Month: March 2009

Endorsements

by digby

There has been a lot of talk over the last couple of days about Tom Geoghegan’s loss in the special election on Tuesday. I am not a field organizer or a campaign consultant so I’ll leave the discussions of those things to others. I did hear one concern that I think is worth addressing here and that is that bloggers are losing credibility and the trust of our readers by backing candidates who fail. Since I do endorse candidates, either personally or through Blue America, I want to explain my thinking on that once again.

There was a time when I probably would have backed just about anyone in order to put an end to the horrific reign on George W. Bush. I knew it was bad, but the new things we are starting to see come out about that time are so stunning that I am prouder than ever of having been among those who helped in that endeavor. Had our enemies been even a a tenth as lethal as they claimed, and another terrorist attack had taken place on American soil, there is no longer any doubt what would have happened. That’s what they were laying the groundwork for. So, no regrets.

However, since 1996, the mission changed. In addition to fighting the conservatives, I and many others have been trying to specifically advance progressive causes and congressional candidates, with an eye toward long term movement building. And in my view that means sometimes backing causes, ideas and people who are not yet in the political mainstream but which I think have resonance and meaning and reflect principles that I hold. There’s no list of criteria or any great manifesto — I’m just an old country blogger, after all, and have absolutely no delusions of political grandeur about any of this. I trust that everyone who reads this blog is a free thinking adult and knows to do their own research.

I was invited to join Blue America some time back, which was great because the group is dedicated to electing “more and better” Democrats, which translates to more and better progressives because of the philosophical inclinations of the members of the group. And Blue America has a terrific track record over the past few cycles even though the criteria for choosing candidates is based almost entirely on issues and responsiveness to the netroots. To me, that says something.

My personal reason for being part of the group has to do with supporting people with ideas. It’s what I’m interested in and it’s a job that I think the netroots is distinctly qualified for and good at doing. We’re both activist and media and we have a unique function (among others) which is pumping new thinking into the ether and getting both our readers and the political class to consider things that stale conventional wisdom, by its nature, locks out of the conversation. I consider that to be the lubricant in the engine of change.

Anyway, about Geoghegan, there was some discussion that he was difficult to understand. And on a performance level, there were probably some good reasons why that might have been. Public speaking off the cuff is very difficult (and a very good reason why I would rather stick needles under my fingernails than do it myself.) I wrote some of the following in an email on the subject and I thought I would share it with you in case you were wondering about this:

I didn’t find Tom’s presentation to be difficult to understand, but I can see where someone might if they were used to hearing the narrow range of discussion that normally takes place in our discourse. The reason he may have caused some dissonance was the bigness of his ideas.

He called himself the first “post-meltdown” candidacy, which (along with his rivals) was true in a literal sense, but also in an ideological sense. He talked about things like erasing individual debt and *expanding* social security and said that single payer was the only logical system. He did talk about usury and even (gasp!) used Europe as a model for certain programs. He was way outside the parameters of comfortable political discourse in this country. I’m sure some people thought he was incomprehensible — he said things they’ve never heard any politician say before.

When I heard him speak I felt that dissonance and I was aware that the public’s ears had not yet been prepared for these ideas and understood this was going to take a while to sink in. Since this was a special election, I certainly had hope that the large field would provide an opening, but I knew he probably sounded pretty radical to a lot of people.

And I was thrilled to support someone who was bringing these ideas into electoral politics and gaining the attention of the political establishment through the blogs and friends in the liberal intelligentsia — particularly the young, new establishment that’s going to be growing up in the Obama era (and can easily be subsumed in tired conventional Broderism if they aren’t challenged.) It’s movement building at its best. It pushes the conversation left, makes people think in new ways and prepares the ground for other, perhaps more mainstream politicians, to adopt these progressive ways of thinking. It’s extremely useful in an era where the wind is at our backs and big things are being done.

