This started with a stray comment between us but the idea has only grown more insistent.

In response to the shootings in Tucson, Arizona,  Ellen and I have been talking about what we could do to make manifest the idea that we want our Congresspeople to deal civilly with one another. To hear one another. To talk things out. To not do what will play on the news the loudest but to do what’s best for all of the American people the best they know how.

How could we personally help make that actually happen?

My uncle Bob Bennett of Utah, in his remarks to his colleagues on leaving the Senate last month, discussed the general philosophy of the Republican party vs the Democratic party re the role of government,  and then pronounced, “Both sides are right.”

This is a man who had been rated one of the most conservative members of the Senate (and with whom I often disagreed politically).  But he’d also had real-life experience: as a homeowner trying not to lose his house at one point. As a former business owner who knew that for businesses to succeed, their workers had to have the peace of mind of knowing that they could have adequate medical care should something happen to them or their families.

He said, and I’m paraphrasing to the best of my memory, It’s the meeting in the middle to negotiate our differences that is where we do our best work. None of us is supposed to get everything all our way in any other part of life, and certainly not in politics where we are working with people with completely different life experiences.

So here’s what Ellen and I are hoping for.

Never mind, I’ll let her tell it, she says it better than I do.

From Ellen:

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“Here is what I think I’d like to do.

Invite any and all knitters who would like to join in to knit a hat (sizing information here) for their own congressional representative, whether Senate or House.  Ask them to email me, perhaps send a photo or link to a Ravelry project, and let me know to whom a hat has been sent.  I can track who is being covered (literally!) and if anyone wants to knit more than one hat, they can send them to me and I’ll handle mailing them to a rep who hasn’t received one yet.

I’d like to write a standard note to go with it, to which any knitter could add her own personal message.  I’m also thinking how cool it would be to design a hat for it, but I am also telling myself to keep it manageable.  (Her husband) suggested that the hats be purple, a blending of red and blue, but I told him I want them to be worn!

This doesn’t rule out hats for the victims, which is also a good idea and could be a use for some of the extra hats, though I still don’t know how to go about getting the names or how to deliver them.  After thinking on it all week, though, what is really compelling me is to highlight the need for civil discourse even over things we disagree on.”

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From me: I would plead that the hats be of a material you’d want to wear yourself. I want each recipient to feel they are being treated with the great respect we all mutually deserve.  For whatever it’s worth, I can vouch for the fact that the Plymouth King George (how’s that for an ironic name!) baby alpaca/merino/cashmere blend on sale for four bucks a ball (for the moment, at least) will make an absolutely soft, warm cabled hat using two balls; I just knitted one. Three balls should I think get you two plain beanies.  All in a day’s work.

I’m not trying to shill for DBNY, I’m just trying to convey the idea that it doesn’t have to be a lot of money for it to be something nice if you don’t have something ready in your stash. Support your local yarn store, too. However it works for you.

We want each individual to be glad they got one–and wouldn’t it be cool to have Congresspeople swapping around with each other to get just what they want? Let the cheerful negotiating begin!

I just ordered two more balls in, yes, Ellen’s husband, purple.

Can you just picture the photo-op we could all make happen? Knitters can change the world. We can set the tone. In wild color combinations or subdued: as the song says, We’ll give them something to talk about.

You in too?

(ed. to add: What should we call this campaign? So far I’ve come up with Talking Heads.)

My heart goes out to the wounded, the families, the bystanders, the doctors and nurses and ambulance crews and all those who have had to see firsthand what was deliberately done by a human being to other human beings.

My hometown paper had this to say.

It doesn’t matter what party the shooter belonged to. It is the simple truth that the unbalanced among us had been told what to do to get the most attention and to believe they would be praised for it.

The words we choose to represent ourselves by have consequences beyond what we can know or control, and that is especially true in the political sphere. Choosing to have basic common courtesy: is it so hard? It is so essential.

And yet.  However one feels about how this all came to be, there is another truth: that we are all in pain, all grieving over the senselessness and the pain and the injury done to individuals and, really, to all of us.

And that speaks to the empathy and the great good in the very great majority of us. We may not personally know any of the people at that scene, but they matter to us as if they were us.

We are all in this life thing together.

And now I’m glued (again) to watching the results come in.

