By Miryam Ehrlich Williamson

$50,000 worth of pills? Photo: higlu/ flickr

A Wisconsin Congressmember last month filed a bill that would require providers of health care products and services, including health insurance, to put a price tag on everything they offer. There’s a good reason why Rep. Steve Kagan (D-WI8) wants people to know what they – or their insurance companies – are paying for. Kagan, a physician, knows first hand what’s up.

That would be prices of common health care items. A CNN report by Elizabeth Cohen cites obscenities such as $23 for an alcohol swab, $1,000 for an ordinary toothbrush, and $140 for a single Tylenol pill. She found one woman who spent two hours in the ER getting rehydrated with a bag of intravenous saline solution ($41) and was charged for 41 bags – for a total of $4,182.

Cohen says insurance companies rarely question a hospital bill for less than $100,000. They get the money back anyway – by raising insurance premiums. So we may not pay the hospital bill but we – and everyone else – get the bump resulting from the egregious overcharges, and, in the case of the IV bag, what looks like outright fraud.

The main part Kagan’s bill, which is 404 words long (that’s words, not pages), says this:

SEC. 2. TRANSPARENCY IN ALL HEALTH CARE PRICING.

(a) In General- Any and all individuals or business entities, including hospitals, physicians, nurses, pharmacies, pharmaceutical manufacturers, dentists, and the insurance entities described in subsection (d), and any other health care related providers or issuers that offer or furnish health care related items, products, services, or procedures (as defined by the Secretary of Health and Human Services) for sale to the public shall publicly disclose, on a continuous basis, all prices for such items, products, services, or procedures in accordance with this section.

(b) Manner of Disclosure- The disclosure required under subsection (a) shall–

• (1) be made in an open and conspicuous manner;

• (2) be made available at the point of purchase, in print, and on the Internet; and

• (3) include all wholesale, retail, subsidized, discounted, or other such prices the individuals or business entities described in such subsection accept as payment in full for items, products, services, or procedures such individuals or business entities furnish to individual consumers.

(c) Penalties- The Secretary of Health and Human Services may investigate any and all individuals or business entities that fail to comply with the requirements of this section and may impose on such individuals or business entities civil fines, or other civil penalties, as determined appropriate by the Secretary.

The bill, titled H.R. 4700, Transparency in All Health Care Pricing Act of 2010, has 17 confirmed co-sponsors, and could use more. Do you feel like asking your Representative in Congress to sign on? I sure do. You can locate your congressmember here.

Posted on March 10th, 2010 by Miryam Ehrlich Williamson
Filed under: Congress, Healthcare Reform, House of Representatives | No Comments »

By Miryam Ehrlich Williamson

Photo: rebecka_o / flickr

I’ve been working with a neuroscientist on a proposal for a book about the societal causes of childhood obesity.  The proposal is written, which is why I can be back here, blogging, after a hiatus of several months. Elliott Blass, my writing partner, is in charge of sending the proposal to selected agents, editors, and publishers, offering it to them for publication.

So far we haven’t had a taker, but I keep reminding myself (and Elliott) that the literary classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig, (a treatise on excellence that is about neither Zen nor motorcycle maintenance) went to 122 publishers before it found its way into print. Since it appeared in 1974, the book has sold more than 4 million copies and remains in print, probably setting a record surpassed only by the Bible.

So on we plod, hoping not to surpass Pirsig’s record for the number of rejections.  But we wouldn’t mind passing him in the number of years in print.

