With the health care debate raging, I, like many Americans, find myself asking how I feel about my health coverage.

It’s a difficult question. What I can say for sure is that last month was kind of a mixed bag.

In the middle of the month, my wife had a laparoscopy to repair a hernia that had formed around the incision from an emergency appendectomy last December. The inpatient surgery took three hours. She was in recovery for two hours before they finally brought her into her room in the outpatient ward of the hospital. Three hours later, they sent her home with a prescription for Oxycodone.

The surgery was a bit more extensive than your average laparoscopy. I’d had a similar procedure done several years ago, which involved four incisions. My wife’s surgeon used nine incisions. She was heavily sedated and wasn’t really back to normal until the following afternoon.

Still, they sent her home. It might’ve been best if they’d kept her overnight except for one crucial point: Our health insurance covers outpatient surgeries 100 percent. Hospitalization involves a $500 deductible, despite the fact that this was a complication from the previous surgery.

The next week I went to the dentist for a crown. Our health plan includes dental insurance, which is nice. Check-ups and cleanings are pretty much covered. However, once you get into oral surgery, you start talking some bucks. One may try to put off oral surgery, but, well, you can only put off that kind of pain for so long. If you don’t believe me, check out Marathon Man sometime and then try to tell me if it’s safe.

Our insurance was going to cover about half the cost of the crown, but considering that my wife’s laparoscopy didn’t cost anything, I figured we were ahead of the game.

That is, until the dentist performed a closer examination of the tooth in question and told me I’d need a root canal first.

Please tell Lawrence Olivier that no, it isn’t safe.

My oral surgery bill just doubled and then some. So much for being ahead of the game. And then, when I went in for the root canal, the endodontist, after taking x-rays and examining the tooth in question found that the real problem was the tooth next to it, which had an abscess. The first tooth, he said, still needed a root canal, and then would still need a crown, but this other tooth was much more urgent. Now my dental bill has quadrupled.

Like so many Americans, I’m asking myself, how do I feel about my health care?

My answer is multi-faceted. I like my health care. However, I don’t like paying for it.

My wife and I get health coverage through the employee plan at my place of work, Union Cab, which is a 100-percent worker-owned-and-operated cooperative. Our health coverage provider is Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin.

GHC provides excellent health care. It’s a not-for-profit organization and truly is a model for how health care should be delivered. GHC is all about sustainability. All the health care professionals within GHC are employees. They’re paid a decent wage, but their pay is not based on how many patients they can bring in or how much money they can bill to third-party payers. Because GHC isn’t about turning a profit over to some fat-cat CEO or some far-off board of directors, the cooperative isn’t concerned with maximizing profits.

What they do, however, is see that members receive the care they need in a timely manner. Oh, and GHC was one of the first, if not the first HMO in Dane County to utilize MyChart, an excellent software package that allows members to gain access to their medical records, schedule their own appointments and order prescriptions from their computer at home.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that paying for health coverage is eating me alive.

A little over a year ago, my wife quit her job. Previously, she’d worked for the State of Wisconsin. The health coverage was good, though not quite as good as GHC. Still, other than token co-pay, the state paid almost every penny of the health insurance premiums for the two of us.

Unfortunately, the job was making my wife physically ill. She put up with it for longer than she should have and then finally quit last summer. She’s now in graduate school and has not yet found another job.

It is extremely fortunate that Union Cab has a health plan. However, the cab company is not able to pay anywhere near the percentage of our premiums that the state had previously paid. In fact, the company is unable to pay any portion of any health insurance premiums for a driver’s family members.

That’s the trade-off for working in that particular business. The wage itself is relatively high but, for the company, the profit margin is relatively small, so the benefit package is minimal.

I pay $600 per month for health insurance. We get paid every two weeks, so I’m paying $300 out of every paycheck to pay our premiums.

When you include co-pays and deductibles, I’m paying as much for health care as I am for housing. And let me tell you, compared to the premiums, the co-pays and deductibles may just be nickel-and-dime stuff, but added together, it’s death by a thousand paper cuts, especially considering that with just one bread-winner in the household, we’re on one very tight budget. We’re practically budgeted to the penny.

And how am I able to afford to pay these premiums?

As a cab driver, I’m paid by commission. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to work at a place like Union Cab, which has seniority pay increases with no cap. At any other cab company, I would not be able to support the household without my wife working. This notion horrifies me because, given my wife’s health issues over the last several months, without what I get paid at Union Cab we’d be just another statistic, just one more defaulted mortgage.

Still, we make ends meet, I’m working an extra shift every other week. I’m not taking about some dinky six- or eight-hour shift. I’m talking about a full, ten-hour shift, which usually ends up being more like twelve hours. On top of that, I usually work past my end time for my other shifts as well.

Last week was one of my long weeks. I worked somewhere around 55-56 hours. I’ll work fewer hours this week, but I am averaging somewhere around 48-50 hours a week.

So much for the Haymarket Martyrs. So much for the 40-hour week.

I feel like such a crybaby about this whole thing. I’ll just be doing this for a little while, but there’s people who work full time and then some their whole lives. It’s just their lot in life. It’s just them doing what they have to do.

Well, that’s just a lot of Protestant Work Ethic bullshit. The number 40 is not some arbitrary number that some bomb-throwing anarchist pulled out of his ass. This experience has taught me that there’s a huge difference between working 40 hours a week and working more than 40 hours a week.

The 40-hour work week gives the worker time to rest and leaves the worker with enough energy to spend quality time with friends and family, to get involved with civic activities or even create art if that is what he or she chooses to do.

I’m working beyond the 40-hour workweek because there is no other choice. My wife and I are both in our mid-to-late 40s. Going without health insurance is simply not an option. Otherwise, what would we do? Wait until the pain is so bad that we show up at the emergency room with cases so acute that they have to treat us?

The system as it exists now is flat out unjust and immoral. I’m given a choice of working myself to death or letting illnesses and conditions get so bad that they have to be treated in the ER, which, of course, costs everyone much more.

But at least I have a choice. Somewhere around 47 million Americans don’t have this choice. Their access to health care is blocked by simple economics.

We need relief. A public option that provides full medical coverage with little or no cost to those who earn up to 400 percent of Federal Poverty Level income would be a good place to start.

The simplest and easiest thing to do would be to expand Medicare so it covers all Americans. I guess you could charge premiums and co-pays, preferably on a sliding scale, though I think it would be easier to charge nothing at all for expanded Medicare. Instead, raise taxes considerably on the super-wealthy, less on the wealthy and even less on the upper middle class.

All of that said, I do have to say that something that bothers me greatly about the health care debate is the focus on the delivery of payment for health care services. This problem is double-faceted and requires a two-prong solution.

Yes, we need to deal with the issue of delivery of payment for health care services, but we also desperately need to fix the problem of delivery of health care services.

The key word here is access.

Lack of access to health care causes tremendous problems that we all pay for. And when I say pay, I mean that in the most literal sense. When our fellow Americans are denied access to health care, it hits us all in the wallet with greater health care expenses.

Economic access is only part of the problem. A good part of the problem is also geographical. The problem is sometimes cultural.

We need to understand and adopt a simple concept:

To be a healthier society, with a health system that works better and costs less, we want all Americans to see medical professionals more often rather than less often.

This runs contrary to the mantra of Republicans with their so-called free-market health-care solution. They would prefer that individuals purchase their own health insurance and pay their own health care expenses—with the aid of tax credits and deductions, of course. Their reasoning is that if people make their own health care decisions, i.e., pay for it themselves, they’ll make more prudent decisions, i.e., put things off because they can’t afford it.

This is morally bankrupt as well as intellectually dishonest.

Consider the words spoken by John Stossel at a recent teabagger rally held here in Madison, Wisconsin organized by Americans for Prosperity, a right-wing organization funded in part by oil and gas conglomerates:

"Americans need to learn to shop for their own health insurance the same way people used to save pennies when they compared the prices of cans of peas," Stossel said. It should be noted that propagandist Stossel finally has chosen to be honest about his work. Shortly after uttering those words, he took a job with Fox.

