I spend a great deal of time and money supporting Democrats all around the nation. Among those I fought to get elected, both with blogging time, appeals to friends for donations, and my own donations, were Linda Sanchez of California and Zack Space of Ohio. Long before that I also helped Linda's sister, Loretta Sanchez, with money...this was before blogging so I could only give money.

In general I do not regret helping even somewhat conservative Democrats get elected because they are always better than the Republicans they replace. But...sometimes I do get frustrated with what I see as a disconnect between the relatively progressive words they utter to get elected and the more conservative stands they take.

Right now America has a chance to FINALLY get real healthcare reform. I have blogged about how America's helthcare system is one of the most expensive in the world but only delivers mediocre outcomes, on par with places like Slovenia, Portugal, Albania, Bosnia, Kazakhstan...and even Cuba and North Korea. This takes into account a large number of measurable outcomes including probability of not reaching 60 years old, healthy life expectancy and respiratory disease child death rate. Our healthcare is both far more expensive and far less effective than the healthcare systems in Sweden, Canada, the UK and the Netherlands. We are doing it wrong in BOTH in terms of excessively high costs AND excessively poor benefits. We need reform and we need to reform in ways that learns from those nations that do it much better and even cheaper: Sweden, UK, Canada and the Netherlands.

Right now in Congress we have the chance to start reforming our system in the right way, a way that will overall reduce costs an improve outcomes. This is the public option.

Linda Sanchez and Zack Space: I helped get you two elected with both my time and my money because I trusted both of you to make the right decisions most of the time. Look carefully at the numbers. America is doing it wrong when it comes to healthcare and you have the chance to reform that for the better. I ask you to support a strong Public Option for healthcare. This may be the single most important thing you can do for working and middle class Americans: reduce their healthcare costs and improve their healthcare outcomes. The numbers speak for themselves. Sweden, Netherlands, UK and Canada are consistently, across almost all measures of quality for healthcare, better off than America for less money per capita. I trust you, Conrgesswoman Sanchez and Congressman Space, to see that and to start moving us away from healthcare that costs too much but barely beats the healthcare in places like Slovenia, Cuba and Albania to one that learns from the best there is in the world.

Do me proud. Make me happy that I put the time and effort into your elections. In the case of Zack Space I did so more than once and long before anyone else supported you. Do me proud.

This year I have been invited to dozens of inaugural parties all over the country. If we could have made it to DC we could have party hoppped and really enjoyed the enthusiasm of all the newly elected Dems. But there is one inaugural party I am most proud to be invited to. For all who remember the Republican corruption in Ohio and the possibly stolen election in Ohio in 2004, THIS is really sweet:

Too bad we can't be there! Best of luck to Mark Dann and Jennifer Brunner. I am proud to have sent them some publicity and some donations.

If YOU want to go to their party, you can talk to the Ohio Democratic Party.

My colleague from the Drug Policy Alliance wrote this op-ed piece [Liza's Note: We are reprinting the whole article with the author's permission]:

Put Drug Laws on Day One Docket
By Gabriel Sayegh
First published: Tuesday, January 2, 2007
Albany Times-Union

New Yorkers are waiting to see whether Gov. Eliot Spitzer's campaign slogan -- "Day One, Everything Changes"-- is genuine, or just a slogan. There are a number of issues that warrant the attention of the new administration, and reforming the draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws should be a priority.

The Rockefeller Drug Laws, passed in 1973, mandate harsh mandatory minimum prison terms for simple, low-level drug offenses. Under these laws, people convicted of first-time drug offenses receive 8 to 20 years in prison. While the state spends millions of taxpayer dollars every year imprisoning drug offenders, spending on community-based drug treatment is pitifully low.

Indeed, treatment options for people with drug problems are too limited, especially for low-income people. There are more than 14,000 people in New York prisons under the Rockefeller Drug Laws. Nationwide, over 500,000 people are incarcerated on drug offenses, more than any other industrialized nation (and more than the European Union, with 100 million more residents, incarcerates for all offenses combined).

But perhaps the most despicable aspect of the Rockefeller Drug Laws is the institutional racism associated with their application. More than 90 percent of the people incarcerated under the Rockefeller Drug Laws are black and Latino, even though whites use and sell illegal drugs at approximately equal rates. There is no excuse for this disparity.
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