Tonight: Robert Reich at UCB

Just a quick note to remind you that Robert Reich is scheduled to speak tonight at 5:30 p.m. at UC Berkeley on "Progressive Leadership in Healthcare Reform."

I just called his assistant to confirm that he will be there, and she said yes. She also mentioned that she was just going through his revised notes for tonight, which means, I think, that this will be a very up-to-date presentation.

The presentation will be at the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union, which is close to Sather Gate and very easy to access from Bancroft and Telegraph. There's a map included in the link.

Here is the link with the details:

http://events.berkeley.edu/index.php/#26636

If you can't make it to Robert Reich's presentation tonight, we'll have a write-up tomorrow, with extra notes from one of our nurse/researchers on the recent Anthem Blue Cross rate hike.

Healthcare: Robert Reich
Tuesday, February 9 | 5:30-7:30 p.m. | East Pauley Ballroom Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union

In this lecture, Robert Reich, professor of public policy, will discuss "Progressive Leadership in Healthcare Reform." A former Rhodes Scholar, Reich served as the 22nd Labor Secretary under President Bill Clinton. Among his accomplishments were helping to implement the Family and Medical Leave Act, raising the minimum wage and leading a crackdown on sweatshops. He currently serves as an adviser to President Barack Obama.

Your Comments On The Constitutional Amendment Reality TV Show

There were so many comments about yesterday’s idea to audition telegenic law grads for a Constitutional Amendment Reality TV Show that I decided to run a "top ten" list of comments and links. Included are some of the longer comments, excluded are a ton of brief "thumbs up" (but thanks for those!)

I took the overwhelmingly enthusiastic response as an indication that we're all tired of being outfoxed by Sarah Palin - an adversary whom we'd be well advised to take seriously, despite how vacuous she may appear.

For the record, this was yesterday’s idea in full. And here are your top ten comments in countdown order:

10. What’s the Point of Having a “Liberal Media Establishment” if You Never Use It?

9. And the First Nominee Is…

8. What About That Other Notorious Hollywood Liberal?

7. Eliminate The Middleman!

6. Be Careful What You Wish For…

5. It Ain’t Just Her Wholesome Good Looks!

4. Smart? Who Needs Smart?

3. Gentlemen (and a lot of the rest of us) Prefer A Particular Blonde

2. A Sneak Peek

1. The Number One Comment!

Bonus Comment!

10. What’s the point of having a “liberal media establishment” if you never use it?

I like your idea of the reality show and bringing back Norman Lear to do it right. Hollywood seems comatose since the campaign and even during the campaign, they were out-shone by the grassrooters. Rob Reiner (the producer-director who once played the “Meathead” son-in-law to Archie Bunker) comes to mind, as does Oliver Stone as producers to kick something off.

Creativity seems to flourish when there's a vacuum. And I would argue that that's why Palin, the Tea Baggers and the Fox "Noise" team are all over the news media: the Republican leadership is non-existent.

I would also argue that we already have our telegenic law hero who can summon a media party whenever he wants and he is our President. And his lawyer wife isn't too bad, either. I've been chomping at the bit to create a slide show for him when he's talking over the heads of most of his constituents during nationally televised speeches, like the SOTU speech.

Hear, hear – we can always use more slides... and more Obama appearances. Not least because his appearances crowd out the media images of the tea partiers and Sarah Palin. Some FDR-style fireside chats might buy the administration some necessary time and restore a measure of calm to an anxious public.

9. And the First Nominee for the Constitutional Amendment Reality TV Show Is….

I nominate Kamala Harris - but she may be too old and committed to her campaign?

The initial idea was to pick someone young enough that you could run them ragged 24/7 and they’d not only still look fresh for the cameras, they’d keep on going.

But at 45, the hard-working beauty Kamala Harris looks like she’s never had a bad night’s sleep. What’s more, she’s whip-smart, ethical, and on our side. Downside: there’s no way she’d have time for this.

8. What about that other notorious Hollywood liberal?

Hi Eva. Interesting thought. I don't know if there's any relevance, but I've just learned about the brand new Redford Center, funded by Robert Redford, in the new Brower Building in downtown Berkeley. Dedicated to social activism in the arts: http://redfordcenter.org/. Perhaps you can see a place this might fit in.

Excellent – counting Lear, Reiner, Stone and now Redford, we now have more than a few producer-directors to whom we can present the idea!

