A Canadian friend of mine emailed me last November, after President Obama’s election victory, and asked who the President-elect might nominate for Secretary of Peace.
I had never before considered such a question. What a concept.
Someone with the ear of the President, part of the inner circle of power in the most powerful nation in the world, whose responsibility was to promote and protect peace for Americans.
You might argue that is the job of the Secretary of Defense, but think about it. To use a sports metaphor, it’s like saying we need a defensive coach, but not someone who looks for new and effective ways to score points. You can’t win games that way.
Truth is, defending us from an imminent attack is not the same as anticipating what might disrupt peace in the near and distant future, and taking steps to avoid such situations.
If your neighbor keeps throwing his trash over the fence into your yard, you call the cops, and if you don’t get satisfaction that way, you raise the height of your fence so they can’t do it anymore. Defense (pardon the pun).
If instead, you went over to visit, you might find out they were doing that because your dog keeps pooping on their lawn and you never clean it up. They can’t let their toddler crawl around in the yard because of all the crap. You express surprise and regret, and promise to control your dog and clean up after him, they promise to stop tossing their trash into your yard. Peacemaking.
Or, you say “My dog is perfect. His poop don’t stink.” And sick your dog on their toddler. Then you express surprise when they pull out a gun and shoot you. And you make your way home and set fire to their house on the way. Defense.
When a new neighbor moves in, do you knock on their door and tell them to keep the hell off your property and raise your fence height so they can’t see your house? Defense. Or do you knock on the door with fresh-baked bread and a jar of homemade preserves and say “Welcome to our neighborhood.” Peacemaking.
We’ve talked about this before on this blog. Clearly we need both defense and peacemaking if we want to live in peace with the rest of the world. But the Secretary of State is the closest thing we have to a Secretary of Peace. When Secretary Clinton tries to meet with foreign governments, the right wingnuts say she’s weakening our defense.
If someone, anyone, points out that our nation’s behavior in the past might actually have something to do with why another country or group of people take offense and react violently, they are scolded for “blaming America first.”
President Obama is facing an incredibly momentous decision on what to do about Afghanistan. Do we send in more troops and settle in for the long haul? Set a goal of instituting a new democracy in that nation of fiefdoms? Set a goal of eliminating corruption in a government we don’t control – indeed a government that has never controlled that nation? Is the Taliban the enemy? Or is it al Qaeda? Or the heroin industry? Do we beef up our presence and start shooting everyone who might be associated with the Taliban? Or pick and choose only those who actually shoot at us, or provide funding and arms for those who do? And how do we identify them?
Or do we cut and run? We took on the Taliban, destroyed their government infrastructure, encouraged the people to defend themselves against them, and now we disappear, leaving them to fend for themselves?
Do we consider peacemaking? Using the billions we’re spending to build highways, power grids, schools, health clinics? Disarming the Taliban by competing for the hearts and minds of the Afghan people?
These are questions you can’t answer with knee-jerk patriotism. A defensive attitude doesn’t provide the answers to such a complex situation.
Pundits suggest the President’s decision is taking so long because it is based on protecting his job, his legacy. He does not want to be known for putting in place the “Obama surge”… That assumes President Obama’s main priority is keeping his job for 8 years instead of only 4. It assumes he has self-absorbed tunnel vision. Is it not possible that the President of the United States places the highest priority on determining what is the best course for America? What will work to ensure a safe and comfortable future for our children?
Let’s judge his process of decision-making when we see the results. Not the day after he makes his announcement, but 2 years from now – 10 years from now – 100 years from now. The job isn’t impressing the television pundits or quieting the defensive “no one can say anything bad about us” patriots. It’s keeping America at peace while respecting our constitution.
Don’t assume the new guy and his team have the same priorities as the previous guy.
JM
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Terrorists in American Jails?
Foreign terrorists in American jails? How dangerous is that? To listen to the opportunistic right wingers, you’d think American prisons were way too easy to break out of to take a chance incarcerating foreign terrorists in them.
Can someone please explain to them that there are already more than 300 terrorists in American prisons – 200+ foreigners, 100+ domestic terrorists. (Yes, America has produced a few terrorists of its own!) Take a look at the actual facilities in which we would keep them. No one in the world has better super high security prisons than we do. I won’t join those who insult our prison system.
The other big battle cry is that foreign terrorists don’t deserve a fair trial. For starters, we’ve convicted 190+ terrorists already – in our own judicial system. A fair trial is not the same thing as a free pass.
Second, we put these people in prison in Guantanamo because we had some evidence that they had committed a crime. We haven’t proved it yet. Do we somehow have the magical vision that allows us to determine guilt or innocence of foreigners without a trial, to the point that we’re willing to kill people or incarcerate them until they die?
If we have that vision for foreigners, why can’t we just use it domestically, too? Think of the money we could save if we just took a quick look at hearsay evidence and decided to execute the accused based on statements of a snitch who got paid a bounty for turning in that person?
Is that what America has become? Is that the America hundreds of thousands of our sons and daughters died to protect?
One phrase I keep hearing from my right-of-center friends is “slippery slope.” They use it to describe the change President Obama has in mind for policies like health care, rules governing CEOs of businesses that get government bailouts, allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the military and teach in schools, talking with other governments about things we disagree on, and on and on.
Well, this is one slippery slope that seems quite real to me. When we decide to convict anyone without fair trial, we give away one of the most basic freedoms upon which this country was founded. That’s not OK with me.
Just imagine if some other country decided to take that approach with Americans who appear to have committed a crime overseas? If we do it ourselves, that is something we can look forward to. A very slippery slope indeed.
JM
Can someone please explain to them that there are already more than 300 terrorists in American prisons – 200+ foreigners, 100+ domestic terrorists. (Yes, America has produced a few terrorists of its own!) Take a look at the actual facilities in which we would keep them. No one in the world has better super high security prisons than we do. I won’t join those who insult our prison system.
The other big battle cry is that foreign terrorists don’t deserve a fair trial. For starters, we’ve convicted 190+ terrorists already – in our own judicial system. A fair trial is not the same thing as a free pass.
Second, we put these people in prison in Guantanamo because we had some evidence that they had committed a crime. We haven’t proved it yet. Do we somehow have the magical vision that allows us to determine guilt or innocence of foreigners without a trial, to the point that we’re willing to kill people or incarcerate them until they die?
If we have that vision for foreigners, why can’t we just use it domestically, too? Think of the money we could save if we just took a quick look at hearsay evidence and decided to execute the accused based on statements of a snitch who got paid a bounty for turning in that person?
Is that what America has become? Is that the America hundreds of thousands of our sons and daughters died to protect?
One phrase I keep hearing from my right-of-center friends is “slippery slope.” They use it to describe the change President Obama has in mind for policies like health care, rules governing CEOs of businesses that get government bailouts, allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the military and teach in schools, talking with other governments about things we disagree on, and on and on.
Well, this is one slippery slope that seems quite real to me. When we decide to convict anyone without fair trial, we give away one of the most basic freedoms upon which this country was founded. That’s not OK with me.
Just imagine if some other country decided to take that approach with Americans who appear to have committed a crime overseas? If we do it ourselves, that is something we can look forward to. A very slippery slope indeed.
JM
Monday, November 16, 2009
Wow! Big News From Washington!
Lobbyists are writing the legislation!
What’s that you say? You already knew?
Apparently the health care “reform bill” from the House of Representatives is loaded with industry written components. One item from the Republican reform proposal that was added to House bill word-for-word, was originally written by Big Pharma. It gives them virtually unlimited patent rights on life-saving drugs, which then gives them the right to set the prices at outrageous levels – as high as $400,000 per year for some.
Passed without question.
A Genentech spokesperson defended it by saying this happens all the time, as we have been telling you on this blog. Does that make it OK?
We know the talking points were cleverly crafted by the paid talent of the health care industry, then parroted by the Democratic Representatives who signed on. A casual comparative reading of some of the politicans’ statements shows word-for-word copycatting.
How many other items in that bill were written by industry with the effect of handing over tax dollars in perpetuity?
Here’s the worst case scenario: the truth about this comes out in small town papers and blogs on both sides, the implications for future health care costs are calculated, and the possibility of health care reform goes down the drain.
No wait, it could be worse. The public option bites the dust (because that’s the single biggest government component of the bill) but the rest of the bill – the parts written by those who will profit from them - gets approved and signed by the President. We the people end up being forced to buy health insurance from a few select providers, and there are no controls on the cost of the services and products, jacking up the health care profitability even beyond the unacceptable levels we face now.
The best case: the truth about this comes out in small town papers and blogs on both sides, the implications for future health care costs are calculated, and the people demand that all those pig trough amendments be dropped, we keep the strong public option and then give that government plan the right to negotiate prices for services and products. True competition erupts, everyone is covered and over time, we pare down the relative costs, giving us back money for education, highways, and pay raises!
Which do you think is likely?
Unless the people stand up and demand responsible legislative behavior, I fear the worst of the worst. Lobbyists own Congress. Is there a majority of representatives and senators who will stand up to the health care industry pressure and do the right thing? I submit that will only happen if the people, literally, take to the streets, flood the mailrooms, crash the email servers, and clog up the phone lines.
Get busy!
* * * * * * * * * * * *
We’ve been “off the air” of the blog-o-sphere for the past couple of weeks, sitting back and watching things develop. Couldn’t keep our mouths shut forever, though. Keep watching… there’s more to come.
JM
What’s that you say? You already knew?
Apparently the health care “reform bill” from the House of Representatives is loaded with industry written components. One item from the Republican reform proposal that was added to House bill word-for-word, was originally written by Big Pharma. It gives them virtually unlimited patent rights on life-saving drugs, which then gives them the right to set the prices at outrageous levels – as high as $400,000 per year for some.
Passed without question.
A Genentech spokesperson defended it by saying this happens all the time, as we have been telling you on this blog. Does that make it OK?
We know the talking points were cleverly crafted by the paid talent of the health care industry, then parroted by the Democratic Representatives who signed on. A casual comparative reading of some of the politicans’ statements shows word-for-word copycatting.
How many other items in that bill were written by industry with the effect of handing over tax dollars in perpetuity?
Here’s the worst case scenario: the truth about this comes out in small town papers and blogs on both sides, the implications for future health care costs are calculated, and the possibility of health care reform goes down the drain.
No wait, it could be worse. The public option bites the dust (because that’s the single biggest government component of the bill) but the rest of the bill – the parts written by those who will profit from them - gets approved and signed by the President. We the people end up being forced to buy health insurance from a few select providers, and there are no controls on the cost of the services and products, jacking up the health care profitability even beyond the unacceptable levels we face now.
The best case: the truth about this comes out in small town papers and blogs on both sides, the implications for future health care costs are calculated, and the people demand that all those pig trough amendments be dropped, we keep the strong public option and then give that government plan the right to negotiate prices for services and products. True competition erupts, everyone is covered and over time, we pare down the relative costs, giving us back money for education, highways, and pay raises!
Which do you think is likely?
Unless the people stand up and demand responsible legislative behavior, I fear the worst of the worst. Lobbyists own Congress. Is there a majority of representatives and senators who will stand up to the health care industry pressure and do the right thing? I submit that will only happen if the people, literally, take to the streets, flood the mailrooms, crash the email servers, and clog up the phone lines.
Get busy!
* * * * * * * * * * * *
We’ve been “off the air” of the blog-o-sphere for the past couple of weeks, sitting back and watching things develop. Couldn’t keep our mouths shut forever, though. Keep watching… there’s more to come.
JM
Friday, October 30, 2009
Insurance competition is not enough…
To call it the American health care system is an oxymoron – there is no “system” to it as a whole. No wonder the House bill is 2,000 pages long. Such a multi-faceted issue is not as simple as whether or not to have a public option.
The shared goal of all our federal legislators for health care reform, as they would tell us, is greater accessibility at lower cost. (I won’t go so far as to say they all agree on “universal” access and affordability. That’s what you and I want, but we don’t get tax-free tips from the health care industry.)
So in those 2,000 pages we see odds and ends of “reform” for who pays, who provides, who insures, what is successful treatment, what’s a fair price, when do you get a subsidy, what does a given service cost, who gets taxed, who’s responsible for supervising, who negotiates, what’s covered, and on and on and on. Reminiscent of herding cats. Where to start?
Americans spend twice as much per capita on health care as the next most expensive country. But we don’t get anywhere near the best care, despite what we pay.
Have you checked the rate-per-hour of a surgeon lately? Thousands! Yet doctors of my acquaintance say they’re barely making it at today’s rates of reimbursement. The cost of their training takes years, decades perhaps, to pay back. Then there’s the cost of all the high tech equipment they need, the medical staff, the liability insurance, the bookkeeping staff. Indeed, some hospitals have pointed out that they have more billing staff per bed than they have nursing staff. Doctors and hospital administrators all live pretty well by my standards, but I will take their word that it’s not like it used to be.
In any case, they pass on to the “payer” the cost of all that. Ultimately, that’s you and me, not them.
No doubt the so-called system today encourages over-testing, over-treating. That’s certainly due in part to their legal liability. Tort reform is an element of reducing the CYA component of health care costs, but it’s not the only fix needed.
So what does either the Senate or House bill do to curtail the CYA practices, and impose industry standards, or “best practices”? Numbers show we over test, and that does NOT improve outcomes. “Evidence-based medicine” requires a payment structure that guides what is seen as potentially helpful and what isn’t. Medicare does it, and it works very well. The docs are relieved of some the legal liability if a government entity decrees a standard that is “evidence-based,” and they follow it. That doesn’t mean they fail to perform tests or treatments they deem necessary for a particular patient. It means they don’t take a shotgun approach when a sighted-rifle will do the job.
Hospitals used to be non-profit. Amazing how the costs of an aspirin and a bandaid provided during your hospital stay have skyrocketed out of control since they became for-profit care providers, isn’t it?
Pharmaceuticals show record profits, but government (Medicare) isn’t allowed to negotiate prices? They can sell their stuff in South America for a fraction of what they sell it to us? How do these bills address this ridiculous situation?
Then there’s the issue of anti-trust exemptions. Insurance companies are allowed to control a market in a specific state. But changing this won’t guarantee more competition; there are different regulations and secured funds requirements in each state; it’s expensive to set up shop in a new state. A few bad customers in a small state (think millions in medical bills for someone with several significant lifelong issues) can kill the profitability of a company with a small market share in that state. Perhaps if they were in every state they could spread the liability around, but surely we can all see that this won’t reduce premiums overnight.
And we come to profits for Insurance Companies. They claim their profits are only 2%. Seems pretty reasonable, doesn’t it? How can we expect them to decrease profits?
I submit that’s creative accounting. That’s what they report to the IRS, not what they report to their shareholders. Wouldn’t a large discrepancy like that raise a few eyebrows if it were offered by a person, not a corporation? Special tax rules for corporations with lots of cash to flash in Washington and throw at campaign offices across America?
And executive salaries are considered expenses, remember? No limits there, of course. That’s just overhead. 30%. Is there any real attempt to limit profits and overhead in the health insurance industry in either bill?
Fiscal conservatives, you should like the idea of letting Bean Counters make the decisions about appropriate care and legitimate overhead -- especially when it’s tax dollars that are paying, like in a “public option.” But that’s not what Blue Dogs and Republicans are jumping on. Truly cutting costs means suggesting that a patient can’t just get every drug and procedure and test they’ve seen on TV. That’s a hard sell to the American public who already have insurance that someone else pays for.
So since we all share the same goals of greater accessibility and lower costs, you might think the Blue Dogs and Republicans would support a plan that gives this highly controlled option not only to Medicaid recipients, but also those too cheap to buy insurance who mess things up for the rest of us. They should get “rationed care” as dictated by the Bean Counters. So that’s where the fiscal conservatives jump in, right? But no, they say forget the public option. Let’s stick with what we’ve got. Gotta save those tax dollars – right? Regardless of the people who pay for that attitude with their health, indeed their very lives. 40,000 die every year from lack of health care coverage and the outrageously high cost of care.
