“Shame on us!” admonished Monica Russo to the assembled 1100 participants at the Floridians Rally for Healthcare reform, “Shame on us!” She used the phrase several times to accent what people were not doing hard enough to influence their elected representatives to pass meaningful healthcare reform. It was more like preaching to the choir and yet her stinging rebuke was a warning that healthcare reform could fail without the extraordinary efforts of all the assembled and their activism in promoting the legislation to their friends, neighbors, and colleagues.

The event, sponsored by Health Care Reform for America Now with participation from OFA, SEIU, AFL-CIO, AFSCME,  ACORN and FCAN was held Saturday afternoon, August 29 at 2:00 PM at the Orlando Downtown Recreation Complex to a capacity crowd. This was not an open event; a ticket was needed to enter and participate. Outside, there were a few vendors and petitioners for candidates for office and Florida Redistricting, and even some protesters, however, nothing got confrontational or out of hand. Buses had brought people in from Miami, West Palm Beach, Jacksonville, Tallahassee and other cities throughout the state.

Russo, a member of the SEIU Health Care Team, also acted as emcee and started the afternoon with a fitting tribute to the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy, specifically citing his continuing efforts to assure that every American had access to a quality education and quality health care. After a moment of silence, State Senator Dan Gelber led the Pledge of Allegiance and told the crowd that at the moment there are 800,000 children in the state of Florida who are uninsured, and that something needed to be done about it. State Representative Scott Randolph Welcomed everyone to the event which is in his district (36).

A short health story was told by Matthew Le Clair, 23 regarding his physical condition. Two years ago at the age of 21 Le Clair had experienced severe back pains but had no insurance and none offered by his employer so he didn’t seek treatment until the pain was too unbearable. After a $3000.00 MRI and minimal treatment he was diagnosed as having three herniated discs. Unable to perform the physical tasks, he was fired by his employer due to illness.

The three person keynote panel included Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson, Mary Kay Henry, Executive Vice President of SEIU and Tony Fransetta, President of the Florida Alliance for Retired Americans. Grayson explained that the current bill in the House of Representatives stops insurance companies from lifetime capping of claims and also stops them from excluding people with preexisting conditions. Grayson reminded everyone that 18000 people die each year because they do not seek medical attention due to lack of insurance coverage.

Fransetta, whose organization has over 200,000 members in Florida, railed against the “wimpy Democrats” and went through a check list of myths that needed to be debunked, including Medicare benefits being cut. What he did say is that Medicare will be reformed so that providers will be more accountable to the taxpayers.

Ms. Henry hosted a question and answer session in which the panelists answered questions from participants who wrote them down on white 3×5 cards. The questions seemed too well thought out and studied to have been spontaneous, but they produced some interesting responses. Scott Randolph advised at one point during his answer that there was talk in Republican legislative circles that during the next session they would sponsor a bill exempting Florida from any healthcare reform bill that Congress passes. He urged everyone to write their legislators in opposition to the proposals. There was a question about small businesses being overly burdened by this legislation. Grayson told the questioner that any small business with a payroll under $250,000.00 would be exempt and that her business payroll was small enough that she didn’t have to worry. He also added that during the Bush years insurance company rates tripled and their profits rose 800% placing much more of a burden on the small business owner. The highlight of the Q & A came with Fransetta’s rousing response to a question about Socialized Medicine in which he claimed it already exists “and you will never see any Republican denounce it!” He was speaking about VA healthcare, a system which he as a disabled Korean War veteran was completely familiar with. He warned all not to be fooled or intimidated by any claims of Socialized Medicine.

After the Q & A, Miriam Silvermintz of West Palm Beach explained why she has become an activist. Her son, now 20, is diabetic and at the moment is covered under her insurance, but shortly he will need his own coverage and will not be able to get it due to his preexisting condition. She held a meeting at her house and recruited several friends to become active. I interviewed her afterward and she intimated that her group must have touched some kind of nerve because she was invited to participate in Charlie Crists’  2008 State of the State Address where he mentioned her family by name, although nothing ever came of it.

The stage was now set for Monica Russo:

“Stand up if you’ve made a call, stand up if you’ve knocked on doors, stand up if you’ve written a letter to the editor, stand up if you’ve organized a house meeting.” Each question elicits a response from less than half of the attendees, whereupon she scolds them with “Shame on us!”