7. As Yossarian Once Pointed Out, Why Not Eliminate the Middleman?

As it was the SCOTUS decision that spurred the initial suggestion, another offered this:

Hi - I was listening to Alan Colmes (whose show I hate) on Green 960 the other night. He interviewed a Corporation that is running for a seat in Maryland. The corporation was represented by a publicist and a lawyer. The theory was to get rid of the middleman and just run for office. I liked it. Had you heard about it?

Website with promo video:

www.murrayhillincforcongress.com

Thom Hartman interview

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAxbZ67p5pA

There's a lot about it on the Internet. I was surprised. Maybe it's catching on.

Thanks, that was amazing. Worth watching.

6. Be Careful What You Wish For….

Interesting, Eva. I've shuddered at Lawrence Lessig (Harvard Law School) suggesting a Constitutional amendment; I think it's not the time to tinker and open up that can of worms (the right likely has a number of amendments that tea-baggers might help promote). Call me conservative in this respect (perhaps I'll think otherwise at some point), but there are times when you hold, to paraphrase Kenny Rogers.

Also, listening to Lessig on Bill Moyers’ show, opposite a libertarian, I realized that he's not really so progressive -- more concerned because the Court's ruling expanding corporate political ads as free speech may give the appearance of greater corporate power and thus undermine average folks' trust of government, than with the fact that the ruling greatly increases corporate power to corrupt elected officials and subvert democracy.

He's not opposed to considering corporations as persons, with the rights guaranteed people in the Constitution (even thought, from what I've read, the fact that they are treated from people resulted from a questionable interpretation of an obscure legal opinion...)

So: while your idea of a Norman Lear T.V. show is genuinely appealing, I'd much prefer it focus on corporate non-personhood --- someone showing why that old decision was in error, and why the Supreme Court's activism on this issue was doubly erroneous, and how Congress can "fix it" with real campaign finance reform (whatever that entails).

Seriously, these are all excellent points – I think the bottom line is that the reality TV show could just as easily be about any of your other suggestions (“plain English” legislation anyone?) The larger idea is to make sure that traditional Democratic ideas (some call them progressive) find an advocate who generates as much schwing as Palin. A tasteless idea, I’ll readily admit. But the high road has not exactly delivered.

5. It Ain’t Just Her Wholesome Good Looks!

Your idea might work, but keep in mind that the media covers Palin for other reasons as well. I suspect they cover her primarily because she promotes the agenda of big media advertisers. Even if only 1,100 people showed up, those 1,100 are the dupes willing to shout out their message of weak government and its unspoken corollary: total political control by corporate plutocrats.

Excellent point. Then again, they don’t turn out like that for Karl Rove.

4. Smart? Who needs smart?

I agree 100% with your analysis. But why does it have to be a smart law school graduate? All she has to have is good looks and say the right things. How smart do you have to be to compete with Sarah Palin? Her main attraction appears to be that she was a beauty pageant contestant. I don't detect any sign of intelligent life in her.

I disagree that Palin is entirely unintelligent (more on that later.) But point taken - might we actually be working against our goal if we pick someone perceived as too brainy? We should be trying to fight fire with fire, not fight fire with SAT scores.

3. Gentlemen (and a lot of the rest of us) Prefer A Particular Blonde

Enough of you sent in raves about Elizabeth Warren that I’m combining the links. Yes, she’s over a decade older than Sarah Palin. But Liz Warren is someone to consider for far more than a TV show – The Boston Globe is suggesting she should run for the senate as early as 2012. Crossover appeal: like Congressman Eric Massa, Warren is a former Republican. She converted to the Democratic Party in the mid-1990’s.

2. A Sneak Peek

Some of you sent links to Palin’s cheat sheet (scrawled on the palm of her hand for this weekend’s debate) – but please, don’t write Palin off as a joke. We’ve known about what makes her appealing for over a year. And our side hasn’t eventried to present a woman who can give Palin a run for her money, even though our law schools are packed with smart, ethical, telegenic women, any one of whom would barely break a sweat running Palin into a lather.

So who’s dumb – Palin or us?

1. And the number one comment…. (drum roll, please!)

Please take me off your email list. Thank you.

Seriously, in response to the reality tv show newsletter, one person asked to be taken off the list, but no doubt a lot of other people are just holding their tongues (or sitting on their typing fingers.) Apologies – the idea of a reality tv show may sound louche. Then again, it’s all in how it’s done – if it hews to the documentary format, it could well be extraordinary.

Bonus!