Hate to be a broken record, but the only way to even begin to fix ALL these things is a single-payer system. Truly, a system. Would it be perfect? Of course not. Ask people in countries that have one. But would it cost less? Ask those same people and they’ll give you a resounding “Yes.” Would it improve access to health care? Duh. See previous answer. Would it improve the health of the American people? Just check the statistics that show we rank 37th in the world, behind every country that has a universal single payer system.
But we can’t even consider such a thing. It’s socialism, remember? Best practice, when it comes to health care, is apparently not good business, it’s socialism, according to the Blue Dogs and Republicans. And you know what THAT would mean! Better, faster, cheaper. We can’t have that in America!
* * * * * * * *
Footnote: Then there’s our ol’ pal Joe Lieberman. What I want to know is, where are the protests from Connecticut? 64% of those folks, according to the polls, want at least a public option in the health care reform bill. 64% of the people he represents. And he won’t even let the Senate have an up or down vote on the subject? I should be able to hear the screaming all the way down here in South Carolina. He absolutely does not deserve to caucus with the Democrats, much less be chairman of the Homeland Security committee, or even keep his seat in the Senate. Can you impeach a senator, Connecticut?
JM
The shared goal of all our federal legislators for health care reform, as they would tell us, is greater accessibility at lower cost. (I won’t go so far as to say they all agree on “universal” access and affordability. That’s what you and I want, but we don’t get tax-free tips from the health care industry.)
So in those 2,000 pages we see odds and ends of “reform” for who pays, who provides, who insures, what is successful treatment, what’s a fair price, when do you get a subsidy, what does a given service cost, who gets taxed, who’s responsible for supervising, who negotiates, what’s covered, and on and on and on. Reminiscent of herding cats. Where to start?
Americans spend twice as much per capita on health care as the next most expensive country. But we don’t get anywhere near the best care, despite what we pay.
Have you checked the rate-per-hour of a surgeon lately? Thousands! Yet doctors of my acquaintance say they’re barely making it at today’s rates of reimbursement. The cost of their training takes years, decades perhaps, to pay back. Then there’s the cost of all the high tech equipment they need, the medical staff, the liability insurance, the bookkeeping staff. Indeed, some hospitals have pointed out that they have more billing staff per bed than they have nursing staff. Doctors and hospital administrators all live pretty well by my standards, but I will take their word that it’s not like it used to be.
In any case, they pass on to the “payer” the cost of all that. Ultimately, that’s you and me, not them.
No doubt the so-called system today encourages over-testing, over-treating. That’s certainly due in part to their legal liability. Tort reform is an element of reducing the CYA component of health care costs, but it’s not the only fix needed.
So what does either the Senate or House bill do to curtail the CYA practices, and impose industry standards, or “best practices”? Numbers show we over test, and that does NOT improve outcomes. “Evidence-based medicine” requires a payment structure that guides what is seen as potentially helpful and what isn’t. Medicare does it, and it works very well. The docs are relieved of some the legal liability if a government entity decrees a standard that is “evidence-based,” and they follow it. That doesn’t mean they fail to perform tests or treatments they deem necessary for a particular patient. It means they don’t take a shotgun approach when a sighted-rifle will do the job.
Hospitals used to be non-profit. Amazing how the costs of an aspirin and a bandaid provided during your hospital stay have skyrocketed out of control since they became for-profit care providers, isn’t it?
Pharmaceuticals show record profits, but government (Medicare) isn’t allowed to negotiate prices? They can sell their stuff in South America for a fraction of what they sell it to us? How do these bills address this ridiculous situation?
Then there’s the issue of anti-trust exemptions. Insurance companies are allowed to control a market in a specific state. But changing this won’t guarantee more competition; there are different regulations and secured funds requirements in each state; it’s expensive to set up shop in a new state. A few bad customers in a small state (think millions in medical bills for someone with several significant lifelong issues) can kill the profitability of a company with a small market share in that state. Perhaps if they were in every state they could spread the liability around, but surely we can all see that this won’t reduce premiums overnight.
And we come to profits for Insurance Companies. They claim their profits are only 2%. Seems pretty reasonable, doesn’t it? How can we expect them to decrease profits?
I submit that’s creative accounting. That’s what they report to the IRS, not what they report to their shareholders. Wouldn’t a large discrepancy like that raise a few eyebrows if it were offered by a person, not a corporation? Special tax rules for corporations with lots of cash to flash in Washington and throw at campaign offices across America?
And executive salaries are considered expenses, remember? No limits there, of course. That’s just overhead. 30%. Is there any real attempt to limit profits and overhead in the health insurance industry in either bill?
Fiscal conservatives, you should like the idea of letting Bean Counters make the decisions about appropriate care and legitimate overhead -- especially when it’s tax dollars that are paying, like in a “public option.” But that’s not what Blue Dogs and Republicans are jumping on. Truly cutting costs means suggesting that a patient can’t just get every drug and procedure and test they’ve seen on TV. That’s a hard sell to the American public who already have insurance that someone else pays for.
So since we all share the same goals of greater accessibility and lower costs, you might think the Blue Dogs and Republicans would support a plan that gives this highly controlled option not only to Medicaid recipients, but also those too cheap to buy insurance who mess things up for the rest of us. They should get “rationed care” as dictated by the Bean Counters. So that’s where the fiscal conservatives jump in, right? But no, they say forget the public option. Let’s stick with what we’ve got. Gotta save those tax dollars – right? Regardless of the people who pay for that attitude with their health, indeed their very lives. 40,000 die every year from lack of health care coverage and the outrageously high cost of care.
Hate to be a broken record, but the only way to even begin to fix ALL these things is a single-payer system. Truly, a system. Would it be perfect? Of course not. Ask people in countries that have one. But would it cost less? Ask those same people and they’ll give you a resounding “Yes.” Would it improve access to health care? Duh. See previous answer. Would it improve the health of the American people? Just check the statistics that show we rank 37th in the world, behind every country that has a universal single payer system.
But we can’t even consider such a thing. It’s socialism, remember? Best practice, when it comes to health care, is apparently not good business, it’s socialism, according to the Blue Dogs and Republicans. And you know what THAT would mean! Better, faster, cheaper. We can’t have that in America!
* * * * * * * *
Footnote: Then there’s our ol’ pal Joe Lieberman. What I want to know is, where are the protests from Connecticut? 64% of those folks, according to the polls, want at least a public option in the health care reform bill. 64% of the people he represents. And he won’t even let the Senate have an up or down vote on the subject? I should be able to hear the screaming all the way down here in South Carolina. He absolutely does not deserve to caucus with the Democrats, much less be chairman of the Homeland Security committee, or even keep his seat in the Senate. Can you impeach a senator, Connecticut?
JM
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
We Could be Dancing: Doing the Public Option Hokey Pokey
You put your left vote in.
They take their right vote out.
You put your left vote in.
Then you really shout it out.
You do the Hokey Pokey with the Public Option clout.
That’s what it’s all about.
It would seem on the surface that in light of what transpired in Washington yesterday, by all rights Lefties should be thrilled. Majority Leader Harry Reid stated unequivocally that there will be a Public Option in any Health Care Reform Bill that comes out of the Senate…and we had previously been assured by Speaker Nancy Pelosi that the Bill the House puts forward will also include a ‘robust’ Public Option.
So, to paraphrase Janis Joplin…now that we’re here, where are we?
Let’s start with Reid’s assertion that the Senate bill will feature a Public Option with an opt out…meaning individual states will be able to opt out of the program after a pre-determined period of time…say a year. No problem for people who want and need a Public Option and happen to live in a blue state…but potentially devastating news for those that have been counting on a Public Option and, when it comes to acquiring health insurance, have the misfortune of residing in a red state. So on balance…some good and some bad in the news department.
In any case when Reid went all in on the Public Option, not surprisingly he was assailed by the usual suspects on the right. What was surprising…perhaps even stunning…was that he was also questioned by some on the left. One pundit, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, went so far as to say that Reid had effectively thrown Maine’s Olympia Snowe, the lone Republican to vote with the Democrats to move a Senate Bill out of committee, under the bus for crying out loud!
Others say the only reason Reid came down on the side of a Public Option was because he was afraid he would lose the support of Democrats in his re-election bid in Nevada. Well duh! These are the same people who only the day before had been warning that if Reid didn’t support a Public Option, he would lose the support of Democrats in his re-election bid in Nevada! So now they’re criticizing him for doing what they warned him he’d better freaking do. Kind of gives you a headache, doesn’t it?
Then there are the reported whispers supposedly coming out of the White House…that the President actually prefers the trigger mechanism favored by Senator Snowe to the opt out plan Reid favors. Of course, those are just whispers. Nobody has actually heard Barack Obama say anything like that publicly…at least not yet.
Until we do…and until the Senate and the House produce their actual bills…let’s just chill. The fact is that no one knows for sure how all of this is going to flesh out. We won’t know unless and until a Health Care Reform Bill actually comes up for final debate… which looks probable now but is by no means a certifiable lock. So essentially, everyone’s getting all lathered up about something that doesn’t even exist…and how stupid is that?
Seriously Democrats, let’s leave it to the GOP to eat their own. One circus in town at a time is more than enough. And while we’re at it, let Snowe go back over to the dark side, and take Joe Lieberman with her. Who the hell cares? That butt hole dances the Hokey Pokey with two right feet anyway.
The Public Option is still alive in spite of them…but Washington bipartisanship is deader than Dick Cheney’s conscience.
And so it goes.
SC
They take their right vote out.
You put your left vote in.
Then you really shout it out.
You do the Hokey Pokey with the Public Option clout.
That’s what it’s all about.
It would seem on the surface that in light of what transpired in Washington yesterday, by all rights Lefties should be thrilled. Majority Leader Harry Reid stated unequivocally that there will be a Public Option in any Health Care Reform Bill that comes out of the Senate…and we had previously been assured by Speaker Nancy Pelosi that the Bill the House puts forward will also include a ‘robust’ Public Option.
So, to paraphrase Janis Joplin…now that we’re here, where are we?
Let’s start with Reid’s assertion that the Senate bill will feature a Public Option with an opt out…meaning individual states will be able to opt out of the program after a pre-determined period of time…say a year. No problem for people who want and need a Public Option and happen to live in a blue state…but potentially devastating news for those that have been counting on a Public Option and, when it comes to acquiring health insurance, have the misfortune of residing in a red state. So on balance…some good and some bad in the news department.
In any case when Reid went all in on the Public Option, not surprisingly he was assailed by the usual suspects on the right. What was surprising…perhaps even stunning…was that he was also questioned by some on the left. One pundit, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, went so far as to say that Reid had effectively thrown Maine’s Olympia Snowe, the lone Republican to vote with the Democrats to move a Senate Bill out of committee, under the bus for crying out loud!
Others say the only reason Reid came down on the side of a Public Option was because he was afraid he would lose the support of Democrats in his re-election bid in Nevada. Well duh! These are the same people who only the day before had been warning that if Reid didn’t support a Public Option, he would lose the support of Democrats in his re-election bid in Nevada! So now they’re criticizing him for doing what they warned him he’d better freaking do. Kind of gives you a headache, doesn’t it?
Then there are the reported whispers supposedly coming out of the White House…that the President actually prefers the trigger mechanism favored by Senator Snowe to the opt out plan Reid favors. Of course, those are just whispers. Nobody has actually heard Barack Obama say anything like that publicly…at least not yet.
Until we do…and until the Senate and the House produce their actual bills…let’s just chill. The fact is that no one knows for sure how all of this is going to flesh out. We won’t know unless and until a Health Care Reform Bill actually comes up for final debate… which looks probable now but is by no means a certifiable lock. So essentially, everyone’s getting all lathered up about something that doesn’t even exist…and how stupid is that?
Seriously Democrats, let’s leave it to the GOP to eat their own. One circus in town at a time is more than enough. And while we’re at it, let Snowe go back over to the dark side, and take Joe Lieberman with her. Who the hell cares? That butt hole dances the Hokey Pokey with two right feet anyway.
The Public Option is still alive in spite of them…but Washington bipartisanship is deader than Dick Cheney’s conscience.
And so it goes.
SC
Monday, October 26, 2009
Harry Reid takes a courageous baby step forward...
Suddenly, the fact that my representatives in the US Senate are Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham, is taking on a very personal meaning.
You see, they apparently represent more than half the population of my home state of South Carolina. Which one MIGHT take to mean that their views on important matters will reflect those of most of the state. OK, I know, this is no surprise. But with Harry Reid’s announcement that the Senate health care reform bill that will be presented to the full Senate will include a public option (YAY!!) with an “opt out” proviso for states that choose to pass on it (BOO!!), I foresee the possibility of having a year or so of health insurance coverage that will be ripped out from under me when my state “opts out”.
Since I won’t qualify for Medicare for some years to come, I’ll be forced to keep playing health care roulette, since I can’t afford the only private insurance options available to me with my pre-existing condition.
I’m not crazy enough to dream that perhaps DeMint and Graham will vote for the resulting bill. But I cling to the hope that 60 Democrats and Independents will at least allow the bill to come for an up or down vote, and then the 56 Senators will vote AYE.
At least I am uninsured (who’d ‘a’ thunk that would be an advantage?) – so I would qualify for the plan for the one-year mandate that would be required in all states before they get to opt out. The poor folks who already have a plan, no matter how crummy it is, won’t be allowed to “opt in” to the public option.
Of course, that means the “uninsurable” who are too sick to get coverage from the private industry will be the only people who sign up, and the public option will have the disadvantage of having only the most expensive clients to take care of. So the premiums will have to be higher just to cover the claims. The healthy people, who don’t make claims, will be forced to stick to the private plans, who won’t have the level of expenses that the public option has. Not exactly a level playing field.
All in all, if the reform only results in about 10 or 20 million people eligible for the public option, the potential cost control goes down. There also is word that the “government plan” won’t be allowed to use its clout to negotiate lower prices. So the plan has less chance to deliver the savings and accessibility that was the whole reason for the public option in the first place.
Sen. John Borrasso said today on The Ed Show that this bill is doomed. Americans don’t want the government to cut Medicare and take away their seniors’ benefits. What a crock! The only dollars that will be cut from Medicare are the inefficiencies and duplications that are forcing up costs today. But he spewed the Republican talking points nonetheless.
He went on to say Americans don’t want the government to take over health care, so many states (like his Wyoming) will likely opt out. Can you believe they’re still mouthing that crap?!? They are still playing the fear card that if the federal government gets involved, the delivery will be as useless and pointless as the federal government’s response to hurricane Katrina.
What balls. The Republican Party has been chanting the mantra that government can’t do anything right. They have spent virtually every year, and trillions of dollars, for the past 8 years trying to prove it. They seem to purposely mess up everything they do, and de-regulate every industry that can destroy our economy, our environment, our constitutional freedoms, and our very democracy, so whatever the government doesn’t wreck, private industry can take on. Then they tell us that it is an absolute truth that government sucks.
The absolute truth here is, any government run by people who hate government will suck.
But today, we don’t have a government that hates governing. We have an administration that wants to tackle the biggest problems we face as a nation, and do the best it can for the most people. They want to regulate industries that, left unchecked, have proved they will do unbelievable harm to all but a very elite few of the wealthy and powerful. The current White House will use the models that have historically worked, like Medicare and Social Security. And they will fund them with money that the Republicans would have gladly squandered on war and wasteful pork barrel defense spending, and un-negotiated payments for pharmaceuticals for Medicare.
No doubt it will take more than just four years to correct the damage done by the government-haters who grabbed control of government.
Nonetheless, I hope that somehow, the Senate bill will be conferenced successfully with the House, and a step forward on health care for all will be presented to President Obama for signature. The trepidation seeps in when I hear rumors the Public Option won’t start until 2013. I know House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will push for a 2010 startup, but I’m warned the President will be happy to settle for 2013. Start up the health care roulette wheel again.
