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Health Care: Reid Promises Bill With or Without Republicans, Harkin Talks to AlterNet, Schumer Lays an Egg
Posted by Adele Stan, AlterNet on November 19, 2009 at 5:21 PM.

Standing before an audience of union members, former Obama campaign volunteers and media in a cramped room in the Capitol Visitors Center, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid spoke in historical terms of the health-care bill he melded out of the bills crafted by two Senate committees. Reading from a letter to Congress written by President Harry Truman 64 years ago to the day, Reid called upon the Senate to get behind his Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

"He knew that the health of the American people is linked to the health of the American economy," Reid said of Truman. He then noted that a person who was one year old at the time Truman penned the letter would, this very day, become eligible for Medicare. (C-SPAN has video here.)

Reid stood surrounded by Democratic senators from the Finance Committee and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, as well as Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., his assistant majority leader. In their triumphant mood, each of the Democrats seemed to assume their individual personae quite fully.

Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., invoked the spirit of the late Ted Kennedy, whose reins of the HELP Committee Dodd took while crafting the bill during the last days of Kennedy's illness. The affably pugilistic Durbin played true to form, noting that the largest criticism he heard from the Republican side was that the bill was 2,000 pages long.

"I might remind the Republican side of the aisle that when it comes to the size of legislation, it was that bank-bailout bill that the last president proposed that was only three pages long," Durbin said. "Now, there's a work of wisdom."

Durbin also projected a raft of legal challenges from insurance companies after the bill is passed. "[Y]ou better make sure you have a lot of pages there to cover the law suits they're going to file to try to stop us," he said.

Chuck Schumer of New York, standing in for Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (who was in his home state of Montana tending to his sick mother), exceeded expectations of persona-fulfillment with a very bad joke about breakfast foods. Referring to "that impresario, that great chef, Harry Reid," Schumer said, "I have this tie on here: it has eggs and cheese and pork. So, it's a great omelet. Harry made a great omelet. You sometimes have to break a few eggs to make a great omelet, but he did...We have great cheese from the Finance Committee and great pork from the HELP Committee. I couldn't say we had great pork from the Finance Committee or I'd be in trouble."

At one point during Schumer's McMuffin speech, Dodd leaned over to whisper in Harry Reid's ear. Would that we could know what he said.

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How to Achieve Real, Populist Reform
Posted by Digby, Hullabaloo on November 19, 2009 at 5:00 PM.

This is a must read profile of Dr Elizabeth Warren, a genuine great American populist reformer (who happens to teach at Harvard -- I know, shocking.)

In Elizabeth Warren’s world, credit card contracts would be so simple a teenager could read and understand them in four minutes. Loans would be as easy to compare as toasters, and online credit scores would be free.

“We need a new model: If you can’t explain it, you can’t sell it,” said Warren, 60, a Harvard University law professor who is head of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, in an interview.

The 1966 high school debate champion of Oklahoma may get what she wants. The House of Representatives will vote in December on her idea. She suggested a Financial Product Safety Commission in a 2007 article in the magazine Democracy. President Barack Obama proposed it to Congress in June as the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

I urge you to read the whole thing. Her mind is so lively and so finely tuned to the real economic environment that I wish I could lock every Democrat in Washington in a room with her for as long as it takes to get them to hear what she is saying and learn how to think along these lines. She's one of the very few who articulates the kind of reform populism that makes sense to average citizens and which might keep the know-nothing Palinite freakshow from looking good to increasingly desperate, working people in this country.

Update: Here's some neat post partisan populism: The Ron Paul, Alan Grayson bill to audit the fed just passed through the committee. Baby steps, folks.

The Best Paragraph Written About Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue"
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on November 19, 2009 at 4:48 PM.

