Goldman Sachs Report: Watered-Down Senate Health Bill a Windfall for Big Insurance
Posted by Igor Volsky, Think Progress on November 13, 2009 at 3:55 PM.

The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein reports that Goldman Sachs (in the course of performing “God’s work“) did a report analyzing the impact of health reform on Cigna, Aetna, WellPoint, UnitedHealth and Humana. While Stein concludes that insurers would profit from undermining health care reform, the report also points out that a more “centrist” version of the Senate Finance Committee (SFC) legislation would lead to the highest “aggregate revenue growth” for the insurance industry:

Should lawmakers further water-down the SFC bill, the industry will stand to profit, the report implies, suggesting that the “bull” case scenario is a reform package that brings in millions of new government-subsidized customers without requiring the industry to pay any new taxes. Industry revenue would grow 6.9% from “more moderation of provisions in the current SFC plan or as a result of changes prior to the major implementation in 2013,” the report states. The report therefore suggests that the insurance industry may actually prefer watered-down reform over nothing. The Wonk Room has more. (Chart courtesy of FDL)

Politico Trivializes Rape by Gov Contractors, Spins Franken Amendment as Partisan Attack (Obsenity-Laden Rant Alert)
Posted by Thers, Whiskey Fire on November 13, 2009 at 2:53 PM.

Here is why I dislike the American Political Insider Press, and by "dislike," I mean, "want to toss into a vat of shark-infested sulfuric acid." It is because of this class of thing from The Politico.

When Al Franken ran for the Senate last year, the former “Saturday Night Live” star had to reassure skeptics that the fierce partisan attacks he lobbed at Republicans as an author and radio host wouldn’t define his style as a legislator. 

But because of one of his first pieces of legislation, Democrats now have their most brazen attack line of the emerging 2010 campaign season: that Republicans are insensitive to rape victims. 

The charge stems from a Franken-sponsored amendment that would prohibit the Department of Defense from contracting with companies that require employees to resolve workplace complaints — including complaints of sexual assault — through private arbitration rather than the courts. 

Only in the god-blighted shitworld of the horrible fuckassed American Political Insider Press is it possible to even fucking think for a motherfucking minute that it's Playing with Partisan Dynamite to argue that the American government should not negotiate expensive contracts with companies that shield rapists. What the fuck? What the motherfucking fuck?

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Will the Senate Stand Against Anti-Choice Stupak Amendment?
Posted by Emily Douglas, The Nation on November 13, 2009 at 1:43 PM.

"That's the price of health-care reform." That's what plenty of oh-so-well-meaning pundits have told those of us making a fuss over the Stupak amendment, the late-night attachment to the House health-care reform bill that will leave virtually any woman accessing insurance through the health insurance exchange without abortion coverage. (Another argument that's cropped up is that the Stupak amendment won't actually affect abortion access for that many women, a claim that's based on faulty analysis of Guttmacher data on billing for abortion care, as Adam Sonfield explains.)

But both pro-choice and progressive health-care reform leaders and members of Congress have come out swinging against the amendment, some going as far as to make it clear they'll refuse to support reform if Congressional Democrats decide to pay for it with women's health-care. Calling the amendment a "middle-class abortion ban," Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards said Wednesday that her organization would not support health-care reform with an amendment further limiting access to abortion. Meanwhile, Senators Barbara Mikulski and Diane Feinstein have begun strategizing how to keep Stupak off the Senate bill, the New York Times reports.

"Keeping Stupak off the Senate bill is our primary goal right now," Laurie Rubiner, PPFA vice-president, said, "and chances are very good for that."

"We're definitely hearing a lot of encouraging talk [about the Senate]," Donna Crane, public policy director at NARAL Pro-Choice America, adds. "The Senate thinks the House went too far."

Sen. Ben Nelson has grabbed headlines with the announcement that he won't support the Senate healthcare reform bill unless it, too, bans coverage of abortion for any plan financed in part by affordability credits, but advocates were doubtful that he could get the 60 votes necessary to have the bill considered.

"If someone wants to offer this very radical amendment, which would really tear apart [a decades-long] compromise, then I think at that point they would need to have 60 votes to do it," Sen. Barbara Boxer told the Huffington Post. "It is a much more pro-choice Senate than it has been in a long time, and it is much more pro-choice than the House."

"Ben Nelson is looking for any excuse to vote against health-care reform," Rubiner says. "It's abortion today, it was the public plan yesterday."

NARAL, though it is running a petition asking Sen. Harry Reid to keep Stupak-like language off the Senate bill, has not yet drawn a line in the sand. "We don't have an answer to that question," Crane told me when I asked whether NARAL would support a health-care reform bill with Stupak-like language attached. But the group's rhetoric is strong: in Politico, Nancy Keenan, NARAL president, said that "we are prepared to stop at nothing."

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Limbaugh Calls Palin Memoir "One of Most Substantive Policy Books I've Read"
Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet on November 13, 2009 at 12:25 PM.