So, should I take the time to call or write my Senators? My Congressman, Henry Brown? You bet. I want them to know they are on the wrong side of history on this one. And when the bill is signed into law by President Obama, I’ll start my efforts to make sure my state legislators know they won’t have a cakewalk in dismantling the public option in South Carolina.
Then I’ll start working to encourage further reform to eliminate the problems we haven’t conquered yet. Join me?
JM
You see, they apparently represent more than half the population of my home state of South Carolina. Which one MIGHT take to mean that their views on important matters will reflect those of most of the state. OK, I know, this is no surprise. But with Harry Reid’s announcement that the Senate health care reform bill that will be presented to the full Senate will include a public option (YAY!!) with an “opt out” proviso for states that choose to pass on it (BOO!!), I foresee the possibility of having a year or so of health insurance coverage that will be ripped out from under me when my state “opts out”.
Since I won’t qualify for Medicare for some years to come, I’ll be forced to keep playing health care roulette, since I can’t afford the only private insurance options available to me with my pre-existing condition.
I’m not crazy enough to dream that perhaps DeMint and Graham will vote for the resulting bill. But I cling to the hope that 60 Democrats and Independents will at least allow the bill to come for an up or down vote, and then the 56 Senators will vote AYE.
At least I am uninsured (who’d ‘a’ thunk that would be an advantage?) – so I would qualify for the plan for the one-year mandate that would be required in all states before they get to opt out. The poor folks who already have a plan, no matter how crummy it is, won’t be allowed to “opt in” to the public option.
Of course, that means the “uninsurable” who are too sick to get coverage from the private industry will be the only people who sign up, and the public option will have the disadvantage of having only the most expensive clients to take care of. So the premiums will have to be higher just to cover the claims. The healthy people, who don’t make claims, will be forced to stick to the private plans, who won’t have the level of expenses that the public option has. Not exactly a level playing field.
All in all, if the reform only results in about 10 or 20 million people eligible for the public option, the potential cost control goes down. There also is word that the “government plan” won’t be allowed to use its clout to negotiate lower prices. So the plan has less chance to deliver the savings and accessibility that was the whole reason for the public option in the first place.
Sen. John Borrasso said today on The Ed Show that this bill is doomed. Americans don’t want the government to cut Medicare and take away their seniors’ benefits. What a crock! The only dollars that will be cut from Medicare are the inefficiencies and duplications that are forcing up costs today. But he spewed the Republican talking points nonetheless.
He went on to say Americans don’t want the government to take over health care, so many states (like his Wyoming) will likely opt out. Can you believe they’re still mouthing that crap?!? They are still playing the fear card that if the federal government gets involved, the delivery will be as useless and pointless as the federal government’s response to hurricane Katrina.
What balls. The Republican Party has been chanting the mantra that government can’t do anything right. They have spent virtually every year, and trillions of dollars, for the past 8 years trying to prove it. They seem to purposely mess up everything they do, and de-regulate every industry that can destroy our economy, our environment, our constitutional freedoms, and our very democracy, so whatever the government doesn’t wreck, private industry can take on. Then they tell us that it is an absolute truth that government sucks.
The absolute truth here is, any government run by people who hate government will suck.
But today, we don’t have a government that hates governing. We have an administration that wants to tackle the biggest problems we face as a nation, and do the best it can for the most people. They want to regulate industries that, left unchecked, have proved they will do unbelievable harm to all but a very elite few of the wealthy and powerful. The current White House will use the models that have historically worked, like Medicare and Social Security. And they will fund them with money that the Republicans would have gladly squandered on war and wasteful pork barrel defense spending, and un-negotiated payments for pharmaceuticals for Medicare.
No doubt it will take more than just four years to correct the damage done by the government-haters who grabbed control of government.
Nonetheless, I hope that somehow, the Senate bill will be conferenced successfully with the House, and a step forward on health care for all will be presented to President Obama for signature. The trepidation seeps in when I hear rumors the Public Option won’t start until 2013. I know House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will push for a 2010 startup, but I’m warned the President will be happy to settle for 2013. Start up the health care roulette wheel again.
So, should I take the time to call or write my Senators? My Congressman, Henry Brown? You bet. I want them to know they are on the wrong side of history on this one. And when the bill is signed into law by President Obama, I’ll start my efforts to make sure my state legislators know they won’t have a cakewalk in dismantling the public option in South Carolina.
Then I’ll start working to encourage further reform to eliminate the problems we haven’t conquered yet. Join me?
JM
Friday, October 23, 2009
A Fiscally Conservative 3rd World Country?
Bernie Sanders, Independent Senator from Vermont, has said America is becoming a 3rd world country. In speaking on the subject of health care reform and the vociferous objections of so-called fiscal conservatives who steadfastly refuse to spend another dime to ensure a healthy population, he marveled at how quickly they were willing to reduce existing tax revenue streams, and authorize un-paid-for expenses that will climb to $3 Trillion for a completely unnecessary war in Iraq.
The tax cuts that were the hallmark of the Bush Administration, were quite specifically geared toward the wealthiest Americans. During those 8 years, the rich got inexorably richer, and the middle class became the working class, and the working class became the poor. The poor stayed that way.
Those reduced taxes translated to less money flowing to state governments, so while the rich got a luxurious tax break, local property taxes skyrocketed. Middle class families were stuck making up the difference with increases in the taxes on their homes and cars.
Here’s another angle. Scheduled to expire in 2010, thanks, again, to the Bush Administration, is the estate tax. You may not recognize that term, because those orchestrating the repeal drive a few years back sold it as getting rid of the “death tax.” Sound familiar?
This outrageous tax, they declared, would destroy family farms and small businesses across America, when they were handed down to the next generation.
Voters bought in to the story, shedding tears over the tragic losses of multigenerational 200 acre farms. Fiscal conservatives whipped the sympathy into a frenzy and passed a tax cut on estates. Few of us ever learned the fact that by simply exempting such passing on of entrepreneurial enterprises, we could have avoided those tragedies, Instead, we now face a loss of a trillion dollars from tax revenue over the next 20 years because the tax break will be extended to the richest of the rich, less than 0.3% of Americans.
The middle class will have to make up that trillion dollars, too.
In 2007, Warren E. Buffett, the billionaire chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, urged Congress to keep the estate tax. He opined that plans to repeal the tax would benefit the very few richest American families, and widen income disparity in the United States.
Rather than call it a “death tax,” he said it should be called a "death present.""A meaningful estate tax is needed to prevent our democracy from becoming a dynastic plutocracy." And this is coming from one of the richest persons in the world.
Here’s the reality: having a job doesn’t protect you from being poor and unable to pay your bills and buy food. Having two jobs in a family doesn’t protect you from losing your house. Having four jobs between two people doesn’t guarantee you can afford the health care you need just to stay alive. No matter how hard you work, no matter how you try to save, no matter if you don’t smoke or drink or eat fried foods, there is no guarantee you will live the American Dream come true. It has not been less true since the dawn of the industrial revolution and rise of the middle class.
But you will pay taxes on the money you earn from those jobs. And those taxes will be used to build highways, educate children, pay firefighters, defend the nation from enemies, control air traffic to prevent collisions, inspect food processing plants, bail out banks and fund research for cancer cures. Everyone in the country will benefit from the money you contribute, rich and poor alike.
Yet people who didn’t work a day to collect the millions their great-great-grandfathers earned 100 years ago seem to think they should receive this unearned cash tax free. And the rest of us can go to hell. As Marie Antoinette never said, “Let them eat cake.”
Then there’s the capital gains tax, which we discussed a few weeks ago on this blog, You take some money, leverage it to the hilt, and move it from one electronic account to another, make more money, and “earn” a capital gain. The fiscal conservatives would like to ensure you don’t pay a dime of tax on that “earned” capital gain. It doesn’t matter what benefit you might get from the use of those tax dollars. It certainly doesn’t matter what OTHER people might benefit.
Those same fiscal conservatives were quite happy to raid the coffers of the social security system back in the days we contributed more than we paid out. All that “excess” money was supposed to remain untouched for any purpose other than social security because economists recognized that as the baby boomers aged, that money was going to be necessary to meet the need. Instead, it was used to buy missile defense systems and fight wars of choice. Now that we’re running short, their answer is to dispense with the system and let people invest in an unregulated Wall Street.
I think you can see where I’m going with this. Senator Sanders is right. Our elected representatives (if they can be called that) have gone to great lengths to ensure that the middle class will disappear. We’ll have the powerful upper class, and the powerless poor who work for them. Just like in 3rd world countries.
But we have one hope to prevent this. A very American hope. The vote. The self-styled fiscal conservatives may have money and power, but there aren’t very many of them. The rest of us can change the course of history, apply the brakes to the widening disparity in the distribution of wealth.
At no time has this been more possible than it is right now, by confronting the obstructionism of the Blue Dog Democrats and Republicans with regard to health care reform. When they cry for a halt in spending on things that help us little guys, but continue to throw money at wars and cut taxes on the rich, we can let them know that they will pay for it at the polls. Call, write, email, march, but don’t let them get away with this. They’ve already gotten away with enough.
JM
The tax cuts that were the hallmark of the Bush Administration, were quite specifically geared toward the wealthiest Americans. During those 8 years, the rich got inexorably richer, and the middle class became the working class, and the working class became the poor. The poor stayed that way.
Those reduced taxes translated to less money flowing to state governments, so while the rich got a luxurious tax break, local property taxes skyrocketed. Middle class families were stuck making up the difference with increases in the taxes on their homes and cars.
Here’s another angle. Scheduled to expire in 2010, thanks, again, to the Bush Administration, is the estate tax. You may not recognize that term, because those orchestrating the repeal drive a few years back sold it as getting rid of the “death tax.” Sound familiar?
This outrageous tax, they declared, would destroy family farms and small businesses across America, when they were handed down to the next generation.
Voters bought in to the story, shedding tears over the tragic losses of multigenerational 200 acre farms. Fiscal conservatives whipped the sympathy into a frenzy and passed a tax cut on estates. Few of us ever learned the fact that by simply exempting such passing on of entrepreneurial enterprises, we could have avoided those tragedies, Instead, we now face a loss of a trillion dollars from tax revenue over the next 20 years because the tax break will be extended to the richest of the rich, less than 0.3% of Americans.
The middle class will have to make up that trillion dollars, too.
In 2007, Warren E. Buffett, the billionaire chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, urged Congress to keep the estate tax. He opined that plans to repeal the tax would benefit the very few richest American families, and widen income disparity in the United States.
Rather than call it a “death tax,” he said it should be called a "death present.""A meaningful estate tax is needed to prevent our democracy from becoming a dynastic plutocracy." And this is coming from one of the richest persons in the world.
Here’s the reality: having a job doesn’t protect you from being poor and unable to pay your bills and buy food. Having two jobs in a family doesn’t protect you from losing your house. Having four jobs between two people doesn’t guarantee you can afford the health care you need just to stay alive. No matter how hard you work, no matter how you try to save, no matter if you don’t smoke or drink or eat fried foods, there is no guarantee you will live the American Dream come true. It has not been less true since the dawn of the industrial revolution and rise of the middle class.
But you will pay taxes on the money you earn from those jobs. And those taxes will be used to build highways, educate children, pay firefighters, defend the nation from enemies, control air traffic to prevent collisions, inspect food processing plants, bail out banks and fund research for cancer cures. Everyone in the country will benefit from the money you contribute, rich and poor alike.
Yet people who didn’t work a day to collect the millions their great-great-grandfathers earned 100 years ago seem to think they should receive this unearned cash tax free. And the rest of us can go to hell. As Marie Antoinette never said, “Let them eat cake.”
Then there’s the capital gains tax, which we discussed a few weeks ago on this blog, You take some money, leverage it to the hilt, and move it from one electronic account to another, make more money, and “earn” a capital gain. The fiscal conservatives would like to ensure you don’t pay a dime of tax on that “earned” capital gain. It doesn’t matter what benefit you might get from the use of those tax dollars. It certainly doesn’t matter what OTHER people might benefit.
Those same fiscal conservatives were quite happy to raid the coffers of the social security system back in the days we contributed more than we paid out. All that “excess” money was supposed to remain untouched for any purpose other than social security because economists recognized that as the baby boomers aged, that money was going to be necessary to meet the need. Instead, it was used to buy missile defense systems and fight wars of choice. Now that we’re running short, their answer is to dispense with the system and let people invest in an unregulated Wall Street.
I think you can see where I’m going with this. Senator Sanders is right. Our elected representatives (if they can be called that) have gone to great lengths to ensure that the middle class will disappear. We’ll have the powerful upper class, and the powerless poor who work for them. Just like in 3rd world countries.
But we have one hope to prevent this. A very American hope. The vote. The self-styled fiscal conservatives may have money and power, but there aren’t very many of them. The rest of us can change the course of history, apply the brakes to the widening disparity in the distribution of wealth.
At no time has this been more possible than it is right now, by confronting the obstructionism of the Blue Dog Democrats and Republicans with regard to health care reform. When they cry for a halt in spending on things that help us little guys, but continue to throw money at wars and cut taxes on the rich, we can let them know that they will pay for it at the polls. Call, write, email, march, but don’t let them get away with this. They’ve already gotten away with enough.
JM
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Circling The Drain: Why the GOP is becoming the party of NO ONE
The blog we posted Tuesday apparently struck a nerve with some of our right-leaning friends. In spite of the poll numbers staring them in the face, they vehemently dispute the notion that the Grand Old Party could be well on its way to imploding.
But the reality is that that’s exactly what’s happening...and from this vantage point the reason is pretty obvious. As long as Republicans stand by and allow those with the least credibility…or those who are the most polarizing…to speak for them, the GOP death spiral will continue. They’re losing support at an alarming rate because…well, quite frankly, because almost nobody likes or trusts them any more. More specifically, almost nobody likes or trusts the people who have become the face of their party.
Consider the evidence!
Let’s start in the House of Representatives where John Boehner is arguably the most ineffective Minority Leader in the history of either party…so no one really pays any attention to him. Instead, the Republican House member we see and hear pontificating most often, and far too shrilly, is Michele Bachmann, a certifiable Minnesota loon.
Every time Bachmann opens her mouth…and it rarely seems to be closed these days… the extent of her lunacy is increasingly more obvious. Think indoctrination camps, death panels, birthers, wrist slitting, sex clinics in schools…she’s been front and center for all of them, either as the originator of the spuriousness or the one who gives voice and credence to it. And she’s emerged as the GOP standard bearer in the House.
It’s almost a mirror image in the Senate where Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has perhaps even less public appeal than Boehner. McConnell makes Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid seem dynamic by comparison…and who would’ve thought that was even possible? So with increasing regularity, into that gaping Republican void steps Jeff Sessions of Alabama. Yikes! How’s that for a spokesperson? A bigoted, sexist, heartless, xenophobe…and that’s only what we know about him so far. If they ever begin peeling back some of the layers on this Jesse Helms wannabe, who the hell knows what they’ll find?
Let’s see! Just recently he voted against Democrat Al Franken’s amendment to withhold defense contracts from companies if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court…this on the heels of allegations by a former employee of Haliburton subsidiary KBR that she was gang raped and subsequently held captive in a storage trailer four days after reporting for work in Iraq.
Over the years Sessions has also been, either by vote or voice, against a ban on the use of torture during interrogation; against a reauthorization of the President’s Plan for World Aids Relief; in favor of the Helms Amendment that would ban HIV-positive patients from entering the country; in favor of the warrantless wiretapping program; and soooooo against Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor that he actually insinuated during her ultimately successful confirmation hearing that she was a racist! What a Guy.
