The 7/12/17 Email “Medicare For All” Campaign to Sen. McCain

[Pat]

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---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: The 7/12/17 Email “Medicare For All” Campaign to Sen. John McCain
From: Pat
Date: Sun, November 17, 2019 7:18 am MST
To: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Attachment:
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Dear John,

I was surprised upon waking up a few minutes ago to find two e-mails in my in-box – both on the subject of the new e-mail campaign to protect a possible global-warming solution (hydrogen extraction) from being killed.

The first was my copy of the e-mail you sent to the 168 members of ReadingLiberally-SaltLake and posted at http://discussingliberally-saltlake.org ... =23&t=1850.

The second was an e-mail that you sent to 42 social activists who belong to two other social-activist organizations in which you participate. One of those recipients forwarded that e-mail to me.

The second e-mail that you sent included your first e-mail preceded by the message that follows immediately below.

Congratulations on the sneakiness of its PS with which you are impliedly inviting each of the 42 social activists to join ReadingLiberally-SaltLake!

However, I am intrigued by another aspect of your PS.

It claims with respect to the 7/12/17 “Medicare For All” e-mail campaign to Sen. John McCain –

“A mere 16 days after we launched that E-mail Campaign, Sen. McCain made his iconic ‘thumb down’ vote against ‘repealing and replacing’ Obamacare as a result of which ‘repeal and replace’ failed by one vote.”

Yet the 7/12/17 e-mail campaign (http://discussingliberally-saltlake.org ... =23&t=1631) was not posted on http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org until 7/29/17, which is the day AFTER Sen. McCain cast his iconic “thumb down” vote on “repeal and replace.”

Could you please explain?

Regards,

Pat

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The portion of your second e-mail to 42 social activists that preceded the inclusion of your first e-mail to the 168 members of ReadingLiberally-SaltLake –

Dear Friends,

The following e-mail should be self-explanatory.

You may recall that last Sunday you received a “last call SOS” because we (ReadingLiberally-SaltLake) were two short of our minimum quorum for adopting one of our e-mail campaigns – the one being proposed was to two United Nations Officials to protect a possible global-warming solution (hydrogen extraction) from being killed.

Thank you to everyone who responded – we exceeded our minimum quorum by two.

And the following e-mail to our 168 members containing the campaign to the two United Nations Officials was the result.

It would be greatly appreciated if each of you would also participate in the e-mail campaign – your participation should require less than 5 minutes.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,
John Karls

PS – Re our 7/12/2017 E-mail Campaign to Sen. John McCain on “Saving The U.S. Government $300 Billion/YEAR – Medicare For All”

A mere 16 days after we launched that E-mail Campaign, Sen. McCain made his iconic “thumb down” vote against “repealing and replacing” Obamacare as a result of which “repeal and replace” failed by one vote.

The text of our E-mail Campaign to Sen. McCain (and information about our calculation of the savings of $300 Billion/YEAR) are available at http://discussingliberally-saltlake.org ... =23&t=1631.

The reason for mentioning this is that the attendees of our 11/13/2019 meeting selected as the focus for our Wed evening 12/11/2019 meeting “The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care - And How To Fix It” by Johns Hopkins Surgeon and Prof. of Health Policy Marty Markary (Bloomsbury Publishing 9/10/2019 – 288 pages - $15.89 + shipping or $11.49 Kindle from Amazon.com).

[Please hit your “reply” button if you would like to RSVP for the Dec 11 meeting.]


---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Re: The 7/12/17 Email “Medicare For All” Campaign to Sen. John McCain
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Date: Sun, November 17, 2019 8:37 am MST
To: Pat
Attachment:
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Dear Pat,

Thank you very much for your e-mail.

I see from our records that you also did not attend the 7/12/2017 meeting.

I had missed my flight returning from a family reunion in Michigan due to food poisoning (for the curious, due to a restaurant rather than relatives) and was in no fit state to participate in the 7/12/2017 meeting via Skype.

Accordingly, I requested Ted and Tucker (aka Elizabeth) Gurney (two retired U/U Biology Profs who had been attending our meetings regularly at that time) to conduct the meeting.

I was very disappointed afterward to learn that the e-mail campaign to Sen. John McCain had not been approved.

You may recall that our standards for an official e-mail campaign are a minimum quorum of 6 with no more than one dissent (which we then describe as a “consensus” rather “unanimous”).

