Mediaboss Marketing

By Phillip Stucky

Many progressive votersquestion whetherDemocratic Sen. Kamala Harris of Californiawouldrepresent them if shecampaignedagainst President Donald Trump in 2020, according to report released Friday.

Despiteher rising popularityon the national stage, progressive voters are unsure just how the freshman senatorwouldrepresent them if she were to run for the White House.

Shes not on our radar,RoseAnn DeMuro, a supporter of former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, told the New York Times about Harris potential White House run. Shes one of the people the Democratic Party is putting up. In terms of where the progressives live, I dont think theres any there there. DeMuro heads National Nurses United, as well as the California Nurses Association.

Veteran Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein also appeared to distance herself from supporting the rising senator.

She just got here, Feinstein said. What she should do is concentrate on being a good, and possibly a great, United States senator. The rest will either happen or not happen.

Harrismade a namefor herself during her questioning of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and AttorneyGeneral Jeff Sessions during a June Senate hearing. She was interrupted by Sens. Richard Burr and John McCain for her not letting the witnesses fully answer the question.

Since then, shestraveledthe country raising money for other Democrats, a pretty sure sign that shes interested in playing a national role moving forward. Shes raised more than $600,000 so far this year on behalf of a Democratic Senate fund, according to the report.

Harris hasalso shied away from far-left positions, mentioning several times that Democratic senators cant afford to be purists to gain an edge in the Senate in the 2018 midterms.

Bernie Sandersdianne feinsteinDonald TrumpJeff Sessionsjohn mccainkamala harrisRichard BurrRod Rosenstein

Read more:
'She's Not On Our Radar': Progressives May Not Support Kamala Harris In 2020 - The Libertarian Republic

Kathy Hoekstra Published 10:44 p.m. ET July 9, 2017 | Updated 10:44 p.m. ET July 9, 2017

Conservatives and progressives are working together to tackle the biggest problems with our health care system, Hoekstra writes.(Photo: The Detroit News / Donna Terek)Buy Photo

A free market health care advocate walked into a meeting of progressives. If you think you know the punchline to this one, think again.

Dr. Chad Savage got quite a surprise in May when he presented his free market health care ideas to the Grand Rapids United Progressives.

They applauded, he said. They were open to the free market idea of direct primary care and they applauded it.

Savage does not accept insurance at his Brighton practice, Your Choice Direct Care. Instead, he is one of the growing number of doctors in Michigan and across the country who charge patients a monthly fee for unlimited access to office visits, free in-office testing and discounts for some procedures.

By eliminating interference by insurance and government bureaucrats, direct primary care (DPC) is known to slash patient costs by as much as 50 percent, and allows doctors to focus on patients rather than bureaucracy.

But while Savage considers himself liberated after 12 years in the traditional third-party payer system, he knows progressives generally embrace the opposite single-payer, government-controlled healthcare.

Yet, he was tagged by Paula Triplett, the chief organizer, to present at the May 31 forum on health care. Triplett is a longtime Democratic activist and early Obamacare supporter, and still likes the former president, just not his healthcare plan.

I like (President Barack) Obama. I wish I could vote for him again. The health care that he crafted was a start, but its not that great. Obamacare is not the answer, she said.

So Triplett assembled the forum to discuss congressional reform efforts and solutions not currently on the table in Washington. She admitted knowing nothing about free market health care, but promised an all inclusive, nonpartisan forum. So she added Savage to a list of presenters that included advocates for Obamacare and a single-payer option.

Savage explained direct primary care, and how the free market model could even apply to government assisted health care.

I suggested essentially subsidizing patient-controlled dollars and creating a program like medical food stamps. That would allow for free market with a subsidy for the poor, Savage explained. I feel that in the current environment, medical food stamps would be the closest thing to free market that we can get.

Triplett says the mostly progressive crowd loved it.

I was kind of shocked, she said. It was a very, very new idea. It is a concept that certainly gives patients a lot more rights than what we have now.

Triplett says she still has a lot of questions about how direct primary care works, but now she wont have to go far for answers.