I know everyone feels that we should win all these races and I like to win too, but I think that’s a very cramped vision for progressivism. There’s no opportunity as good as an election to educate the public about policy, principles and ideology, even though most of it is wasted with soundbites and slogans (which are also important, don’t get me wrong.) I’d rather support a new big thinker like Geoghegan over a predictable, blow dried political robot any day, simply for the opportunity to get those ideas out there.

Geoghegan’s speech opened my mind to some things I hadn’t thought about before and I would bet anything he did the same to some others. That’s how new neural pathways are formed in the body politic and how long term change is made. After all, Obama would not be able to speak a common language about progressive change if dirty hippies hadn’t been out there tilting at windmills about the environment,health care etc. for years.

Geoghegan was in a field of number of acceptable Democratic candidates in a Democratic primary for a solid Democratic seat. In cases like those, I back the one who is the most progressive and has the big ideas. To me, that’s just a no brainer. There is no way you can lose.

So, that’s where I’m coming from. If you want to only back those who the political professionals think can best beat Republicans, the DCCC and the DSCC spend many millions of dollars doing research to find and nurture those people. Their track record isn’t any better than others’ a good part of the time, but that is their sole criteria. But if you want to help progressive candidates who have a chance of winning but who, even if they lose, will advance the progressive message in congressional and senate campaigns, then you might want to look at other groups or people you trust who are endorsing candidates for those reasons.

And I would caution anyone who thinks that just because the political class says that a candidate “can’t win” to think again. It happens all the time. In fact, if you read the previous post by dday, you’ll read about one of them — Alan Grayson, a guy who all the smart guys told Howie Klein didn’t have a chance. Blue America endorsed him anyway. Now he’s in Washington giving the Big Money Boyz headaches and causing the Politico to write hit pieces on him because of his rude attitude toward Rush Limbaugh and bankers. Talk about a winner.

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Leave Limbaugh Alooooone

by digby

The liberals have been beating up on poor Rush so badly that the right is the verge of suffering a total breakdown over it. Even lefty bloggers are starting to defend him:

So sad.

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They Don’t Want Us Following The Money

by dday

The Politico writes a hit piece on Alan Grayson today (no link, they’re trolling for one). They, and by proxy the Villagers and Republican concern trolls, are just horrified at his uncouth statements like calling Rush Limbaugh a “has-been hypocrite loser” who “was more lucid when he was a drug addict.” (I think Rush is a constituent, so good luck winning back his vote!)

What they’re really mad about is that he hired a blogger, Matt Stoller, as his senior policy adviser, and he asked officials of the Federal Reserve what they’re doing with nearly $2 trillion dollars of taxpayer money. This has become a feature of the financial meltdown – the utter lack of disclosure.

Banks like BofA will not disclose the timing of the bonuses Merrill Lynch handed out when they were on the verge of collapse, to the extent that people like Andrew Cuomo have to issue subpoenas to get some transparency. UBS will not disclose the names of thousands of Americans hiding their cash in Swiss bank accounts to dodge taxes, to the extent that Congress is attempting to rewrite the laws to crack down on offshore tax havens. AIG will not disclose the counterparties who are getting hundreds of billions of dollars in bailout money from the government, which is a major and evolving scandal that Josh Marshall and the TPM crew are trying to wrap their arms around. This in particular appears to be an unbelievable scheme, almost a black bag job, where the Fed drops money into an account and AIG picks it up so that everyone can maintain the fiction that it isn’t a direct cash transfer. There’s more here, including a description of how derivative counter-parties got away with murder in the 2005 bankruptcy bill, and how their taking all the equity if AIG went down would trigger a real and thoroughgoing collapse (as if one isn’t imminent anyway).

But it’s more than just AIG. The Fed won’t release the names of any of the recipients of nearly $2 trillion in loans over the past two years. Bernie Sanders has legislation to force disclosure. CREW is filing a Freedom of Information Act request to find out. In fact, such requests have already been filed, by Bloomberg News and Fox News, only to be refused, despite being subject to FOIA.

