We had a small victory for AdultBasic today. But there is still more to be done to insure that the program continues until it is no longer necessary.

The Adult Basic Program

Health Care For America Now joined five events around the state led by the Pennsylvania Health Access Network in support of Adult Basic, Pennsylvania’s health insurance program for 47,000 people who cannot afford health insurance but whose incomes are not low enough to qualify for Medicaid. AdultBasic is inadequate insurance, but it provides a lifeline for many people. And over 350,000 are on a waiting list for the program.

Matt Ruben wrote a good op-ed in the Daily News today that points out that rape is a crime of violence against women and that calls for making the hate crimes law apply to such violence.

I agree with this conclusion.

But in the course of making the argument, Matt repeats a staple of feminist thought when he says that “research has demolished the myth that rape is a crime of lust or passion. It's a crime of power: Men rape women because they seek to dominate and brutalize them.”

The standard feminist argument about rape and sex

That claim is well intentioned in two respects. First it shows us that the fundamental source of rape is that men seek to dominate and control (and I would add direct their anger at) women. This is important to know because, if we want to make rape less common, we have to address the psychological source of rape.

After asking people, again and again, to help us enact the most important legislation in forty years, I almost feel a little funny asking people to help pass something that is as close to a no-brainer as they come.

But Washington being Washington, and this being an election year, sometimes a no-brainer is harder than it should be.

So please use our click to call tool http://tools.advomatic.com/8/fmapcobra to tell Senators Casey and Specter and your Representative to extend FMAP, the enhanced Medicaid match, and COBRA benefits now.

Important parts of the stimulus package enacted in 2009 are expiring. Last week, the House passed legislation that extended unemployment benefits. But it eliminated an extension of FMAP and COBRA subsidies.

FMAP provides extra federal dollars to match state Medicaid spending. During this awful recession, FMAP has allowed Pennsylvania and other states to continue to provide critical services even while their tax revenues have been declining.

Yesterday, on the steps of the Montgomery and Delaware County Court Houses health care advocates from Health Care for America Now, the Pennsylvania Health Access Network, Pennsylvania Communities Organizing for Change and Penn Action calling on Attorney General Tom Corbett to resign his office.

Montgomery County Times-Herald coverage of the action, including video footage, can be found here: http://www.timesherald.com/articles/2010/06/04/news/doc4c0895e916247717912231.txt.

We took this action because Corbett has politicized an office that should be entirely above politics.

I went to a 194th state representative district candidate event last week at Roxborough Memorial Hospital. It made clear to me why, when we decide which candidate to support, we progressives have to get out of the habit of looking at the elaborate questionnaires candidates produce and focus on what their history tells us about where their heart is.

Sometime in the next two years, the person who wins this election is going to have to make a decision about a new piece of legislation before him or her. It might be late at night and there won’t be time to call some advisor to find out what is the right thing to do. There won’t be time to determine whether the legislation violates a core ideal of Democrats or progressives. The next representative for the 194th district is just going to have to use his or her judgment and experience to come to a quick decision.

Everything I saw last week convinces me that I want Lou Agre making those decisions, not the other leading candidate, Pam DeLissio.

Please join us for a rally in support of health care reform and in opposition to Attorney General Tom Corbett's lawsuit against the legislation that recently passed the US Congress.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010
12:00 Noon
Thomas Paine Plaza (in front of the Municipal Services Building)
Arch Street between Broad and 15th Street

We will be joined, among others, by Congressmen Chaka Fattah and Bob Brady, Mayor Michael Nutter, and State Representative Dwight Evans.

You might wonder why we are rallying again for health care reform so soon after the legislation passed.

Phone banking 10 to 8 today and 10 until the vote tomorrow at the offices of the Philadelphia Unemployment Project. 112 Broad Street 11th floor

or from your home: for instructions email or call Athena Ford at aford@philaup.org or 267-257-6968.

After 20 months, this part of our campaign for quality, affordable health care for all is coming to an end. We are fairly sure the critical vote in the House of Representatives will take place by Saturday.

The vote will be very close, and health care reform won't be enacted without an outpouring of grassroots energy that can overcome the powerful insurance company interests that are trying to block it.

So many of you in Pennsylvania have been doing so much for so long. Over the last three weeks, Pennsylvanians have led the way at two events in Washington. Hundreds of you joined us for the end of Melanie's March and for the exciting anti- health insurance company rally last week.

But whether you have been an active participant in the campaign or not, I must ask you to do everything you can in this crucial last week to make our dream a reality. Most importantly, I need you to do some

Phone banking

where President Obama is speaking. Meet at 443 Rices Mill Road at 9 am and walk to Arcadia.

