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
Showing posts with label baucus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label baucus. Show all posts
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Stick It Out the Window!
More than a few things been burnin’ my ass lately. Here are a couple of ‘em.
First, Sen. Max Baucus just proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is in this for the politics, not the American people. Voting against BOTH “public option” amendments to the Finance Committee’s health care “reform” legislation, he said he liked the Schumer amendment better than the Rockefeller amendment, but he didn’t think it could get 60 votes in the Senate, so he had to vote against it.
What an idiot. What a traitor to the people who put him in office. Rather than do what he thought was best for the American people, and what he had to know his constituents want, he bowed to the pressure from Republicans, Blue Dog Democrats, and, no doubt, his corporate insurance benefactors.
With the final vote being 13 to 10 against, if any two of the three Judas Democrats had voted with the progressives and moderates, it would have passed, and the chances of getting a true public option out of Congress would have been greatly improved.
Your earliest opportunity to show how out of touch a Senator can be will be 2010, when Sen. Blanche Lincoln faces the electorate. Any volunteers for the Arkansas primary? Add North Dakota’s Senator Kent Conrad to the list for 2012. Baucus must be hoping everyone in Montana will have forgotten by 2014, when he is up for a primary thrashing. Call these folks TODAY and let them know how shamefully they’ve behaved.
Second, on a different subject:
The so-called “toxic mortgages” are still in the news. I thought the idea behind the bank bail out was to clean those up and get the banks back on an even keel. Well, the banks seem to be claiming to be on that even keel, but they still have the toxic mortgages on the books. Begs the question, were those bail out funds really necessary? Did the banks cry poor to sucker the government into handing over billions in cash so they could shore up their own credit, and not do a thing for the folks who were struggling under outrageous interest rates and balloon payments? I’m thinkin’ it looks like a duck.
And now we’re hearing the mantra that those toxic loans were given to undeserving people. Not people who got suckered. People who should have known they didn’t deserve such good fortune as a home of their own.
I’m hearing code words here. Over-represented in the group are African-Americans and Latinos. Undeserving.
And the bleeding heart liberals are blamed, of course. We wanted those lazy welfare bums to have a mansion of their own, and we wanted the mean nasty bankers to pay for it. Oh, and we wanted tax dollars to subsidize the whole thing.
I’d like to remind those who are selling this snake oil that it was their very own hero, President George Bush, who sold it in the first place. Take a look at these flash back videos… dating back to 2002, the start of it all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNqQx7sjoS8&feature=related The compassionate conservative President Bush promised to help us realize the American Dream by subsidizing downpayments with tax dollars, streamlining the lending process, making it “easy to understand” (read “even the dumb people can do it”) and keeping interest rates low.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW9viaJatpo&feature=related (radio with pictures) – President Bush speaks to African-Americans and Latino Americans, (pointing out that less than half of the people in these groups own homes) and promises to provide more money – beefing up Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, etc. He promised that even a “low income homebuyer can have just as nice a home as anybody else” with his plan.
And we all know what a bleeding heart liberal George Bush was.
What I see is a plan to funnel the hard-earned savings of first time homebuyers to banks, through fee-taking brokers, subsidize it with $7,000 or $8,000 of tax dollars, then, when the poor sucker can’t keep up with his mortgage, kick him out, keep his downpayment and the tax dollars, and then cry poor to Congress (while slipping them millions in campaign contributions).
I even know of cases, like here in South Carolina, where they took some of their subsidized housing, did a bit of a re-paint job, and offered it to Section 8 renters on a rent-to-own basis. If the resident could keep up their payments for a few months, come up with a small downpayment, get that government subsidy, they would apply part of their already-paid rent to the purchase price. For those residents who managed to keep up their payments, it was a chance to own low-income housing in a not-so-nice neighborhood. Whoopee! And for those who couldn’t make consistent payments, the housing authority got to keep the downpayments, rent, and subsidy. Not a bad deal, eh?
OK, so maybe some people took out mortgages they knew full well they couldn’t keep up. Some should have known they weren’t in a position to own a half million dollar house. But these people have paid the price – they’re out on the street. The bankers are still smokin’ their cigars on Wall Street, gettin’ those daily massages.
Who’s the villain here?
And if the buyers realized they couldn’t keep it up, and needed to get out from under by selling the house within 5 years, they’d have to pay back the subsidy over the next15 years. So they could never save up a downpayment again! Even if that first-time low-income undereducated homebuyer managed to keep it up for four years, improved his education, got a better job, and decided to move up in the housing chain, they have to pay it back. So they had to add that payment to their budget in their new home.
