Progressive Democrats Sonoma County

March 9, 2010

We highly encourage signing up for a PDA Issue Organizing Team (IOT) if you wish to actively engage in the work of PDA and PDSonoma County. If you have not already done so, you can get started by clicking on ‘Committees’ on the menu at the top of this website page and there you can:

*sign up for a PDA Issue Organizing Team via the PDA website and

*find the name and contact information for the local PDSonoma chapter team leader for that IOT. If you have not already done so, let that person know that you have signed up for the PDA IOT and they can add you to their local chapter list of activists on that particular issue.

Elliott Gould warns us not to believe the myths about single payer health care. “Single payer is no more socialized medicine than the police department is socialized crime fighting,” he says. California OneCare is publicly financed, privately delivered health care, and poll after poll has shown

Link to Original

This IOT conference call had its usual stellar lineup of guests, including last-minute guest Rep. Dennis Kucinich.

PDA Conference Call Guests: David Swanson, Cole Harrison of UFPJ, PDA Field Director Conor Boylan,

Brown Bag Lunch Vigils (BBLV) partner David Swanson started the call off with comments on and advice for the BBLVs, to move the vigils to a higher degree of action, and he spoke about the legislation to halt Afghanistan funding.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN & to read more

Join PDA’s End War & Occupations, Redirect Funding Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here.

Senator Mark Leno, author of Senate Bill 810, says that it’s time for Californians to be innovators once again. We can become the first state to enact a publicly funded, privately delivered single payer health care system that will cover everybody and save money.

Dear Single-Payer Supporter:

If you’re in the San Francisco area, please attend this rally for single-payer healthcare.

Medicare for All Rally

Join with activists from the California Physicians Alliance, California Alliance for Retired Americans, Gray Panthers, and Single Payer Now to let President Obama know that we want Medicare for All.

When: Thurs. 10am, Feb. 25
Where: San Francisco Federal Building, 90 7th St., between Market and Mission – Civic Center

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On this call we had -Donna Smith, Healthcare NOT Warfare co-chair, updated us from the Hill on where we stand and also the Brown Bag Lunch Vigil campaign from DC.

Chuck Pennacchio, Executive Director of Healthcare 4 All PA, updated us on single-payer progress in PA.

Ben Day, Executive Director of Mass-Care, updated us on MA.

The BBLV Team updated the group on where the campaign currently stands on the eve of the February BBLVs.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

Join PDA’s Healthcare for All Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here

February 22nd 2010. Donna Smith and Norman Solomon discuss Healthcare NOT Warfare and Brown Bag Lunch Vigils

Listen to “Healthcare NOT Warfare” national co-chairs Donna Smith and Norman Solomon in the next installment of Agitator Voices of PDA, a new series of podcasts from Progressive Democrats of America’s. It was a busy week for PDA activists and our allies as we gathered in front of 65 congressional offices for the second Brown Bag Lunch Vigil.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

February 17, 2010

Dear Representative Woolsey,

We thank you for signing on to support HR 2454, calling for an exit strategy from Afghanistan & HR 3699, prohibiting any increase in the number of U.S. Armed Forces in Afghanistan.

Further, we call on you to publicly commit to voting “No” on any bills that fund wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Yemen, and to publicly urge your colleagues and the House leadership to make the same commitment.

Protest! Health Care, not Warfare! Progressive Democrats, Sonoma County from Jon Stiffler on Vimeo.

Mark Leno
February 18, 2010, San Fransisco, CA

Published by The San Fransisco Chronicle

As outraged families and small businesses react to the latest health insurance premium increases, Californians are forced to face the fact that insurance companies are not in business to provide health care to people who need it. Premium increases are just part of the concerns—pre-existing condition denials, overturned doctors’ decisions, coverage rescissions and other insurance industry abuses are sadly commonplace.

It is impossible to make a profit serving customers who are likely to cost the insurer more than the premiums they pay. This means that if any one of us gets seriously sick or injured, we become an undesirable customer to health insurers. That’s the message Anthem Blue Cross sent to millions of Californians when it increased premiums by up to 39 percent. The insurer clearly doesn’t care if it loses these customers.

