December's Lowdown

December 2009, Volume 11, Number 12

Edited by Jim Hightower and Phillip Frazer

Forget for a moment our culture of wealthcare--and celebrate some grassroots victories

These folks aren't waiting for change, they're making it happen

Having just graduated from the University of North Texas in June 1965, I headed east to Washington, D.C., for a few years. I wanted to experience a place and culture that were different from where I'd been raised--and to absorb all the lessons I could about the new American politics emerging as my generation came of age in the sixties and seventies, including the progressive populist lessons to be found in such transformative movements as civil rights, antiwar activism, farmworker justice, feminism, and environmentalism, and the Ralph Nader model of corporate muckraking and public-interest advocacy.

It was a heady time for a 22-year-old Texas bumpkin to arrive in the nation's capital, for D.C. was an exciting, creative place politically. However, the city suffered from a serious, almost terminal cultural flaw: there was no Mexican food or barbeque worth eating. You could take the boy out of Texas, but you could not take Texas out of the boy, and I yearned for a real taste of home. Then it came.

The best Christmas present I ever received was from my parents--a cardboard box filled with a fantastic assortment of BBQ sauces, Cajun spices, chili mixings, tostados, salsa...and, of course, the essential liquid binder for all of the above: a 6-pack of Lone Star beer.

Today my favorite meals are those made up of an array of small plates with many different tastes, such as an Italian seafood misto, a 20-dish Turkish "salad" (like I once had in an Arab village in Israel), a Greek mezze, or just a selection of appetizers from any interesting American restaurant. I like variety.

So in this season of many flavors (Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Eid al-Adha, Winter Solstice, etc.), we're serving up a Lowdown misto for you this month--a holiday basket of tidbits, oddities, advice, and whatnots to ease you into 2010 and our next decade of grassroots activism.


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Fixed the text

Sorry about the abbreviated text folks -- it's fixed now! Happy holidays.

Phillip Frazer, co-editor

-- posted by Frazer at 2:14pm, December 24, 2009
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complete disaster

Obama has been an embarrassment. Either be a progressive or not. The healthcare reform is an embarrassment. Liberals are doing things just to spite righties - not because they are the right thing to do. No public option, annual limits on payouts - better hope if you get cancer, it happens late in the year so you have a chance. And Obama thinks the solution to lowering healthcare costs is to lower payouts to Drs. up to their eyeballs in student loan debt? Boy, am I glad I decided not to go that route.
Sotomayor is a good appointment?!?! She's a racist! Look at her record. OMG! Oh wait, I forgot that minorities can't be racist...yeah, right.
What about the bank bailouts? How about making them do something for all the taxpayer money we pumped into their coffers? Obama is the same old same old. Change, my foot! The only change is that the commander-in-chief is doing nothing for photo ops instead of doing it on his own in Texas.
Hightower, you are a disappointment. We are supposed to hold government to a higher standard, what happened?

-- posted by geminislefthand at 12:35pm, December 24, 2009
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Lean on your elected officials...

The President is just one person... why should he take all the heat for this mess, he isn't getting much support from Congress or us!!

What about the chickenshit elected officials who seem to be afraid to build any decent legislation if they think they won't get re-elected. I want to vote for someone who doesn't think that getting elected is the only job he has...

Write your congressman...
and badger the local media who keep trying to present "both" sides when there is precious little on the Republican side of reform...

-- posted by chicagoflygirls at 3:03am, December 24, 2009
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health care

This sounds terrible but I am against the health care reform because it is no reform except maybe the business end of things.
If we get the 40,000,000 or so under some form of the present/new health care system more of these people will die from toxic drugs, doctor, nurse, hospital screw ups, chemo, radiation, and unnecessary surgery.
Health care reform would be changing to healthy non-toxic foods produced on healthy soil without chemicals and without industrialized food processing. It would be alternative medicine with a touch of allopathic.
The Hippocratic oath was 1 st Do No Harm and the second part was to heal with foods.
It would be nice if the FDA and USDA were working for the people instead of the corporate rich profiteers.

Keeping jobs in the US might be a nice change of pace also.
Dr Bob

-- posted by Dr Bob at 1:12am, December 24, 2009
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governing from the inside

One thing I have learned over the years also applies to governing:

If you play someone else's game by someone else's rules, SOMEONE ELSE always wins! Obama needs to stop playing by congress's rules!

There's no such thing as a public option if any member of the public is excluded.

-- posted by kermit944 at 3:50pm, December 23, 2009
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THE END?

It's not the end. The print copy, as well as the PDF go on to finish the article. Also this is missing some sidebars which are in both of those.

-- posted by Gene Cannon at 5:41pm, December 22, 2009
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the end?

The article seems to come to a premature end unless infu is a newly coined word :^)

-- posted by dem0n1 at 4:50pm, December 22, 2009
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