United We Serve
Posted by cloe on June 21, 2009 at 12:00 PM
This summer President Obama is challenging all Americans to aid our economic recovery and help lay a new foundation for growth by engaging in sustained, meaningful community service in four key areas: health care, energy, education, and community renewal. This initiative, called United We Serve, begins next Monday, June 22nd and runs through the National Day of Service and Remembrance on September 11th.
On Monday, First Lady Michelle Obama and several Cabinet Secretaries and senior administration officials will officially launch United We Serve by participating in service projects across the country.
- Mrs. Obama will join the First Lady of California Maria Shriver to highlight the importance of children’s health and well-being by helping to construct a public playground at Bret Harte Public Elementary School in San Francisco.
- Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Jackson will join Missouri River Relief, Blue River Watershed Association, Missouri Stream Team and Friends of the Kaw, as well as local students to monitor and help clean up the Missouri and Kansas Rivers at Kaw Point Park, Kansas.
- Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Donovan will join volunteers from the St. Bernard Project and other local organizations to rebuild a New Orleans home that was destroyed in Hurricane Katrina.
- Department of Energy Secretary Chu will travel to Battle Creek, Michigan for an energy efficiency event in partnership with League of Conservation Voters at the local YMCA. He will help assemble home energy efficiency kits and educational materials to help families lower their energy costs.
- Veterans’ Affairs Secretary Shinseki will assist volunteer drivers in transporting patients who are unable to drive to their medical appointments at VA Medical Centers.
- Secretary Vilsack will work with the Summer Food Service Program in Chicago to help prepare and distribute free, nutritious meals and snacks to children in low-income areas. The Summer Food Service Program is administered by the Food and Nutrition Service, an agency of the USDA.
To register your own service project or find a volunteer opportunity in your community visit Serve.gov.
Organizing for America is coordinating a National Health Care Day of Service on June 27th, as part of the ongoing campaign to pass comprehensive health care reform this year. Visit my.barackobama.com and sign up to host or attend an event.
Comments (3) «
Elephants and Mice,
Republicans and Change
Elephants aren’t afraid of mice – it’s a myth.
But Republicans are afraid of change – it’s a fact.
That’s the only explanation for the strident and premature Republican attacks on health care reform triggered by a Congressional Budget Office reaction to a draft not yet completely written.
The CBO said the plan it saw would cost $1 trillion over ten years and still leave about two-thirds of those without medical coverage on their own. That set the Republicans into a group moon-howl, with South Carolina’s Sen. Lindsey Graham widely quoted as saying the CBO figures were a “death blow to a government-run health care plan."
Republicans are clearly opposed to government-run anything, unless it’s something essential like torturing suspects, or spending $680 billion and more than 4,300 American lives to swap one group of corrupt Iraqi thugs for another.
Of course, we do have a government-run health plan already. It’s called Medicare, and it’s tax-supported help for those 65 and over. Medicare has been successful in keeping most retirees from having to choose between health care and bankruptcy. President Lyndon Johnson signed it into law in 1965.
Where were the Republicans on Medicare in the years prior to 1965?
Republicans were opposed, of course. It was change, and they had barely recovered from the change trauma of Social Security, which they had also opposed. Besides, Medicare would cover all alike, rich and poor, and that made it socialized medicine.
Even hinting at socialized medicine guaranteed opposition from the American Medical Association, then as now a group concerned mostly with those medical standards relating to forms of payment. But the AMA had the Republican party by the ears (or perhaps other body parts).
And private health insurance companies had little interest in upsetting a business plan that allowed them to collect premiums from the healthy until they became old and ill, at which point premiums would rise beyond reach or policies would not be renewed. They helped tighten the AMA’s grip.
All the Democrats gripped was Congress, with the 1964 elections giving them a 68-32 majority in the Senate and a 295-140 majority in the House.
And so Medicare became law on a House vote of 307-116 and a Senate tally of 70-17. Half of the House Republicans saw the light – or more probably, the next election in two years – and voted for the bill More than half of Republicans in the Senate opposed Medicare, six-year terms making votes in line with purchased principles easier.
The health care politics now are pretty much as they were in the early sixties. Republicans are opposed, screaming in horror at the costs, socialized medicine and all the other monsters living under their beds. The AMA remains concerned about the doctor/patient relation$hip, and the private insurers don’t want to compete with a government plan that might give the customers an even break.
I’ll predict a health reform victory before the end of the year, but offer this bit of comfort to the Republicans mortally afraid of change. Republicans opposed Social Security and got creamed in 1936. They opposed the reform that became Medicare and got creamed in 1964. And if they continue to oppose health care reform mindlessly, they’ll get creamed in 2010.
Which should make them feel good, because there’s no change involved.
###
« Hide Comments
Comments are now closed for this entry.