We went over to Johnna and Glenn’s for an election party, Jon Stewart style: everyone kind and courteous and just plain enjoying hanging out with friends, regardless of any party affiliation. Pass the snacks.  Glenn supplied fine chocolate, I brought almond raspberry sponge cake.  (Mom: that would be your hot milk sponge cake recipe from Betty Crocker circa 1952, made with almond extract, 4 tbl butter instead of 2, and with two boxes of raspberries rinsed, very carefully patted dry, and arranged across to sink down to the bottom evenly.  Crunchy organic/Demerara type sugar sprinkled on top of the cake.)

And a good time was had by all.

(Ed. to add, and one political party=one baby hat, knittingwise.)

My hometown paper posted pictures of signs at the Stewart/Colbert rally. My favorite so far, having grown up in DC during the Vietnam War, was number 42, with the picture of a pepperoni pie: Give pizza chants.

Amen, brother.

And pizzan quiet at last when the phone stops ringing every five minutes come Wednesday.

Meg. We’ve heard all about your maid, endlessly; it’s not so much the is she legal/is she not, it’s, once you knew, how did you respond? Were you kind to the person who loved your children and you, too, enough to stay there for half of their growing-up years by then?

Or did you respond with vindictiveness?

Then how will you treat the rest of us whom you don’t personally know when you are in power over us?

It was not the taxpayers’ pockets that settled the suit when you lost your temper at Ebay and threw a dissenting underling towards the wall; I don’t want to be on the hook for your behavior when you find yourself thwarted in politics over and over and endlessly over again.  But see, there’s something you would already have learned a little of had you ever voted before deciding to run:

You don’t always get your way in politics. It’s worth trying, and then you just have to go and be gracious with the results.

And Carly? I remember friends who worked for HP singing in great glee, Ding dong the witch is dead! It was the unofficial company theme song across the headlines and in person–I bear personal witness–when you got fired by the board. You had no use for the egalitarian culture of a good company, one where by common consent when there was a downturn, everybody across the board from the top on down would take temporary salary cuts in order that there be no layoffs until the next business upswing. The focus was on taking care of each other for the good of the company that was creating new ideas and new products for the good of society.  It was a very idealistic place to work.

You killed all that. You bought yourself the corporate jet that Hewlett and Packard would totally never have done. (Bill Hewlett swam at my therapy pool. He was a sweet old guy.) You bought into the whole overprivileged CEO thing, spending millions and millions on yourself while firing competent workers and shipping their jobs away–HP nearly died of you. The HP Way, you thought, was archaic and quaint.

John McCain fired you too.

And tomorrow is my chance.

Don loaned me his copy of Stones Into Schools, by Greg Mortenson, one of the most important books I’ve read in my life. Mortenson writes well and lives well: the man loves deeply.  And by that love’s work he is changing the world.

I’ve been savoring it slowly, a chapter or two a night–and then today couldn’t stand the wait and simply read through it all. I didn’t want to put any of those living characters down.  I wanted to support their cause of hiring the local population to build and staff good schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan and requiring that girls make up half the student population, both by my attention and financially.

I immediately ordered a copy of Three Cups of Tea.

I cannot begin to say how important it is that this man, and those who work with him, are alive in this world and that they are doing what they are doing (and how glad I am that our soldiers are being told to read Three Cups).  We are the ones being educated, too, by Mortenson’s showing who these people are and what their lives are like.  They respond to being cared about, just like we all do.

I did not know that the custom was, before one goes to war, the elders properly sit down with the opposing elders to discuss whether they can afford the costs: the winning side is to take on the solemn obligation to support the widows and children left behind.

My thanks to all who supported Mortenson’s cause by their donations long before I opened the book and let myself see beyond just the titles of two bestsellers.  There are students at 145 new built-t0-code schools and counting who will always know who, along with the dedicated labor of their families and neighbors, made it so they could learn to read and see the world through what others too may write.

An exit interview I found interesting, even if I often don’t agree with my uncle’s politics. Gotta love that secret CIA/Senate committee briefing in the secret room because Patrick Moynihan wanted it scooped on the front page the next day.

Note that my uncle’s son is helping the Democrat candidate’s campaign now that his dad is out. It’s the candidate that matters far more than the party.  Go Jim!

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Update: PG&E was awarded nearly $5 million by the state three years ago specifically to replace that high-risk pipe that later blew up. PG&E did not replace it. They did, however, give that much in bonuses to their executives. And now they’re asking for money to… Yeah…

Go lawmakers go! This is the kind of thing we vote you into office FOR!