We want people to see medical professionals more often, not less often. This means that people with minor ailments can get the care they need before the minor ailment turns into something major. This means that major ailments can be discovered sooner, thus increasing the patient’s chances of survival and reducing the expense of treatment. This also means increased opportunities to educate the public about health, which can save lives as well as money down the road.

As they say, an ounce of prevention equals a pound of cure. Or in other words, a dollar of prevention is worth a hundred thousand dollars of high-tech treatment down the road.

We need to unleash hordes of nurse practitioners and physician assistants who can do the basic work of doctors for a fraction of the cost.

We need to multiply the number of community clinics by at least 100, if not more.

We need to fund outreach programs where medical professionals go into the inner city and the hinterlands to treat the sick and educate everyone about how a functional health care system works.

We need to increase Medical Assistance funding for taxicabs to transport people to and from their medical appointments.

We need to do everything we can to either get people to a health-care clinic or bring the health-care clinic to them.

Why?

Because these measures work. Increasing access to health care leads to a healthier populace and saves money as well. I’d say that’s pretty much a no-brainer.

Still not convinced? Here are a couple of examples.

Holland has a single-payer system, which is one of the best in the world. Interestingly, the Dutch system includes a mix of government-run and privately owned clinics. Recently it was discovered that something was dragging the whole system down. Emergency room visits had increased, which led to a dramatic increase in the expense of the Dutch health care system.

In response, the Dutch government created a program where they sent doctors out on house calls. This might sound crazy and absurdly expensive, but the rationale was that the money spent up-front would be more than compensated by the money saved on the back end.

And they were right. Emergency-room visits dropped, thus saving the Dutch government a great deal of money.

Another dramatic example can be found right here in Dane County. The 1990s featured a mass migration of African Americans into Dane County. The new residents were largely poor and, frankly, needed a wide variety of social services. Sadly, the city and county were slow to respond to this demographic shift.

Parenthetically, I have to state that I have been railing about this neglect, about this head-in-the-sand approach for years, and now I have my smoking gun, an actual quantifying of not just a problem, but also a solution that actually works.

Last year, the county released the results of a study of infant mortality rates. The results were surprising, if not shocking.

Prior to 2000, infant mortality among African Americans was 19 out of every 1000 births. After 2000, that number dropped to six. During all the years of the study, infant mortality among whites held steady at four out of 1000 births.

No one could explain the sudden decrease in infant mortality among African Americans, though there was mass rejoicing among city and county officials, even though the discrepancy between whites and African Americans is 50 percent. Still, this is great news.

The only problem was that they didn’t know what they were doing right. The Public Health Department of Madison and Dane County was given a half million-dollar grant to figure that out.

As Dr. Tom Schlenker, Executive Director of Public Health of Madison and Dane County said, "We need to discover the driving forces behind these trends to protect and sustain them and to share them with the rest of the state and nation."

I don’t think Schlenker leaves his office much. Otherwise, he might already know the answer, and he might’ve been able to save $500,000 in grant money.

Infant mortality among African Americans in Dane County decreased by 70 percent because of Union Cab, the place where I work.

During the late 1990s, the state mandated that the counties use Medical Assistance money to pay for transportation to help low-income residents go to and from their medical appointments. The program is very simple. HMOs and other medical organizations pay Union Cab to perform this task. They forward our bill to the county. The county bills the state.

I have extensive first-hand knowledge of this program, and I know it is a tremendous help to these women who for one reason or another have difficulty in getting to their medical appointments without having a cab pick them up. Sometimes it’s because they live out in the suburbs, far from any kind of mass transit. Sometimes it’s because they physically are unable to wait for the bus or ride on the bus. Sometimes there are childcare issues.

There are numerous issues, but we are the solution. Our efforts save money and save lives.

And just how important is pre-natal care? The results are obvious, but let’s take a closer look. The woman who receives quality pre-natal care is more likely to enjoy a non-eventful pregnancy and most likely won’t need to go to the clinic as often, which saves money. Her chances of giving birth prematurely decrease, which saves us money. A healthy baby is less likely to suffer from chronic health problems, which saves us a boatload of money.

More importantly, by taking action as we have, we are making great strides to help newcomers to our community feel like they are genuinely part of the community, all because we, as a community, made a concerted effort to provide access to health care for people who need it the most.

So let’s have our debate about how to fix health care. There are no shortages of ideas out there, so we need to listen closely and keep an open mind to any and all good ideas. But mostly we need to understand how we pay for people’s health care is only part of the solution. If we don’t address access, we’re not really working to fix the problem. All we’re doing is slapping a bandage on a gaping wound.

* * *

Regarding the disruptions at town hall meetings across the country, there’s a lot I could say, but I’ve said a lot already, so I’ll be very, very brief:
The silent majority is neither.

And now something from the sports world:

Brett Favre lashed out at ESPN the other day over the network's reporting that he's caused a "schism" in the Minnesota Vikings locker room just because he was allowed to skip out on a good bit of training camp, has been handed the starting job and is the recipient of various kinds of special treatment.

“I don’t even know what that means, I’ve got no reaction,” Favre said, expressing anger and confusion over the word "schism." “I’m just doing what I can do to hopefully help this team win and just trying to fit in. I’m not worried about that. That’s for you guys to have some fun with. Once again, I have no idea what that means. I’m assuming it’s controversial.”

Whoah! I guess Favre doesn't know what the word "dictionary" means either. Anybody with any kind of intellectual curiosity will crack open the dictionary when they encounter a word they don't know, but then again, I know for a fact that Favre doesn't own a dictionary. I recently saw a magazine feature that included pictures of Favre's "study." I didn't see a dictionary, but I saw a dog-eared volume of "My Pretty Pony" and a copy of "My Pet Goat," autographed by George W. Bush. Favre said the book was one of his most prized possessions.

But getting back to Favre's outburst, it seems that his skin is getting less and less thick every day. I think Shakespeare must've been talking about Favre when he penned this line in perfect iambic pentameter:

Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

Last night over beers after the softball game, I brought up the issue of what is the middle class.

Wow, great idea! Yeah, class analysis and softball, two things that one doesn't necessarily think would mix. Well, depending on your team, maybe they would, but really, it depends on your team and which teammate you're talking to.

In our corner of the table, three of us were talking about General Motors, and I was getting increasingly hot and bothered by my two teammates bashing the workers, saying it was all their fault and the fault of the UAW, that it was ridiculous for a guy who turns the same three bolts to get paid that much money, which of course they waste on fancy cars and boats.

I countered by saying that the United States is the only industrialized country without a national health plan, and that's why the American automakers have such a hard time competing internationally. Furthermore, I mentioned that I've been saying for years that the U. S. economy is built on a house of cards because of the situation with health care and a reliance on fossil fuels.

That didn't get anywhere.

Now of the two teammates, I felt one should've known better. The other, well I didn't expect the same charity and compassion from him. I decided to push the conversation in a different direction. I asked, "Well, at what level of prosperity would you define as middle class? And who deserves to be middle class?"

That didn't get anywhere either. One teammate had no answer. The other started talking about people who ONLY earn between $100,000 and $200,000 who are barely able to afford a second house. That wasn't what I was talking about.

I do think this is a compelling question. The concept of the middle class is slippery, fluid and to a certain extent a figment of our imagination. A person could be middle class one year and not be middle class the next year. I do think there are certain levels of prosperity that would define one as middle class, like owning a house and a certain degree of upward mobility, if not for the individual but at least for his or her children.

As to who deserves to be in the middle class, I remember a friend years ago saying, "Everyone should be able to live as well as the petite bourgeoisie." I remember replying, "You mean everyone should be petite bourgeois?" "No, I said everyone should live as well as the petite bourgeoisie!"

