On Tuesday’s Your World, guest host Alexis Glick didn’t bother to hide her horror that Wal-Mart had signed a letter endorsing President Obama’s plan to require big businesses to give their employees health insurance. “What in the world is going on at Wal-Mart,” she asked as if the very notion of ensured coverage were an outrage.

“I’m sort of speechless… Why would Wal-Mart do this?” Glick asked guest Craig Smith, CEO of Swiss America. So much for “we report, you decide.” The “fair and balanced” wasn’t worth much either, as Smith was on the same page as Glick. He said that when he heard the news, “I scratched my head. Who in their right mind raises increased costs in their business during a time of recession?” He called it “an absolute jobs killer.” There was nobody on with an opposing view. There was also nobody to point out that at the same time Wal-Mart endorsed the president’s plan, it also sought a guarantee from the government that health costs will be contained.

Glick said it’s interesting that Wal-Mart has chosen this path, considering it had been “criticized in the past for not providing the right benefits or expensive benefits to its employees.”

Smith agreed, “That’s a great point.” He then wrongly suggested that the only employees not currently covered by Wal-Mart’s insurance plan are on Medicaid. “How in the world does an employer with 1.4 million employees, of which 2.5% of them are currently on Medicaid. How can you put those 35,000 employees on insurance and not have your costs go up? It’s impossible.” Hmm, is Smith suggesting that public health insurance is better than private? Or would he rather see those 35,000 people not get any health insurance?

Regardless, what neither Smith nor Glick addressed, is that there is also a sizeable chunk of Wal-Mart employees who have no health insurance at all. According to Wal-Mart estimates, it’s 6% of its 1.4 million workers. According to my calculations, that comes to 84,000 employees. Smith added, “Other large corporations are hanging on by a thread, and if they have increased costs,they’re going to start cutting jobs. This is a jobs killer. I don’t care how you weigh it out, it’s gonna hurt employment.” His voice rising, he said, “And we can’t afford to lose jobs now, Alexis!”

Smith had apparently decided, without asking how the public felt, that it was better for employers to offer low-paying jobs than to offer health insurance. But neither he nor Glick offered any evidence that it was an either/or situation. Nor did either of them consider the effects of lowering health costs, as Wal-Mart is seeking, may have.

Glick squealed, “Cost cutting initiatives have saved a lot of jobs, and if we do something like this, the risk is that people may need to get laid off in order to afford these rising costs. What sbout the families themselves?”

Craig “You’re absolutely right… Look, I’m not a politician, I’m a businessman. Any businessman will tell you that his biggest bang for his buck in cost cutting is employees because you get rid of the salary (and the benefits.)” He continued, “In the case of Wal-Mart, they’re going to take those increased costs, increase their prices to the public… It will be a tax, a hidden tax on the middle class as they pay more at Wal-Mart for goods and services. This is a horrible bill.”

Alexis “Yeah, this is pressing.”

Comment: It’s also quite a “hidden tax” on the middle class if they can’t get decent health insurance. But Glick and Smith seemed far more interested in fear mongering about Obama’s plan than in offering any solutions for the more than 45 million or more Americans who, unlike themselves, are uninsured.

Also on News Hounds

What can the progressive movement learn from the LGBT community? On the 40^th anniversary of Stonewall there has been a good deal of reflection and soul searching on the role of the struggle for gay rights within the larger civil rights movement. Yesterday when Barack Obama met with gay couples in the White House he said, “It’s not for me to tell you to be patient any more than it was for others to counsel patience to African-Americans who were petitioning for equal rights a half-century ago. We’ve been in office six months now. I suspect that by the time this administration is over, I think you guys will have pretty good feelings about the Obama administration.” That could be applied to a number of issues, not only those affecting the LGBT community.

Richard Burns, Chief Operating Officer of the Arcus Foundation, Naomi Clark of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, Richard Kim, Associate Editor at The Nation, and independent journalist Nancy Goldstein on the role of LGBT politics within the progressive movement.