What you have before you is a small excerpt from the sample chapter that accompanies the proposal. I’ll continue posting excerpts from time to time. If you have young children and haven’t done so already, I’m aiming to inspire you to look at the influence that advertising has over their food preferences. If you’re not directly engaged with little ones, perhaps you’ll feel called upon to express your thoughts about what you read here in a message to your legislators.

~~~

No matter where they appear, advertisements have a single purpose: to make people believe they will be happier if they buy the advertiser’s product. The sales pitch may be that you’ll have more fun, or more money, be healthier, smarter, or more attractive, but it all comes down to happiness. That’s what everyone wants, and what everyone is selling: buy this and be happy.

The pursuit of happiness is such a fundamental part of being human that it’s not surprising that even the most sophisticated of adults sometimes fall for the blandishments of advertising. But the suggestibility of adults is nothing, compared to that of children who lack the life experience needed to separate fact from fiction.

Before they turn two, most children are already watching television on their own, without the influence of an adult who might weigh in against the claims of commercials meant to sell foods and drinks that undercut healthful eating at the most critical time in a person’s life. Early childhood is when feeding preferences and the acceptable range of foods and flavors develop. It is also the period of maximum growth, of both body and brain.

Lack of exposure to a wide variety of foods, not just the sweet, fatty, salty, and high-calorie foods and beverages displayed on the TV screen, has a variety of unfortunate consequences. An overweight toddler will probably be an obese adolescent. And adolescent obesity is almost certain to lead to obesity as an adult, with the accompanying risk of major diseases. What’s more, it takes a wide range of foods to provide the micronutrients – vitamins, minerals, and amino acids – required for healthy growth. Potato chips, cookies, and soda pop won’t do. Nutritional deficiencies that develop in childhood are likely to persist throughout life.

Today, 80 percent of homes have two or more television sets. Among children under two years of age, 25 percent have a TV set in their own bedrooms, as do 60 percent of children aged eight or older. Television viewing has become an increasingly solitary activity. Parents have little control over what their children see, thus little opportunity to contradict information that they consider erroneous or contrary to the values they want to impart to their children. It’s not that these parents don’t care; solo TV watching has become the norm, in large part because many adults must hold more than one job to keep the family afloat. They simply don’t have the energy to do more than work, eat, and sleep.

Thus children become desensitized to the violence that characterizes even Saturday morning cartoons. But even worse, from the standpoint of their health and their futures, they accept as true everything television tells them.

What a rich opportunity this presents to advertisers. Even when broadcasters in the United States adhere to the advertising limits set by the Federal Communications Commission – 10.5 minutes per hour on weekdays and 12 minutes hourly on the weekend – the average child is exposed to three and a half hours of commercials per week, and between 20,000 and 40,000 television advertisements in a year. At least half of these promote sugary cereals, candy, snacks, and beverages, or invite the child to visit a fast food restaurant, where the meals are consist mainly of fat, salt, and a high-calorie dessert.

Remember: all of these advertisements are promising happiness in return for obeying the message they convey.

Studies have shown that before they reach the age of nine, even though they may recognize that the cartoon characters they see are not real, children do not distinguish between the program they are watching and the commercials that interrupt them. They are unlikely to understand that the commercials are there to make them urge their parents to buy the foods or take them to the restaurants advertised. Unlike older children and adults, they have no defenses against commercial claims.

The money invested in advertising to children is well spent. A MarketResearch.com report sets the value of the children’s food market, in 2009 dollars, at $32.5 billion. That number represents the influence children have on their parents’ food buying decisions. But it’s not only present-day purchases the marketers are after. Ample evidence exists that preferences established when a child is five or six will last a lifetime. As adults, they may not choose Cocoa Puffs themselves, but nostalgia, if nothing else, is apt to make them offer the chocolate cereal to their toddlers, even before the children are old enough to ask for it. Thus, the $12 billion or so that manufacturers invest this year in marketing to children will pay off for a generation or more to come.

© 2010 Miryam Ehrlich Williamson. Bloggers are welcome to link to this page, but no one is welcome to reproduce this document in any form, anywhere, without express permission from the author, which can be obtained by writing to TB40 ~ at ~ mwilliamson ~ dot ~ com

Posted on March 9th, 2010 by Miryam Ehrlich Williamson
Filed under: Childhood obesity, Nutrition | 2 Comments »

By Miryam Ehrlich Williamson

Support for a strong climate change bill, coupled with the argument that cutting America’s addiction to oil in half will help us increase our nation’s security and reduce the likelihood of a war against Iran, comes from a quarter that will surprise many: veterans of the war on Iraq.

VoteVets, a non-profit political organization that advocates for veterans, has started running a new video nationally, with localized versions in seven states, explaining how this would work. Passing clean energy and climate legislation, they say, would cut US oil use in half, depriving Iran of funds used to develop and spread a new kind of roadside bomb specifically designed to pierce soldiers’ body armor. The funds are also to suppress the nation’s own citizens, VoteVets notes.

The video doesn’t hold much back, so you may want to wait until the children are out of the room before you play it. It runs for one minute.

The ad’s on-screen narrator, Chris Miller, an Iraq veteran who earned a Purple Heart from an IED explosion, tells of these new devices, called EFPs (Explosively Formed Projectiles), some of which were created in Iran and introduced into the wars our troops are fighting.  Now, he says, knowledge of how to build these weapons has spread to those who target American troops, whether or not they have ties to Iran.