There was a lot of talk during the last presidential election about strengthening the middle class. It was good to hear, and I think Obama genuinely believes his own rhetoric on this topic. Bringing it to fruition is something altogether different, especially given that the previous eight years had succeeded in transferring so much wealth to the richest one percent of Americans that now we're in a state of income misdistribution that hasn't been seen since the Gilded Age. This is a situation that is very difficult to reverse. The ruling class worked damn hard to steal everybody's money, and they don't want to give it back. Obama talks about relatively minor tax reforms, and he gets redbaited. What year is this?

I hate to talk about the so-called American Dream, but it's apropos to this conversation. The American Dream is about building a strong middle class. History has shown time and time again that when the middle class is strong, the economy is strong, which is good for everybody. My teammates were talking about how autoworkers should be happy to get paid fifteen dollars per hour. They said that was a fair wage for the "work" they do. Fifteen dollars per hour translates into an annual wage of $30,000. That's not enough to raise a family. That's not enough to buy a house. Let's remember, people who work in manufacturing create wealth. They deserve to be compensated for the real value of their work.

So, who deserves to be middle class? I'd say everybody deserves to be middle class. That's not to say everybody can be middle class, but at least everybody deserves the opportunity to at least approach that level of prosperity.

In Barbara Ehrenreich’s groundbreaking essay, “Reimagining Socialism,” which appeared recently in The Nation, she states that we on the Left need a plan, but we don’t have a plan.

Well, I have a plan, albeit a small one.

My plan is something I like to call Neo-Syndicalism. This may sound familiar to longtime Mobius readers; I have written about this before.

Just to quickly review, Neo-Syndicalism, like Classical Syndicalism, is the notion that we can change society through economic means rather than political means. In terms of Classical Syndicalism, this is most elegantly expressed in the old IWW slogan, “one big union, one big strike.”

Neo-Syndicalism takes an updated, more pragmatic, and perhaps more cynical approach in that we acknowledge that perhaps we can’t overthrow the Capitalist system. However, within the Capitalist system we can create liberated zones through organisms like worker cooperatives, collectives, and other forms of worker-owned businesses, along with economic alternatives such as fair trade, community supported agriculture, and, in general, sustainability.

Essentially, this is about building our own economy brick by brick.

The movement, the plan, is out there. It just doesn’t know it, at least not yet. That is why I have given it a name. Giving a movement a name pulls together diffusive elements and helps provide a conduit for people with different interests to work together toward a common goal.

Or to put it another way, if you are involved in an activity that falls under my heading of Neo-Syndicalism, you are doing something greater and more significant than you realize. You should take this understanding, talk to the other members of your group, and discuss your work in this greater context. You should network with other groups that do the same thing your group does. And then you should network with groups you may not have much in common with if these groups share the strategy of Neo-Syndicalism.

It’s about building our own economy brick by brick.

In these desperate times, there’s interesting and radical things going on. Last year in Chicago, workers at Republic Windows and Doors staged a sit-in after the company was forced to close when the bank, which had received TARP funds, refused to extend a line of credit to allow the company to continue production. The worker’s refusal to let the plant close was rewarded. Another company came and in bought the plant thus saving a few hundred jobs.

In Latin America, there have been numerous instances where factories abandoned by the companies that owned them have been taken over by the workers. As one worker commented, the company came into our community, took our subsidies, took our tax breaks and then left. We are claiming ownership.

My favorite story is in France, there have been instances of boss-napping. Of course, the French being the French were rather civilized about the whole thing. While holding bosses as they waited for corporations to consider their demands, they stuffed the bosses with moules et frites.

I remember way back in 1979, when I first moved here to Madison, Wisconsin, to attend the University of Wisconsin. Somebody handed me a copy of the very last issue of the radical newspaper Takeover. I remember the slogan: “Are you going to take orders or are you going to take over?”

Granted, I’ve always found the sentiment a bit simplistic, but in this case, I think it’s quite apt. I look at the shuttered GM plant in Janesville, and all I can think is “are you going to take orders or are you going to take over?”

These corporations are afforded the same rights as individual human beings. We give them tax breaks. We give them tax subsidies. We give them tons and tons of public money so they can come into our communities to provide jobs. In these harsh economic times, we give them stimulus money so they can stay in business and continue to provide jobs.

And then they close. They either simply shut their doors or they move to other countries.

As far as I’m concerned, the GM plant in Janesville belongs to the people of Janesville. They should take over the plant and run it as a worker-owned cooperative or perhaps as a community-owned cooperative of some sort. They could produce anything they want, though perhaps it might make the most sense if they produced cars. Perhaps they could contract with one of the surviving auto companies. Or maybe they could actually start their own auto manufacturing company. Or maybe they could take over Saturn once GM officially discontinues that line.

One might think, automakers designing cars? Ridiculous?

Well, of course they’d hire design engineers and whatever brain power they need, but just imagine what kind of cars such a plant would produce when the workers who produce the vehicles and drive the vehicles actually have a say in the design of the vehicles. Gee, they might actually be vehicles people want to drive!

And yes, I do understand this is a pipe dream without a massive infusion of cash. After all, as a character in The Right Stuff says, “No bucks, no Buck Rogers.”

If the government can bail out the banks and the auto companies, they can provide money to facilitate the formation of worker-owned-and-operated cooperatives at abandoned manufacturing plants. This would comprise a real economic stimulus package. It would save and create jobs. It would be great for the communities that die long, slow, painful deaths when a manufacturing plant closes.

And it would help get us back into the business of building stuff the world wants to buy.

The Obama Administration should call for an initiative to provide grants and low interest loans to abandoned workers who want to form worker cooperatives. In fact, the Obama Administration should encourage abandoned workers to take over shuttered manufacturing plants.

Of course, there’s a chicken/egg aspect to this. Workers should view this tactic strategically, that if more and more workers take over abandoned manufacturing plants, it could be a way to force the Obama Administration to take positive action. We saw this during the FDR Administration, and it’s equally true now: radical change comes from the bottom up. Remember, FDR himself said, “Make me.” Obama has pretty much implied the same thing, urging people to organize, to basically give him political cover to be able to move in stronger directions.

But let’s make one thing perfectly clear: Neo-Syndicalism is not merely a tactic to push government into a more radical direction. It’s a strategy. Again, it’s about rebuilding our economy, brick by brick. It’s about telling the corporatocracy that we will no longer play their little reindeer games, that we can find a path toward a real and lasting prosperity without them.
Neo-Syndicalism is just a term I came up with, but as I’ve said time and time again, words have great power. What we’re talking about is defining a movement that’s out there, working hard and doing good work. By identifying this as a movement, we create a synergy that will make it stronger through greater numbers and more comprehensive exchanges of information and, in general, people power.

During the "We Do the Work" panel, I noticed a woman wearing the coolest T-shirt I would see all weekend. It said:

My Marxist-Feminist Dialectic Brings All the Boys to the Yard.

Way cool!

Okay, it's been way too long since I've posted, so here goes nothing.

Wiscon was last weekend. As always, it was really great. More later--perhaps--but here's the coolest thing that happened all weekend. On Friday, I moderated a panel titled, "We do the work" about the portrayal or lack thereof of working class people in science fiction. Before the panel, I did an interview for WORT, our local community radio station on the weekly show, "Labor Radio." Unfortunately, the show aired just after the panel, so I wasn't able to hear it. However, an employee at the Concourse Hotel, where Wiscon was held, did hear the show. During the big author signing on Monday, he found me and told me he loved a certain comment that I had made during the interview, "If you're not a subject, you're an object, and if you're objectified, people feel like they can do things to you."

He told me he would never forget those words.

Way cool!

Shrouded behind a cloud of free market rhetoric is the simple fact that John McCain’s health care plan will raise taxes for the middle class and small businesses. McCain’s plan would tax me for the full value of my health plan. The contribution I pay to my premium would no longer be deducted from my paycheck pre-tax. Essentially, this is a double-tax.