The third paragraph of the 7/12/2017 e-mail campaign says –

“[Of the 12 attendees of our 1/9/2017 meeting on “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters In The End” by Harvard Medical School Prof. Atul Gwande, four participants who would be called “conservative” in conventional terms, opposed “Medicare For All” -- and all four had RSVP’d for our 7/12/2017 meeting on “An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back” by Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal. Following the 7/12/2017 meeting, Yours Truly personally lobbied the four holdouts (all of the other 7/12/2017 attendees were already on record from the 1/9/2017 meeting as favoring “Medicare For All”) and am delighted to report that all four were persuaded that “Medicare For All” aligns with conservative principles because it should save the U.S. Government $300 BILLION/year. Accordingly, this campaign is unanimous.]”

By way of background, I’m sure you are aware that when one of our e-mail campaign proposals is blocked by two or more meeting participants, our organization takes the position that we do NOT have authority to interfere with the First Amendment “Right of Free Speech” of the majority, any one of whom is free to launch an UNOFFICIAL e-mail campaign of her/his own.

[Indeed, the face of Sec. 1 of http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org states that of our 43 e-mail campaigns, 7 were UNOFFICIAL and their unofficial status is shown by a lower-case title, as contrasted with the titles of the OFFICIAL campaigns which are all caps.]

So on 7/13/2017, I could have simply posted the e-mail campaign on http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org as an UNOFFICIAL campaign.

HOWEVER, I thought that the proposal was important enough to try to persuade the 4 attendees of the 7/12/2017 meeting who would be called “conservative” in conventional terms, that the true “conservative” position on “Medicare For All” should NOT be opposition to an expanded governmental program BUT RATHER support for saving the U.S. Government $300 Billion/YEAR!!!

ESPECIALLY BECAUSE I knew that Sen. McCain had been fond in speeches on healthcare over the years of claiming that the U.S. healthcare system was “the finest in the world”!!!

AND I HAD THE UTMOST RESPECT for the integrity and conscience of Sen. McCain to “do the right thing” when confronted with the two facts featured at the beginning of our campaign that –

“(1) The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reports that the percentage of American Gross Domestic Product (“GDP”) spent on healthcare is more than twice the average of developed countries!!!

“(2) The U.N.’s World Health Organization ranks “the health system performance” of the U.S. as only 37th in the world -- which means that since there are only 35 members of the OECD, American healthcare is outranked by at least two third-world countries!!!”

ACCORDINGLY, the record will show that I immediately sent out on 7/13/2017 an UNOFFICIAL “Six Degrees of Separation” E-mail Campaign comprising what later became the OFFICIAL e-mail campaign whose text was posted on our bulletin board on 7/29/2017.

The 7/13/2017 UNOFFICIAL e-mail campaign was addressed to more than 30 of our ReadingLiberally-SaltLake members who I knew would be strong supporters of the campaign.

[Per the “Six Degrees of Separation” theory, an UNOFFICIAL campaign launched by only one person can still result in 330 million e-mails in the in-box of the decision maker such as Sen. McCain.]

Then, as explained in the third paragraph of the OFFICIAL campaign quoted above, I proceeded to lobby the 4 attendees of the 7/12/2017 meeting who would be considered “conservative” in conventional terms that “true” conservatism should overlook the expansion of a governmental program on the altar of honoring an allegedly more-important conservative principle – saving the U.S. Government $300 Billion/YEAR!!!

BTW, you might be amused to know that the “lobbying” took the form of “wining and dining” (literally) the 4 holdouts.

Due to scheduling difficulties, it was NOT possible to “wine and dine” for 2 weeks the last two holdouts (Jay Hansen and Marcia Jean Hansen who had been attending our meetings regularly at that time – indeed, Jay was a member of both our Great Salt Lake “working group” and our Thorium Fission “working group” for which I will be eternally grateful!!!).

You can probably imagine my joy when Jay and Marcia agreed that saving the government money was more important than the expansion of a governmental program!!!

Which was immediately trumpeted “to the world” with the 7/29/2017 posting on http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org that the 7/12/2017 UNOFFICIAL e-mail campaign had become OFFICIAL.

As you can tell, I relish the thought that our e-mail campaigns are effective.

However, I will be the first to concede that a causal relationship can rarely be proved, and it is entirely possible that Sen. McCain reached his decision without the e-mails that he received as a result of our campaign for 16 days before reaching his decision on the “repeal and replacement” of Obamacare.

Thank you again for your e-mail.

Answering it brought back many pleasant memories!!!

Your friend,

John K.