Who was this “program” designed to help? Do you really have to ask? Consider the source.
JM
First, Sen. Max Baucus just proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is in this for the politics, not the American people. Voting against BOTH “public option” amendments to the Finance Committee’s health care “reform” legislation, he said he liked the Schumer amendment better than the Rockefeller amendment, but he didn’t think it could get 60 votes in the Senate, so he had to vote against it.
What an idiot. What a traitor to the people who put him in office. Rather than do what he thought was best for the American people, and what he had to know his constituents want, he bowed to the pressure from Republicans, Blue Dog Democrats, and, no doubt, his corporate insurance benefactors.
With the final vote being 13 to 10 against, if any two of the three Judas Democrats had voted with the progressives and moderates, it would have passed, and the chances of getting a true public option out of Congress would have been greatly improved.
Your earliest opportunity to show how out of touch a Senator can be will be 2010, when Sen. Blanche Lincoln faces the electorate. Any volunteers for the Arkansas primary? Add North Dakota’s Senator Kent Conrad to the list for 2012. Baucus must be hoping everyone in Montana will have forgotten by 2014, when he is up for a primary thrashing. Call these folks TODAY and let them know how shamefully they’ve behaved.
Second, on a different subject:
The so-called “toxic mortgages” are still in the news. I thought the idea behind the bank bail out was to clean those up and get the banks back on an even keel. Well, the banks seem to be claiming to be on that even keel, but they still have the toxic mortgages on the books. Begs the question, were those bail out funds really necessary? Did the banks cry poor to sucker the government into handing over billions in cash so they could shore up their own credit, and not do a thing for the folks who were struggling under outrageous interest rates and balloon payments? I’m thinkin’ it looks like a duck.
And now we’re hearing the mantra that those toxic loans were given to undeserving people. Not people who got suckered. People who should have known they didn’t deserve such good fortune as a home of their own.
I’m hearing code words here. Over-represented in the group are African-Americans and Latinos. Undeserving.
And the bleeding heart liberals are blamed, of course. We wanted those lazy welfare bums to have a mansion of their own, and we wanted the mean nasty bankers to pay for it. Oh, and we wanted tax dollars to subsidize the whole thing.
I’d like to remind those who are selling this snake oil that it was their very own hero, President George Bush, who sold it in the first place. Take a look at these flash back videos… dating back to 2002, the start of it all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNqQx7sjoS8&feature=related The compassionate conservative President Bush promised to help us realize the American Dream by subsidizing downpayments with tax dollars, streamlining the lending process, making it “easy to understand” (read “even the dumb people can do it”) and keeping interest rates low.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW9viaJatpo&feature=related (radio with pictures) – President Bush speaks to African-Americans and Latino Americans, (pointing out that less than half of the people in these groups own homes) and promises to provide more money – beefing up Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, etc. He promised that even a “low income homebuyer can have just as nice a home as anybody else” with his plan.
And we all know what a bleeding heart liberal George Bush was.
What I see is a plan to funnel the hard-earned savings of first time homebuyers to banks, through fee-taking brokers, subsidize it with $7,000 or $8,000 of tax dollars, then, when the poor sucker can’t keep up with his mortgage, kick him out, keep his downpayment and the tax dollars, and then cry poor to Congress (while slipping them millions in campaign contributions).
I even know of cases, like here in South Carolina, where they took some of their subsidized housing, did a bit of a re-paint job, and offered it to Section 8 renters on a rent-to-own basis. If the resident could keep up their payments for a few months, come up with a small downpayment, get that government subsidy, they would apply part of their already-paid rent to the purchase price. For those residents who managed to keep up their payments, it was a chance to own low-income housing in a not-so-nice neighborhood. Whoopee! And for those who couldn’t make consistent payments, the housing authority got to keep the downpayments, rent, and subsidy. Not a bad deal, eh?
OK, so maybe some people took out mortgages they knew full well they couldn’t keep up. Some should have known they weren’t in a position to own a half million dollar house. But these people have paid the price – they’re out on the street. The bankers are still smokin’ their cigars on Wall Street, gettin’ those daily massages.
Who’s the villain here?
And if the buyers realized they couldn’t keep it up, and needed to get out from under by selling the house within 5 years, they’d have to pay back the subsidy over the next15 years. So they could never save up a downpayment again! Even if that first-time low-income undereducated homebuyer managed to keep it up for four years, improved his education, got a better job, and decided to move up in the housing chain, they have to pay it back. So they had to add that payment to their budget in their new home.
Who was this “program” designed to help? Do you really have to ask? Consider the source.
JM
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