A New Year's Resolution

 

From http://www.woodyguthrie.org/

With the beginning of a new year, most of us are making resolutions. Like the denizens of Sesame Street, we all want to become smarter, stronger, and kinder in 2018. New Year's Resolutions are nothing new. Historians have traced the practice back at least 4,000 years, to the ancient Babylonians

I recently became aware of a list of New Year's Resolutions written by one of my heroes, folksinger Woody Guthrie. This icon in the battle for economic justice and equality wasn't highly-educated. However, he was very smart. The two pages pictured above were written by Guthrie as "New Years Rulin's" on January 1, 1943, while living in New York City:

1. Work more and better                    18. Stay glad 
2. Work by a schedule                       19. Keep hoping machine running  
3. Wash teeth if any                           20. Dream good
4. Shave                                             21. Bank all extra money
5. Take bath                                       22. Save dough 
6. Eat good (fruit, vegetables, milk)   23. Have company but don't waste time 
7. Drink very scant if any                   24. Send Mary and kids money
8. Write a song a day                         25. Play and sing good  
9. Wear clean clothes - look good      26. Dance better
10. Shine shoes                                  27. Help win war - beat fascism  
11. Change socks                               28. Love mama  
12. Change bed clothes often             29. Love papa  
13. Read lots good books                   30. Love Pete  
14. Listen to radio a lot                       31. Love everybody
15. Learn people better                       32. Make up your mind                                    
16. Keep rancho clean                        33. Wake up and fight 
17. Don't get lonesome                      
 
Many of Guthrie's folksy resolutions concern person hygiene (such as take bath, shave, change socks, and wash teeth-if any). Some are aimed at improving his personal relationships (love mama & papa, learn people better). Others try to improve his finances (save dough, bank all extra money) or his psyche (read lots good books, dream good, keep hoping machine running). All of us could stand some improvement in these areas.

But Woody leaves the most important resolution for last-"Wake-up and fight!". Woody certainly followed his own advice. His lifetime was spent fighting for workers, the downtrodden, and the oppressed. This should also be the most important resolution for all progressives in 2018. We must "wake-up and fight". We have huge battles facing us at the local, state, and national levels.

In Wisconsin, we must restore balance to our Supreme Court. We must take back the Governor and Attorney-General offices. Like our Virginian brothers and sisters, we need to contest every legislative election in an attempt to regain progressive majorities in Madison.

If we intend to make Wisconsin a place to be proud of again, we need to help elect people who will make drastic changes in how our state is run. We need common sense gun laws and common sense environmental protections. We need policies that increase workers' salaries instead of cutting them. We need to improve public schools and reject school privatization. We need to defend reproductive rights.

On the national level, we must fight each and every regressive policy coming from the tantrum-prone toddler who occupies the Oval Office. We must return to net neutrality. We must reject a return to harsh marijuana law enforcement. We must push for a sane foreign policy. We must rejoin with the rest of the world to fight global heating.

We must continue to resist the efforts of Congress to steal healthcare from Americans. We must enact DACA into law. We must defend Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. We must stand-up against attacks on unions, the environment, and women.

We can only be successful at the national level if we re-take the House and the Senate. For our part, we have to defend Tammy Baldwin's Senate seat and make progressive gains in Wisconsin's House delegation.

If he was still alive, Woody Guthrie would be with us in our 2018 struggle. After all, he wrote a song in the early 1950's, protesting the discriminatory renting policies of Fred Trump, the Orange Dotard's father. Woody would certainly be leading the resistance against the administration of Fred's racist son.

Like Woody Guthrie, we must keep our "hoping machine" running. 2018 needs a strong effort from each and every one of us. We must all make a resolution to be active in campaigns, donate what we can, march, and call our Congresspeople in 2018. We must all "Wake-up and fight !".

With continued hard work and luck, we will win. If we all resolve to put-in our best efforts in 2018, we will prevail. We will take back our state and our country. As the lyrics to one of Woody's best songs promise, "There's a better world that's a-coming !"

Would You Trust Walker With Healthcare Block Grants?

Here we go again. Just when we thought that our healthcare system was safe and ready for improvement, Zombie-Trumpcare re-emerged from the crypt. The latest version of the Republican effort to demolish our healthcare system is the Graham-Cassidy-(Heller-Johnson) bill.

Graham-Cassidy will take insurance away from an estimated 32 million Americans. Every major physician and hospital group is against this travesty. Every major organization dedicated to the health of a particular body part or aimed at fighting a specific disease is against it. Retiree organizations, reproductive rights groups, and consumer associations are all against it.

Who is for it? Most Republican politicians are reflexively for killing Obamacare because... Obama! Trump, who is desperate to sign anything that he can declare a "win", is for it. Billionaire GOP donors are for it, in order to free-up money for their promised tax-breaks. But right at the forefront of this drive to demolish our healthcare system is Wisconsin's worst political hack- Gov. Scott Walker.

The Graham-Cassidy provision that has Walker licking his chops sends huge federal sums to the states as block grants. Governors like Walker could spend these billions any way they want, with little control. Somehow, having 50 different insurance systems is supposed to be better than having uniform healthcare standards and laws across the country.

Walker has been involved in this most recent attack on the ACA from the beginning. Rather than working to help the people of Wisconsin, he has spent much of his time trying to take away our healthcare. He traveled to the White House several times since January to lobby against the Affordable Care Act.

Walker attended an emergency White House meeting in July after a previous repeal bill had failed in the Senate. Among the attendees were HHS Secretary Tom Price, Sen. Cassidy, former Sen. Rick Santorum, and the governors of Mississippi, Arizona, and Arkansas. The far-right group soon congealed around the block-grant concept.

In a Breitbart interview (don't worry, I disinfected my keyboard), Walker spoke about the White House meeting and the repeal efforts that became Graham-Cassidy, "I think it's awesome....What a perfect way to kick start a true repeal and replace of Obamacare by sending it back to the states where we’re definitely more effective, more efficient, and more accountable to the people."

In the same interview, Walker said that Graham-Cassidy is a way to head-off a Medicare-for-All system,"...my fear is at some point in the future there will be a decisive push to go the opposite direction and instead of repealing they will push for a government-run single-payer system which would be horrible for people. That is something we have to prevent from happening and I think this gives us our last best effort to do that.” It appears that Scottie's fear is my hope.

Walker is doing everything that he can to take away your healthcare through the atrocious Graham-Cassidy bill. For example, earlier this month, he published an opinion piece, "States Can Fix Obamacare's Mess". The article strongly pushes the right-wing panacea of block grants to the states. 

A bipartisan group of governors wrote to Mitch McConnell, asking him to refrain from bringing Graham-Cassidy to the Senate floor. But Walker was having none of that. He sent his own letter, signed by a strictly partisan group of GOP governors, asking for a floor vote on the bill to kill healthcare.

So Walker, who is responsible for the WEDC boondoggle of lost and untracked millions of dollars is asking for control of billions in federal block grants. Walker, who cost hardworking taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars by turning-down Medicaid expansion, wants to have complete control over our state healthcare system. Walker, who negotiated the failed Foxconn fiasco, wants us to trust him with our lives.

Walker wants us to believe that a state government, run by kleptocrats like him, Robin Vos, and Scott Fitzgerald will be "more effective, more efficient, and more accountable to the people".

Under Walker, Wisconsin has become a pay-for-play carnival. Organizations seeking favorable treatment by the state inevitably donate to GOP candidates. With Walker's control of billions more in block-grant money, our state will turn into a special-interest feeding frenzy. It's no wonder that the Governor is pushing this block-grant idea so hard.