Month: July 2013

Senator Rand Paul submitted an amendment to the Transportation and HUD appropriation bill that has nothing to do with transportation or housing (sorry, no permanent link is available). It was just tabled. It won the support of a mere 13 senators, including Sen. Paul. See if you can figure out why it had so little support.

SA 1739. Mr. PAUL submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by him to the bill S. 1243, making appropriations for the Departments of Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2014, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:

At the end of title I, insert the following:

Sec. __XXX. (a) Congress makes the following findings:

(1) On June 30, 2012, Mohamed Morsi was elected President of Egypt in elections that were certified as free and fair by the Egyptian Presidential Election Commission and the United Nations.

(2) On July 3, 2013, the military of Egypt removed the democratically elected President of Egypt, arrested his supporters, and suspended the Constitution of Egypt. These actions fit the definition of a military coup d’état.

(3) Pursuant to section 7008 of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Act, 2012 (division I of Public Law 112-74; 125 Stat. 1195), the United States is legally prohibited from providing foreign assistance to any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by a military coup d’état, or removed in such a way that the military plays a decisive role.

(4) The United States has suspended aid to countries that have undergone military coups d’état in the past, including the Ivory Coast, the Central African Republic, Thailand, Mali, Fiji, and Honduras.

(b)(1) In accordance with section 7008 of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Act, 2012 (division I of Public Law 112-74; 125 Stat. 1195), the United States Government, including the Department of State, shall refrain from providing to the Government of Egypt the assistance restricted under such section.

(2) In addition to the restrictions referred to in paragraph (1), the following restrictions shall be in effect with respect to United States assistance to the Government of Egypt:

(A) Deliveries of defense articles currently slated for transfer to Egyptian Ministry of Defense (MOD) and Ministry of Interior (MOI) shall be suspended until the President certifies to Congress that democratic national elections have taken place in Egypt followed by a peaceful transfer of power.

(B) Provision of defense services to Egyptian MOD and MOI shall be halted immediately until the President certifies to Congress that democratic national elections have taken place in Egypt followed by a peaceful transfer of power.

(C) Processing of draft Letters of Offer and Acceptance (LOAs) for future arms sales to Egyptian MOD and MOI entities shall be halted until the President certifies to Congress that democratic national elections have taken place in Egypt followed by a peaceful transfer of power.

(D) All costs associated with the delays in deliveries and provision of services required under subparagraphs (A) through (C) shall be borne by the Government of Egypt.

(c) Any amounts retained by the United States as a result of implementing subsection (b) shall be made available to the Secretary of Transportation to carry out activities under the heading “BRIDGES IN CRITICAL CORRIDORS”.

I like how he made it germane by taking any potential savings and repurposing it to build bridges in critical corridors. How progressive of him. Very cute.

Under the letter of the law, Egypt should have its aid suspended if it is determined that a coup d’etat took place there. It’s a noble and, yet, stupid law. Aid to Egypt is part of the Camp David Accords, and if we expect Egypt to stay at peace with Israel, then we need to keep our end of the bargain. Our relationship with Egypt is controversial, as it should be, but it is also one of our most important relationships. And our policy should not be set by some catch-all pro-democracy statute, let alone by the nutcase junior senator from Kentucky. And it certainly shouldn’t be determined by language in a bill to fund the departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development.

The way the Obama administration is getting around the law is by refusing to define what happened in Egypt as a coup d’etat. It’s an inelegant solution to a stupid problem. But it’s a solution.

Secretary of State Kerry is trying to kickstart new peace negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians, which, if successful, would be in our national interests. Fucking with our aid package to Egypt in this context would be sub-mental. But sub-mental is what Rand Paul does for a living.

That would be former Governor of Montana Brian Schweitzer.

Way back in early 2009 as the healthcare debates were heating up, I undertook a study of the history, successes, and failures in the US health care “system.”  The more I researched and did back of the enveloped calculations, the more convinced I became that even single-payer (which wasn’t even an option) wouldn’t be robust enough to deliver Universal Health Care at a national cost anywhere near what other countries spend on national health care.  

The OECD reported the comparative costs of health care among western countries, most with some system of UHC.  What’s particularly striking is that in 2009 (not too different from the 2008 report that I consulted) the US spent more public dollars, on a per capita basis, on health care than all but two of the comparative countries.  More public dollars (along with a lot more private dollars) and we weren’t even close to providing UHC.  

As bad as those comparative numbers are, they would be much worse if the US senior population percentage were similar to that in most of the comparative countries.  The US senior population in 2009 was just under 13%; whereas, it was 15% in the UK and 17-18% in several European countries and 20% in Japan.  I wrote a series of diaries on why we can’t get from “here” to “there” (UHC) with health insurance reform.  

I ended the first diary with:

Stay tuned (only because this diary is already too long).  In the interim think about Detroit, Swine Flu & Single-Payer.  Two buzz words: public and free.