Today, all U.S. troops must be withdrawn from Iraqi cities, including U.S. bases in Baghdad, according to the Status Of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the U.S. and Iraq. The Iraqi government will also take legal responsibility for the actions of U.S. troops and have legal jurisdiction over American soldiers who commit crimes off-base and off-duty, and the SOFA will grant permission to U.S. troops for military operations, as well as ban the U.S. from staging attacks on other countries from Iraq.

While it may seem like a step forward toward ending the six-year occupation of Iraq, the Pentagon is doing what it can to dodge or play down these SOFA stipulations. In recent weeks, it has been re-classifying bases and troops, hiring “corporate security” mercenaries, and preventing Iraq from having jurisdiction over those actions. It’ll get away with it too, as Congress never ratified the SOFA, and because many are justifying further occupation under the banner of keeping Iraq secure.

Leading up to the June 30th deadline, the Pentagon has been playing shell games with bases and with soldiers. City limits have been modified to exempt bases from the agreement and soldiers who have moved out of cities are now encircling them. As Erik Leaver points out in his article “A Withdrawal in Name Only,” three thousand troops stationed at the FOB Falcon, located within Baghdad, will not be moving, because Iraqi and American military officials simply decided it wasn’t within the city limits. And thousands of troops in bases sleeping outside the cities will continue to serve in “support” and “advisory” roles in the day.

And while troops may be moving out of the cities, they are not moving out of the country just yet. The military has been expanding and building new bases in rural areas to accommodate the movement of soldiers, and Congress just passed a bill that includes more funding for military construction in Iraq. In reality, only 30,000 troops have left Iraq since September last year and 134,000 troops still remain.

But the 132,000 military contractors in Iraq are the real loophole. How do they fit into the withdrawal plan? How many of them will stay past June 30th? Or past 2011? Military contractors have been used extensively in the War in Iraq to evade legal accountability and hide the true cost – and body count – of the war. In fact, mercenaries may be on the rise and will spark additional violence in the country.

Arab-American journalist Dahr Jamail points out the violence in Iraq has largely been quelled because the U.S. has paid Iraqi resistance fighters to keep the peace, and the increase in violent resistance in May and June is due to many fighters losing their paychecks from the US government. In his blog, MidEast Dispatches, Jamail writes:

“Attacks against U.S. forces are once again on the rise in places like Baghdad and Fallujah, where the Iraqi resistance was fiercest before so many of them joined the Sahwa (Sons of Iraq, also referred to as Awakening Councils) and began taking payments from the U.S. military in exchange for halting attacks against the occupiers and agreeing to join the fight against al-Qaeda in Iraq. Daily we are watching Sahwa members leave their security posts.”

He further explains that many Iraqis are rejoining the resistance in protest of losing their paychecks and increasing government attacks, and thus, have stopped targeting al-Qaeda.

Instead of continuing to pay these resistance fighters, the U.S. plans to replace some soldiers and Marines in Iraq with mercenaries — private U.S. contractors and corporations. This new occupying force will continue to alienate Iraqis and delay any real Iraqi independence.

But despite working all the loopholes, the U.S. never officially committed to playing by the rules of an Iraq withdrawal, anyway. In 2007 and 2009, members of Congress including then-Senator Hillary Clinton believed the SOFA should have been ratified by Senate to be legitimate. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Clinton urged Obama to sign on to her legislation that would have required Bush to bring the SOFA to Senate first. Obama, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, never agreed to do so. But once Clinton dropped her opposition to Obama’s unanimous selection as the Democratic presidential nominee, and was rewarded by being chosen as Secretary of State, she put her SOFA principle aside and now supports an agreement that only one country – Iraq – has ratified. The U.S. Senate’s role in ratifying bilateral agreements has been nullified, a development that should worry all who have been concerned about a “unitary executive” and an increasingly weakened Congress.

Even in Iraq, withdrawal plans have been undermined. The Iraqi parliament planned to ratify the SOFA under a national referendum this month. But recently the Iraqi cabinet decided to reschedule to align with the national parliamentary elections in January 2010. The SOFA is widely unpopular and seen as legitimizing the US occupation until 2011. If it goes to a vote, it will likely be defeated. So Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other Iraqi leaders have colluded with both the Bush and Obama administrations to subvert the will of the Iraqi people.

