Party leaders prepare liberals to accept a health care reform deal

After the toughest week yet for health reform, leading Democrats are warning that the party likely will have to accept major compromises to get a bill passed this year – perhaps even dropping a proposal to create a government-run plan that is almost an article of faith among some liberals.
With August dominated by angry faces and raised voices at town hall meetings, influential Democrats began laying the groundwork for the fall, particularly with the party's liberal base, saying they may need to accept a less-than-perfect bill to achieve health reform this year.
"Trying to hold the president's feet to the fire is fine, but first we have to win the big argument," former President Bill Clinton said Thursday at the Netroots Nation convention, a gathering of liberal activists and bloggers who will prove most difficult to convince. "I am pleading with you. It is OK with me if you want to keep everybody honest. . . . But try to keep this thing in the lane of getting something done. We need to pass a bill and move this thing forward."
“I want us to be mindful we may need to take less than a full loaf,” he said after recounting the political troubles that followed his failed reform effort in 1994.
It won’t be an easy sell. Even former national party chairman Howard Dean this week threatened Democrats who don’t support the public insurance plan with the prospect of primary challenges – the first rumblings of what could devolve into a Democratic civil war over health care.
There is no guarantee, either, that progressive House and Senate members wouldn't make good on their promise to oppose a bill without a public insurance plan.
But the signs were everywhere this week that Democrats, stung and seemingly caught by surprise by the vehemence of the opposition to President Barack Obama’s overhaul plans, were already gaming out September and what it would take to get a bill to Obama’s desk.
Jettisoning the public plan has always been one option, and even Obama has signaled for weeks that he would consider alternatives to a government insurance plan, which moderate Democratic senators have yet to embrace and nearly all Republicans oppose. And in the face of public resistance to Obama’s plans, some top Democrats have begun to talk more openly about the possibility of compromise on a bill.
Sen. Dick Durbin, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, said twice this week that he was open to dropping the public plan to pass a bill. “We are determined to get a bill to the floor. It doesn't have to be a perfect bill. I don't want this process filibustered to failure,” he said.
White House health reform czar Nancy-Ann DeParle said recently the president was willing to study replacing the government-run plan with non-profit insurance cooperatives – a compromise under consideration in the Senate Finance Committee.
Writing in a Washington Post op-ed, Democratic strategist Paul Begala, who is close to White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, warned progressives against turning their backs on reform if it doesn’t include everything they want. As a former consultant to Clinton during the health care battle, Begala said he carries "a heavy burden of regret from my role in setting the bar too high the last time we tried fundamental health reform." He had urged Clinton to veto any bill short of guaranteeing universal health care.
“It would be a bitter disappointment if health reform did not include a public option,” he wrote. "A public plan that keeps the insurance companies honest is, I believe, the right policy and the right politics. . . . The question is not whether I or other progressives will support a health-reform bill that includes everything we want but, rather, whether we will support a bill that doesn't.” There were other hints of compromise. When the congressional Democratic leadership and the White House issued August recess talking points before leaving town, the public plan was not among the proposals members were encouraged to emphasize.

White House will change e-mail rules

The White House said Sunday night that it will change its e-mail sign-up procedures after some recipients of a health-care e-mail complained that they had not asked to receive updates.
“We are implementing measures to make subscribing to e-mails clearer, including preventing advocacy organizations from signing people up to our lists without their permission when they deliver petition signatures and other messages on individual’s behalf,” spokesman Nick Shapiro said in a statement Sunday night.
After a few such recipients appeared on Fox News, White House officials determined that advocacy groups on the right or left could have sent in the names without the person knowing it.
For instance, a group might have sent WhiteHouse.gov a comment from each person who had signed an online petition, and the White House would have captured the e-mail address.
FoxNews.com reported: “FOX News has offered the White House examples of what hundreds of people say were unsolicited e-mails.”
Shapiro said in the statement: “The White House e-mail list is made up of e-mail addresses obtained solely through the White House website. The White House doesn't purchase, upload or merge from any other list. … [A]ll e-mails come from the White House website as we have no interest in emailing anyone who does not want to receive an email.
“If an individual received the e-mail because someone else or a group signed them up or forwarded the email, we hope they were not too inconvenienced. Further, we suggest that they unsubscribe from the list by clicking the link at the bottom of the e-mail or tell whomever forwarded it to them not to forward such information anymore.”
The complaints concerned a 1,500-word e-mail sent Thursday in the name of White House senior adviser David Axelrod, including “8 common myths about health insurance reform.” The e-mail mimicked the style of chain e-mails attacking President Barack Obama’s health-reform plan. The subject line: “Something worth forwarding.”
The White House had sent other e-mails to the list without complaint.
Fox News’ Major Garrett had a lengthy exchange about the matter with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs at the televised briefing on Thursday.
Garrett said: “[F]olks have emailed me … [who] would like to know how they get an e-mail from the White House when they have never asked for one.”
Gibbs replied: “I'd have to look and see.” Later, when Gibbs was asked whether public opinion would influence the administration’s Afghanistan policy, he quipped: “We're e-mailing Major's list.”