This is not a feel-good post. My apologies.

PG&E has gone to the California Public Utilities Commission, pleading that their liability insurance costs are 4x after the big wildfires last year: those fires that were sparked by unmaintained PG&E utility lines brushing trees in their right-of-way, which should have been trimmed by them and were not, causing arcing. They specifically want their ratepayers to reimburse them for fires caused by their lack of maintenance on their lines.

The San Bruno gas pipe that exploded had had a sewer line criss-crossing it that was replaced two years ago by explosives bursting it outward as a new sewer pipe went in.

This was a few feet from the high-pressure 30″ gas line.

Which PG&E said it inspected afterwards. According to the local newspapers, when pressed hard this week, they admitted no, not internally they didn’t, not that stretch of it, and no the type of pipe was not now up to code, no it shouldn’t have had that seam, that’s not standard, no, we didn’t know it was corroded. Because we didn’t look inside that particular section after the sewer work.

There was a homeowner whose walls cracked after the same sewer company used that same method near his home in Millbrae. (He sued, they settled.)

PG&E just spent nearly $50 million in ratepayers’ dollars trying to push a fraudulently-presented election measure that would have given them monopoly status and shut down many cities’ efforts to go green. When Prop 16 failed, they tried within days to get regulators to let them raise rates to cover the amount they’d spent on that campaign.

Think how far that money could have gone towards trimming trees that make the power lines arc. Towards replacing old and substandard pipes.

PG&E is trying to look magnanimous towards the homeowners whose friends and neighborhood they just blew up by offering them money they want their customers to then have to provide. Again, they want their shareholders to have a direct disincentive for holding them responsible for maintenance and public safety. As a friend put it, only the profits are privatized.

One of those who burned to death, Jacqueline Grieg, was a CPUC regulator of their lines.

Now they want her co-workers to make her heirs have to help pay for killing her.

Utter, bitter, classic chutzpah.

One might think the CEO who’s running the corporate culture of Pacific Gas And–the word that unfortunately leaps to mind is–Evil would have the sense to wear a little financial sackcloth of upgrading equipment and getting the actual work done that the public pays for while so many of San Bruno Mountain’s families, the ones still alive, stand among only ashes.

Fire the guy. And CPUC, please, do right by us all. In Grieg’s memory.

So this guy  calls himself a pastor.  He’s broke and on the verge of losing his property.  So he comes up with a way to scare up major notoriety and grab attention from all over the world and to get his hands in the pockets of people who are creeps like himself.

He’s not quite Westboro yet, but he’s definitely working on it.

I have this deeply-felt wish: that the good people of Florida go to where Jones plans to hold his Koran burning on 9/11.  That they race to protect those Korans from the flames unharmed as we want to be able to practice our own religions–or lack thereof–unharmed.  That they manifest the honor of our country, our cherished belief in religious freedom, and our goodwill towards our fellow men. Everywhere.

(Ed. to add: Half an hour after I posted this, the Washington Post published a report that Jones has agreed to cancel his bookburning.  He is now painting himself as a good person urging others not to burn Korans.  I think we have a new definition of chutzpah.)

I wrote a post. I’m still thinking about it.  (Moral of the story: never, ever comment on a politician’s FB page; there, it is not a family discussion.)

Learned my lesson.

(The sound you just heard was my entire extended family snorting in disbelief.)

(p.s. Yeah, I went back and deleted that comment.  There is, literally, no point.)

I know not everyone agrees with me. But oh thank goodness. At last!

And–calling Bart Stupak, of all people, the one who gathered his fellow Democrats in opposition to the bill earlier because of his anti-abortion stance, a baby killer?  Calling John Lewis, a civil-rights-era hero, truly, a hero, the N word?  Spitting on the opposition?  Republican congressmen inciting the crowd outside to a near riot from the House balcony and proclaiming, That’s kind of fun! Watching Boehner screaming Hell! NO! over and over–

Who on earth wants to be on the side of people like that?

And then Nancy Pelosi.  Whatever else you may think of her.  Calmly and surely, taking her turn at the podium, talking about the actual issue at hand: what was in the bill, what it meant to Americans, and why it was an important piece of legislation that after all the work done on it and the ways that it would benefit the American people, deserved to be passed.  The contrast!

