Month: September 2009

Sixty Three Percent. What does that represent? The most recent poll numbers on how many Americans would agree to pay higher taxes for better health care.

The telephone survey of 3,003 U.S. adults conducted by Thomson Reuters found 63 percent willing to pay for healthcare reform, though most also said they are happy with their own doctors, insurance plans and out-of-pocket costs.

Ok, that’s the good news. The republicans and Glenn Beck’s teabaggers are the minority by a 2 to 1 margin. The bad news? After Democrats spent the last eight months screwing around seeking “bi-partisanship” from the Party of Just Say No (as well as letting them control the talking points aired by major media outlets), and playing footsie with Insurance industry lobbyists hell bent on killing the public option, an almost identical majority of Americans don’t think that President Obama and Congress will finish the job that we elected them to do: Give us real, meaningful health care reform.

However, only 35 percent of those surveyed said President Barack Obama’s reform agenda and the debate in Congress will lead to better health service, while 41 percent said they would expect it to lead to lower costs.

Of course, if there were any rationality in this debate, we would be arguing about a single payer system versus a public option competing with private insurance. Instead we’re seeing time after time, the insurance industry losing the PR battle with the American public, but winning the only battle that matters: with Democrats in Congress, and particularly Democrats in the Senate. Unlike the unity and discipline the Republican party demonstrated in passing almost anything that George Bush or Tom DeLay wanted, the Democrats, as a party (I’m not talking about the Progressive Caucus here for whom I have the greatest respect) have shown themselves time and again to be willing to go against what the majority of Americans clearly want: cheaper, better health care that doesn’t cut off your coverage anytime it looks like you’ll really need it, that covers pre-existing conditions, that doesn’t have “donut holes” and high deductibles, that doesn’t waste more money on administrative costs than any other country in the developed world, that covers anyone and everyone, that pays for our prescriptions and doesn’t allow the Pharmaceutical companies to gouge us, that’s portable and not tied to the current job we have, and that doesn’t reward the CEO’s of major for profit Insurance companies for denying coverage to as many people as they can, legally or otherwise.

This poll is just further evidence that Democrats are throwing away their chance to lock down a generational shift in the political landscape by playing business as usual with lobbyists and the Washington Establishment (admittedly, often one and the same) and settling for the “status quo” rather than implementing the most fundamental promises that got so many of them elected in the first place. Millions of people didn’t urn out to vote for more of the same just with a kinder, gentler face on it in November 2008. They turned out to elect the party which claimed it stood for change, and especially change in critical areas that affect our lives, such as health care. If the Democrats pass a crappy health care reform bill that merely moves the deck chairs around on the Titanic but reforms nothing with respect to the way health care is delivered and paid for in this country they will have failed. Failed as a party, and failed as servants of “We, the People.” And for that failure they will get hammered in the 2010 midterms. If that happens, no agenda of change dealing with the severe crises we face regarding our economy, climate change, needed government regulation of the financial sector nor health care reform that actually helps people rather than pad the pockets of Big Pharma and the Insurance Companies wiil be possible. Indeed, the likelihood that Obama will be a one term President (or a two termer like Bill Clinton whose grand accomplishments were eliminating welfare, destroying the last of the New Deal protections with respect to our financial industry, and avoiding trumped up charges of impeachment) will also increase dramatically.

The Democrats have been a party without any real power for the last three decades because they lost their way. Too many of them came to stand for nothing other than grubbing after corporate cash to pay for their campaigns (yes, Democratic leadership Council and “Blue Dogs” I’m talking to you). They became the party who ran Joe Lieberman as their Vice presidential candidate, who mouthed platitudes about “feeling our pain” while turning around and holding out their hands for any crumbs corporate lobbyists were willing to give them after most of the cash ahd already been turned over to the GOP’s candidates, the craziest, most malign group of politicians this side of Orwell’s 1984. They were swept back into power on a wave of resentment at what republicans had done when they controlled all the reins of government, true, but also because they claimed they had learned their lesson, and that they would change the culture in Washington, that they would put the people’s business before the interests of Big Business.

