Donate Your Video Camera, Laptop or Work Tools to Authentic Journalists

Al,

 

I think you left out one critical piece of information:  Where are we to send the computer hardware?

Thanks!

JCK - I mentioned that we'll come pick it up almost anywhere you tell us to!

If you'd like to make different arrangements, just write me at narconews@gmail.com and we'll be happy to oblige.

I have an old laptop and also a digital camera if you are interested.

Al, sent an email last nite with information about what I have to donate. Wonderful opportunity!

Al, you are always so cogent and smart about organizing and social change.  I just posted a new diary this morning at Kos.  I am beyond frustrated with the nihilism beind promoted by some on the left...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/12/16/815063/-Arianna-Huffington,-White-Privilege,-NihilismHealth-Reform

We could use your voice right now.  I hope that you will consider posting something about the current health care debate soon.

 

 

Thank you to everybody who has responded so far to this call. It has brought in four laptops, two mini macs and various digital cameras so far.

Dennis - I sent you and email. If you don't get it write me at narconews@gmail.com

MK - Nice piece. I totally agree with its thrust. Field Hand Tara Brownlee asked me yesterday to comment on this health care bill debate over at Facebook and here was my brief response:

See, I'm just not that into the back and forth over the details of a bill that, no matter what, is only a foot in the door and a huge first step in a process that will take years.

It is more important, it seems to me, that the threshold be crossed past the point of no return - because once the folks start getting even some modest health care goodies they'll never let go - and then the context of future debates will be entirely more positive. It will shortly become political suicide for any pol to then try to take away what has been given, like with Social Security and Medicare and the V.A.

Lieberman's tantrum is a mere speed bump on a much longer road. In the years to come, his efforts will have proved futile, even if he prevails in the first round.

The most important thing is to get a bill - almost any bill - through Congress. That will open a thousand more doors down the line for public options and even eventually single payer.

The tendency of progressives to think every battle is Armageddon or the final word is the infantile part of them that I try to keep a distance from. Get a bill passed. Any bill. And watch the rest flow from there...

That is some crazy stuff going on in the comments' section under your diary. Some anonymous dude is calling Nate Silver "mathematically challenged" which is sort of like calling Drew Brees a lousy quarterback! Teh stupid burns.

I thought Howard Dean (like Arianna Huffington and Ed Schultz) was irresponsible in his comments - interpreted as "kill the bill" even if he didn't go so far as to say that - and of course in forums that allow anonymity it doesn't take many operatives to infiltrate and lead an entire flock astray.

Fortunately, the talking heads and bloggers don't really have that much influence. Something will likely be passed. And folks have to keep in mind that whatever it is can only be a first step.

I wouldn't go as far as saying this bill needs to be killed (as there isn't even a final bill yet), but people opposing it have good reasons. First of all, the mandates are nothing more than a huge handout to the health care industry, basically forcing people to put their lives in the hands of companies that time and time again have proven to be unthrustworthy. Secondly, the bill is obviously insufficient: no single payer, no public option, no drug re-importation, no expansion of medicare, an end to denial of coverage that isn't one (a loophole will allow administrations to set limits on what insurance companies spend on people's health). The one, big, good element seems to be the subsidies.

I agee that it's impossible for these social systems to be scrapped completely once they're in place. But relatively little new things are being put in place. And while I agree that structural elements are unlikely to get cancelled, I doubt whether the same goes for the financial streams to these structures. A public option or an expension of medicare would be much harder to overturn, than say the amount of subsidies handed out.

Perhaps this is but the first step, but do you believe that the next step will be taken anytime soon? Half-assed measures aren't exactly a cause for celebration, because the next health care reform might not happen for another twenty years. What happens if this bill is "too successful"? Alleviating part of people's pains, but leaving others miserable, but ultimatly helping just enough people that health care dissapears as an issue, while the system remains dysfunctional. I don't think it's unimaginable that President Palin ;-) would get rid of the subsidies, while keeping the mandates intact.

There's also a lot of deserved criticism at the whole process. Obama showed very little leadership, at times hinting that it was ok to drop important provisions of the bill, making backdoor deals with the pharmaceutical industry and refusing to brownbeat any Dems (although he had no problem with this when it came to his war in Afghanistan). Concession after concession is being made to Lieberman and his centrist buddies, and they're signaling that it's still not enough. And in the meantime, Dems are still empowering Lieberman, by letting him keep his committee's chairmanship. This isn't "change we can believe in", this is "incremental reform that reinforces all that is dysfunctional in Washington".

I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to get it right the first time. And accusing people that support this goal of being "operatives" is just nonsense. It's perfectly normal that a number of people are angry and frustrated at the broken American political system. Especially after they had just gotten their hopes up.

Sloan - I did not "accuse people that" oppose the health care bill who consider themselves to be of the left as being "operatives." I simply pointed out the obvious: that in sites with anonymous commenters you are being egged on and manipulated by operatives. I don't know which is worse, being the user, or being the used!

Are you saying with a straight face that political rivals would never dare exploit the weaknesses of sites that allow substantial anonymity to "troll" by pretending to be from the left while seeking to divide progressives and undercut support for any reform at all?

Finally, you're mad at the "process" issues, particularly of "caving to Lieberman" and "Afghanistan." Well, so the fuck what? Your upset does not justify playing a game of revenge by scuttling the first chance since 1948 of getting a skeletal health care bill through Congress. I think the people who are playing your game are being childish, holding a tantrum, and working against progress even as you seem to think you are demanding more of it. It's the law of unintended consequences, and you should really hope that the bill doesn't go down to defeat because the backlash on people like Huffington, Schultz and Dean will be significant, especially from the non-white, poor and working class sectors of progressive America that will be most harmed if no bill at all is passed.

You will have effed up a historic opportunity to get the foot in the door, and, if it comes to that, I, for one, will never let you people hear the end of it!

Fortunately, I think you're gonna lose this one anyway.

Thank you for a beautiful and powerful diary. It is especially compelling to me today. I got a call from my 30 year old daughter who lives across the country. She has been unable to find health insurance since she aged off of my policy because at three years of age she had a bleed in the right temporal lobe of her brain. She had subsequent surgery, and several years later had a titanium plate put in her head where the skull had not grown back. A year ago she found an insurance company that only asked for a five year history. They covered her for almost a year; yesterday she was notified that they have dumped her after finding out about the plate in her head. She's a young woman who has faced and survived incredible odds, and stands to lose everything -- perhaps even her life. I feel your rage, deeply and personally.

Al, I was just dropping by to suggest that a report from you on the recent goings on at the "children's table" is in order now.  I see the beginnings in the comment section here already.

Ezra Klein's take posted on Andrew Sullivan's blog today, 12/16: "[If] I could construct a system in which insurers spent 90 percent of every premium dollar on medical care, never discriminated against another sick applicant, began exerting real pressure for providers to bring down costs, vastly simplified their billing systems, made it easier to compare plans and access consumer ratings, and generally worked more like companies in a competitive market rather than companies in a non-functional market, I would take that deal. And if you told me that the price of that deal was that insurers would move from being the 86th most profitable industry to being the 53rd most profitable industry, I would still take that deal. And that may be the exact deal we're getting. The profit motive is not, in and of itself, a bad thing."

 

I hope to meet someone who can donate a video camera.

We need it for documentation of our granting simple wishes mission in Biliran, Philippines.

Please see our works at this facebook link:

http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/profile.php?id=1798613682

Ty very much. God bless.

 

Jun Atok del Rosario

jundelrosario888@yahoo.com

00639204107777