Month: June 2009

Accountability Now

by dday

Accountability is back in Washngton, as today the House impeached a federal judge. At long last, one of the legal architects of the Bush torture regime, the man who allowed the CIA to waterboard and provided the twisted legal rationale, the m- what, it was the other one?

The House on Friday impeached a federal judge imprisoned for lying about sexual assaults of two women in the first such vote since impeaching former President Bill Clinton a decade ago.

The impeachment of U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent of Texas sets up a trial in the Senate. Kent is the first federal judge impeached in 20 years.

It’s never the sex, it’s the lying.

This guy’s actually convicted and in prison serving a 33-month sentence, and he won’t resign so he can draw his $174,000 a year salary. I’m not saying it’s not warranted. Hey, maybe the House can exercise this whole accountability and oversight muscle. Baby steps.

…from a reader:

I am a hard core D and a plaintiff’s lawyer, but Kent was corrupt. He was in the pocket of a couple local plaintiff lawyers, so much that three years ago or so, the 5th Cir ordered that all of Kent’s cases in which Richard Melancon had appeared as counsel (and there were, necessarily, hundreds) be reassigned to different judges–a virtually unprecedented step. So this was a classic Al Capone situation–they got him for the sexual harassment, but his real crime was his longstanding abuse of his office.

My side “benefited” from his bias, but it was and is embarrassing as hell. Just because the insurance industry is open and obvious about its corruption does not mean we can do the same.

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We Need 10 Million Views Of This Video By Next Week

by dday

Health care reform is certainly in a fair bit of trouble. But the three committees working on this in the House have stepped up. They released a discussion draft based on the work of all of the relevant Chairmen, which includes a robust public option to keep insurers honest and allow for experimentation in the marketplace. Initially, the plan utilizes Medicare bargaining rates to ramp up, and then will use cost control plans to provide better coverage and more effective care.

Now all it needs is a mass action to define clearly the differences, and force politicians to stand with people, or corporations.

During the press conference (on C-SPAN 3, not cable, because who gives a crap about health care, right?), John Dingell brought up the hearing in the House on rescission, the practice of insurers dropping people the moment they get sick, sometimes for technical violations on their applications like misspelling their name. Digby mentioned it a couple days ago.

I know a fair bit about rescission, because in California, it’s become a major issue. Former LA City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo has doggedly pursued those companies, like Blue Cross, who have engaged in the practice, and to date insurers have agreed to pay over $37 million dollars in fines. Another case is about to go to trial. Blue Cross encouraged this with performance bonuses for employees who found a reason to cancel coverage for the sick.

Now check out what these insurance CEOs said after being confronted with all of these examples of them denying coverage to sick people.

An investigation by the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations showed that health insurers WellPoint Inc., UnitedHealth Group and Assurant Inc. canceled the coverage of more than 20,000 people, allowing the companies to avoid paying more than $300 million in medical claims over a five-year period […]

Late in the hearing, Stupak, the committee chairman, put the executives on the spot. Stupak asked each of them whether he would at least commit his company to immediately stop rescissions except where they could show “intentional fraud.”

The answer from all three executives:

“No.”

Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) said that a public insurance plan should be a part of any overhaul because it would force private companies to treat consumers fairly or risk losing them.

“This is precisely why we need a public option,” Dingell said.

Here’s the YouTube of that hearing. It should have 10 million hits by the end of next week.

Here’s a Splicd version of the moment where they all refuse to commit to stop rescinding people when they get sick. In the above YouTube, that comes in around 4:47.

TEN MILLION VIEWS.

Here’s the Twitter message I put up about this.

Health insurance CEOs refuse to stop screwing their customers: http://splicd.com/_29CCVI1ao4/288/371 please RT! #publicoption

Email this to everyone you know. Retweet. Put it up on Facebook. Do whatever you can to get this in front of people’s eyeballs. Without a public option, we give our health care future over to people who have vowed not to cover you if you’re sick. Politicians can stand with people, or with these insurers.

Thanks.

…Health Care for America Now has a page up with this incredible video. You can forward an email to a friend with the video using their page.