Well so far, dear Democrats, I’m not seeing any real return on that investment I made in your party when I pulled that lever for Barack Obama, and every other Democrat on my ballot last Fall. And there are a helluva lot of people who feel just like me. You think we are going to keep making all those small (but numerous) donations to you if you don’t come through for us? Sorry, but no. Pass health care reform that means something or you will find your party back in the political waste land from which you so recently emerged, and will have given new life to your opponent, the crazy loons of the Far Right GOP, who less than a year ago looked like their party was doomed to irrelevance for at least a generation.

In short, Dems, read the damn polls. Stop listening to Fox News and its cadre of wannabe haters on talk radio. Stop listening to the sweet whispers of corporate lobbyists who tell you the only way to retain your power is to play ball with them and go back on your word. Show some spine, demonstrate you have those vaunted principles you claim you do, and give the American people (not the Billionaires and CEOs with their bonuses and golden parachutes) something we can believe in, something that benefits the vast majority of ordinary citizens, not the wealthy elites.

Stand and deliver. Now, when it counts. Or be ready to pay the consequences. For we won’t turn out for you with our money, our activism or our votes a year from now if this is all you have to offer us. And that’s not a promise brothers and sisters, that’s a threat.

.

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

There is a lot of anger today because the Senate Finance Committee rejected two public option amendments. I suppose it is valid to be pissed off at the Democrats who voted against the president’s agenda, but we’ve known this day was coming for nine months. The entire debate about health care this year has been predicated on the fact that the Finance Committee would never report out a bill with a public option. Everything the administration has said and done since the spring has been done with that unalterable inevitability in mind. It won’t mean much in the end, but this result might just allow Olympia Snowe to vote for the Finance bill, giving it a tiny sheen of bipartisanship. I don’t think we want that, however, because it will dampen the impression that the Republicans are united in opposition to the passage of any version of health reform. It would also give the Finance version of the bill a slight boost over the HELP version when it comes to time to meld them together for a vote on the floor of the Senate.

Regardless, the administration has known from the beginning that they would not a get a bill worth signing out of Finance. These votes are no more than window dressing and posturing. The single goal is to get something out of Finance and then meld it into something that can get 60 votes for cloture. It’s not even critical that the public option is in the melded bill. As long as it is in the House bill, it can get included during the Conference Committee. However, it is important that there is momentum for the public option (something HELP chairman Tom Harkin understands well).

The ideal situation from a parliamentary point of view is to include the HELP version of the public option in the base bill, and then force the opponents to strip it out with an amendment. But that might not work out for the best. For example, if the Senate has a knock-down drag-out fight over the public option and defeats it, it will be harder to get them to turn around and support it if it comes back at them in the Conference Report. The liberal majority in the Senate Democratic Caucus might be better served to save their ammunition. Pass whatever can pass without a lot of fuss and then fight like hell to include the House’s public option in the Conference Report. I could go either way on the strategy. The most important thing is that the progressives in the House hold firm in their pledge to vote against a Conference Report that doesn’t have a public option. They must make sure it is included in the House bill and they must prevail for its inclusion in the Report.

If they do, the only way they can fail is if there are Democrats (or Lieberman) in the Senate who will filibuster this at the end of the process. And, if that happens, we just go to the reconciliation process. I don’t sense that the administration is wobbly on this at all, although I’m sure they are plenty nervous. They are a lot of balls in the air at the moment, and anything can still go wrong.

Minutes after the Senate Finance Committee voted down two public option amendments to the Baucus bill, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) and Democracy for America doubled their goal for raising money and running ads against Max Baucus and Olympia Snowe.

It’s time for political pain for those who put their corporate contributors ahead of their constituents:
http://www.actblue.com/page/baucuspublicoption?refcode=hccw_baucus-dkos2ste

If Max Baucus (D-MT) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) had voted in favor of the public health insurance option in the Senate Finance Committee, they would have been the deciding votes–and the Schumer amendment would have passed.