From the fifth diary

How can we not see that US public health facilities, Community Health Clinics and free clinics are the only viable key to expanding access and affordability  to the tens of millions of Americans that have been left behind by The Best (and most expensive) Health Care in the World?

Montana has put something similar to the test:

A year ago, Montana opened the nation’s first clinic for free primary healthcare services to its state government employees. …

He and others faulted then-Gov. Brian Schweitzer for moving ahead with the clinic last year without approval of the state legislature, although it was not needed.

How’s it working for those state employees and retirees with health insurance?

Visitation is more than 75 percent higher than initial estimates.

“For goodness sakes, of course the employees and the retirees like it, it’s free,” says Republican State Sen. Dave Lewis.

And because it’s free to patients, hundreds of people have come in who had not seen a doctor for at least two years.

Hill says the facility is catching a lot, including 600 people who have diabetes, 1,300 people with high cholesterol, 1,600 people with high blood pressure and 2,600 patients diagnosed as obese. Treating these conditions early could avoid heart attacks, amputations, or other expensive hospital visits down the line, saving the state more money.

Pretty darn well.

How’s it working fiscally?

Even so, division manager Russ Hill says it’s actually costing the state $1,500,000 less for healthcare than before the clinic opened.

Pretty darn well.

Free is critically important.  As I surmised, it is attractive to certain people and population demographics with health insurance.  Free of the billing tasks, doctors and nurses can deliver more patient care in the same number of hours.  That alone eases the shortage of primary and preventative healthcare providers.  The bonus comes with early treatment of conditions that will be much more expensive to treat later.  

Well done, Mr. Schweitzer!  A mighty fine first step outside the health insurance closed maze.

If you’ve been following along, you already know about the three nominees to serve on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals who the Republicans plan on filibustering because, they claim, the DC Circuit doesn’t need any more judges. Reading Sahil Kapur’s piece for Talking Points Memo, you might get the impression that these three judges will eventually be confirmed. But when you read Sahil Kapur’s piece on today’s cloture vote on the nominee to head the Alcohol Tobacco & Firearms department, that optimism is likely to vanish.

At the last minute, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) changed her ‘no’ vote to ‘yes,’ which will likely end up being the key vote. After her vote, 59 ‘yes’ votes had been cast for Jones, and senators said the vote was being held open while Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) was en route to Washington from North Dakota to cast the 60th vote…

…Murkowski changed her vote after speaking to McCain and Susan Collins (R-ME), both of whom voted yes, on the floor. The Alaskan declined to talk to reporters afterward. Democrats expected her to vote yes but privately believe she was initially talked out of it.

“Lisa’s just a friend of mine and I thought we’d have a nice little chat about what we had for dinner last night,” Collins quipped, describing as “accurate” a reporter’s characterization that she rescued Murkowski as she was being ganged up on by Republican senators. “I was concerned that she was being pummeled by both sides.”

Supposedly, the vote is being held open until 7:30, by which time Sen. Heitkamp should have arrived and been able to cast the 60th vote. This is for the ATF director, not a lifetime appointment to the second most important court in the country.

I will be interested to see how NSA apologists like Sen. Diane Feinstein and Rep. Mike Rogers respond to this. It appears to confirm that the safeguards we are supposed to enjoy against invasions of our privacy are limited to the voluntary compliance of NSA workers and contractors. I’ll have more to say about the details later, but I just wanted to open the discussion right away.

Freshman Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is like Jim DeMint on steroids, and that probably means that he doesn’t have much of a future in the U.S. Senate. DeMint burned so many bridges with his colleagues that a position at the Heritage Foundation became more attractive to him than going to work each day with 99 people who hated his guts. But DeMint wasn’t in the habit of having his staff insult other Republican members on a regular basis.

Senator Cruz is pretty obviously going to run for the Republican nomination for president, and he’s positioning himself as the most far-right candidate in the race. Everyone else is a coward. Everyone else is corrupted by Washington. Only Senator Cruz has the steel to fight. Republicans who don’t want to shut down the government have to defend themselves from these attacks, and presidential aspirants will have to be willing to do it in the presidential debates and somehow win the argument with the Republican base. Either that, or they will fall in line with Sen. Cruz. That’s what Sens. Marco Rubio and Rand Paul have done.

The 2016 election is still a long way off, and ObamaCare will be well-established by then. People will be very tired of dysfunction and gridlock by then, too, and there are no signs that the problem will have abated before 2016.

Even though the Republican leadership and consultant class does not want to follow Ted Cruz’s government shutdown strategy, none of them dare argue against the underlying principle, which is to repeal ObamaCare. That will remain an orthodox article of faith that no Republican can deviate from. It’s a sickness.

And Senator Cruz is spreading the disease.

Regarding Booman’s recent post Good and Bad News regarding the (supposed) decline and thus end of the RatPublican party, the Booman contributor “obsessed” wrote the following highly perceptive comment:  

I’m counting on the Republicans to keep this up.