As CREW explained in its request, the documents it seeks are essential to understanding and assessing the government’s response to the devastating economic financial crisis our nation faces. CREW’s Chief Counsel, Anne Weismann, put it like this:

Telling Americans that they are not entitled to know which banks are receiving 2.2 trillion dollars of taxpayer money is unacceptable under any terms. This administration has promised transparency and we expect it to deliver.

What is pretty clear is that a lot of this money is going to the banksters in backdoor bailouts that do nothing for the greater economy. Noriel Roubini writes:

“In the meantime, the massacre in financial markets and among financial firms is continuing. The debate on “bank nationalization” is borderline surreal, with the U.S. government having already committed–between guarantees, investment, recapitalization and liquidity provision–about $9 trillion of government financial resources to the financial system (and having already spent $2 trillion of this staggering $9 trillion figure).

Thus, the U.S. financial system is de facto nationalized, as the Federal Reserve has become the lender of first and only resort rather than the lender of last resort, and the U.S. Treasury is the spender and guarantor of first and only resort. The only issue is whether banks and financial institutions should also be nationalized de jure.

. . . AIG, which lost $62 billion in the fourth quarter and $99 billion in all of 2008 and is already 80% government-owned. With such staggering losses, it should be formally 100% government-owned. And now the Fed and Treasury commitments of public resources to the bailout of the shareholders and creditors of AIG have gone from $80 billion to $162 billion.

News and banks analysts’ reports suggested that Goldman Sachs got about $25 billion of the government bailout of AIG and that Merrill Lynch was the second largest benefactor of the government largesse. These are educated guesses, as the government is hiding the counter-party benefactors of the AIG bailout.”

The inability to disclose is intuitively linked to an inability to tell the truth – the banks are insolvent, the government already essentially owns them, and this inability to admit what’s completely obvious is destined to cripple the economy permanently unless action is taken.

Here’s how the pattern works: first, administration officials, usually speaking off the record, float a plan for rescuing the banks in the press. This trial balloon is quickly shot down by informed commentators.

Then, a few weeks later, the administration floats a new plan. This plan is, however, just a thinly disguised version of the previous plan, a fact quickly realized by all concerned. And the cycle starts again.

Why do officials keep offering plans that nobody else finds credible? Because somehow, top officials in the Obama administration and at the Federal Reserve have convinced themselves that troubled assets, often referred to these days as “toxic waste,” are really worth much more than anyone is actually willing to pay for them — and that if these assets were properly priced, all our troubles would go away […]

So why has this zombie idea — it keeps being killed, but it keeps coming back — taken such a powerful grip? The answer, I fear, is that officials still aren’t willing to face the facts. They don’t want to face up to the dire state of major financial institutions because it’s very hard to rescue an essentially insolvent bank without, at least temporarily, taking it over. And temporary nationalization is still, apparently, considered unthinkable.

But this refusal to face the facts means, in practice, an absence of action. And I share the president’s fears: inaction could result in an economy that sputters along, not for months or years, but for a decade or more.

This is why the establishment is mad at Alan Grayson. He’s willing to say this kind of thing out loud.

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The Contractors Strike Back

by dday

Looks like the military industry-welfare lobby isn’t going to take kindly to Barack Obama’s call to end waste in government contracting and procurement. They’re preparing for battle like you’d expect of people who build weapons systems for a living.

Defense bloat has stunned auditors. A report last year from the Government Accountability Office found that 95 ongoing major defense programs exceeded their budgets, providing an accumulated excess cost of $295 billion to taxpayers. The programs include big-ticket items beloved by the military services, including the Army’s Future Combat System, the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship and the Air Force’s Joint Strike Fighter, which are built by defense-industry giants like Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co., and Raytheon Company, all of which have aggressive lobbying arms and excellent relationships with defense barons on Capitol Hill. According to the government’s Federal Procurement Database, which tracks federal contracts, the Defense Department reported over $394 billion worth of business with private contractors in fiscal 2008 alone.