Under the status quo, my employer’s contributions to the company health plan are considered a business expense and can be written off on the company’s taxes. McCain’s plan would encourage younger, healthier employees to leave the company plan. Costs could rise to such an extent that my employer would reduce or drop this benefit, thus increasing the company’s tax liability. Granted, money not spent on this benefit would somewhat offset higher taxes, but the company would lose the ability to invest in the health of its employees.

Looking at my own household situation and crunching number, I've found that despite tax credits offered by McCain’s plan, I’d pay more under most of the possible scenario except going without health insurance. And I’d never see a dime of that credit because the money would go directly to the insurance company of my choosing. Insurance companies would receive billions upon billions of dollars of our money before paying for even one single medical procedure. Thanks to proposed deregulation, if you have a pre-existing condition, there is no guarantee you would be able to find a private insurer, and if you do, you might pay considerably higher rates.

Market-based health care proponents freely admit that they seek to reduce health care expenditures by forcing consumers to pay more out-of-pocket costs. McCain speaks derisively about “gold-plated” health plans, but he doesn’t seem to understand that when we see health care professionals more rather than less often there is greater emphasis on prevention and health maintenance, and that saves all of us a great deal of money in the long run.

My conversation with Alex continues right here. Again, Alex and I are the founding members of the Madison Vampire Coven, a group of Madison, WI vampire writers. We read at Barnes and Noble East, Monday, October 27, 7 PM.




Fred: A question every writer would probably want to ask, how did you
snare an agent? Did you land your agent before or after the
publication of "The Sword-Edged Blonde?" If it was afterward, what
role did the publication of your first book have in landing an agent,
and what was the story behind signing the deal with Night Shade?

Alex: I got my agent through a blind submission before I'd sold
anything other than short stories. She was the first one who seemed
to "get" what I was doing and saw there might be a market for it, and
she stuck with me for a long time before making that first sale. She
placed "The Sword Edged Blonde" with Night Shade, and has handled
everything since.

Fred: During our first interview, I was most intrigued with the
statement you made about your vampires in "Blood Groove," "The humans
in the story cross paths with them at their own peril." A big source
on tension in my vampire novel is the need of the protagonist to be
able to pass for human. How much does that come to play with your
vampires? Do they mix with humans or they to exist around the fringes
of society? If a human does cross their path, are they pretty much
doomed?

Alex: The vampire characters view humans very differently. The
protagonist, Zginski, tries to pass as human but his immense ego and
outdated understanding of social roles trips him up. The heroine
Fauvette begins as someone content to exist in the shadowy fringes of
society, much like a parasite or scavenger. One vampire has a normal
job, while others are pretty much unconcerned with blending in. But
none of them befriend or interact with humans except to serve their
own ends, and as a result the closer humans get to them, the less
likely they are to survive.

Fred: How old is Rudolfo Zginski and how much of his history comes out
in the book? It seems to me that if you have an immortal character
who's been around a good long time, that character would have so much
past, it might be a bit of a struggle for that character to not
constantly see the past superimposed on the present? Does Rudolfo have
issues with this? How much of his past is actually "written?"

Alex: The biggest problem for Zginski is not his age, but the
experience of being stuck in limbo for sixty fairly substantial years
from 1915 to 1975. The world changed dramatically in that time, and
he has to learn to maneuver in it.

Fred: Do you have plans for any other Rudolfo novels, either prequel or sequel?

Alex: The nice thing about vampires is that there are always other
stories for them. So it wouldn't surprise me to see him pop up again.

Fred: We talked a little bit about music before and the role that it
plays in "Blood Groove." I love the graphic on your website of the
eight-track tape with the fangs. Is this a novel with a soundtrack?

Alex: First, my wife gets the props for designing that image. And
since the novel is set in 1975 (pre-disco) Memphis, the dominant sound
would be funk: Parliament/Funkadelic, The O'Jays, etc. Music threads
through the story, since at the time almost everyone for a hundred
miles around Memphis listened to WHBQ AM, and they played everything.
But for me the most crucial music was the 1979 album "Streets of Fire"
by the late English rocker Duncan Browne. I listened to it constantly
while writing the book, named the heroine after one of its songs and
dedicated the book to Browne's memory. It's hard to find, but well
worth the effort.

You might say that Alex Bledsoe and I are founding members of the Madison Vampire Coven. Well, I just came up with that name for the two of us. Last year, on Halloween, I did a vampire reading to mark the upcoming publication of "Vampire Cabbie." Now, there are two Madison writers with vampire books. Does that mean next Halloween there will be four of us? Like me, Alex lives here in Madison, well, Middleton, actually, and he has a vampire novel coming out next year, "Blood Groove," from Tor. His first novel, "The Sword-Edged Blonde," was published last year by the very cool press Night Shade. Eddie LaCrosse, the hero of "The Sword-Edged Blonde" greets us again later next year in "Burn Me Deadly."

Alex and I will do a vampire reading Monday, October 27, 7 PM at Barnes and Noble East, which is at East Towne Mall on Madison's far east side.

"Blood Groove" tells the story of smooth continental vampire Rudolfo Zginski who was staked in 1915, only to be resurrected in Memphis sixty years later. He finds a world he must quickly master, and more peril than he ever expected. In addition to the automobiles, polyester fashions and racial tensions of 1975, he encounters four new vampires who know their nature only from the movies, and must evade a trap set for him half a century earlier that might ensnare them all.

Here's an interview I did with Alex. For more info about Alex, go to:

www.alexbledsoe.com




Fred: It looks like you could have a whole series of Eddie LaCrosse books, but here you are coming out with a vampire novel. For you as a writer, why did you write a vampire novel and why now when you might be working on a series?

Alex: I'm doing both, actually. "Blood Groove" comes out next spring, and the second Eddie LaCrosse novel, "Burn Me Deadly", will be released in the fall of 2009.

As to why a vampire novel, the simplest answer is, I'm a fan. From the first time I saw a vampire movie as a kid, I've been fascinated by them. I've read the classics (even most of "Varney the Vampire," which is a hard slog), a lot of less-than-classics, and seen every vampire movie that looks like it might have an interesting idea. But the core idea of "Blood Groove"--of an older vampire mentoring younger ones, more or less against his better judgment--came to me in that old cliche, a dream. Really. And I held onto the idea for several years, waiting for it to accrue some additional weight.

Fred: Also, how did you get Tor on board with this? Frankly, the big presses don't have much respect for the intelligence of their readers, which is why they strive to brand their writers, I guess because they figure the people who buy the books don't have the brains to not get confused when their favorite writer hop-scotches from genre to genre.

Alex: I can't take any real credit for that; my amazing agent, Marlene Stringer, worked her magic there. And the editorial staff at Tor have been awesome to work with.

Fred: Alex, you and I were on a panel together earlier this year at Odyssey Con about vampire archetypes. What kind of vampire is Rudolfo Zginski? How does he fit in with the vampire archetypes discussed at the panel? Rudolfo meets four newby vampires whose knowledge of their nature is restricted to what they know from the movies. What kind of statement are you making about vampire archetypes or even stereotypes by characters such as these?

Alex: Zginski is an Old World European vampire in the tradition of Dracula, Lord Ruthven and Francis Varney. He has the accent, the title and the attitude. He also knows a lot about his vampiric nature, since he comes from the part of the world where the vampire was essentially invented, and where the stories are handed down. The "young" vampires he encounters are children of their time, and they receive their information through movies and television. And the only "statement" intended is that as we distance ourselves from our societies, whether through time, physical space or attitude, we learn to accept things as truths that may not be, simply because we hear them a lot. Zginski has first-hand knowledge, while the others have second-hand.

Fred: That sounds like a great comic premise. Is this a comic novel? What kind of humor do you wring out of characters such as these if any?

Alex: There's some fish-out-of-water humor, but I chose the era because I wanted to be pre-Anne Rice. While I admire her initial idea for updating the vampire, I don't find a tortured, self-loathing creature to be very compelling. My vampires are what they are, and for the most part accept it in the true vampiric spirit of nihilism. The humans in the story cross paths with them at their own peril.