These senators just voted against what their own constituents want — and voted with corporate interests that have given them millions. Now they need to be forced to answer to their constituents.

Along with Democracy for America, they raised over $148,000 in just one day to run ads in Montana and Maine. Now, in reaction to today’s vote, we’ve raised our goal to $200,000 to make sure that the ads are everywhere in those states. Can you help? Click here:
http://www.actblue.com/page/baucuspublicoption?refcode=hccw_baucus-dkos2ste

The latest Research 2000 polls show that Maine voters support a public option 58% to 29%. Montana voters support it 47% to 43%.  

Obviously, Kent Conrad and Blanche Lincoln were also key votes against the amendments today. As this struggle goes on, there will be more targets.

But this is a time to fight back fast, and hold two leading senators accountable:
http://www.actblue.com/page/baucuspublicoption?refcode=hccw_baucus-dkos2ste

Tonight, I’m going to the Washington, DC premiere of Micheal Moore’s new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story.

I know there are people who can’t stand Moore, but I’ve seen just about all of his movies.

He’s loud, perhaps even sometimes obnoxious, but in a time when so much that needs to be said is mystifyingly unsayable, at least Moore isn’t afraid to say it. And he doesn’t wait for America to catch up with him before he says it. SiCKO is just one example. Much of what Moore covered in the film, and many of the facts he posted to set the record straight, have been echoed over and over in the current health care debate.

He also isn’t afraid to stand up to the media when necessary. What inspired him to post the facts and sources he used in SiCKO was this little exchange.

And, this time around, Moore still isn’t afraid of “big bad” Wolf Blitzer.

I’ll be interested to see Moore’s take on things related to the economy. Admittedly, until the past year or so, I didn’t say much about economics, because I thought the subject so complicated that I’d probably miss something. I figured, there are plenty of smart people out there who know what it’s about and how it works. So, it was probably better if I just stayed away from the topic.

Then I heard Alan Greenspan, known as “The Oracle”, sit in front on a congressional panel and basically answer “Fuck if I know,” when asked what the hell was happening on Wall Street and how the hell he didn’t see this mess coming. I figured, if Greenspan didn’t know, it was okay for me to at least hazard a guess. (The result has been series like, Drop Dead Conservatism, The Society of the Owned and What’s Wrong With Wall Street?)

There were many flaws that Greenspan failed to see, and that other free market fundamentalists must avoid seeing if they want to continue to believe. A major one, as pointed out by Soros, Reich and other above is that the government has constantly intervened in the “free market” in order to save the market from itself and its own “innovations.” But there’s another that has is basis in nothing more than human nature.

All the time I’m sitting in the audience thinking that these models are far too simplistic and based on countless unrealistic assumptions. I tell people that these instruments are dangerous, that no one understands the risks. But no one cares.

As long as people are compensated hugely for taking risks with other people’s money, and do not suffer equally on the downside, then those risks will inevitably become outrageous. Whether markets are efficient or not, I don’t know for sure. But I do know that, if there’s a way for someone to make money at another’s expense, he will.

Simply put, it only works if everyone (in Greenspan’s terminology) behaves honorably. Put even more simply, in order for it to work, everyone has to behave themselves. Taken a step further, everyone will behave themselves, because it is in their “rational self interest” to do so. Thus Greenspan can say with a straight face that he believed self-interest would regulate Wall Street.

For years, a Congressional hearing with Alan Greenspan was a marquee event. Lawmakers doted on him as an economic sage. Markets jumped up or down depending on what he said. Politicians in both parties wanted the maestro on their side.

But on Thursday, almost three years after stepping down as chairman of the Federal Reserve, a humbled Mr. Greenspan admitted that he had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets and had failed to anticipate the self-destructive power of wanton mortgage lending.

“Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief,” he told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Who can blame him for being “in a state of shocked disbelief”? After all, it would be irrational for an organism to destroy the very environment that sustains it. Wouldn’t it? And rational organisms like human beings wouldn’t do that. They’d stop themselves before things went too far. Right?