Then there’s former Vice President Dick Cheney, apparently now totally invested as the GOP front man on the public speaking circuit. And what he does best…what he has always done best…is demean and criticize from afar. Since January his primary target…hell, who are we kidding…his only target has been President Obama and his administration.
It seems Cheney doesn’t think the Obamas have cleaned up the ungodly mess they inherited following eight years of Bush-Cheney madness quickly enough for his liking. That apparently gives him license…always in front of friendly audiences of course…to, most recently, call the President weak on defense in reference to Afghanistan, and a ditherer with regards to his overall foreign policy. He routinely fires other volleys…Big Dick always has been good with a gun…about things like the mess our economy is in, rising unemployment, and Health Care Reform which, predictably, he is dead set against.
Then there’s the bloviators who hold forth daily on talk radio and television…primarily but not exclusively on Faux News… in unflinching support of the Republicans and vehemently opposed to everything that has anything to do with President Obama or the Democrats. Led by the likes of the obscene Rush Limbaugh, the absurd Glenn Beck, the offensive Bill O’Reilly, the pointless Sean Hannity, and the ludicrous Lou Dobbs (is it possible Dobbs is angling for a job at Faux so he can rejoin his old buddy Beck?), these screeching hate mongers have effectively become the GOP’s media arm.
So there you have it, in sum total the new public face of the Republican Party…or, perhaps more accurately, the public face of the new Republican Party. And to think there are actually people out there who wonder why the Grand Old Party is circling the drain.
Go figure!
SC
But the reality is that that’s exactly what’s happening...and from this vantage point the reason is pretty obvious. As long as Republicans stand by and allow those with the least credibility…or those who are the most polarizing…to speak for them, the GOP death spiral will continue. They’re losing support at an alarming rate because…well, quite frankly, because almost nobody likes or trusts them any more. More specifically, almost nobody likes or trusts the people who have become the face of their party.
Consider the evidence!
Let’s start in the House of Representatives where John Boehner is arguably the most ineffective Minority Leader in the history of either party…so no one really pays any attention to him. Instead, the Republican House member we see and hear pontificating most often, and far too shrilly, is Michele Bachmann, a certifiable Minnesota loon.
Every time Bachmann opens her mouth…and it rarely seems to be closed these days… the extent of her lunacy is increasingly more obvious. Think indoctrination camps, death panels, birthers, wrist slitting, sex clinics in schools…she’s been front and center for all of them, either as the originator of the spuriousness or the one who gives voice and credence to it. And she’s emerged as the GOP standard bearer in the House.
It’s almost a mirror image in the Senate where Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has perhaps even less public appeal than Boehner. McConnell makes Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid seem dynamic by comparison…and who would’ve thought that was even possible? So with increasing regularity, into that gaping Republican void steps Jeff Sessions of Alabama. Yikes! How’s that for a spokesperson? A bigoted, sexist, heartless, xenophobe…and that’s only what we know about him so far. If they ever begin peeling back some of the layers on this Jesse Helms wannabe, who the hell knows what they’ll find?
Let’s see! Just recently he voted against Democrat Al Franken’s amendment to withhold defense contracts from companies if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court…this on the heels of allegations by a former employee of Haliburton subsidiary KBR that she was gang raped and subsequently held captive in a storage trailer four days after reporting for work in Iraq.
Over the years Sessions has also been, either by vote or voice, against a ban on the use of torture during interrogation; against a reauthorization of the President’s Plan for World Aids Relief; in favor of the Helms Amendment that would ban HIV-positive patients from entering the country; in favor of the warrantless wiretapping program; and soooooo against Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor that he actually insinuated during her ultimately successful confirmation hearing that she was a racist! What a Guy.
Then there’s former Vice President Dick Cheney, apparently now totally invested as the GOP front man on the public speaking circuit. And what he does best…what he has always done best…is demean and criticize from afar. Since January his primary target…hell, who are we kidding…his only target has been President Obama and his administration.
It seems Cheney doesn’t think the Obamas have cleaned up the ungodly mess they inherited following eight years of Bush-Cheney madness quickly enough for his liking. That apparently gives him license…always in front of friendly audiences of course…to, most recently, call the President weak on defense in reference to Afghanistan, and a ditherer with regards to his overall foreign policy. He routinely fires other volleys…Big Dick always has been good with a gun…about things like the mess our economy is in, rising unemployment, and Health Care Reform which, predictably, he is dead set against.
Then there’s the bloviators who hold forth daily on talk radio and television…primarily but not exclusively on Faux News… in unflinching support of the Republicans and vehemently opposed to everything that has anything to do with President Obama or the Democrats. Led by the likes of the obscene Rush Limbaugh, the absurd Glenn Beck, the offensive Bill O’Reilly, the pointless Sean Hannity, and the ludicrous Lou Dobbs (is it possible Dobbs is angling for a job at Faux so he can rejoin his old buddy Beck?), these screeching hate mongers have effectively become the GOP’s media arm.
So there you have it, in sum total the new public face of the Republican Party…or, perhaps more accurately, the public face of the new Republican Party. And to think there are actually people out there who wonder why the Grand Old Party is circling the drain.
Go figure!
SC
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Hedging bets on a longshot…
I heard a Democratic strategist say today that it was more important to maintain the Democratic control of the House and Senate in the mid-term elections next year than to pass a public option.
Wrong. One of the most important things the Obama administration can achieve – whether in one term or two – is health care reform.
REAL health care reform.
Let’s face it, if history is a predictor, Democrats will lose a lot of seats in the mid-term elections, regardless of what goes on in the world. But will they lose enough to lose control? Their performance in the current session will have an impact, no doubt.
The first 22 months are the one sure shot they have at accomplishing the platform that got them elected in the first place. The question then becomes, what’s more important – achieving the most important of the goals, or hedging their bets on a long shot?
Real health care reform, achieved immediately, not by 2013 or 2020, will do more to win votes in 2010 than appeasing an electorate in districts that are iffy. For God’s sakes, the great majority of the people of this country want health care reform WITH A PUBLIC OPTION!
No amount of fancy bells and whistles, as Rep. Anthony Weiner says, that they keep cramming into the existing Senate Finance Committee bill will save enough money to make health insurance affordable, so any reform without a public option will fail. Pure and simple. And any bill that fails will put the nail in the coffin of affordable health care for all for generations to come.
True competition and choice will drive down the cost of health insurance, and help control the costs of health care in general. That will help ease the strain on the economy, give us a healthier population, and let us get on with other priorities.
No one who has a plan today will be forced to lose it because of a public option. Only those with no insurance get to “opt in” to the plan.
Is this really so hard to understand? If we don’t get this right, we won’t get another chance for decades to come.
This is only ONE of the important platform elements that elected Democrats. If they don’t achieve this, what hope do they have of fixing the economy? Getting out of Iraq? Defeating al qaeda and the Taliban? Limiting nuclear arms? Slowing down global warming? Improving education?
Any Democrat who won’t support – at the very least – an up or down vote on health care reform with a public option, should be investigated for either being on the payroll of the health insurance industry, or being a closet Republican.
What’s more, any Democrat who loses their seat to a Republican in 2010, given the ongoing disintegration of that party as we know it, clearly couldn’t articulate his or her message effectively to at least half of his/her overall constituency. Or worse, his/her Democratic constituents were completely disgusted at his/her lack of spine. Or much worse, everyone saw that he/she was more interested in keeping their job than doing what is so desperately needed for the health of the American people.
Wake up Blue Dogs! You’ll be ensuring your own demise if you join with the Republicans in obstructing health care reform!
JM
Wrong. One of the most important things the Obama administration can achieve – whether in one term or two – is health care reform.
REAL health care reform.
Let’s face it, if history is a predictor, Democrats will lose a lot of seats in the mid-term elections, regardless of what goes on in the world. But will they lose enough to lose control? Their performance in the current session will have an impact, no doubt.
The first 22 months are the one sure shot they have at accomplishing the platform that got them elected in the first place. The question then becomes, what’s more important – achieving the most important of the goals, or hedging their bets on a long shot?
Real health care reform, achieved immediately, not by 2013 or 2020, will do more to win votes in 2010 than appeasing an electorate in districts that are iffy. For God’s sakes, the great majority of the people of this country want health care reform WITH A PUBLIC OPTION!
No amount of fancy bells and whistles, as Rep. Anthony Weiner says, that they keep cramming into the existing Senate Finance Committee bill will save enough money to make health insurance affordable, so any reform without a public option will fail. Pure and simple. And any bill that fails will put the nail in the coffin of affordable health care for all for generations to come.
True competition and choice will drive down the cost of health insurance, and help control the costs of health care in general. That will help ease the strain on the economy, give us a healthier population, and let us get on with other priorities.
No one who has a plan today will be forced to lose it because of a public option. Only those with no insurance get to “opt in” to the plan.
Is this really so hard to understand? If we don’t get this right, we won’t get another chance for decades to come.
This is only ONE of the important platform elements that elected Democrats. If they don’t achieve this, what hope do they have of fixing the economy? Getting out of Iraq? Defeating al qaeda and the Taliban? Limiting nuclear arms? Slowing down global warming? Improving education?
Any Democrat who won’t support – at the very least – an up or down vote on health care reform with a public option, should be investigated for either being on the payroll of the health insurance industry, or being a closet Republican.
What’s more, any Democrat who loses their seat to a Republican in 2010, given the ongoing disintegration of that party as we know it, clearly couldn’t articulate his or her message effectively to at least half of his/her overall constituency. Or worse, his/her Democratic constituents were completely disgusted at his/her lack of spine. Or much worse, everyone saw that he/she was more interested in keeping their job than doing what is so desperately needed for the health of the American people.
Wake up Blue Dogs! You’ll be ensuring your own demise if you join with the Republicans in obstructing health care reform!
JM
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Daze Of The Jackals: The Republicans are now eating their own
Oh how the once mighty have fallen. In fact the numbers are so dismal in the most recent polls that the Republican Party is becoming almost irrelevant in Washington…and much as it may sound strange to hear a lefty say this, that would not be a good thing for America. It’s imperative that we have at least two viable, opposing parties on the national political scene…if for no other reason than to keep each other in check.
So what in the world is happening to the GOP? Well, to be blunt, they’re turning on each other in increasingly more public and vicious ways. Egged on by the likes of radio blowhard Rush Limbaugh and TV/radio whack job Glenn Beck, the extreme right wing of the party is launching an all out, no holds barred assault on anyone in the Republican tent whom they consider to be too close to the center of the political spectrum.
Sadly, considering how wide the fissures have become between the various factions fighting for control of the party and ownership of the GOP brand, to those of us on the outside looking in it really isn’t coming as much of a surprise to see the Republicans beginning to eat their own. We’ve all seen it coming. As spring turned to summer and Limbaugh bellowed ever louder, Beck also got steadily crazier…and the fringe loonies took this as their cue to seek out and discredit everyone in THEIR party, and anyone in the country, who didn’t fall into lock step with their extremist view of a polarized, intolerant, xenophobic America.
What has resulted is an internal bloodletting that has seen prominent political figures, such as the more traditionally conservative Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, pilloried at his own town hall meeting for urging bipartisanship in Washington. At the same time Republican nut jobs like Michelle Bachmann are being elevated to rock star status for giving credence and voice to outrages like death panels and the birthers.
The GOP has lost its moral compass…and the country has noticed. That reality has been vividly illustrated in the polls referred to earlier in this blog. As of this day only 20% of Americans polled…just one in five…currently identify themselves as Republicans. And only 19%...less than one in five…believe the country would be better served with Republicans in control of the White House and Congress.
The corresponding numbers for the Democrats are not exactly overwhelming, but in direct comparison they’re hugely encouraging. Just over 37% of those polled identify themselves as Dems, and just under 35% believe we’re better off right now with the Democrats controlling Congress. 57%, an increase of 5% since the GOP’s internally focused scorched earth campaign shifted into high gear, currently approve of the job being done by President Barack Obama.
People have apparently had enough of the Republican act…grown tired of their lack of viable or even alternative ideas to those being offered by the party in power…become weary of the endless, hateful anti-Obama rhetoric…finally gotten fed up with all their ridiculous, unproductive, anti-Democratic anti-progressive nonsense. They also distrust and fear a party that thinks Sarah Palin would make a good President.
As long as they allow the repugnant Limbaugh to lead them around by the nose like mindless cattle, and the psychotic Beck to speak without rebuttal on their behalf, the stench of the GOP decay will continue spreading for all to smell. Even now the vultures are circling lower with every pass, and the jackals have begun licking their chops in anticipation.
And what we’re going to end up with, unless or until one of the factions prevails in the right’s uncivil war, is a third political party emerging from their chaos. The first volley in what is sure to be a long, bitter infight has already been fired. The Conservative Party has entered a candidate in the race to replace the resigning, incumbent, GOP Congressman in New York’s historically Republican 23rd district. The Conservative will be running against both a Democrat and a Republican… and guess who stands to benefit most from the resulting split of the right wing vote ?
And so it goes!
SC
So what in the world is happening to the GOP? Well, to be blunt, they’re turning on each other in increasingly more public and vicious ways. Egged on by the likes of radio blowhard Rush Limbaugh and TV/radio whack job Glenn Beck, the extreme right wing of the party is launching an all out, no holds barred assault on anyone in the Republican tent whom they consider to be too close to the center of the political spectrum.
Sadly, considering how wide the fissures have become between the various factions fighting for control of the party and ownership of the GOP brand, to those of us on the outside looking in it really isn’t coming as much of a surprise to see the Republicans beginning to eat their own. We’ve all seen it coming. As spring turned to summer and Limbaugh bellowed ever louder, Beck also got steadily crazier…and the fringe loonies took this as their cue to seek out and discredit everyone in THEIR party, and anyone in the country, who didn’t fall into lock step with their extremist view of a polarized, intolerant, xenophobic America.
What has resulted is an internal bloodletting that has seen prominent political figures, such as the more traditionally conservative Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, pilloried at his own town hall meeting for urging bipartisanship in Washington. At the same time Republican nut jobs like Michelle Bachmann are being elevated to rock star status for giving credence and voice to outrages like death panels and the birthers.
The GOP has lost its moral compass…and the country has noticed. That reality has been vividly illustrated in the polls referred to earlier in this blog. As of this day only 20% of Americans polled…just one in five…currently identify themselves as Republicans. And only 19%...less than one in five…believe the country would be better served with Republicans in control of the White House and Congress.
The corresponding numbers for the Democrats are not exactly overwhelming, but in direct comparison they’re hugely encouraging. Just over 37% of those polled identify themselves as Dems, and just under 35% believe we’re better off right now with the Democrats controlling Congress. 57%, an increase of 5% since the GOP’s internally focused scorched earth campaign shifted into high gear, currently approve of the job being done by President Barack Obama.
People have apparently had enough of the Republican act…grown tired of their lack of viable or even alternative ideas to those being offered by the party in power…become weary of the endless, hateful anti-Obama rhetoric…finally gotten fed up with all their ridiculous, unproductive, anti-Democratic anti-progressive nonsense. They also distrust and fear a party that thinks Sarah Palin would make a good President.
As long as they allow the repugnant Limbaugh to lead them around by the nose like mindless cattle, and the psychotic Beck to speak without rebuttal on their behalf, the stench of the GOP decay will continue spreading for all to smell. Even now the vultures are circling lower with every pass, and the jackals have begun licking their chops in anticipation.
And what we’re going to end up with, unless or until one of the factions prevails in the right’s uncivil war, is a third political party emerging from their chaos. The first volley in what is sure to be a long, bitter infight has already been fired. The Conservative Party has entered a candidate in the race to replace the resigning, incumbent, GOP Congressman in New York’s historically Republican 23rd district. The Conservative will be running against both a Democrat and a Republican… and guess who stands to benefit most from the resulting split of the right wing vote ?
And so it goes!
SC
Thursday, October 15, 2009
What will it take to make us see..
Sad to say not much time tonight for the blog… but we can’t ignore the health care reform issues of the day. So here are a few thoughts.