Well, now, actually, Mr. Boehner, sir, the American majority has voted.

Yes.

Having visited my House representative’s website on occasion, being a good little constituent keeping tabs on things (did I mention I was born in Washington DC?  It’s in my blood) I got an email a day or two ago:  it was a series of questions. The first was, what did I think was the most pressing issue before Congress, offering me several answers to choose from that surprised me on the one item it did not offer.

Or a blank to fill in.  Okay, given the timing of that query and what is immediately on Congress’s plate, that was real easy.

The rest were questions about my views on the healthcare bill; surprise, surprise. Beat’em to it at question one.

Though Republicans may shout and continue to believe that Americans want the healthcare industry left alone because all is well, lalalaa fingers in their ears they’re not LISTENingggg…  It’s simply and absolutely not true.

The current system is killing people of all ages who are treatable and who could have been saved.  The very fact that a low-level clerk who was not available after hours, on weekends, or during a snowstorm was making life-and-death decisions IN AN EMERGENCY, with no recourse, about my monoclonal antibody medication a year ago only because my insurer didn’t want to pay for it is unfathomable; just who gave that clerk a medical license? And you know my case is only one of thousands at just that one company, simply because that’s how they’re set up.

This absolutely must change.  We may argue over how it is to be done; we may argue over what should fund what; but the current system is absolutely untenable, and after a year of everybody trying to hash out their differences and their beliefs and their constituencies in Washington, after a long and terrible pregnancy, we have birthed a bill. It may be on life support, but we have a bill and it is still breathing.

Like all good politics, it’s full of compromises such that nobody is completely happy with it–it doesn’t go far enough, it goes too far. He looks like your side of the family, he doesn’t look enough like my side of the family.

Yes, well; that’s what democracy produces. Mashups.

Now vote on the %#* thing and PASS it like we voted so many of you into office to do.

(I totally love that Caremark got members of Congress slapping multiple investigations on them for the sake of Federal employees; where were our congressmen when such practices were messing over the rest of us?  Where are they now?)

So the hubby comes home tonight and opens his mail.

And now we know the details.

To all those who think employer-based healthcare plans are the pure and only true path to medicine? Given my medical history, insurance is a subject close to home here.  Are you sitting down?

My husband and I are celebrating our 30th anniversary this summer.  Thirty years ago, with both of us having grandfathers on the political scene in DC for decades, they knew everybody, they had us invite everybody to the reception, we sent out 500 invitations and 500 people actually showed up! We were standing in that receiving line for three and a half solid hours with no breaks in the flow of humanity, most of whom my new husband and I didn’t know, all these people taking the time out of their lives to come shake our hands and wish us well.

We solemnly promised our own children we would never do that to them.

I guess one could say now that we had a lot of witnesses, having no idea we might someday need them. (One thank-you note, on the other hand, was returned two months after the wedding as “recipient deceased.” That was fast. We might be in trouble here.)

My husband’s employer, a Fortune 500 company, now says we must produce our marriage certificate, and fast, or they are cutting off my medical insurance on the assumption of fraud.  They are doing this to everybody.  We claim John is our son? We’d better produce the birth certificate and prove it, and his school transcript, too.  We have to order the license or the birth certificate from the states they happened in? Oh, those states are furloughing workers and are weeks or even, in California’s case, months behind on all paperwork?  So sad too bad, you’re out.

It took California over ten weeks to process my auto registration payment, and that’s when they were in effect getting paid money by me to do so, and not just some nominal fee.  Okay, yes, we have the kid’s birth certificate, but not his transcript.  And what of all the people who don’t have a copy on hand for their kids?  Or of their marriage certificate?

I so much want to ask the CEO, whose own insurance, I am sure, is in no way imperiled: exactly what kind of corporate culture do they think they’re trying for here? Are they familiar with the term meta-message? Could you shake each employee’s hand, look them in the eye, and convince them you were wishing them and their families…well?

My own grandmother, ratting someone out! Not that I want to give anyone ideas.

Note that Strom Thurmond is famous both for his record filibuster stalling the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and for how very wrong he was on that issue–he made it appear *more* wrong by what he did, by how he frustrated his country as well as his fellow senators, and he never got completely away from the image he gave himself by doing so.

Okay, now, a word on Massachusetts:  they elected a charismatic, good-looking guy who knows how to throw a zinger given a chance. Tip O’Neill of Massachusetts once famously said “All politics is local.” I would add, “and of the moment.”