If by July 31 however the Iraq SOFA is not referendum-ratified or a 12-month cancellation notice issued, it will expire. If it expires, the U.S. will be in Iraq without legal authorization and U.S. forces may be subject to lock down until the matter is resolved. Under these conditions, U.S. troops will no longer have the bilateral protections – effectively left in a legal and political limbo.

Ultimately, the Pentagon must stop playing chess games to slow down a real withdrawal. And our leaders in the White House and Congress – who just passed another $70 billion for the war – must take real leadership to end this war, including withdrawing all our troops, ending the use of military contractors, stop funding any permanent bases in Iraq, and allowing the Iraqi people the space to reclaim their country.

Janet Weil is a CODEPINK staff member based in San Francisco. Her nephew is preparing to be deployed to Afghanistan in November.

Bob Woodward’s piece for the WaPo, in which he recounts national security advisor Jim Jones telling military leaders that any further calls for more troops in Afghanistan would occasion a “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment” from Obama, has both COINdinistas and contraCOINers discussing prioritization of the (still benchmarkless) strategy’s confusing components in Afghanistan.

Marine general Lawrence Nicholson is quoted by Woodward as having a mission of “Protect the populace by, with and through the ANSF,” where “killing the enemy is secondary.” By contrast, Obama back in his March Af/Pak stratergy speech said that “These soldiers and Marines will take the fight to the Taliban in the south and east, and give us a greater capacity to partner with Afghan Security Forces and to go after insurgents along the border.” Pretty much everyone agrees that there aren’t enough troops on the ground – whether they be U.S., allied or local Afghan forces – to cover all the bases; to both secure population centers in a COIN “clear, hold and build” operation and to go after the insurgency in its own rural and border territory. Something has to give – and it looks like it will be the latter.

No matter what Obama may have said in March, the military and the CNAS-propelled Obama administration foreign policy team have set the strategy as a COIN-based one. That means a loooong war, at a cost of upwards of a trillion, as the US pursues a chimerical dream whereby Afghanistan one day (no one will guess when) emerges as a nation where economic development and reconstruction defeat the Taliban, albeit with a heavy occupation presence of foreign troops. But will that presence be heavy enough? At the CNAS blog, “Ibn Muqawama” writes in a post entitled “Repeating Mistakes?” that insufficient force was what hampered Iraq all those years and that:

if we are committed to our current strategy in Afghanistan, it seems pretty darn important that we’re confident we have the force levels necessary to establish that minimum level of security.  Otherwise our “civilian surge” and reconstruction initiatives seem likely to be DOA.  That’s not a call for the administration to reflexively throw in more troops without a rigorous analysis of strategic costs and benefits, but it does suggest that it needs to double-check to ensure that its ends, ways, and means in Afghanistan are are all aligned.

Hang on, the “mistake” wasn’t to try to make an invasion based on lies and a years-long occupation turn out a “victory” for US interests in the first place? Apparently not – for CNAS is neoliberal interventionism at its very worst. “Can we invade it? Yes we can!” All of which leaves contraCOIN writer Michael Cohen very frustrated:

If I had my druthers the President would conduct … a cost benefit analysis and come to the right conclusion that the currently stated mission in Afghanistan is worth neither the blood nor treasure that are needed for it to be successfully achieved. Instead he has chosen a muddled course that pretty much guarantees the US won’t achieve his goals for Afghanistan. Personally, I think fighting a counter-insurgency in Afghanistan is the modern equivalent of fighting a land war in Asia, but if that’s the mission you decide upon then you have to give the military the resources to actually do it.

The President can’t have it both ways. Either you fight the war in Afghanistan to achieve the mission you’ve laid out, or you don’t. There isn’t really a middle ground here. History provides a pretty good road map for how that usually works out.