Pundits abound who tell us that Congress is destined to pass a health care reform bill before Christmas, thanks to the tireless efforts of Senator Max Baucus and the incredible courage of Senator Olympia Snowe. The Finance Committee bill is held up as the model for the final version Harry Reid and company will present to the entire Senate, and negotiate in conference with the House.
The biggest complaint we hear, from diverse perspectives we might note, is that the “Baucus Bill” won’t significantly reduce costs of health care, and thus might accomplish a few good things, but won’t survive for more than a year or two.
We must agree. Without a public option, this plan will not reduce costs. Read some of our previous blogs, and you’ll learn why. The insurance companies will not fail to live up to our criticism and raise premiums and inflate care costs. The tax burden will increase, as will private plan premiums. In a few years, we will all recognize the failure as millions more can’t afford insurance and get fined $1,500 for that privilege, and the rest of us sell our RVs and time-shares and desperately seek a second job to afford coverage. And the deficit will continue to climb.
Republicans will say it was because government can’t do anything right. Democrats will say it’s because we didn’t go far enough with our reforms. The people will be screwed again, and no one will have a better idea that we didn’t already reject this time around.
As Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota pointed out, the states with the best health care have the lowest costs. Improve quality, you reduce costs. That HAS to be part of the legislation. And what could be the biggest first step to that than a strong public option that rewards quality and draws Americans to it.
Just read some of the House bills that promote REAL reform. They make sense. They will work. Please please please write to your Congressmen and Senators and tell them not to sell out.
And ultimately, a word about Colin Powell’s remarks from 2007 replayed on Keith Olberman’s Countdown on MSNBC. He warned us about the “terror-industrial complex.” Those of you who are old enough, or actually study history, will know that this is a play on the words of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower. A Republican. As he left office in 1961, he warned (apparently unheeded) of the “military industrial complex.”
Powell opined that if we aren’t careful, we will go well beyond appropriate funding our anti-terror efforts. We will let the folks who make so much money “fighting terrorism” impinge upon our freedom and way of life.
How did we all miss this story back in 2007? He was absolutely right, and it has absolutely happened. Just read the Patriot Act. Just ask the people who say we can’t afford to reform health care because we have to balance the budget without touching the money we spend on fighting “terror”.
I just wish Colin Powell had had the courage to speak out beyond a college campus. I wish the press had encouraged him. But that was not to be…
JM
Pundits abound who tell us that Congress is destined to pass a health care reform bill before Christmas, thanks to the tireless efforts of Senator Max Baucus and the incredible courage of Senator Olympia Snowe. The Finance Committee bill is held up as the model for the final version Harry Reid and company will present to the entire Senate, and negotiate in conference with the House.
The biggest complaint we hear, from diverse perspectives we might note, is that the “Baucus Bill” won’t significantly reduce costs of health care, and thus might accomplish a few good things, but won’t survive for more than a year or two.
We must agree. Without a public option, this plan will not reduce costs. Read some of our previous blogs, and you’ll learn why. The insurance companies will not fail to live up to our criticism and raise premiums and inflate care costs. The tax burden will increase, as will private plan premiums. In a few years, we will all recognize the failure as millions more can’t afford insurance and get fined $1,500 for that privilege, and the rest of us sell our RVs and time-shares and desperately seek a second job to afford coverage. And the deficit will continue to climb.
Republicans will say it was because government can’t do anything right. Democrats will say it’s because we didn’t go far enough with our reforms. The people will be screwed again, and no one will have a better idea that we didn’t already reject this time around.
As Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota pointed out, the states with the best health care have the lowest costs. Improve quality, you reduce costs. That HAS to be part of the legislation. And what could be the biggest first step to that than a strong public option that rewards quality and draws Americans to it.
Just read some of the House bills that promote REAL reform. They make sense. They will work. Please please please write to your Congressmen and Senators and tell them not to sell out.
And ultimately, a word about Colin Powell’s remarks from 2007 replayed on Keith Olberman’s Countdown on MSNBC. He warned us about the “terror-industrial complex.” Those of you who are old enough, or actually study history, will know that this is a play on the words of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower. A Republican. As he left office in 1961, he warned (apparently unheeded) of the “military industrial complex.”
Powell opined that if we aren’t careful, we will go well beyond appropriate funding our anti-terror efforts. We will let the folks who make so much money “fighting terrorism” impinge upon our freedom and way of life.
How did we all miss this story back in 2007? He was absolutely right, and it has absolutely happened. Just read the Patriot Act. Just ask the people who say we can’t afford to reform health care because we have to balance the budget without touching the money we spend on fighting “terror”.
I just wish Colin Powell had had the courage to speak out beyond a college campus. I wish the press had encouraged him. But that was not to be…
JM
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Party Before Country:
Why the GOP is losing the battle for America
There was a pundit expounding on television this morning…can’t remember who or on which network, but that really doesn’t matter. What does matter is what he said, and it was probably the most prescient and, for Democrats, most encouraging thing we’ve heard in a long time. Granted, it was only one person’s opinion…but it really struck home.
During a discussion about the long-awaited Health Care Reform bill that had finally been put forward by the Senate Finance Committee, talk turned to how the Republicans would react…and what their next move might be. This pundit said that we should expect more of the same kind of scare tactics and negativity the GOP has been trotting out since the Health Care Reform debate began, and that if he were a Democratic strategist, that’s exactly how he’d be hoping they would respond.
After thinking about his assessment for a moment, what he meant by it suddenly became quite clear…kind of like a light had just come on. Since Barack Obama took the oath of office in January, the Republicans have been of one mind in focusing on a single, self-destructive strategy… namely bringing this President down. They don’t care how, they just want to topple his administration…and like a drug addict, their obsession is slowly but inexorably consuming them.
What the GOP is doing…and has been effectively fixated on ever since the Democratic primary season ended last summer…is somehow returning their party to power. They have demonstrated consistently that they’re not concerned about the needs of the country, or the needs of the people who vote for them. Their only concern is their party…and how to restore it to what they believe is its rightful place atop the American political pyramid.
Obviously, to accomplish that they must first get rid of President Obama, so they’ve put the bullseye squarely on him. As a result, they seemingly spend all of their time either thinking up or giving credence to ever more spurious ways to discredit him and his administration… think Bill Ayers, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, birthers, death panels, socialized medicine, ACORN, government takeovers, etc., etc.
Unfortunately, they’re not spending any time coming up with alternatives to the ideas that the President and the Democrats are offering for things that are so critically important to the well being of this country and its citizens…things like meaningful Health Care Reform, financial recovery, and job creation. That’s why the Republicans have come to be regarded as ‘the party of no’…as in, no, we don’t and won’t agree with what you’re proposing…and no, we don’t have a better, or even another idea.
If they can’t somehow push through more tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, and they can’t figure out how to funnel more health care industry and financial services industry money into their PACs, then it’s all about destroying Barack Obama, all the time. They’re totally bereft of ideas and concern for the needs of this country and the majority of its people. Their only concern is for the well being of the GOP.
It doesn’t seem to have dawned on them that even though the approval ratings for the President and the Democrats have gone down…as they always do during the last half of every new President’s first year in office…Republican approval ratings have, for the most part, either declined along with them or remained stagnant. That’s what’s so unusual about the current climate in Washington…and why, if the Democrats aren’t encouraged, they should be. The GOP simply haven’t taken advantage of the normal change in the political tide.
So basically, as long as President Obama has thick skin…and it would appear thus far that that is indeed the case…the Republicans’ Obamacentric strategy is not going to work. In steadily increasing numbers people are beginning to see their obstructionist tactics for what they truly are…unproductive, self-centered nonsense. The party of me…the party of us…the party of no…they’ve been reaching out to the fringe for so long now that they appear to have moved in with them.
This doesn’t mean the President and the Democrats can coast…far from it. People aren’t exactly thrilled with them right now either. But as long as they continue to work towards a better America for all…proposing legislation that will ultimately benefit the entire country rather than just their corporate benefactors and the privileged few…people will see and understand that. And even if they occasionally take their eyes off the road ahead, they’re more likely to be forgiven so long as the opposition is stuck in park or driving in reverse.
And so it goes.
SC
There was a pundit expounding on television this morning…can’t remember who or on which network, but that really doesn’t matter. What does matter is what he said, and it was probably the most prescient and, for Democrats, most encouraging thing we’ve heard in a long time. Granted, it was only one person’s opinion…but it really struck home.
During a discussion about the long-awaited Health Care Reform bill that had finally been put forward by the Senate Finance Committee, talk turned to how the Republicans would react…and what their next move might be. This pundit said that we should expect more of the same kind of scare tactics and negativity the GOP has been trotting out since the Health Care Reform debate began, and that if he were a Democratic strategist, that’s exactly how he’d be hoping they would respond.
After thinking about his assessment for a moment, what he meant by it suddenly became quite clear…kind of like a light had just come on. Since Barack Obama took the oath of office in January, the Republicans have been of one mind in focusing on a single, self-destructive strategy… namely bringing this President down. They don’t care how, they just want to topple his administration…and like a drug addict, their obsession is slowly but inexorably consuming them.
What the GOP is doing…and has been effectively fixated on ever since the Democratic primary season ended last summer…is somehow returning their party to power. They have demonstrated consistently that they’re not concerned about the needs of the country, or the needs of the people who vote for them. Their only concern is their party…and how to restore it to what they believe is its rightful place atop the American political pyramid.
Obviously, to accomplish that they must first get rid of President Obama, so they’ve put the bullseye squarely on him. As a result, they seemingly spend all of their time either thinking up or giving credence to ever more spurious ways to discredit him and his administration… think Bill Ayers, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, birthers, death panels, socialized medicine, ACORN, government takeovers, etc., etc.
Unfortunately, they’re not spending any time coming up with alternatives to the ideas that the President and the Democrats are offering for things that are so critically important to the well being of this country and its citizens…things like meaningful Health Care Reform, financial recovery, and job creation. That’s why the Republicans have come to be regarded as ‘the party of no’…as in, no, we don’t and won’t agree with what you’re proposing…and no, we don’t have a better, or even another idea.
If they can’t somehow push through more tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, and they can’t figure out how to funnel more health care industry and financial services industry money into their PACs, then it’s all about destroying Barack Obama, all the time. They’re totally bereft of ideas and concern for the needs of this country and the majority of its people. Their only concern is for the well being of the GOP.
It doesn’t seem to have dawned on them that even though the approval ratings for the President and the Democrats have gone down…as they always do during the last half of every new President’s first year in office…Republican approval ratings have, for the most part, either declined along with them or remained stagnant. That’s what’s so unusual about the current climate in Washington…and why, if the Democrats aren’t encouraged, they should be. The GOP simply haven’t taken advantage of the normal change in the political tide.
So basically, as long as President Obama has thick skin…and it would appear thus far that that is indeed the case…the Republicans’ Obamacentric strategy is not going to work. In steadily increasing numbers people are beginning to see their obstructionist tactics for what they truly are…unproductive, self-centered nonsense. The party of me…the party of us…the party of no…they’ve been reaching out to the fringe for so long now that they appear to have moved in with them.
This doesn’t mean the President and the Democrats can coast…far from it. People aren’t exactly thrilled with them right now either. But as long as they continue to work towards a better America for all…proposing legislation that will ultimately benefit the entire country rather than just their corporate benefactors and the privileged few…people will see and understand that. And even if they occasionally take their eyes off the road ahead, they’re more likely to be forgiven so long as the opposition is stuck in park or driving in reverse.
And so it goes.
SC
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Hold That Line: No Rush(ing) in the NFL
So Rush Limbaugh wants to be a National Football League franchise owner! Can’t say we really blame him. The NFL is one of the wealthiest businesses in the world…far and away the most successful professional sports league North America has ever seen…and to be part of that exclusive fraternity would really say something about a guy.
That’s why it wasn’t all that surprising when ‘Java the Hutt’ went public the other day with news that he was partnering with Dave Checketts, owner of the National Hockey League’s St. Louis Blues, in a bid to purchase the NFL’s St. Louis Rams. But to this long-time fan, the idea that the National Football League would actually ever approve Limbaugh as a franchise owner and operator is, in a word, preposterous.
“Why”, you might ask? Well, as has been the case with every other major sports league and organization in America, including the NCAA for those who either can’t or won’t remember, the NFL has worked long and hard, and continues to work incessantly, to bury its racist past and become known as a league of non-discrimination and inclusiveness. So why in the world would they want to flush all that hard-earned progress down the toilet by welcoming an unapologetic bigot like Limbaugh as a partner?
“Prove it”, you say! Alright, consider these quotes, taken mostly from his radio show, a few of which relate directly to the NFL:
“Look, let me put it to you this way: the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it.”
******
“I think the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. They’re interested in black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well. I think there’s a little hope invested in (Donavan) McNabb and he got a lot of credit for the performance of his team that he really didn’t deserve.”
******
“I mean, let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.”
******
“The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies.”
******
“They (African Americans) are 12 percent of the population. Who the hell cares?”
******
To an African American caller to his radio show…“Take that bone out of your nose and call me back.”
******
“You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray” (the confessed assassin of Martin Luther King). “We miss you, James. Godspeed.”
******
How does any of that fit in with the image the NFL is trying to project? To be blunt, it doesn’t… not now and hopefully not ever. Leave America’s ‘Fat Bastard’ (what can we say…today’s the day for movie references!) where he belongs …with his dittoheads. They deserve each other!
Voices of adamant opposition to Limbaugh’s inclusion as an NFL owner are already being heard…perhaps predictably led by activists Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. But there are others, equally if not more significant, the National Football League Players’ Association, at least one team owner, and several individual players among them.
NFLPA head DeMaurice Smith has contacted Commissioner Roger Goodell and written an e-mail to his union’s executive committee trying to rally support against the Limbaugh bid. In it he said in part…“Sport in America is at its best when it unifies, gives all of us reason to cheer, and when it transcends. Our sport does exactly that when it overcomes division and rejects discrimination and hatred.”
Speaking as an outside, albeit keenly interested, observer, ESPN Radio’s Mike Greenberg said of the NFL…"They are a machine. They are so overwhelmingly popular. They don't need the additional attention. I don't see there's a whole lot of upside for them and it is obvious what some of the downside could be."
Responding to such a widespread outpouring from those who don’t want to see him become, in any way, part of the NFL, Limbaugh had this to say on his radio show. “They have to go somewhere, find concocted quotes which are now bordering on slander, libel, whatever it is, and I never said, and they believe it.” The problem for him is that these quotes, and many others, are all part of the public record…as is the case with anything that’s said by anyone on radio or television. It can only be considered a ‘concocted quote’ if it’s not on tape for everyone to hear.
In any case, the ball is now in the NFL’s hands. They would undoubtedly risk serious legal repercussions if they didn’t give the Limbaugh/Checketts application due consideration. But those would pale in comparison to the public blowback they would experience if they ever actually accepted this bigoted blowhard into their fraternity.
Limbaugh may not actually be a racist…although from this perspective it would appear fairly obvious that he is…but the fact is that that’s what he plays on the radio. That’s how he has chosen to come across in his public persona…and there should be no place for that in an increasingly more integrated and purportedly inclusive entity like the NFL.
Truth to tell, there should really be no place for Limbaugh’s kind of divisiveness and “hate evangelism” anywhere in the world today. Sadly there’s apparently still a market for it though, because his long-running, syndicated radio show is hugely successful. But that doesn’t make it okay or acceptable. It just means that in spite of the progress we believe we’ve made as a society towards true, all-encompassing tolerance, obviously we’ve still got a very long way to go.
SC
That’s why it wasn’t all that surprising when ‘Java the Hutt’ went public the other day with news that he was partnering with Dave Checketts, owner of the National Hockey League’s St. Louis Blues, in a bid to purchase the NFL’s St. Louis Rams. But to this long-time fan, the idea that the National Football League would actually ever approve Limbaugh as a franchise owner and operator is, in a word, preposterous.