Fred: The novel takes place in Memphis in 1975. Myself, I'm working on the rewrites of my next novel, "Guitar God," which also takes place in the 1970s. How much fun was it grounding the book in that time period, given the nostalgia about the music that you must have felt, as well as the less than nostalgic feeling about the clothes, the economy and the politics? And how strange is it to think back to an era before e-mail, before cell phones, and OMG! before the Internet, where one would actually walk over to a friend's house to see what they were up to?

Alex: The seventies in the South, where I grew up, had a very specific vibe that I tried to recapture. We were past the turmoil of the sixties, but there were many unspoken social boundaries still in place; boundaries that, to a vampire, would be meaningless. The economy had tanked, our standing in the world was seriously diminished, and cynicism was rampant. Radio at that time was a free-for-all; you could hear Funkadelic, followed by John Denver, followed by the Edgar Winter Group, all on the same radio station; and there were the ghastly one-hit wonders, from "Disco Duck" to "The Night Chicago Died," that we all wish we could carve out of our brains.

Fred: And why Memphis? Is there something special to you personally about the city? Are you able to conjure a classically gothic vampire setting like say New Orleans or Paris? Or is your Memphis an anti-gothic setting?

Alex: It's definitely not Gothic. It's decadent and sweaty like New Orleans, but still a city of aging Southern graciousness. In a way, it's the very embodiment of "Wham, bam, thank you, ma'am." For the vampires, it's got both the urban population that allows them to live in anonymity, while still being close enough to rural areas for them to disappear as needed.

Fred: Lastly, do you believe vampires really exist?

Alex: I'm going to quote the late Arthur C. Clarke: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." So I'll never say anything is impossible.

Does the idea of Sarah Palin serving as vice president scare the crap out of you? If it doesn't, it should. If you're not convinced, please read this article from The Nation.


from The Nation, October 13, 2008

Palin's Party

by Michelle Goldberg



Wasilla, Alaska

Pat O'Hara, a journalist who served on the Wasilla school board for
twelve years, remembers how the religious right made her feel like a
stranger in her own community. The Mat-Su Valley, which includes the
neighboring towns of Wasilla and Palmer, had once been a libertarian
sort of place, full of blue-collar individualists who didn't fit in
elsewhere. "I had the dog team in the woods, the cabin in the woods. My
friends were teachers, farmers, construction workers," she said as she
stood with about 1,500 demonstrators at a September 13 anti-Sarah Palin
rally in Anchorage. "It was kind of a working, very much Democratic
community. And then it changed."

The Valley, Alaska's fastest-growing region, is a spectacular area of
lakes and birch and spruce forests, surrounded by granite-colored
snowcapped mountains that poke through the clouds. Palmer has a
community core, a walkable few blocks with a lively coffee shop,
Vagabond Blues. Wasilla, though, has developed as a sprawl of strip
malls containing a mix of pawnshops, gun shops and chain stores--and,
incongruously, a decent sushi place, with a Korean chef from California.
It is a little piece of the American South near the North Pole,
rough-hewn but slowly upscaling.

It wasn't until the 1990s that local churches like the Wasilla Assembly
of God, which Palin grew up attending, became aggressively political. A
few years before Palin became mayor, a group of preachers confronted the
school board with questions about social issues that had never before
surfaced in local politics, according to O'Hara, who wrote first for the
Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman and then for the Anchorage Daily
News. "They started asking me, 'Would you allow a homosexual to
teach in schools?' and 'Do you favor abortion?'" she said. "At the time,
I didn't know what was coming. I said, 'This is not a school board
issue. We have overcrowding. We have funding problems.'" The last time
O'Hara ran, conservative pastors mounted an effort to defeat her, saying
she favored hiring homosexuals, but they failed. Nevertheless, in 1996,
feeling increasingly alienated in a place she'd lived for twenty-five
years, she quit the school board and moved to more liberal Anchorage.

"The whole community changed," she said. "It became extremely rigid and
intolerant, and you can see that in every election since." Palin, said
O'Hara, "represents the worst of those values. She feels that because
she's a member of the right church, she's chosen by God to inflict her
values on everyone."

With her vice presidential nomination, Sarah Palin has become the
ultimate religious-right success story. Ever since the Christian
Coalition was formed using the infrastructure of Pat Robertson's 1988
presidential run, the movement has focused on building power from the
ground up, turning conservative churches into little political machines.
"I would rather have a thousand school board members than one president
and no school board members," Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed said
in 1996. Palin, who got her start in a local church-backed political
struggle, is very much the product of Reed's strategy.

She has not always governed as a zealot; in fact, she's a bit of a
cipher, with scant record of speeches or writings on social issues or
foreign policy. Nevertheless, several people who've dealt with her say
that those concerned about church-state separation should be chilled by
the idea of a Palin presidency. "To understand Sarah Palin, you have to
realize that she is a religious fundamentalist," said Howard Bess, a
retired liberal Baptist minister living in Palmer. "The structure of her
understanding of life is no different from a Muslim fundamentalist."

Palin's nomination, and the energy she has injected into the GOP, show
that, once again, reports of the death of the Christian right have been
greatly exaggerated. Not long ago, pundits and journalists were lining
up to explain how the religious right, long the largest and
best-organized faction in the Republican Party, was deteriorating. Last
year the liberal evangelical Jim Wallis published a piece in Time
headlined The Religious Right's Era Is Over. Several months later The
New York Times Magazine followed with a cover story titled The
Evangelical Crackup. Liberal columnist E.J. Dionne argued, in his book
Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious
Right, that the movement was collapsing.

Obviously the religious right has endured many setbacks in recent years.
Ted Haggard, former head of the National Association of Evangelicals,
slunk away in disgrace following a scandal involving a gay prostitute
and crystal meth. Ralph Reed was tainted by his association with the
extravagantly corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Jerry Falwell died, as did
the influential Florida televangelist D. James Kennedy. Tom DeLay, one
of the movement's fiercest allies, left Congress after being indicted on
charges of criminal conspiracy. Nonetheless, the Republican Party is
actually more dependent on religious conservatives than ever. In the
2006 midterms, the most significant GOP defeats were among moderate
Republicans from the Northeast, where the party lost almost a third of
its House seats, and from the Midwest, where it lost 15 percent. As
moderates and independents abandoned the party, its center of gravity
moved rightward. In order to maintain the support of the party that
reluctantly nominated him, John McCain had to choose a vice president
who represented the base. Indeed, never before has someone with such
deep roots in the movement been on a major party ticket.

It's a familiar pattern: the Christian right often has its greatest
triumphs just after it's been pronounced moribund. In 1999, just as the
Christian right was about to achieve unprecedented power in the Bush
administration, The Economist wrote, "The armies of
righteousness, which once threatened to overwhelm the Republican Party,
are downcast and despondent." One could have written the same thing last
month. Now, as then, the movement has been resurrected. At the recent
Values Voter Summit, a religious-right gathering in Washington, DC,
sponsored by the Family Research Council, attendees were ebullient. "The
surge of energy is unbelievable," said Emily Buchanan, executive
director of the Susan B. Anthony List, a PAC that supports antiabortion
candidates and aims to mobilize antiabortion women. "Sarah Palin is
going to be our poster woman," she said. "She represents exactly what
we've been trying to do since we were founded in 1992."

Palin--who opposes gay rights, believes abortion should be banned even
in cases of rape and incest, and supports the teaching of
creationism--wasn't known as a leader in Alaska's religious right, but
she clearly had ties to it, and to some of the more extreme
fundamentalists in the United States. As has been widely reported, her
husband, Todd, was a member of the separatist Alaskan Independence
Party. She reportedly attended the party's 1994 convention, and as
governor she gave a video address to the group's gathering this year in
Fairbanks. Less well-known are the Alaskan Independence Party's ties to
the theocratic Constitution Party--a vice chair of the former is the
state representative for the latter. According to its platform, the
Constitution Party aims "to restore American jurisprudence to its
Biblical foundations" and advocates criminalizing gay sex and abolishing
Social Security.

