A Fresh Start

Now it begins in earnest, and it appears the Karl Rove lies and distraction machine has had its effect. It again becomes possible that the administration that presided over the most disastrous four years since World War II with the most profoundly destructive implications for the next fifty years, may be rewarded with another term.

The Kerry-Edwards campaign is fighting back with a clarity not seen since the primaries. But we return to our belief that the theme that could mean victory is simply FOR A FRESH START.

To energize the base and to win swing voters and inspire non-voters, we need to inspire emotionally while we make sense on the facts. We need to be positive at the same time as we relentlessly expose the damage that Bush has done, that must not be rewarded with four more years.

There is power in words, and these words---A FRESH START---are optimistic at the same time as they imply Bush's failure and the need to repudiate his administration. In themselves they do not attack anyone personally. Whether the implication is "throw the bums out" or a more neutral "time for a change," these three words say it.

Yet these words are primarily oriented towards the future.

They express what this campaign is already saying, especially since the Willy Horton Writ Large GOP convention. They don't concentrate on blame, yet the action required is crystal clear: for A FRESH START, vote for Kerry-Edwards.

If you are convinced this is an effective combination of words to use, it may be up to you to use them---in your letters to the editor, or any other communications you have in support of saving the future by getting Bush out of power. It may have to be a slogan, an idea that percolates up from a few individuals and possibly gets noticed by the campaign. But even if it doesn't, even if it clicks with one voter enough to earn one vote, it will have made an important contribution. Especially in a race which may be extremely close.

Now we turn the lectern over to Morgan....



Focus for Fall

Kerry has been hammering away at the folly and tragic cost of the Iraq war, and that's good. But prominent in his Iraq critique should be mention of the issue that stirs emotions, particularly of swing voters: the prison abuses, like Abu Grav.

Kerry reportedly was advised by Bill Clinton, shortly before going under the knife, to concentrate on economic issues, including the highly appropriate one of health care.

Kerry should emphasize most of all the health care crisis. Jobs, lower incomes, income disparities, are all vital issues, but it is easy to obscure them with apparently contradictory numbers. The facts in the health care crisis are stark. The platitudes that perhaps once were true simply aren't any longer: America is not the healthiest nation in the world, with the best health care system in the world, as most have long believed.

An American girl born today has a life expectancy lower than that in 18 other countries. An American boy is expected on average to live as long as a boy born in Brunei, and not as long as boys in 30 other nations.

Among the world's 13 wealthiest countries, the U.S. has the lowest (or nearly the lowest) life expectancy at birth and life expectancy for infants. It is worst (or nearly worst) in infant mortality and low birth weight. An American infant is more like to die than an infant in Croatia.

We're used to thinking of heart attacks as being the province of busy, wealthy middle-aged white men like Clinton, but in fact cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of death in poor black neighborhoods. This is where the vast wealth of the few really pays off: a woman born in a wealthy Washington neighborhood can expect to live 40 years longer than a male born in a poor DC district. It's a more potent killer, thanks to the stress of poverty, than drugs or homicides. So is cancer. And so is the amorphous category of "untreated conditions."

People die younger in Harlem than in Bangladesh.

The major health role of income disparity is expressed in various factors, but the most obvious one is health insurance. The wealthy have it (or don't need it), and they get better care.
The result is not just in getting life-saving surgery, but in getting simple check-ups and relatively simple care to follow up on what's found. But when care is postponed and then is given haphazardly, grudgingly, and in inferior ways, the result can be measured not only in dollars lost to the economy, but in human suffering. The suffering of people you see every day of your life.

In 2002, some 40 million Americans had no health insurance, including some 20 million with full-time jobs. Some 75 million Americans under age 65 were without health insurance for all or parts of 2001 and 2002. And it's worse now.

New figures from Kaiser, a leading health insurer, show costs of health insurance rose 11% just in 2004. The cost to insure a family for a year is now approaching the annual income of a worker earning minimum wage.

The Institute of Medicine blames gaps in insurance coverage for 17,000 preventable deaths a year. That's 5 times the death toll of 9/11, every year.

Health care is an issue that unites the poor and the middle class workers and families, small business and even large businesses being hampered or crushed by rising health care costs---rising faster than income for one thing, up 50% since Bush took office---and significantly, many health care professionals, including doctors and their organizations, and even some health insurance executives.

The U.S. health care and health insurance system is destructive and on the verge of collapse. It is a potent issue for John Kerry and John Edwards. All Bush has done is increase the burden on Medicare recepients while enriching drug companies and adding to the deficit. It's virtually all cost and no benefit, except to the already wealthy. Sound familiar?

John Kerry pledges to introduce legislation to create affordable health care insurance for all Americans as his first proposal to Congress.

Health care and health insurance is of immense personal importance to me. I am one of those Americans who lost health care coverage during the reign of GW Bush. I am six weeks older than Bill Clinton. Clinton has had the best medical care possible for at least the last decade, and had no apparent health problems, yet he required open heart surgery or he likely would have had a major heart attack that would have disabled or killed him.

As Senator Hillary Clinton pointed out, they have great health insurance, and Bill Clinton got the best care by the best doctors in reputedly the best hospital in the world for his condition.

If later today I were to have chest pains, or require any kind of care, it's very likely I would either not receive it, or it would be inferior and inadequate. If I had what Bill Clinton had, I wouldn't be facing rehabilitation, I would be facing imminent death.

With John Kerry's health care plan, at least the debate will be revived, and perhaps something will be done. This election could literally be life and death for people like me. It is life and death, and the difference between health and suffering, for millions.