“Why”, you might ask? Well, as has been the case with every other major sports league and organization in America, including the NCAA for those who either can’t or won’t remember, the NFL has worked long and hard, and continues to work incessantly, to bury its racist past and become known as a league of non-discrimination and inclusiveness. So why in the world would they want to flush all that hard-earned progress down the toilet by welcoming an unapologetic bigot like Limbaugh as a partner?
“Prove it”, you say! Alright, consider these quotes, taken mostly from his radio show, a few of which relate directly to the NFL:
“Look, let me put it to you this way: the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it.”
******
“I think the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. They’re interested in black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well. I think there’s a little hope invested in (Donavan) McNabb and he got a lot of credit for the performance of his team that he really didn’t deserve.”
******
“I mean, let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.”
******
“The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies.”
******
“They (African Americans) are 12 percent of the population. Who the hell cares?”
******
To an African American caller to his radio show…“Take that bone out of your nose and call me back.”
******
“You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray” (the confessed assassin of Martin Luther King). “We miss you, James. Godspeed.”
******
How does any of that fit in with the image the NFL is trying to project? To be blunt, it doesn’t… not now and hopefully not ever. Leave America’s ‘Fat Bastard’ (what can we say…today’s the day for movie references!) where he belongs …with his dittoheads. They deserve each other!
Voices of adamant opposition to Limbaugh’s inclusion as an NFL owner are already being heard…perhaps predictably led by activists Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. But there are others, equally if not more significant, the National Football League Players’ Association, at least one team owner, and several individual players among them.
NFLPA head DeMaurice Smith has contacted Commissioner Roger Goodell and written an e-mail to his union’s executive committee trying to rally support against the Limbaugh bid. In it he said in part…“Sport in America is at its best when it unifies, gives all of us reason to cheer, and when it transcends. Our sport does exactly that when it overcomes division and rejects discrimination and hatred.”
Speaking as an outside, albeit keenly interested, observer, ESPN Radio’s Mike Greenberg said of the NFL…"They are a machine. They are so overwhelmingly popular. They don't need the additional attention. I don't see there's a whole lot of upside for them and it is obvious what some of the downside could be."
Responding to such a widespread outpouring from those who don’t want to see him become, in any way, part of the NFL, Limbaugh had this to say on his radio show. “They have to go somewhere, find concocted quotes which are now bordering on slander, libel, whatever it is, and I never said, and they believe it.” The problem for him is that these quotes, and many others, are all part of the public record…as is the case with anything that’s said by anyone on radio or television. It can only be considered a ‘concocted quote’ if it’s not on tape for everyone to hear.
In any case, the ball is now in the NFL’s hands. They would undoubtedly risk serious legal repercussions if they didn’t give the Limbaugh/Checketts application due consideration. But those would pale in comparison to the public blowback they would experience if they ever actually accepted this bigoted blowhard into their fraternity.
Limbaugh may not actually be a racist…although from this perspective it would appear fairly obvious that he is…but the fact is that that’s what he plays on the radio. That’s how he has chosen to come across in his public persona…and there should be no place for that in an increasingly more integrated and purportedly inclusive entity like the NFL.
Truth to tell, there should really be no place for Limbaugh’s kind of divisiveness and “hate evangelism” anywhere in the world today. Sadly there’s apparently still a market for it though, because his long-running, syndicated radio show is hugely successful. But that doesn’t make it okay or acceptable. It just means that in spite of the progress we believe we’ve made as a society towards true, all-encompassing tolerance, obviously we’ve still got a very long way to go.
SC
Monday, October 12, 2009
Consumer Credit: the road to hell
The upset applecart that is the American economy right now is the number one concern of voters. No surprise – if the economy is in the tank, it affects us all.
President Obama inherited a mess, for sure. And he recognizes that our health insurance/health care reform crisis is one of the biggest issues that he must correct to fix the economy. He’s been working hard on that, and with any luck, we’ll have some improvement in this year’s legislative session (as long as no one falls for the latest insurance industry ploy to threaten outrageous premium increases if we don’t force everyone to buy their products).
But there are other pieces of our economic puzzle. And virtually nothing has been done of any substance on things like consumer credit. There are no doubt people working furiously behind the scenes on new regulations to control the greedy financial industry that brought us the sub-prime mortgage crisis. But we haven’t seen any of that work yet.
Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard professor and member of the Congressional Oversight Panel, says that one of the only tools we have to insure this never happens again is an independent, consumer protection panel, which will have the power to prohibit such predatory practices as we saw over the past 8 years. There is a “muscular program” waiting to be enacted, she says, but lobbyists of the big banks and financial institutions are opposing it, and they are supported by the regulators who were in control, who let them get away with it in the first place.
The Federal Reserve, she maintains, had the power to shut down that shameless exploitation of lower- and middle-class consumers, preventing the disaster we face today. But they did nothing.
There is a bill in Congress right now that needs our support. Led by Barney Frank in the House, and Chris Dodd in the Senate, it would create that independent panel to be the watchdog for consumers, with the power to stop predatory lending practices.
Predictably, Republicans, AND BLUE DOG DEMOCRATS, are dragging their feet on this. Surprised? Not if you’ve been watching the Senate Finance Committee.
And then there is the consumer credit crunch. It’s really hard to get a loan right now. We might argue that that’s a good thing. Those same basic principles that destroyed the mortgage market are also at work in the credit card market.
But while mortgage interest rates are quite low right now, credit card interest rates are soaring. Usury laws – do you even know what that means? An unconscionable or exorbitant rate of interest. At one time, we had state prohibitions against usury. But a Supreme Court decision back in 1978 determined that the rates charged for credit cards would be determined by the state where the card issuer (bank) was chartered, not where the consumer lived.
The fallout of this decision was quick and deadly. Since there was no cap on interest rates in certain states, notably South Dakota and Delaware, the credit card issuers, such as Capital One, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Chase Bank and many others, moved their home base – on paper at least – to states with no cap.
Well, the rest is history. What used to be 7% or 8% interest rose inexorably to 15%, 18% and higher. Oh, they might offer a 0% trial offer, or a nice 4% 6 month rate for transferred balances, but if you ever missed a due date by a day or two, they could, and would, raise your rate… to 20%, or 24%, or even 36%.
What’s more, even if you paid them faithfully, even if you paid more than the minimum, if you missed a payment for some other debt, they could, and would, raise your rate. Doesn’t matter if you felt your other creditor had made a mistake, and you withheld a payment until it was settled. This was all the excuse the card issuer needed to raise your rate.
Talk about a license to print money.
Last year, with significant efforts by Barney Frank again, the Democratic Congress passed a rule that credit card companies had to give 45 days notice on rate increases, not just the 15 that was previously allowed. The new regulations also required them to keep the interest rate on existing balances that was in place when the debt was incurred, and raise them only on new purchases and new cards.
But efforts to change bankruptcy rules were the price we paid. It used to be that unsecured debt, like credit card debt and medical debts, were not protected when the consumer couldn’t pay. Filing bankruptcy could wipe those debts out. Lobbying by bank interests eliminated those exemptions. (Thanks, Joseph Biden – formerly Democratic senator from Delaware. Shame on you. Now that you don’t represent only the people of Delaware who host so many banks with no interest rate caps, now that you're Vice President of us all, we hope you will support the rest of us on future legislation!)
Medical debt was lumped with credit card debt, and you couldn’t just file bankruptcy when you found yourself in a hole.
While we might accept the idea that buying a fur coat and diamonds on your credit card shouldn’t be protected, the overwhelming cases of bankruptcy were related to medical debts – often charged to credit cards.
In May of 2009 Congress had the chance to cap interest rates – Bernie Sanders of Vermont proposed a cap at 15%, but 66 Senators refused. Only 33 signed on. Any of you who are paying 36% on $10,000 of credit card debt should have been crying over that, but it went almost unnoticed.
That 2008 legislation will come into effect in 2010. So what are credit card companies doing in preparation? Trimming overhead costs? Cutting executive salaries and bonuses?
Nah. They’re raising their interest rates, some effective in November, some on December 1st – taking advantage of the holiday season buying spree most Americans engage in every year. They’re going to soak every penny out of us that they can.
Suggesting that people don’t use their cards this Christmas like they usually do has the effect of screwing the retail industry that depends for about half their revenue on this buying season.
Someday, somehow, we have to find a way to return to a sane economy where consumers are not tempted into debt with unrealistic promises and expectations, then screwed into poverty by the very people who made those promises.
The Obama administration has a big challenge. Congress needs all the consumer lobbying we can muster.
JM
President Obama inherited a mess, for sure. And he recognizes that our health insurance/health care reform crisis is one of the biggest issues that he must correct to fix the economy. He’s been working hard on that, and with any luck, we’ll have some improvement in this year’s legislative session (as long as no one falls for the latest insurance industry ploy to threaten outrageous premium increases if we don’t force everyone to buy their products).
But there are other pieces of our economic puzzle. And virtually nothing has been done of any substance on things like consumer credit. There are no doubt people working furiously behind the scenes on new regulations to control the greedy financial industry that brought us the sub-prime mortgage crisis. But we haven’t seen any of that work yet.
Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard professor and member of the Congressional Oversight Panel, says that one of the only tools we have to insure this never happens again is an independent, consumer protection panel, which will have the power to prohibit such predatory practices as we saw over the past 8 years. There is a “muscular program” waiting to be enacted, she says, but lobbyists of the big banks and financial institutions are opposing it, and they are supported by the regulators who were in control, who let them get away with it in the first place.
The Federal Reserve, she maintains, had the power to shut down that shameless exploitation of lower- and middle-class consumers, preventing the disaster we face today. But they did nothing.
There is a bill in Congress right now that needs our support. Led by Barney Frank in the House, and Chris Dodd in the Senate, it would create that independent panel to be the watchdog for consumers, with the power to stop predatory lending practices.
Predictably, Republicans, AND BLUE DOG DEMOCRATS, are dragging their feet on this. Surprised? Not if you’ve been watching the Senate Finance Committee.
And then there is the consumer credit crunch. It’s really hard to get a loan right now. We might argue that that’s a good thing. Those same basic principles that destroyed the mortgage market are also at work in the credit card market.
But while mortgage interest rates are quite low right now, credit card interest rates are soaring. Usury laws – do you even know what that means? An unconscionable or exorbitant rate of interest. At one time, we had state prohibitions against usury. But a Supreme Court decision back in 1978 determined that the rates charged for credit cards would be determined by the state where the card issuer (bank) was chartered, not where the consumer lived.
The fallout of this decision was quick and deadly. Since there was no cap on interest rates in certain states, notably South Dakota and Delaware, the credit card issuers, such as Capital One, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Chase Bank and many others, moved their home base – on paper at least – to states with no cap.
Well, the rest is history. What used to be 7% or 8% interest rose inexorably to 15%, 18% and higher. Oh, they might offer a 0% trial offer, or a nice 4% 6 month rate for transferred balances, but if you ever missed a due date by a day or two, they could, and would, raise your rate… to 20%, or 24%, or even 36%.
What’s more, even if you paid them faithfully, even if you paid more than the minimum, if you missed a payment for some other debt, they could, and would, raise your rate. Doesn’t matter if you felt your other creditor had made a mistake, and you withheld a payment until it was settled. This was all the excuse the card issuer needed to raise your rate.
Talk about a license to print money.
Last year, with significant efforts by Barney Frank again, the Democratic Congress passed a rule that credit card companies had to give 45 days notice on rate increases, not just the 15 that was previously allowed. The new regulations also required them to keep the interest rate on existing balances that was in place when the debt was incurred, and raise them only on new purchases and new cards.
But efforts to change bankruptcy rules were the price we paid. It used to be that unsecured debt, like credit card debt and medical debts, were not protected when the consumer couldn’t pay. Filing bankruptcy could wipe those debts out. Lobbying by bank interests eliminated those exemptions. (Thanks, Joseph Biden – formerly Democratic senator from Delaware. Shame on you. Now that you don’t represent only the people of Delaware who host so many banks with no interest rate caps, now that you're Vice President of us all, we hope you will support the rest of us on future legislation!)
Medical debt was lumped with credit card debt, and you couldn’t just file bankruptcy when you found yourself in a hole.
While we might accept the idea that buying a fur coat and diamonds on your credit card shouldn’t be protected, the overwhelming cases of bankruptcy were related to medical debts – often charged to credit cards.
In May of 2009 Congress had the chance to cap interest rates – Bernie Sanders of Vermont proposed a cap at 15%, but 66 Senators refused. Only 33 signed on. Any of you who are paying 36% on $10,000 of credit card debt should have been crying over that, but it went almost unnoticed.
That 2008 legislation will come into effect in 2010. So what are credit card companies doing in preparation? Trimming overhead costs? Cutting executive salaries and bonuses?
Nah. They’re raising their interest rates, some effective in November, some on December 1st – taking advantage of the holiday season buying spree most Americans engage in every year. They’re going to soak every penny out of us that they can.
Suggesting that people don’t use their cards this Christmas like they usually do has the effect of screwing the retail industry that depends for about half their revenue on this buying season.
Someday, somehow, we have to find a way to return to a sane economy where consumers are not tempted into debt with unrealistic promises and expectations, then screwed into poverty by the very people who made those promises.
The Obama administration has a big challenge. Congress needs all the consumer lobbying we can muster.
JM
Friday, October 9, 2009
Apologizing to the world?
Facebook is quite a forum for revealing the world you live in. You see aspects of your “friends” that you could not see any other way.
Today, I was quite dismayed to see that some people I have admired and respected, albeit disagreed with politically, were quite outspoken in their disrespect for the Nobel Prize awarded to President Obama. The remarks usually started with a statement of surprise, then went on to say he hadn’t done anything to deserve it. That all he’s done is apologize to the world. They point out that he had only been in office for about 11 days before the nominations were closed, so how could he get such an award.
“Give me a break! He’s done nothing worthy of the honor.”
“I think he should refuse the award and give it to someone who’s done much more … for peace.”
“If they had awarded it to Bush at any point in his tenure, people would have been screaming.”
One commented sarcastically that they’d heard “they’d also given him a Heisman award…”
“They are setting him up to do exactly what they want him to do …apologize to the world again! We are the USA and we owe no one any apologies!”
I can only guess that many of them have been listening to those superpatriots Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.
According to Limbaugh, “Obama gives speeches trashing his own country – and he gets a prize for it.” He said this was “worse than losing the Olympics… Our President is a world wide joke”… and he purported that he and most Americans are all on the same side as the Taliban. (The Taliban said they should have called it a prize for violence.)
Glenn Beck cried “He has to turn it down… that’s the only way for him to make a win out of this. Only his arrogance will stop him from doing this.” He felt the prize should have gone to the Tea Party goers.
The Nobel Prize committee says they awarded President Obama not for what he WILL do, but for what he accomplished last year, although they hope it serves as momentum for his plans.
Getting elected with a platform of diplomacy and nuclear disarmament obviously impessed more than just the majority of Americans, but also most of the rest of the world.
Obama doesn’t feel he deserves to be in the company of former recipients, but he will go to Oslo to accept the award with gratitude and humility.
No doubt there are many people who have done wonderful, kind and
generous things in the world. But the prize is for encouraging
peace... though I realize many of my countrymen feel America should not
apologize to the world for anything, I can tell you that many, many,
many people in other countries, people of great intelligence,
education, spirituality and humanity, were thanking God when America
elected a President who views them as partners, as friends, and people
of dignity who deserve to be treated with respect and diplomacy.
What Obama haters see as apologies, I see as recognition of reality, admission of
imperfection, acknowledgement of shared hope for peace, happiness and
prosperity among nations. I believe in my heart that most of the world
heaved a sigh of relief when President Obama took the oath of office.
