On Jan 29, 2007, at 11:43 PM, Jim Straub wrote:
> Yeah, I'm with you. I do think that you may have a -tad-
> underestimated how difficult it will be to win it, but our position
> is for universal hc.
Seems to me that if you have a long-term goal, you pursue policies in the short-term that promote it. I don't see how SEIU is doing that. Why not find a state where the political environment for single-payer is promising and throw some resources into pushing it? Why support schemes like Romney's which are certain to fail, which contain onerous mandates, and which will discredit those who support them?
> But until we win it, the goal is to expand the number of people who
> have hc; by winning it in contracts; by supporting legislation that
> expands it; and in general just pushing the numbers up whever
> possible.
So how will these people who can't afford health insurance suddenly afford it because the law requires them to?
> This is highly non-trivial--- it is people's lives, literally.
> But as the battle comes, SEIU will be weighed in with massive
> massed power for hc; where, oh where, will the triumphant peoples'
> left be? Off in the closets of history, muttering dark
> imprecations to itself no one will ever hear? Or doing what SEIU
> is, building power, one worker at a time, into the millions, so
> that instead of being Mr Say, we can be Mr Do?
Do you really believe this?
> BTW guys, in all your calculations about union density, I find it
> odd no one has executed the most elementary analtical breakdown---
> how has CtW membership fared, and how has the rest?
Dunno. The BLS doesn't provide the data. You have it?
> Again, organizing the non-offshoreable broadly-defined service
> industry, and making those jobs into what factory jobs used to be,
> and using the resulting massed power to turn the direction of the
> country around, is our strategic project for the intermediate term,
> and every day tens of thousands bend their energies to making
> advances in this task. What's yours?
As I've said before, I'm all for that, though I'm not sure how writing checks to the Republican Governors' Association promotes that goal. But on health care, SEIU isn't missing the boat - they've set the course in the wrong direction.
Doug