Russo outlined her plan of action:

1. Wear the blue ribbon provided in your health care package until legislation is passed
2. Get together  September 2 and organize for action
3. 3. 10000 calls to Senator Bill Nelson’s office in Washington on September 9 202.224.5274, in Orlando toll-free 888.671.4091 (let’s face it- we pay his salary, he can afford the call.)

Russo then went on to say that senators like Bill Nelson and representatives like Suzanne Kosmas need to realize that they can’t just automatically take for granted the votes of Democrats if they don’t do what the people want. The Florida labor unions are beginning to realize this and so is the average Democratic voter in Florida. If they are going to seek reelection they are going to have to earn those votes, and it’s possible that they could lose in the primaries if they don’t take action now. It’s time to throw down the gauntlet.

Press coverage for this event didn’t generate much activity, although there was an article in the Orlando Sentinel describing the event. WFTV Channel 9 did cover the event and conducted some interviews with participants. Jamie Foxx performing at the nearby Bob Carr Performing Arts Center got more press coverage.

As submitted to the Huffington Post

I’ve been deluged over the last six months by all kinds of letter writing and petition requests from every progressive committee and cause that has my e-mail address. There are also one or several conservative groups that continue to send me stuff. I read their stuff just for laughs, but honestly there’s nothing to laugh at, sort of like Dennis Miller, even when he was a liberal. I laugh at their sheer audacity, and I laugh only because I would explode in anger over how ridiculous their positions are. The messaging being done by the progressive and liberal groups is in its relative infancy compared to the vitriol and hate that the conservatives have been doing since the first Bush presidency, further exacerbated by Bill Clinton’s dubious signing of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which allowed broadcasters and publishing companies to buy up and control local area media markets all over the country.

The Republicans were as wrong in their message then as they are now, but over the course of twenty years (almost a full generation) the relentless hammering away with virtually no opposition has taken its toll. We progressives were asleep at the wheel during all of this and we allowed the deterioration to happen. The seeds that were sown even before 1988 have produced a bitter harvest being played out in places like St. Louis, Tampa, Philadelphia and anywhere else that there have been disruptions in town hall meetings. In my last post I chronicled my conversation with Rhonda Welsch, a very conservative woman of 40 who was 12 years old when Ronald Reagan was sworn in for his first term. Ms. Welsch, having grown up in a conservative area and household, has nothing to compare her experiences with. Willfully ignorant and incurious people prefer what they’re used to and don’t handle change easily. The progressive message has a long way to go before these people pay attention, and no real change will be effected until the conservatives realize that they are going to have to compromise the way our founding fathers did. I wonder if that will happen in my lifetime. I don’t know.

Back in 1998 I attended a reception for Sandra Mortham, then Secretary of State for Florida. As an arts administrator I donated $25.00 to her campaign fund and reasoned that she had been good to Florida’s arts organizations and she was approachable. At that point Florida was #2 nationally in arts funding and Mortham was an enthusiastic supporter of all arts disciplines. She took pride in citing figures that every dollar invested in the arts was returned threefold to the community. It was also known at the time that her opponent in the primary was to be a woman named Katherine Harris. Jeb Bush was the Republican candidate for Governor. There was some scandal about improprieties in her office and Bush eventually endorsed Harris who went on to win the primary. That small donation got me inundated with direct mail of all kinds from every conservative Florida and national politician, as well as pointed hate mail against then Clinton administration by people like Leonard Starr, Newt Gingrich, Bob Barr and others too numerous to mention, but the tone of all this mail was tortured logic, blatant misinformation and outright disdain of any Clinton policies or progressive political positions. Once Jeb Bush took office this state took a backward slide from which it has never recovered, and Katherine Harris was at the forefront of that decline. Today, Florida has virtually no money for the arts, and totally disdains any money for the proper education of our most precious resource, our children. I’m still on some of their mailing lists and from time to time they waste their money on mailings to me.

Rhonda Welsch is not alone. Corporate executives, attorneys, physicians, Wall Street bankers and other professionals of the same age group grew up with the same messages being pounded continually without an organized, coherent and attractive counter message. They cut their teeth on greed and selfishness; they really don’t understand ethical behavior and they really feel that they are entitled. I blame myself and every other progressive for not being more vigilant and not acting when we could have. Jimmy Carter might have beaten Reagan if we had the proper grass roots in place. The race was very close until the final weeks. We could have made the difference. The kind of activism we displayed last year could have made the difference in 2000 as well, especially in Florida. So much for complacency.

