Next Step: Medicare Buy-In; My letter to my Congressman

Dear Congressman Berman:

First, I want to thank you for being a strong supporter of the historic and vital health care reform legislation which just passed. I know from communicating with you in the past that you were and are a supporter of stronger measures, including a robust public option.

Now I want to urge you to sign on as a co-sponsor of the newly introduced "Medicare You Can Buy Into" bill, HR 4789. This is what is really needed.

It's a simple 3-and-a-half page bill that would let everyone have access to Medicare if they were willing to pay for it.

There are 80 co-sponsors already. I believe that this bill will go a long way to making health care really affordable and control its spiraling costs, by giving people a real alternative to the wasteful private insurance market, and providing real competition which will have the effect of making everyone's health care less costly and more effective.

As a Democrat, I don't need to argue to you that what makes for competition is not just a laissez-faire, anything goes system, but a balanced and regulated market, where public institutions actually ENSURE competition.

Please support HR 4789, and help make the first step towards real health care reform which has already been taken just that... a first step... towards a balanced and competitive system that really does guarantee efficient and affordable health care for everyone.

Thank you.

David Studhalter
North Hollywood, CA

♦♦
What I hope to eventually see is real Medicare for All, where health care is treated simply as a right, to be paid for from taxes, with those who want to purchase more luxurious coverage or directly buy private care free to do so on the private market. But this bill would be a tremendous improvement over the current system, and would allay many of the potential problems foreseen by many economists with the newly passed system.

President Obama signs historic arms pact with Russia

While the Party of No Deal continues to froth and rail against their historic legislative defeat this week, the President, flanked by the Secretary of State, continue to do the vital work they were elected to do.

The Party of No Deal to Continue ... not dealing

"[O]ur people are pretty upset. The consequences of doing something this big in such a partisan, sleazy way--those consequences are real."  

--Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), March 25, 2010.

WTF. I'm sorry, but this is just beyond belief. Let's get this straight. Alan Grayson was being theatrical when he put up posters on the House Floor saying: "Republican Health Care Plan: 1. Don't Get Sick. 2. If you do get sick... 3. Die quickly." But there is truth in this portrayal. The administration and Dems on the Senate Finance Ctte. worked for months and months to try to get any constructive cooperation from even a small number of Republicans, but they offered absolutely nothing constructive or even halfway realistic; and they obstructed and opposed everything, entirely, always, and finally (other than what turned out to be a little phony pretend cooperation from Olympia Snowe).

Meanwhile, other critical issues languished, and the Obama legislative agenda was effectively derailed by the tactics of obstruction and delay, with no cooperation, no negotiation in good faith, and no realistic alternatives.  This can be contrasted with what often seemed to Progressives like embarassingly excessive cooperative attitudes from many Democrats during the Bush presidency (and Bush I's and Reagan's, let's not forget, but not... remember Newt's shutdown?...reciprocated by them during Clinton's).

The Democrats are partisan? The Democrats are sleazy? Because they used majority rule to pass legislation? Because they used the reconciliation process, which has been used more often by Republicans, including in passing multi trillion dollar non-offset tax cuts that have ruined our fiscal health going forward for decades? Because they used their congressional majorities to pass the cornerstone of what President Obama ran on, however watered down?

Puh-leeze, Republicans, cut the palaver. Go ahead and continue obstructing, but don't give us that crap. The consequences are real, all right. Eventually enough of the electorate is going to wake up to the fact that you are all shills for ultrarich and corporate interests, you are all liars, and you are all hypocrites, who care nothing for the real interests of ordinary people, and you will be politically marginalized. Even your own so-called moderate supporters have already mostly left.

Some day the Republican party will remake itself, just as the Democrats (largely unfortunately) did after the historic defeat of George McGovern. But until then, I think their trajectory is unlikely to be upwards, given this kind of negative and angry refusal to work with anyone on anything. The public, ultimately, will judge this childish and elitist conduct harshly.