You know a public figure has captured the cultural imagination when, despite a severely half-baked political career, her memoir becomes a bestseller before it's even released -- and then, when it is released, there are not one, but two, parody books -- with the same title -- hitting shelves at the same time.

I'm talking, of course, about Sarah Palin, that tragicomic trick candle of politics, who never ever seems to go away, no matter how much we want her to (or secretly don't). Her new book, 413 pages long and flirtily titled Going Rogue, will be officially bestowed upon the world next week and reporters everywhere are already feverishly plucking out the best parts -- Palin's innermost thoughts on Katie Couric, for example.

Meanwhile, a number of enterprising lefties are promoting books of their own. And these are actually worth buying.

Going Rouge is the title of this book, to be released next week, on the same day at Going Rogue. A sort of best-of collection of commentary inspired by the former governor of Alaska, it cuts to the chase right on the cover ("An American Nightmare" is the subtitle). And why shouldn't it? By any sane standard, the prospect of Sarah Palin holding national office was -- and remains -- a frightening thought. Now, all the reasons why are packed into one convenient book.

To be clear, this book is no spoof: "Looking back, progressives and feminists did an admirable job in picking apart the GOP's first female vice presidential nominee," write co-editors Betsy Reed and Richard Kim of The Nation Magazine in the introduction. Featuring serious (and sometimes hilarious) articles by writers including Gloria Steinem, Katha Pollitt, Matt Taibbi, and Max Blumenthal -- not to mention our own lovable AlterNet staff -- it's a progressive pre-emptive strike we can totally get behind. (Remember, this is a woman who supports shooting wolves from helicopters.)

Moving on, Going Rouge is also the title of this book, which takes a whole different approach to deconstructing Sarah Palin. "That other book just has a bunch of words," co-author Michael Stinson recently told Buzzflash. "We got pictures!"

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Video: The Victimization of Carrie Prejean? How a Sex Tape and a Softball Question From Larry King = Christian Persecution
Posted by Adele Stan, AlterNet on November 13, 2009 at 9:37 AM.

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO

The e-mail from the right-wing magazine, Human Events, bore this subject line: Liberal attacks on beautiful female conservative

The "beautiful female conservative" is Carrie Prejean, the Miss Universe pageant contestant who became famous by dint of her answer to a question posed to her by pageant judge Perez Hilton about same-sex marriage. And the attacks are presumably the distribution of a pornographic video featuring Prejean that surfaced earlier this week.

Now Prejean is hawking her book, Still Standing, at an inconveniently-timed moment: the pornographic video of Prejean surfaced just as the book was released, reportedly during her negotiations with pageant officials for the settlement of a counter-suit she filed against them after the pageant sued her for repayment of the cost of her breast implants.

It's all very Christian.

So Human Events is offering the Prejean book to you, free of cost, if only you'll take a trial subscription -- at no risk to you! -- of their anti-sex, anti-woman magazine. It's win-win for everybody. The bestseller list is gamed through the bulk buy of Still Standing by the magazine (progressive mags do this, too); Human Events gets new subscribers, and the Prejean-as-victim narrative is advanced.

Prejean herself has been the foremost saleswoman of the story of her martyrdom, but she may not be the best pitch-person for the job. On Wednesday's edition of CNN's Larry King Live, she proved her pitch to be less than perfect, when she called his softball question about the pageant settlement "inappropriate," removed her mic, but stayed in the guest chair. (Video at the end of this post.)

Carrie Prejean was just another beauty pageant contestant until, at the Miss Universe pageant, she was asked what she thought of same-sex marriage. Instead of giving a "world peace" answer, Prejean said she thought marriage was something that shold take place only between a man and a woman.

In the days that followed, Prejean was held up to ridicule for her statement, and another right-wing martyr was born. Proponents of same-sex marriage hardly helped their cause with the ferocity of their attacks. Some went after her family; Perez Hilton, the pageant judge who asked her the same-sex marriage question, called her a "dumb bitch" on his blog.

Prejean was lionized by the religious right, appearing as a keynoter at the Family Research Council's Values Voter Summit. There she recounted the attacks she endured after her pageant answer, but said she knew she had been chosen for that purpose. "As I saw my goals and aspirations flash by me, I knew God had a plan for me… God chose me for that moment," she told the audience of evangelical Christians. "He knew I was strong enough to get through all the junk that I have been through."

Since the surfacing of Prejean's sex video, she has cancelled appearances before conservative audiences, but that hasn't stopped Human Events from advancing the story of poor Carrie's victimization. After all, they still have that pile of books to get rid of.

VIDEO AFTER THE JUMP

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

No, It's not Elitist to Think the Tea-Baggers Are Idiots
Posted by Oliver Willis, Oliver Willis.com on November 13, 2009 at 8:39 AM.

A post over at the Seminal is taking “liberal elitism” to task for not taking the Tea Party people seriously, and that that will lead to the election of Sarah Palin and other such ilk.

