Nurses radical bid to knock out political curruption

UKRNinUSA, RN · Nov 7, 2006

stevielynn -we'll agree to disagree but I'm interested in your thoughts about an alternative plan to rid our country of political corruption. IMO it seems to be getting worse with no end in sight.

pickledpepperRN · Nov 8, 2006

Proposition 89, a measure that would revolutionize the way California pays for elections, handily lost as supporters conceded the race with just over 29 percent of the ballots counted.

"We're disappointed that we lost, but we're not discouraged," said Martha Kuhl, a registered nurse and an officer with the California Nurses Association, which was pushing the measure against opposition from an eclectic mix of opponents who are usually rivals: unions, large corporations, Democrats and Republicans.

All of the opponents, Kuhl said, "have an interest in the status quo." …

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/11/08/MNG4UM89CA1.DTL&type=printable

UKRNinUSA, RN · Nov 9, 2006

still waiting for your suggestions to get the corruption out of politics - all that pork you were talking about is just favors for favors i.e. bribery - you can't get rid of the political corruption until you take the money factor out of it.

pickledpepperRN · Nov 9, 2006

Prop. 89: We've Opened a Door for Reform That Will Never Be Closed

Advocates of political reform in California said today that despite a defeat in Tuesday’s election, the campaign for Proposition 89 has laid the groundwork for the inevitable enactment of a change in the political system.

http://www.calnurses.org/media-center/press-releases/2006/november/page.jsp?itemID=28804168&print=t

pickledpepperRN · Nov 9, 2006

still waiting for your suggestions to get the corruption out of politics - all that pork you were talking about is just favors for favors i.e. bribery - you can't get rid of the political corruption until you take the money factor out of it.

I am also interested in how to alleviate the "money in- favors out" way our government is run now.

allnurses Guide · Nov 9, 2006

Full, complete, immediate, open disclosure of who donates, how much they donate and who are the people REALLY behind the PAC's and Special Interest groups so the public can see who is donating and then can make an informed choice when they vote.

Labor unions, teachers unions, public employee unions are the biggest contributors (not corporations) and they all contribute mostly to liberal Democrats and liberal causes. Do I think they need to be shut down? NO!

"Corporations" are not evil . . .

Repeal the McCain/Feingold bill.

Allow access to our political leaders from every walk of life - just disclose who gives what to whom.

In the case of Republicans, they get most of their money from small businessmen and women. Some obviously from bigger fish . .

I do not see how having access to a politician is a bad thing . . . and I do see how making me finance a politician's election campaign is completely unfair. If they want to run, they have to get their own money.

steph

pickledpepperRN · Nov 10, 2006

Full, complete, immediate, open disclosure of who donates, how much they donate and who are the people REALLY behind the PAC's and Special Interest groups so the public can see who is donating and then can make an informed choice when they vote.
Labor unions, teachers unions, public employee unions are the biggest contributors (not corporations) and they all contribute mostly to liberal Democrats and liberal causes. Do I think they need to be shut down? NO!
"Corporations" are not evil . . .
Repeal the McCain/Feingold bill.
Allow access to our political leaders from every walk of life - just disclose who gives what to whom.
In the case of Republicans, they get most of their money from small businessmen and women. Some obviously from bigger fish . .
I do not see how having access to a politician is a bad thing . . . and I do see how making me finance a politician's election campaign is completely unfair. If they want to run, they have to get their own money.
steph

I think full, complete, immediate, open disclosure of who donates, how much they donate and who are the people REALLY behind the PAC's and Special Interest groups is a GREAT idea! Public as in large print and required disclosure orally in broadcast media.

I also think for statewide office three debates shoud be mandatory. For local offices one may suffice.

I think having access to a politician IS a good thing. Do you know access to phoney Arnold has been impossible even for those who spend what is a LARGE sum to a nurse.

I could not truly have his attention even if I sold my house and took all my savings from the bank to donate it to him.

SO the oil companies, csrpenters union, PHARMA (stem cell research) and insurance companies get their say and their way.

The Hospital Association wrote his "Emergency Order" the allow hospitals to avoid any safe staffing level in ER. They were not even required to keep a record of which nurse was assigned to a patient!

AND to try to eliminate the Board of Registered Nursing and other boards so there would be no oversight or accountability.

They paid for it and they wrote it.

It was illegal an placed patient lives in danger.

How can we make it possible to get access for citizens who are not millionaires?

--------------------------------

Deep pockets carry the day

Big spenders, notably oil and tobacco firms, were also big winners.

By Dan Morain

Times Staff Writer

November 9, 2006

Money didn't just talk in Tuesday's election. It screamed.