Of course, to believe that you’d have to ignore not only thousands of years of human history but also the simple truth of what the columnist I quoted earlier said. If people get big payoffs for taking big risks with other people’s money and suffer no consequences, some of them will do it. Or, if some people can beat you out of a buck and get away with it, they won’t think twice about doing it.

But even worse than that, Greenspan (and a host of other free market fundies) would have to ignore his own interventions on behalf of the wealthiest players. In that sense, he is a bit like the “Great and Powerful Oz” — the man behind the curtain, pulling levers and flipping switches — except that he has come to believe in the facade of fire and smoke.

Well, what do you expect when you turn you economy over to someone who subscribes to the philosophy of Ayn Rand? It was deliciously described in The New Republic by John Chait.

In these disparate comments we can see the outlines of a coherent view of society. It expresses its opposition to redistribution not in practical terms–that taking from the rich harms the economy–but in moral absolutes, that taking from the rich is wrong. It likewise glorifies selfishness as a virtue. It denies any basis, other than raw force, for using government to reduce economic inequality. It holds people completely responsible for their own success or failure, and thus concludes that when government helps the disadvantaged, it consequently punishes virtue and rewards sloth. And it indulges the hopeful prospect that the rich will revolt against their ill treatment by going on strike, simultaneously punishing the inferiors who have exploited them while teaching them the folly of their ways.

There is another way to describe this conservative idea. It is the ideology of Ayn Rand. Some, though not all, of the conservatives protesting against redistribution and conferring the highest moral prestige upon material success explicitly identify themselves as acolytes of Rand. (As Santelli later explained, “I know this may not sound very humanitarian, but at the end of the day I’m an Ayn Rand-er.”) Rand is everywhere in this right-wing mood. Her novels are enjoying a huge boost in sales. Popular conservative talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have touted her vision as a prophetic analysis of the present crisis. “Many of us who know Rand’s work,” wrote Stephen Moore in the Wall Street Journal last January, “have noticed that with each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme out of Washington, our current politicians are committing the very acts of economic lunacy that Atlas Shrugged parodied in 1957.”

…The likes of Gale Norton, George Gilder, Charles Murray, and many others have cited Rand as an influence. Rand acolytes such as Alan Greenspan and Martin Anderson have held important positions in Republican politics. “What she did–through long discussions and lots of arguments into the night–was to make me think why capitalism is not only efficient and practical, but also moral,” attested Greenspan. In 1987, The New York Times called Rand the “novelist laureate” of the Reagan administration. Reagan’s nominee for commerce secretary, C. William Verity Jr., kept a passage from Atlas Shrugged on his desk, including the line “How well you do your work . . . [is] the only measure of human value.”

It makes sense. Like I said before, depending on your perspective it’s perfectly right that millions of people have health insurance, and absolutely wrong for the government to guarantee coverage to anyone. Our health care system, like our economy, works for those who have wealth because it’s supposed to. If you’re complaining because it’s not working for you, no matter how hard you work at it, that’s because it’s not supposed to.

Of course, he was wrong. Wrong about derivatives, wrong that Wall Streeters would simply “behave honorably,” and wrong about much more.

It was Greenspan who set the Fed funds rate at an all-time low of one percent, inflating the housing bubble whose existence he denied, insisting that the unprecedented run-up in housing prices was just local “froth.”

It was Greenspan who successfully fought off all efforts to regulate derivatives — the generic name for the financial instruments that have poisoned the world’s economies — by the Congress and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, proclaiming instead that the market would regulate itself.

When then-Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) asked Greenspan at a Congressional hearing, “Aren’t you concerned with such a growing concentration of wealth that if one of these huge institutions fails that it will have a horrendous impact on the national and global economy?”

Greenspan answered, “No, I’m not. I believe that the general growth in large institutions has occurred in the context of an underlying structure of markets in which many of the larger risks are dramatically — I should say, fully — hedged.” In other words, the bigness of our big banks had conquered risk.