To quote our vice president, malarkey.

While I have long argued that there is too much elitism on the left for my tastes, there’s a wide gulf between holding your nose in the air for no good reason and dumbing yourself down in order to appeal to the lowest common idiotic denominator. Suck is the case with the Tea Party group and their leaders like Palin.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

In Obama Era, Neo-Nazis Becoming More Visible
Posted by David Neiwert, Orcinus on November 13, 2009 at 7:41 AM.

James Verini at the Daily Beast notices something we've been tracking here at Orcinus too: Neo-Nazis and far-right extremists are not only recruiting more openly, they're being much more public in their full-on expressions of racism, nativism, and xenophobia. Unlike David Duke, these characters aren't even trying to hide it:

A year after President Obama's election, hate groups are feeling bolder than they have in over a decade, and their usually insular anger is beginning to spill into the public realm. This weekend, the National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi organization, held rallies in Arizona and Minnesota. Those demonstrations came on the heels of similar actions in Southern California, where epithet-spewing white supremacists were forced to disband by rock-throwing counter-protesters. The upsurge in visibility is more than anecdotal—law-enforcement officials are monitoring levels of agitation among extremist groups that they say are the highest since Timothy McVeigh’s deadly attack in Oklahoma City nearly 15 years ago.

The outcries of right-wing tea-partiers, death panellers, birthers, and the like are accompanied by increased activity all along the paranoid fringe.

“It’s sort of a beehive now,” says James Cavanaugh, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Cavanaugh was one of the agents at the standoff at David Koresh’s Waco, Texas, compound in 1993 (which McVeigh timed his terrorist act to commemorate, two years later, on April 19, 1995). Last October in Tennessee, Cavanaugh aided in the arrest of two white supremacists charged with plotting to assassinate Obama, and in 2007 he helped bring down members of the Alabama Free Militia, who were found with hundreds of hand- and rifle grenades and other explosives. The arrests had an unsettling familiarity. “We haven’t had that kind of activity since the 1990s,” Cavanaugh says.

“We believe there is a real resurgence,” adds Lieutenant David Hall, director of the Missouri Information Analysis Center, which tracks antigovernment extremist groups around the Midwest. “The atmosphere is ripe.”

That was obvious to anyone who was in downtown Phoenix, Arizona, this past weekend:

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Hawks in Congress Willing to Shell Out Trillions for War, but Won't Help Americans Get Decent Health-Care
Posted by Zaid Jilani, Think Progress on November 13, 2009 at 3:57 AM.

In recent days, heated policy discussions in Washington have largely focused on two topics: a possible escalation of the war in Afghanistan and health care legislation. Both a troop escalation and health care legislation carry significant price tags: roughly $100 billion and $80-$100 billion a year respectively. (It should be noted that health care reform, unlike a troop surge, would cut the deficit.)

In his New York Times column today [ed: Thursday], columnist Nicholas Kristof asks why hawks claim health reform is “fiscally irresponsible” while enthusiastically supporting a troop surge in Afghanistan, given the fact that fixing our broken health care system is, unlike a troop surge, essential to the health and well-being of Americans:

The health care legislation pays for itself, according to the Congressional Budget Office, while the deployment in Afghanistan is unfinanced and will raise our budget deficits and undermine our long-term economic security.

So doesn’t it seem odd to hear hawks say that health reform is fiscally irresponsible, while in the next breath they cheer a larger deployment of troops in Afghanistan?

Meanwhile, lack of health insurance kills about 45,000 Americans a year, according to a Harvard study released in September. So which is the greater danger to our homeland security, the Taliban or our dysfunctional insurance system?

Indeed, hawkish legislators have lined up to both demand a costly surge in U.S. troops in Afghanistan while at the same time claiming that deficit-cutting health care legislation would simply be too expensive:

– Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) has called for providing the “resources [needed]” for a “significant increase in U.S. forces” while warning that he is “really worried about what [health care reform] would do to the deficit.” [9/13/09, 10/26/09]

– Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has complained that passing health care legislation would “expand government spending even more,” while also boasting of his Republican caucus’s “broad support” for any troop increase in Afghanistan. [10/21/09, 10/11/09]

– Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) wrote a letter to President Obama stating that we “urgently need more resources” in Afghanistan, “including more combat troops,” while at the same time claiming that passing health care legislation would be tantamount to “generational theft” that would run up “unconscionable and unsustainable deficits.” [11/10/09, 8/27/09]

Kristof’s question bears answering. Why is it that hawkish lawmakers are so willing to spend such enormous resources in both lives and treasure on a troop surge in Afghanistan that is increasingly opposed by Americans and Afghans, but are so quick to bark at the price tag of health care legislation that could save the lives of the 45,000 Americans who die every year because they don’t have access to health care? As Glenn Greenwald notes, “Urging that more Americans be sent into endless war paid for with endless debt, while yawning and lazily waving away with boredom the hordes outside dying for lack of health care coverage, is one of the most repugnant images one can imagine.”