We are pretty sure the room will be filled with activists. But we need some help to overwhelm the right wingers expected to be outside the room. Come join us if you can.

We are getting very close to the end of this year’s battle on health care reform. President Obama and the Congressional leadership have agreed on a path to enacting much of what we wanted by the end of this month. The first, critical vote may come as early as March 19.

But we need your help to bring it home. Can you join us next Tuesday, March 9, on a bus to DC for a final push for health care reform and against the insurance companies?

RSVP here http://hcanpa.org/m9 for a bus leaving from Philadelphia at 7:00 am from Love Park. Other buses are leaving from Doylestown, Fairless Hills, Plymouth Meeting, and ten other cities in the state.

As I hope you know a group of Pennsylvanians are, right now, marching to Washington, DC for health care reform in the name of Melanie Shouse. You can find out more about our march at our website http://melaniesmarch.com

And now if you take a free bus from Philadelphia on the morning of the 24th you can take a bus to join for the last mile of the march. (Thanks to SEIU for a large contribution for the buses.)

RSVP for the Philadelphia bus here http://healthcareforamericanow.org/page/event/detail/febrallies/4jvg9

We'll arrive in Washington on the 24th, the day before President Obama's health care summit. We expect to be joined by hundreds of people on the last leg of the march from Union Station to the Capitol. We'll march to the Dirksen Office building for an event at which we'll be joined by Senators Casey and Specter, some of our PA House members, and members of Congress from other states possibly including some from the Congressional leadership.

Lou Agre's kickoff of his campaign for state representative in the 194th district is Saturday January 23rd at 1:00 pm at hiks campaign office at 6210 Ridge Avenue in Roxborough.

Free parking at Golden's.

Come out to support a true progressive for state representative.

The Massachusetts Senate election tomorrow is critical to the future of this country and especially to the future of health care reform. It’s likely to be a low turnout election, so everything we do here in Pennsylvania to help get Coakley supporters to the polls will make a big difference.

There are two local places where you can join phone banks to call likely Coakley supporters and urge them to vote tomorrow.

UFCW Local 1776, 3031 Walton Road, Plymouth Meeting, PA. 19462.
Now until 8:00 pm today and 10:00 am to 7:00 pm tomorrow.

Organizing for America PA Headquarters, 123 South Broad Street, Suite 820, Philadelphia, PA 19107
Shifts at 4:00 pm today; 10:00 am, 1:00 pm and 4:00 pm, tomorrow.

Some progressives, motivated in part by Dennis Kucinich’s vote against HR 3926 are expressing disappointment with and even opposition to the health care reform legislation going through Congress.

While HR 3926 is not perfect—and the anti-abortion language added to it is terrible and will, we believe, be removed later in the process—it is a bill progressives should and must support.

In a long post I’ve explained in detail why I think single payer advocates like Kucinich have gone off the railse in opposing the bill. Here, in this short version, I want to summarize the case for progressives giving enthusiastic support to the legislation.

Two Preliminary Observations

Let me start with two preliminary observations.

Even if Kucinich is right, he’s wrong

First, even if everything Congressman Kucinich says about HR 3692 is true, it is a moral abomination to vote against this bill and kill health care reform this years.

We are talking about real lives of real people who desperately need health care and who suffer and die and go broke because they have no or inadequate health insurance. How can anyone in good conscience vote against legislation that would help thousands of people who desperately need help?

It would be one thing if Congressmen Kucinich and Mass had an alternative that could be enacted sometime soon. But, as I’ve pointed out in other writing, single payer has no chance of being enacted in the United States (or in Pennsylvania) now or in the foreseeable future. Handing President Obama a defeat on this legislation, with the result that large numbers of Democrats in Congress are defeated next year, would just delay the time when single payer is on the table, perhaps by a decade or more.

To ask people who need help today to wait is cruel. To have health insurance—as Congressmen Kucinich and Massa, and as almost every supporter of single payer I’ve ever met does—and ask other people to wait until some ideal is attained is worse than cruel. It is a moral abomination.

All the work we have been doing to create a guarantee of quality affordable health care for all is coming to a point: The House vote on HR 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act is scheduled to take place this Saturday, November 7 at around 6:00 pm.

The vote will be close. We don't know whether we it will pass or not.

It really depends on you. Three members of Congress in Pennsylvania--Jason Altmire, Chris Carney, and Paul Kanjorski--undecided. If we can get more of their constituents to call them, they would be more likely to decide in favor of reform.

Can you take part in phone banking with us from the convenience of your own home?

We will be using a new computerized system called Activate to do phone banking that will connect you with constituents quickly without worrying answering machines or unanswered calls. Then you can immediately patch the people you talk to through to the office of the member of Congress.