Well, he wasn’t entirely wrong, I guess. Some of them were “too big to fail” in that the government was unwilling to let them fail. A year after one of them — Lehman — failed, what remains of the financial sector is doing quite well. The rest of us? Not so much.

Now, with the financial sector stabilized and economists predicting that the Great Recession is nearing an end, the sighs of relief coming out of Washington and Lower Manhattan are understandable. But this is no time to lose sight of the wreckage all around us. This recession, a full-blown economic horror, has left a gaping hole in the heart of working America that is unlikely to heal for years, if not decades.

Fifteen million Americans are locked in the nightmare of unemployment, nearly 10 percent of the work force. A third have been jobless for more than six months. Thirteen percent of Latinos and 15 percent of blacks are out of work. (Those are some of the official statistics. The reality is much worse.)

Consider this: Some 9.4 million new jobs would have to be created to get us back to the level of employment at the time that the recession began in December 2007. But last month, we lost 216,000 jobs. If the recession technically ends soon and we get to a point where some modest number of jobs are created — say, 100,000 or 150,000 a month — the politicians and the business commentators will celebrate like it’s New Year’s.

But think about how puny that level of job creation really is in an environment that needs nearly 10 million jobs just to get us back to the lean years of the George W. Bush administration.

We’re hurtin’ and there ain’t much healin’ on the horizon.

That’s because something else is becoming clearer to more and more people as the downturn continues. If we live in a world where these institutions are “too big to fail” and trillions in tax dollars are committed to making sure they don’t, then the rest of us who are losing jobs, pensions, homes, health insurance — and perhaps even hope in some cases — perhaps the rest of us are in the opposite category: too small to matter. And that cuts across some powerful divisions.

After a preview screening last week (at which I did a Q&A session with Michael), he came over to my home for a late night bite. Over lasagna, he told me about an incident that occurred while he was filming that exemplifies how the economic crisis cannot be looked at through a left vs right prism.

It happened while he and his crew were shooting the climax of the movie, where Michael decides to mark Wall Street as a crime scene, putting up yellow police tape around some of the financial district’s towers of power.

While unfurling the tape in front of a “too big to fail” bank, he became aware of a group of New York’s finest approaching him. Moore has a long history of dealing with policemen and security guards trying to shut him down, but in this case he knew he was, however temporarily, defacing private property. And his shooting schedule didn’t leave room for a detour to the local jail. So, as the lead officer came closer, Moore tried to deflect him, saying: “Just doing a little comedy here, officer. I’ll be gone in a minute, and will clean up before I go.”

The officer looked at him for a moment, then leaned in: “Take all the time you need.” He nodded to the bank and said, “These guys wiped out a lot of our Police Pension Funds.” The officer turned and slowly headed back to his squad car. Moore wanted to put the moment in his film, but realized it could cost the cop his job, and decided to leave it out. “When they’ve lost the police,” he told me, “you know they’re in trouble.”

There’s another Q & A after this premiere. I’m interested in hearing what else Moore has to say.

“A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove…but the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child.” Said by an American Scholar. Everyone of us is responsible for building a stronger country through emotional bond which is the most powerful weapon present in this world. We are emotionally not strong and so that we are not successful in our living. It is necessary for us to understand our child and to help them in every good things in life. There are many small states like Nevada which shows more signs of unusual child expulsions from school.
Every parents should be responsible in caring their children. It is not right to expect our child to be perfect in their activities because they are immature and playful.

Misunderstanding between us and our child in the basic thing we have to correct to grow up the kid successfully and so that they can lead the nation or can be as successful as our 16th president Abraham Lincoln serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Though he was born in a poor family, he was drawn by his motivation got from his father which helped him in managing many problems when he was ruling our country. So it is our duty to grow our child with high motivation within them to be successful in their life.

