Billionaires for Wealthcare — Guerilla Theater

[Side note: Frances Perkins appears as a character in the original musical "Annie," on which this piece is based. I think she would have appreciated this effort to humorously expose the opponents of reform.]

‘Emphatically and truly, a government of the people’

There was a fine opinion piece in the LA Times yesterday noting the anniversary of the signing of the Social Security Act. The title was “President Barack Obama could learn from Franklin D. Roosevelt” and the author is Nancy J. Altman, who wrote the recently published history, The Battle for Social Security: From FDR’s Vision to Bush’s Gamble.

Altman compares the current health care debate with the fight over the Social Security Act and finds many similarities:

Then as now, opponents played the socialism card. In hearings before the Senate Finance Committee, a senator from Oklahoma accusingly asked President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins, “Isn’t this socialism?” When Perkins emphatically answered no, the senator leaned forward and, with a conspiratorial whisper, pressed, “Isn’t this a teeny-weeny bit of socialism?”

Altman says that the difference is that FDR controlled the debate:

In a series of fireside chats and other broadcasts, the president anticipated arguments and responded before public opposition got out of control. “A few timid people, who fear progress, will try to give you new and strange names for what we are doing,” he said in one talk. “Sometimes they will call it ‘fascism,’ sometimes ‘communism,’ sometimes ‘regimentation,’ sometimes ’socialism.’ But, in so doing, they are trying to make very complex and theoretical something that is really very simple and very practical. … I believe that what we are doing today is a necessary fulfillment of what Americans have always been doing — a fulfillment of old and tested American ideals. … We remain, as John Marshall said a century ago, ‘emphatically and truly, a government of the people.’ “

You can read the entire piece here: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-altman14-2009aug14,0,6660527.story.

Let’s put a real fear of socialism in them

National, or federal, health insurance is not a revolutionary new idea.

In 1883, Chancellor of Germany Otto von Bismarck — a staunch conservative, he was known as the “Iron Chancellor” — instituted a national health insurance plan for workers. Why? Because he was trying to woo them away from the Social Democratic Party. In other words, 126 years ago people were demanding national health insurance and Bismarck found it necessary to deliver.

And fifty years later  in the U.S., it was considered a “practical possibility.”

In 1933, before accepting the job of secretary of Labor that Franklin Roosevelt had offered her, Frances Perkins read FDR a list of nine social programs, “practical possibilities,” for which she asked his support. After 12 years as secretary of Labor, she wrote him a resignation letter. In the letter, dated December 1, 1944, she enumerated all they had done together. This is the last part of the letter:

With one major exception all the items we discussed as “among the practical possibilities” before you took office as President have been accomplished or begun. That exception is a social security item providing for some form of benefit to persons where loss of income is due to sickness and provision for appropriate medical care for the same. [emphasis added]

I hope that this will be upon your agenda for the near future.

Faithfully yours,
Frances Perkins

The president’s response was a short and witty letter saying that her resignation was “refused and rejected.” Unfortunately, FDR died five months later.

The need for a national health insurance program has been recognized for more than 100 years. But you’d never know it today. Perhaps the usually non-political writer Jesse Kornbluth, who has an idiosyncratic blog called Head Butler, said it best (talking about the Obama administration’s effort):

This is leadership? How about staking out a position (say: single-payer) and selling the hell out of it? How about calling out the Congressmen (Democrats included) who are owned and operated by insurance agencies and telling us exactly how much they’ve been paid to vote against their community’s interest?

and

This issue is not beyond explanation. And there are actual facts involved. But all the lazy sots on TV care about is where the ball sits on the field and who’s got momentum. And can we have a brief sneer at the demagogues in the media and the Congress who know better but take pleasure in scaring people with talk of “death panels” and “socialism”?

It’s great to read a “rant” by someone whose regular topic is not politics. The fact is, a majority (72%) of the American public agrees with Jesse and would like to have single-payer option (see my July 16th post for details).

Maybe it would be better if those demagogues Jesse refers to were truly worried about socialism — worried that Americans would turn to a more radical form of socialism if we didn’t get single-payer health insurance. Hey, the “Iron Chancellor” was worried; why aren’t they?

