Month: November 2007

The Good, The Perfect and the Wisconsin Compromise

I attended an interesting conference on “Health Care for All,” sponsored by Citizen Action at Rutgers University today, with a lot of breathless anticipation about how the 2008 elections were going to provide a mandate to finally get a national health plan. That is, if our policy-thinkers and policy-makers don’t compromise it to death. Dr. Oliver Fein, of Physicians for a National Health Plan, provided a spirited advocacy for universal single payer health care – “Medicare for All” – with a direct challenge to the for-profit insurance lobby and the compromisers. Too bad he’s not running for President. Representatives for Obama’s and Clinton’s campaigns were in attendance and said a whole lot about nothing, which does not bode well for voters’ supposed mandate for meaningful reform. In the face of federal inaction, many states are putting together piecemeal, stop-gap programs. New Jersey’s slow move in this direction was the ostensible […]

Debs and Bolshevism

In his famous 1918 anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio, in which he martyred himself for a prison term that would last beyond the World War and shave years off his life, Eugene V. Debs declared, “From the top of my head to the tip of my toes, I am a Bolshevik, and proud of it.” This quote is often taken out of context by some to argue that in his later years Debs was turning towards Lenin’s doctrine and perhaps would have joined the Communist Party had he lived long enough. Too many socialists attempt to freeze Debs in a particular moment and argue that because the pioneering leader of American socialism took a certain position, say, forming new industrial unions to compete with and replace the American Federation of Labor in 1907, that that is the correct position for socialists in 2007, even if Debs himself contradicted that position […]

Another Fake Ally for Health Care

Andy Stern continues to invite more strange fellows into his bed. The President of the Service Employees Union has drifted far astray from the rest of the labor movement and most sensible healthcare reformers by partnering with Wal-Mart, the Business Roundtable and other pro-business groups whose agenda is in direct opposition to ours. Their wet dream is to dump their insurance obligations on the public ledger, not to ensure that everyone can receive good medical treatment at “no cost” through public funds, funded in large part by a payroll tax on employers. “Medicare for all” must be our goal, and any proposal that leaves private insurance companies free to exploit and profit, or that places most of the burden for funding the program on the backs of taxpayers and workers who have already won health insurance from their employers through their unions is bound to fail. Stern recently welcomed into […]

Is It Treason to Strike Against the Government?

Is it treasonous to go on strike against your employer? Most reasonable people would say no. But, given the opportunity, most Bosses would make it illegal for their employees to strike for better wages and conditions. The government, as employer of many thousands of public sector employees, is the only employer that has the ability to outlaw strikes by its employees. Al Shanker, who led New York City’s school teachers on a number of strikes between the early 1960s and the late 1970s, grumbled that the illegality of strikes and the steep fines and penalties incurred by city unions that strike anyway were a holdover from monarchistic thinking, and that there isn’t even the slimmest pretext of arguing for public safety or welfare in making them illegal. Shanker would point out that teachers at private schools would face no penalty if they chose to strike, even though such a strike […]