The video says that every time the price of a barrel of oil goes up a dollar on the world market, that means another $1.5 billion for Iran’s treasury. Miller concludes,

The connection between oil and the enemy couldn’t be clearer. We need to break that connection, by breaking our addiction.  And we can. By passing a clean energy climate plan. It’ll cut our dependence on foreign oil in half.

In a related Daily Kos article, Jon Soltz, an Iraq vet and president of VoteVets, writes,

Ask anyone who has served in Iraq, and they know about Iranian influence in Iraq.

He goes on to assert that

The World oil market depends greatly upon Iranian supply and the United States, as the top consumer of oil in the world, significantly drives up oil prices.

While the ad is graphic, it puts our oil addiction into very real world terms, showing the lethal effect it has on our men and women in uniform.  That is something that has been absent from the energy debate for too long, and needs to be made clear.

What Soltz says next hits me right where I live:

For many progressives, making a security argument in blunt and graphic terms has often been avoided, because they believe it only stokes the flames of war. Nothing could be further from the truth.  In fact, by avoiding that argument, progressives have not only ceded the security argument to people like Dick Cheney, but allowed them to gain the upper-hand in proposing a solution to our security issues:  More War.

In essence, progressives’ reticence to take the troops and security argument on in a visceral way has only helped those who advocate more war.

I hadn’t seen it that way. I doubt anyone of my political persuasion has. I’ll have to think about it. Perhaps we’re too traumatized by eight years of President “Mission Accomplished” and the War Mongers. Perhaps we’re not entirely sure where President “Bipartisanship Above All” stands.

VoteVets, says Soltz, has long said that Iran is a direct threat to American troops, and to national security as well. But they have never advocated war with Iran. To the contrary, the organization’s “Stop Iran War” campaign has advocated other means to keep Iran in check, in videos you can see here, here, and here. “We’re not about to start backing war with Iran now,” he adds.

The current ad is an extension of no-war effort. It backs a bill that, Soltz says, would would create millions of new American jobs while it combats global climate change, which is wreaking havoc on the planet and also has security implications. Citing the last Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which says that, if it continues, global climate change will have a severe impact on our forces, due to the need to respond to natural disasters and upheaval in the poorest nations of the world. Soltz concludes,

The American Veterans that VoteVets.org represents will never avoid a security argument.  We will never be afraid to call out which nations support killing our troops…. And, we will never let the neo-cons define the way to combat threats to America and her troops.

We’re taking this debate back, and we hope you’ll be right there with us.

Posted on March 8th, 2010 by Miryam Ehrlich Williamson
Filed under: Climate Change, Climate Change Legislation, Global Warming, National Security, Veterans | No Comments »

Posted by Miryam Ehrlich Williamson

Photo: CappiT / flickr

[Note from Miryam: I thought you should see this post on Health Affairs Blog by Chris Fleming. If you are a parent or grandparent and what you read here strikes a bell, you could make a huge difference in a child's life by stepping in with gentle guidance. Being seriously obese is difficult for a young child, awful for an adolescent, and bordering on (if not actually) a disability for an adult trying to earn a living.

Childhood is the place to start: an obese adolescent is almost certain to become an obese adult.]

Children in the United States snack almost three times a day on salty chips, candy, and other junk food, according to one of the first studies to look at long-term eating patterns in children. The increase in snacking—which now accounts for more than 27 percent of daily caloric intake in children—added 168 calories per day to kids’ caloric intake between 1977 and 2006.

The new research was published yesterday in the March 2010 edition of Health Affairs, which focuses on the child obesity epidemic and was supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “Our study shows that some children, including very young children, snack almost continuously throughout the day,” said Barry M. Popkin, a professor in the Department of Nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and lead author of the paper. The rise in childhood obesity, meanwhile, has put millions of children at risk of chronic conditions such as hypertension, heart disease, and diabetes.

Media Coverage. The work by Popkin and Carmen Piernas, also at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has attracted quite a bit of attention in the media. “The Web is abuzz” about the study, wrote Rebecca Ruiz at Forbes. Tara Parker-Pope wrote about the study in her New York Times blog “Well”; her story contains this quote from Popkin: “My underlying fear is that we’re moving away from being hungry and eating for satiation to just eating. Food is there, and we eat.”

In her blog at the Boston Globe, Lylah Alphonse noted the study’s indication that unhealthy eating habits begin early in life: “I thought the age group with the largest snacking increase would be teenagers — they eat pretty much everything that isn’t nailed down, right? Wrong. Young kids, age 2 to 6, were the ones who consumed the most calories via snacks, the study found.” The research by Popkin and Piernas was also discussed by CBS, USA Today, Reuters, the Los Angeles Times, and many other outlets from BusinessWeek to Nickelodean.

What The Study Found

Popkin and Piernas studied nationally representative surveys of food intake in more than 31,000 U.S. children from 1977 to 2006. The researchers zeroed in on snacking patterns and found large increases: For example, in 1977 to 1978, 74 percent of children ages 2 to 18 said they snacked on foods outside of regular meals. In 2003 to 2006, that number had jumped to a whopping 98 percent.

“Kids still eat three meals a day, but they’re also loading up on high-calorie junk food that contains little or no nutritional value during these snacks,” Popkin said.

The largest increase in the types of snacks kids were eating during the three-decade period: salty snacks like chips and crackers. Another surprising finding: Kids are eating more candy at snack time, an unhealthy habit that can lead not only to weight gain but also to cavities.

Children of all ages increased their caloric intake coming from snacks by an average of 168 calories per daybetween 1977 and 2006. As noted above, the largest increase was found in children ages 2 to 6, who consumed 182 more calories per day in snacks, a troubling finding that suggests an unhealthy eating pattern early in life.

