Author Archives: Solivita Democrat

(Excerpt from WalletHub 2014 Report by John S Kiernan)

States with Democratic Governors or Legislatures have fewer uninsured workers than red states. Low-wage service employees are less able to see a doctor in red states.

A recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) provides the best estimate to date of the proportion of private health plan enrollees under Obamacare who previously lacked health insurance and therefore would be gaining coverage under the new law. Based on their nationally representative survey of adults who purchase their own insurance, KFF finds that 57% of private plan enrollees were previously uninsured.

Combining this new data point with information on the number of new Medicaid recipients and private plan enrollees under Obamacare, WalletHub analysts are now able to offer an initial projection of uninsured rates post-Obamacare for 43 states and the District of Columbia.

As more Floridians become aware of how important this election year is, the FDP Leadership Blue Gala set new records for attendance and fundraising. The featured speaker, President Bill Clinton, got the crowd fired up and ready to go!

(Reprint of July/August Edition of Politico by Multi-millionaire Nick Hanauer)

This is, in other words, an economic approach that can unite left and right. Perhaps that’s one reason the right is beginning, inexorably, to wake up to this reality as well. Even Republicans as diverse as Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum recently came out in favor of raising the minimum wage, in defiance of the Republicans in Congress.

One thing we can agree on—I’m sure of this—is that the change isn’t going to start in Washington. Thinking is stale, arguments even more so. On both sides.
But the way I see it, that’s all right. Most major social movements have seen their earliest victories at the state and municipal levels. The fight over the eight-hour workday, which ended in Washington, D.C., in 1938, began in places like Illinois and Massachusetts in the late 1800s. The movement for social security began in California in the 1930s. Even the Affordable Health Care Act—Obamacare—would have been hard to imagine without Mitt Romney’s model in Massachusetts to lead the way.

Sadly, no Republicans and few Democrats get this. President Obama doesn’t seem to either, though his heart is in the right place. In his State of the Union speech this year, he mentioned the need for a higher minimum wage but failed to make the case that less inequality and a renewed middle class would promote faster economic growth. Instead, the arguments we hear from most Democrats are the same old social-justice claims. The only reason to help workers is because we feel sorry for them. These fairness arguments feed right into every stereotype of Obama and the Democrats as bleeding hearts. Republicans say growth. Democrats say fairness—and lose every time.

But just because the two parties in Washington haven’t figured it out yet doesn’t mean we rich folks can just keep going. The conversation is already changing, even if the billionaires aren’t onto it. I know what you think: You think that Occupy Wall Street and all the other capitalism-is-the-problem protesters disappeared without a trace. But that’s not true. Of course, it’s hard to get people to sleep in a park in the cause of social justice. But the protests we had in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis really did help to change the debate in this country from death panels and debt ceilings to inequality.

It’s just that so many of you plutocrats didn’t get the message.

Dear 1%ers, many of our fellow citizens are starting to believe that capitalism itself is the problem. I disagree, and I’m sure you do too. Capitalism, when well managed, is the greatest social technology ever invented to create prosperity in human societies. But capitalism left unchecked tends toward concentration and collapse. It can be managed either to benefit the few in the near term or the many in the long term. The work of democracies is to bend it to the latter. That is why investments in the middle class work. And tax breaks for rich people like us don’t. Balancing the power of workers and billionaires by raising the minimum wage isn’t bad for capitalism. It’s an indispensable tool smart capitalists use to make capitalism stable and sustainable. And no one has a bigger stake in that than zillionaires like us.

The oldest and most important conflict in human societies is the battle over the concentration of wealth and power. The folks like us at the top have always told those at the bottom that our respective positions are righteous and good for all. Historically, we called that divine right. Today we have trickle-down economics.
What nonsense this is. Am I really such a superior person? Do I belong at the center of the moral as well as economic universe? Do you?