In the end, this whole situation reminds me of another old military expression: FUBAR

But the “civilian surge” is already in trouble too. As my friend and COINdinista-with-misgivings Spencer Ackerman notes:

The so-called “civilian surge” into Afghanistan isn’t happening. Proposals earlier this year for hundreds of new U.S. civilian officials to deploy to Afghanistan have given way to “triage” attempts at getting smaller amounts of key civilian personnel into advisory capacities to bolster Afghan governance.

Even if the “civilian surge” was sorted out, though, the whole “population-centric” strategy is based on the idea that economic improvement, reconstruction and reconcilliation would mean that the Taliban would lose their foothold in Afghanistan and be unable to regain it either by bullet or ballot box afteroccupying forces (eventually) leave. There’s no particular reason why this should be so and indeed real world evidence suggests that it’s simply bulls**t, but it’s taken as an article of blind faith by the COIN crowd. Neither Afghanistan or Pakistan are Iraq and the Taliban movement is not foreign in the way Al Qaeda was in Iraq. In fact, this blind faith underpinning of the entire COIN strategy for Af/Pak is most akin to believing, just because, that economic reconstruction and democracy would prevent the Sunni Arabs of Iraq ever again holding any kind of power in that country after US troops leave – a pretty unlikely proposition.

Also on Newshoggers

Paul Bass of the New Haven Independent catches up with President Lieberman, who says a public plan is not going to happen — because he’s going to rally a bipartisan Senate group against it.

Which, of course, instantly spawned much fond nostalgia from veterans of the 2006 campaign.

Tparty has started a collection over at My Left Nutmeg:

Lieberman devoted a conference call with reporters to an issue that his main rival in the U.S. Senate race, Democratic nominee Ned Lamont, has highlighted in recent days.

“I have long supported the goal of universal health care,” Lieberman told reporters. “Ned Lamont can talk about it. I’ve been doing something about it all the time I’ve been here.

Lieberman, who voted for every war supplemental and every bank bailout that he ever encountered without batting an eyelash about the expense, suddenly says that a public plan is “a cost we can’t take on.”

So take a stroll down memory lane, and enjoy the Best of Joe.  And remember, like Bill Clinton said,  it didn’t matter who won — Lamont or Lieberman — because both were Democrats.

Win win!

This week, workers at Hartmarx Factory won a major victory against Wells Fargo, as Wells Fargo agreed to keep their factory open. The story of the Hartmarx workers had drawn national attention as they threatened to occupy their factory if Wells Fargo closed it. Their victory yesterday represents a major triumph in the growing trend of factory sit ins that started last December when workers, members of United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE) occupied the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago

Last January, Hartmarx, the maker of men’s apparel and an employer of nearly 4,000 people, filed for bankruptcy after Wells Fargo refused to extend them a line of credit. Wells Fargo then pushed for the company to be liquidated in order to increase their short term profits. They favored liquidating the factory and laying off the 4,000 workers despite the fact that there were proposals by several groups to purchase the company and keep it running.

The workers, members of SEIU, refused to accept the bank’s ruling and decided to do something about it. The workers said they were inspired after having gone to see a speaking tour of members of who had occupied Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago. They then decided that perhaps they should consider threatening to occupy their plant in order to force the bank to keep it open. The workers then voted to sit-in to occupy that plant if Wells Fargo decided to liquidate it and drew national media attention to their story.

As a result of the worker’s resolve to fight the company, they received a large degree of political and community support. Over 43 members of Congress signed a letter calling on Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to investigate Wells Fargo’s use of bailout money. Congressman Phil Hare, a former worker at Harmarx, promised to be Wells Fargo’s “worst nightmare” if they closed the plant. Finally, State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias brought Wells Fargo to their knees when he threatened to cut off $8 billion dollars worth of business that the state does with Wells Fargo if they closed the plant

As a result of the union members’ activism, community pressure and politicians’ threat to take action against Wells Fargo, the union was able to force the bank to accept a bid from another company to keep the plant open. The final decision represents a major victory in the worker sit-in movement against the banks. The victory at Hartmarx confirms the growing trend that I wrote about last week that whenever these banks are challenged through direct action in a visible, public way that they always fold to demands.

