Well, we know that Mitch McConnell's heart is definitely two sizes too small.
The Republican Senate leader's successful efforts to block the auto bailout has struck fear into the hearts of hundreds of thousands of auto workers--and millions of people in their families, communities, and industry. That's a lot of Whovilles. And even by the Grinch's standards, the Mitch who Stole Christmas is diabolical.
Unionized nurses around the country, members of the AFL-CIO just like our UAW brothers and sisters, are kicking off a new campaign to let the Mitch know he's gone too far. Time to either get some Christmas cheer--or get booed off the American stage. Please help out by sending a message to the Mitch here--think of it as a virtual lump of coal.. We'll send him your words....and the message that a revitalized labor movement is not going to let these jobs be lost.
You might have seen that the nurses from the national RN union--National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association--are on a national tour to talk about the role and the importance of healthcare in this election.
After healthcare, what is the first thing that people in battleground states around the country are talking about as the nurses do their ourteach?
Yep.
They're talking about the small fortune Sarah Palin dropped on 2 months of clothes. The $150,000 represents an 80-year clothes budget of the average Joe or Jo Sixpack...and symbolize a party not just out of touch with average people, but really out of hearing, sound, and sight of them as well.
Nurses from Nevada and around the country continued rolling through Western Nevada today as part of the "Drive for Healthcare Voters" tour, visiting the small towns of Gardnerville and Fallon. The tour is being put on by the National Nurses Organizing Committee, which is America's largest RN union, and is complemented by a campaign including mail pieces, phonebanking, and advertising. Our goal is to make sure that voters have the information they need to be healthcare voters.
Day 2 of the tour was intense and emotional, as our healthcare outreach led to many conversations with voters about what is going on in their lives.
The National Nurses Organizing Committee (NNOC) today kicked off a national road show and outreach campaign designed to inform voters about the healthcare proposals of both leading Presidential candidates. 5 swing states will be targeted before the election for this healthcare outreach.
As one nurse from St. Mary's Medical Center Reno put it, "Our patients are voters too, and we're here to get them the information they need."
The road show hits 11 different Nevada cities stops this week-everywhere from Reno to Elko to the Shoshone Reservation-with a striking wrapped bus featuring the nurses' report cards on Obama and McCain. Next week, the bus turns left and heads to Ohio, Pennsylvania, Manchester NH and Bangor ME (along with a visit to healthcare hero Eric Massa, running for Congress in New York.)
This year's extended primary just might be great for healthcare reform as the Clinton campaign's failure may have killed off the terrible idea of insurance mandates. She ran on it, and lost--just like Arnold did in California last year.
If so, great news all around. Working people, already struggling, will not face the prospects of having their wages garnished to pay off Blue Cross' inflated premiums, overhead, and denials. Healthcare reformers can focus their work towards enacting genuine solutions, rather than fighting off this insurance marketing scheme masquerading as health care policy. And all of us can debate the real issues at hand here, like the new report finding the number of underinsured is spiking as our healthcare system continues its death-by-insurer spiral.
We'll take a look at this and updates from single-payer movement below!
In an extraordinary convention just concluding in Puerto Rico, here's what you didn't hear from Andy Stern's paid PR blitz. SEIU was under siege throughout by protest encampments of the popular Puerto Rican Teachers' Union, responding to SEIU's raid of the island's largest union-- during a strike to improve horrific educational conditions.
Inside the convention, to the detriment of the overall labor movement, Stern successfully squashed the internal dissent by SEIU's democracy activists, thereby further concentrating power in himself. The CEO model.
And in an extraordinary development, Stern announced that SEIU is basically doing away with labor reps in favor of outsourced call centers...which makes sense, in that if you sign no-strike promises to your employer, why would you need to mobilize your members?
There's more! SEIU is continuing its war against state and national RN unions by now picking up John McCain's frame of attacking "government-run healthcare" as their latest salvo against the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (AFL-CIO). If anyone doubted SEIU's willingness to sell out genuine healthcare reform in a second, there it is.
RNs now celebrate Mary Seacole Day as part of National Nurses Week-and as the day we honor the social justice aspect of the work of nurses. Mary Seacole remains an important inspiration for the national nurses movement being built by CNA/NNOC (California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee), which focuses on improving patient care and safety in hospitals and on bringing this country the guaranteed, single-payer health care that our patients deserve.
Andy Stern's SEIU International has gone and proven why RNs want nothing to do with.
Even though they're providing the evidence for all the critiques of CNA/NNOC, today is a dark, dark day for the labor movement. Last night, in Dearborn Michigan, at an annual conference of union activists, sponsored by the non-partisal Labor Notes SEIU resorted to violence to get their messages across.