Defense contractors and their allies in government will not let that money go without a confrontation, say defense reformers […] Their “ground game,” the official said, will be run from the services’ legislative outreach and public-affairs offices, feeding talking points and strategy information to sympathetic members of Congress — something that “got the services in trouble in 2002″ with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld when the Army resisted his ultimately-successful plan to scrap an archaic artillery system called Crusader. An “air game” will feature “a lot of ominous whispers on background to the press and conservative think tanks and commentators about endangering the American people and costing lives in some future fight.”

Gates, whom Obama tasked with working closely with OMB, has told confidantes that he views a sustainable long-term rebalancing of defense priorities as one of his most important tasks now that Obama has given him the chance to continue on as Pentagon chief. His service under the Bush administration was more about supporting the immediate needs of the Iraq war after Bush fired Rumsfeld in November 2006. “The services are accustomed to reviews that start out with a lot of talk about setting priorities and making tough choices but in reality usually end with leaving everything more or less intact,” the Pentagon official said. “This time they have a secretary who really means it.”

As Matthew Yglesias notes, what we’re talking about here is the armed services – part of the federal government – using their own taxpayer-funded public affairs shops to lobby for more wasted contracting and against reform. The fact that the door between the Pentagon and the defense industry is constantly revolving means that a government official who steers contracts to the right company is simply fattening their own resume for the inevitable post-public service career. This is why it’s called a military-industrial complex, after all.

And under the Bush regime, this kind of coziness between government officials and their cronies was simply rampant. In a little-discussed tidbit in yesterday’s press briefing, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack mentions a $400,000 consulting contact with the USDA that he recently cancelled because career staffers considered it “inappropriate.” There’s a follow-up, and the information had to practically be dragged out of Vilsack, but the picture he eventually paints is one of a mob boss creating make-work jobs for his henchmen (Major Garrett is the questioner, trying to make some case for the necessity of useless contracts to avoid lawsuits, or something):

Q Secretary Vilsack, you talked about a $400,000 consulting contract deemed inappropriate. What was inappropriate about it? And just generally, to both of you, one of the problems in federal contracting is when you cancel a contract, sometimes a contract will sue the government because they disagree with the cancellation. How do you end up saving the taxpayers money if you get involved in protracted litigation if it’s not for cause?

SECRETARY VILSACK: Well, I don’t want to go into great detail about this particular contract, other than to say that the career folks who watched this process unfold in the last waning days of this last administration were very concerned about the process, the connections and relationships between people receiving this half-a-million-dollar contract, and what they intended to do with the resource, which the career folks felt was unnecessary and inappropriate.

They made a very strong and powerful case to me that the process wasn’t followed as it should have been; their input was not valued as it should be. We put a lot of confidence in people who have been through this process before, in terms of knowing precisely how best to use these tax dollars. And this particular consulting contract — I’ve looked at the details — I didn’t see any value to USDA from it. I will tell you that it was rather startling to see that a substantial amount of money had already been spent on foreign travel, which, under the circumstances, we did not think was appropriate.

In terms of litigation, I feel fairly confident on this one that we will prevail, and I’d be surprised if it’s questioned.

Q Can you tell us, Mr. Secretary, who this involved and more details? It sounds like a rather startling discovery that you’ve made, and taxpayers probably would like to know more about it.

SECRETARY VILSACK: Well, I think what taxpayers need to know is that every single department of government has now been charged by the President to review in detail the nature of contracts that we’ve entered into. In order to do what American families are doing — American families are sitting down today and trying to decide, how do we save money, how do we eliminate unnecessary spending — their expectation is the government does the same.

I don’t want to get into details about this, but I will tell you that I think it’s appropriate for us to do this. I’m glad the President has instructed us to do this, and I think we’ll probably continue to find savings.