Now the fight moves onto a plant across town from Hartmarx in Moline, Illinois. Wells Fargo has cut off credit to Quad City Die Casting factory. Workers at the plant, who are members of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE), the same union that occupied Republic Windows and Doors last summer, are engaging in direct action against Wells Fargo as they call for Wells Fargo to keep the plant open. So far, Wells Fargo has refused to even sit down with the union and negotiate. The union though has not been dissuaded and promises to continuing fighting the banksters of Wells Fargo.

Last week, UE held protests at over 20 cities throughout the country to protest Wells Fargo. In addition, a delegation from their union visited over 100 congressional offices last week to call for an investigation into how Wells Fargo is using its bailout money. The union charges that after having received $25 billion in bailout money that Wells Fargo has an obligation to look to promote economic recovery by keeping the plant open. Speaking at the protest in Davenport, Iowa, UE Director of Organization Bob Kingsley said, “We can’t let this giant bank default on its obligation to the American people and the people of the Quad Cities. Wells Fargo is a roadblock to economic recovery.”

Now the question is whether we as the progressive movement will join them in solidarity to support keeping factories open. Please go to UE’s website and send a letter to your congressman calling on them to investigate how Wells Fargo has refused to spend its $25 billion in bailout money to support economic recovery. Our resolve as a movement to support the struggle of workers at Quad City Die Casting will determine our ability to support this growing worker uprising to fight banks that have destroyed our economy. Keeping good American manufacturing jobs such as the union jobs at Quad City Die Casting in this country is key to creating a successful economic revival not built on the speculative bubbles of the past. Its time that banks like Wells Fargo get out of the way on the road to economic recovery.

Follow Mike Elk on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MikeElk

As the US military launches operation “Strike of the Sword” in Afghanistan, sending 4,000 newly arrived Marines and 650 Afghan forces into the Helmland River valley, we must consider how this major offensive will impact Afghan civilians forced to flee this war torn region.  Rough estimates from The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) suggest there are already up to 1,000 Helmland families living in refugee camps near Kabul.  Who knows how many thousands more families will seek shelter in these camps in the ensuing weeks due to deadly battles in Helmland or anywhere else in Afghanistan.  One thing is clear though, which Tom Hayden nailed in his recent piece on the Long War, “American troops can never “protect” Afghanistan civilians from American troops!”

The Afghan Women’s Mission and RAWA have been working tirelessly to help Afghan refugees in dire need, despite threats from warlords and the Afghan intelligence agency.  At this point, refugees lack food more than anything else.  Just consider what the prices of food are in an Afghan market (based on a exchange rate of $1 US = 50.2 Afghanis):

Please make a contribution to RAWA through The Afghan Women’s Mission today.

The simultaneous conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and beyond are all connected to the Pentagon strategy of “the Long War” projected to last fifty years in “the arc of crisis” that just happens to stretch across Muslim lands where there are oil reserves and plans for Western-dominated pipelines. The term “Long War” was introduced by Gen. John Abizaid in the 1990s and is the perspective of counterinsurgency experts around the Pentagon and think tanks led by the Center for New American Security.

The Long War will require a long peace movement, and a different one.

Many veterans of the movement against the Iraq War, impacted by the multiple wars, the financial and budget crises, and confused about the Obama era, are pondering the question of what to think and do. The following are brief notes outlining a possible strategy.

Counterinsurgency goes back to Malaysia and Algeria. It has never “worked”, except in Malaysia where conditions were unique.

Counterinsurgency is aimed at the home front, to keep American casualties low and, as Kagan writes, “off camera, so to speak.”

In Iraq, it’s hardly “victory” when the client government is bragging about the American withdrawal and the future is totally uncertain. The “surge” delivered as CNAS and Gen. Petraeus wished, by keeping the war out of the election [their words, not mine]. Now counterinsurgency can’t help them. They are pledged to withdrawal without having won the war, without having secured Western oil contracts, and without having reliable Iraqi client allies.