Sugar-Laden Beverages, Sweets Are Replacing Milk, Fruits & Vegetables

In addition, the researchers found the type of snack food or beverage had changed during the last three decades. Children are less likely to drink milk, which contains calcium and nutrients needed for proper growth; and they’re more likely to reach for fruit juice, which is almost all sugar, or sweetened beverages such as sports drinks that contain a lot of calories.

At the same time, children today are less likely to grab a fresh apple or a vegetable at snack time. The trend toward more fruit juice and less fruit and vegetables is a dangerous one because fresh produce contains fiber and lots of valuable nutrients that children need to stay healthy, Popkin said.

He also noted that consumption of desserts declined from 1977 to 2006. However, children today still snack on cake, cookies, and other rich foods, which account for a significant source of calories.

“Kids are eating nearly three snacks a day, and that’s too much,” Popkin said. He recommends that parents try to limit snack time to once a day for children six and older and make sure they stock up on plenty of healthy snack food items like apple slices, carrots, and other fruits and vegetables. Parents should also curtail young children’s consumption of junk food and candy and talk to older children about the importance of a healthy diet, including snacks.

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This article is published under a Creative Commons license that allows it to be copied in full for non-commercial purposes, with no alterations in the content.

Posted on March 4th, 2010 by Miryam Ehrlich Williamson
Filed under: Nutrition | No Comments »

By Miryam Ehrlich Williamson

John Kerry, who until Teddy Kennedy’s death was my second favorite Massachusetts senator, has some important things to say about Republican obstructionism — important enough that I’m not going to make you go to the source, Talking Points Memo — although you can if you want to, by clicking here.

Not a Game

By John Kerry - March 1, 2010, 6:08PM

Too often, the way it’s played and the way it’s reported, Americans might think everything that happens in Washington is a game.

But look, this is anything but a game. The business before the Senate is literally life and death on many issues, and the parliamentary tricks to delay and obstruct the basic workings of our government have real-world consequences.

What am I talking about? Start with the latest example: one Senator’s effort to delay the votes on some critically-needed legislation for Americans out of work and hurting in our economy.

A lot of people today are clicking on this news story about Senator Bunning.

Political theater? Much more than that. Here’s what’s at stake: 2000 federal highway workers were furloughed this morning, losing the pay that their families depend on and halting work on critical national infrastructure. Nearly 1.2 million could lose their unemployment benefits without an extension of that program, pulling away a critical financial lifeline.

This has to end.

In the last Congress, the Republican minority more than doubled the previous record for filibusters, and they are on a pace to challenge or surpass that “accomplishment” this Congress as well. And filibusters are only the most obvious part of it. (TPM put together a great chart on filibusters which you can see here.)

On issue after issue, votes large and small, the strategy from the GOP at the highest levels has been the same: exploiting every Senate rule, playing every trick to try to slow things down. They put holds on bills that later pass by 90 votes, filibuster things they later vote for, block things they previously proposed. They used the filibuster to shoot down a debt commission that they themselves called on President Obama to implement! They block completely uncontroversial nominees and cause days of delays on the most critical of legislation. They even stalled on money for our troops last year, just to try to delay debate on health care reform.

It doesn’t have to be this way. There are good Senators on both sides of the aisle. Last week, five Republican Senators (including Scott Brown of Massachusetts, and I don’t care about party label, I call it the way I see it - Scott cast the right vote for Massachusetts there) joined with Democrats to break a GOP filibuster to pass a jobs bill helping small businesses hire in this tough economy. Senator Lindsay Graham and I are working hard together to develop a bill on energy and global climate change.

But as long as the GOP leadership continues with the scorched-earth campaign, it will be tough to get done the things we know we need to do.

We need this to end. Debate big differences. Disagree. Use the filibuster when big matters of principle hang in the balance - and sometimes they do. But at the end of the day, Washington has to function - people are counting on it. When it comes to unemployment insurance for workers who have been laid-off through no fault of their own, stop playing games immediately, allow a vote, and then get to work trying to solve some problems, not playing tricks with the Senate rules. The framers invested the minority with rights to protect the Senate - not to destroy it.

Yes, I’m a registered Democrat, but my years as a print and electronic journalist have forced me to try to see the other side, even if I find it repugnant.  I remember interviewing a Massachusetts delegate at the 1980 Republican National Convention about his opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment.  I asked questions, wrote his answers in my notebook, and didn’t kick him where it hurts most.  I reported on the interview for the Salem (Mass.) News, carefully neither revealing my bias nor endorsing his position. I just wrote what he said.

I’m telling you this now because, at this point in this Senate session, I could no more interview a Jim Bunning or a Mitch McConnell and hear what they have to say than I could fly to the next county on my own power.

So I’m asking you: if you understand what motivates such people to obstruct everything the Senate is called upon to do, will you please explain it to me?  I won’t argue with you.  Maybe I’ll learn something that makes sense of what’s going on.

If you can, tell me here in the comments box, or write to me at TB40@mwilliamson.com.  If I get enough information for a blog, I’ll post it here.  I won’t name you, unless you tell me to, but Ill assume if you write to me that you’re giving me permission to use your words.

I mean this.  It hurts my ego to be so completely unable to understand another’s point of view. I really thought I was a better journalist than that.  Help me out here, if you can.

Posted on March 3rd, 2010 by Miryam Ehrlich Williamson
