Noted.

GOOD MEDICINE: "When you're face to face with a patient, you can't worry about the fact that they can't pay," says Dr. Regina Benjamin, Barack Obama's Surgeon General nominee. After an unsettling flirtation with TV-doctor Sanjay Gupta--which caused an outcry from single-payer proponents angered by Gupta's bashing of public programs--Obama opted for a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" recipient whose career has been spent as a family doctor in the low-income, multiethnic, Hurricane Katrina-battered community of Bayou La Batre, Alabama. When Benjamin says, "It should not be this hard for doctors and other healthcare providers to care for their patients," she speaks from experience. Just as significant, Benjamin highlights the essential role of publicly organized and funded healthcare programs--as she did at the announcement of her nomination with shout-outs to the US Public Health Service Commission Corps and the National Health Service Corps, of which she is an alumna. There could not be a better advocate for maintaining a robust public option in any healthcare reform plan.   JOHN NICHOLS

WIN FOR WORKERS: Workers at Hartmarx Corporation won a big victory in June when a bankruptcy court approved its sale to Emerisque Brands and SKNL North America. After the Illinois-based manufacturer, which produces Hart Schaffner Marx and Hickey Freeman clothing, declared bankruptcy in January, Workers United, the union that represents its employees, launched a campaign to resist pressure from creditors, led by Wells Fargo, to liquidate the firm [see "Social Unionism Lives," June 15]. While other bidders intended to break up Hartmarx, Emerisque promised to keep manufacturing its brands in the United States.

The 3,000 Hartmarx jobs are a drop in the bucket compared with the 1.5 million manufacturing jobs that have been lost in the past year. But as Workers United president Bruce Raynor commented, the Hartmarx struggle "shows we can save manufacturing jobs.... The banks are not immune to pressure" when they make "quick-buck decisions." The workers' threat to occupy Hartmarx factories helped generate attention. Raynor believes that taking over plants "might be the kind of thing workers will have to do" to keep their jobs.   JOSHUA FREEMAN

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