Recently, I started a facebook group in support of the Weiner substitute amendment that has now attracted 150+ members from all across the country. We've done a little bit of SEO (search engine optimization) work and disciplined daily searches for key phrases and have measurable results that we can begin to be proud of, but there is lots more to do, and less time to do it in.
Please consider joining us! Especially if you are in Congress, work for Congress, or have friendly contacts, insight into where we are in the process, when we can expect HR 3200 and its amendments to go through the House Committee on Rules, how members of congress are speaking to each other about this and other amendments to HR 3200.
Please investigate this historic opportunity for debate and a vote on extending Medicare to all Americans, and then write more about it. Post your links to relevant DKos diaries and posts on your own blogs to our Wall.
I have been encouraging this groups membership to do at least a 1x per day search for the phrase "Weiner Amendment" on Google, Google News and Google blogsearch, and optionally on another big search engine like Yahoo or Bing.com
We now see that the phrase "Weiner amendment" is a measurable new trend in search queries on Google Trends.
I have asked group members to write more online and craft links to the Physicians for a National Health Program webpage at http://pnhp.org/... with the phrase "Weiner Amendment" in the anchor text and that page has increased its position in Google's SERPs for that phrase to the number 2 listing. According to Alexa, over the last 3 months traffic to the PNHP website from major search engines has increased by 43%, and traffic to the PNHP.org now exceeds that traffic Alexa measures going to the healthcareforamericanow.org website.
We have made some good progress, but we can do more and be in a very good place to answer the questions the public will have on this substitute amendment on the day of the debate and vote, and in the huge amount of traffic we will see when and if the mainstream media does its too little, too late job of covering the news after it happens instead of properly informing the citizens for full participation in its self-governance.
We are also in a great place to reward those journalists and media outlets that do give us favorable and fair coverage in advance of this vote with proper recognition, internet traffic and search engine relevance if they start their own daily coverage to the process and significance of HR 3200's Weiner substitute and Kucinich ERISA-related amendments.
Update: The Weiner substitute amendment will replace Section A of HR 3200 with Chairman Conyers' HR 676. The deal made just before the August recess to progressives on the Health subcommittee of Energy and Commerce by Chairman Waxman was that Pelosi would allow a debate and a vote on the Weiner subsitute as a floor amendment. So this is Medicare for All.