Monday, March 29, 2010

Health Care Reform: Cleaning Out The E-mail

I spent part of yesterday going through all the self-congratulatory e-mail that various "progressive" organizations sent me last week when the health care "reform" bill was passed. Some of the celebrants included:

  • Democracy NowTrue Majority

  • Democracy For America

  • Democrats.org

  • Progressive Congress Action Fund

  • Washington (state) Democrats

  • MoveOn.org


There were also a number of congressmen whose mailing lists I was on only because they promised to not vote for a health care bill that didn't have a public option.

I unsubscribed myself from all of them. If you're incensed about how these organizations helped make us all hostages to insurance companies by supporting the bill, I'd recommend you do the same. These organizations' only real power to raise money is in their e-mail lists. They use them for direct appeals, and as the basis for requesting grants and other support from big donors. If you remove yourself, you remove a little bit of that power. Failure needs to be punished more among America's political class. This is one small way of making that happen.

As for the politicians, I responded to them somewhat along these lines:

When Rep. <insert name here> lied to us that she would never vote for a bill that had no public option, she declared that she didn't want my support. That's the only reason I was on this list in the first place.

If I receive further e-mail from this list, I will add it to the spam filter.

In other words, don't expect me to thank you for screwing us.

If nothing else, you'll be less likely to miss important e-mail for all the political spam.

UPDATE: I don't know how I got them mixed up, but True Majority should have been on the list, and since I can't find evidence of offending e-mail from Democracy Now, they should not have been. Apologies to the latter, and thanks to selise for pointing out the error.

UPDATE 2: Here's a video of Democracy Now's Amy Goodman on CNN discussing the health care bill. She didn't sound happy with the bill.


7 comments:

lawguy said...

In looking at Obama's recess appointments I see that he appointed the two union chioces to the NLRB. Well, it looks like the unions got something no matter how small for their roll over. Unlike more other "progressive" organizations.

Cujo359 said...

It seems a pitifully small victory, nonetheless, for selling out the work force at large.

lawguy said...

I didn't say it wa a good deal. The question that keeps nagging at me is why do so called progressive groups gie up so easily?

lawguy said...

or maybe give.

Cujo359 said...

My guess, and it's really only a guess, is that the real explanation is a combination of things. Much of the progressive movement caved early, when Rahm Emanuel threatened the funding of some of the major groups (the "veal pen", as Jane Hamsher called them). Many others eventually caved so they wouldn't be "outsiders" in DC.

I suppose we'll find out the real story later, but meanwhile, given the players, this seems like a reasonable hypothesis.

Anonymous said...

Cujo - In my 59 yrs., I've never seen anything quite like this. My Democratic "friends" refuse to see these Health Insurance Revisions as anything less than revolutionary progress! They are acting, well, just like the Palinist Tea-Baggers that they despise! They've set up this "Phony Paradigm" where this "Reform" is light vs. darkness. This is akin to a belief system where it's us vs. the big, bad, rural, redneck right-wing extemists. Cujo, these people are as crazy & stupid as the exteme Palinistas! JB

Cujo359 said...

My circle of friends may be smaller, but not too many of them are fooled by that nonsense, JB. To me, it makes even less sense as a result. Besides the Medicaid expansion, the marginal Medicare reforms, and the aid for community clinics, there's nothing in the bill that helps ordinary folks. The rest of it is a huge giveaway to the very interests that have been making our health care system expensive and unusable.

But then, what you want to believe has become more important in America than what is actually true. I'm afraid that we may have finally become too stupid to govern ourselves properly.