My family, the Hanauers, started in Germany selling feathers and pillows. They got chased out of Germany by Hitler and ended up in Seattle owning another pillow company. Three generations later, I benefited from that. Then I got as lucky as a person could possibly get in the Internet age by having a buddy in Seattle named Bezos. I look at the average Joe on the street, and I say, “There but for the grace of Jeff go I.” Even the best of us, in the worst of circumstances, are barefoot, standing by a dirt road, selling fruit. We should never forget that, or forget that the United States of America and its middle class made us, rather than the other way around.

Or we could sit back, do nothing, enjoy our yachts. And wait for the pitchforks.

Nick Hanauer is a Seattle-based entrepreneur.

Shown from left: Harold Miller, John and Michelle Green, Michael and Ilene Malpero, Ellis Moose

The SDC “Blue Balls Bowlers” cleaned up in Lakeland on Sunday, June 8. Michael

Malpero rolled the high game for men and new board member, Michelle Green took top

honors for women.

American middle class is no longer the richest in the world

(Excerpt from NYT on May 14, 2014 by Nicholas Kristoff)

It was in 1931 that the historian James Truslow Adams coined the phrase “the American dream.”

• The American dream is not just a yearning for affluence, Adams said, but also for the chance to overcome barriers and social class. Yet today the American dream has derailed, partly because of growing inequality.
• Or maybe the American dream has just swapped citizenship, for now it is more likely to be found in Canada or Europe — and a central issue in this year’s political campaigns should be how to repatriate it.
• A report last month in The Times by David Leonhardt and Kevin Quealy noted that the American middle class is no longer the richest in the world, with Canada apparently pulling ahead in median after-tax income.
• In fact, the discrepancy is arguably even greater. Canadians receive essentially free health care, while Americans pay for part of their health care costs with after-tax dollars.
• Meanwhile, the American worker toils, on average, 4.6 percent more hours than a Canadian worker, 21 percent more hours than a French worker and an astonishing 28 percent more hours than a German worker, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
• Canadians and Europeans also live longer, on average, than Americans do. Their children are less likely to die than ours. American women are twice as likely to die as a result of pregnancy or childbirth as Canadian women.
• And, while our universities are still the best in the world, children in other industrialized countries, on average, get a better education than ours.
• Most sobering of all: A recent O.E.C.D. report found that for people aged 16 to 24, Americans ranked last among rich countries in numeracy and technological proficiency.
• Economic mobility is tricky to measure, but several studies show that a child born in the bottom 20 percent economically is less likely to rise to the top in America than in Europe. A Danish child is twice as likely to rise as an American child.
• “America has become the advanced country not only with the highest level of inequality, but one of those with the least equality of opportunity,” according to Nobel-winning Economist Joseph Stiglitz.
• Consider that the American economy has, over all, grown more quickly than France’s. But so much of the growth has gone to the top 1 percent that the bottom 99 percent of French people have done better than the bottom 99 percent of Americans.
• The top six hedge fund managers and traders averaged more than $2 billion each in earnings last year, partly because of the egregious “carried interest” tax break.
• President Obama has been unable to get financing for universal prekindergarten; this year’s proposed federal budget for pre-K for all, so important to our nation’s future, would be a bit more than a single month’s earnings for those six tycoons.

Proposed Solutions

• We could stop subsidizing private jets and too-big-to-fail banks, and direct those funds to early education programs that help break the cycle of poverty.
• We can invest less in prisons and more in schools.
• We can impose a financial transactions tax and use the proceeds to broaden jobs programs like the earned-income tax credit and career academies.
• And, as Alan S. Blinder of Princeton University has outlined, we can give companies tax credits for creating new jobs.

It’s time to bring the American dream home from exile.

Click here to read article in its entirety

Here’s why:

(The following is an excerpt from The Miami Herald by Marc Caputo)

Rick Scott’s ‘awful’ poll numbers make Florida Republicans queasy

On Tuesday, as Scott kicked off the Legislature’s 60-day lawmaking session, he gave the annual state of the state speech, a campaign-like preview filled with job-creation statistics.

But many of Scott’s fellow Republicans were paying attention to a different set of numbers: a raft of poll data-points that make the GOP queasy because it shows Democrat Charlie Crist has broad support across Florida right now. The highlights:

• 34 percentage points — the margin Crist beats Scott by in Broward and Miami-Dade counties, according to one business interest’s statewide survey. This margin is 12 points greater than Democrat Alex Sink’s in the 2010 governor’s race. If she had earned Crist’s poll numbers in just these two counties, Sink would have won.