I continue to get viral e-mails forwarded to me by a dear friend who happens to be a racist libertarian. To his credit he doesn’t generate them, he just forwards them. He’s an ex NY cop who became an actor and a singer and he’s fun to be with as long as we don’t discuss politics. Many of his e-mails show his appreciation of the arts in the form of the female anatomy in various poses and states of physical activity and undress. The others, unfortunately, are a rehash of all the vitriol, myths and baseless attacks from the 2008 campaign, including several rants by Jackie Mason about Barack Obama. I actually became a Huffington Post Blogger by forwarding all of his e-mails to the Post during the campaign so I have him to thank for all this, but I digress-the purpose of this column is to show why the Republican message is and has been wrong.

In the beginning of this post I told of all the letters and petitions I receive. Some stuff I delete, as we all do. I do sign most of the petitions, but not the ones I disagree with. Somehow, a petition I signed got to the office of our soon-to-be ex Senator, Mel Martinez, and someone had to have misread it, because it alleged that I opposed government funded abortions. Here is the letter I got from Martinez:

Below is a response to the recent comments I received from you:

Dear Mr. Waxman: Thank you for contacting me regarding your opposition to the use of taxpayer funding for abortion services. I appreciate hearing from you and would like to respond to your concerns. Every human life is precious. We must uphold our Constitution which ensures Americans the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but even before these—the right to life. I am committed to promoting a culture of life in America. Like you, I am opposed to all abortion, and do not support the use of taxpayer funds for any abortion. I appreciate you sharing your views with me, and rest assured that as your Senator, I will continue to support the right to life. Again, thank you taking the time to share your views with me. If you have any further questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact me. In addition, for more information about issues and activities important to Florida, please sign up for my weekly newsletter at http://martinez.senate.gov.

Sincerely,

Mel Martinez

 United States Senator

That’s funny, because anytime I contacted him it was about either single payer, or barring that the public option on health care, and that I was solidly in favor of those options. I never once mentioned abortion. So, I wonder if he and Charlie Crist share the same mail responders since Crist seems to have a problem with answering his mail as well. If on the off chance I did sign the wrong petition, I sincerely apologize for that lapse in judgement. Frankly, abortion is a non-issue. It belongs between a woman and her doctor and nowhere else, however, people like Mel Martinez continue to use it to obscure the real issues confronting him. He is a coward and his letter is a copout. He has never completed a government job he started and now, at a time when Florida needs responsible people in leadership positions he chickens out. That’s the Republican message that they are sending. He may be a decent man; many people have told me he is, but none of his actions, save his Sotomayor vote show any integrity or compassion for his voting public. Good riddance to both him and his message.

A tale of two citizens

The monthly meeting of The International Union of Painters and Allied Trades was held on Thursday, August 6 at their headquarters in Orlando. Coincidentally, this was the same day of the disrupted Tampa town meeting. Several politicians were there to update the members on their respective positions. The first two people to speak were freshmen congressional representatives Alan Grayson and Suzanne Kosmas both of whom have constituencies in Orange County. The union members were a mixed group, some being Democrats and some being Republican, but all were well behaved and respectful. Grayson was poised, sure of himself and completely at ease as he gave an impromptu talk about his childhood illnesses which were many. His parents, both teachers, had been on strike during one of his illnesses and there were questions as to how to pay for their son’s medical treatment. He then spoke on the merits of the bill which he fully supports, including the public option, and he is fighting hard for the bill’s passage. His term for the bill, while acknowledging it was not a perfect bill was “Peace of Mind.” Kosmas, who came late to the meeting, was much stiffer in her presentation. She apologized for only hearing the peace of mind part of Grayson’s speech and then, much like a university teaching assistant in economics, not yet sure of her subject, launched into an essay about being cautious in crafting the bill. She appeared ill at ease with anything to do with health care and over the course of fifteen minutes managed to say very little at all. In a safe atmosphere where there is no threat of disruption; at a friendly union hall where she gained a lot of support over her years in the Florida Legislature, she chose to play it worse that safe-she was non-committal. What’s she afraid of? She beat Tom Feeney on his own turf in a district he drew for himself as a lifetime fiefdom. Obviously the fear of the Republican message bothers her more than the constituency of East Orange County Democratic voters that she’s avoiding. East Orange County Democratic voters were instrumental in her being elected and they can also deny her re-election.

The Republican message is inherently wrong. It has led us down a dangerous and destructive path for a full generation. To acquiesce to the message is also wrong. This is not mathematics. Two negatives do not make a positive. Last week I saw a sign on a local church sign: “There is no right way to do something wrong.” It’s a great message.