Month: August 2009

Civility

by digby

I hadn’t heard about this but it figures: the right wing strategy during the recess is to attend events in the district and drown out health care advocates with shouting and protests. Steve Benen reports:

One leaked strategy memo said, “Look for these opportunities before [a member of Congress] even takes questions.” Who needs civility and intelligent discourse when we have confused mobs of far-right activists organized by corporate lobbyists? The House has been in recess for only a few days, but we’re already seeing the results of the right-wing efforts.

This past weekend, Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) was the latest victim of the right’s strategy, where protesters followed him and chanted “just say no” to health care. Texas has the highest uninsured rate in the nation and stands to be among the most to gain from Obama’s health care plan. “[N]early 6 million Texans, including the one in six U.S. uninsured children who live there, could get health insurance for the first time if the plan is enacted.” […] An angry crowd also exploded at Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius. The Philadelphia Daily News reports, “They wore bumper stickers on their foreheads. They carried signs. They shouted insults at notable American figures — and each other. Loudly.”

This is predictable. After all, they are following the 1994 playbook and they did the same thing then. This is from the PBS timeline of the Clinton health care debate:

July 22, 1994 – Trying to win back the kind of political support that brought them to the White House, the administration plans a bus trek across America to generate their own grassroots message to Congress for reform. A kickoff rally in Portland, Oregon, is marred by anti-Clinton protesters. When the first buses reach the highway they find a broken-down bus wreathed in red tape symbolizing government bureaucracy and hitched to a tow truck labeled, “This is Clinton Health Care.”
The anti-bus trek protests are the crowning success of the No Name Coalition and especially of the conservative political interest group Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE). By the time the ill-fated bus caravan takes to the highways, CSE operatives, working closely — and secretly — with Newt Gingrich’s Capitol Hill office and with Republican senators, have mapped out plans to derail the Reform Riders wherever they go. July 23, 1994 – Following several days of anti-Hillary rhetoric on local talk shows, Hillary Clinton — at a bus rally in Seattle — is confronted by hundreds of angry men shouting that the Clintons are going to destroy their way of life, ban guns, extend abortion rights, protect gays, and socialize medicine. When she finishes speaking and tries to leave the rally, her limousine is surrounded by protesters. Each of the four caravan routes becomes an expedition into enemy territory — with better-armed, better-prepared, better-mobilized anti-Clinton protesters at each stop along the way. Local reform groups and caravan organizers are forced to cancel scheduled stops because of implicit threats of violence.

I’m sure the Democrats all remember this and are prepared for it this time. Right?If you haven’t read the entire PBS timeline on how health care reform was derailed in 1994 recently, do yourself a favor and read it. The legislative side has an eerily familiar feel to it, especially the part where the Democrats in the Senate preen egomaniacally while selling out reform to the insurance industry and the Republicans. You’ll recall that the Republicans’ consciously pumped Whitewater in the press and to create a distraction for the public and fuel mass protest among their own base. It’s a sign of their impotence that the best they could come up with this time was a fringy clown show like the birthers, but it’s certainly done its job among the 58% of Republicans who now aren’t sure if Obama is actually an illegal alien. This stuff is evergreen.

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Fergawdsake

by digby

This is almost making me feel sad:

WorldNetDaily and the right-wing fringe are very excited about their scoop that Orly Taitz has “released a copy of what purports to be a Kenyan certification of birth” for President Obama. According to WND, “Taitz told WND that the document came from an anonymous source who doesn’t want his name known because ‘he’s afraid for his life.’ ” So in order to believe Taitz and WND, one would have to assume that this document was requested 45 years ago, preserved that entire time, withheld through the entire election and transition period, and yet somehow ended up in the hands of someone sympathetic to Orly Taitz.

Click here for the punchline.

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Reflections On The Summer of Shark

by digby

James Poniewozik at Time recalls the summer of 2001, when the entire media came unhinged over Chandra Levy and sharks and muses that the media now engage in fearmongering and tittilation pretty much all the time:

To live every week like it’s Shark Week, then, might be a metaphor for living in our media environment: to spend every week titillated by unlikely threats, getting whipped into frenzies, yawning over high-minded stuff like health-care policy and supping from the delicious chum bucket of hysteria. The President is a secret Kenyan who faked his birth certificate! Terrorists are coming to get you! And the world is going to end, six different ways! But first a word from our sponsor.