• 10 percentage points — the margin Crist beats Scott by in another business interest’s statewide poll.

• 8 percentage points — the margin Crist beats Scott by in two other business interests’ statewide polls.

• 7 percentage points — the margin Crist beats Scott by in a fourth business interest’s statewide poll.

• 6 percentage points — the margin Crist beats Scott by in a poll of Republican-controlled state House districts across Florida.

• 4 percentage points — the margin Crist beats Scott by in North Florida, a Republican stronghold. The number is well within the poll’s error margin. But it’s a cumulative 17-point shift in favor of Democrats compared to 2010, and Sink would have won the governor’s race with this North Florida margin.

• 2 percentage points — the margin Scott beats Crist by in a poll of Republican-controlled state Senate districts in North Florida. Again, it’s within the error margin. But again: If Sink had had this margin, she probably would have won the governor’s race.

“There’s no way to sugarcoat this: It’s awful,” said a top Florida Republican, one of a dozen who provided or confirmed with the Miami Herald the crosstabs, presentations or individual slices of the above-mentioned polls, six in all, which were taken in advance of the lawmaking session.

To read the article in its entirety, click here.

(If you’ve ever been curious about the impact of talk radio on the public discourse, following is a fascinating video that explains its rise and effect on ordinary Americans. Click here to see the video. Scroll down right side of page.)

[Excerpt from Daily Kos by Leslie Salzillo on March 4, 2014]

Many of us understand the damage that has been done by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, FOX News, and Hate Media. You can hear the promotion of blatant racism, homophobia, misogyny and bigotry just by turning on the tv, radio or computer. Malicious lies are perpetuated until they are believed by those who have been sucked in and who now use right-wing media as their only source of ‘news’. Jen Senko is a filmmaker who watched the transformation of her father as he slowly came to believe the extreme right-wing propaganda. Senko is now making a documentary about it called  The Brainwashing Of My Dad.

Polk County Democratic Executive Committee
Joe Clark
Joseph.clark4@gmail.com
Albyn L. Roman
Roman.polkdec@gmail.com

  Polk County Democratic Hispanic Caucus

Elects Officers, Sets Agenda 

Albyn Roman

The Polk County Democratic Hispanic Caucus elected its first set of officers at its organizational meeting June 16.

Albyn L. Roman of Lakeland was elected president for the 2014-2016 term.  Rocco Anastasia of Lakeland was elected vice president and Betsy Oley, also of Lakeland, was elected secretary/treasurer.

The group heard presentations from two candidates, Michael “Mac” McKenna who is running for Congress from District 10 and Celeste Williams, who is running for the Florida House of Representatives from District 41.

The Caucus voted to hold its monthly meetings in the west end of the county on the third Thursday of each month. The next meeting will be held February 20 at 6:30 p.m. on the Lakeland campus of Polk State College, Room 1243.

The Caucus will also hold monthly meetings on the east side of the county. A location, time and place for those meetings is still to be determined.

“We want to make our meeting locations as convenient as possible for all our members,” said newly elected president Roman. “We will establish sites for meetings on both sides of our far-flung county.”

Our club’s donation to the Philippine Haiyan typhoon relief effort was presented to two Solivita Filipino groups and sent off to help that battered area recover.

Board members Ilene Malpero and Joe Clark presented the $1,000.00 check to a joint meeting of  Filipinos At Solivita and Kapamilya early in January. FAS president Rudy Julian and Kapamilya president Jun Tejada accepted the donation and expressed their gratitude to our club.

The amount was immediately sent off to Catholic Relief Services, one of the organizations coordinating the relief effort.

“This quick and open hearted response to people we have never met really shows what a generous group we have in the Solivita Democratic Club,” said Club President Marti Kara. “Our hearts go out to the people in the disaster area.”

Many thanks to all of our generous members who contributed to this effort.

Joe Clark
SDC Executive Board