The Double E's: Ezra Klein and Elizabeth Edwards

(pic courtesy of Pushback)

Last night, Elizabeth Edwards was in a discussion with another fellow health care policy wonk, Ezra Klein of the American Prospect, at GWU Medical School. The program was entitled, "Sick and Broke: A Conversation with Elizabeth Edwards." The program was sponsored by Campus Progress.

Rather than giving you all of the highlights, I am providing a link instead to two videos: one of highlights, and one of the full session. I will say that she is critical of most health care issue plans, including those of JRE, but she explains why JRE went the route he did, and it made sense.

Ezra met his match last night. While he said nothing little on his blog today, he must have been pleased as good punch he had this opportunity to be the moderator of something of not only his expertise, but to engage someone who is very knowledgeable (Elizabeth is truly an equal, but she doesn't claim to have all of her fingers on the facts--and has Erza confirming one of the facts) and has a passionate discourse to share with all of us due to her incurable disease.

Here's the link to the full and highlight videos:

http://zedc3test.techprogress.org/issues/2008/10/cpedwards.html

Flowers and water for the Double E health care wonks: Elizabeth and Ezra. I respect their views on this matter more than anyone.

Health care is going to be the 21st century version of Social Security.

I'm going to go out on a limb for a moment.

While I think Social Security is important, I think many of us do believe (as we did with Clinton) we won't see it when we retire. It was designed for those of the depression for a small amount based on actuary data, and those of the "Greatest Generation" have been able to take advantage of it...some having a vacation home in Florida or Sun States. The Greatest Generation in general scrimped and saved to help the war effort. But not all did. I had an uncle who was not a participant in WWII, and benefitted more with receiving from the system until he died although he paid a lot less into the system. That's what gets the elephants' underwear in bunches, and I can understand that, except, they made stupid decisions on many things, and SS is the less of those big expenditures that is worthwhile. I have a friend who has SS and a pension, and lives OK with it due to Medicare, but it would difficult if she didn't have those combos. She's single and is an active civic person.

I think we will have to choose between UHC and SS, and to be honest, I would choose health care gladly. It's the best policy for prevention, as EE notes, and to save us all from more costs in the long run to our government and to our small businesses, the growth engine of our economy, always.

I doubt we can fund both SS and UHC well in the future.

Good Article about the Media Narrative of John and Elizabeth Edwards

Ezra Klein nails it.

(h/t to Neil the Ethical Werewolf and a former Eliza Klein.com weekend blogger)

Congrats to TAPPED

Which won the Sidney Hillman Foundation awards in Journalism recently. Ezra Klein, whose blog is on my blogroll, is part of the TAPPED (American Prospect online Edition) team.

Since 1950, the Sidney Hillman Foundation has recognized journalists, writers and public figures whose work promotes social and economic justice.

Annual awards are given in the following categories:

• Books (non-fiction)
• Newspaper Reporting
• Magazine Reporting
• Broadcast Journalism
  (includes television and radio)
• Photojournalism
• BLOGs

These awards reflect the vision and commitment of Hillman, president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (a predecessor union of UNITE HERE), whose tireless efforts to bring dignity and respect to working people left a lasting legacy for the American public.

Hillman was an architect of the New Deal and worked to build a vibrant union movement extending beyond the shop floor to all aspects of workers' lives. Today, his belief in social and political activist trade unionism is in the forefront of creating a new progressive movement for social change.

John Edwards has worked with UNITE Here for the past 2 years in raising awareness about poverty, the right to organize unions, and to raise working standards, wages, and benefits for hotel workers.

JRE Buzz (37): Blogger Sit Down in Iowa

Greetings BW readers,
The last few days have been and will continue to be a whirlwind for John Edwards, who announced his candidacy yesterday in NOLA. Only press and citizen journalists were at the announcement, with the exception of some of the residents and One Corps New Orleans.

Edwards is granting quite a bit of access to bloggers as he considers this campaign (his words from the announcement on Thur) a grassroots and netroots effort. The following YT was done by NCDem of the OAC.


One of the exciting moments for this blogger was to drive to Des Moines to see Edwards address a town hall meeting of 1o00, possibly 1500 or more, depending on who reported on it. But before the town hall portion, local bloggers and myself were invited to a petite tete a tete "bloggers sit-in". This was an opportunity to say hello ask Edwards questions. Jake Ludington, originally from Iowa and visiting for the holidays, is one of those Lockergnome guys and an attendee at this gathering. He captured a pretty good chunk of the conversation here. I hope Mitch Radcliffe is reading all of these accounts. After all, it was his idea to have a CJ or professional blogger on the back of the bus to capture the behind the scenes of a politician.

Yes, you see me very very briefly trying to sit down after shaking hands with John Edwards. To Edwards' left is my pal and OAC blogger, Jackie R, who was obviously very interested in what Edwards had to say.

My question was (and you can hear it on the video better than I can repeat verbatim) was about Edwards' foreign travels and the CFR report he wrote with Jack Kemp (in which Edwards finished my thought--"you mean Russia") and if it was possible to have the Russians at the table to help engage Iran. In short, Edwards didn't think so since Putin was moving away from democracy in Russia.

Other folks at this meeting included Robert Scoble, who works for Podtech and is travelling around on the plane with JRE, but Podtech is picking up his tab otherwise. He's one of my favorite geeks, and we had a nice conversation about the movement towards electronic public engagement, and I told him about some of the projects I've been working on at work as well as my own place here. I will post a picture I had taken with him later as I'm still in Iowa and will need access to my own computer to load into one of my plog accounts.

Scoble and I also talked about his experiences with some of the NC bloggers at the Converge South conference a couple of months ago. He said it was definitely like being in an old southern neighborhood, and one could see how politicians were born and bred out of that environment.

This was Scoble's first foray into political vlogging.

One thing I was not aware of until later was that not all of the bloggers were necessarily Edwards supporters at this blogger sit down. But I'm hoping one by one they will be won over, as I have been.

I also caught up with fellow bloggers NCDem and Chuckles, who were the CJ's travelling with Edwards' entourage for the first leg of the announcement tour. Jackie and I gave them a ride to their hotel and had dinner with them. Lots of war stories they were telling about their adventure, but it really was an adventure for them. Chuckles told me that Ezra Klein was his roommate in NOLA.

Updates forthcoming. Signing off from Hawkeye land.

More buzz l8tr...