There has been much fanfare of Obama’s speech in front of Congress last night from liberals. I read the first six or so blog posts on the speech Huffington Post last night, and they were a bit absurd in their romanticism of the event.  

Paul Begala explained “Why I Loved Obama’s Health Care Speech.”

Jacob Heilbrun claimed he had “come out swinging” and made the “single most persuasive case for government intervention in decades.”

From Bill Cunningham: “Tonight, we saw a leader, unafraid to stand and deliver…not a political document, but a platform that all who care about real reform, can support and amend and work for.”

And it wasn’t just on Huffington Post. Katrina vanden Heuvel (who I interned for and have co-written pieces with) was more enthusiastic than I would have expected, saying Obama showed his progressive “spine.”

On MSNBC, Steve Hilderberg, a former Obama campaign staffer who has been organizing with others former staffers to demand a public option, seemed unperturbed that Obama, for all practical purposes, caved to the Blue Dogs who oppose the idea, and not the progressives that elected him.

When asked by Kieth Olberman if Obama’s speech was strong enough, he said “For sure. I never had any doubt, this favor is on side of American people and not in bed with special interests … he hit it out of the ballpark.”

Now, I know there is a desire to defend Obama, given that he has been subject to absurd lies and distortions from a right-wing base that has become more delusional and vitriolic than in recent memory.

But progressives have got to get past the glowing rhetoric, and notice something very important: Obama is going to pass a pretty shitty bill.

Sure, the bill will be better than the status quo; there will be some subsidies for lower middle class people. But also dreaded mandate — a gift to insurance companies, who love that 46 million people must purchase poor and overpriced healthcare plans that still leave them open to financial ruin.

There will almost assuredly be no public option. Even with 59-60 seats in the Senate, Democrats will not so much as accept a minuscule public option to insure just a tiny fraction of the population.

This idea that Obama is restating the case for liberalism is an absurd overstatement. There are huge majorities, and a self-described progressive president with a mandate for change, and we going to end up with a bill dictated largely by what Blue Dogs and insurance companies want (a mandate and no public option).

As Ezra Klein noted, there are not so much changes, but merely improvements.

Anyway, in today’s Christian Science Monitor, I make the case that the disappointing nature of the healthcare package outlined by Obama is a reason that advocates of universal healthcare, need to focus, not on Washington — which is so impervious to change — but in state houses across the country. http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/…

There has been tremendous work on this issue done in Vermont, as I note in the piece.  

(NOTE: I submitted this a week ago, and decided not to wait around for the paper any longer)

It is not often I find time to write to the local paper, but Douglas Greg’s My Turn piece (Health care your responsibility, May 11 – http://tinyurl.com/qdkxq3), simply cannot go without retort. His ad hominem attacks and distortions of simple facts do his readers a great disservice.

For those readers who may have missed the article, Mr. Greg argues, in response to a healthcare activist campaign led by the Vermont Workers’ Center, that healthcare should not be treated as a human right.

But before he even gives readers a chance to be taken seriously, he resorts to juvenile – and borderline shameful – meanderings.

Mr Greg writes that after he saw a group of pro-healthcare activists on the road he “figured that maybe they were fans of a local sporting event” since “half of the group were kids.” But, much to his displeasure, he learns they are pro-healthcare activists and immediately dismisses them as crazy lefties with “blood for oil” signs

“Everyone needs a hobby,” he concludes.

It is rather astounding that in one paragraph Greg manages to dismiss all healthcare activists, young people and anti-war activists as unworthy of being taken seriously. More astounding is that the rest of his piece proves to show that the same critique could be applied to him in a far more convincing way.

His insistence that Catamount Health, Dr. Dynosaur and the Vermont Health Access plan – three psuedo-public programs that offer subsidized healthcare to needy Vermonters – “are essentially free to those who need it” is an unambiguous falsehood.

To give just one example, Catamount Health is anything but free. Even those with no income must pay a small premium, and someone making short of $30,000 a year still must come up with $160 a month for insurance, plus deductibles and co-pays. This can be rather cost-prohibitive for people just barely getting by on service-sector jobs. These plans also do nothing to control costs – which are escalating well past the rate of inflation – whereas a public plan would cut costs dramatically.