Q But why not get into details? This is government funds — the public has a right to know, with all due respect.

SECRETARY VILSACK: I’m happy to share — I don’t want to step on protocol here — I’m happy to share, if Mr. Gibbs expects it to be —

Q Transparent? (Laughter.)

MR. GIBBS: Lay it out. I’m all for it.

SECRETARY VILSACK: Well, it involves an individual by the name of Stan Johnson who had a close connection with the previous administration. It was a consulting contract for half a million dollars; a substantial amount of money was spent for foreign travel. To be honest with you, we saw very little, if any, value to the USDA. And a number of career folks were very concerned about how the process unfolded. And had their input been valued, the contract would not have been entered into.

Q Is this like a favoritism thing, Mr. Secretary?

SECRETARY VILSACK: You know, I don’t know about that. I don’t know. I just know that there was a close connection. It was a contract that I think was unnecessary, and I know the career people were very concerned about the way in which it unfolded.

Q Consulting on what issue, sir? Consulting on what issue?

SECRETARY VILSACK: Well, that’s a good question, and I can’t answer it.

Q Can we get more details from your department later?

SECRETARY VILSACK: Yes, be happy to.

Here’s a little interview with Stan Johnson. He tried to give some background to what he actually did for the USDA, but mainly it appeared to involve flying from his home in Reno to Washington to work for something called the National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy. Their senior fellows include John Block, the Secretary of Agriculture under Ronald Reagan, and Dan Glickman, Agriculture Secretary under Bill Clinton. And by the way, the NCFAP still has two other contracts with the USDA.

As these things go, NCFAP doesn’t even sound all that bad, but this is just one example of the insidious web of official Washington, between think tanks and contractors and politicians and journalists and staffers and hangers-on, that Obama is basically taking on with this effort. It’s necessary, but it’s going to be a very hard road that’s bound to be more than a little disappointing along the way.

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Abortion Dialog

by digby

Chris Matthews says we have to find middle ground on abortion. Apparently, he just read Lord Saleton’s most recent screed in the NY Times and was very affected by this:

Eight years ago, the Alan Guttmacher Institute surveyed over 10,000 American women who had abortions. Nearly half said they hadn’t used birth control in the month they conceived. When asked why not, 8 percent cited financial problems, and 2 percent said they didn’t know where to get it. By comparison, 28 percent said they had thought they wouldn’t get pregnant, 26 percent said they hadn’t expected to have sex and 23 percent said they had never thought about using birth control, had never gotten around to it or had stopped using it. Ten percent said their partners had objected to it. Three percent said they had thought it would make sex less fun.

This isn’t a shortage of pills or condoms. It’s a shortage of cultural and personal responsibility. It’s a failure to teach, understand, admit or care that unprotected sex can lead to the creation — and the subsequent killing, through abortion — of a developing human being.

Matthews let fly with his interpretation that “the problem is that we have a lot of abortions, a lot of them, in cases where the person is having sex and not doing anything to prevent getting pregnant and that they have no intention of taking to term. What do we do about those people who have sex and have no intention of taking the baby to term?” [Burn them! — ed]

Ken Blackwell replied that science has shown that human life begins at conception whether it’s brainwaves or fingerprints. Yep.

Lord Saletan of Will added that mating is the engine of history.

And then Matthews railed some more against women for just having sex without taking any precautions, and just figuring they can go get an abortion if they get pregnant. He said, “I want these little bitches to think!” (Ok, he didn’t call them little bitches,he said “people,” but the meaning was clear.)

In the whole exchange about responsibility and birth control, not one person mentioned the other person involved in the sexual act — the man.

And one couldn’t help but wonder, considering the direction that conversation was taking, whether or not this new “liberal” approach by Saletan really could result in some common ground. Since both sides already agree that these unwanted pregnancies are the result of lazy, irresponsible Jezebels fucking for fun without giving a second thought to the consequences, perhaps we can agree to keep abortion legal and simply punish women for having unprotected sex some other way that forced childbirth. Talk about consensus.