Filed under: US Senate | 2 Comments »

By Miryam Ehrlich Williamson

Bill Halter, Arkansas Lt. Governor

If Arkansas Community Theater (which I just made up) ever puts on The Wizard of Oz, I nominate Blanche Lincoln as the Wicked Witch of the West. If they time it right, I’ll bet she’ll accept the call – and totally miss how appropriate she is for the part. She should have plenty of time to rehearse next year.

Blanche Lincoln, the future former Senator from Arkansas, recipient of $2 million in insurance industry campaign contributions, is an honest politician: When she gets bought, she stays bought. How else to explain her threatened block of any vote on the senate’s health care reform bill if it provided for a public option insurance plan to compete with her industry benefactors? After all, 56% of her constituents wanted to see it in the bill.

So unpopular has she become in her home state that Democratic party officials have been asking her to step aside and let someone more electable run for the seat. So far, Lincoln has said no. Wouldn’t you, if you had that kind of money backing up your campaign? How could you disappoint such a generous bunch of donors?

What does it matter that 450,000 Arkansans are without health insurance? Their campaign contributions don’t add up to a hill of beans.

So now comes Bill Halter, Arkansas’ lieutenant governor, to challenge Lincoln in the fall primary. Halter, as it happens, is the one who secured the site for the free health care clinic in Little Rock last November, inspired by a producer on Keith Olbermann’s Countdown on MSNBC, funded by small individual contributions, and staffed with volunteers and professionals from the National Association of Free Clinics.

On Monday, March 1, at a 7 a.m. (CT) news conference, Halter announced his candidacy saying,

Washington is broken. Bailing out Wall Street, with no strings attached while leaving middle-class Arkansas taxpayers with the bill. Protecting insurance company profits instead of patients and lowering health costs. Gridlock, bickering and partisan games while unemployment is at a 25-year high. Enough is enough.

Last autumn, Democracy for America promised certain senators on the left side of the aisle (I can’t call them Democratic senators – they may be Democrats, but democratic they’re not) that they wouldn’t run for reelection unchallenged. It’s the promise Barack Obama, by way of his chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel (the pit bull turned poodle) should have been making. Now that Lincoln’s got her match, Obama should be working on a challenger for Ben Nelson, whose term is also up. Obama has time to go after Joe Lieberman (class of 2013), the third of the Senate’s crypto-Republicans, all more interested in their own interests than in those of their healthcare-vulnerable constituents.

As you might imagine, Democracy for America hopes to put progressive money where our collective mouth is. Here’s the pitch (2:15):

And here’s the link to use if you like the idea of showing Lincoln she’s toast.

SEND A MESSAGE WASHINGTON UNDERSTANDS – SUPPORT BILL HALTER NOW

In an ideal world, Bill Halter would be spared the expense of a primary while the Republicans, with three candidates already in the ring, beat themselves to a pulp, the one left standing having to go up against a rested and relaxed Halter. Wouldn’t that be a treat to see?

Posted on March 2nd, 2010 by Miryam Ehrlich Williamson
Filed under: 2010 Senate races, Election 2010, Healthcare Reform | No Comments »

By Miryam Ehrlich Williamson

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

—Albert Einstein

Al Gore, in an op-ed piece in the February 28 New York Times, gives us a briefing on climate change. If this doesn’t brace you for the phone calls I’ll ask you to make later in this essay, I guess nothing will. And that would be sad.

Here is what scientists have found is happening to our climate: man-made global-warming pollution traps heat from the sun and increases atmospheric temperatures. These pollutants — especially carbon dioxide — have been increasing rapidly with the growth in the burning of coal, oil, natural gas and forests, and temperatures have increased over the same period. Almost all of the ice-covered regions of the Earth are melting — and seas are rising. Hurricanes are predicted to grow stronger and more destructive, though their number is expected to decrease. Droughts are getting longer and deeper in many mid-continent regions, even as the severity of flooding increases. The seasonal predictability of rainfall and temperatures is being disrupted, posing serious threats to agriculture. The rate of species extinction is accelerating to dangerous levels.

The United States, long the leader in dumping climate-changing carbon dioxide into the air, must now become the leader in reining in emissions – before currently inhabited land masses become uninhabitable, before droughts in some places and floods in others wipe out agriculture in both and spread hunger and starvation beyond our ability to imagine. Before our grandchildren grow old and aware enough to demand to know what in hell we were thinking in the early years of the 21^st century when we were warned, and warned again, that this was what would happen.

Here’s a simple statistic from the US Department of Energy that shows why the US must lead in the effort. It’s true that China leads the US in the overall number of metric tons of carbon dioxide it emits (6,534 million vs 5,833 million in 2008). But when you look at emissions per person – a far more accurate way of judging who the wasteful ones are – you find that Americans accounted for 19.2 metric tons of CO2 in 2008, while Chinese people accounted for 4.9 metric tons. The world average in that year was 4.5 metric tons. So calculated on a per-person basis, it’s easy to see why we must set the example for others to follow.

Last summer the House of Representatives passed a clean energy and climate change bill. If the Senate had enacted one as well, even if there wasn’t time before December and the Copenhagen climate conference to reconcile the two into one that President Obama would sign, the outcome of the conference would not have been as anemic and disappointing as it was. Now we’ve got to catch up.

This week will see a concentrated 72-hour effort on the part of dozens of organizations, including labor, business, religious, veterans, and environmental groups to flood Senate offices with the message that we want our senators to enact a comprehensive clean energy and climate change bill that will not only make us right with the world, but will also inspire other nations to do the same.

Call your senators on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. Start early, and keep calling until you get through. Tell the person you talk with that you want the bill to include

• a strong investment in clean energy to create American manufacturing and construction jobs and