[…]

In Discovery’s The Colony, 10 volunteers are barricaded in a warehouse, without running water or electricity, to simulate surviving after the end of civilization. The band of engineers, handymen and medical professionals (the magazine columnists, I assume, have long since been eaten) fends off “gangs” (played by actors), filters water and goes through coffee withdrawal.

In The Colony’s scenario, a pandemic did us in. But, the show helpfully notes, it could have been “human conflict, nuclear bombs, natural disasters, chemical and biological warfare. Without warning, the world as we know it can come to an end.” Until it does, enjoy the show!

On The Colony, every week is Shark Week. And what with upcoming apocalypse movies like The Road and 2012 and the end-of-days rumblings of talk TV and radio, the same is now true for the rest of us. Superterrorists, natural disasters and megaviruses are not imaginary. But they’re more viscerally scary and easier to apprehend than vital but boring systemic problems like the economy and public health.

It strikes me as a bit odd that the infotainment complex is hitting the fear button so hard right now. I was always told that during the depression Hollywood made a lot of fantasy and upbeat comedy because people wanted an escape. I’m not sure that isn’t true now. I don’t watch a whole lot of TV for relaxation, but when I do I certainly don’t want to watch something that’s going to make me feel more fear and anxiety than I already do.

But the humiliation rituals on reality TV and the violence in the movies right now are just mind-boggling — I watched a Mamet flick the other night that just about made me sick. I don’t know about you, but I feel as if our society is in a sour, sour place right now — and justifiably so. It doesn’t seem like pumping up the anxiety and fear can be good for people who are already stressed out beyond belief.

But hey, I’m old so maybe it’s just Driving Miss Daisy time for me. Far be it for me to become one of those scolds telling the kids they shouldn’t listen to that “yeah yeah” music. But it kind of creeps me out.

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Wonk Speech

by digby

We spend a lot of time trying to claw through all the details of the pending health care legislation, relying a bunch of egg headed wonks who don’t know how to talk to regular people about complex issues. No wonder we don’t know what’s going on.

Leave it to a shrill, no account blogger (who has a day job!) to come up with a clean argument:

Health reform made simple

Kudos to the Times for a story that, for once, emphasizes the remarkable unity of vision health reformers are showing, rather than the squabbles that are an inevitable part of passing major legislation.

The essence is really quite simple: regulation of insurers, so that they can’t cherry-pick only the healthy, and subsidies, so that all Americans can afford insurance.

Everything else is about making that core work. Individual mandates are a way to prevent gaming of the system by people who don’t sign up until they’re sick; employer mandates a way to hold down the on-budget costs by preventing a rush by employers to drop insurance; the public option a way to create effective competition and hold costs down further.

But what it means for the individual will be that insurers can’t reject you, and if your income is relatively low, the government will help pay your premiums.

That’s it. Any commentator who whines that he just doesn’t understand it is basically saying that he doesn’t want to understand it.

That’s about it. If we could fight this fight on that basis, on both the left and the right, as to whether the various details emerging from the plans will accomplish the goal of affordable, universal coverage, we would be far ahead of the game.

As it is, we’re losing the war of the words. It’s not just the polls — I can even cite my own Friedmanesque anecdote. I was at the hairdresser’s on Friday (I’m sure Cokie was at hers too…) and the talk turned to health care. Keep in mind that this is on the west side of LA, not Ben Nelson’s home town or somewhere deep in Republican country where every radio is turned to Rush.

Everyone in the place was complaining about the insurance companies and how broken the system was. But they were also convinced that the Democrats are trying to pass socialized medicine. When I asked what they thought that meant, they said, “government takeover of health care.” And they were seriously worried about how that was going to affect them.