The basic thing we have to do is to take care of our child from their schooling. The only mistake most of the parents do is to leave their children alone most of the time and when they got expelled from school in case of some problem in school. There are many problems in a child’s life like their child school expulsion. They have to be take cared in those situations with a lawyer to represent them in their hearing. Because those are some critical situation in which the child expects more support from parents. It is very important for us to hire a lawyer to represent your child in case of some mishap in school under the California Education Code 48900. Because it is the lawyers who are one among the persons to help in building the law and order in the country next to police department. So it is the responsibility of every parents to take care of their child in every aspects like appointing lawyer for child in school hearing as it is a small thing which will help in great manner in parent child relationship

Republican Rep. Trent Franks:

A Republican member of the House of Representatives accused President Barack Obama of being “an enemy of humanity” during a conservative values forum this past weekend.

In a speech Saturday before the How to Take Back America conference, Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) made comments that went far beyond the limits of traditional White House criticism. At one point, Franks demanded that Obama release his birth certificate to prove his constitutionally eligibility to hold office. The bluntest charge, however, centered on the president’s position on abortion, which the congressman derided as “insane” and godless.

Watch it here:

Insane and godless, eh? Enemy of humanity? This from the man who threatened to file a lawsuit against Obama for the release of his birth certificate (must be a lot of birthers down in Arizona)? The same guy who lied outright when he claimed that the Democrats health care reform efforts would the “largest expansion of abortion in the United States since Roe v. Wade.“Ever heard of the saying by, oh I can’t think of his name, but it goes something like this: “Let he who is without idiocy cast the first stone.”

Oh, by the way, this fearless defender of America’s freedoms is now walking back his statement, or at least his staff is:

Bethany Haley, spokeswoman for Franks, said the congressman was referring to “unborn humanity” and should have clarified his statement. She also said that Franks meant to say that Obama’s abortion-related policies have no place in government, rather than that Obama has no place in government. […]

“He was just referring to the way President Obama has set himself up as the most pro-abortion president in America’s history,” Haley said.

Way to stand up for yourself Rep. Franks! I guess he still believes Obama is Godless and insane, but at least he’s only an enemy to unborn humanity. Phew. What a relief. I thought for a minute there that maybe Franks believed Obama was part of a conspiracy to commit genocide.

I had thought I lost this video but I found it in the darned camera:

At the end of the blogger outreach on Saturday, September 26th, ’09, I talked to Senator Dodd on the Kucinich Amendment Protecting States’ Rights to move forward on Single Payer. Essentially, Dodd refers to Senator Bernie Sanders’ efforts and Sanders legislation to deal with Erisa laws and allow Single Payer in States that want to start an SP system. Dodd makes no commitment to support it, but he will look at it. Sanders had previously introduced a partial fix to the system and it was rejected in the Senate HELP committee BUT if we can get him to reintroduce it, or even a stronger fix? One possibly more sympathetic and newly minted Chairperson may have the will to twist a few arms:

This entry is from Dr. McCanne’s Quote of
the Day, a daily health policy update on the single-payer health care
reform movement. The QotD is archived on PNHP’s website.

Senate HELP Committee

July 14, 2009

Sen. Bernie Sanders just offered an amendment to the Senate HELP
health care reform bill that would allow a limited number of state
experiments with single payer systems. The proposal would have provided
waivers from federal regulations such as ERISA, and would have
authorized current federal spending on programs such as Medicare and
Medicaid to be transferred to the state to be used in the single payer
program.

Those voting for the amendment:

Bernie Sanders

Tom Harkin

Sherrod Brown

Jeff Merkley

All Republicans and all other Democrats voted against it.

Notably absent in support of that was Senator Dodd. I have 10 videos in my YouTube archives from this one event alone.

First Read does a good job of explaining how the budget reconciliation process would work for the health care reform bill. If you are following this debate, you should definitely take five minutes to read it. I think it is still too close to call on whether or not we’re headed for reconciliation. Most of this year I just assumed that the Senate would never pass health reform with a public option. But the situation has been improving lately. If I had to bet, I’d bet that we’re still headed for reconciliation. There is also a chance that the public option will be dropped and the bill will still pass. At least the unpredictability makes things interesting to watch.

.

Update [2009-9-30 5:57:34 by Oui]: See interview with Russian TV …

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."