Dem No votes on HCR Reconciliation: Lincoln, Pryor, Nelson

The three Democrats who failed to vote for the Senate reconciliation bill are:

Blanche Lincoln (AR)

Mark Pryor (AR)

Ben Nelson (NE)

All three should face primary challenges, for many reasons, but one of them being this vote.

Note that even Lieberman, Conrad, and Bayh voted YES.

Repubs are nuts to base campaign on repeal of Health Care

Maybe, maybe, I'm totally out to lunch on this, but I seriously think that the Repubs are out of their minds to try to campaign to repeal health care reform. There was an immediate uptick in support for HCR, the President, and even for Dems in Congress; if the GOP folks think the anger they've stirred up with lying propaganda will increase once the bill becomes law, I think they're nuts. But have at it, you lousy lying hypocrites... I do believe it will eventually be your undoing.

Petition to AGs not to sue to block health care

Chris Kelly, candidate for Calif. AG, asked his e-mail audience to sign this petition, calling on the rightist AGs nationwide who've filed frivolous suits to grandstand on health care (since it's generally recognized that even with the right wing judiciary in some areas and in the Supreme Court, these suits are very unlikely to go anywhere). I added the following comment when I signed the petition:

This litigation is frivolous, as the AGs well know. Only radical interventionist judges (of which, to be sure, there are several on the Supreme Court) would even consider upsetting foundational stare decisis to give these cases more than cursory examination. Moreover, as I say to all my conservative friends, if you really believe that our country cannot afford to provide public health care which is a shadow of that provided by South Korea and Taiwan to their people, then your hero George W. Bush's unpaid-for trillion dollar war and non-offset multi-trillion dollar tax cuts for the rich apparently did even more damage to our economy, and created a debt crisis of even more monumental proportions, than I imagined. Better to spend our energies fixing those problems than trying to deny decent health care to the poor and middle class. For shame.

David Brooks's column

David Brooks just annoys me to no end. First, he gives a précis of glittering generalities about the social progressivism of Democrats over the years. Then he says the health care bill will stifle the American prospect because of fiscal irresponsibility. Ignore for a moment the economic realities which belie his assumption that health care reform will not actually help to reduce the growth of health care costs as a proportion of the overall economy (which has been the actual experience, as T. R. Reid documents, of every single country which has adopted universal health care). How someone who supported a trillion dollar unpaid-for war which has been wholly destructive of American interests, and a multi-trillion dollar not-offset series of tax cuts, can complain about fiscal irresponsibility is beyond me. Oh, yeah. He's a Republican. Highfalutin' or not, they're all hypocrites, and he's no exception. 

Read this «Open Letter to Conservatives»

Read Russell King's Open Letter to Conservatives.

Newsmax Propaganda Poll

I sent this to the right wing piece of crap Newsmax in response to their propaganda poll on the passage of health care. 

Do you people really think your ridiculous health care poll isn't an obvious marketing gimmick for your right wing cyberrag? First, you deliberately choose a menacing looking portrait of Obama. Then, every question is farcially propagandistic, taking a page straight from Goebbels' propaganda manual. You even (no doubt deliberately, or at minimum illiterately) misspell "democrats'" as "democrat's". To top it off, in order to submit this nonsense, one has to agree to receive marketing e-mails from you. This is not only not scientific in any way, it's blatant propaganda. You folks should be ashamed of yourselves, but, unfortunately, I'm quite sure you aren't.

Please sign petition in favor of final passage of HCR reconciliation

I don't know how much difference it makes, but if you support Harry Reid's effort to finally, finally, get Health Care Reform done and on President Obama's desk, please take 5 seconds to fill out four fields and submit this electronic petition.

Thank you.

Health Care Reform will be bad for Party of No Deal

The Health Care Bill... assuming reconciliation passes the Senate, is a solid start to eventual real Health Care Reform. 