In fact, I could see a whole bureaucracy set up to investigate and judge women as to whether or not their abortion was justified and find some good way to sanction this shallow, irresponsible behavior. Since they obviously just love getting pregnant and having abortions, there must be some better way to teach these braindead twits that there are consequences for their unbridled lust.

Seriously, is there a more offensive (and increasingly sexist) commenter on this subject than Will Saletan? He really seems to think that if only women understood that they were committing murder, they would take birth control pills and solve this problem once and for all. It’s incredibly insulting to think that women don’t take this seriously, even those who “thought they wouldn’t get pregnant” or “didn’t expect to have sex.” Does he honestly think that because they said this was how their unintended pregnancy happened it follows that they didn’t understand the consequences? Of course they did.

Sex is the most primitive human desire there is. Telling women they need to “think” before they have sex is excellent advice. (Good advice for men too.) It always has been. Churches and parents and every other authority figure have probably been saying it since humans figured out the connection between mating and reproduction. But there are always going to be situations where they don’t. It’s not called a drive for nothing. (And truly, if mating were left to rational decision making the human race would not have survived.)

Maybe Chris Matthews and Will Saletan think that lecturing women about murder and responsibility will make a big difference, but it won’t. All women except the youngest or the mentally disabled understand very well the ramifications of unwanted pregnancy and if there’s is one woman who fully understands the consequences of unprotected sex, it’s the woman whose period is late. To have a bunch of men piously lecturing them that pregnancy is something they need to take seriously is pretty absurd.

The abortion rate could probably be reduced by offering comprehensive sex education and easy access to birth control among the young and poor. (And here’s an idea — maybe we could have the pharmaceutical companies put as much effort into the development of the male birth control pill as they put in to the male boner pill too.) But no matter what they do, the fact is that there are always going to be unintended pregnancies because people will continue to throw caution to the wind sometimes when it comes to sex. You can marry girls off at the age of 13, you can criminalize abortion, you can shun the jezebels, you can perform female castration so they won’t feel any pleasure and a thousand other things and it won’t change it. It’s just the way it is.

And incidentally, it would be really nice if people could stop solely blaming females for being stupid, irresponsible sluts, in this particular argument especially. Condoms are cheap and available everywhere and I really doubt it’s women who are forcing their men not to use them.

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Shake It Off

by digby

Apropos of Paul Krugman’s latest post, here’s a little gem from commenter El Cid in Krugman’s comment section:

From a 1934 Time magazine article just after the Republicans had thoroughly lost in the 1934 elections after FDR’s takeover in 1932:

“”I should like to see the Republican Party reorganized. … I don’t think there is any room in this country for an old conservative party. . . . Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt were liberal leaders. It doesn’t take long to shake off what you call conservatism. . . . There was a vast amount of reaction against the New Deal, but what were the people offered? . . . People can’t eat the Constitution.” [Idaho Republican Senator William Edgar Borah.]

— El Cid

And this time, the Republicans actually flushed the constitution down toilet before they imploded and the Democrats are actually trying to restore it (sort of), so they certainly don’t have any crediblity to squeal about that.

If they keep up with this robotic, anachronistic mantra about tax cuts, socialism and class warfare, 2010 may very well end up being 1934 all over again.

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Principled Conservatism

by dday

The long-awaited health care summit is today, and dozens of members of Congress and stakeholders are at the White House in the first step to reforming a broken system. Here is an excerpt of the President’s prepared remarks:

In the last eight years, premiums have grown four times faster than wages, and an additional nine million Americans have joined the ranks of the uninsured. The cost of health care now causes a bankruptcy in America every thirty seconds. By the end of the year, it could cause 1.5 million Americans to lose their homes. And even for folks who are weathering this economic storm, and have health care now, all it takes is one stroke of bad luck – an accident or illness; a divorce or lost job – to become one of the nearly 46 million uninsured or the millions who have health care, but can’t afford it.