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The Log In The Eye

by digby

I am not surprised that anti-choice groups in Kansas would receive threats of violence in the wake of Dr Tiller’s assassination. The world is full of violent people. But one does have to point out that there are no known cases of assassinations having been carried out against them, while there’s a pile of corpses of doctors and clinic workers who have been killed by people on the allegedly “pro-life” side. These anti-choice zealots all claim that the assassins are lone wolves who have nothing to do with the movement. If that’s the case, if I were getting threatened, I’d be looking a little closer to home. That’s where the real nuts are.

Again, I hesitate to dismiss their complaints because the world is full of violence and it wouldn’t surprise me if they are getting threats, but this complaining about being in personal danger is more than a little bit ironic considering well… you know:

Around the nation, anti-abortion leaders have been taking precautions before and after the shooting, said the Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Christian Defense Coalition.

“I don’t want to go into detail, but I know for a fact that numerous pro-life leaders travel with bulletproof vests,” Mahoney said…

“Abortion is an emotional, controversial subject on both sides of the issue, and when you have that kind of emotion… on the fringes of both sides of the divide you’re going to have people who lash out,” he said.

Except only one side routinely blows up clinics and shoots and kills people on the other side. But I guess you can’t be too careful.

h/t to bb

Listening To The Serious People

by dday

Mike Lux says what needs to be said about Tom Daschle’s el foldo move against the public option, and it has weight because Lux worked for Daschle for many years. Caving to Republicans and the insurance industry in the name of getting “health reform” passed just won’t work, particularly because you will lose every ally on the left and end up with absolutely nothing. And taking out the most popular part of the bill and the most tangible expression of reform that people can touch, feel and see would have the effect of turning it into dust.

It doesn’t surprise me that a man who essentially is an industry lobbyist would side with industry over the people. But the other element here is this irrational fear of Republicans, who have lost almost all of their support in the country, are actually less popular than Dick Cheney, and yet must be placated in the good name of bipartisanship. I believe the metaphor that the President uses is “we will extend a hand if you unclench your fist.”

Behold the unclenched fist of the leader of the Republican Party.

“Day to day, there is no health care crisis in this country”

And if you don’t think Limbaugh is the leader of the GOP, here’s the leader of the RNC, with his opinion of what health care reform would necessarily mean:

STEELE: Well you’ll get issued, Doc, you’re gonna issue, to your patients, a health care card that’s gonna be part of a national ID system that, you know, every time I charge something or use that card, it’s going to show up on a grid what I’ve done and what I have failed to do, according to the government plan. So the government will know whether or not I’ve had my physical at the appropriate time and then probably some health police will come knocking on my door telling me I’m now costing the system money because I haven’t, you know, gone and done my preventive care.

He thinks there’s going to be a health care police. And the 76% of Americans who support a public option have to be pushed aside, because Michael Steele is just more serious.

It’s important to recognize the undemocratic nature of the Senate, where Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer represent 36 million people and have the same amount of votes as Mike Enzi and John Barrasso, who represent 500,000. That absolutely has a bearing on how the Senate does not listen to its constituents. But In this case, Democrats have the votes; they only need 50 to pass health reform. But they think they have to listen to clowns instead of the people.

…Ezra Klein has an interview up with Daschle where he tries to walk back his opposition to a public plan.

You made headlines the other day for dismissing the need for a public plan. Want to talk a bit more on that?

I don’t know where that came from. We’ve been pushing back on that all day. I didn’t say that. I have said emphatically I support a public plan. A Medicare-for-all public plan. Any federal plan. For all the reasons that have been made for years. It’s important for cost, for choice, for competition, for popularity. I strongly support it.

What I did say is that I’m willing to compromise on most things to bring the package across the line. The plan we agreed to yesterday was that states could offer public plans with a federal fall back. That’s not my first, second, or third choice. But given the concessions my colleagues made on universal coverage and an employer mandate and everything else, that’s the essence of compromise.

To focus on that for a moment, for all the controversy around this issue, I think a lot of liberals don’t understand why they should have to sacrifice it. After all, private insurers aren’t exactly covered in glory, and a Wall Street Journal poll just today showed that three-fourths of Americans support the policy.

