Senate Vote: Public Option

From Robert Reich at TPM:

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is a critical day in the saga of the public option. Democrats Charles Schumer (New York) and Jay Rockefeller (West Virginia) are introducing an amendment to include the public option in the bill to be reported out by the Senate Finance Committee -- the committee anointed by the White House as its favored vehicle for getting health care reform.

Before you read another word, call and email the Senate offices of Democrats Max Baucus (Montana), Tom Carper (Delaware), Robert Menendez (New Jersey), Kent Conrad (North Dakota), Jeff Bingaman (New Mexico), John Kerry (MA), Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas), Ron Wyden (Oregon), Debbie Stabenow (Michigan), Maria Cantwell (Washington), and Bill Nelson (Florida) -- telling them you want them to vote in favor of the public option amendment. And get everyone you know in these states to do the same. Hell, you might as well phone and email Republican Olympia Snowe (Maine) and make the same pitch.

You can find the full text of Reiche's piece here. You can find contact info for your senator here. And it will take the vote of your Democratic senators. Republicans will not be on board. Unfortunately, too many Democrats are bought and paid for, too.

Background: Every dollar squeezed out of Big Pharma and Big Insurance is a dollar less that you'll have to pay either in healthcare costs or in taxes to cover healthcare costs. The two most direct ways to squeeze future profits are allowing Medicare to use its huge bargaining leverage to negotiate lower drug prices, and creating a public insurance option to compete with private insurers and also use its bargaining clout to get lower prices and thereby push private insurers to offer lower rates.
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Last Thursday, for example, the Senate Finance Committee rejected Ben Nelson's amendment to require Big Pharma to give some $160 billion in discounts to Medicare -- thereby reducing the bonanza Pharma would reap from the healthcare bill. Not surprisingly, all Republicans voted against the amendment. But it was defeated only because Dems Baucus, Carper, and Menendez voted with the Republicans.

29 September 2009

Addition: Votes were held on two public option amendments today. In both cases, the public option failed to pass.

The first amendment, the more "liberal" of the two, but also ironically the more fiscally conservative, was put forward by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D- WV). The vote against it was 15-8. Democrats who failed America today by voting against this amendment, joining all of the Republicans on the committee in so doing, were Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), and Tom Carper (D-Del.).

The second amendment, put forward by New York's Charles Schumer, failed to pass 13-10. Again, all Republicans sold out their constituents. Joining them were Democrats Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), and Kent Conrad (D-N.D.). Lincoln voted by proxy, not even bothering to show up for the vote.

There will be no public option in the Senate Finance Committee's "health care" bill.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/29/first-public-option-amend_n_303228.html

Protect Insurance Companies PSA

This is funny.

23 September 2009

Free Food for Rescued Animals

An organization called TheAnimalRescueSite.com, a partner of PetFinder.com, has an on-line charity promotion to provide food to animal shelters around the country for rescued animals. Simply by clicking a button at TheAnimalRescueSite.com, a donation will be made by the advertisers on that page to the organization that will be used to supply the food. No other action is required other than clicking the button and no personal information need be provided. This can be done once per day from any computer to provide continual, needed donations -- so bookmark the site and return daily! It is a worthy cause, brought to my attention by my sister who raises assistance dogs, and I hope that you will take part. Thank you.

22 September 2009

The Marshmallow Test

You'll see.

18 September 2009

Public Option: Insider's Take

As noted on The Huffington Post -- quoted in part here -- with transcripts and video of the exchanges:

Speaking before the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee Tuesday, former health insurance industry executive-turned-whistleblower Wendell Potter warned that if Congress "fails to create a public insurance option to compete with private insurers, the bill it sends to the president might as well be called the Insurance Industry Profit Protection and Enhancement Act."

Potter also struck back against one of the key arguments made against the public option: that it would have an unfair competitive advantage over private insurers.

'Contrary to the misinformation being disseminated by the health insurance industry and its allies, the public insurance option would not have a competitive advantage over private plans," Potter told the committee. "It would have to meet the same benefit requirements and comply with the same insurance market reforms as private plans. "

Potter, who was previously a vice president of communication at Cigna, also sharply criticized Democratic Senator Max Baucus' health care reform bill in a conversation with reporters Monday, calling the plan an "absolute gift to the industry."