I'm giving the nod to va, at Whiskey Fire:

The most unbelievable thing about Going Rogue, by the author-function "Sarah Palin," is that it's supposed to be self-serving. The problem a self-serving narrative about Sarah Palin confronts is that it's about Sarah Palin, whose entire life, it appears, consists of worse and worse attempts to create self-serving narratives explaining away bigger and bigger fuck-ups. Going Rogue's burden is that it must claim to be the definitive, encyclopedic explanation, the final excuse, for a long history of failure begat by failure; it's an epic of failure, if you will, and if the goal here is some kind of ultimate vindication, well, it is monumentally unsuccessful. Going Rogue is, at bottom, the story of every one of Sarah Palin's projects ending in grotesque catastrophe; it is only self-serving in the sense that these catastrophes either prove benign or turn out to be some other schlub's fault. If everything I knew about Sarah Palin came from this book (and basically it does), I would say her life has been like a play in which a deus-ex-machina descends at the end of every act to bestow peace and harmony, except the deus forgot to put on pants and everyone's just standing around going "uhhhh..." and then the lights go out and the scene changes.

Paragraphs 2 through 5 offer some fine and fun writing as well, so I urge you to read the whole thing.

Why Fiscal Conservatives Should Love the Senate Health Care Bill
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on November 19, 2009 at 3:33 PM.

BENDING THE PROVERBIAL CURVE.... For some conservatives, including some center-right Democrats, the very point of tackling health care reform is to get health care costs under control. Ezra Klein has a great item today, explaining how the Senate reform bill does just that.

If this piece of the bill was passed on its own, it would be the most important cost control bill ever considered by the United States Congress. But you could never have passed it on its own. You needed the coverage to make the grand bargain work. Republicans like to call this bill a trillion-dollar experiment to expand the health-care system, and in some ways, it is. But it's also a multitrillion-dollar experiment to cut costs in the health-care system, and it deserves credit for that, and support from fiscal conservatives. It's easy to talk about cutting costs, but this is the chance for people to actually do it.

The "grand bargain" is an important concept that often goes overlooked in the debate. For the left, which has been clamoring for health care reform for several generations now, the point of fixing the system is the moral outrage of allowing tens of millions of Americans to go without coverage. The uninsured are one serious illness away from bankruptcy, or one layoff away from family peril, and progressives have long demanded a remedy.

For the right, the principal reason to even entertain the possibility of reform is fiscal -- conservatives are worried about spiraling costs and massive deficits.

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Economy Is Going to Get Much Worse
Posted by Steven D., Booman Tribune on November 19, 2009 at 2:02 PM.

I think the economy is pretty darn awful, but with record profits on Wall Street and all the happy talk about a recovery from the recession (albeit a jobless recovery) it's confusing for many people as to what our economic future really holds. Well, here's relevant statistic that sums it up nicely, one that shows the so-called recovery is mostly a smoke and mirrors vaudeville magician's routine by the same people who either got us into this fine mess in the first place, or enabled the ones who did. Take a peek at this excerpt from Inner Workings David Goldman's blog at Asia Times:

This morning’s news that housing starts “unexpectedly” dropped by 11 percent month on month is consistent with my grim view of the American economy. The crystal-meth monetary policy at the Fed makes everyone feel better, until they don’t. The nonstop rise in the price of dollar hedges tells us that it can’t last forever. Large balance sheets attached to the Fed’s money pump can show profits, and the price of spread assets (as PIMCO’s Bill Gross keeps emphasizing) is stupid rich. But at the capillary level, through, the economy is dying and gangrene is setting in.

Here’s year on year growth in commercial and industrial loans from weekly reporting banks in the US:

[Attached chart shows 20% decline in commercial and industrial loans in the 12 months]

A TWENTY PERCENT decline in commercial and industrial loans? That's not a recovery, it's a fricking catastrophic collapse in the fundamental underpinnings of our economy. It's Wall Street sucking Main Street and Government dry, grabbing all the cash while they can. Not surprisingly they are using that cash pump from the Federal Reserve to drive up commodities prices. What does that tell you? It tells me things are about to get much, much worse, and no one in Washington has a clue what to do. It's, and let's be honest, the worst economic performance since the Great Depression. Jobs that created the foundation of our economic growth in the 20th Century have flat disappeared, as Nouriel Roubini (you know, the economist whose predictions were right all along while the Friedman disciples like Alan Greenspan fiddled as the US economy burned to the ground) makes clear.