So here we have that lost 60th vote–but it’s a Republican and he’s from Massachusetts, representing a whole lot of Democrats. He knows he has to keep them happy if he wants to keep that plum job.  He knows he has to work with the other party.  In today’s severely divided Congress, this is a good thing. He also happens to have been for the plan in Massachusetts that the one in Congress is trying to improve upon. (It ain’t perfect, but we gotta start somewhere.)

Back when I was in college, I was at my grandparents’ home and somehow a cousin asked Gram a question re their political life back in the day; usually, those got directed at Grampa. But he wasn’t in the room just then.

My very proper grandmother, whom I’d never heard speak an ill word towards nor about anybody in any way ever before that moment, looked suddenly like she’d kept this one to herself for far too many years. It was just too much. The truth had to be told.

The subject was that record filibuster.  Passing that Act was the right thing to do, but Thurmond was having none of it. As long as he stayed on that floor, reading the Washington DC phone book, or, famously, his grandmother’s biscuit recipe, then the floor was all his.

As long as he didn’t step away from it.

And what would limit that?

“Strom Thurmond had a catheter under his pants!” exclaimed Gram.

(Typing fast, I’ve only got two minutes…)

Wha-a-a-t! That’s not supposed to…! I just put that in there!

Context:  Blue Cross helpfully said there were no deductibles on ileostomy supplies this year. Given our $10k deductible and a no-insurance catalog price of $995/month, that was a huge relief. They don’t tell you the fine points during the November enrollment period, nor do they answer the questions they don’t want you to know to ask.

So I was going, oh good.  And then they said that oh by the way that one month supply that just shipped, same monthly amount as ever, was, as of this year, to hold me for the quarter.  Wait, *what*!  Are you out of your MINDS?!

And today, how stunningly bad an idea that was was staring hard at me.

It’s okay. My doctor’s office is on it. (But why should they have to be?)

Michelle was sitting in a cozy spot on this cold, rainy day.  First time I ever saw a bluejay shaking itself off like a dog, or a very soaked squirrel, but I don’t think either would have cared for an offer of a hairdryer. Brrr.

Wrapped up in a blanket, hot mug of cocoa on the arm of the chair, laptop propped up on the other one, safe from all ills.  It cheered me up just to look at her.

I plunked down at her feet. “Can I growl?”

She looked at me. “Okay, you got one minute of whine.”

“Stupid bag burst.”

“Oh,” wincing.  She thought about it a moment.  Then she threw her arms out from under her blanket in a magnanimous, wide-open gesture, and granted me, “For that, you may have TWO minutes of whine!”

We both burst out laughing, and that was the end of that.  Hey, Michelle–you’re a good one.  Thank you.

(Massachusetts voters:  60.  It’s all in your hands tomorrow.)

A stunning item in the Newsweek issue that arrived today:

They write about the Cleveland Clinic, showing the various ways in which it has cut costs while improving patient outcomes and how it hopes to be a model for ways in which the delivery of healthcare could be reformed.

But there is one major problem they can do nothing about.  They describe the clinic’s clerks.  Picking up the phone to deal with the “thousands of different health plans from the hundreds of companies all over the country” and getting “put on hold like anyone else who calls an insurance company.”  Industry estimates, they say, are that the average cost of handling a phone call is $3 to each party. “This is the hidden cost of competition…”

So, one might wonder, reading that, how many phone calls are there per case?

What dropped my jaw was what they said next: there are 2,000 doctors at Cleveland. They have to keep 1,400 clerks to deal with those companies. And they know, their CEO says, that the insurers have just as many people working on each of those cases, doing everything they can to examine them.  And then if they can in any way they will deny or at least delay each claim for as long as possible.

Which is one big reason why the overhead for private insurers averages out, Cleveland Clinic’s CEO says, at 29% vs. Medicare’s 3%.  (As an aside, I have read that the Blue Crosses of California run at about 50%.)  That’s just on the insurers’ end in terms of the lost money that could have been spent on actual care of human beings in actual medical need.

Cleveland, it should be noted, told insurers what its average maternity cost was and offered to simply charge that average fee per baby delivered to each, freeing themselves and all those insurance plans all the costs of all that wrangling and nitpicking.  Spend that premium money on the patients instead! Please!

Not a single one took them up on it.

We need a public option. Now.