dean campaign of 2004 (the first to make a serious attempt at harnessing the Internet), Obama’s presidential campaign was greatly helped by his use not only of e-mail and the Web, but of social networks like Facebook and Twitter. And by groups like MoveOn and True Majority, that were able to organize their members to support and fund the campaign, while focusing attention on a progressive agenda.

And of course, the countless blogs, e-zines, websites, and radio programs on the Net, from around the world, are an easy alternative to mainstream corporate-owned media that can no longer tightly control the news–at least not for those willing to be a bit adventurous with their web searches. That, too, is revolutionary.

The future promises to be quite exciting.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability Tagged with , , , ,

President Barack Obama’s inaugural address was deeply moving to me on many levels. And one of the most promising was his statements on energy.

First, he recognized both the environmental and national security disaster of our present policy:

Each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

And second, the clean solution:

We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.

Not since Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House and wore sweaters instead of overheating the building have we had a U.S. President with this consciousness.

Not Reagan, who promptly took the solar system OFF the roof. Not George H.W. Bush. Not even Clinton. And even though George W. Bush’s Crawford ranch is one of the Greenest houses in the country, his presidency has been a disaster for the environment, and an eight-year lost opportunity to address climate change while it’s still possible.

Hooray!

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Peace and War, Politics, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , ,

By Howard Zinn, with opening commentary by Shel Horowitz
Democracy Now ran a long speech by the legendary Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States (a book that is absolute must reading for any serious student of history, of the power of social change, of people’s movements, and yes, of how to get to the kind of future we all want).

I strongly advise: go to the DN website and listen, watch, or read this speech. And then go read his book. If you’ve read it already, it’s probably time to read it again. If you’ve never read it, prepare to have your eyes opened wide.

Here are a couple of fragments of the speech. Two of which I bolded. the first is maybe the best advice Obama could receive–and the second is advice for we, the people. For us.
-SH

So, the other factor that stands in the way of a real bold economic and social program is the war. The war, the thing that has, you know, a $600 billion military budget. Now, how can you call for the government to take over the healthcare system? How can you call for the government to give jobs to millions of people? How can you do all that? How can you offer free education, free higher education, which is what we should have really? We should have free higher education. Or how can you—you know. No, you know, how can you double teachers’ salaries? How can you do all these things, which will do away with poverty in the United States? It all costs money.

And so, where’s that money going to come from? Well, it can come from two sources. One is the tax structure…the top one percent of—the richest one percent of the country has gained several trillions of dollars in the last twenty, thirty years as a result of the tax system, which has favored them. And, you know, you have a tax system where 200 of the richest corporations pay no taxes. You know that? You can’t do that. You don’t have their accountants. You don’t have their legal teams, and so on and so forth. You don’t have their loopholes.

The war, $600 billion, we need that. We need that money…that money is needed to take care of little kids in pre-school, and there’s no money for pre-school. No, we need a radical change in the tax structure, which will immediately free huge amounts of money to do the things that need to be done, and then we have to get the money from the military budget. Well, how do you get money from the military budget? Don’t we need $600 billion for a military budget? Don’t we have to fight two wars? No. We don’t have to fight any wars. You know.

And this is where Obama and the Democratic Party have been hesitant, you know, to talk about. But we’re not hesitant to talk about it. The citizens should not be hesitant to talk about it. If the citizens are hesitant to talk about it, they would just reinforce the Democratic leadership and Obama in their hesitations. No, we have to speak what we believe is the truth. I think the truth is we should not be at war. We should not be at war at all. I mean, these wars are absurd. They’re horrible also. They’re horrible, and they’re absurd. You know, from a human, human point of view, they’re horrible. You know, the deaths and the mangled limbs and the blindness and the three million people in Iraq losing their homes, having to leave their homes, three million people—imagine?—having to look elsewhere to live because of our occupation, because of our war for democracy, our war for liberty, our war for whatever it is we’re supposed to be fighting for…

Obama could possibly listen, if we, all of us—and the thing to say is, we have to change our whole attitude as a nation towards war, militarism, violence. We have to declare that we are not going to engage in aggressive wars. We are going to renounce the Bush Doctrine of preventive war. “Oh, we have to go to”—you know, “We have to go to war on this little pitiful country, because this little pitiful country might someday”—do what? Attack us? I mean, Iraq might attack us? “Well, they’re developing a nuclear weapon”—one, which they may have in five or ten years. That’s what all the experts said, even the experts on the government side. You know, they may develop one nuclear weapon in five—wow! The United States has 10,000 nuclear weapons. Nobody says, “How about us?” you see. But, you know, well, you know all about that. Weapons of mass destruct, etc., etc. No reason for us to wage aggressive wars. We have to renounce war as an instrument of foreign policy….

A hundred different countries, we have military bases. That doesn’t look like a peace-loving country. And besides—I mean, first of all, of course, it’s very expensive. We save a lot of money. Do we really need those—what do we need those bases for? I can’t figure out what we need those bases for. And, you know, so we have to—yeah, we have to give that up, and we have to declare ourselves a peaceful nation. We will no longer be a military superpower. “Oh, that’s terrible!” There are people who think we must be a military superpower. We don’t have to be a military superpower. We don’t have to be a military power at all, you see? We can be a humanitarian superpower. We can—yeah. We’ll still be powerful. We’ll still be rich. But we can use that power and that wealth to help people all over the world. I mean, instead of sending helicopters to bomb people, send helicopters when they face a hurricane or an earthquake and they desperately need helicopters. You know, you know. So, yeah, there’s a lot of money available once you seriously fundamentally change the foreign policy of the United States…

when you put together that don’t belong together, you see a “national security”—no—and “national interest.” No, there’s no one national interest. There’s the interest of the president of the United States, and then there’s the interest of the young person he sends to war. They’re different interests, you see? There is the interest of Exxon and Halliburton, and there’s the interest of the worker, the nurse’s aide, the teacher, the factory worker. Those are different interests. Once you recognize that you and the government have different interests, that’s a very important step forward in your thinking, because if you think you have a common interest with the government, well, then it means that if the government says you must do this and you must do that, and it’s a good idea to go to war here, well, the government is looking out for my interest. No, the government is not looking out for your interest. The government has its own interests, and they’re not the interests of the people…

We have checks and balances that balance one another out. If somebody does something bad, it will be checked by”—wow! What a neat system! Nothing can go wrong. Well, now, those structures are not democracy. Democracy is the people. Democracy is social movements. That’s what democracy is. And what history tells us is that when injustices have been remedied, they have not been remedied by the three branches of government. They’ve been remedied by great social movements, which then push and force and pressure and threaten the three branches of government until they finally do something. Really, that’s democracy.

And no, we mustn’t be pessimistic. We mustn’t be cynical. We mustn’t think we’re powerless. We’re not powerless. That’s where history comes in. If you look at history, you see people felt powerless and felt powerless and felt powerless, until they organized, and they got together, and they persisted, and they didn’t give up, and they built social movements. Whether it was the anti-slavery movement or the black movement of the 1960s or the antiwar movement in Vietnam or the women’s movement, they started small and apparently helpless; they became powerful enough to have an effect on the nation and on national policy. We’re not powerless. We just have to be persistent and patient…

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail