The Great Blog Circle Jerk, part IV
I’m pleased as punch to finally be able to acknowledge someone who has been instrumental in keeping me on the dubya dubya dubya dot org all these years. I’ve worked with Josh Handle (Handle is a “handle,” dig?) on a number of socialist websites (including Ypsl’s and others) over the years, most of which he designed as I barked orders for how it should look. For my own dot org, he’s been an indispensable resource for coaching me through Blosxom, WordPress, PhP and other techno-gibberish that I would not otherwise understand.
Josh shares that democratizing impulse for the internet on his own blog, Open Source Society. It’s a good resource, and probably about as readable as this geek talk can be. If you need more hand holding, he’s offering his services for a fee for web design. His web design work, and, more importantly, his availability and cooperativeness, get the strongest endorsement from me. Plus, it’s for a good cause. Comrade’s got a lot of babies to feed.
Nothing Is Revealed
Todd Haynes’ new anti-biopic, “I’m Not There,” lives up to its hype as the perfect film distillation of the life and legend of Bob Dylan. The stories of six Dylan-like characters (played, among others, by a 13-year-old black boy, a British actress, Richard Gere and Batman) intertwine, and, naturally, nothing is revealed.
The soundtrack is fantastic, including covers by a who’s who of middle-aged alt-rock and a terrific selection of Dylan classics and overlooked gems like “Blind Willie McTell” and the early version of “Idiot Wind” that wound up on the cutting room floor for “Blood On The Tracks.” The title is taken from a heretofore unreleased “basement tapes” recording, one of those haunting songs that Dylan recorded in one take and perversely never touched again, much to the chagrin of us cultists. It turns up here in a re-mastered mix and Sonic Youth cover.
Cultists, the only folks who could properly enjoy two and a half hours of abstract Dylanology, will have a field day with character names, set decoration and other sly references to songs both popular and rare. The rest of the squares, like the couple sitting behind me who would not shut up, will content themselves by pointing out that Cate Blanchett’s insufferable-prick-era “Dylan,” Jude Quinn, “probably means the Rolling Stones,” when introducing Brian Jones as a member of “that cute little cover band.”
For many, the scenes that stretch hardest for credibility are Richard Gere as Billy the Kid-in-hiding, after escaping Pat Garrett’s bullet. For me, this is the most enjoyable part of the film. It’s a tribute and celebration of Dylan’s weird and wonderful “basement tapes” period; a tangled up mix of Americana from the Civil Way to the Dust Bowl, with circus freaks and outlaws and ostriches, that somehow makes sense of non-sensical lyrics like “pack up the meat, sweet” and “open the door, Homer.” It’s a visual delight for any true Dylan freak.
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 purpose for the conference. The state of Wisconsin is apparently close to enacting (or at least voting on) a pretty good plan that, nevertheless, demonstrates the pitfalls of statewide solutions. What Wisconsin would do, according to Dr. Robert Kraig of Citizen Action, is what most states do to insure their own employees. They spell out the terms of coverage – what procedures would be fully reimbursed, how much hospitalization, whether there would be co-pays or deductibles, that no one be denied coverage because of age, location or pre-existing condition, that no more than 15% of the costs go towards advertising and administration, etc. – and then contract out with various companies to provide the coverage. The Wisconsin plan would replace private insurance with a payroll tax to fund a statewide system and throw everyone into the same statewide pool, but allow individuals to choose between different insurance companies – Blue Cross, GHI and the like – or a state-run, non-profit plan. This idea of creating a state plan to compete with the private companies is apparently coming up often in these compromise plans. The thinking is that it’s a backdoor to single-payer health insurance, since a non-profit state-run plan would be cheaper and more efficient and would inevitably drive the private companies out of the market. At the very least, it is reasoned, they will keep the private companies competitive and “honest.” Call me a cynical socialist, but I assume the public plans will be sabotaged in some way so that the “superiority” of private plans will be proved.
Nevertheless, from an operational standpoint, the Wisconsin plan would work. It would provide good, comprehensive health care for everyone. However, I’m afraid it wouldn’t retain enough public support to survive the gauntlet of opposition it will receive from business and the insurance lobby. The problem is the funding formula. The plan calls for a ten percent payroll tax on employers, which is a good, suitable level (California’s Super Hero Governor is proposing a meager 6% payroll tax for his less-than-universal plan). A ten percent tax is less than employers pay for good health insurance, but more than employers pay for lousy or no insurance, helping even the playing field for companies than have been competing over health care costs (like Wal-Mart and the unionized supermarkets).
However, the plan also calls for a four percent payroll tax on employees, which, simply put, represents a pay cut for many workers for something they already have. Workers who have formed unions and bargained to gain and maintain good health insurance have already forgone higher wages in lieu of that insurance. To propose that they take a cut now, essentially to bail out employers who have shirked their responsibilities, is not only unfair, it is politically untenable. No matter what proposals come out for universal health care, the insurance lobby is going to spend tons of money on television and radio advertising to scare voters out of supporting the plan. Why give them a good, scary issue? Perhaps I see this more clearly as a union organizer. During a union recognition vote, an employer campaigns to convince his employees to vote against forming a union. The employer never campaigns on his issues – his need to maintain “flexibility” and the ability to freeze or cut wages, increase hours and lay off employees as he sees fit – because these issues are obviously not in the interest of his workers. So, the employer instead campaigns on an issue that is in the interest of the workers: their paychecks. Every employer-run anti-union campaign makes union dues a main focus. The insurance lobby is not going to campaign on its need to maintain profits at the expense of people’s health, but they will campaign on issues of costs and taxes.
Wisconsin, like any other state, is limited in terms of its options for new revenue, so a payroll tax (the burden of which falls inordinately on working people) is one of its few options. The federal government, which ultimately should take up the responsibility of a universal plan, has many more equitable options. To fund a “Medicare for All” plan, Congress could and should implement a payroll tax on employers. But Congress could also repeal the Bush tax cut, which mostly went to the wealthy, or increase the capital gains tax, which is how the wealthy get obscenely wealthy. Congress could probably find enough money to fund the program in the billions that are currently being blown to smithereens in Iraq.
As Dr. Fein, of PNHP, remarked at the conference, a long-held saying in the movement for national health, has been “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Meaning, don’t let our pipe dream of single payer health insurance stand in the way of a compromise that we can get now. Now, with health care reform definitely on the agenda, it’s all the more important to hold firm to our convictions that single payer health care is not a pipe dream. It is not merely a wonky distinction between a bunch of “equally good” compromise plans put forth by the candidates. It is the only plan that can coalesce and maintain a coalition of unions, community and advocacy groups, healthcare professionals and taxpayers that can survive the barrage of attacks that any plan – good, perfect or terrible – will inevitably face from the merchants of death in the insurance lobby.
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 at another point in his life.
That’s why it’s fascinating to read in Edward Johanningsmeier’s excellent biography of William Z. Foster, “Forging American Communism,” is Debs’ response to Foster’s entreaties to join the Communist Party. In a meeting shortly after he was released from prison in 1922, Debs declared, “Some groups propose to take orders from men in Moscow who know absolutely nothing about American conditions. I know more about American psychology and conditions than all the leaders in Russia know in five years, and I will not accept my orders from a maniac like Zinoviev. Since when, I want to know, has socialism become synonymous with Communism? I am not a Communist and I don’t want to be one, and I do not believe in minority rule.”
Debs did, however, publicly endorse Foster’s Trade Union Education League and its program of encouraging radicals to bore from within AFL craft unions to promote an agenda of organizing the unskilled masses and challenging the conservative business union leaders. Debs also served as the Socialist Party’s National Chairman in his twilight years, the only time he held office in the party, or indeed even attended a convention. And he came to the conclusion that the SP should direct its electoral efforts on uniting with the AFL and other progressive groups to form a national labor party. If we are going to let WWEVDD guide us, let’s look at where he stood politically at the end of his life, in a political era that is closer to our own.