Further, if Vermont already had “basically free” universal insurance, how does he explain that 11 percent of Vermonters – including, unforgivably, thousands of children – have no insurance at all?

Now, if Greg would prefer that for-profit private insurers with virtually no accountability handle our healthcare system, rather than the citizens of Vermont, that is his prerogative. But he could at least refrain from misleading readers about the economic costs of a public plan, as opposed to the current private system.

Due to corporate profits and administrative waste, private insurance is actually far more expensive than a public system. According to a study commissioned by the Legislature in 2006, Vermont would save $51 million a year if it implemented a single-payer healthcare system. Indeed, contrary to the doctrinaire assumptions of Greg and other free-market absolutists, single-payer is far more fiscally conservative a plan than what we currently have.

I do hope and suspect readers of the Free Press see past the misinformation put forth in that piece and at least consider a more humane healthcare system that leaves no one behind.

( – promoted by Christian Avard)

As the “debate” over gay marriage reaches critical mass in Vermont, I can’t help but feel a deep sense of shame.

The shame comes, not from the fact that Vermont is, rightly, taking up the issue and fighting for basic human rights for all, but because there is even a debate at all.

To me gay marriage is one of the great no-brainers of our time: treat people equally. It is civics 101, not to mention a constitutional requirement.

But when Gov. Jim Douglas, despicably, announced he would veto any gay marriage legislation that came to his desk, I was once again reminded, to steal a line from Kurt Vonnegut, “how embarrassing it is to be human.”  

It is appalling, both morally and intellectually.  When I heard his statement, I thought I was listening to George Wallace defend segregation as the governor of Alabama in 1963, not the governor of Vermont – arguably the most progressive and humane state in the country – in 2009.

Generations from now that fact that this was even debatable will be a monumental embarrassment for Americans, and Vermonters, everywhere.

There once was a time, not very long ago, when our country engaged in “serious debate” over whether or not it should be legal to enslave human beings or allow women to vote. Thankfully, due to the hard work of rational, humane people, these issues are no longer controversial.

And there can be little doubt that the gay marriage issue will run a similar course. It is inevitable they will be recognized in time, just as struggles in the past led to progress on women’s rights, African-American rights, disabled persons rights and so on.

This effort to discriminate against gays is ultimately a losing one. Societal progress almost always takes shape in the form of acceptance, a thankful reminder of our own humanity in the face of the bigotry we are witnessing by Gov. Douglas.

According to very detailed PEW report, young people – described as “Generation Next” – are by far the most tolerant generation ever. When it comes to gay rights, secularism, immigrants, interracial relationships, and even recreational drug use, young people are historically accepting of others compared to older generations, and young people polled generations ago. They are also less pious than any other age group, which is of significant given the Christian opposition to gay rights.  About half of Gen Nexters say the growing number of immigrants to the U.S. strengthens the country ­ more than any generation. And they also lead the way in their support for gay marriage and acceptance of interracial dating.

I don’t find this to be terribly surprising. Young people have now grown up around gays to the extent where the behavior seems entirely normal to most. Compare this to how older generations viewed homosexuality–as a social taboo punishable by an eternity in hell.

And by the time today’s young people become the country’s power brokers, gay marriage will likely be accepted in most states, and attempts to discriminate against them will be met with contempt not currently seen.

And those public officials, who tried to reason that gays need their own consolation prize, the civil union, and should be “separate but equal” from their heterosexual brethren, will be remembered through the lens of history as enablers of discrimination.

To be fair, this applies to many Democrats in the federal government, including the President.

But Governor Douglas’ pathetic ruminations on the subject from Wednesday assure himself a very special footnote in this unfortunate element of our history. He is one of  the first two governors in U.S. history to openly thwart a democratically-elected body’s decision to give gays the same right to marry as everyone else.

It is a detestable act now; years from now it will come across as bigotry pure and simple – a sad reminder of a time when politicians felt it was OK, even noble, to discriminate against gays.  

(NOTE: Made a small correction to reflect the comments about how the gov. of California also vetoed gay marriage legislation)