Enjoy the insufferable grind. Gridlock is our friend. Obama is determined to cut social security and medicare and to install Larry Summers as Fed Chief. If the Republicans give him a chance he’ll be the most anti-middle class president since Reagan.

I just want him to sit down and shut up. People with no spines really should not try to stand up. And they should DEFINITELY not try to make deals with Republicans.

I just want his term to be over before he can do more harm. There is no way on earth for the Republicans to win the WH in 2016. If we had a strong, progressive Congress, they could control a democratic president. In lieu of that, we’re better off with the utter recalcitrance of the current crew. PLUS – the more outrageous they are, the larger the infinitesimally small chance of a progressive wave election in 2014.

Obama protects us from them with his veto pen. They protect us from Obama. That’s the best case scenario. Let’s just run out the damned clock.

OH yes!!!

I started a reply and it grew.

Read on.
An excellent comment, obsessed!

Stalemate as a useful way of life. I am reminded of all of those regularly occurring “POLICE STRIKE!!!” stories over the years.

BLUE FLU!!!

POLICE STRIKE!!!

IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD!!! THE BAD GUYS WILL TAKE OVER!!!

HELLLLP!!!

And then the emergency passes, and buried in the back of whatever media dare to print or speak it you will see statistics that say there was less crime during the police strike than either before or after it.

I often call myself a nonarchist. The following explains why.

Anarchy is chaos. Polyarchy is a control system. Every “—archy” rapidly regresses (if of course it does not start there in the first place) to a position of corruption in the name of “controlling the people”. The reason why American society so rapidly progressed during the 20th Century, the reason that the U.S. became the colossus that it is?

A form of nonarchy.

There were holes in the system…big holes, serious holes…through which the human spirit could manifest itself uncontrolled. Those holes persisted right through the late ’60s/early-to-mid ’70s, and then the walls started to to close in. The holes in the walls began to be patched by “technology,” by technology that was itself controlled by corporate interests that only desired conformity and the profits that can be made through the utter predictability of that conformity.

And here we jolly well are, folks. Controlled like a motherfucker and…most of us, anyway…loving every minute of it.

WIKILEAKS!!!

THAT AWFUL SNOWDEN FELLA!!!

THEY WANT TO STOP US FROM HAVING OUR SECRETS!!!

THE BAD GUYS WILL TAKE OVER IF THEY STOP US!!!

SURVEILLANCE IS GOOD!!!

HELLLLP!!!

If there is anything that you can bet on, it is this.

Short of some kind of total collapse of the control system as it now stands…economically, due to whatever reasons (A really bad oil situation being the most likely, but a heavy terrorist hit or climate change-caused emergency might do the job too)…you will not see any presidential candidates or political “leaders” of any stripe whatsoever other than so-called centrists…people who have thoroughly signaled their agreement with the rigid control system now thoroughly in place…being strongly financed (and thus media-supported) during the 2016 election cycle.

Bet on it.

And them holes’ll jes’ keep on closing.

Bet on that as well.

Happy Millienium, sleepies.

Whadda buncha maroons!!!

AG

Christan Nation Advocates Exposed, Peter Montgomery, State of Belief Radio, July 27 2013

Some key points:
12-state strategy for moving his campaign forward and helping Republican Party win in 2016.

Deep-pocket financial resources from Silicon Valley (United in Purpose) and Colorado Springs (American Family Association).  The American Family Association has a network of 200 radio stations.

Base network of 600 evangelical pastors

Alliance with David Barton, Matt Shaver (Liberty Counsel), and Jim Garlow. (Google them)

Fronting for Ted Cruz and Rand Paul exploratory visits to Iowa for Presidential race in 2016.  (Backed Rick Perry in 2012 and was behind movement to deny Romney the nomination because Mormonism is not Christian.)

This is why you cannot take PVIs as destiny.  There is a lot of money going into moving PVIs to the right.  It is organized and strategic and uses churches a local bases.  And Rand Paul is not a religious libertarian.

I remember when Christie Todd Whitman was elected governor of New Jersey and I correctly predicted that it was the end of the world as we then knew it. But it got worse.

Jon Favreau:

I’m not talking about a battle between moderates and conservatives. The conservatives won that fight a long time ago. Our children may never believe that moderate Republicans once roamed the Earth, advocating policies that would limit carbon pollution and invest in scientific research, reform our schools and build new roads, promote national service, reduce the influence of money in politics, and require individuals who can afford health insurance to take responsibility for buying it. Soon enough, these politicians will exist only in the minds of ’90s-era pundits and Aaron Sorkin’s writing staff.

For the foreseeable future, I cannot imagine a Republican who could both win the party’s nomination and 270 Electoral Votes. That’s the good news. The bad news is that they will have enough power to make everything an insufferable grind.

I’m off to see Stoke City play a friendly with the Philly Union. Find something to talk about.