This is one time when it makes good politics and good policy. There are two groups primarily opposed to it. Many of the stakeholders view it as real cost cutting. As a result, they’re worried about that competition. A lot of other stakeholders are concerned about feeling the effects of a cost constraint. I’ve said this, and no one has ever disputed it, that I’ve never seen a study that didn’t say the public plan would reduce costs. And we hear so much about costs, and here we are taking it off the table.

The other group is this ideological group of Republicans and conservatives who see it as government intrusion they simply can’t support. It’s an ideological basis that I will never understand but that that’s what it is.

Oh well! It is what it is!

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Begging For Pitchforks Part 77

by digby

Vandehei and Allen have the latest conventional wisdom on health care, which is that everything’s going to hell in a handbasket fast. The sky is falling because of the deficit, the cost of reform is much too high, the Democrats are trying to do too much, businesses aren’t happy and Pete Peterson is just dreamy.(Ok , that last part is just something I read between the lines.)

They are probably correct as far as the beltway is concerned. It’s pretty clear to me that it’s in trouble too, although I would lay the blame more solidly at the feet of Dems who keep getting punk’d by silly things like the premature release of the CBO report and the administration’s fear of looking “irresponsible” to David Broder, but I think there are elements of all the things they mention. Most importantly, it’s more and more obvious that the insurance companies are dictating the terms. Here’s Scarecrow at FDL:

As I’ve said over and over, a public “exchange” is not a plan; it’s a market place where you choose between plans. It’s not one of the products, and it’s definitely not a public option product. You can only buy private plans in this exchange. So there’s no meaningful choice. Why is this so hard to grasp? So what do we have left? 1. The insurance companies get the federal government to mandate that everyone must purchase insurance. (Insurance companies 1, consumers 0) 2. There are only private insurance plans available. (Private Insurers 2, consumers 0) 3. The federal government gets states who feel like it to create an exchange to help consumers shop for — and insurance companies sell — their private insurance. (Private insurers 3, consumers 0) [And insurance companies get an extra point in states that don’t like federal intrusion] 4. The federal government then subsidizes consumers to help them pay the full premiums charged by the private insurance plans. Insurers win! 4-0! Does this look familiar? Well, yes, because this is exactly what the private insurers proposed months ago, and are now salivating about.

The question really comes down to whether or not Obama is willing to use his political capital to get through a serious systemic reform or whether or not he will end up backing an incremental small bore plan promising to take another bite at it down the road. The problem is that unless he uses the moment to institute a public option, that incremental plan won’t work either.

The logic of incrementalism on something like this is that you just want to get your foot in the door. Once a something exists, it’s harder to completely scrap it in the future, so even if it’s imperfect, you have a foundation on which to build to make it more robust as time goes on. But if they give up on the public plan as part of reform, the only thing we’ll get is a bunch of new regulations and “voluntary” efforts that will be subject to change and interpretation. They need to institutionalize this or it will be a temporary, cosmetic fix that in the worst case will end up failing spectacularly and further alienate the public from government programs. Doing it wrong is far more politically risky than not doing it at all.

The Politico article says that Organizing For America is going to form the grassroots campaign to support health care (and start organizing for the midterms.) That will be very interesting to see unfold. If Obama were to come out right now and say unequivocally that he wants a public option and puts his organization to work in conjunction with all the other grassroots/netroots groups, it could be a formidable pressure point against the medical industrial complex. If he enlists his supporters to work for something phony and incomplete, he will likely lose many of them and almost certainly lose the rest of us. We will see before too long whether he wants to use the “yes we can” voters as a counterbalance the influence of the big donors or if he just took their money and their volunteered time and is doing the bidding of the big money donors anyway.

The Politico article says that the administration believes it’s too early to start cracking heads. But if they plan to (and it’s completely unknown if they do and for what) they’d better start to make their move soon because this thing is moving very quickly and they are losing control of it.
Universal health care is fundamental to progressives. If the Democratic Party cannot get this done with a large majority, an economic crisis that is making hundreds of thousands of average Americans lose their insurance, and a president who ran explicitly on the issue and has a large mandate for reform, then they are in danger of creating a huge hole in their coalition that will be very difficult to repair. Health care is the big one.