While America's official unemployment rate is already 10.2 per cent, the figure jumps to a whopping 17.5 per cent when discouraged workers and partially employed workers are included. And, while data from firms suggest that job losses in the past three months were about 600,000, household surveys, which include self-employed workers and small entrepreneurs, suggest a number above two million.

Moreover, the total effect on labour income – the product of jobs times hours worked times average hourly wages – has been more severe than that implied by the job losses alone, because many firms are cutting their workers' hours, placing them on furlough or lowering their wages as a way to share the pain.

Many of the lost jobs – in construction, finance, and outsourced manufacturing and services – are gone forever, and recent studies suggest that a quarter of U.S. jobs can be fully outsourced over time to other countries. Thus, a growing proportion of the work force – often below the radar screen of official statistics – is losing hope of finding gainful employment, while the unemployment rate (especially for poor, unskilled workers) will remain high for a much longer period of time than in previous recessions. [...]

[T]he credit crunch for non-investment-grade firms and smaller firms, which rely mostly on access to bank loans rather than capital markets, is still severe. Or consider bankruptcies and defaults by households and firms. Larger firms – even those with large debt problems – can refinance their excessive liabilities in or out of court, but an unprecedented number of small businesses are going bankrupt. The same holds for households, with millions of weaker and poorer borrowers defaulting on mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, student loans and other consumer credit.

Consider also what is happening to private consumption and retail sales. Recent monthly figures suggest a rise in retail sales. But, because the official statistics capture mostly sales by larger retailers and exclude the fall by hundreds of thousands of smaller stores and businesses that have failed, consumption looks better than it really is. [...]

Moreover, income and wealth inequality is rising again. Poorer households are at greater risk of unemployment, falling wages or reductions in hours worked, all leading to lower labour income, whereas on Wall Street, outrageous bonuses have returned with a vengeance. With the stock market rising and home prices still falling, the wealthy are becoming richer, while the middle class and the poor – whose main wealth is a house rather than equities – are becoming poorer and being saddled with an unsustainable debt burden.

So, while the United States may technically be close to the end of a severe recession, most of America is facing a near-depression. Little wonder, then, that few Americans believe that what walks like a duck and quacks like a duck is actually the phoenix of recovery.

The Tea Baggers and their talk of a tax revolt and railing against the mythical socialist takeover of America by the Obama administration isn't the problem.

The problem is that we've been scammed by Wall Street financial firms (the megalithic survivors) into juicing their balance sheets while getting less than zero in return for our billions of dollars of bailout expenditures by the Fed and Congress and trillions more for Federal guarantees of Wall Street's toxic junk financial derivatives.

In short, our investment of tax dollars in an essentially opaque, unregulated, subsidized and protected financial sector is proving to be a very, very bad bet for the future of any real economic recovery for the vast majority of Americans who don't work for Goldman Sachs and their ilk. This isn't a rational free market by anyone's definition. It's a con game, one that Obama's economic team has been more than willing to ignore in the interest of helping their friends, even if that means unacceptably high unemployment and lower investment in the real drivers of our economy -- small businesses, workers and manufacturing.

And unless we see a sea change in the economic strategies being pursued by the Obama administration, any talk of a fundamental political realignment in which Democrats benefit from a generational shift in political power is as much a pipe dream as Karl Rove's plan for a one party Republican state. Indeed, if Democrats in the Executive Branch and in Congress continue to ignore the fundamental changes in economic policy necessary to reverse our present course, the likelihood of something far sinister, a fascist or neo-fascist movement or a coup by a right wing military junta is not out of the question. Because when democratic civil governments becomes unable or unwilling to address fundamental issues of economic security they can lose their legitimacy literally overnight.

Just look at the history of the Weimar Republic, or Italy after WWI, if you want an object lesson in democratic governments that failed because their political leaders, operating within a weak, corrupted and gridlocked systems, were more concerned about their political careers and futures than addressing the critical economic issues that had spread misery and despair among millions of their constituents.