Christian Healthcare Centers opened for business in Grand Rapids last week , and is the first DPC practice in West Michigan. (In addition to Dr. Savages practice in Brighton, there are a host of DPC doctors in southeast Michigan and in Williamston, near Lansing.)

Michigan Sen. Patrick Colbeck, R-Canton, who ushered through legislation in 2015 that allows DPC in Michigan, was on hand for the June 28 ribbon cutting at Christian Healthcare Centers.

Its really great because we can stop talking about shifting costs, about who gets to pay for what, and lowering the cost for everybody, not by saying no, you cant have that coverage but by providing better care, preventative care, (and) relationships with your patients, Colbeck told onlookers.

In the meantime, could the single-payer and free market crowds do something our politicians seem unwilling or unable to do find a common solution to the common enemy, third party payers?

Dr. Savage said something during the forum that really brought a lot of people together, she recalled. He said, Hey, theres not that much difference between you and me.

Shed like to get Savage and John Cavacece, the single-payer advocate from the forum, back to the table and ask them if they are not that far apart and could create a health care policy, what would it look like?

I would get that to (U.S.) Sen. (Debbie) Stabenow as fast as I could, she added.

Kathy Hoekstra is a freelance journalist who previously wrote for Watchdog.org.

Read or Share this story: http://detne.ws/2v0sbD0

See more here:
Column: Health care free marketers, progressives unite - The Detroit News

Remember the 70s saying, What is real? You wont find your factual real answer on CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, The Associated Press and Reuters. I grew up believing that true journalism was reporting objectively, the factually confirmed news. Today, since the Enterprise-Record fills up its space content with Associated Press column reporting, count all the pages each day, each report is filled with biased, liberal leaning, misplace a fact or two editorializing. They buried objective reporting after colluding with the Russians, the progressive liberal left, Hillary Clintons hammer using computer server killers, Loretta Lynchs airport tarmac love fest with Bill Clinton, Lois Learner, the director of the IRS, and of course, who could forget Eric Holders middle finger to Congress when asked to testify under oath. Barack Obama had one heck of a corruption team. And how many minutes did the above news outlets dedicate to each and every one of Obamas scandals? Just 1.45 minutes.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the progressive liberal machine has learned they have all but destroyed Illinois government. S&P downgraded their credit worthiness to junk after learning those Democratic vote bribes for a pension have landed the state in a $250 billion deficit. Illinois state legislature representatives are talking about dissolving the state and/or formal bankruptcy. Good job progressives. California is next. Being saddled with $125 billion unfunded pension liabilities currently, Jerry Brown and his progressives say, Dont worry, well just borrow more money and cook the books. Yeah, we know.

Rick Clements, Paradise

Read the original post:
Letter: Progressive liberal left controls the media - Chico Enterprise-Record

Many progressive votersquestion whetherDemocratic Sen. Kamala Harris of California wouldrepresent them if she campaignedagainst President Donald Trump in 2020, according to report released Friday.

Despiteher rising popularity on the national stage, progressive voters are unsure just how the freshman senator wouldrepresent them if she were to run for the White House.

Shes not on our radar, RoseAnn DeMuro, a supporter of former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, told the New York Times about Harris potential White House run. Shes one of the people the Democratic Party is putting up. In terms of where the progressives live, I dont think theres any there there. DeMuro heads National Nurses United, as well as the California Nurses Association.

Veteran Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein also appeared to distance herself from supporting the rising senator.

She just got here, Feinstein said. What she should do is concentrate on being a good, and possibly a great, United States senator. The rest will either happen or not happen.

Harris made a namefor herself during her questioning of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and AttorneyGeneral Jeff Sessions during a June Senate hearing. She was interrupted by Sens. Richard Burr and John McCain for her not letting the witnesses fully answer the question.

Since then, shes traveledthe country raising money for other Democrats, a pretty sure sign that shes interested in playing a national role moving forward. Shes raised more than $600,000 so far this year on behalf of a Democratic Senate fund, according to the report.

Harris hasalso shied away from far-left positions, mentioning several times that Democratic senators cant afford to be purists to gain an edge in the Senate in the 2018 midterms.

Follow Phillip On Twitter

Have a Tip? Let us Know

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [emailprotected].

Read more:
'She's Not On Our Radar': Progressives May Not Support Kamala Harris In 2020 - The Daily Caller

Bill Knight / Opinion columnist

Conservatives occasionally concede that organized labor has been a reason for rising standards of living and making the middle class, and The Atlantic magazine shows that unions provide common ground for progressives and conservatives alike.

Historically, conservative pundits and politicians have praised unions. Columnist George Will in 1977 said, I think American labor unions get a large share of the credit for making us a middle-class country.

In 1991, Republican economist George Schultz (Secretary of Labor under Richard Nixon and Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan) said a healthy workplace [needs] some system of checks and balances and unions provided an effective system of industrial jurisprudence, a check on corporations focus on profits.

In The Atlantic, Jonathan Rauch recalls a 2016 brunch with conservative Eli Lehrer, who runs Washingtons Republican-leaning R Street Institute, and Andy Stern, former president of the Service Employees International Union.

Lehrer believes the time has come for the American Right to reconsider its decades-long war on unions, Rauch says. Their collapse, he says, has fueled the growth of government and of the welfare state, which has stepped in to regulate workplaces and provide job security as unions have died out.

Stern thinks unions cannot survive unless they innovate and change, but laws intended to protect and preserve them get in the way, Rauch adds.

The journal National Affairs this summer published Lehrer and Sterns essay about the need for change. In How to Modernize Labor Law, the two write, The fundamental federal rules governing employer-worker relations were written for a different era.

That era was the Great Depression. It resulted in 1935s National Labor Relations Act, but it hasnt substantially changed except for court rulings and sometimes-partisan National Labor Relations Board decisions since 1947s anti-union Taft-Hartley Act.

Meanwhile, regular working people are worried about pay but also anxious, if not angry, about how theyre treated. Last years campaign showed that many workers feel voiceless and powerless, that unhappy workers are angry voters, and that angry voters can lash out against trade, immigration, and even democracy.

Private-sector unions are close to extinct, Rauch writes. In the 1950s, more than one in three private-sector workers belonged to a union; today, unionization is down to 6 percent of the private-sector workforce, lower than it was a century ago before the modern labor movement took off.

The decline of unions is one of the countrys most pressing problems and at least as much a social and political problem as an economic one, he continues. Old-style, mid-20th-century industrial unions had their flaws. But when unions work as they should, they serve important social functions. They can smooth the jagged edges of globalization by giving workers bargaining power. They are associated with lower income inequality. Perhaps most important, they offer workers a way to be heard.

Other models exist for workers organizing, from Europes works councils, which give workers a voice in company affairs, to Germanys permitting unions to organize sectors rather than employers, offering incentives to workers and companies to cooperate for better competitiveness.

Unfortunately, in America in 2017, we dont know how a truly modern union would look, writes Rauch, because it is mostly illegal to find out.

Efforts to legislate reforms have fizzled (most recently, during President Obamas first term, when Democrats had more power), and the GOP-dominated Capitol makes change doubtful. But Stern and Lehrer suggest a workaround like giving states authority to grant labor-law waivers permitting experimentation. For example, if employers and unions had an interesting model that met certain guidelines, they could try it.

The Stern-Lehrer waiver idea is a no-brainer if we want to address the deeper causes of the malaise and distemper afflicting Americas lower-middle class, Rauch writes. Although income stagnation is certainly one culprit, another is the decline of the civic organizations and social institutions that help people feel connected. Service fraternities, volunteer clubs, youth groups, churches, political parties, widespread military service, unions and the rest in their prime all fostered social interaction a sense of social cohesion even when times were much tougher. None matters more than unions.

GOP President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s seem to know this, but also saw the relationship as unchanging.

Only a handful of reactionaries harbor the ugly thought of breaking unions and depriving working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice, Ike said. I have no use for those regardless of their political party who hold some vain and foolish dream of spinning the clock back to days when organized labor was huddled, almost as a hapless mass. Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice.

Contact Bill at Bill.Knight@hotmail.com.

Go here to read the rest:
Knight: Unions offer balance to conservatives, progressives - Washington Times-Reporter