Gay Rights Leader Doubts Obama's Anti-Gay Marriage Stance

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country
Two things surprised me in my interview with Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese:
He's befriended the evangelical minister who led California's clergy in promoting Proposition 8, the state's recently adopted gay marriage ban.
Solmonese has doubts about the president's stated opposition to same-sex marriage.
Here's our exchange on Obama's gay marriage position:
You've gotten to know the president personally. Have you talked to him about his opposition to gay marriage?
I've had the chance to visit with the president personally both during the campaign and since he's been in the White House. I don't really know what's at the heart of his opposition. It's hard for me to believe that in his heart he's truly opposed to same-sex marriage. Maybe it's something he's working to get his head around. When you look at who he is and what his life experiences are and who he surrounds himself by and the transformative political figure he is, it's hard to imagine he genuinely opposes it.
Solmonese isn't the first to doubt the president's opposition to gay marriage, though those who do are usually on the right, alleging that Obama just wants to avoid inflaming cultural conservatives. As a state senate candidate in Illinois, he supported gay marriage. But here's what Obama told the Chicago Tribune in March 2007:I'm a Christian. And so, although I try not to have my religious beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do believe that tradition, and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman.

Veteran Environmental and Energy Policy Expert Roger Platt Named USGBC’s SVP Global

Platt as the Senior Vice President, Global Policy and Law, a new position in the organization effective
September 1, 2009.
“Roger will be an incredible addition to our team,” said Rick Fedrizzi, President, CEO and Founding
Chair, USGBC and CEO, GBCI. “He has a unique perspective on how public-private-non-profit
alliances are redefining how important work gets done in the US, and increasingly around the world. It
takes a rare kind of leadership talent to get diverse people to the table and inspire them to success in
hammering out the details that define good policy. Roger is a veteran Washington expert at this, and
his contributions to USGBC in this new role will give us new capacity both here and around the world.”
“USGBC is clearly setting the agenda for how the wholesale shift to greener, more efficient buildings
and communities will happen,” said Platt. “And they’ve done it by being clear in their vision and
relentless in their execution. I’ve been inspired by the partnerships we’ve done together and impressed
by the organization’s management from my seat on the USGBC board. To be able to contribute more
directly to that success in this new role is very exciting.”
Platt joins USGBC after a very successful 15 years as senior vice president and counsel with the Real
Estate Roundtable, which represents the leaders of America’s top public and privately owned real
estate entities on public policy issues. There Roger pioneered a series of high-profile collaborations
between the Roundtable and environmental and non-profit organizations to advance responsible public
policy. These include working with the Clinton Climate Initiative’s global program on large energy
retrofits; Environmental Defense Fund and the Nature Conservancy on multi-species land use
planning; the U.S. Conference of Mayors and Smart Growth America on smarter growth, including the
recycling of Brownfield’s properties; the Environmental Protection Agency on the launch of the Energy
Star Building Label program; the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) on tax incentives for
ultra-efficient commercial buildings; and most recently with NRDC and USGBC on how greener, more
efficient buildings can be part of the solution to energy and climate protection challenges.
Before joining the Real Estate Roundtable, he was a consultant to President Clinton’s then newly
formed Corporation for National and Community Service. Prior to that he worked as a senior associate
practicing in the area of urban land use and real estate development and transactions at a San
Francisco-based law firm. Roger received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and hislaw degree from the University of San Francisco School of Law.