In Afghanistan, counterinsurgency is at cross-purposes with the drone attacks which kill the civilians who are supposed to be protected [which is why David Kilcullen writes against the continued use of Predators]. 21,000 more American troops mean more visible American casualties. The US is at fundamental odds with Karzhai, who represents the growing mainstream Afgan distrust of the US. American troops can never “protect” Afghanistan civilians from American troops! The contradictions between the US versus Europe, NATO versus the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, will increase and cannot be bridged.

In Pakistan, the US has succeeded in forcing Pakistan troops into fighting the domestic Taliban, partly because of the Taliban’s relative unpopularity. But in the process, 2-3 million refugees have been generated in the past few weeks alone, the greatest refugee crisis since Pakistan’s bloody origins. There will be more upheaval soon in South Waziristan. How on earth is this “protecting the civilian population”? Again it is the contradiction at the heart of counterinsurgency.

I would keep a focus on the need for an exit strategy, because the Pentagon and CNAS don’t believe in an exit strategy short of “victory”, which is most likely unachievable. Even the Center for American Progress [CAP] proposes a 10-12 year occupation, speaking only of Afghanistan. Add up and project the casualties and budget costs, and you have a trillion dollar war with several thousand American casualties. You will antagonize more Muslims and drive them into anti-US nationalism and extremism. You will be running a gulag of barbaric detention camps in these countries, multiplying the Guantanamo and Bagram crises. You will add to the collapsing dream of funding for health care, education and stimulus spending here at home. Obama will be burdened with wars and occupations during his entire presidency. We will not be safer.

My advice:

• Read and study the Long War. It’s not paranoia, it’s a Pentagon strategy.
• Understand that the Long War is against Muslim countries and over oil and pipelines. It spreads terrorism.
• Understand the need to link with human rights, and anti-torture coalitions, especially the clergy.
• Understand the need to link with groups focused on domestic budget priorities, especially labor and people of color.
• Understand why Alternative Energy is a priority for the peace movement and a threat to the Long War’s premises.
• Obtain and continually spread information on the real costs in American blood, taxes and civilian casualties.
• Work around the clock on the media, convincing them to report a rationale critique with special emphasis on resisting the growing secrecy of these special operation strategies.
• Spend the next six months preparing to expand the 132 House votes for an exit strategy into critical hearings and 230 votes by next spring as Congressional elections approach.
• Don’t attack President personally. He is trapped between the Long War and his promise of an exit strategy, but attack the occupations and include the argument that the Long War might doom Obama’s domestic priorities and even his presidency.
• Build a giant constituency base in Congressional districts. Employ field organizers by regions to run anti-war campaigns on a community-organizing model. Avoid Beltway faction fights by focusing on what the grass-roots needs.

The CNAS is the new “best and brightest” group, and we should remember what happened to them in Vietnam.

The Long War will fail because the US is overextended militarily and economically, and the world is more multi-polar than uni-polar. The world does not share the US Long War agenda. This overextension will cause worsening problems at home, become a threat to the open society, and lead to serious political challenges down the road. The choice is always empire versus democracy.

(Also on HuffPo)

I’ve been fighting breast cancer for 16 years now, and am gratefully in recovery from my third bout.

I’m lucky to be one of the ones who fought and won, but there are many who fought and lost.

The New York Times has a story this morning about the number of people who had health insurance that were nonetheless driven into personal bankruptcy because of their medical bills.  I’ve written before that despite being fully insured by Blue Cross, the cost has been enormous.

Fighting for your life and knowing you could lose everything you have in the process is agonizing.

So when I see women like Kay Hagan who oppose a public plan because she wants “to ensure private health insurance isn’t going to be destabilized,” I take it pretty personally.

Then there’s Olympia Snowe, who worries that a public plan will keep prices low and cut into insurance company profits, because keeping the Blue Cross healthy is evidently more important than keeping the public healthy.