His dedication to ending the threat of nuclear armaments and war has
made many friends for America around the world. That will do more for
peace than any violent settlement of grievance we could undertake.
JM
Today, I was quite dismayed to see that some people I have admired and respected, albeit disagreed with politically, were quite outspoken in their disrespect for the Nobel Prize awarded to President Obama. The remarks usually started with a statement of surprise, then went on to say he hadn’t done anything to deserve it. That all he’s done is apologize to the world. They point out that he had only been in office for about 11 days before the nominations were closed, so how could he get such an award.
“Give me a break! He’s done nothing worthy of the honor.”
“I think he should refuse the award and give it to someone who’s done much more … for peace.”
“If they had awarded it to Bush at any point in his tenure, people would have been screaming.”
One commented sarcastically that they’d heard “they’d also given him a Heisman award…”
“They are setting him up to do exactly what they want him to do …apologize to the world again! We are the USA and we owe no one any apologies!”
I can only guess that many of them have been listening to those superpatriots Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.
According to Limbaugh, “Obama gives speeches trashing his own country – and he gets a prize for it.” He said this was “worse than losing the Olympics… Our President is a world wide joke”… and he purported that he and most Americans are all on the same side as the Taliban. (The Taliban said they should have called it a prize for violence.)
Glenn Beck cried “He has to turn it down… that’s the only way for him to make a win out of this. Only his arrogance will stop him from doing this.” He felt the prize should have gone to the Tea Party goers.
The Nobel Prize committee says they awarded President Obama not for what he WILL do, but for what he accomplished last year, although they hope it serves as momentum for his plans.
Getting elected with a platform of diplomacy and nuclear disarmament obviously impessed more than just the majority of Americans, but also most of the rest of the world.
Obama doesn’t feel he deserves to be in the company of former recipients, but he will go to Oslo to accept the award with gratitude and humility.
No doubt there are many people who have done wonderful, kind and
generous things in the world. But the prize is for encouraging
peace... though I realize many of my countrymen feel America should not
apologize to the world for anything, I can tell you that many, many,
many people in other countries, people of great intelligence,
education, spirituality and humanity, were thanking God when America
elected a President who views them as partners, as friends, and people
of dignity who deserve to be treated with respect and diplomacy.
What Obama haters see as apologies, I see as recognition of reality, admission of
imperfection, acknowledgement of shared hope for peace, happiness and
prosperity among nations. I believe in my heart that most of the world
heaved a sigh of relief when President Obama took the oath of office.
His dedication to ending the threat of nuclear armaments and war has
made many friends for America around the world. That will do more for
peace than any violent settlement of grievance we could undertake.
JM
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Buckle Up America: It’s Go Time for Health Insurers
Dare we dream? It’s beginning to look as if there’s been enough of a broad-based backlash against Washington’s inaction or indifference when it comes to meaningful Health Care Reform that our politicians are actually starting to take notice! We always knew that our House Reps and Senators could be gotten to. The only question was whether their respective ‘G’ spots were more susceptible to the lure of money or the need for votes.
The safe bet would be both, and although just how much each individual politician is influenced by either one or the other has yet to be determined, it would appear that most of them are now well aware of a rising level of dissent…on Main Street and beyond. The majority of Americans…65% and counting…are making it known that they want a public insurance option included in any Health Care bill that’s passed, and that demand is being echoed by more and more doctors and other health sector professionals every day.
It seems like the tide may finally be turning. The health insurance industry is being increasingly recognized and universally criticized for what it is…a corrupt, greedy, selfish, unfeeling profit center that cares only about its bottom line and nothing about its customers. The rest of the health sector concerns, and not an insignificant number of politicians, have begun distancing themselves from the insurers… leaving them isolated on an island by themselves so as to avoid being hit by shrapnel from the incoming bombs of outrage and grenades of discontent.
Since discussion concerning Health Care Reform was once again brought to the front burner in Washington earlier this year, the health insurance industry and their minions have been ‘wagging the dog’ in terms of the debate. A never-ending flood of fear-inspiring innuendo and outright lies, put forth in many cases by people and organizations who should know better, have kept supporters of meaningful reform consistently on the defensive. But with momentum starting to shift perceptibly in this battle, expect the insurers to lower the level of discourse and ethics even further.
So what’s next you ask? Well, as the legendary Al Jolson once said, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet”. If you think that the health insurance conglomerates, their lobbyists, and the media mouthpieces and political apologists that support them and are supported by them, will stand by and watch the sun set on this gravy train, you’d better give your head a shake. To paraphrase an old hockey adage, the gloves are about to come off.
Through the ill-advised largesse of our lawmakers, up until now health insurers have been granted a license to print money…or perhaps steal would be a more apt description of what they’ve been allowed to do for all these years. They’ve been operating without effective oversight for so long that when something threatens to impact their bloated bottom line…something such as a public insurance option designed to, oh, let’s say keep them honest…they predictably react with snarling desperation, like any cornered animal would in those circumstances.
That means we shouldn’t be surprised by anything they say or do, or that’s said and done on their behalf, in the coming weeks. There’s likely nothing they won’t try in their effort to retain unfettered, Washington-condoned access to our wallets and bank accounts. The salvos they’ve fired so far…death panels, socialism, communism, fascism, birthers, tea-baggers, government controlled, etc., etc.…will pale in comparison to what lies ahead as this transcendent battle for meaningful Health Care Reform reaches its climax.
A recent Quinnipiac poll suggested that fixing our economy is the single most important thing Americans have to deal with…but understand this! If we can find the will to reform and control the health insurance industry, fixing the economy is doable. Without meaningful Health Care Reform though, more specifically without health insurance reform, our economy will continue spiraling downward. It’s that simple.
SC
The safe bet would be both, and although just how much each individual politician is influenced by either one or the other has yet to be determined, it would appear that most of them are now well aware of a rising level of dissent…on Main Street and beyond. The majority of Americans…65% and counting…are making it known that they want a public insurance option included in any Health Care bill that’s passed, and that demand is being echoed by more and more doctors and other health sector professionals every day.
It seems like the tide may finally be turning. The health insurance industry is being increasingly recognized and universally criticized for what it is…a corrupt, greedy, selfish, unfeeling profit center that cares only about its bottom line and nothing about its customers. The rest of the health sector concerns, and not an insignificant number of politicians, have begun distancing themselves from the insurers… leaving them isolated on an island by themselves so as to avoid being hit by shrapnel from the incoming bombs of outrage and grenades of discontent.
Since discussion concerning Health Care Reform was once again brought to the front burner in Washington earlier this year, the health insurance industry and their minions have been ‘wagging the dog’ in terms of the debate. A never-ending flood of fear-inspiring innuendo and outright lies, put forth in many cases by people and organizations who should know better, have kept supporters of meaningful reform consistently on the defensive. But with momentum starting to shift perceptibly in this battle, expect the insurers to lower the level of discourse and ethics even further.
So what’s next you ask? Well, as the legendary Al Jolson once said, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet”. If you think that the health insurance conglomerates, their lobbyists, and the media mouthpieces and political apologists that support them and are supported by them, will stand by and watch the sun set on this gravy train, you’d better give your head a shake. To paraphrase an old hockey adage, the gloves are about to come off.
Through the ill-advised largesse of our lawmakers, up until now health insurers have been granted a license to print money…or perhaps steal would be a more apt description of what they’ve been allowed to do for all these years. They’ve been operating without effective oversight for so long that when something threatens to impact their bloated bottom line…something such as a public insurance option designed to, oh, let’s say keep them honest…they predictably react with snarling desperation, like any cornered animal would in those circumstances.
That means we shouldn’t be surprised by anything they say or do, or that’s said and done on their behalf, in the coming weeks. There’s likely nothing they won’t try in their effort to retain unfettered, Washington-condoned access to our wallets and bank accounts. The salvos they’ve fired so far…death panels, socialism, communism, fascism, birthers, tea-baggers, government controlled, etc., etc.…will pale in comparison to what lies ahead as this transcendent battle for meaningful Health Care Reform reaches its climax.
A recent Quinnipiac poll suggested that fixing our economy is the single most important thing Americans have to deal with…but understand this! If we can find the will to reform and control the health insurance industry, fixing the economy is doable. Without meaningful Health Care Reform though, more specifically without health insurance reform, our economy will continue spiraling downward. It’s that simple.
SC
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Don't Do It
No. We cannot afford to have a health care reform bill that is merely lip service.
Literally. We can’t afford it.
Senators, congressmen, please vote down any bill that doesn’t have, at the very least, a fully operational public option, not a trigger option, not a co-op. Though we are completely convinced that reform is essential to a healthy future for our country, both people and economy, we also understand that the “reforms” that mandate individuals to purchase an insurance policy from the private industry, without significant cost control mechanisms, is a recipe for disaster.
Follow my logic. The Finance Committee’s bill offers a bunch of “reforms” but no constraints on profits, and no publicly run insurance option.
Eliminating “pre-existing conditions” is a moral imperative. But without removing the “rating” – inflated premiums – that are charged, the cost of such insurance will be out of reach of most of the 47 million currently uninsured. (We personally would have to pay more than $2000 per month right now, even if they exclude coverage for our pre-existing conditions.)
That would lead to subsidies by the federal government (or, as some amendments propose, state governments) to try to make it affordable. Tax dollars. That would go directly to private insurance companies, who are at record profit levels today.
The Baucus plan doesn’t require employers to provide insurance, and it would fine anyone who doesn’t purchase a private plan. The latest number we saw is $1,500 a year. What would they get for that? Nothing. (Oh, that’s right – charity, or the opportunity to sell everything they own, spend it on treatment, then sign up for a government program like Medicaid - this advice from those bleeding heart Republicans.)
And who would get the $1,500? The government, so they can forward it to the private insurance companies, to help them pay for covering all those sick people with pre-existing conditions.
Despite the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates that this bill will reduce the deficit, it will surely lead to continuing escalation in the cost of insurance for individuals.
Whose costs are we trying to reduce? The individuals? The taxpayers? Aren’t they the same people? Ah, there’s the rub. Corporations are taxpayers, too. They’re also currently footing the bill for most American’s health insurance premiums.
Without a serious mechanism to contain the amount of money we pay to health care service providers, and cut back the overhead of insurance companies (currently at more than 25%, compared to Medicare at 3%), the number of dollars spent on “health care” will climb. If individuals and employers have to keep up with increasing premiums (or pay fines), and co-pays go up, out-of-pocket maximums go up, we will be paying out more than the current 1/6th of our GDP. It may not build up the government’s deficit, but it will surely build up personal deficit for each of us individually.
So how you do you contain costs? How do you do it at home? Discipline. Efficiency. Practicality. Shopping around.
The current system, and the “reformed” system without a public option, doesn’t encourage these things. When the cost of an ultrasound goes up, insurance companies just charge more for premiums, and deny any claims they can get away with. Those of us with “good” health insurance plans don’t see or appreciate the actual costs of the care they receive. As Senator Schumer pointed out recently, if a doctor says ‘Hmmm, I don’t think it’s really necessary, but I suppose we could do a CT scan’, neither the patient nor the doctor has a second thought about what it costs because they don’t pay it directly. So unnecessary tests are done, and the overall cost goes up.
Medicare, the only “public option” in existence right now, uses all those cost containment principles, very effectively. But with the private insurers letting costs creep up, Medicare has to keep increasing its payment rates, too, or providers will drop out of participation. So individuals costs go up, and government costs go up.
When the costs strangle our economy, voters will go crazy and Republicans will capitalize on that by claiming the “reforms” were to blame, and we can kiss true reform goodbye. Congress will tinker some more as our economy turns us into a third-world debtor nation.
We have three choices – 1) make it illegal for insurance companies to make profits and put severe regulations on their operations, or 2) maintain more of a free market and make them compete with a non-profit public option to force prices down, or 3) expand our successful Medicare program to all Americans.
Since the Dems took 3) off the table before they even started negotiating, we don’t have any hope of that one. Choice 1) would take an act of God, not just an act of Congress.
The public option has to be big enough, and strong enough, to have the cost-containing impact we need. If, as some Republicans are crying these days, it would be so good people would leave private insurance companies in droves and head to the public option, destroying the profitable industry, we ask: what is your priority? Affordable and great health care for all, or profits to a heartless industry that controls our very lives?
Quoting Wil Rogers, "Even if you are on the right track you will get run over if you just sit there."
Congress, if some of you don’t have the heart and balls to put real health care reform into play, then show your true selves to the electorate and let us all show you what we think.
JM
Literally. We can’t afford it.
Senators, congressmen, please vote down any bill that doesn’t have, at the very least, a fully operational public option, not a trigger option, not a co-op. Though we are completely convinced that reform is essential to a healthy future for our country, both people and economy, we also understand that the “reforms” that mandate individuals to purchase an insurance policy from the private industry, without significant cost control mechanisms, is a recipe for disaster.
Follow my logic. The Finance Committee’s bill offers a bunch of “reforms” but no constraints on profits, and no publicly run insurance option.
Eliminating “pre-existing conditions” is a moral imperative. But without removing the “rating” – inflated premiums – that are charged, the cost of such insurance will be out of reach of most of the 47 million currently uninsured. (We personally would have to pay more than $2000 per month right now, even if they exclude coverage for our pre-existing conditions.)
That would lead to subsidies by the federal government (or, as some amendments propose, state governments) to try to make it affordable. Tax dollars. That would go directly to private insurance companies, who are at record profit levels today.
The Baucus plan doesn’t require employers to provide insurance, and it would fine anyone who doesn’t purchase a private plan. The latest number we saw is $1,500 a year. What would they get for that? Nothing. (Oh, that’s right – charity, or the opportunity to sell everything they own, spend it on treatment, then sign up for a government program like Medicaid - this advice from those bleeding heart Republicans.)
And who would get the $1,500? The government, so they can forward it to the private insurance companies, to help them pay for covering all those sick people with pre-existing conditions.
Despite the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates that this bill will reduce the deficit, it will surely lead to continuing escalation in the cost of insurance for individuals.
Whose costs are we trying to reduce? The individuals? The taxpayers? Aren’t they the same people? Ah, there’s the rub. Corporations are taxpayers, too. They’re also currently footing the bill for most American’s health insurance premiums.
Without a serious mechanism to contain the amount of money we pay to health care service providers, and cut back the overhead of insurance companies (currently at more than 25%, compared to Medicare at 3%), the number of dollars spent on “health care” will climb. If individuals and employers have to keep up with increasing premiums (or pay fines), and co-pays go up, out-of-pocket maximums go up, we will be paying out more than the current 1/6th of our GDP. It may not build up the government’s deficit, but it will surely build up personal deficit for each of us individually.
So how you do you contain costs? How do you do it at home? Discipline. Efficiency. Practicality. Shopping around.
The current system, and the “reformed” system without a public option, doesn’t encourage these things. When the cost of an ultrasound goes up, insurance companies just charge more for premiums, and deny any claims they can get away with. Those of us with “good” health insurance plans don’t see or appreciate the actual costs of the care they receive. As Senator Schumer pointed out recently, if a doctor says ‘Hmmm, I don’t think it’s really necessary, but I suppose we could do a CT scan’, neither the patient nor the doctor has a second thought about what it costs because they don’t pay it directly. So unnecessary tests are done, and the overall cost goes up.
Medicare, the only “public option” in existence right now, uses all those cost containment principles, very effectively. But with the private insurers letting costs creep up, Medicare has to keep increasing its payment rates, too, or providers will drop out of participation. So individuals costs go up, and government costs go up.
When the costs strangle our economy, voters will go crazy and Republicans will capitalize on that by claiming the “reforms” were to blame, and we can kiss true reform goodbye. Congress will tinker some more as our economy turns us into a third-world debtor nation.
We have three choices – 1) make it illegal for insurance companies to make profits and put severe regulations on their operations, or 2) maintain more of a free market and make them compete with a non-profit public option to force prices down, or 3) expand our successful Medicare program to all Americans.