The disappointment at failure will be immense, and not just among grassroots activists, but among the public at large if Obama doesn’t fulfill this promise. There is no good political reason not to do this right and every reason to avoid doing it wrong. It’s incomprehensible to me that they would put this on the table and then fail to follow through. It’s the worst of all possible worlds.

I never thought Obama particularly cared about Health Care reform. He was basically interested in foreign policy and more modern, sexy issues like climate change, which are obviously incredibly important and are good reasons to have supported him. But health care is the kind of issue with which Democrats build majorities and accumulate trust and political power for things like climate change. If the DLC market orientation still pervades the party the way it did for the past two decades, even in light of the fearsome economic crisis we face, then the party is going to see a serious populist threat from both the left and the right. We’ve already seen the foreshadowing of that in the past two decades with the Perot and Nader campaigns, both of which were exceedingly significant in terms of electoral outcomes. They should not write them off as discrete eccentricities. This is a building political wave.

Propping up the old economic order is already happening with the financial bailouts. But I’m disinclined to read anything political into it because I think the crisis hit so hard and so fast that the lessons are still being absorbed. (Not that I’m sanguine that they are learning the right things from it, just that it’s still unfolding and I don’t think anyone knows the full extent of the damage yet.) Health care, on the other hand is a very well studied and understood problem. They know what they need to do. There’s no need for high priests or seat-of-the-pants mechanics to reinvent the wheel.

Fixing the health care system is the first real test of whether or not the Democratic Party understands the new political era in which it’s governing. The next couple of months will tell the tale.

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Most Transparent Government In History

by dday

The Obama Administration has really taken to this executive power and official secrecy thing. Duck, meet water. This has all happened in the past week:

MSNBC:

The Obama administration is fighting to block access to names of visitors to the White House, taking up the Bush administration argument that a president doesn’t have to reveal who comes calling to influence policy decisions.

Despite President Barack Obama’s pledge to introduce a new era of transparency to Washington, and despite two rulings by a federal judge that the records are public, the Secret Service has denied msnbc.com’s request for the names of all White House visitors from Jan. 20 to the present. It also denied a narrower request by the nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which sought logs of visits by executives of coal companies.

The Guardian UK:

A rift has opened between the Obama administration and some of its closest allies – Democratic leaders and environmental organisations – over its refusal to publicly disclose the location of 44 coal ash dumps that have been officially designated as a “high hazard” to local populations.

The administration turned down a request from a powerful Democratic senator to make public the list of 44 dumps, which contain a toxic soup of arsenic and heavy metals from coal-fired electricity plants, citing terrorism fears.

The LA Times:

He was appointed with fanfare in December as public watchdog over the government’s multibillion-dollar bailout of the nation’s financial system. But now Neil Barofsky, inspector general of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, is embroiled in a dispute with the Obama administration that delayed one recent inquiry and sparked questions about his ability to investigate without interference.

The Treasury Department contends that Barofsky does not have a completely independent role. That claim prompted a stern letter from a Republican senator, who warns that Obama administration officials are encroaching on the integrity of an office created to protect taxpayers.

The Washington Post:

A federal judge yesterday sharply questioned an assertion by the Obama administration that former Vice President Richard B. Cheney’s statements to a special prosecutor about the Valerie Plame case must be kept secret, partly so they do not become fodder for Cheney’s political enemies or late-night commentary on “The Daily Show.”

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan expressed surprise during a hearing here that the Justice Department, in asserting that Cheney’s voluntary statements to U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald were exempt from disclosure, relied on legal claims put forward last October by a Bush administration political appointee, Stephen Bradbury. The department asserted then that the disclosure would make presidents and vice presidents reluctant to cooperate voluntarily with future criminal investigations.

The Plum Line:

On Friday, there may be a major development in the torture wars: The CIA is set to release portions of a 2004 report that reportedly found no proof that torture foiled any terror plots, which would dramatically undercut Dick Cheney’s claims that torture worked.

But a news story this morning raises the question: Is the CIA trying to keep chunks that would undermine Cheney under wraps?