Well, let’s be clear: the same soaring costs that are straining our families’ budgets are sinking our businesses and eating up our government’s budget too. Too many small businesses can’t insure their employees. Major American corporations are struggling to compete with their foreign counterparts. And companies of all sizes are shipping their jobs overseas or shutting their doors for good.

That is why we cannot delay this discussion any longer. And that is why today’s forum is so important. Because health care reform is no longer just a moral imperative, it is a fiscal imperative. If we want to create jobs and rebuild our economy, then we must address the crushing cost of health care this year, in this Administration. Making investments in reform now, investments that will dramatically lower costs, won’t add to our budget deficits in the long-term – rather, it is one of the best ways to reduce them.

That’s the basic mainstream Democratic argument at this point – that health care costs are strangling our businesses, our budget, and most importantly our families, and that we have to fundamentally address this before it spirals completely out of control.

I now give you the conservative counter-argument.

REP. ZACH WAMP: Listen, health care is a privilege. […]

MSNBC: Well, it’s a privilege? Health care? I mean if you have cancer right now, do you see it as a privilege to get treatment?

WAMP: I was just about to say, for some people it’s a right. But for everyone, frankly, it’s not necessarily a right.

Wamp went on to claim that many Americans are uninsured by choice because they “rejected” the insurance plan offered by their employers. Asked to respond to Wamp, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) remarked “Well my reaction is that it was said by somebody who has a really good health [insurance] plan as a member of the House of Representatives.” “More importantly than that [health care] is a right in this country,” Brown concluded. Watch a compilation:

This should be on a billboard in every city in the nation by Friday. It’s a concise and sharp expression of the conservative worldview. They think health care is a privilege. And if you get shot at work trying to ward off an attacker, and your fast-food company’s insurer (the name rhymes with Bickdonald’s) refuses to pay your medical bills, tough, you don’t have the privilege. If you aren’t privileged enough to have health insurance, hospitals can use your lack of leverage or purchasing power to charge you ten times as much for the same treatment – sorry, you don’t have the privilege. If you have insurance, and your insurer decides they don’t want to pay your claims, sending you into a choice between treatment and bankruptcy or illness and solvency, well – you don’t have the privilege.

(Interesting that Villager Karen Tumulty wrote that last link, drawing on the experience of her brother’s travails through the health care system. It’s the typical story of personal experience trumping the expected groupthink.)

In the upside-down value system of Republicans, they think that health care is a privilege, but the ability for health insurers to profit off of it is an inalienable right.

McConnell suggested there were areas in which Republicans won’t compromise, particularly the creation of a new public insurance program to compete with private insurers.

“Forcing free market plans to compete with these government-run programs would create an unlevel playing field and inevitably doom true competition,” the letter stated.

As David Sirota notes, these are the same people who claim that the free market is a universal good and nothing can be run more efficiently or excellently than private enterprise. Somehow, though, if a public option was offered to compete with the free market, it would cause the insurance industry to crumble. Those titans of industry, the masters of the universe, just can’t compete with those government bureaucrats everyone is supposed to hate. This could be a mite bit of a flaw in their logic.

The GOP sees polls showing the public supports the concept of government-sponsored health care (and loves government programs like Medicare) – that is, the party knows that if given the choice, many Americans would choose a government-run program over private health insurance. But because the party is so owned and operated by the private health insurance industry, it is willing to effectively undermine its entire macro-argument about the supremacy of the free market so as to shill for its moneyed benefactors.

I appreciate McConnell and Wamp for making things clear. The GOP thinks health care is a privilege and that insurance industry gouging is a right. More people besides blog readers should know this.

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Make It Hoops

by tristero

Presumably, Obama knows enough to ignore him, but if he doesn’t I suggest he counter with a challenge to Limbaugh for a game of one-on-one on the basketball court of his choice.