The year's biggest spenders-and biggest winners-were the oil and tobacco industries. In almost every contest, candidates and issues with the most money trumped the side with less, even if the losers raised bags full.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/politics/cal/la-me-money9nov09,0,397013.story?coll=la-home-headlines

allnurses Guide · Nov 10, 2006

I think full, complete, immediate, open disclosure of who donates, how much they donate and who are the people REALLY behind the PAC's and Special Interest groups is a GREAT idea! Public as in large print and required disclosure orally in broadcast media.
I also think for statewide office three debates shoud be mandatory. For local offices one may suffice.
I think having access to a politician IS a good thing. Do you know access to phoney Arnold has been impossible even for those who spend what is a LARGE sum to a nurse.
I could not truly have his attention even if I sold my house and took all my savings from the bank to donate it to him.
SO the oil companies, csrpenters union, PHARMA (stem cell research) and insurance companies get their say and their way.
The Hospital Association wrote his "Emergency Order" the allow hospitals to avoid any safe staffing level in ER. They were not even required to keep a record of which nurse was assigned to a patient!
AND to try to eliminate the Board of Registered Nursing and other boards so there would be no oversight or accountability.
They paid for it and they wrote it.
It was illegal an placed patient lives in danger.
How can we make it possible to get access for citizens who are not millionaires?
--------------------------------
Deep pockets carry the day
Big spenders, notably oil and tobacco firms, were also big winners.
By Dan Morain
Times Staff Writer
November 9, 2006
Money didn't just talk in Tuesday's election. It screamed.
The year's biggest spenders-and biggest winners-were the oil and tobacco industries. In almost every contest, candidates and issues with the most money trumped the side with less, even if the losers raised bags full.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/politics/cal/la-me-money9nov09,0,397013.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Vote Arnold out . . . .

Obviously, most of Californians want him in.

Majority wins . . . even if I don't like it or you don't like it.

steph

UKRNinUSA, RN · Nov 10, 2006

"Corporations" are not evil . . .
I do not see how having access to a politician is a bad thing . . . and I do see how making me finance a politician's election campaign is completely unfair.

Two things -corporations are not necessarily evil -it's just that they have one goal in mind -making money -not necessarily a bad thing but becomes a bad thing when it disenfranchises the rest of us.

Access to a politician is not a bad thing, unequal access is a bad thing- which is the situation we have. Is George Bush more likely to listen to me or the CEO of, lets say, Halliburton ? There is an old (probably capitalist) saying -you have to speculate to accumulate. As we say in the UK (don't know if there is an American equivalent) don't be penny wise and pound foolish -it'll turn round and bite you in the rear-end.

RN4MERCY · Nov 12, 2006

Prop 89 is simply welfare for politicians. No thanks.
I'll have to watch those links later . . .gotta take my 5 year old out to trick or treat.
steph

Halloween is over and I hope you've had time to watch the links posted by 'Spacenurse'.

You've been TRICKED, pursuaded by a "sound byte" paid for by Big Oil, Big PhRMA, HMOs and Insurers! Do you really believe that only Millionaires should be able to essentially buy an office? (I'd say run, but the races are not fair due to the corrupting influence of big money in politics...it's just not fair!).

As a nurse, I hope you would carefully consider that your duty as a patient advocate extends beyond the bedside and is inseparable from social, political, and economic advocacy. Historically, professional nurses such as Lavinia Dock, Lillian Wald, and Florence Nightengale understood this and were passionate about protecting the public health and welfare in the political arena...they took it to the streets too!

Respectfully, you might want to reconsider your previous reference to the "special interests" of nurses unions (our patients, of course!)...here's a TREAT for you:

Proposition 89: Placing Voter Political Participation Ahead of Corporate Political Privilege

By Don DeMoro, Executive Director IHSP

Institute for Health & Socio-Economic Policy

November 3, 2006

In 1816, ten years before his death, a concern with corporate economic power displacing equitable political participation in the larger society prompted Thomas Jefferson to lament:

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

Granted, Jefferson was referring to British combines he feared would politically defile a nation and not about today's Big Oil, Big Pharma or the nation's Really Big - and enormously powerful - Finance Sector, (investment banks, insurance corporations, credit and equity companies, hedge funds, REITs, etc., ) which in 2001 accounted for about 40% of all U.S corporate profits, up from 14% in 1981.

Nothing better illustrates our current democracy deficit better than the $500 million plus river in political contributions flowing into California's current election coffers and the battle over Proposition 89, the Clean Money in Politics Act sponsored by the California Nurses Association that aims to stem that flood.

The barrage of "special interest" and 'unfairness' allegations launched from both left and right flooding media political reporting - and in the process choking out any opportunity for sane political discourse - is an especially virulent display of California 'attack politics.'

How is the average voter, already weary and perhaps more than a little repulsed and even cynical with our big-money dominated auctioneering-like political morass, to have hope for a sensible, just and moral politics in the face of all this political nonsense?

A good start is to get clear on the 'special interest' charge and what a fair envisioning of electoral politics could and should look like in the present era where both political pundits and much of the media bemoan the corrupting influence of big money in politics but at the same time - and with a straight face - insist upon the sanctitude of money as a form of free speech.

Just what and who is a special interest, what's fair and what's not fair, and fair for whom?

