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August, 2009:

A Second Look | Politico Eats Crow

Aug 25th, 2009
by Tom.
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via Democrats plan hundreds of reform rallies – Chris Frates – POLITICO.com.

Faced with a souring public mood on health care reform, Democrats and their supporters are launching a national grassroots push Wednesday to show lawmakers that the majority of Americans still support overhauling the system.

Reform supporters are planning to hold more than 500 events between Wednesday and when lawmakers return to Washington Sept. 8, ranging from neighborhood organized phone banks to professionally staffed rallies with hundreds of people.

It isn’t over until it’s over.

That’s what I hate about Politico and other self-appointed super-specialist pundits who think they have all the answers. They were all absolutely sure that the Republicans had won the August debate and the word wars. They denied the reports of the fake grassroots Astroturf town hall protests funded and coordinated by PAC groups working for big Pharma and big insurance.

Supporters have their work cut out for them. Many lawmakers were thunderstruck over the August recess by the anger and outrage expressed by their constituents in town hall meetings across the country. And in poll after poll, support for reform has eroded throughout the month.

Well, the progressives are fighting back now, to the surprise of Politico and their self-anointed joy-stick pen jockeys who will bend in any which direction with any wind. And who exactly was “thunderstruck”? Not any of my representatives. And if you don’t believe that these protesters are bought and paid for, let Rachel clue you in on exactly who is behind this charade.

But they, the Politico pundits are stuck, see, they have to report that the Dems are fighting back and they have to back up a little from the gall-darned sureness of the astroturfers and the birthers and deathers winning the day.

“We want members of Congress to get back to work and pass reform that means something. We need affordable care. We need real insurance regulation. And we need a strong public health insurance option,” said HCAN spokeswoman Jacki Schechner. “It’s doable and we expect it to get done now.”

I wonder how it felt having bet on the wrong side and having to print that the public option, which they swore was dead and gone by the intensity of the uproar, is back and back strong.

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A Second Look | The Great Reconciliation Idea

Aug 24th, 2009
by Tom.
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via Senate Democrats Consider Tactic to Push Through Government Health Plan – NYTimes.com.

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats said Sunday that they were fleshing out plans to pass health legislation, particularly the option of a new government-run insurance program, with a simple majority, instead of the 60 votes that would ordinarily be needed to overcome a filibuster…

…In the last week, Democrats have begun to talk openly of using a procedure known as budget reconciliation to pass a health bill in the Senate with a simple majority, assuming no Republican support. To do that, under Senate rules, they would probably need to show that the public plan changed federal spending or revenues and that the effects were not “merely incidental” to the changes in health policy.

If there was no filibuster, if the Democratic majority voted to change the Senate rules, then there would be no need for the reconciliation process. The filibuster would just go away.

Here’s a couple of graphics showing the incredibly shocking increase in the use of the cloture motion (60 votes to pass) to end endless debate, or “filibuster”, a parliamentary procedure initiated to attempt to kill legislation. Notice the spike in cloture motions after the Republicans lost their majority in the Senate after 2006.

filibusters-1101.gifImage:Cloture Voting, U.S. Senate, 1947 to 2008.jpg‎‎

The facts are plain to see. When the Republicans lost the majority in 2006 setting up a Democratic majority in the 110th Congress (something Karl Rove claimed would never happen) they have since attempted to set the three-fifths, 60 votes needed for a cloture vote, as the standard needed to pass any legislation.

We (progressives) have written letters, called, and blogged the President and our Senators to please blow the dust off the reconciliation process and then go ahead and pass the public option. It is simple. Bush used it three times when the Senate passed the tax cuts for the rich in 2001, 2003, and 2005. He used the reconciliation process to bypass the threat from any Democratic filibusters. It’s been done several times, historically, so why the hell are we timidly tip-toeing around the issue. Screw that. Just do it.

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A Second Look | Krugman Sucks! Attacking From The Left Again!

Aug 21st, 2009
by Tom.
1 comment

via Op-Ed Columnist – Obama’s Trust Problem – NYTimes.com.

Paul Krugman, Obama Political Enemy

NY Times op-ed columnist and Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman is at it again. At a time when the President is at his most difficult moment since inauguration with the health care debate, Krugman goes on the attack.

He is attacking the President from the left again, not satisfied that we at least have a Democrat in the White House that has achieved much since arriving there a mere eight months ago. Examples? The right-wing Supreme Court ruled in Ledbetter v. Goodyear that it was okay that women get paid less than men and not be able to sue for it, and then Obama fixed that by signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. Where was the kudos for Obama from Krugman? Crickets.

There have been many accomplishments in Obama’s eight months in office.

Obama inherited a nation whose economy was in free-fall and he has been able to get the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed with no Republican support in the House and very little in the Senate. He has also passed a budget plan that puts emphasis on eliminating fraud and abuse and overall fiscal responsibility after inheriting a $1.3 trillion deficit from Bush.

Here are just a few more examples of President Obama’s accomplishments from the Huffington Post:

  • $19 billion in the stimulus package to help implement an electronic medical record system
  • innovative online messaging by streaming every press conference and hosting question-and-answer sessions with the president, and publishing the first White House blog
  • Obama Department of Transportation has approved 2,500 highway projects and they have move $9.3 billion out the door since February in stimulus money
  • $2,500 tax credit to help offset the cost of tuition (among other expenses) for those seeking a college education. Nearly five million families are expected to save $9 billion
  • $2 billion in stimulus cash for advanced batteries systems for electric and hybrid cars
  • CARS, the Car Allowance Rebate System – cash for clunkers
  • the DOJ secured $2 billion for Byrne Grants, which funds anti-gang and anti-gun task forces and is expected to have huge impacts in urban gang control

You’d think we’d be hearing from Krugman about some, at least one, of these accomplishments. But hell no. Krugman is once again baselessly attacking a President that has bent over backwards to create a bipartisan atmosphere in Washington. He has reached out to the Republicans time and again only to have that door slammed in his face. Leftist economists like Krugman accuse him of appeasement and then attack him personally as a weakling.

It’s hard to avoid the sense that Mr. Obama has wasted months trying to appease people who can’t be appeased, and who take every concession as a sign that he can be rolled.

Krugman is critical of not only the President’s policies, but insultingly talks of his moral failings and his lack of clarity. Notice how he starts this next paragraph with the issue of “health care itself”, then immediately slides into a personal barrage, forgetting health care itself, but using the health care issue to wedge in his personal attack on Obama insinuating that the President has somehow become “uninspiring” and now he is nothing more than a “dry technocrat”:

On the issue of health care itself, the inspiring figure progressives thought they had elected comes across, far too often, as a dry technocrat who talks of “bending the curve” but has only recently begun to make the moral case for reform. Mr. Obama’s explanations of his plan have gotten clearer, but he still seems unable to settle on a simple, pithy formula; his speeches and op-eds still read as if they were written by a committee.

If Krugman is so worked up about Obama’s presidency at this point after only eight months, then a year from now Krugman will be a total wreck. He is the epitome of the enemy that should be kept closer. Yes, Krugman is the enemy, it matters not if he is from the far left. He still supplies the right with ammunition against his fellow Democratic president. With supporters like Krugman, who needs the right, right?

Krugman, the high and mighty Nobel Prize winner, sucks.

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