Single-payer proponents ask for a seat at the table

The Senate Finance Committee, under Chair Max Baucus (D-Montana), has been holding hearings on health care reform, one of which was held last Tuesday. Proponents of a single-payer health care system–modeled on Medicare and, like Frances Perkins’s most significant accomplishment, Social Security, available to all–were upset that they did not have a representative at the table at any of these hearings. Jerry Call, who attended our conference on May 2nd and spoke up there for the single-payer system, was one of the protestors at the May 12th hearing. Here’s a YouTube video of that event (Jerry appears after about 7 minutes).

Here’s what Jerry said at our conference, talking about the discussion that took place in the Health Care for All workshop:

We’re basically faced with two choices. In probably June or July or maybe as late as August, the Administration will come out with a mandatory for-profit insurance program similar to what Massachusetts has done and failed at. And I think the sense of the group was that we’re pretty much going to lay down and accept it. We’re going to go with the political will of this mandatory insurance program. We’re not going to get a public program out of it. Not only is it not feasible, it’s not advisable. And Baucus already said last week that he is putting it aside, which is the same thing as if  he said it is off the table. It’s off.

So the other option to that is, the other side that we discussed was, well, we could be idealists, if you will. We could step out there and try to do something about it. We could stand up for our principles and say “Let’s go out and let’s demand a single payer Medicare for all system.” So that’s the simple choice. I mean, you can either go out and demand it or you can just lay back and take what Obama will give you. Which is a mandatory for-profit insurance system.

On the same day as the Senate Finance Committee Hearing, May 12, MoveOn.org sent an email to members asking them to call their senators and urge them to make sure that a Medicare-based health insurance option stays in the president’s plan. They claim that the Republicans are planning to kill that option:

Luntz wrote a confidential memo that laid out the Republican strategy: Pretend to support reform. Mislead Americans about the heart of Obama’s plan, the public health insurance option. Scare enough people to doom real reform.

If you want to know more about that public health insurance option, check out The Case for Public Plan Choice in National Health Reform: Key to Cost Control and Quality Coverage by Jacob S. Hacker of Berkeley. Here’s the PDF: Jacob_Hacker_Public_Plan_Choice

The end run around blocking change

Robert Borosage, co-director of Campaign for America’s Future, wrote a fiery blog post in the Huffington Post last night: “Corruption is Dangerous to Your Health.” In it, he excoriates the corporate lobbyists who effectively block so much legislation that would improve the lives of all Americans, such as paid sick leave:

More than 160 countries, the Times tells us, have laws that ensure all their citizens receive paid sick leave and more than 110 of them guarantee paid leave from the first day of illness. The US does not. The reason goes no further than the influence of money on politics.

There’s a way to change this culture of corporate influence and it’s a piece of legislation called “The Fair Elections Now Act,” H.R. 1826 and S. 752. Here’s what Congressman John Larson and Congresswoman Chellie Pingree wrote in a join editorial in the Kennebec Journal yesterday:

The Fair Elections Now Act, which has been in the works for more than a year, takes the big money out of our political system and empowers small donors and average Americans. Our proposal, which would be entirely voluntary, would require candidates for Congress to qualify by raising at least 1,500 small contributions of between $5 and $100 from in-state residents. Once they qualify, they will receive an upfront grant, based on the average costs of winning campaigns in recent elections, for their primary campaigns; and if nominated, another grant for their general election campaign. Candidates will also receive a 4:1 match for in- state contributions. No individual may give more than $100 and that match will stop after a certain spending level is reached.

The Fair Elections Now Act builds on the experiences of states to perfect a system that has cleaned up local elections across the country. In Connecticut and Maine, more than 80 percent of candidates for the state Legislature now participate in a clean- elections system. The clean-elections laws in these states have let lawmakers get back to doing the people’s business, tackling big issues such as the economy and the environment without the influence of lobbyists and big donors.