The Party of No Deal's assumption that it will play politically for them, especially beyond the immediate midterm election, is, in my view almost certainly overly optimistic on their part, and not something we Progressive Democrats need fret overly much about. I offer David Frum's piece here, about how passage of HCR is the GOP's waterloo, not Obama's, as an indicator, and the following, Glenn Greenwald commenting on a CNN poll, as actual evidence: 

 A new CNN poll today finds that Americans oppose the current health care plan by a margin of 59-39%, but a sizable portion of those opposed -- 13% -- oppose it because "it is not liberal enough" (see questions 20 and 21):

Thus, a majority of Americans either support the plan or believe it should be more liberal (52%), while only a minority (43%) oppose the plan on the ground that it is too liberal.

To my mind, this indicates that the proportion of the public that wants "change"... meaning at least modestly progressive reform, is about 39+13 = 52%, just about the same proportion as elected President Obama. So, Republicans, don't be so damn sure this will inure to your benefit, especially in the long term. I think it will not. 

Wingers Gone Mad

Georgia Congressman sees parallels between health care reform bill and "Great War of Yankee Aggression.'

I think it's fair to say some of these right wingers have literally been driven mad in frustration at no longer being in control.

Ryan says GOP will repeal health care: Bring it On!

The mentally challenged Ayn Randite Paul Ryan, author of the Republican Roadmap budget (that would increase the deficit, transfer even more wealth to the superrich, increase middle class taxes, and destroy the most popular social programs in U.S. History), has a new line: the GOP, if it takes back control of Congress, will repeal the Health Care Bill. 

Let's parse this a bit. First, it effectively concedes HCR will pass. Second, it ignores the fact that the President would obviously veto such a repeal. So what does this mean? They think they can win elections by arguing that HCR was a bad idea, after it becomes law?

I hope so. We can use this same idiot's budget plan to paint Repubs as shills for the very rich, who want to screw ordinary people out of every benefit they now have, including the most recently passed (more or less) universal health care. If they think this is a winning strategy, I say, they're nuts, and let's have it, because it will not work for them.

Right Wing Congressman Supports Single Payer (!?)

I suppose it should not surprise me that a right-wing Republican would be a self-contradicting idiot (from TPM):

[MSNBC's] Shuster accused Republicans of supporting insurers, [Rep. John] Shadegg [R-AZ] balked.

"No we don't! You guys keep saying that, but I'm not the guy pushing the bill that says we should compel people to buy insurance from the for-profit guys. That's the Democrats," he said.

Then, after some back and forth with Shuster: "I would support single-payer."

"You would support a government-run medical system?" Shuster asked.

"Absolutely," Shadegg said. "I would support forcing American insurance companies to compete. Right now they have a monopoly."

He also said that the best way to pay for those with pre-existing conditions is to "spread their costs among the healthy, among the taxpayers."

On his web site, Shadegg is described as "known for his strong advocacy for free market health care reform" and once compared single-payer to Soviet gulags.

Go figure. (Might take a while, because it doesn't add up). Interesting, though, almost despite himself, he actually was giving at least the core of a case for single-payer. I guess the essential logic of compassion somehow penetrated the fog of his mean-spirited ideology.

Erick Erickson, extremist, on CNN

Here's my comment to CNN about their execrable decision to give airtime to the notorious right wing extremist, Erick Erickson:

I had long ago concluded that CNN's former reputation for reasonable objectivity and temperateness was no longer deserved, in light of its consistent tilt to the right since the commencement of the Second Bush Administration, but the selection of the GROSSLY intemperate and extremist Erick Erickson as a commentator has pushed the network entirely off the cliff in my book. I will consider the slot on the dial occupied by CNN to be a vacuum, unsuitable for viewing, like FoxNews, henceforth.