Since the Dems took 3) off the table before they even started negotiating, we don’t have any hope of that one. Choice 1) would take an act of God, not just an act of Congress.
The public option has to be big enough, and strong enough, to have the cost-containing impact we need. If, as some Republicans are crying these days, it would be so good people would leave private insurance companies in droves and head to the public option, destroying the profitable industry, we ask: what is your priority? Affordable and great health care for all, or profits to a heartless industry that controls our very lives?
Quoting Wil Rogers, "Even if you are on the right track you will get run over if you just sit there."
Congress, if some of you don’t have the heart and balls to put real health care reform into play, then show your true selves to the electorate and let us all show you what we think.
JM
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Hearts & Minds vs. Bullets & Bombs
Can’t help it… I have to repeat myself. We’d make better progress in Afghanistan if we sent in the Peace Corps alongside the Marine Corps.
I saw journalist David Ignatius on TV the other day. He was in Afghanistan in April, then again recently, and noticed a big difference. The Taliban is gaining ground and influence with the people. There’s a growing feeling that the US is on its way out, so we either have to stem that notion or get out, or the people will be disinclined to cooperate. No point in throwing your lot in with the folks who are deserting you!
He says they’re making progress against the Taliban in Pakistan! How? They’re using 10 times as many national troops in the regions where the Taliban have found refuge. But they don’t shoot people, they get the soldiers & local police into the towns and cities mixing with the people, making friends -- and beefing up aid for schools, jobs, health care.
Pakistanis are doing it by themselves in their own country. Can American soldiers do it in Afghanistan?
Confounding the situation, we also learned that the governments whose troops we are supporting in the region are corrupt. Of the $6+billion US dollars given to Pakistan to support their military efforts against the Taliban, only $500Million actually got to the military. The rest went to … who knows?
But get back to the earlier observation, that Pakistan is making headway. People are people. In the end, it’s Afghanistan’s fight. The people there have to make up their minds who they trust to be in control. Would you trust people who shoot your friends and bomb civilian homes because there might be Taliban leaders in there? Or the people who shoot the foreign occupiers? Or the people who help you build water treatment plants, and plant corn, and operate clinics to make people healthier, and supply schools with teachers and books?
Whoever they trust, they will support.
Don’t give President Obama a hard time because he’s taking his time trying to decide the right course of action in Afghanistan. Could YOU decide based on what you know, when everywhere you turn is evidence for a different rationale?
The President’s decision is not just about troops, but also diplomatic effort. If civilians don’t decide to step up, we will fail. We need to protect them to get them on board.
We need to have a plan and goals in Afghanistan. I’ll submit these: First, we need to earn their trust. Second, we need to defend whoever we put there. Third, we need to make a recognizable contribution to their well-being. The goals? First, train local people to do everything WE can do there. Second, convince the people that they can and should take responsibility for their own future. And third, stabilize the region (Pakistan has nukes!) by getting our visible military presence out of there.
JM
I saw journalist David Ignatius on TV the other day. He was in Afghanistan in April, then again recently, and noticed a big difference. The Taliban is gaining ground and influence with the people. There’s a growing feeling that the US is on its way out, so we either have to stem that notion or get out, or the people will be disinclined to cooperate. No point in throwing your lot in with the folks who are deserting you!
He says they’re making progress against the Taliban in Pakistan! How? They’re using 10 times as many national troops in the regions where the Taliban have found refuge. But they don’t shoot people, they get the soldiers & local police into the towns and cities mixing with the people, making friends -- and beefing up aid for schools, jobs, health care.
Pakistanis are doing it by themselves in their own country. Can American soldiers do it in Afghanistan?
Confounding the situation, we also learned that the governments whose troops we are supporting in the region are corrupt. Of the $6+billion US dollars given to Pakistan to support their military efforts against the Taliban, only $500Million actually got to the military. The rest went to … who knows?
But get back to the earlier observation, that Pakistan is making headway. People are people. In the end, it’s Afghanistan’s fight. The people there have to make up their minds who they trust to be in control. Would you trust people who shoot your friends and bomb civilian homes because there might be Taliban leaders in there? Or the people who shoot the foreign occupiers? Or the people who help you build water treatment plants, and plant corn, and operate clinics to make people healthier, and supply schools with teachers and books?
Whoever they trust, they will support.
Don’t give President Obama a hard time because he’s taking his time trying to decide the right course of action in Afghanistan. Could YOU decide based on what you know, when everywhere you turn is evidence for a different rationale?
The President’s decision is not just about troops, but also diplomatic effort. If civilians don’t decide to step up, we will fail. We need to protect them to get them on board.
We need to have a plan and goals in Afghanistan. I’ll submit these: First, we need to earn their trust. Second, we need to defend whoever we put there. Third, we need to make a recognizable contribution to their well-being. The goals? First, train local people to do everything WE can do there. Second, convince the people that they can and should take responsibility for their own future. And third, stabilize the region (Pakistan has nukes!) by getting our visible military presence out of there.
JM
Monday, October 5, 2009
Profit American Style
Profit’s a good thing, right? Very American. We all want profit.
So maybe we should be looking deeply into Exxon, Chevron, United Health Care, Cigna, Koch Industries – all the big companies that have made record profits while paying HUGE executive salaries, even during a staggering economic downturn. We should be learning from them. What, exactly, do they do differently from General Motors and Washington Mutual Bank, or, even, our little company? How can the rest of us do the same?
SHOULD the rest of us do the same? Is what those companies do legal? Constructive to the overall economy? Is the pie big enough for all of us to get a fair chance at a piece of it by doing what they do, even on a smaller scale? If the answer to any of these last three questions is “no”, then it only makes sense that those profits were not fairly come by, and the practices that achieved those excessive profits should be stopped, by regulation that is designed to result in a stable and just economy. And profits for all who work hard and honestly.
We’re not economists, but that seems like a basic ethic America can get behind. There must be SOME economists out there with ideas that will rescue us. Then all we need is a Congress willing to put their mouths and votes where the money isn’t.
Just sayin’...
Credit, they say, is hard to come by for small business these days. We heard some conservative pundit say today that we need to cut the capital gains tax to encourage investment. Problem is, the typical investment that results in “capital gains” goes to corporations that are on the stock exchange, not the small businesses (fewer than 500 employees) that account for something like 50% of the jobs in America.
Let’s differentiate between venture capital to small (REALLY SMALL) businesses and buying stock in General Electric or Exxon. Put your money in a struggling 10 person business with a plan to create something, some product they can sell (not just a service company) to people who really need it, and you shouldn’t get taxed on the gains as much as if you buy 10,000 units of Bank of America. If all you do is transfer your electronic money from one spreadsheet to another, and you make big money, you should get taxed big too.
And if you invest in a company that employs half the people in some small town in, oh, let’s say, Kansas, and your investment keeps that town alive, plus earns you a gain on those dollars, you should get a super tax break, and a medal.
Just sayin’…
And speaking of jobs, I’m sure the folks in Rio will be glad to get the jobs that will come with the 2016 Olympics. Chicago – and America at large – could have used this injection too. So how did our pal Rush Limbaugh react to the disappointment? Watch this video – even Fox News found he responded “less diplomatically”:
He went on to say it was the worst day of Obama’s presidency. What a class act this guy is. But he’s not the only Republican to sense some kind of political victory at Chicago’s loss:
The clip shows conservatives at a seminar for Americans for Prosperity, cheering at the news. American’s for Prosperity – the fake “grassroots” Tea Party group funded by … oh, yeah, Koch Industries – one of the companies we mentioned in the first paragraph.
We’ll echo Dylan Ratigan of MSNBC – these people oppose health care reform just to defeat Obama and “they don’t care if half the country dies!” So there should be no surprise when they cheer the failure of Chicago to get the Olympics because they see it as a loss for President Obama.
Apparently there’s no price too high to pay for the defeat of your political foe – even if it puts another nail in our economic coffin.
So maybe we should be looking deeply into Exxon, Chevron, United Health Care, Cigna, Koch Industries – all the big companies that have made record profits while paying HUGE executive salaries, even during a staggering economic downturn. We should be learning from them. What, exactly, do they do differently from General Motors and Washington Mutual Bank, or, even, our little company? How can the rest of us do the same?
SHOULD the rest of us do the same? Is what those companies do legal? Constructive to the overall economy? Is the pie big enough for all of us to get a fair chance at a piece of it by doing what they do, even on a smaller scale? If the answer to any of these last three questions is “no”, then it only makes sense that those profits were not fairly come by, and the practices that achieved those excessive profits should be stopped, by regulation that is designed to result in a stable and just economy. And profits for all who work hard and honestly.
We’re not economists, but that seems like a basic ethic America can get behind. There must be SOME economists out there with ideas that will rescue us. Then all we need is a Congress willing to put their mouths and votes where the money isn’t.
Just sayin’...
Credit, they say, is hard to come by for small business these days. We heard some conservative pundit say today that we need to cut the capital gains tax to encourage investment. Problem is, the typical investment that results in “capital gains” goes to corporations that are on the stock exchange, not the small businesses (fewer than 500 employees) that account for something like 50% of the jobs in America.
Let’s differentiate between venture capital to small (REALLY SMALL) businesses and buying stock in General Electric or Exxon. Put your money in a struggling 10 person business with a plan to create something, some product they can sell (not just a service company) to people who really need it, and you shouldn’t get taxed on the gains as much as if you buy 10,000 units of Bank of America. If all you do is transfer your electronic money from one spreadsheet to another, and you make big money, you should get taxed big too.
And if you invest in a company that employs half the people in some small town in, oh, let’s say, Kansas, and your investment keeps that town alive, plus earns you a gain on those dollars, you should get a super tax break, and a medal.
Just sayin’…
And speaking of jobs, I’m sure the folks in Rio will be glad to get the jobs that will come with the 2016 Olympics. Chicago – and America at large – could have used this injection too. So how did our pal Rush Limbaugh react to the disappointment? Watch this video – even Fox News found he responded “less diplomatically”:
He went on to say it was the worst day of Obama’s presidency. What a class act this guy is. But he’s not the only Republican to sense some kind of political victory at Chicago’s loss:
The clip shows conservatives at a seminar for Americans for Prosperity, cheering at the news. American’s for Prosperity – the fake “grassroots” Tea Party group funded by … oh, yeah, Koch Industries – one of the companies we mentioned in the first paragraph.
We’ll echo Dylan Ratigan of MSNBC – these people oppose health care reform just to defeat Obama and “they don’t care if half the country dies!” So there should be no surprise when they cheer the failure of Chicago to get the Olympics because they see it as a loss for President Obama.
Apparently there’s no price too high to pay for the defeat of your political foe – even if it puts another nail in our economic coffin.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Republicans At The Brink: Lindsey Graham says hyperbole must stop
It would appear that the more conservative and, dare we say it, more sensible wing of the Republican Party, has finally started to figure out that it might be time to put some much needed distance between them and their extreme right fringe. Apparently some can see that the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are quickly pulling the GOP in a direction they don’t want to go… and if they don’t step up now, pretty soon there could be no turning back.
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham has become the first of what we would hope will be an ever-increasing number of legitimate Republican politicians who call out some of these vile and dangerous lunatics. Graham took a swipe at both Beck and the birthers when questioned at an event in Arlington, Virginia yesterday.
And lest you think that we’re being hyperbolic when we opine, as we often do, that Beck is certifiably crazy…check this out. What you’re about to hear is Beck losing his mind with a caller to his nationally syndicated radio show. The woman had the temerity to criticize him for being so virulently against comprehensive health care reform. We’re playing the entire call…no editing involved…just because. If you want to cut to the chase yourself, the fireworks start about 2:40 into the clip. Everything from about 3:35 to the end is just Beck and his producer trying to justify his melt down.
The most frightening thing is that Beck has a loyal following who believe everything he says, no matter how ludicrous. For all our sakes we’d better hope that listening to him is as far as it goes. Acting on what this crazy man says would be far, far worse…and after hearing that insane outburst, how long do you think it’ll be before he starts dragging the more extreme members of his cult over the edge with him?
Back in the real world the 2016 Summer Olympics were awarded to Rio de Janeiro today, so everyone who felt President Obama was wasting time better spent elsewhere trying to help Chicago win the bid will now have more fuel for their fires. For the most part, though, these would be the same people who so easily excused then President G. W. Bush for being four days late showing up to survey Hurricane Katrina damage in New Orleans and on the Mississippi Gulf Coast because he was clearing brush at his Texas ranch…or on a fishing trip. WTF?
If memory serves, W spent about half of his Presidency clearing brush at the ranch. This was an 18-hour trip the current President took to try and bolster his adopted home town’s Olympic bid…unsuccessfully as it turned out. And maybe that’s a good thing because it’s the opinion of this blog that the legacy left behind after staging an Olympics seldom if ever justifies the enormous cost and inconvenience of preparing for them.
That said, they are undeniably a great PR vehicle, and if Chicago wanted them badly enough to ask the President to help, good on him for making the effort. Lord knows, if Texas had been bidding for an Olympics during one of the Bush Presidencies, you can bet your tushie that either I or II would have been there to help with (cow)bells on.
And don’t give us that crap about America being in crisis right now. This country has been faced with one crisis or another at virtually every moment in our history. Sometimes, though, Presidents are asked to help with things that don’t involve a crisis. This was one such time…and lo and behold, the country didn’t suffer a complete melt down in the absence of our Commander In Chief.
Go Figure!
SC
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham has become the first of what we would hope will be an ever-increasing number of legitimate Republican politicians who call out some of these vile and dangerous lunatics. Graham took a swipe at both Beck and the birthers when questioned at an event in Arlington, Virginia yesterday.
And lest you think that we’re being hyperbolic when we opine, as we often do, that Beck is certifiably crazy…check this out. What you’re about to hear is Beck losing his mind with a caller to his nationally syndicated radio show. The woman had the temerity to criticize him for being so virulently against comprehensive health care reform. We’re playing the entire call…no editing involved…just because. If you want to cut to the chase yourself, the fireworks start about 2:40 into the clip. Everything from about 3:35 to the end is just Beck and his producer trying to justify his melt down.
The most frightening thing is that Beck has a loyal following who believe everything he says, no matter how ludicrous. For all our sakes we’d better hope that listening to him is as far as it goes. Acting on what this crazy man says would be far, far worse…and after hearing that insane outburst, how long do you think it’ll be before he starts dragging the more extreme members of his cult over the edge with him?
Back in the real world the 2016 Summer Olympics were awarded to Rio de Janeiro today, so everyone who felt President Obama was wasting time better spent elsewhere trying to help Chicago win the bid will now have more fuel for their fires. For the most part, though, these would be the same people who so easily excused then President G. W. Bush for being four days late showing up to survey Hurricane Katrina damage in New Orleans and on the Mississippi Gulf Coast because he was clearing brush at his Texas ranch…or on a fishing trip. WTF?
If memory serves, W spent about half of his Presidency clearing brush at the ranch. This was an 18-hour trip the current President took to try and bolster his adopted home town’s Olympic bid…unsuccessfully as it turned out. And maybe that’s a good thing because it’s the opinion of this blog that the legacy left behind after staging an Olympics seldom if ever justifies the enormous cost and inconvenience of preparing for them.
That said, they are undeniably a great PR vehicle, and if Chicago wanted them badly enough to ask the President to help, good on him for making the effort. Lord knows, if Texas had been bidding for an Olympics during one of the Bush Presidencies, you can bet your tushie that either I or II would have been there to help with (cow)bells on.
And don’t give us that crap about America being in crisis right now. This country has been faced with one crisis or another at virtually every moment in our history. Sometimes, though, Presidents are asked to help with things that don’t involve a crisis. This was one such time…and lo and behold, the country didn’t suffer a complete melt down in the absence of our Commander In Chief.
Go Figure!
SC
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