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Rep. Virginia Foxx Credits GOP for Civil Rights Legislation
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on November 19, 2009 at 1:00 PM.

FOXX'S NOTION OF 'REVISIONIST HISTORY'.... On the House floor today, Rep. Virginia Foxx, a right-wing Republican from North Carolina, boasted of her party's alleged progressive history on civil rights.

"Just as we were the people who passed the civil rights bills back in the '60s without very much help from our colleagues across the aisle," said Fox. "They love to engage in revisionist history."

Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-Calif.), stunned, tried to set Foxx straight, pointing to the role of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations of the 1960s. "John Lewis, a member of this House, was beaten on the Edmund Pettus bridge to get that civil rights legislation passed," Cardoza reminded Foxx. "Tell John Lewis that he wasn't part of getting that legislation passed."

Matt Corley added, "To support the claim that Republicans were actually the architects of civil rights, conservatives often point out that a 'higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats supported the civil-rights bill.' But this ignores the 'distinct split between Northern and Southern politicians' on the issue."

This comes up from time to time, and since some confused people like Virginia Foxx have trouble remembering the details, it's worth the occasional refresher.

The Democratic Party, in the first half of the 20th century, was home to competing constituencies -- southern whites with abhorrent views on race, and white progressives and African Americans in the north, who sought to advance the cause of civil rights. The party struggled, ultimately siding with an inclusive, liberal agenda.

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Fox Issues On-Air Apology for Misleading Footage of Palin Crowds
Posted by Faiz Shakir, Think Progress on November 19, 2009 at 12:00 PM.

Following ThinkProgress’ report yesterday that Fox News had recycled old file footage of Sarah Palin rallies to assert that she is currently getting huge turnouts on her book tour, the network issued an on-air apology this afternoon. Fox’s Happening Now co-host Jane Skinner said it was mistake, but didn’t explain how it happened:

In the tease before the segment — the tease to commercial — we told you how those people were already lining up to meet Palin. The problem is, we didn’t actually show you the video we were referencing. Instead, we mistakenly aired what’s called file tape of Sarah Palin. We didn’t mean to mislead anybody in that tease. It was a mistake. And for that, we apologize.

Watch it:

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We Pay Sen. McCaskill $174,000 a Year for This Kind of Whining?
Posted by Natasha Chart, Open Left on November 19, 2009 at 11:00 AM.

Sen. McCaskill explains why the Senate can't be bothered to do anything about the climate bill:

Some senators are skeptical lawmakers will be ready to tackle another huge issue after finishing health care. "After you do one really, really big, really, really hard thing that makes everybody mad, I don't think anybody's excited about doing another really, really big thing that's really, really hard that makes everybody mad," Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said. "Climate fits that category."

This is a grownup Senator talking?

Well, dagnabbit, I wish I'd thought of that when discussing future goals with ex-managers during performance reviews. 'No, no, I don't need to move on to any next project, I already did one really, really hard thing this year. And hold my calls, would you? They interrupt my Mahjong Titans time.'

But look, I've seen some of the Senate's other really, really hard work this year, and it sucked. Also, it was clearly written mostly by lobbyists anyway. Which is not only sleazier than having your Mom do your homework, it's lazier. It means these Senators didn't so much as have to supervise the staff manager that told the policy writers to stop screwing around and get that subparagraph on their desk, ASAP. That's like having your Mom's secretary do your homework.

This is some Subgenius level slacking going on up there in the Senate. If these Senators were on the government dime, why, someone might get angry about this. If we were paying for ... oh, right.

In closing, I can only sputter at this point. So I'm turning you over to the immortal inspirational speaking of George W. Bush. Here, in a 2004 debate with John Kerry, our former president laid out a nobler vision of a public service work ethic that, sadly, may deeply disturb Sen. Claire McCaskill:

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Hoffman Manages to Blame ACORN for His Loss
Posted by BarbinMD, Daily Kos on November 19, 2009 at 10:02 AM.