• a cap on carbon pollution that limits the amount of carbon companies can emit, that gives them incentives to do so, and that holds violators accountable.

Repower America is providing a toll-free phone [1-877-9-REPOWER (1-877-9-737-6937)] that will help you connect to your senators’ offices. All you need to know is what state you live in. You’ll receive suggested talking points and hints on being effective when you call.

If you click here now, Repower America will send you an e-mail reminder.

As the organization points out:

Successful legislation isn’t just important here in the U.S. As we saw at the Copenhagen Climate Conference, countless nations are relying on our action to catalyze global efforts to promote clean energy and reduce carbon pollution.

In other words, the whole world is watching.

Posted on March 1st, 2010 by Miryam Ehrlich Williamson
Filed under: Climate Change, Climate Change Legislation, Global Warming, The Environment, US Senate | 2 Comments »

By Miryam Ehrlich Williamson

Bipartisanship cannot mean simply that Democrats give up everything that they believe in, find the handful of things that Republicans have been advocating for and we do those things, and then we have bipartisanship.

—Barack Obama, at a news conference Feb. 9, 2010

On Thursday, February 25, the President is hosting a legislative summit on health care reform. The summit will begin at 10 a.m. Eastern Time. You can see it streamed live from beginning to end on the White House web site. And MSNBC will broadcast a two-hour summary of the session Thursday night at 9 p.m. Eastern. Other outlets may carry it live or in summary. If you don’t want to miss it, you won’t have to.

We’re told that the 21 senators and representatives invited to the summit will sit around a big, square table that will eliminate any semblance of hierarchy. How sweet. Am I the only one who thinks it’s time for the President to sit at the head of the table and act like the leader we asked him to be?

The people who put him in office – you, me, and millions like us, who got on the phones, knocked on doors in blasting heat and numbing cold, sent $5, $10, or $20 every time we could – have waited long enough. We’ve hoped our hopes, made our excuses, told ourselves and each other he is really smarter and braver than he has seemed to be since he moved his family into the White House.

If it turns out that he duped us, that he’s more interested in being liked than being true to the values he claimed to have, the values that drew us to him – if that happens then Barack Obama will go down in history as having driven a stake through the heart of democracy.

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” he said during the campaign. His opponents tagged that statement as symptomatic of a messiah complex. If Obama had cited his source, part of the sayings of a Hopi elder, he could at once have shown his critics for what they were – obviously ignorant and apparently malicious. And he could have pointed out that what the saying means is no one is going to save us but ourselves.

“Yes we can,” he had us chanting. “No you can’t,” Congressional Republicans are shouting back, ever louder and more persuasively.

If  Obama lets us down now, if he continues to pander to those in the Republican party who want nothing more than to see him broken, emasculated, reduced to the role of a place holder for whatever nonentity the corporations that will fund the Republican Party select to defeat him in 2012, we will find ourselves living in a totalitarian state in which fear of terrorism is the dominant emotion. This will provide the excuse for repression and the triumph of the corporate state, the goal of the moneyed class that sees us as either convenient or expendable, depending on how compliant we are with their requirements.

I’ve lived enough history to know what I’m talking about. I know what mass heartbreak and the loss of hope do to human societies. It could happen here.

It’s crunch time for Obama and the legislative Democrats. Lose on health-care reform and we’ll have lost more than we as a nation can afford.

I see the next few weeks as Barack Obama’s last chance to show us that he’s made of more than ambition and a great vocabulary. Victory, in the form of a robust health-care reform law, is within reach. All the President and the Democrats in Congress have to do is stop being scared of their shadows and act like the majority party.

The key to success is embodied in a single word: reconciliation. In this context, it’s a technical term having to do with a congressional procedure. It has nothing to do with getting Democrats and Republicans to sit around a campfire singing “Kumbaya.” That kind of reconciliation is not going to happen any time soon, but there might be some accommodation if the President reminded Republican politicians that a majority of Americans chose his expressed values, and not theirs – if he stopped acting like a little boy allowed to sit at the table with the grownups, but not to take part in the conversation.

In Congressional terms, reconciliation has to do with resolving differences between legislation adopted by the House of Representatives on the one hand, and the Senate on the other. It refers specifically to matters pertaining to the government’s fiscal status. There can be no debate about whether the future of health care in America will have an impact on the nation’s budget and the national debt.

Forget for a moment the 50,000-some people who die each year because they lack adequate insurance to pay for medical care. Forget the people, parents mostly, who cling to dead-end jobs they hate because they don’t dare try for something better; they might lose their family’s (at least partially) employer-paid health insurance. Or, if you prefer, just think of those people as indentured servants to those with the power to let them go and their children go doctorless if they step out of line. Forget the people who’ve lost their health insurance because they’ve been laid off. Forget the people who won’t ever find another job, not because they’re incompetent or lazy, not even because of the economy, but because they have a condition such as diabetes that will make them uninsurable and, therefore, unattractive as an employee because even group insurance rates go up if people need medical care.

Instead, remember that out-of-control health care costs, regardless of who pays them, bid fair to cripple our economy forever. No other industrialized country abandons its people to the avarice of the health care industry; none makes employers bear the burden of covering people’s medical bills. Our insane insistence on employer-based health insurance puts this country at a competitive disadvantage in the global marketplace.

Yes, health care is definitely tied to our national finances, so reconciliation is a valid option in passing health-care reform legislation.