Someone just wrote in that Robert Reich will speak at UCB tomorrow evening on the issue of “Progressive Leadership in HCR.” Here’s the link:

http://events.berkeley.edu/index.php/#26636

Thanks for hanging in there,

Eva

The Constitutional Amendment Reality TV Show

Would it be so hard to find one of these?

Stephanie March in "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit."

In yesterday’s newsletter, we shared one of your ideas:

I'd add one more: a Constitutional Amendment to clarify that all civil rights enumerated in the Constitution and elsewhere, apply only to NATURAL PERSONS-- real people-- and not to corporations or other legal fictions. Passing that would take years, but getting ratified by at least one state might not

take that long.

To which another F1200’er responded:

Great idea. But to get anywhere, ideas such as this must be pushed hard by many people. How is that done? Writing and lobbying reps. Writing letters to editors of popular media. Organizing demonstrations and marches. Running petition drives. Raising funds. Doing all of the above is usually too much for an individual, but an alternative is to support organizations that already work on these issues, such as Common Cause, Public Citizen, and others.

I beg to differ. That’s exactly what we’ve been doing for health care reform. And how has that worked out for us?

Wasn’t Einstein’s definition of insanity “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”? Does even one percent of the American public recognize the names of either Common Cause or Public Citizen?

Let’s at least consider trying something else:

Norman Lear is an 87-year-old television producer. He’s the liberal WWII veteran who brought you Archie and Edith Bunker and “The Jeffersons.” He’s a big advocate for civil liberties. I can pretty much assure you that he’s also appalled by the recent SCOTUS decision, and might welcome the idea of the constitutional amendment suggested by one of our members.

Lear is a virtual treasure trove of media connections and American decency.

Why, instead of flailing about writing to our representatives, do we not appeal instead to Mr. Lear to create a reality TV show with an unemployed, telegenic 20-something law school graduate, who will devote the rest of the year to getting that constitutional amendment ratified in the state of California?

I don’t say this without reason. This weekend, there was a "tea party" convention, which on the day of its biggest draw, gathered 1,100 people to hear Sarah Palin speak. Hello, F-1200ers? That’s at least a hundred less than our own group. But they got front-page coverage in The New York Times. Why? In large part because the media swarms like flies to honey whenever the leggy Palin shows up. Because Sarah Palin, like sex, sells.

So why is it, in a recession economy, our side can’t find a far more comely and compelling personality to push an actual constitutional amendment? On reality TV? And I’m not talking about a Sarah Palin clone. I’m talking about a smart-as-a-whip, woman law school grad, who made it through on financial aid, and strongly believes in “people power” vs. corporate excess.

I’m talking about a 20-something someone with better bone structure and better ethical principles than Sarah Palin. I’m talking about The Apprentice with better intrigue, smarter dialogue, and a modicum of dignity.

Are you telling me that with all of our contacts, we can’t find that telegenic law school grad? Or we can’t at least get the ball rolling for the auditions by writing 1,200 letters to Norman Lear to produce a reality TV show that not only people like us would want to watch, but those necessary other people would want to watch, too?

Hey, we can phone-bank until our fingers bleed, and some of us have. But it’s time to recognize that those efforts, while important, are not reaching the audience we need. It’s time to recognize that we can’t fight Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin with Al Franken and Anthony Weiner (no matter how much I love Franken and Weiner.)

I honestly don’t know if a reality TV show would make the difference, but it would be one way to reach a larger audience. And if Norman Lear can’t do it for us, maybe he can refer us to someone with similar values who can.

Thanks for hanging in there. I’ll have more on this, on “plain English pitfalls and benefits”, and more of your comments tomorrow.

Alvy Singer's "Dead Shark"

"A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark." - Woody Allen as Alvy Singer in 1977’s “Annie Hall”

1. Dead Shark

2. Your Idea Finds Support from… The Economist?

3. Your Ideas: An Amendment

4. Historical Perspective

5. Tomorrow: Plain English Pitfalls

1. Dead Shark

Unlike organizations that are sustained by cash donations instead of cups of coffee, The Feinstein 1200 is not obliged to maintain the fiction that health care reform is somehow magically alive. That doesn’t make us right, nor those organizations wrong – as you know, I have frequently featured their efforts in this very newsletter.

But their scramble for fundraising dollars means that long after it is clear to everyone else that what we have on our hands is a dead shark, some organizations will find themselves obliged to say that you need only make more phone calls to “Revive the Fish!”

And for all I know, they are right to do so.