Proving once and for all that he really was the only true Republican in the race, the loser in the election to represent New York's 23rd District is now sobbing that ACORN cost him the election. And apparently they pelted the teabagger candidate with nuts until he was "forced to concede."

With his prospect of winning the 23rd Congressional District race now almost zero, Conservative Party candidate Douglas L. Hoffman suggested Wednesday in a letter that “ACORN, the unions and the Democratic Party” “tampered” with results to deny him victory.

Mr. Hoffman provided no evidence to support his claims, but asked fellow conservatives to send donations his way to “ensure every vote is counted.”

Jerry O. Eaton, Jefferson County Republican elections commissioner, called Mr. Hoffman's assertion “absolutely false.”

Outraged teabaggers can go to Hoffman's website and see no evidence surface -- although the URL is pretty convincing.

Give it up, Mr. Hoffman. Swallow your loss and move on.

GOP Lawmakers Accuse Holder of Being a Terrorist Sympathizer
Posted by Steve Benen on November 19, 2009 at 9:00 AM.

ENOUGH TO MAKE AN ATTORNEY GENERAL LAUGH.... Attorney General Eric Holder talked to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, primarily about the decision to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his alleged co-conspirators in federal court. It didn't go especially well -- Republicans on the panel didn't seem persuaded -- but Dahlia Lithwick highlighted the most troubling aspect of the Q&A.

Specifically, some GOP senators are concerned that some Justice Department officials, including the attorney general himself, may actually be terrorist sympathizers.

[Sen. Chuck Grassley (R) of Iowa] demanded that Holder explain the presence in the solicitor general's office of Neal Katyal, who represented Osama Bin Laden's driver at the Supreme Court. Grassley used a smear from the New York Post (penned by the writer who ridiculously claimed Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh believed "Sharia law could apply to disputes in US courts") to demand that Holder account for Jennifer Daskal as counsel in its National Security Division, who allegedly wants terrorists to have more time to write poetry. Grassley demanded that Holder produce a list of DoJ appointees who have ever acted as lawyers for terror detainees.

 

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No Stupak Language in Senate Bill; Boxer "Couldn't Be Happier," Hatch Promises "Holy War"
Posted by Adele Stan, AlterNet on November 19, 2009 at 6:46 AM.

At Majority Leader Harry Reid's announcement yesterday about the health-care bill he seeks to introduce on the Senate floor, the elephant in the room was women's reproductive rights, which were not addressed from the podium.

But ever since the House passed its health-care bill with the egregious Stupak amendment attached -- which bars virtually all abortion coverage from being offered in the exchanges through which most individual policies will be purchased -- battles over reproductive rights have taken center stage as the Senate hammered out its version of the legislation, titled the the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. 

The Washington Post reports that the bill does not go the Stupak route, and instead establishes a "firewall" between federally-funded subsidies for insurance premiums and private funds that could be used to pay for plans that contain abortion coverage. ""I couldn't be happier," Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., told the Post. "For those who want to keep abortion out of this bill, Senator Reid did it the right way." Boxer is regarded as the Senate's foremost pro-choice advocate.

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News Flash: Christians Still Not Victimized by Hate Crimes Legislation
Posted by Steven D., Booman Tribune on November 19, 2009 at 6:38 AM.

There is a group which has seen a 25% rise in hate crimes against them in Florida, 17% which involve violent physical assaults. This might surprise some of my counterparts on the Right, but the group which is incurring these vicious attacks is not the one they would suspect.

That's right, violent hate crimes against white Christians are not increasing despite the election of that Kenyan Born Muslim loving Barack Husein Obama. I know it's hard to believe considering all the angst expressed on right wing talk shows about how Christians are under attack and are being victimized and terrorized by Obama, Atheists, Secularists, Democrats and Gays, but its true, nonetheless.

Let me ask all those concerned Republicans and Conservative Christians who are so afraid/whiny/have their undies in a twist over their alleged claim that that the recent hate crimes legislation protecting gays was directed against them (despite the fact that all people of religious faith have been a protected class under hate crime legislation since the first such laws were written years ago.