Trial Of The Century

by dday

Here in California, the big story of the day is the Prop. 8 hearing in the California Supreme Court. It starts at 9AM ET, and you can actually watch it at the California Channel. Large groups of activists will be watching the trial throughout the state, and last night there were a series of candlelight vigils.

There are three questions at play:

• Is Proposition 8 invalid because it constitutes a revision of, rather than an amendment to, the California Constitution?

• Does Proposition 8 violate the separation of powers doctrine under the California Constitution?

• If Proposition 8 is not unconstitutional, what is its effect, if any, on the marriages of same-sex couples performed before the adoption of Proposition 8?

This is less a hearing about the Constitutional validity of a ban on gay marriage itself and more about these questions. However, the first question essentially asserts that the state Constitution cannot be amended to strip away fundamental rights (and essentially contradict another part of that Constitution). Brian Devine has a must-read on the legal issues involved at Calitics. And Attorney General Jerry Brown is arguing that the proposition should be thrown out.

Incidentally, on the side of allowing discrimination today, arguing for the measure’s backers, is none other than Ken Starr.

Based on the way that the California Supreme Court works, it is likely that an opinion has already been formed.

The California Supreme Court may reveal Thursday whether it intends to uphold Proposition 8, and if so, whether an estimated 18,000 same-sex marriages will remain valid, during a high-stakes televised session that has sparked plans for demonstrations throughout the state.

By now, the court already has drafted a decision on the case, with an author and at least three other justices willing to sign it. Oral arguments sometimes result in changes to the draft, but rarely do they change the majority position. The ruling is due in 90 days.

Chief Justice Ronald M. George, who wrote the historic May 15, 2008, decision that gave same-sex couples the right to marry, will be the one to watch during the hearing because he is often in the majority and usually writes the rulings in the most controversial cases […]

Most legal analysts expect that the court will garner enough votes to uphold existing marriages but not enough to overturn Proposition 8. The dissenters in May’s 4-3 marriage ruling said the decision should be left to the voters.

One conservative constitutional scholar has said that the court could both affirm its historic May 15 ruling giving gays equality and uphold Proposition 8 by requiring the state to use a term other than “marriage” and apply it to all couples, gay and straight.

This is not the end of the fight for marriage equality, but just another marker along the road. Our Supreme Court judges here go through elections every ten years (remember that when you hear about “unelected judges”), so there are likely to be recall campaigns. And more ballot initiatives. And this is just one state in the union.

Let’s hope for the wisdom of those sitting on the bench to understand the implications of a simple majority taking away the rights of a whole class of citizens.

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Presidential Pork

by digby

Where, oh where, will the liberal profligacy end?

First daughters Malia and Sasha Obama got a big surprise after school Wednesday: a brand-new swing set.

They squealed with delight upon seeing it, a spokeswoman for the first lady said.

President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, went to work while the girls were at school, having the set installed on the south grounds of the White House within sight of the Oval Office, where their father spends plenty of time.

Late last year as the couple planned the family’s move to Washington, they had discussed with the chief usher at the White House ways to make the historic residence feel more like home for their girls, said Katie McCormick Lelyveld, a spokeswoman for Michelle Obama.

Malia and Sasha, ages 10 and 7, had never lived anywhere but Chicago.

“Many first families have made these sorts of changes to make the White House feel like home,” McCormick Lelyveld said. “This one is like their little mark.”

The 100 percent cedar and North American Redwood structure has four swings, including a tire swing, a slide, a fort, a climbing wall and climbing ropes. There’s also a picnic table with brass plates etched with the names of all 44 presidents, she said.

“They ran right for it. They were really, really excited. All four of them,” McCormick Lelyveld said.

The girls named the swing set “checkers” and gosh darn it, no matter what Michelle Malkin says, they’re going to keep it.

h/t to david t, who recognized that we all needed a little mood lightener at this point in the week.