Sarah Palin's Lies About Obamacare Are Based on Religion

By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Once again, flailin' Palin mangles the facts. I'm not for federally subsidized healthcare or the so-called public option, either. But the way to fight well-meaning but overwrought healthcare reform is not to lie about what's on the table, nor to grossly mischaracterize its components.
That, of course, is what former Gov. Sarah Palin did online, making up a story about President Obama's nonexistent plan to create a "death panel":
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin called President Barack Obama's health plan "downright evil" Friday Aug. 7, 2009 in her first online comments since leaving office, saying in a Facebook posting that he would create a "death panel" that would deny care to the neediest Americans.
Once again, former Governor Palin is letting her religiosity cloud her thinking. She and others of the Schiavo ilk read into the Bible that the public should pay for life support even when there's not a remote possibility that the life in question is salvageable. We don't need healthcare reform to resolve that problem. All we need do is shift the cost of sustaining the living dead to the people who insist on keeping them on life support. And I don't mean to their insurance companies, I mean shifting that cost to the individuals themselves.
Watch how quickly they would vote to "pull the plug" if they had to spend decades working to pay the true costs.
I like the way Monsignor Charles Fahey, 76, a Catholic priest who chairs the board of the National Council on Aging, phrased the way he would decide on when to pull his own plug:"We have to make decisions that are deliberative about our health care at every moment," Fahey said. "What I have said is that if I cannot say another prayer, if I cannot give or get another hug, and if I cannot have another martini—then let me go."

By Susan Page, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — As supporters and opponents of overhauling the health care system try to shape public opinion at congressional town-hall-style meetings, both sides face a big complication: Public opinion on the issue is complex in ways that defy an easy Republican-Democratic divide.
Analysis of a recent USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds views on what priority to emphasize, how fast to act and what's important to protect vary and sometimes conflict depending on a person's age and region of the country, whether he or she has insurance, and is healthy or ailing.
PELOSI, HOYER: Attacks are 'un-American'
TOWN HALL: Passions flare-up at forums
TELL US: How do you feel about the health care debate?
Seniors are by far the most resistant to the idea of changing the current system — an opening for opponents who have focused on proposed cuts in Medicare spending and accusations about planning for "end-of-life" care. The idea of controlling insurance costs has broader support overall than expanding coverage for the uninsured, which has prompted the White House to begin describing its goal as "insurance reform."
Meanwhile, in an op-ed article in today's USA TODAY, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, both Democrats, decry what they call "un-American" tactics used to disrupt some congressional forums.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell on Fox News Sunday accused Democrats of trying "to demonize citizens who are energetic about this."
An analysis of results from a USA TODAY survey July 10-12 illustrates some of the crosscurrents in public opinion. The poll of 3,026 adults has a margin of error of +/—2 percentage points. The poll found:
•Significant differences on what the key goal of a health care overhaul should be. Two-thirds of blacks and six in 10 Hispanics say it should be expanding coverage to the uninsured, but six in 10 whites say controlling costs. Westerners are inclined to say expanding coverage is more important; Southerners say it's controlling costs. •Challenges in convincing most Americans that it is urgent to act this year, as Obama argues. There's less urgency among those who have insurance and whose health is excellent or good — groups that make up the majority of those polled.

Health Specialist Katie Wilson Reports On Her Experience Using Resveratrol

I'm a 35-year-old news veteran, who's been covering health and wellness news for more than a decade. I admit I can sometimes be jaded and skeptical with an 'I've seen it all attitude.'
Birth of a Story
When the news director John Beamer asked me to do an investigative report on the nutritional supplement Resveratrol, I had no idea that I would end up as the 'star' of my own story. But I did!
John had seen Resveratrol all over the news and media lately and wanted to get to the bottom of this new 'miracle product', so he gave me the task to do a story on it.
Rich in antioxidants and believed to promote healthy, younger looking skin as well as increasing energy levels, it has gotten a lot of attention in the national media."Scientists have identified a substitute to red wine called Resveratrol that they believe might do more than just protect the heart but could, significantly extend life by preventing a number of age-related illnesses."