When Palin ran for mayor in 1996, she leveraged the support of the
religious conservatives. Wasilla mayoral races are nonpartisan and in
the past had been focused on local issues like taxes and policing. In
her challenge to Republican mayor John Stein, Palin changed that,
touting her opposition to abortion, her religion and her support for gun
rights. "She got a lot of help from the Christian groups," said Curt
Menard, mayor of Mat-Su Borough (which includes Wasilla). "They came out
and did telephone polling and things like that."

Menard and his wife, Republican State Senate candidate Linda Menard--the
former director of the Miss Wasilla pageant--have known Palin since she
was in third grade. She was a classmate and close friend of their late
son, who, before he died in a 2001 plane crash, was the godfather of
Palin's son Track. Their families attend the same church--Wasilla Bible
Church, which Palin joined in 2002--and the Menards are caring for
Palin's dog, Agia, named after Palin's proudest legislative
accomplishment, the Alaska Gasoline Inducement Act, while she is on the
campaign trail. They clearly adore Palin, and when Curt Menard describes
her connections to the religious right, he doesn't intend to be
critical.

Echoing Pat O'Hara's account, he recalled that the area had been solidly
Democratic until the rise of politicized right-wing religion. "Pat
Robertson, when he organized the Christian right...that's when this area
really changed," said Menard. "To my knowledge, I would say [Palin] was
supportive of the movement," he added, though he said she wasn't at the
forefront of it.

Nevertheless, the movement was at the forefront of her mayoral campaign.
According to Stein, a national antiabortion organization sent out
postcards to Wasilla voters on Palin's behalf. There was a whisper
campaign that Stein, a Lutheran, was actually Jewish. Some Palin
supporters suggested that Stein and his wife, Karen Marie, weren't
really married because they didn't have the same last name. "We had to
produce a marriage certificate just to demonstrate that," said Stein. "I
believe that was Sarah's campaign committee who brought that up."

Much has been made of Palin's gestures toward book-banning as mayor. To
understand what happened, it's useful to realize that the Mat-Su Valley
was in the middle of a roiling controversy over a book by Bess, the
retired minister, titled Pastor, I Am Gay. Bess, 80, is deeply
respected by the Valley's small progressive community. Educated at
Northwestern's Garrett Biblical Institute--now called the Garrett
Evangelical Theological Seminary--he comes from a Baptist tradition
committed to church-state separation. In 1980 he left his church in
Santa Barbara, California, to become pastor of Anchorage First American
Baptist. Over the years Bess developed an intense concern about gay
rights, and he went out of his way to welcome gay people into his
Anchorage church. After he had served seven years at First Baptist, the
board of the church asked him to lower his profile on the issue.
Unwilling to do so, he resigned, took early retirement and ended up
moving to Palmer to pastor a tiny liberal congregation, the Church of
the Covenant, which he did without pay.

Bess published Pastor, I Am Gay in 1995. It recounts his
experiences ministering to gay men and lesbians, calls for the church to
take a stand against discrimination and even draws parallels between the
experience of gay people and that of Jesus. "They are despised and
rejected," he wrote. "They suffer and are acquainted with infirmity.
They are rejected by a perversion of justice.... Is it possible that the
will of the Lord will prosper through them?"

Local conservatives, including at Wasilla Assembly of God, mobilized
against the book. Christian bookstores as well as secular retailers
refused to sell it. Bess donated two copies to the Wasilla Public
Library, but they vanished from the shelves, so he donated more. The
atmosphere toward Bess was toxic; a 1997 cartoon in the
Frontiersman showed a slobbering, doll-clutching pedophile
approaching his church, whose sign said, Wasilla Church of the Covenant.
Howard Bess, Pastor. All Sinners Welcome! Bible Interpretations to Suit
Your "Lifestyle."

Most reports have said that, when asking about banning books, Palin
never mentioned any specific titles, but the presence of Pastor, I Am
Gay in the library was, at the time, a matter of fierce contention.
"I'm as sure that that book was at issue with Sarah Palin as I am that
I'm talking to you right now," said Bess.

When Palin ran for governor in 2006, Christian conservatives mobilized
to help elect her--the Alaska Family Council, a group that formed that
year and is loosely affiliated with Focus on the Family, distributed a
voter guide showing Palin's alignment with its ideology. During her
nineteen months as governor, it's important to note, she has mostly
ignored divisive social issues, instead focusing on getting a gas
pipeline built. If she hasn't governed as a fire-breather, though, her
record nevertheless offers some evidence that in Washington she would
likely continue George W. Bush's injection of religious dogmatism into
government appointments and policy-making. Opposition to abortion is,
for her, a litmus test. When Sarah Palin ran for mayor of Wasilla, Faye
Palin, Todd's stepmother, supported her, but when Faye Palin ran for
mayor in 2002, Sarah supported her opponent. The reason, said Menard,
was that Faye Palin is prochoice. "To my knowledge, that was the big
issue," he said.

Last year, when Vic Kohring, a Republican State Representative from
Wasilla, left office after being indicted for bribery and extortion,
Sarah Palin appointed Wes Keller, an elder in her church, to replace
him. He introduced a bill to make the performance of intact dilation and
extraction abortions--so-called "partial-birth abortions"--a felony, and
according to a McClatchy Newspapers report, he plans to introduce
legislation mandating the teaching of intelligent design in public
schools.

Like McCain, Palin appears to believe that the United States is a
Christian nation. As governor, she signed a resolution declaring October
21-27 Christian Heritage Week in Alaska, in order to remind Alaskans of
"the role Christianity has played in our rich heritage." Written in the
mode of some right-wing revisionist historians, it describes the
nation's founders--including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson--as
"Christians of caliber and integrity who did not hesitate to express
their faith."

The conviction that America is a Christian nation could be especially
worrisome when coupled with the kind of apocalyptic beliefs espoused by
the Wasilla Assembly of God, since the combination suggests a profoundly
messianic foreign policy. In a widely seen video taken just months
before she received the vice presidential nomination, Palin stood
onstage in her old church with pastor Ed Kalnins as he explained how, in
the last days, Alaska would be a refuge for Christians fleeing the Lower
48. "Hundreds of thousands of people are going to come to this state to
seek refuge, and the church has to be ready to minister to them."
Palin's current religious home, Wasilla Bible Church, is rather more
moderate and low-key, but it, too, subscribes to a theology that
includes a literal belief in a biblical End Times scenario. In August,
it hosted David Brickner, executive director of Jews for Jesus, who told
the congregation, "But what we see in Israel, the conflict that is
spilled out throughout the Middle East, really which is all about
Jerusalem, is an ongoing reflection of the fact that there is
judgment...there's a reality to the judgment of unbelief."

Brickner's beliefs, said Menard, are shared by many at Wasilla Bible
Church, though he said he couldn't speak to the particulars of Palin's
faith. Whatever her original convictions about the Middle East--or
anything else--they have likely stayed intact throughout her tutorials
by the McCain campaign team. "Once she makes her mind up on an issue, it
takes a ninety-mile-an-hour Alaska north wind to move her off course,"
said Menard. Of course, he meant it as a compliment, not a warning.



This article can be found on the web at:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081013/goldberg



Visit The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/

Subscribe to The Nation:
https://ssl.thenation.com/

Ick!

God, what else can I say? What a pickle! How can you get more damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't.

The problem is that too many of these institutions are indeed too big to fail. The problem is that we let too many of these institutions to become too big to fail. We could sit back and let the system correct itself, but that would end up dragging too many people down into the ensuing vortex.

So, here's what Fred thinks should be done. And I will state for the record that writing and publishing a novel doesn't qualify me any more than it qualifies anybody else to comment about this, though that shouldn't stop you or me or anybody else.

Yes, we should bail out these institutions because I don't think we have any choice. However, we don't need to rush. We need to do it right.

