Write to the media and the legislators.  Here are some things you might want to say:

December 2, 2009

In a recent column (published in the Hamilton Journal News on Nov. 30) Nobel-prize-winner Paul Krugman writes:

“Should we use taxes to deter financial speculation?  Yes, say top British officials….  Other European governments agree, and they are right,  Unfortunately, U.S. officials – especially Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner – are dead set against the proposal.  Let’s hope they reconsider; a financial transactions tax is an idea whose time has come.”

Such a tax is a good idea because it would discourage “socially useless” activities such as “repo” transactions (financial institutions selling assets to investors while promising to buy them back in a short time).  That’s the kind of money deals that do no good, that are intended only to line the pockets of the money people.  That’s what was largely responsible for the financial disaster of the past couple of years.  According to The Progressive, some of Geithner’s closest aides earned millions of dollars last year working for Wall Street firms.

It may be high time for President Obama to think very seriously about replacing Tim Geithner and others who, by opposing such measures as the financial transactions tax, hinder vitally necessary regulations, thus neglecting poor and middle-class citizens and making future financial collapses virtually a foregone conclusion

Butler County Progressives are urged to think through this question, to look carefully at what Geithner has done and advocated so far in this administration, and to write President Obama regarding their thoughts on the matter – as well as to write legislators about the need for a financial transactions tax.

November 1, 2009

Senator Russ Feingold has made an important point:  Let’s strongly favor the public option but make it clear that for liberals it is a compromise position.  Liberals’ first choice is the single-payer system.  So let’s not let people get away with asking us to compromise; we are already compromising — with the recognition that it is a compromise absolutely necessary to keep the insurance companies from sending health care costs through the roof.

Since we are already compromising by supporting the public option instead of insisting on single-payer, we should not give active support to the states-opt-out proposal — but may have to go along with it if that is finally all that the Democrats can muster.

A “trigger” of any kind makes any health care proposal meaningless.  It would simply allow the insurance companies to come up with schemes of delay and deception.  .

Olympia Snowe is not important to the passage of a health care reform bill.  She is the kind of person who goes into a restaurant and orders a bowl of chili, but without beans, without beef, without tomatoes, and (to top it off) without chili powder.