16 September 2009

Trivial Personal Trivia

Twenty years ago today, I had my left ear pierced.

15 September 2009

Dowd on Political Racism

Conservative New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd tackled the topic of racism against President Obama, from both Congress and state officials, in her column on Saturday. Josh Marshall of TPM blogged about the column thusly:

Kudos to Maureen Dowd for going there. 'There' being some public recognition of what should be inescapable by now: that a lot of the more electric and intemperate reactions to President Obama come from people who cannot or will not accept that a black man is the President of the United States.

I think Dowd was right to see it behind Wednesday night's outburst from Rep. Joe Wilson (R) of South Carolina, a man previously best known as one of the last hold-outs for keeping the confederate flag flying over the Capitol in South Carolina. And you didn't have to wait for the night of the speech though. The day before the speech, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R) of Georgia said Obama needed to show some "humility" when he showed up on Capitol Hill Wednesday night. I've heard presidents criticized, pilloried, even villified for lots of things. But I don't think I've ever heard one warned to show some humility.

It's no accident that both comments came from white men from the Deep South in their early to mid-60s. I won't say because I don't think this is all the GOP, just as I don't think that all the opposition to Obama is rooted in atavism and paranoia. But it is a big chunk of it. And it's the 'chunk' that's got the voice at the moment and increasingly seems to be calling the shots.

Dowd has it exactly right. Sadly.

14 September 2009

Darwin Movie: &*%$!!!

From The Huffington Post:

Jeremy Thomas, the Oscar-winning producer of Creation, said he was astonished that such attitudes exist 150 years after On The Origin of Species was published.

"That's what we're up against. In 2009. It's amazing," he said.

"The film has no distributor in America. It has got a deal everywhere else in the world but in the US, and it's because of what the film is about. People have been saying this is the best film they've seen all year, yet nobody in the US has picked it up.

Read the whole story: Telegraph

14 September 2009

Maher's Directions for Obama

Bill Maher makes some very good points, as introduced here on The Huffington Post.

On "Real Time" Friday night, host Bill Maher closed his show with some sharp words for the Obama administration with regards to how they have responded to criticism from figures such as Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin.

Maher called the White House "cowards" for allowing Van Jones to resign following a series of right-wing attacks and for capitulating to those who complained about the nature of Obama's back-to-school speech.

"The Democrats just never learn. Americans don't really care which side of an issue you're on as long as you don't act like pussies," Maher said.

Maher then criticized Obama for trying to win over those who vehemently disagree with him, insisting that the president should instead "stand up for the 70 percent of Americans who aren't crazy."

"When are we going to actually show up in all this," Maher said.

As usual, Maher is funny and has great points to make.

12 September 2009

Wall Street: No Change

From the New York Times, an article on how little Wall Street has changed since the melt down began last year. Reform? Don't believe the hype.

12 September 2009

Obama's Health Care Speech

Here is video of the president's speech last night to Congress on health care reform. Its text can be found here. Reaction to the speech varied. Dan Froomkin wrote for The Huffington Post. A good follow-up to that piece is Paul Krugman's Why the Public Option Matters.

10 September 2009

Addition: Robert Reich on why a so-called trigger for a public option won't work.

Al Franken's US Map

This is really, really cool. From HuffingtonPost.com:

Senator Al Franken drew a surprisingly accurate map of all fifty U.S. states at the Minnesota State Fair recently.

The senator from Minnesota demonstrated his talent during a recording for Minnesota Public Radio. The video is set to music, so it's impossible to hear any "oohs" or "ahhs" from the audience.

This isn't the first time Sen. Franken drew the map for an audience. Franken showed off his cool party trick and auctioned it off during a 2007 Democratic fundraiser in Minnesota.

The current drawing can be found at the first Huffington Post link above.

9 September 2009

Neffinger on Health Care Reform

John Neffinger has a very interesting take on the tactics of health care reform over at The Huffington Post. It is well worth the read.

7 September 2009

Reich to Obama on Health Care Reform

Robert Reich called on President Obama to put up or shut up next week at his speech before Congress.