Final March for Reform and What's Ahead for Democrats

The materials being put out by OFA (Organizing for America, the President's outreach organization), on the "Final March for Reform" are very good, and very well organized. I hope this is a blueprint for greater activism from the President, in particular as to the specifics of the legislation he wants to see passed. 

The President was great in Ohio the other day, and I think this is just what reform actually takes: highly visible presidential leadership.

I hope going forward that the lesson learned from Health Care is that you must come to the table with the best reform you can think of... and compromise from there. The mistake we made, as Democrats, in HCR was to compromise away Medicare for All or something of that sort before we even came to the negotiations.

Also, I think it must by now be abundantly clear that the Party of No Deal is just that... and that we have to convince the people to demand that their Republican (and some Democratic) congresspeople and Senators vote for their interests.

And, in the campaign, we have to be willing to call them out, point out their hypocrisy, point out how they represent corporate interests and the interests of the Very, Very Rich, and not the interests they pretend to represent.

With Dennis Kucinich having yielded to pressure (including even from Daily KOS's Markos Moulitsas), I am now reasonably optimistic that this HCR reconciliation bill will actually pass, and that it will, in fact, serve as a springboard for further critical reforms.

I have seen commentary (not sure about actual polling) indicating that possibly the election of Brown in Massachusetts was actually the low water mark for Democrats, and that things are actually swinging back already. If that's true, then a huge push to counter the lies and hypocrisy of the Party of No Deal may minimize the damage this MidTerm, and from there, we just have to continue to shape the message, pull together as a party to make sure that there actually is a reform agenda that can be simply and clearly explained to be in the best interests of the great majority of the public, and fight like hell to regain and build on victorious margins in the Congress.

To this end, I would like to see the President's supporters organize to actually buy time for Presidential Fireside Chats, (including advertising to get people to watch them). I have been critical of the President and especially of some of his advisers, but I do think his communication abilities are second to few, if any, and that if he will get out there with real "fire in the belly" and ask the public for support, with strong, albeit straightforward and simple, arguments for his policies, he could actually easily turn around the perception that his presidency is floundering, and create a big momentum of public good will for his agenda. So far, the Party of No Deal has been winning the Message War; they're good at it; but now is certainly not the time to give up.
 

Shout Down Bush War and Tax Cut supporters!

And on the subject of Lying Hpocrite Republican hypocrisy, could we just stipulate, please, that anyone who supported the Not-Paid-For Trillion Dollar War for Iran's Interests (aka the Second Iraq War), and the Two Giant Not-Paid-For Wealth Transfers to the Rich (aka "Tax Cuts") under Bush, should be permanently banned from braying about budget deficits? And if they won't shut up, let's just shout them down!

After all, these two events account for the bulk of the current national debt. Let's have some truth around here. 

Lying Hypocrites hypocritical once more (surprise)!

I have no strong opinion on whether it's a good idea to use the "Self-executing" rule to pass the Senate HCR bill in the house at the same time as the reconciliation markup.

But I have to comment on the now continual total hypocrisy of the Lying Hypocrites Republicans in bleating about it, since under Bush they used exactly this parliamentary maneuver dozens of times. 

Damn, I'm sick of these people. 

T. R. Reid: no-brainer: hate abortion? Support Universal Health Care.

T.R. Reid, author of The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care, writing in the Wa. Post:  

  When I studied health-care systems overseas in research for a book, I asked health ministers, doctors, economists and others in all the rich countries why their nations decided to provide health care for everybody. The answers were medical (universal care saves lives), economic (universal care is cheaper), political (the voters like it), religious (it's what Christ commanded) and moral (it's the right thing to do). And in every country, people told me that universal health-care coverage is desirable because it reduces the rate of abortion.
  It's only in the United States that opponents of abortion are fighting against expanded health-care coverage -- a policy step that has been proved around the world to limit abortions.

Tea Partiers truly nuts

"Tea Party Crowd Calls for Pelosi to be Tried for Treason"

--TPM headline today.

Truly, deeply, these people need to get a grip.