'Special interests,' if the phrase has any political meaning left, must be differentiated from and contrasted to the 'Public Interest.' A special interest has interests that are over and against and actually do harm to the Public Interest understood as just that: the common good of society as a whole.

The idea of 'fairness' in politics is a little more slippery to grasp There is a long standing notion that fairness in politics centers around the notion of political 'voice,' that everyone no matter their political beliefs or the size of their wallet should have equal 'voice' in the political arena.

Voice is crucial because it is through that voice that participation in politics is possible. But simply 'having' a voice is not enough; politicians must actually listen to and act upon the voice of average voters before we can say with any degree of confidence that genuine political participation - and thus fairness in civic life - has taken root in the body politic.

Jefferson's concern with 'the aristocracy of our monied corporations' usurping political democracy has proven prescient. Large corporations and their vast economic resources are not just another political voice or special interest participant among many. Their interests are radically distinct from and in opposition to the Public Interest. They are financial behemoths to which the nation's courts have granted the legal rights of personhood (the term 'corporation' does not appear in the U.S. Constitution), and have in effect diluted both the Constitutional sovereignty of citizens and the original intent and demand of corporate charters that corporations must serve the public interest above all. Now, corporate financial clout regularly monopolizes public political discourse in an effort to literally define what counts as a 'legitimate' interest in the political arena.

Corporate economic concentration, of the world's largest 100 economies, fifty-two are corporations, dominates not only our access to a just overall quality of life - decent jobs, fair pensions, health care, a sustainable environment - but just as critically disfigures the very fabric of political thought. Corporate manufactured political-speak saturates the mass media helping to maintain a politics of privilege for concentrated corporate wealth and tacitly legitimating the illegitimate idea that economic power is somehow equivalent to political equality.

The people of California have a political watershed opportunity and a momentous responsibility. They can demonstrate national leadership in campaign finance reform and vote for the California Nurses Association sponsored Proposition 89 to help put an end to brute economic power and a corporate politics of privilege masquerading as political equality. Or, they can vote to continue the masquerade and mute their own voice and genuine political participation and responsibilities for years to come.

Whatever choice they make come November 7, the consequences of that choice and the hope to which Jefferson spoke, a hope for a politics of participation in opposition to a politics of privilege, rests with them.

We should all be hopeful.

Don DeMoro is Executive Director of The Institute for Health & Socio-Economic Policy (IHSP), a non-profit policy and research group and the research arm of the California Nurses Association. The IHSP focus is current political/economic policy analysis in health care and other industries and the constructive engagement of alternative policies with international, national, state and local bodies to enhance promote and defend the quality of life for all.

http://www.calnurses.org/media-center/in-the-news/2006/november/page.jsp?itemID=28759832

ZASHAGALKA, RN · Nov 12, 2006

As a nurse, I hope you would carefully consider that your duty as a patient advocate extends beyond the bedside and is inseparable from social, political, and economic advocacy.

Not even a good soundbite.

I'm sorry, being a good nurse has NOTHING to do with an obligation to be a good little liberal.

In fact, I'm conservative BECAUSE I believe that it is in the best economic, political, and social interest of everybody, patients included.

I'm a conservative because conservatism means caring. That IS patient advocacy.

While we might have different worldviews, it's silly to state that if I don't agree with YOU politically, why, I must not be a true patient advocate.

Prop 89 was bad law and the only intent behind it was to give some politicians a leg up on others. Period. It had nothing to do with the 'common' good. It was defeated because there were more politicians that thought it would NOT be specifically good for them, and they backed up that assumption with the money that buys air time. The ability to USE money to buy the time to defeat the proposition, btw, proves their point in doing so.

~faith,

Timothy.

allnurses Guide · Nov 13, 2006

Not even a good soundbite.
I'm sorry, being a good nurse has NOTHING to do with an obligation to be a good little liberal.
In fact, I'm conservative BECAUSE I believe that it is in the best economic, political, and social interest of everybody, patients included.
I'm a conservative because conservatism means caring. That IS patient advocacy.
While we might have different worldviews, it's silly to state that if I don't agree with YOU politically, why, I must not be a true patient advocate.
Prop 89 was bad law and the only intent behind it was to give some politicians a leg up on others. Period. It had nothing to do with the 'common' good. It was defeated because there were more politicians that thought it would NOT be specifically good for them, and they backed up that assumption with the money that buys air time. The ability to USE money to buy the time to defeat the proposition, btw, proves their point in doing so.
~faith,
Timothy.

Riding to my rescue again Tim :kiss Such a good post.

To RN4Mercy - I am not being tricked. I educated myself regarding this bill quite extensively and just come at this entire issue from a different viewpoint, a conservative one. And I'm just as much a patient advocate as you. I don't doubt your ability to advocate for patients - please don't doubt mine.

I do disagree with you and with your soundbite and as Tim mentioned, I was not impressed with it.

A special interest is merely a group of folks who are organizing around a special issue - nothing ugly or wrong about that. CNA is a special interest group. I stand by that. And they have my blessing to lobby all they want. I just disagree with them.

steph