I will link to the release and pictures after the release.
I'm sure SEIU will come on here with some crazy spin justifying their violence, but please first answer these questions:
1. Will SEIU pay the bill of the hospitalized worker?
2. Will Andy Stern promise to renounce violence?
3. Will you aplogize to all involved?
4. Will we see the same tactics in other venues?
A major reason for the increasing controversy surrounding SEIU International has been their lack of commitment to genuine healthcare reform-and in fact their active attempts to undermine and sink patient-centered, single-payer reforms.
Progressive elements in the labor movement (and their own union) have long been aware of this problem, as have healthcare and single-payer activists around the country.
This story is now entering the wider public discussion as SEIU International embarks on new partnerships with corporate America and, all too often, Republican power brokers. We'll take a look, below, at their latest partnership, this one with the National Federation of Independent Business and the National Association of Realtors, to support a bill that hurts patients in the name of increasing insurance corporation profits-and, perhaps, winning employer sanction for SEIU organizing.
...for more background, please visit the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee's new site, ServingEmployersInsteadofUs.
4,000 brave women and men, RNs from the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, are spending this week on the picket lines outside of Sutter Health Hospitals throughout Northern California, on a 10-day strike over patient care issues. Let me tell you about it, and introduce you to some of the RNs, because this is an important strike for a re-energized American labor movement and a key moment for the nation's battle for quality healthcare.
This week in Ohio there was a major victory for democratic, member-led, social justice unionism. A hospital chain hand-picked a union, SEIU, which is known for being friendly to employers, and attempted to impose this company union on employees without a democratic process or any show of support among workers.
Local nurses, together with the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association, started an effort to block this anti-democratic, top-down deal and were successful--in a major victory for RNs, patients, and healthcare reform.
Should government mandate the purchase of for-profit insurance products, backed up by threats to garnish wages or place a lien on homes? Or should we move to a guaranteed healthcare system modeled on the single-payer financing that is working in Taiwan, Canada, and most of Europe?
This very interesting debate is happening simultaneously at the national and state levels-because mandated insurance is the top priority of the insurance industry, and they're pushing it everywhere they can.
Conversations with press like this happen every day, every hour in the Capitol; it's why the building exists.
But I guess most conversations aren't on the subject of the insurance industry's number one priority-which is to pass an "individual mandate" law. And most conversations don't happen as a gigantic fake healthcare reform bill seems to be careening to an ugly defeat.
Which is why most conversations don't end with patients being cited for a misdemeanor.
The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee put out a simple call for a petition last week, demanding access for our patients to CheneyCare, the guaranteed, non-profit, quality healthcare available to Dick Cheney. (Sign up if you haven't already.)
Pre-existing condition? No problem. Guaranteed healthcare? Of course. Heartless insurance bureaucrats meddling in medical decisions? No way. A single standard of quality care? Nothing less will do.
(Tragically, the girl in question, Nataline Sarkisyan, died yesterday evening after this diary was posted. nyceve at Daily Kos has more about the netroots' role in forcing CIGNA to capitulate. - promoted by Robert in Monterey)
I am pasting a release below about the Dec. 20 "Patient's Revolt" that forced heartless CIGNA corporation to approve the liver transplant that could save the life of 17-year-old Nataline Sarkysian.
It's been an emotional day involving hundreds of people, but there are a couple of lessons I want to take away.
First--we have power. We shouldn't be afraid to use it. A unique coalition of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, a union, together with netroots and the Armenian Community shamed a global insurance corporation into doing the right thing.
Second--we shouldn't have to do this...and every candidate pushing to mandate individuals purchase insurance products from the likes of CIGNA, who would still be in the business of profiting through the denial of care, should think long and hard. Are the CIGNA's of the world really the people who should control our healthcare dollars?
While politicians debate individual mandates-a/k/a forcing Americans to purchase expensive, unworkable insurance products from the very corporations who brought you our healthcare disaster-more evidence rolls in about how Americans are being bankrupted by their health insurance.
From Iowa to California to Massachusetts, the national healthcare debates are finally starting to hit the key point: the problem of the health insurance corporations. We'll take a look below…cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association's Breakroom Blog, as we organize for GUARANTEED healthcare on the single-payer model.
The Wall St. Journal reports on the new marketing plans for the health insurance companies: push health care reform, reap $100 billion in annual public subsidies!
We'll take a look at that, as well as the GOP candidates who don't care about cancer, the Sacramento insiders letting kids' health fail run out, and new problems with the "Massachusetts mandate" law.