3 September 2009

Addition: Also see the letter sent by the Congressional Progressive Caucus to the president today.

Huffington on America Today

If you read only one thing this week, make it this latest writing by Arianna Huffington at The Huffington Post. Titled Has Obama's Handling of the Bank Bailout Undermined Health Care Reform?, it begins thusly:

Given the media's ADD, I imagine the discussion on health care will quickly revert to where it was before Ted Kennedy's death -- filled with chatter about the Gang of Six's latest pronouncements, and whether there are or aren't death panels in the House bill.

But before we move on to the minutiae and the moronic, let's do some big picture stocktaking, using the valuable perspective last week's look back at Kennedy's career and speeches provided.

This weekend, Sam Tanenhaus, the senior editor at the New York Times Book Review, wrote that Kennedy's passing brought to an end a vision of liberalism that "holds that the forces of government should be marshaled to improve conditions for the greatest possible number of Americans, with particular emphasis on the excluded and disadvantaged."

But shouldn't the vision of marshaling forces to improve conditions for the greatest possible number of Americans be the appropriate goal for any civilized society? We can argue about what precisely should be the proper balance between government, the private sector, and philanthropy. But is there any doubt that this goal is what our political discourse should revolve around?

After all, the vision of improving conditions for the greatest possible number of Americans is not the exclusive province of liberalism. And because it is the ultimate goal of society, it is about right versus wrong, rather than right versus left.

That is pretty decent political philosophy, however hard it may actually be to apply it to America today. After noting how things should be, Huffington details how things are. And how things are -- well -- that's not too pretty a picture.

Take the bank bailouts. The dust is finally beginning to settle on that front, and what we are seeing doesn't bode well for the ongoing health care fight.

Two days after Senator Kennedy's death, and thus not given much attention, there was a shocking piece in the Washington Post about how America's "too-big-to-fail" banks have gotten even bigger since the meltdown. Four banks (Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citi) now issue 50 percent of America's mortgages and control two-thirds of the nation's credit cards. According to FDIC chair Sheila Blair, this kind of consolidation of power "fed the crisis, and it has gotten worse because of the crisis."

And the consolidation isn't over. As WaPo's David Cho points out, these mega-banks now get even more favorable treatment from creditors because the creditors know the banks will be bailed out by taxpayers if they take on too much risk. This favorable treatment includes lower borrowing costs than other banks are able to get. This, in turn, will put even more of these smaller banks out of business, furthering the concentration of wealth and power. And Democrats are ceding the populist field of trust busting to Republicans.

Though the big four banks have all recently announced multi-billion profits (with a bottom line handsomely padded by all of us), three dozen smaller banks have gone under in the last two months.

As Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Economy.com puts it: "the oligopoly has tightened." Which is what oligopolies tend to do when left untended.

The rich get richer. The middle class gets screwed. The poor are barely a blip on anyone's radar. Why indeed would anyone trust government? Not the idea of government. As jaded as I am, I love the idea of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. I'm simply painfully aware that our government is run by men... men who ultimately care only for themselves. Certainly, they care not for the health of their countrymen.

Rob Johnson, economist at the Economic Policy Institute, and former Chief Economist of the Senate Banking Committee, blogging on HuffPost, nailed it:

By refusing to stand up to the oligarchs and set proper boundaries in defense of society, they fed the cynics and dissipated the magic that Obama had created for real change. The administration seemed closer to Jamie (Dimon) and Goldman Sachs than to us. The lesson: if you fail to defend society once, people lose faith. The loss of faith carries a high price, and we're paying that price now in the arena of health care reform.

And yet the administration is shocked -- shocked that Americans aren't rallying behind its vague health care plan. They can try to blame it on Fox News or town hall crazies, but I hope they know that much of the health care anger is a proxy for bailout anger.

Americans feel it in their gut that the White House is treating the big business health care establishment the same way it handled the big business Wall Street establishment. The president seems to believe that what's good for Goldman Sachs and PhRMA is, ipso facto, good for the country. We keep hearing from the administration how its health care plan is good for "choice and competition." But we see how well "choice and competition" have fared in the financial sector.

1 September 2009