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Oklahoma Lawmaker Considering Bill To Opt Out Of Hate Crimes Act
Posted by Alex Seitz-Wald, Think Progress on November 19, 2009 at 3:12 AM.

A common right-wing objection to federal health care legislation is that it's unconstitutional. So-called "tenthers" argue that the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution never explicitly gives the federal government the right to regulate health care, leaving that power exclusively in the hands of the states. To that end, officials in various states have raised the possibility of passing legislation to exempt their residents from federal health care reform if it passes.

Oklahoma state Sen. Steve Russell (R) is proposing to use the same argument and tactic to try to exempt his state from the recently-passed Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act — which extends hate crimes protections to gays and lesbians — because he claims it infringes on freedom of speech:

Russell said because the government has decided to intervene on issues of morality, he is worried that religious leaders who speak out against any lifestyle could be imprisoned for their speech.

"The law is very vague to begin with," Russell said. "Sexual orientation is a very vague word that could be extended to extremes like necrophilia." [...]

Russell said Oklahoma can opt out of the law on the basis of the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

"The bill gives the federal government power that was not given to them in the Constitution," Russell said. "I am aware of the supremacy of the federal government over state governments, but the federal requirements are vague enough for us to make actions. We just have to be very careful on how we proceed."

Hate crime protections have been on the books since 1969, but Russell seems to object to only those which protect gays and lesbians. Moreover, Russell and the other tenthers have flimsly legal basis for their claims. The Constitution gives Congress broad power to "provide for the common defense and general welfare," but as Ian Millhiser noted, tenthers "insist that these words don't actually mean what they say." The right-wing fringe believes landmark federal programs such as Medicare, Social Security, the federal highway system, and rules regulating airplane safety are unconstitutional.

Other right wingers have echoed Russell's concern about the new hate crimes bill: Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) said on the House floor that the measure would lead to Nazism and the legalization of pedophilia and necrophilia. But as Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) said, "Nothing in this legislation diminishes an American's freedom of religion, freedom of speech or press or the freedom to assemble," because the law "targets acts, not speech." These acts need to be targeted. In 2007 — the most recent year for which data is available — 16.6 percent of all hate crimes reported reported to the FBI "resulted from sexual-orientation bias."

Newsweek Taps Bush Aide For Obama Reporting
Posted by Ari Melber, The Nation on November 19, 2009 at 1:00 AM.

See if you can follow this logic.

A recent article in Newsweek states that Democrats could have won a "very significant number of Republican votes in Congress" for the stimulus -- had there only been a "meaningful tax-cut component." Political journalism is often imaginative, but this verges on delusion. After all, Obama labored to add about $280 billion in tax cuts to the stimulus -- over objections from many Democrats -- and still netted zero Republican votes in the House. Then, the piece asserts that Obama has no "coattails," based on 2009 elections, and reports "early signs of Obama fatigue are emerging." (Again, another observer might note that Democrats have won all 5 special congressional elections this year.) The article also predicts that gubernatorial losses in Virginia and New Jersey "will" make some Democrats "very nervous" about health care reform, which is a "political risk" for the party.

"We appear to be witnessing the beginnings of a significant Republican revival," continues the piece, bringing home its quirky counter-narrative. Lucky for struggling Democrats, however, this Newsweek item closes with some free political advice. "Liberals in Washington would do well to let go of the Republican breakdown narrative," notes the final sentence, "and pull back to the center--or suffer the consequences."

It's the kind of article that might leave you wondering if the author simply works for the G.O.P.

Newsweek's byline states that the writer, Yuval Levin, is "editor of National Affairs and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center." It all sounds quite journalistic and non-partisan. But Levin is also a former aide to President George W. Bush. (He served on the White House domestic policy staff as recently as 2006). If anything, this government experience makes Levin's political analysis more interesting. Why keep it from readers?

As it happens, Levin's first piece for Newsweek, back in March, was prominently billed as Obama analysis from "a Bush veteran." So I put the question to Newsweek, and spokesperson Katherine Barna shares their rationale:

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