Reconciliation allows bills pertaining to taxation and spending to be passed by a majority of legislators – that would be the Democrats – without the obstruction of those who will not otherwise allow urgent legislation to come to a vote in the Senate.

Without invoking reconciliation, 41 politicians, less than half of the 100-member Senate, can overwhelm the will of the majority. That’s tyranny. With reconciliation, majority rule wins. That’s democracy.

In his blog essay on reconciliation, Bob Reich refutes the five reasons he’s heard from his contacts on Capitol Hill arguing against reconciliation.

1.    Reconciliation is too extreme a measure to use on a piece of legislation so important. I hear this a lot but it’s bunk.

George W. Bush used reconciliation to pass tax cuts for the rich twice, and to fund Medicare Advantage, which he hoped would lead to privatization of Medicare.  In all, his administration used reconciliation five times, none of which enhanced your financial interests by as much as a nickel.

Reich continues:

2.   Use of reconciliation would infuriate Senate Republicans. It may. So what? They haven’t given Obama a single vote on any major issue since he first began wining and dining them at the White House. In fact, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and company have been doing everything in their power to undermine the President. [….] Obama could credibly argue that Senate Republicans have altered the rules of the Senate by demanding 60 votes on almost every initiative – a far more extensive use of the filibuster than at any time in modern history – so it’s only right that he, the President, now resort to reconciliation.

Sure, the Republicans will express outrage and call the use of reconciliation high-handed, or worse. Some tall man with the posture of an athlete should then stand up and ask where was their outrage when the shoe was on the other foot.

Reich’s last three reasons – the ones he’s heard on the hill – are here for you to read. He demolishes every one and says if the Democrats show themselves fearful of taking this step,

Obama ought to be banging Senate heads together. A president has huge bargaining leverage because he presides over an almost infinite list of future deals. Lyndon Johnson wasn’t afraid to use his power to the fullest to get Medicare enacted.

Last Monday the President released his proposals, so that Republicans can come to the summit prepared to counter them with the GOP’s alternatives. They are in the report linked here.

You’ll notice there’s no mention of a publicly-managed insurance option. That doesn’t mean it’s not possible under reconciliation – it is, either as the public option the majority of Democrats, independents, and even Republican voters favor, or as a provision allowing people younger than 65 to pay an insurance premium to buy into Medicare.

Obama originally campaigned on a platform that included health insurance for everyone. No surprise, the no-sayers shot back branding Obama as a socialist. Instead of asking what’s wrong with socialism, Obama accepted without question the capitalist view of social economics – the right of the privileged few to control resources and exploit the non-privileged.

Here, Mr. Obama, is as impartial a description of the socialist viewpoint as you can get:

Most socialists share the view that capitalism unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital and derives its wealth through exploitation, creates an unequal society, does not provide equal opportunities for everyone to maximise their potential, and does not utilise technology and resources to their maximum potential nor in the interests of the public.

Tell us, sir:  Does that meet your definition of evil? Do you really prefer to preside over a society that lets people die because they can’t afford to get medical help? Are you proud of America’s rank in the world in terms of health care quality? (37th) Infant mortality? (45th) Life expectancy at birth? (49th)

Where is the candidate Obama who ran on the premise that America is a place where people look after one another because that is the right thing to do? Where are the ethics? Where is the courage? Where is the man we voted for, the one we chose as our leader?

I’m not one of those press people who promote disappointment and disrespect because the President hasn’t accomplished, in his first year, everything he promised. But making people with preexisting medical conditions go without insurance for another four years, as Obama’s proposal does, strikes me as an outright lack of caring.

Mr. President, you can count me as part of the majority of Americans who want more, who want better, and who want it now. We worked hard to form this majority. We will continue to insist that you do not squander it. And if you do, when you need us next, you will look for us in vain, for we will have moved on.

Posted on February 24th, 2010 by Miryam Ehrlich Williamson
Filed under: Congress, Health Care, Healthcare Reform, House of Representatives, Obama, Public Option, US Senate | 2 Comments »

By Miryam Ehrlich Williamson

Fickr / Bruce Tuten

While school is in session — and, in some places, through summer vacation, too — about one-third of the energy a child takes in during the day should come from the lunch he or she eats at school. And the food that provides that energy shouldn’t be all starch and fat.  Children need protein to grow; they need calcium and other minerals; they need vitamins. They need healthy, nutritious food.

Burgeoning rates of childhood obesity and Type 2 diabetes make it essential that every community examines the lunches its schools serve and work out ways to improve the quality of those meals.

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) , a national alliance of family farm, food, conservation, rural and urban organizations,  asserts — and RuralVotes agrees — that one of the most effective ways to get healthful food into our kids is to buy locally.  The benefits compound: children get fresh, attractive fruits and vegetables before cross-country (or farther) shipping causes them to lose color, flavor, and nourishment.

Accordingly, NSAC is urging Congress to fund the Farm to School grant program. It was authorized in the 2004 Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act, but the US Department of Agriculture has never requested any funding for the it. Now comes Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), who is about to introduce legislation to fund the Farm to School program with $50 million — $10 million a year for five years — as part of the Child Nutrition Act reauthorization scheduled for action later this year. NSAC explains:

The Farm to School Program would provide one-time competitive grants to schools or non-profit organizations to develop purchasing relationships with local farmers, plan seasonal menus, start school gardens, develop hands-on nutrition education, and provide solutions to infrastructure problems including storage, transportation, food preparation, and technical training.