And there’s Diane Feinstein who says criticism from the left “doesn’t move me one whit” when it comes to supporting a public plan, as if her vote is a matter of personal fancy and not her responsibility as a public servant.  (This from a woman who has never worried for one minute about how she could pay for a catastrophic illness — most of us don’t have the luxury of casting votes to award our husbands billions of dollars in government contracts.)

There’s Mary Landrieu, who says a public plan “undermines the essence of our efforts to create a real market-based private sector model,” and Blanche Lincoln, who worries about “usurping” the insurance industry’s ability “to compete in the marketplace.”

Well, none of them will ever have to worry about what it’s like to be at the mercy of the insurance industry when your life hangs in the balance.. They’ll enjoy being a part of the Federal Employee Benefits Program for life, so they are free to focus on keeping their millions campaign donations from the insurance industry flowing.

These “fiscally responsible” women fret about how much a health care bill is going to cost, even though none of them withheld their vote from the bank bailouts because there was no way to pay for them.  Nor has any of them made the slightest protestation as Merrill Lynch and Citigroup raise wages by 50% this year, or as Goldman Sachs pays out the biggest bonuses in its 140 year history.

So I asked recently where Emily’s List was on all of this, since they have supported many of these women Senators in the past.   I got a note from Emily Lockwood of Emily’s list, saying that “as an organization, we don’t lobby on any issues.”

So I started thinking — why do I care if there are more women in office if they don’t care about women’s issues?  What on earth would be the value of having a woman who saw her primary function in this battle as guarding the profitability of the insurance industry, as opposed to a man like Bernie Sanders whose commitment to a strong public plan has been one of the only firewalls in the Senate against this turning into nothing more than an insurance industry bailout?

How are these women any better than Joe Lieberman, who never met a war he couldn’t afford, but now says we can’t pay for a public plan?

Women in Congress who will stand up and say “enough, there is a line I will not cross” are in short supply — even among our friends.

So together with BlueNC and Pam’s House Blend, we reached out to my fellow breast cancer survivors in North Carolina. Women like Hazel and Connie, Juanita and Gail and Patricia and Yvette.  Dorrita, Connie, Linda and Lotie.  Mary, Pepper, Waddeah and Felicia.  Women who have triumphed, women who have fought breast cancer and won.  Women of all ages and races and sexual orientations who are not afraid to tell the truth and speak up on behalf of other women.

Because many of our sisters did not survive.  Getting early treatment is critical to recovery, and women often put off getting exams if they don’t know how they’re going to pay for them.  Young African American women are twice as likely to die of breast cancer as young white women, and are five times as likely to suffer delays in getting treatment.

Kay Hagan has been the sole obstacle keeping a public plan from coming out of the Senate HELP Committee.   On Friday,  Pam Spaulding and breast cancer survivors of North Carolina will go to Kay Hagan’s office carrying their signatures and those of the people who stand with them, asking Hagan to stand with us, too.  We want to get 20,000 signatures of support for them to deliver in the next 48 hours.

We survived because we had the medical treatment that many of our sisters who died did not.   As survivors we want to speak out and demand access to health care for the women whose battle is before them.

Please join with with us.

I would like to invite you to an event with Congresswoman Maxine Waters that will be held at Brave New Studios on Thursday, July 2nd. Representative Waters has served as a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives since 1991 for California’s 35th congressional district. She sits on the Committee on the Judiciary and the subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, among others. She co-founded and chairs the Congressional Out of Iraq Caucus and serves as a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Representative Waters is someone with an insider perspective on Congress and will be discussing U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and other important legislative topics.

You will not want to miss this discussion.

Here are the event details:

Date: Thursday, July 2nd

Location: 10536 Culver Boulevard, Culver City, CA 90232
Please enter through the gate behind the building.

Time: 5 pm

RSVP: Please RSVP by emailing ewagner@bravenewfoundation.org
Seating is very limited, so we will be taking a small number of RSVPs.

Parking: There is free parking on the streets on either side of our building. Please do not park in the parking spots behind the building as they are reserved.

I hope you can join us at the Brave New Foundation offices for this event.