Senator Durbin is the sponsor of the Senate version of the bill, and Senator Arlen Specter is the co-sponsor. The House version is sponsored by Larson and has 24 co-sponsors. Without the need to raise millions of dollars to wage a competitive campaign, candidates (and thus, elected officials) would not be beholden to corporate pressuring. It’s not that the voices of corporations would be silenced; they would simply be a part of the chorus instead of the solo divas.

We advocates for social justice have a choice. In each battle — for health care, workers’ rights, etc. — we can fight the corporate interests lined up against us, or we can go to the root of the problem and free our legislative process from its addiction to corporate dollars. Systemic retooling is not easy but it’s the only way to make an end run around those powerful entities blocking change.

Frances would say, “Seize the moment — before it passes”

Much has been made of economist Paul Romer’s statement, “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” Yes, Congress passed the Economic Recovery Act, and yes, it was huge. But unfortunately, much of that money is now going to shore up states’ income-starved budgets — instead of stimulating the economy in new ways. And another huge amount has gone to shore up financial institutions, without a penny of that trickling down to regular people.

We’re not done, yet. I hope no one thinks that we are. We have decades of painful diminution to make up if we expect the middle class to return to its previous robustness, and that’s going to take massive investment. Of tax dollars.

If we don’t do it now, it may never happen. There may never be another chance, and the United States will continue its downward slide.

President Franklin Roosevelt and his Labor secretary, Frances Perkins, had a vision of the kind of place we could be living in today, the sort of standard of living we could be enjoying. It’s embodied in their “Economic Bill of Rights.” Their initial work — including social security, unemployment insurance, a minimum wage — was passed in 1935. But the rest of the list and most notably, national health care, was interrupted by the onslaught of World War II.

Yet, they never lost sight of those social justice goals.

January 11, 1944, FDR said this in an address:

It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens.

As World War II came to a close, FDR and Perkins knew it was time to again turn to their social justice agenda. Unfortunately, illness and death intervened. FDR died on April 12, 1945, before these goals could be enacted.

Frances Perkins, upon hearing of FDR's death on April 12, 1945. (Image: NARA photo, SSA website

Imagine what America would be like if these rights were recognized and supported. Sixty-five years after the “Economic Bill of Rights” was announced, we have the opportunity to make them real. But only if we move fast. Who knows what fate lies in store for us?

Perkins and Roosevelt built first line of defense against economic ruin

Kirstin Downey, author of The Woman Behind the New Deal, recently wrote an editorial in the AFL-CIO Now blog, “Frances Perkins Rides to the Rescue–Again.” Here’s an excerpt:

Americans’ fears about the economy worsened when the Department of Labor reported that unemployment had skyrocketed to 8.5 percent in March, the highest rate in 25 years.

These are not just statistics. The numbers represent real people. At 10 a.m. on a recent morning, more than 150 men stood alongside a main highway into Washington, D.C., in the Virginia city of Annandale, clustered in small groups, huddled against the wind, peering into the windows of passing cars, hoping for work. Motorists sped by quickly, looking away to avoid attracting attention and raising false hopes. Unemployed laborers are a frightening sight to those who are still working.

It is in alarming times like these that some of the key programs of the New Deal demonstrate their continuing significance and highlight how much Americans continue to rely on solutions fashioned then in response to lessons learned, in times that seem eerily similar to our own.

In this case, the economic shock absorber system is unemployment insurance. It is the FEMA of economic hurricanes, and it is keeping more than 6 million households afloat during these bad times.

The unemployment insurance system was propelled into existence by Frances Perkins, the canny but little-known social worker who was President Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of labor. She had studied the U.S. economy for 20 years before she took up her Cabinet post, and she was Roosevelt’s industrial commissioner from 1928 to 1932 while he was governor of New York. Together, they watched the Great Depression arrive and cast its shadow across the American landscape.

Frances Perkins is most famous today for her role as primary architect of Social Security. But in 1933 and 1934, the program she championed most fiercely was unemployment insurance. Now it has become a first line of defense against capitalism’s ruthless pattern of boom-and-bust cycles.