Most importantly, there needs to be serious conditions placed on this bailout. No blank check. No lack of accountability. No lack of transparency.

A rule of thumb of politics probably as old as politics is stick with the tried and true.

I remember the scene from Tale Gunner Joe, the Joe McCarthy made-for-TV biopic starring Peter Boyle in the third 1970s film in which Boyle played guys named Joe who were the title characters (Joe, 1970 and Crazy Joe, 1974). McCarthy had just started his political career, but bemoans to a friend that his career doesn't seem to be gaining any traction. The friend tells McCarthy a story of how he ran for office and accused his opponent of being a Communist. His friend says he won the election in a landslide. When asked by McCarthy is the guy was a Communist, the friend replies, "Does it matter?" or something like that.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

John McCain has his tried and true. It's playing the victim.

It's 1982, and McCain is running in his first election. He's a war hero from an old Navy family where both his father and his grandfather were admirals. He's divorced his first wife and married a woman with tons of family money, and he's ready to start his political career in a big way. He's established residency in Arizona's first district, which he had specifically selected as where he wants to launch his political career. When he is accused of being a carpetbagger, McCain answers with the following:

"Listen, pal, I spent 22 years in the Navy. My father was in the Navy. My grandfather was in the Navy. We in the military service tend to move a lot. We have to live in all parts of the country, all parts of the world. I wish I could have had the luxury, like you, of growing up and living and spending my entire life in a nice place like the First District of Arizona, but I was doing other things. As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi."

And the rest, as they say, is history.

McCain frequently says he doesn't like to talk about his POW experience, but whenever he's backed into a corner, he falls back on it.

Recently, in the midst of the flap over not remembering how many houses he owned, McCain was sharing yucks with Jay Leno when Leno asked him how many houses he actually owned.

"Could I just mention to you Jay, that in a moment of seriousness, I spent five and a half years in a prison cell, I didn't have a house, I didn't have a kitchen table, I didn't have a table, I didn't have a chair," said McCain, citing his history as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. "I spent those five and half years not because I wanted to get a house when I got back home."

McCain finds other ways to play the victim. While Barack Obama spoke to 200,000 people in Germany, McCain had lunch at a German restaurant. In an utterly bizarre press conference where a wind chime constantly drowned out McCain's words, where he started talking about how he was going to meet with the Dali Lama and described how much he admired the holy man, McCain said the following or whined the following:

"I'd love to give a speech in Germany. But I'd much prefer to do it as president of the United States rather than as a candidate for president."

And McCain's people have extended playing the victim to Sarah Palin as well. Anybody who dares criticize her is denounced as sexist, despite the fact that there is plenty about her to criticize.

Personally, I find McCain's self-victimization more than a little ironic. Isn't the Republican Party the party of self-reliance? Of personal responsibility and accountability? Isn't it the party for people who believe that people should pull themselves up by the bootstraps, not look for a handout? Gosh, I thought it was the Democrats who believe that everyone needs to find their inner victim. Who knew this was actually the Republican credo?

Here's a little message I sent to whoever reads these things on Barack Obama's website. I hope somebody actually reads this. If you start hearing Obama talking about funny-money, you'll know where he got the idea from.



You need a catch phrase for the economy, i.e. "It's the economy, stupid." Chris Matthews was talking about that tonight, but I was thinking about it before watching his show, especially given the bad news today from Wall Street.

Again, you need a catch phrase that speaks volumes, that is catchy, that is easily digestible. Here goes:

Let's do away with funny-money. No more funny-money. It's time to put an end to funny-money. Funny-money is no laughing matter.

After all, that is what it's all about, the whole mess on Wall Street, the whole credit crisis that started with the subprime mortgage crisis, spread into credit and has metastasized all over our economy, that our government allowed the trading of paper that wasn't worth the paper it was printed on, not hard currency, but funny-money. 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 1, 2008

Contact:
Mike Burke: mike@democracynow.org

**UPDATE**

Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar
Released After Illegal Arrest at RNC

Goodman Charged with Obstruction; Felony Riot Charges Pending Against
Kouddous and Salazar

ST. PAUL--Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and producers Sharif Abdel
Kouddous and Nicole Salazar have all been released from police custody
in St. Paul following their illegal arrest by Minneapolis Police on
Monday afternoon.

All three were violently manhandled by law enforcement officers. Abdel
Kouddous was slammed against a wall and the ground, leaving his arms
scraped and bloodied. He sustained other injuries to his chest and back.
Salazar's violent arrest by baton-wielding officers, during which she
was slammed to the ground while yelling, "I'm Press! Press!," resulted
in her nose bleeding, as well as causing facial pain. Goodman's arm was
violently yanked by police as she was arrested.

On Tuesday, Democracy Now! will broadcast video of these arrests, as
well as the broader police action. These will also be available on:
www.democracynow.org

Goodman was arrested while questioning police about the unlawful
detention of Kouddous and Salazar who were arrested while they carried
out their journalistic duties in covering street demonstrations at the
Republican National Convention. Goodman's crime appears to have been
defending her colleagues and the freedom of the press.

Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher told Democracy Now! that Kouddous and
Salazar were arrested on suspicion of rioting, a felony. While the three
have been released, they all still face charges stemming from their
unlawful arrest. Kouddous and Salazar face pending charges of suspicion
of felony riot, while Goodman has been officially charged with
obstruction of a legal process and interference with a "peace officer."

Democracy Now! forcefully rejects all of these charges as false and an
attempt at intimidation of these journalists. We demand that the charges
be immediately and completely dropped.

Democracy Now! stands by Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar and condemns this
action by Twin Cities' law enforcement as a clear violation of the
freedom of the press and the First Amendment rights of these journalists.

During the demonstration in which the Democracy Now! team was arrested,
law enforcement officers used pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion
grenades and excessive force against protesters and journalists. Several
dozen demonstrators were also arrested during this action, including a
photographer for the Associated Press.

Amy Goodman is one of the most well-known and well-respected journalists
in the United States. She has received journalism's top honors for her
reporting and has a distinguished reputation of bravery and courage. The
arrest of Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar and the subsequent criminal
charges and threat of charges are a transparent attempt to intimidate
journalists.

Assuming Barack Obama is elected president, as I believe he will be, his presidency will be historic, but not for the obvious reason that he will be the first person of color to serve in the Oval Office.

Consider the following from The Nation:

Many supporters of Barack Obama were outraged by his decision to back the recent White House surveillance bill (FISA), so they took over his website.To its credit, the Obama campaign runs the most open online platform of any major presidential candidate. Visitors may post criticism of the candidate--an act that was restricted on HillaryClinton.com--or use networking tools to build protest groups. Activists did just that by creating Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity--Get FISA Right, which swiftly became the largest network on Obama's site, topping even the campaign's official groups. After whipping up the blogosphere, the group drew coverage from TheNation.com, newspapers and TV.

Then Obama responded directly. In an unusually long online letter, Obama said he still opposed immunity but supported the bill to modernize surveillance oversight and pursue "accountability" via future investigations. Activists welcomed the reply but rejected the substance. Many are continuing the fight at a new hub, getfisaright.com, which organizes Obama supporters around civil liberties. A related coalition, accountabilitynowpac.com, is coordinating a fundraising drive on August 8, the anniversary of the announcement of Richard Nixon's resignation, to mobilize against the "key enablers of the tyrannical and lawless FISA 'compromise.'"

If Obama is lucky, he'll continue to benefit from activists who support his candidacy but also intend to press him on key issues, using his campaign's tools to organize for causes beyond his election. The protest group replied to Obama's letter by heralding this collective dynamic. "As you have said time and again Senator, 'we are the ones we have been waiting for,' and we are here, working to bring about real change in Washington."   ARI MELBER, The Nation, August 4, 2008

President Barack Obama, the first on-line President of the United States of America. From word go, we've seen a candidate wired to the web like none other, of course from the standpoint of mining the net roots for tons and gobs and gobs and tons of money. In terms of how to make money from the web, the Obama campaign could teach a PhD seminar on the subject, but as the above passage illustrates, Obama is also quite adept at using the web for communication.

