Progress Florida's Best of the Blogs for week ending 9-11-09
Note: the Best of the Blogs is featured weekly as part of Progress Florida's popular free Daily Clips service.

"New Voices," old tricks...
By Billy Manes
Orlando Weekly
Verifying the old adage that "opinions are like assholes, and everybody's got one" -- ALSO a Salt N Pepa lyric! -- the Orlando Sentinel published an asshole opinion piece this weekend called "The health-care debate deserves an honest forum" under the auspices of its "New Voices" demographic olive branch: "a forum for readers under 30."

This Labor Day: the difference between honest labor and fraud
By Gimleteye
Eye On Miami
There is something positive and joyful about labor, getting paid for a hard day's work.

Racists to fly their flag in Homestead
By Sinfonian
Blast Off!
For some reason, Florida seems to be a magnet for the slack-jawed racist community and their ubiquitous Confederate battle flags.

So, Senior Citizens have all kinds of fears and reservations about supporting President Obama's push for meaningful, transformative health reform, eh?  Huh???

Yes, that's certainly what the coalition of health insurers, drug companies, bought politicians, compromised media hacks, and brainwashed extremists standing together in opposition to real reform want us to believe.

But no, that's not nearly the whole, or the real story.

In fact, many, many millions of seniors support real health reform.  But when they go show their support for the President's public option-based plan, like they did recently in Palm Beach County, Florida -- Palm Beach County, mind you, a symbolic epicenter of senior living, for crying out loud -- they do it with such class and composure that it doesn't make for juicy TV News coverage.  No screaming or shoving or dislocated hips.  Just concerned senior citizens anxious to hear the details of a reform effort most of them have believed necessary and actively supported for years.

That's supposedly Not News -- not mega-corporate owned, mainstream media news, that is.

The rationale, the "Journalism 101" cliche is, "Man Bites Dog", well that's a news story.  So by that standard, how do you think a ratings-driven network affiliate or major cable news outlet News Director is going to classify footage of costumed, disruptive, misinformed, citizens at important public forums?  Ooohhh, now that's News, that's Sam snapping at Spot's paws, Big Time.

The other way around -- retired working Americans from all corners and walks of life who have benefitted so deeply from Democratic-initiated, government-administered programs like Social Security and Medicare, now wanting to do anything they can to help extend those protections to other Americans?  Well, sorry, that is just Not News, not to the powers that be.  Too much time, effort and creativity required to make simple human drama, well, dramatic.

So the vast majority of good, compassionate people who only have or make the time to get most or all of their news from those giant media conglomerates, they only see...The News.  Not the...Not News.  So there's the maddening, self-perpetuating delusion of large-scale "opposition" to health reform, especially amongst Seniors.  The snowball of a con job just keeps rolling down the slippery slope of misinformation, getting bigger and bigger.  Coverage of  recent poll numbers showing that 3 out of 4 Americans support health reform is now replaced by poll numbers showing only one in five Americans now feels that health reform "would help them".

Call it the Mainstream Media Divide.  One can ony hope that President Obama has enough of The Right Stuff to look at those poll numbers not with an eye towards any degree of surrender or submission, but rather with great regret at his administration's failures in early, effective communication about how health reform will help seniors on Medicare, as it will all Americans -- and with renewed resolve that there still is time to be The Great Communicator, and to turn the tide in favor of the simple, collective, public good.

I do have reason for hope, based at least on anecdotal evidence.  I have a suspicion, based on conversations with strangers -- particularly seniors -- in supermarkets and airports, at movie theatres and gas stations and train stations, and yes, maybe even at an Early Bird Special I wandered into by mistake the other early afternoon.  I suspect that most Americans of all ages, outside of the anti-reform extremists trying so hard to make The News, are sick and tired already of "Warfare" as the central, ubiquitous metaphorical element used in coverage of this story.

It's simply a misrepresentation of fact, and it has also gotten very, very tired.

I really do think folks are fed up with the daytime tabloid TV approach to covering the health reform debate.  I think people are ready to hear about what their fellow, concerned citizens, along with our President, and those of honor in Congress, are fighting for.

Now that Summer's over, one can only hope that seniors and all Americans are ready to reject the sideshow elements of coverage of this extraordinary national debate, ready to put the pressure on major network and cable TV outlets to cover more of the substance of the story, ready to look a little harder for and at the whole truth, and most of all, ready to attend to the serious business at hand.

As the mainstream corporate media outlets that still dominate information delivery in America continue to spin a healthcare reform storyline built -- surprise, surprise -- around conflict, we in Independent Media must do what we can to tell the Real Story.

The real story is that all across our extraordinary country, families and friends and neighbors and strangers are coming together to share their stories of healthcare system victimization, and to brainstorm about how to win the battle to wrest control of our national healthcare system away from The U.S. Healthcare Conglomerate -- the unstated association of insurance companies, drug companies, for-profit institutions and providers, lobbyists, and those selected elected and appointed officials that have been induced to serve their, rather than the public's interests.

Follow the link below to watch a short film (just under 5 minutes) that exemplifies how Americans nationwide are uniting to get the truth told, and to force the lazy, gilded hand of Congress to enact the kind of sweeping, meaningful Healthcare reform -- centered around a new Public Option health plan -- that America needs to recover from the ills of for-profit medicine.

http://bit.ly/floridafightsforhealthreform 

Florida's Governor turned Senate candidate, Charlie Crist, has quietly signed into law a blatantly unfair new workers' compensation bill promoted -- surprise, surprise -- by the Florida Chamber Of Commerce and passed by the Republican-dominated legislature. This regressive legislation dramatically un-levels the playing field between workers injured on the job and the employers who deny their claims for compensation benefits.

We're not talking here about scammers trying to fake or lie about the severity of workplace injuries and make out like bandits. Insurance company investigators and attorneys know how to sniff those types out. We're talking about firefighters, police officers, and other hard-working Floridians whose only recourse once their worker compensation claim is denied is to hire a lawyer and file an appeal.

What the new law does to create such injustice is to put a cap on the fees that an injured worker can pay the lawyer or firm that's handling their appeal -- a cap of $1,500 -- without putting any cap whatsoever on the fees paid by insurance companies to their own corporate attorneys.

This scene is not taking place in the Congo. It has nothing to do with Johannesburg or Cape Town. It is not Nyasaland or Nigeria. This is Florida. These are citizens of the United States, 1960. This is a shape-up for migrant workers. The hawkers are chanting the going piece rate at the various fields. This is the way the humans who harvest the food for the best-fed people in the world get hired. One farmer looked at this and said, "We used to own our slaves; now we just rent them."
...
The migrants have no lobby. Only an enlightened, aroused and perhaps angered public opinion can do anything about the migrants. The people you have seen have the strength to harvest your fruit and vegetables. They do not have the strength to influence legislation. Maybe we do. Good night, and good luck."

Unfortunately, involuntary servitude--slavery--is alive and well in Florida. Since 1997, law-enforcement officials have freed more than 1,000 men and women in seven different cases. And those are only the instances that resulted in convictions. Frightened, undocumented, mistrustful of the police, and speaking little or no English, most slaves refuse to testify, which means their captors cannot be tried. "Unlike victims of other crimes, slaves don't report themselves," said Molloy, who was one of the prosecutors on the Navarrete case. "They hide from us in plain sight."

And for what? Supermarket produce sections overflow with bins of perfect red-orange tomatoes even during the coldest months--never mind that they are all but tasteless. Large packers, which ship nearly $500 million worth of tomatoes annually to major restaurants and grocery retailers nationwide, own or lease the land upon which the workers toil. But the harvesting is often done by independent contractors called crew bosses, who bear responsibility for hiring and overseeing pickers.

In the warm months, the best solution is to follow that old mantra: buy seasonal, local, and small-scale. But what about in winter? So far, Whole Foods is the only grocery chain that has signed on to the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) Campaign for Fair Food, which means that it has promised not to deal with growers who tolerate serious worker abuses and, when buying tomatoes, to a pay a price that supports a living wage. When shopping elsewhere, you can take advantage of the fact that fruits and vegetables must be labeled with their country of origin. Most of the fresh tomatoes in supermarkets during winter months come from Florida, where labor conditions are dismal for field workers, or from Mexico, where they are worse, according to a CIW spokesman. One option during these months is to buy locally produced hydroponic greenhouse tomatoes, including cluster tomatoes still attached to the vine. Greenhouse tomatoes are also imported from Mexico, however, so check signage or consult the little stickers often seen on the fruits themselves to determine their source. You can also visit the CIW's information-packed website (ciw-online.org) if you are interested in becoming part of the coalition's efforts.