canarypapers

Pssst….. Want to move fast? Skip all the info below and just go directly to TPM, where you can read the text of the two petitions, then follow TPM’s provided links to sign them.  

These aren’t the same old, same old petitions we’ve been signing for the past 8 years

If, like the majority of the people in this country, you’ve felt voiceless, invisible and inconsequential (as opposed to the birthers, deathers, the conservatives, Republicans, Blue Dogs, and the insurance, pharmaceutical and, yes, oil industries) throughout this health care reform process, now’s your chance to fix that. 

Two groups are circulating petitions to demand that Obama endorse a public option. Only, unlike most petitions, these two have gained media traction.** One of these (the PCCC petition) has tens of thousands of signatures including – as of yesterday – the signatures of 200 former Obama staffers (such as this one), 23,000 donors and 13,000 volunteers who fought to put Obama into the White House. The more people who sign these two petitions, the more attention they’ll get from both the media and Capitol Hill. Here’s an excerpt from Thursday’s Washington Post piece titled Two Liberal Groups Target Obama Over His Position on Public Option with links to the two petitions:

Two major liberal groups launched petition drives Thursday demanding that President Obama endorse a public-insurance option as part of his drive for health-care reform.

The efforts by MoveOn.org and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee illustrate the widening fissures within the left over how to overhaul the nation’s health-care system. Obama will address the issue in a prime-time speech to Congress next Wednesday.

Many Democrats and liberal groups have been alarmed by what they describe as signs of possible retreat by the White House on especially important issues, and they argue that jettisoning a public plan would amount to a betrayal of those who supported Obama’s historic candidacy last year.

Please sign these two petitions and pass them on. This is our very last chance (the only chance for some) to have our numbers counted before Obama’s prime-time speech before both houses of Congress this Wednesday (Sept. 9). Both petitions provide space where you may include an optional message to Obama (or not) to tell him exactly how you feel. Message or no message, the important thing is to get your name onto these petitions, right here, right now.  

Again, here are the links: 

MoveOn.org http://pol.moveon.org/hcobama/

Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/5649/t/4951/content.jsp?content_KEY=2793&tag=pod_auto-email1

Why are these petitions important?

Polls indicate that 77% of the American people think the choice of a public option in any health care reform is either extremely or quite important. Yet, (according to the Olbermann/Daily Kos), progressives are allegedly going to be told next week to be ”good soldiers” and be prepared to vote for a health care reform bill without a public option, and to be prepared to accept, in its place, the ”trigger.” This is just more hogwash on top of hogwash!

How does one become a ”good soldier” on Capitol Hill while voting against the stated wishes of the constituents and the vast majority of the American people? Does being a good soldier mean that you protect — no matter what — the corporate benefactors to your campaign coffers?

 It’s time we tell Obama it’s his turn to be a good soldier. It’s time he start delivering on his campaign promises – the same promises the American people believed when they voted for him and gave him the mandate to be a good solider and fight for change.

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** Here are a few other media outlets/news stories that have mentioned these petitions: Washington Post,  AP, AP, Politico, Roll Call, Politics Daily, AlterNet  

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by Mantis Katz for the canarypapers

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p.s. Speaking of politics and health care reform…. I, personally, support single-payer, HR 676 Medicare-for-all — and NOT this ambiguous behemoth of a bill coming before us this September, which has only robbed the American people of true health care reform, while giving billions in concessions, subsidies and other candy to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. But, having no choice or voice in the discussion, I’ve been forced to lower my standards and hopes to the point that I am willing to go along with this ”public option” — even as it’s a reprehensible and tragically unreasonable facsimile to the real thing: universal health care. Fact is, for years the majority of Americans have been in favor of single-payer, Medicare-for-all. That all changed this June, when the insurance industry began, in earnest, their $1.5 million per day fearmongering campaign of terror and lies. 

I agree with this petitioner who wrote:  

Since the get-go, real reform and the health of American citizens, we who voted for you and other Democrats on the Hill, have taken a back seat to the interests of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. This is nothing new. It’s just more of the same. The public option was a pathetic substitute for true health care reform, via a H.R. 676 single-payer health care plan.

Count me among those who were watching as single-payer advocates were barred from a seat at the big health care debate table. Count me among those who watched these advocates given police escorts out of the room. Count me among the Americans who KNOW who truly benefits from the concessions and compromises that have been gifted in the current bill. (hint: it’s not us). Count me among the many Americans who were already being “good soldiers” by accepting this inferior public option, rather than a single-payer plan. Count me among the many Americans who will vote “None of the Above” come 2010 and 2012 and will contribute zero money to the DNC and to Democratic candidates who did not vote with their consciences and their constituents in health care reform. Count me among the many Americans who are asking YOU to be a good soldier and fight for us, just like you promised us throughout your campaign. Count me ready to fight, should a public option — specifically one which covers more than our politicians’ tails – not be included in this bill.

As it stands, the focus of this health care bill is NOT to provide affordable health care, except to the extent it plans to subsidize the money-bloated, blood-thirsty insurance and pharmaceutical industries. That’s right. Since we can’t afford their outrageous premiums and their inflated drug prices, the government will help us pay for them. You can be sure that the insurance industy vampires are licking their chops at the prospect of getting 45,000 new customers on the taxpayer’s dime. But at least Obama can’t be accused of being a socialist, because, in this cash-for-clunkers program — even as the American people are being loaded onto the pile like so much junkyard scrap – at least it’s for a good cause: good ol’ American capitalism.

For a comparison of single-payer vs. the public option vs. the status quo, read my post here.  For a glimpse of how the single-payer, Medicare-for-all advocates were treated when they protested being denied a seat at Obama’s “big table” at the start of the health care reform discussions began this past May, watch this:

VIDEO ABOVE (00:00 thru 08:12): “We need more police,” chuckled Sen. Max Baucus to a full round of guffawing approval, as physicians and advocates for single-payer health care arrested and escorted out of the health care reform hearing, one-by-one, as each protester stood to demand a seat at the health care reform table. For his part, Sen. Grassley muttered, “Isn’t there someplace they can watch it on television?” Despite all of Obama’s campaign promises, and despite his promise that “everything” would be on the table — with no voice excluded — and despite that, at the time of this hearing in May 2009, the majority of Americans favored such a plan, single-payer advocates were denied a seat at the table.