Additional support for Holt’s bill is needed; it’s not apt to succeed with only one sponsor. NSAC is asking you to phone your representative in Congress and ask her or him to sign on as a co-sponsor — and, I will add, to work for its inclusion in the Child Nurition Act reauthorization to be voted on later in 2010.

Calling is easy. NSAC tells you how.

You can get your Representative’s name and direct number by going to Congress.org and typing in your zip code.  You can also call the Capitol Switchboard, provide your Representative’s name and be directly connected to their office: (202) 225-3121.   Once connected to your Representative’s office ask to speak to the aide that works on child nutrition.

The message is simple.  “I am a constituent of ________ and I am calling to ask him/her to co-sponsor Representative Rush Holt’s “Farm to School Improvements Act” that will provide $50 million in mandatory funding for the Farm to School program as part of the Child Nutrition reauthorization.”

If you’d rather write, go to the House of Representatives’ directory of Congressmembers, find your state’s listing and click on your representative’s name, then choose Contact from the menu across the top of the front page and send an electronic message.  Use your own words, or something like the message in the paragraph above this one.

It won’t take long, and you’ll be helping children all across America to have healthier and more rewarding lives now, and in the future. Remember that the nutritional habits formed in childhood influence choices later in life.  It’s easier to establish good habits now than to change them later.

Posted on February 24th, 2010 by Miryam Ehrlich Williamson
Filed under: Buy Local, Farm to School, Food, Nutrition, Rural Urban Partnerships, USDA | 1 Comment »

By Miryam Ehrlich Williamson

30 strands of fiber optic cable / flickr:w.fryer

Not only could we start our own tiny town’s broadband system, we did it. In August, 2008, this town of 750 people voted to borrow $40,000 to start building a wireless broadband system that we hope will eventually serve the entire town.  As it has turned out, we didn’t need to borrow — town financial officers found the funds without going to the bank for them.  We got the necessary permits from the owners of two towers here, bought the equipment, got a couple of people trained to install the equipment, and turned on our first customers in March, 2009.

Eleven months later, we have about 75 households hooked up. That’s close to 1/3 of all the homes in town, and installations are continuing. It’s probably close to half of all the homes that have Internet connections.  I know, because I’ve been there, that cable TV companies starting up would give their eye teeth to have such statistics.  And that may cause us problems down the road.

The wireless service we offer is at least 10 times as fast as dialup, and three times as fast as Internet-by-satellite.  Those of us who are lucky enough to live where we can catch the signal are happy with what we’ve got.  But occasionally stuff happens to interfere with the service — heavy snow on the branches that our radio/receivers have to peek through to catch the signal, heavy leaves on trees in the summer, especially when it rains.

So, while we’re pleased, we’re even more excited about the prospect of forming a regional compact to establish a fiber optic network.  About 30 towns in Western Massachusetts are working toward this goal. We’ve been inspired by members of the East Central Vermont Community Fiber Network . Representatives of the group met recently with folks from our 30 towns and told how they
are developing their system. Owned by 22 municipalities in eastern and central Vermont, it will operate without any local tax money.

EC Vermont had its private financing in place in September, 20o8, when the floor fell out of the stock market and investors pulled in their ears.  Since then the organization has had a two-pronged approach: federal broadband stimulus funding and a remake of the investor panel — or perhaps there will be a combination of both.  They’re mapping their region now, and expect soon to have construction underway.

Fiber is by far the fastest and most reliable of all Internet technologies. A fiber connection to the home can also carry cable TV and phone service, all at the same time, without slowing down any of the
services. A single strand of fiber could carry all the telephone calls going on all over the world at any given moment.

Interested Western Mass. towns will have an article on the 2010 Annual Town Meeting warrant asking their selectboards to join the Western Mass fiber initiative.

Before town meetings are asked to decide, a public information meeting will be held in each town, presented by local broadband committee members and members of the interlocal organization’s steering committee. It’s not necessary that all 30 towns decide to join at first. We’re sure we’ll have the critical mass we need to get going (about 60,000 population), even if we lack unanimity among all the towns.

Once the towns form their consortium, we’ll want to go to the state legislature to get a law formalizing our relationship.  That’s where we can anticipate trouble.  We plan a system that will leave room for cable companies, telephone companies, and even other Internet connection suppliers to share our fiber optic system. But the “incumbents,” the existing cable and phone companies — who have demonstrated not an iota of serving our remote areas — will be sure to object, and we’ll have to counter their lobbying efforts at the State House.

City legislators won’t get it, or they won’t care, or they’ll care more about the lobbyists than about us out here in the boonies. Our rural legislators, some of whom are still on dialup at home themselves, will be with us. I haven’t done a count of prospective votes yet; it’s ‘way early. I can’t conceive of our legislative petition being voted down, but I’m a born optimist, so what do I know? I know this: 30 towns in Massachusetts are fewer than 10% of all the municipalities in the state.  There are 351 cities and towns here, and no unincorporated places.  And 60,000 people in a state of 6.5 million?  As my mother used to say, “You could stick them in your eye and have room left to see with.”

But the stakes here are so high it’s impossible to imagine failure. We’re looking at jobs, competitiveness in the Internet marketplace, distance learning, access to advanced medical care — the whole ball of wax that has transformed life in more populous places. We must prevail; we simply must.

Posted on February 23rd, 2010 by Miryam Ehrlich Williamson
Filed under: Broadband, Internet, Telecommunications, Uncategorized | 4 Comments »