Read the Rest Here

Donna Smith
February 17, 2010

Join PDA’s Healthcare for All Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here

This week, the Healthcare Not Warfare campaign I help co-chair for Progressive Democrats of America becomes even more deeply personal for me. My son leaves for his volunteer tour of duty in Afghanistan. And I won’t be there to say goodbye. Because I advocate a position of peace, my son believes my priorities are off kilter, and for some time now he has believed that he goes to war so whiners at home can keep griping about less critical concerns—like healthcare or economic justice.

As is sadly the case with many parents and grown children, my son and I do not see eye-to-eye and that causes a distance of the heart that hurts everyone involved. Though separated, we are both on a mission.

Read the Rest Here

Ralph Lopez
February 11, 2010

Take Action: Eat lunch for peace—become a brown-bagger

Published by Daily KOS.

Unveiling a potentially powerful campaign which goes beyond pointless marching in the street on a Saturday in DC when no one is around, and the march is roundly, thoroughly, even aggressively ignored by the media, Progressive Democrats of America has come to a realization that International ANSWER has not. It’s our house.

Read the Rest Here

Carol Paris, MD
February 4, 2010

Take Action: Eat lunch for Healthcare NOT Warfare—become a brown-bagger

Published by Physicians for a National Health Program.

“People should go where they are not supposed to go, say what they are not supposed to say, and stay when they are told to leave.”—Howard Zinn

Well, that quote pretty well sums up “what to do”. But my biggest challenge is “how”. Specifically, how do I neutralize some pretty powerful fear?

Read the Rest Here

Donna Smith
February 3, 2010

Join PDA’s Healthcare for All Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here.

Since I was a little child huddled in the elementary school hallway for the bomb drills to the present day when I listen to the reasons my nation must spend more on foreign military actions, the means of securing public support for war in this nation seems to have centered on one word. Terror.

We used to be terrified that the Communists from the Soviet Union were coming with their bombs, so we built shelters and indoctrinated our kids to understand our Red fear. Bombs could be launched without warning or even immediate provocation, so making us all fearful wasn’t too hard. Cold War terror lasted a good, long time and helped a lot of people get very rich. We entered many “conflicts” using the fear of a Communist spread. No Commie bomb ever fell, and many still argue that’s because we built more bombs and were much more terrifying as we won that face off with all those evil folks across the globe.

Read the Full Story Here

On Jan. 29, 2010, Doctors Margaret Flowers and Carol Paris were arrested outside a hotel, at the Inner Harbor, in Baltimore, MD, where President Barack Obama was to give a speech. They were on a sidewalk outside the Renaissance hotel holding a banner. The doctors had a letter that they wanted to give to the President and/or one of his aides, re: Medicare for All. They were arrested for trespassing, according to to a police officer at the scene. Later after getting into a police car, this reporter was advised, the two doctors were released, without going to the local lockup. Each was then given “a citation” for trespassing. For background on this issue, check out Dr. Flowers’ visit to the White House, on Jan. 28, 2010, at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxziSRM6fdo

CLICK HERE TO WATCH JAN. 29 VIDEO OF DR. FLOWERS & DR. PARIS IN BALTIMORE

January 28, 2010

By a vote of 22 to 14, the California Senate today passed historic reform legislation, SB 810, that calls for sweeping changes in the financing of health care.

Under the bill, authored by Senator Mark Leno (SF), all residents would be covered by a true universal health care system, which would pay for all needed health services utilizing a “single payer” insurance system. Most residents would be required to pay into the system and all would be covered, with no additional co-pays, deductibles or exclusions for pre-existing conditions.

Read the Rest Here

From: Dr Bill Honigman
Tue, Jan 26, 2010

From bay area activist Susan Harman, and my response below:

Subject: Write Back! Letters needed to refute the Oakland Tribune editorial against SB 810

Dear East Bay Single Payer Activists,

Below is an editorial in today’s Oakland Tribune.

It is part of a newly emerging and growing opposition to single payer, which exists both at the elite level (like the Trib’s publishers) as well as at the grassroots (like Tea Partiers). Such a movement will embolden Republican legislators to fight against SB 810, instead of being resigned to its passage and delivery to the governor. And it will embolden the GOP to wage electoral campaigns for assembly and senate seats on a platform of opposing single payer.

We can add to the momentum from the resolution that the California Democratic Party approved last November — calling for an end to the air war in Afghanistan, withdrawal of U.S. forces and an increase in humanitarian/development aid to that long-suffering country.

