Seize the Day Dems!

I've devoted the past several months, and every day this week totally to health care reform. I’ve attended rallies, met with congressional staff members, made phone calls and marched; and finally, for the first time since the election in Massachusetts, I am cautiously optimistic that we might actually get it done.

I'm optimistic because Senators like Harry Reid and Bill Dodd are finally speaking publicly, and forcefully, about getting the job done with or without the Republicans. Representatives like Congressman Anthony Weiner are plainly stating the facts on the house floor about our congressional members being a subsidiary of the insurance firms. It was clear in Thursday's summit that Republicans have no interest in participating in comprehensive reform. Congress has spent one year coming up with a bill. If they can’t get it done in that time frame, shouldn’t they be fired? Survey after survey shows that the American people want the reforms that are in the bill. It’s true, surveys also show that they don’t like the bill, but I am willing to bet that the majority of the people who don’t like it, don’t know what’s in it. They only know of a few things they don’t like. It’s like going to a restaurant, not liking a few things on the menu (that you have no intention of consuming), and condemning the restaurant as bad.

With a mechanism for success easily within reach, Democrats have no excuse for failure. They have already passed the bill. Now they just need to tweak it, to get rid of some of the “deals” they made. With only 51 votes needed for reconciliation, they no longer need the Leiberman’s of the world, and shame on any progressive House member who doesn’t vote for this bill it because it doesn’t go far enough. They have sick constituents that are counting on them. The writing is on the wall; it’s the end of the march of the wealthy. Democrats need to grasp their moment and run with it.

Seize the day, Dems…or...you’re fired!

Motivation & Renewal

Wow, what a week! I went from hosting a healthcare reform rally on Tuesday-- to completing my income taxes in order to file college financial aid forms for my son on Wednesday-- to kicking off a new website design project for a uniform retailer on Thursday-- to prepping for a meeting with students this evening to help coordinate a fundraising project-- and lots of mini-projects in between-- Whew, time to take a deep breath and chill for a second.

Despite the fact that I am wondering how I will ever meet all of my deadlines [particularly when, due to technical difficulties and a somewhat slowed thinking process, it took me two hours to complete a thank you letter this morning], I am approaching these projects with a renewed sense of motivation and purpose. That sense of motivation and purpose was spurred on by several things that happened this week:

The first, was the simple thank you I received from my son for his birthday letter that I blogged about earlier in the week. A reminder that something must be sinking in.

My second dose of renewal came upon hearing a healthcare horror story from one of the rally participants on Tuesday. This participant was dealing with a very serious health condition that could have been prevented if he had received health care earlier on in the process --health care that he couldn't afford because he could not afford insurance. Telling this story brought tears to his eyes, a reminder that for many this struggle is very personal.

My third dose of renewal came at the end of Presidents Obama's State of the Union speech.

"But remember this -- I never suggested that change would be easy, or that I could do it alone. Democracy in a nation of 300 million people can be noisy and messy and complicated. And when you try to do big things and make big changes, it stirs passions and controversy. That's just how it is....We don't quit. I don't quit. Let's seize this moment -- to start anew, to carry the dream forward and to strengthen our union once more."

... a reminder that this struggle will not be easy, and that victory only goes to those who stay in the race.

And lastly, while completing my taxes, I kept trying to figure out what was going wrong with the tax preparation software I was using in that I was ending up paying 0% on capital gains I had decided to take in my year of underemployment. As it turns out nothing was wrong. I owed nothing. It made me truly realize there must be something wrong with a system where I owed taxes on my earned income, but nothing on unearned income. This fueled me with even more incentive to continue on in the struggle to regain some degree of balance in this country between corporations, the wealthy, and those of us who work for a living [or did at some point -- almost forgot I don't really qualify as part of that group these days].

And so, I forge onward.