To read the entire blog post, go to http://www.aflcio.org/mediacenter/speakout/kirstin_downey.cfm.

The New New Deal: Building an Economy That Works for All of Us

The Frances Perkins Center is sponsoring a conference:

Saturday, May 2nd, 8:30 am – 3:00 PM
The University of Maine Hutchinson Center
Route 3, Belfast

Speakers include:
•    Teresa Ghilarducci (Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos working on issues of retirement security and social policy and the Schwartz Professor of Economic Policy Analysis at the New School for Social Research): “Picturing an economy that works for all”
•    Maine House Speaker Hannah Pingree: “The role of government in building an economy that works for all”
•    Maine Commissioner of Labor Laura Fortman: “Lessons from Frances Perkins and the New Deal”

Workshop Topics and their leaders include:
•    New Kinds of Work for a New Workforce – Leader: Cliff Ginn, president of Opportunity Maine
•    Self-Employed, Part-Time, Under-Employed — Where’s my Safety Net? – Leader: Laura Boyett, director of the Maine State Bureau of Unemployment
•    The Changing Shape of Retirement – Leader: John Christie, Manager of the Augusta Career Center and member of the Older Workers Task Force
•    What Women Workers Want (and Need) – Leader: Sarah Standiford, executive director of the Maine Women’s Lobby and the Maine Women’s Policy Center
•    Health Care for All – Leader: Garrett Martin, economic policy analyst at Maine Center for Economic Policy
•    Unions in the 21st Century – Leader: Tim Belcher, executive director of Maine State Employees Association
Panel moderator: Ben Dudley, executive director of Engage Maine

Registration is $35 ($20 for high school or college students), payable by check in advance or at the door.
Continental breakfast, lunch, and snacks included.
To register online: http://tinyurl.com/May2register.
Questions? Call 207-208-8955 or email info@FrancesPerkinsCenter.org.

SPACE IS LIMITED – REGISTER TODAY!

“1934: A New Deal for Artists” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum

The Smithsonian American Art Museum is currently (through January 3, 2010) showing a wonderful exhibit of examples from the Public Works of Art Program. Here’s information excerpted from the web site:

In 1934, Americans grappled with an economic situation that feels all too familiar today. Against the backdrop of the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration created the Public Works of Art Program—the first federal government program to support the arts nationally. Federal officials in the 1930s understood how essential art was to sustaining America’s spirit. Artists from across the United States who participated in the program, which lasted only six months from mid-December 1933 to June 1934, were encouraged to depict “the American Scene.” The Public Works of Art Program not only paid artists to embellish public buildings, but also provided them with a sense of pride in serving their country. They painted regional, recognizable subjects—ranging from portraits to cityscapes and images of city life to landscapes and depictions of rural life—that reminded the public of quintessential American values such as hard work, community and optimism.

1934: A New Deal for Artists celebrates the 75th anniversary of the Public Works of Art Program by drawing on the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s unparalleled collection of vibrant paintings created for the program. The 56 paintings in the exhibition are a lasting visual record of America at a specific moment in time. George Gurney, deputy chief curator, organized the exhibition with Ann Prentice Wagner, curatorial associate.

Publication
A catalogue, fully illustrated in color and co-published by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and D Giles Ltd. in London, is forthcoming in July 2009. It will feature an essay by Roger Kennedy, historian and director emeritus of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History; individual entries for each artwork by Ann Prentice Wagner; and an introduction by the museum’s director Elizabeth Broun. The book will be available online and in the museum store for $49.95 (softcover $35).

Flickr Group
The museum is sharing nearly 400 artworks and related objects dated 1934 from its collection with the public by creating an image group on Flickr. Join the group and add your images from 1934!

On NPR’s Morning Edition yesterday, reporter Elizabeth Blair did a story called ‘1934′: Reflecting On America’s First Big Art Buy. You can listen to the story on the web site, and see examples from the exhibit.

What did “socialism” (the WPA) do for us?

Salon.com has a slideshow illustrating some of the achievements of the New Deal. (Click the photo below to be taken to the slideshow.)

One of the slides showing WPA projects.