But hey, anybody can post policy statements on their website. Anybody can use the web to make pronouncements from up on high, but what Obama does is use the web to facilitate an interactive, two-way communications dynamic, which hopefully will remain in place once he takes office.

I don't suffer the illusion that Obama won't ever disappoint me, but at least I see the potential for a means for all of us to let him know when he disappoints, and maybe, just maybe he might listen. In the example of the FISA bill, Obama at least was pressured into answering for his stance, and this vociferous communication perhaps will pay dividends in the future because a clear message has been sent that we are paying attention and that we will make our voices be heard. It seems clear that Obama, at least for the time being, welcomes the kind of feedback the web can provide, that he is willing to use to web not only as a microphone, but also as a way to listen to what the citizenry has to say.

Call it the Fireside Chats for the Twenty-First  Century. President Obama will make revolutionary use of a new communications medium in a way that hasn't been seen since FDR, a dramatic contrast with John "Get off my Lawn" McCain who has admitted that he really doesn't get the Internet. There's a lot I could say about McCain, but I think I'll leave it to Tom Tomorrow.

Obama Doesn't Sweat. He should.
 
by Greg Palast 
 
In swing-state Colorado, the Republican Secretary of State conducted the biggest purge of voters in history, dumping a fifth of all registrations. Guess their color.  In swing-state Florida, the state is refusing to accept about 85,000 new registrations from voter drives - overwhelming Black voters.
 
 In swing state New Mexico, HALF of the Democrats of Mora, a dirt poor and overwhelmingly Hispanic county, found their registrations disappeared this year, courtesy of a Republican voting contractor.
 
 In swing states Ohio and Nevada, new federal law is knocking out tens of thousands of voters who lost their homes to foreclosure.
 
My investigations partner spoke directly to Barack Obama about it. (When your partner is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., candidates take your phone call.) The cool, cool Senator Obama told Kennedy he was "concerned" about the integrity of the vote in the Southwest in particular.
 
 He's concerned. I'm sweating.
 
 It's time SOMEBODY raised the alarm about these missing voters; not to save Obama's candidacy – journalists should stay the heck away from partisan endorsements - but raise the alarm to save our sick democracy.
 
And that somebody is YOU. Joining with US, the Palast investigative team. Here's how:
 
 We have been offered an astonishing opportunity to place the Kennedy-Palast investigative findings on a national, prime-time, major-network television broadcast. Plus, separately, we have an extraordinary offer to create a series of reports for national network radio.
 
But guess what? The networks will NOT PAY for our public service reports. We have to raise the start-up funds in the next two weeks to film it, record it and get it on the airwaves.
 
WE need YOU to fund the reports, DISSEMINATE the findings as we post the print, audio and video on the web– and ACT on it.
 
 So, for only the second time this year, I am asking each one of you to make a tax deductible donation to the non-profit, non-partisan Palast Investigative Fund of $500, $150 or $100.
 
 Progressives have complained for years of no opportunity to get the hard, cold sweaty truth on the air. Well, put your money where your heart and soul is.
 
Donate at least $500, I'll send you every book I've written and every film, signed.  Send $150 and I'll send you as a gift, a copy of John Ennis' film Free For All, Armed Madhouse, The Election Files and a copy of Live from the Armed Madhouse all signed.  Donate $100, and I’ll send you 3 copies, one signed to you, of "The Elections Files," (Watch the trailer here) the best of our BBC/Democracy Now films – including special never-broadcast interviews with Kennedy(Watch a clip) and fired prosecutor David Iglesias (Watch a clip).
 
 I know you’re ponying up for your favorite candidates. But what’s the point of winning folks' votes IF NO ONE COUNTS THEM?
 
 Please make your donation – today. No corporation, no big foundation, is going to take on this emergency in our democracy. The election’s about to be stolen – for a third time. SO WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?
 
 Donate today (for $1,000 minimum, we’ll list you as a Producer of our next DVD, in gratitude). Why? Because the only way to get the vote-chewing cockroaches out of the voting machinery is to turn on the lights – tell the truth on them. On prime time.
 
 After our team busted the story of Katherine Harris' attack on innocent Black voters as "felons," the NAACP sued and won back their rights. The truth CAN make the difference. Yes, we can. Indeed, we HAVE.
 
Think all votes should be counted in America? Then YOU stand up and be counted. Don’t expect networks or commercial sponsors to pay for your democracy. Feed the truth, donate $100 right now and pass on a copy of the Elections Files to your dippy cousin who thinks Kerry lost fair and square.
 
Donations from our prior and only request already paid for some of our filming in the Southwest. Don't let this story be swept under the border.
 
 If you want more information, go to GregPalast.com, or write me directly at GregPalast.com – and hit the button, "contact Greg."
 

How's that for a grabber of a headline?

Wouldn't that be perfect for one of those strange-but-true AP stories or even something for the tabloids? Maybe the Chicago Sun Times. I'll never forget my all-time favorite headline, which appeared in the Sun Times years ago, shortly after Rupert Murdoch bought the paper in turned it into the total rag that it is today:

"Father Explodes. Kills Five."

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, the Rest  of the Story.

A few weeks ago, Georgia and I went to Michael's Frozen Custard on Atwood Avenue. I ordered a waffle cone of Oreo Cookie custard, which is basically vanilla custard, with ground up Oreos. As I was licking my cone, I noticed a splotch of red. It didn't register until I took another lick and realized there was something in my custard that looked suspiciously like human blood.

Needless to say, I freaked. Okay, so Poppy Z. Brite I am not.

Without saying a word to Georgia, I ran inside with the cone and demanded to see the manager on duty. A teenager identified herself as such. I showed her my tainted cone. She made a disgusted face and offered to give me a replacement cone. No longer feeling like eating custard, I merely asked for my money back and threw the cone into the garbage.

Well, that was a big mistake. I should've asked for a container to take the cone, er, evidence with me, but, well, maybe I was a bit rattled. This isn't the kind of thing that happens every day of the week.

When we got home, I called the Nurse on Call hotline for our HMO. I mean, I may have ingested human blood. That's potentially very serious, but the nurse who took my call almost immediately reassured me that there was probably little to worry about because even if it was blood, I only ingested a very small amount and that the circulatory system is pretty well insulated from the digestive system. Afterall, blood infections generally are passed blood to blood. Also, the digestive system is pretty good at taking care of things that don't belong there. And, she noted that whatever viruses that might have been in what I ate might not have survived the freezing process. Lastly, she told me that in terms of health care workers who run this kind of risk frequently, it requires a significant ingestion of human blood to cause any serious concern.

On Monday, I talked to a nurse from my doctor's office. She consulted with my doctor and told me pretty much the same thing. I did learn something important, however, that there are inoculations available for both Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B. Though there isn't one available for Hepatitis C, the combination of inoculations for Hepetitis A and B can serve to protect one from C. The nurse, upon finding out that I'd recently visited Mexico recommended that I get inoculated for both Hepititis A and B.

I also called the Dane County Health Department. I received a follow-up phone call the next day. An investigator visited Michael's Frozen Custard and said it was probably unlikely that it actually was human blood that had tainted my cone. All that fuss over strawberry syrup.

Well, I have to say all's well that ends well. Still, I can't get that headline out of my head. I mean, that's the sort of headline that could catch like wildfire, burning up newsrooms from coast to coast, just for being so weirdly funny. Twenty-Five years down the road, I still remember a lecture in my Introduction to English Literature class on comedy devices in the works of Charles Dickens. Juxtaposition was high on the list.

Well, they say that no publicity is bad publicity, but it would be pretty damn embarrassing being featured in a story like that. As Mark Twain said, humans are the only animal that blushes—or needs to.

Still, I might've sold hundreds, who knows, maybe thousands of books if the story would've gotten out to a media that hungers for this sort of thing. I guess I have a lot to learn about shameless self promotion.