That last one may concern the CIA, but I’m pretty sure they work for somebody in the White House. And that’s just from this week, there are countless other examples of using the state secrets privilege to shut down lawsuits, breaking a campaign promise to post every bill passed by Congress on the White House website for public comment before signing, and on and on and on.

Progressives battled George W. Bush and Dick Cheney on their unprecedented offical secrecy on the merits, but also out of a recognition that there is such a thing as Presidential precedent. If one President can get away with aggrandizing their power, the successor would certainly watch and learn. Which is exactly what has happened.

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It’s Their Country. We Just Live In It

by tristero

Jill Richardson of the indispensable food blog La Vida Locavore lists the the top 100 lobbyists in America ordered by policy sector. Read it and weep. As Jill says:

NO WONDER our policy sucks. No wonder it’s nearly impossible to pass health care reform that provides all Americans with affordable care, a global warming bill that doesn’t suck, and the Employee Free Choice Act. No wonder we’re in these two stupid wars. I know everyone’s aware of the problems lobbying poses to our country, but good lord, if people saw the sheer magnitude of it (and the comparatively paltry amounts spent in the people’s interest) they would be outraged.

I agree with everything but the last assertion. In general, people in the US aren’t outraged about this. They think it’s normal, natural, but even if it’s deplorable, there’s nothing to be done to stop it.

BTW, this is only some fraction of the total amount these companies spend on lobbying. Let’s not forget that they have to bribe lobby the media as well.

One More Example

by tristero

Riffing on dday’s post on WaPo’s firing of Froomkin , it is quite clear he was hired because being a “leftist” meant “criticizing George Bush.” But you’re no longer a leftist to WaPo if you dare criticize the Obama administration’s illiberal policies: You’re a dangerous anti-American extremist. That’s because obviously Obama is, as they say, the most leftwing president of our lifetime. To be to the left of Obama is to be so far left, you’re over way beyond Hawaii, drowning up to your commie/fascist/Islamic eyeballs in the Pacific. You don’t want someone like that sullying the reputation of the august, respected Washington Post. It just won’t…work [scroll to Update III].

As far as I can tell, that is the only reason – other than WH pressure, which seems unlikely – that WaPo would fire such a popular and intelligent commentator while retaining such dishonest morons as Krauthammer. I hope I don’t have to explain to anyone reading this that such reasoning is nuts. Among other things, it’s based on several false premises, including:

1. Obama is a liberal. He’s not; he’s a centrist.

2. Froomkin is a radical leftist. He’s not; he’s a moderate liberal.

And so, we have one more example of what acceptable public discourse is in this country. The spectrum of opinion permitted in the mass media runs the full gamut from deep maroon to dark red.

And that is why Republicans accuse Obama, of all people, of socialism. And they get away with it.

Big Fix

by digby

I’ve been skimming some comment sections around the wingnutosphere on the health care debate and I’m noticing a lot of talk about how illegal aliens are causing the health care crisis and the best way to fix it is to deport them all. Is this just some kind of conventional wisdom or is it a talk radio campaign?

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Respect

by digby

In a committee hearing, Barbara Boxer asked a General not to call her m’am, but to call her Senator. According to Townhall, via Sadly No! this is tantamount to treason.

Here’s a sample of the comments:

“She’s my senator too, unfortunately, and let’s be honest…..if she were screwing her aids, she wouldn’t be paying them to keep quiet…..she’d be paying them to screw her.”

I’ve spent the last 20 minutes trying to clean up my keyboard that I spewed Dr. Pepper over after reading this. I also almost choked on it.

I actually taught my five kids to speak to their elders with “yes, sir”, “no sir” and “yes, ma’am” and “no ma’am”, just as I was taught. It is a sign of respect. To try and humiliate a general like that, who was showing total respect, shows the angry feminazi that is the Babs Boxers and the Jillianeanas of this country.

Can any of you imagine the nightmare of actually being married to such an angry and hostile woman as Boxer…or Jilli? GRBU2 had it exactly right. These totally awful women just look for ways to be offended.

I think this person may really believe that he or she is a respectful, decent human being with upstanding morals and old fashioned family values. That’s the scary part.

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