This gathering in Sonoma County will give a boost to a new effort, in the Bay Area and elsewhere, combining grassroots organizing with media outreach to reframe the politics of U.S. policies toward Afghanistan. Please bring a checkbook.

Speakers will include Karen Bernal and Norman Solomon. The two of them, along with Marcy Winograd (who is now running against incumbent war hawk Rep. Jane Harman), co-authored the military-out-of-Afghanistan resolution that is now the official position of the California Democratic Party.

California Nurses Association/National Nurses Union
January 25, 2010, Oakland, CA

With prospects for national healthcare reform dimming following Tuesday’s election in Massachusetts, a major bill that would establish universal healthcare, through a Medicare-for-all style reform, has been cleared today for a new vote in the California legislature.

SB 810, The California Universal Healthcare Act, authored by Sen. Mark Leno and sponsored by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United, with broad support among many healthcare, community, and labor groups, will be voted on in the State Senate by the end of next week.

Read the Rest Here

Let’s combine forces to form the Brownbagger Movement!
Here’s a suggestion for what we should call ourselves— us ordinary people, progressives, ethnic groups, students, labor unions, other workers, environmentalists, conservationists and poor and middle class people: …

Read the Rest Here

Ed. Note: Author Rick Massell is an active member of Progressive Democrats Sonoma County. PDSonoma County hosted David Swanson in Santa Rosa on January 13.

A stellar group of guests spoke to over 80 callers, answering questions submitted in the PDA Chat Room. Minnesota Senator John Marty, Democratic-Farmer-Labor candidate for governor, spoke about single payer legislation in MN, with Chuck Pennacchio from Healthcare4AllPA joining the conversation to compare and contrast the situation in PA, especially in light of ERISA legislation.

Cong. Eric Massa gave the group a generous amount of time to discuss the merging of the House and Senate Healthcare bills, which he bluntly told the group will have few or none of the good aspects of the House bill. Donna Smith, PDA’s Healthcare NOT Warfare co-chair as well as legislative advocate for CalNurses, spoke frankly about how the timidity of the Democrats lost us the chance for any kind of substantive change in healthcare.

IOT coordinator Roberta McNair told the group how to participate in the Brown Bag Lunch Vigils, which have the goal of redirecting the massive sums of money currently going to military costs for the wars into social-benefit programs, such as Medicare for All.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

Progressive Democrats of America expands the Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign to include Brown Bag Lunch Vigils.

As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. observed over 40 years ago, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death,” and “of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane.”

And yet here we are, over four decades later, spending what seems to be limitless money for endless wars. We can pay for warfare but not healthcare, for bombs but not books, for weapons but not windmills, for hellfire but not homes. As the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq labor on, with no end in sight, it’s become alarmingly clear that they have exacted a staggering human and financial toll on the Iraqi, Afghan, and American people. Something is terribly wrong.

In light of this sad state, Progressive Democrats of America is extending and expanding the Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign to raise awareness among the public and our elected officials that the electorate is not being served by current U.S. policies.

Read the Rest Here

By Donna Smith
January 8, 2010

URGENT—Take Action NOW: Tell Speaker Pelosi & Majority Leader Reid – NO on MANDATE, YES on STATES’ RIGHTS

Should Democratic members of the House vote ‘No’ on any reform legislation that includes an excise tax on health benefits? Even if it’s now the President’s preferred funding method for the healthcare insurance company bail-out bill (or health insurance reform bill, as it’s known in the proper political framing terminology)? And should they actually intend to vote ‘No’ and not just make threats followed by a seemingly begrudging ‘Yes’ vote?

Read the Rest Here

Amy Goodman
January 7, 2010

URGENT—Take Action NOW: Tell Speaker Pelosi & Majority Leader Reid – NO on MANDATE, YES on STATES’ RIGHTS

Published by Truthdig.

The media have been swamped with reports about the attempt to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day. When Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, now dubbed the “underwear bomber,” failed in his alleged attack, close to 300 people were spared what would have been, most likely, a horrible, violent end. Since that airborne incident, the debates about terrorism and how best to protect the American people have been reignited.

Read the Rest Here

Tim Carpenter discusses the recent developments in the Health Care debate in Washington.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN