RSN Fundraising Banner
FB Share
Email This Page
add comment

writing for godot

2018 On a Silver Platter

Print
Thursday, 06 July 2017 09:34

Democrats have an easy path to full victory in 2018. One they are ignoring. One that's being handed to them on a silver platter over and over again, on an almost daily basis. Here is just one of those silver-platter opportunities.

Late in Obama's term his administration directed Medicare and Medicaid to stop covering nursing home care if the facility required new residents to sign a forced-arbitration agreement. Normally, if a company had a pattern of mistreating or short-changing residents, those residents or their representatives could ban together and try for a class action suit. A suit by one person often isn't valuable enough to make it worth a legal team putting in the time. A suit by a group of claimants suing together is worth the time. Forced-arbitration agreements mean each wronged person has to contest the company one-by-one, and only via arbitration.

The Trump administration has started the process to roll back that change, allowing nursing homes to, once again, require arbitration agreements. To state it clearly, his administration went out of their way to force seniors and the disabled and their families to give up their leverage if there's a problem, and to give bad operators much less incentive to straighten up. You couldn't write a more perfect headline for Democrats to raise holy hell about.

It's not just Trump but the GOP in general. One example, the GOP in Congress are working on removing the requirement that companies keep record of their workplace injuries; records that reveal which companies are careless toward their workers.

To win, to lead the charge, there is no need to rely on free college or expanded Social Security or other issues that can easily be spun as "hand outs", or that reasonable people can disagree on. There are a thousand places to take a stand that are simply about getting people fair treatment. There are policies that need to be ended which hurt workers, like the not keeping track of injuries, and changes that would empower workers, like setting the target unemployment-rate lower so workers are more in demand and have a better bargaining position. There are a thousand policies to shift priority to people. Not to attack the rich. Not "hand outs". Not radical new degrees of social programs that make some people nervous. Just getting people fair treatment, and getting workers the full benefit of the value they create.

Any party that presented a unified message, that raised such holy hell about it that it cut through the Trump-crap news cycle, that convinced the public they would swarm throughout government and find those thousand policy changes and tilt them all in favor of people, would ride to victory with such a landslide that one Trump promise would finally come true, that there'll be so much winning, you'll get tired of winning.

The silver platter is just waiting. The grassroots across the board, from progressives to some of those economically frustrated Trump supporters, are like a twitchy frog ready to jump on board and support a campaign. Where are the supposedly politically-savvy elected officials? Find your local Democratic official and give them a swift kick in the butt and tell them to wake up. The action is clear. The moment is just aching to be grasped, and won't wait. If the opportunity is ignored, 2018 will be worse than now. If the opportunity is used, 2018 can be in the pocket.

 

See my core piece, The Plan for the Win

 

Tom Cantlon has the interesting challenge of being a left-leaning writer for the paper in a small, right-leaning Western town, in a right-leaning state. He can be reached at comments at TomCantlon dot com.

 

Sources:

Nursing home arbitration: https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2017-06-08/pdf/2017-11883.pdf

Injury records: https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetnovack/2017/03/20/congressional-rollback-of-injury-log-requirement-would-endanger-workers/

e-max.it: your social media marketing partner
Email This Page

 

THE NEW STREAMLINED RSN LOGIN PROCESS: Register once, then login and you are ready to comment. All you need is a Username and a Password of your choosing and you are free to comment whenever you like! Welcome to the Reader Supported News community.

RSNRSN