Barbarian Peanut by CHS.

What has struck me forcefully about the so-called "health care debate" is how little actual issues debate there has been.  And how much orchestrated noise from paid operatives has been ginned up to distract the public from the real prize: real reforms.

Bill Moyers has a profile up on Dick Armey’s Freedomworks astroturf extravaganza that needs viewing far and wide.

It illustrates a fundamental political operative truth: sowing dissent, even based on outright falsehoods, is a means to an end in a public divide and conquer strategy.  Something folks like Armey use to their moneyed clients’ advantage whenever possible because it is the way they earn their multi-million dollar Beltway living.

How so?

Think about the interests involved and their objectives for a moment: maintaining the status quo in health care means that the people making the money continue to rake it in, which means they can continue to dole it out on the Hill. People like Armey bring access on the Hill to the halls of power and that translates into valuable legislative inroads, for which moneyed interests pay handsomely.

In exchange for said donor largesse, keeping the angry public — who are clearly well and truly tired of feeling screwed these days — on the fringes of the discussion had to be a strategic priority.

The best means of doing that? Sow dissent that keeps the public’s eyes off the real ball, thereby throwing any chance at unity of purpose among the public out the window.

Why?  Because a unified public pushing for reform is what drives any substantive change this country ever sees.  It’s what gave FDR the ability to push through New Deal legislation and Wall Street regulations.  It’s what eventually forced an end to the Vietnam War.  It’s the engine that has driven major changes through our entire history.

And the forces of the status quo know that, fear it, and undermine it at every turn. 

Status quo means profit.  Change means instability which makes things tough to control or outright loss of profit, and that is not acceptable, now is it? (more…)

Brilliant Oxfam campaign ad via net_efekt.

Meanwhile, how the other half lives still isn’t pretty:

The National Academy of Science’s formula, which is gaining credibility with public officials including some in the Obama administration, would put the poverty rate for Americans 65 and over at 18.6 percent, or 6.8 million people, compared with 9.7 percent, or 3.6 million people, under the existing measure.

The original government formula, created in 1955, doesn’t take into account rising costs of medical care and other factors.

Seriously, the formula for calculating poverty rates among the elderly hasn’t been changed since 1955? And it’s never taken into account rising medical costs in a rapidly aging population? That’s incredibly daft, so much so that one would think it was deliberate to prevent the public from knowing the full extent of the problems.

What kind of problems, you ask? Ones like this:

Like many older people, Woodruff and his wife spend a tremendous portion of monthly expense money on medicine, he said.

“I know people that don’t even eat to pay for their prescriptions,” he said.

He also knows people who ration medication into smaller dosages just to get by, in addition to those who struggle with everyday expenses such as his own recent electricity bill than ran more than $300.

When you are this close to the edge, $20 can be the difference between starvation and making it through the month. And for so many seniors who have watched their retirement nest egg dwindle or who have had their pension funds yanked out from beneath them through corporate bankruptcy proceedings that were out of their control? It’s shaping up to be an even leaner winter this year.

Especially with a moratorium on COLAs for social security recipients looming.

It doesn’t help that millions still remain out of work for more than 6 months, so that families are too strapped for money to help fully bridge the gap for elderly relatives, either.

Every time people rail about health care reforms, I wonder if they know anyone who is elderly and barely getting by? Or if they even bother to notice, even if they do?

Poignant moment via Jake Parrish. Lovely shot.

As a nation, we are failing the most vulnerable members of our society.

The number of homeless schoolchildren, uprooted amidst the financial turmoil of the last few years is rising:

There were 679,000 homeless students reported in 2006-7, a total that surpassed one million by last spring, Ms. Duffield said.

With schools just returning to session, initial reports point to further rises. In San Antonio, for example, the district has enrolled 1,000 homeless students in the first two weeks of school, twice as many as at the same point last year.

Between foreclosures, job losses and catastrophic illness costs, it’s not just the very poor who are feeling the pinch. The middle class is hurting, too, as families who never had to ask for assistance in the past suddenly depend on it just to get by from week to week.

These days? We’re all a paycheck away from disaster, it seems.

And the elderly? New analysis shows that the poverty rate among those over 65 is far worse than previously thought:

Nearly 20% of Americans over 65 would be considered poor if the government updates the way it calculates poverty, which hasn’t considered medical costs, regional variations and other factors since its creation in 1955.

Currently, the poverty rate for that age group is 9.7%, or 3.6 million people. If the government adopts a revised formula by the National Academy of Sciences, that figure would jump to 18.6% — 6.8 million people…

Recently, a United Way group in Illinois tried to give its volunteers a glimpse into life for the "other half." The lessons learned were some hard ones:

Participants were separated into six different low-income family types and assigned a role to play under various situations, including being newly unemployed, a new applicant for government assistance or a part-time employee relying on food stamps.

Families had to keep their home secure, pay their bills, feed their families and keep the utilities on for a month using various income and debt scenarios. Services such as an employment office, pawn shop, banker, food pantry and grocery store were available. To reach them, though, every person had to use a $2 transportation voucher, which grew scarce as money ran low.

If you have never had to face unexpected poverty, or didn’t grow up around it as a child, then these situations might sound dire. For folks who have lived barely scraping by? It sounds like a whole lot of life.

Certainly personal responsibility plays a big role: bad choices make for bad results for a lot of folks. But for young kids who didn’t choose the families into which they were born? Or for the elderly who have seen retirement savings shrink over the past few years while prescription doughnut holes have expanded?

Who wants to tell their grandma the fact she has to choose between her medicine and food is her own damned fault and to stop whining about prescription drug profit margins. (more…)

These days it seems that bipartisanship is all the rage. Not in practice, mind you, but as a codeword sop to the masses as justification for defending the status quo. The end result of bipartisanship is paring down a bill until it changes next to nothing of import. And then selling it as if it were the greatest thing since the last bucket of lukewarm spit to pass this way.

This is

Imagine living in a society which valued its elders, instead of just using them as political pawns by scaring them half to death and then shoving them to the side. Imagine compassion and care, and a desire to make certain that the last years were filled with comfort. Imagine health care decisions made based on actual health care needs instead of just what was most profitable…

Yesterday was Women’s Equality Day — and the 89th anniversary of women winning the right to vote with the passage of the 19th amendment. I spent an hour yesterday on a call organized by the White House regarding health care and inequality of coverage and services for women.

Ted Kennedy, the lion of the Senate, has passed. His legacy of political achievement is long: his constant and continuing fight (YouTube) for the child health insurance program (CHIP), support and legal equality for Americans with disabilities, reforms of mental health programs, national community service, the voting rights act, substantial work for years on civil rights and civil liberties concerns.

So, health care is being held up by a coalition of dastardly forces known as Blue Dogs, AHIP-sters, golden parachuted profit-sharing millionaire lobbyist-wielders. And six self-important ginormous ego goobers in the Senate, including the ever-charming Chuck Grassley. All of whom who apparently feast on chocolate covered potato chips on the public’s time.

Jeebus, talk about a Super Size Me nightmare in the making.

But something Sen.