Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 2009 10:33 PM
Subject: "Sing Out For Single Payer Road Show
From freebo (guitarist played with lots of "people" (like bonnie raitt)
now playing on his own)
Tomorrow night (Thursday) I'll be participating in the "Sing Out
For Single Payer Road Show", Anne Feeney's brilliant and courageous
undertaking. It will be the kickoff of a 3 wek San Diego to Seattle
tour advocating and bring greater awareness to the single payer
option and the healthcare problem in general.
In addition to ANNE FEENEY, the show will feature ERIC SCHWARTZ,
DAVE CROSSLAND, JOYCE WOODSON, PETER ALSOP, M.B. GORDY, JASON
LUCKETT, and ME. We'll each be doing songs that are pertinent in some
way to the issue of healthcare and social awareness in general.
The show will be at:
AFM LOCAL 47 in LA,
The L.A. Musicians Union Auditorium
818 N. Vine St. in Hollywood, Ca. 90038
Suggested donation $10,
all money's being donated to the tour for expenses.
For more info on the entire tour to check on a West Coast city near
you, please go to Anne's website http://annefeeney.com or
http://laborforsinglepayer.com
There's no doubt our health care system is broken, over 70% of
Americans would like a public option, and single payer seems to work
pretty well for MediCare, as well as in Canada (yes, ask just about
ANY Canadian!). Don't worry, my Conservative friends, no one's going
to take away your option to pay for the private care you'd like with
the insurance of your choice. But CHOICE is the point, and just like
with so much of the Neo-Corporate world, there's really not much
choice (how much of a choice do you really have in the price of gas
for example!) at this point.
Personally, I don't think healthcare should be for unlimited
profit. Sure, folks need to get paid, need to and deserve to make a
good living, but it needs to be in balance. There's something "sick"
about making absurd profits over illnesses that befall our fellow
humans. As we used to say in the 70s, "PEOPLE over PROFITS, not
PROFITS over PEOPLE. There's a reason the separation between the rich
and the poor, the haves and the have nots, the insured and the
uninsured, the homed and the homeless, continues to become greater
and greater. We need to make some profound changes in this country
that we love, and reworking the healthcare system sure would be a
huge part and a great start of that change. There will be hundreds of
millions of dollars thrown at this by the healthcare corporations,
tons of mis-information. I hope the facts will emerge and the
American people will speak out loudly enough to drown out the
corporate greed and have Congress hear our voices.
And that's really what this concert is about. If you're in LA, I
hope you will support it, and I know you will enjoy it. And hats off
to ANNE FEENEY who put this together, a woman who truly puts her
voice and energy to her very strong political and social beliefs, and
a woman for whom I have tremendous respect.
Peace,
FREEBO
***
http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/corp-focus/2009/000321.html
150 Years
By Robert Weissman
The Multi-National Monitor: June 30, 2009
One hundred and fifty years jail time for Bernard Madoff is a good thing.
To listen to the victims of his swindle, or read their words, is to
appreciate the very far-reaching ways in which Madoff's quiet crime has
wreaked havoc on the lives of thousands of families.
Federal District Judge Denny Chin was absolutely right in denouncing
Madoff's crimes as "extraordinarily evil," and giving him the maximum
sentence. Punishment is no substitute for prevention, but the sentence
provides a modicum of justice to the victims and will exert some modest
deterrent effect against future potential swindlers.
The 150-year sentence is headline grabbing, but what should surprise us
is not that Madoff got such a long sentence, but that other corporate
criminals escape with light sentences or no criminal prosecution at all.
In August 2006, U.S. Federal District Court Judge Judith Kessler
adjudged the leading tobacco companies to have engaged in a 50-year long
conspiracy to deceive the public about the health risks of smoking and
to addict children to tobacco. Millions in the United States -- and many
more around the world -- have died as a result of this conspiracy. But
you won't find any tobacco executives in jail for this "extraordinary evil."
Twenty-five years ago, poisonous gas escaped from a factory run by the
chemical company Union Carbide in Bhopal, India. Many thousands died,
many more were debilitated or badly injured, and the plant site remains
polluted. Despite charges of culpable homicide, executives from Union
Carbide (now merged into Dow Chemical) were never tried or sent to jail.
In 1989, the Exxon Valdez hit a reef in Prince William Sound Alaska.
Eleven million gallons of crude oil spilled onto 1,500 miles of Alaskan
shoreline, killing birds and fish. The spill ruined the livelihoods of
thousands of Native Americans, fishermen and others. The captain was
convicted of a misdemeanor and sentenced to community service. Exxon
pled guilty to misdemeanor violations of federal environmental laws. No
executives went to jail.
Victims of horrendous human rights abuses and environmental destruction
caused and abetted by oil companies operating in Burma (Unocal/Chevron),
Nigeria (Shell and Chevron), Ecuador (Texaco/Chevron) and Indonesia
(Exxon), among other places, have -- with lawyers and international
solidarity campaigns -- waged heroic and increasingly successful efforts
to obtain monetary compensation for the wrongs they have suffered. But
there's no prospect of CEO and executive perpetrators of those wrongs
being criminally prosecuted.
For two decades, the multinational oil companies and the giant coal
producers have engaged -- and continue to engage -- in a prolonged
campaign to deny and discredit climate change science. In doing so, they
have imperiled the planet and its people. Paul Krugman, properly, calls
this treason against the planet. But while execution is the highest
penalty for treason against country, treason against the planet won't
even get you the equivalent of a parking ticket.
What to make of the disparity between the appropriate sentencing for
Bernard Madoff and the get-out-of-jail free approach for other leading
corporate criminals and malefactors? There are a few lessons and
conclusions.
First, the Madoff case differs from many of these other examples of
corporate wrongdoing in that the individual perpetrator is so closely
related to the victims. Although he was handling billions of dollars,
Madoff had a skeleton staff, and he had personal connections with many
of those he swindled. As a result, the victims and the public's anger is
visceral and very targeted -- not directed at an amorphous giant
corporation.
Second, Madoff's victims have power. They have the ability to hire
lawyers, and to organize for redress and retribution. Corporate crime
victims in poor communities, or in poor countries, generally do not have
this kind of power. Nor do those who will fall victim in the future to
consequences of actions carried out today.
Third, and relatedly, the penalties for financial crimes are generally
much stiffer than for other corporate crimes. The New York Times has an
interesting feature comparing Madoff's sentence to other white-collar,
financial criminals, many of them convicted of Enron-era crimes;
Madoff's sentence is much longer, but the others received stiff
penalties as well. By contrast, it is very rare to see a felony
prosecution for corporate killings.
Finally, and most important, one of the signal powers of corporations is
their ability to influence the law and culture so that their most
heinous acts are not considered criminal. Knowingly addict millions of
children to a deadly habit? Not a crime. Collaborate with military
regimes and destroy lives and livelihoods in poor countries? Not a
crime. Endanger the planet with greenhouse gas pollution -- and then
mobilize politically to block emergency efforts to save the earth? Not a
crime.
The world is a little bit more just today, after the sentencing of
Bernie Madoff. When other corporate culprits are sentenced comparably,
the world will be a lot more just.
Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational
Monitor, <http://www.multinationalmonitor.org> and director of Essential
Action <http://www.essentialaction.org>.
(c) Robert Weissman
Links and forum to comment on this and other columns at:
<http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/editorsblog>
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