But in the last week, various HCR groups and advocates have strained particularly hard to parse the increasingly vague statements from Congress and the administration on the future of health care reform legislation. Perhaps the most ludicrous parsing came from Jonathan Chait in The New Republic, who desperately interpreted President Obama’s clear statement that health care reform would be scaled back, as an indication that:

… he wants to sit down with both parties, and health care experts, and walk through the details in a methodical way. I'd guess he's imagining a process that might look a little like his back-and-forth with House Republicans -- they present him with wild claims about a government takeover, and he calmly responds. They insist that their ideas are better, and he gets to show that they're not. Then you vote. In other words, a debate in which he gets to take center stage, on top of the kabuki theater of a House debate. That way Obama gets to demonstrate that the plan he has is the product of having considered all the alternatives and arriving at the best way to solve the problem, not just cooking up a backroom deal. The idea seems to be to use his wonky, technocratic style to counteract the process-based objections and sell the bill.

Now, if you believe that, you may well be right, and I hope you are. (A classical skeptic doesn’t maintain that nothing is possible, but that anything is possible.) But it would seem to many of us who have read the statements that President Obama and Nancy Pelosi have made in the past week that it is simply too impolitic to point out that the shark that once energetically flopped over from K Street and into the Senate is no longer moving. (Even during this past week, when Anthem Blue Cross announced a 39% increase in premiums for 800,000 holders of individual policies.)

I am not among those who believe that if the Senate bill fails it will “doom” the Obama presidency to a single term. (I actually feel the opposite is true – the passage of the Senate bill, even with reconciliation, which we now know from Pelosi will not include a public option, may doom the President’s chances for a second term.)

Perhaps it is best that our young President learns from this early failure. Perhaps it is right to let him come back to health care when unemployment is not threatening the country’s stability and the banks aren’t taking even higher risks than before the crash – with the taxpayer and the country’s fiscal future on the hook. In the meantime, I’ll have to take my own lumps as a middle-aged uninsured American.

2. Your Pie-In-The-Sky Idea Finds Support from… The Economist?

If you heard Terry Gross’ interview with journalist Jeff Goodell, you heard a great primer on the distinction of cap-and-trade v. cap-and-dividend, the latter being a particular passion of one of our East Bay docs, as discussed in the “Your Five Big Ideas” newsletter. (And if you’re confused about these issues, I strongly recommend listening to the podcast.) Goodell was realistic about the challenges confronting cap-and-dividend, but now The Economist has thrown its support behind cap-and-dividend – and the woman senator who has been its chief proponent.

3. Your Ideas: One More

I haven’t yet received permission to use this person’s name, but since they sent it in response to your five big ideas, I think I have permission to share the idea at least, which seems to be made in response to the recent SCOTUS decision on Citizens United:

Those are great. I'd add one more: a Constitutional Amendment to clarify that all civil rights enumerated in the Constitution and elsewhere, apply only to NATURAL PERSONS-- real people-- and not to corporations or other legal fictions. Passing that would take years, but getting ratified by at least one state might not take that long.

That last sentence is interesting.

4. Historical Perspective:

Apparently unable to obtain insurance for actual psychotherapy, a number of my classically-bent friends have been gathering in a smoke-filled basement speakeasy (in absence of actual cigars, I’m counting the diffusion of ersatz floral air freshener as smoke), to pore over ancient Greek and Roman texts. (Sadly, there are no drinks and the leg space is beyond cramped, otherwise I’d invite you.)

This month we’re reading Sallust’s The Jugurthine War and The Catiline Conspiracy. There are a number of interesting parallels with modern U.S. politics, particularly the corruption of the senate, and the willingness of certain patricians to whip up the rabble, and how that “tea party-ish” activity might then have influenced larger decisions about policy.

There are many great reasons to read Sallust, not least among them is the fact that in a recession economy, classical texts can be read free online at Project Gutenberg, or easily obtained at your local library, (provided they did not burn all the Greek and Roman texts in some 1970’s-inspired fit of political correctness.) As well, Sallust does not mince words – from the Edmund-like rise of Jugurtha to senatorial intrigue, this text is fast-paced and action-packed. And you’ll never look at Baucus and Lieberman in quite the same way after reading Sallust.

Don’t let the neocons claim the classics for their arguments. Make like Abbie Hoffman and steal this book.

5. Tomorrow: Plain English Pitfalls

Too voluminous for one newsletter…

Happy reading,

Eva