I don’t know where these people are getting this. They aren’t political, they don’t listen to talk radio or read blogs. This is just what’s out in the ether, what people are saying in casual conversation. The ear worm is “we’ve got a problem, but the Democrats are going to take over health care and make things worse.” It’s not entirely surprising, but it’s depressing nonetheless.

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Winger Strategery

by digby

I’ve been wondering about this too. From Jonathan Singer at MYDD:

This report from NPR’s Nina Totenberg contains a fairly remarkable piece of news: So determined to block Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina ever nominated to the Supreme Court, McConnell took the unprecedented step of getting the NRA to do his dirty work.

One top aide to GOP leader McConnell confirmed that McConnell, at a meeting of conservative groups, asked the NRA about scoring the Sotomayor vote as a key vote hostile to gun rights. The aide conceded that in asking the question, McConnell was promoting an unusual step that the NRA then took.

You have to wonder how it is going to play in the Hispanic community around the country that the Republicans were so diametrically opposed to the nomination of Sotomayor, the Supreme Court nominee with the longest resume in nearly a century, that they called upon the NRA to twist Senators’ arms — even though they knew they didn’t have the votes to stop her nomination.

This is what I find inexplicable about Republican strategy. They knew before she was nominated that the person Obama named was 99% likely to be confirmed. They knew she was replacing a liberal on the court, so no harm no foul in terms of the balance on the court. And they know they have a problem with Hispanics, the fastest growing demographic in the country. Allowing a large margin to vote for Sotomayor would be an easy way to ease some of those tensions, buy some good will and provide some cover the next time the Democrats try to block a nominee, without having to actually do anything. It’s just good politics.

And yet they’ve gone out of their way to publicly sully the woman’s reputation and now are pulling every possible string to keep the vote as tight as possible, thereby reinforcing the notion that they hate Hispanics so much that they will do everything in their power, even when they are sure to lose, to keep one from the Supreme Court.

I’ve heard people make the case that this is payback for Thomas, which is seen as the destruction of a good man’s reputation for no good reason. But aside from the merits of the case, (which was about sexual harrasment being ignored by a bunch of powerful, pompous men, not race) the Democrats weren’t in the process of losing the black vote in vast numbers when it happened and because the Dems had been the party of civil rights by that time for more than 30 years. If anything, they were going against type.

This is so politically obtuse that makes me wonder what in the hell these people are really worried about. It occurs to me that they are seeing something much more devastating in their numbers than just losing the Hispanic vote of the future. It seems they must be afraid of losing the white working class. Assuming they are behaving rationally (which is assuming a lot) the only logical reason they could have for ginning up all this racial animosity is if they feel the need to secure their base with the old tried and true racial resentment. If they were secure there, they could afford to be magnanimous toward Sotomayor in a situation that makes no substantial change in policy.

Of course, it could also just be that they are a bunch of sexist, racist bastards themselves and just can’t stand the idea of a woman of Puerto Rican extraction being in power. With these people it’s usually a good idea to apply Occam’s Razor and call it a day.

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The Malaysia Option

by dday

We are several months away from the Obama Administration making a decision on whether to put into motion a practice of preventive detention, so that the government can hold terror suspects captured around the world without charges and despite a paucity of evidence. Despite federal judges finding that the government lacks evidence to imprison suspects in 28 out of 33 habeas corpus hearings on Guantanamo detainees so far, the White House, at least in early reports, wants to set up a system to keep those who they cannot charge but do not want to release. The courts have invalidated the 2006 provision in the Military Commissions Act that would have eliminated the right of habeas corpus for all Guantanamo detainees and so-called “enemy combatants,” but the Administration is pondering a system to effectively deny that right anyway and detain suspects at their discretion for indefinite periods.

It’s instructive to see examples of a system where a chief executive can lock up whoever they choose indefinitely without charges. Yesterday, citizens in Malaysia struck out in protest:

Police broke up Malaysia’s biggest protest in nearly two years Saturday, firing tear gas and chemical-laced water at thousands of opposition supporters demanding an end to a law that allows detention without trial.

Witnesses estimated that as many as 20,000 people took to the streets of Kuala Lumpur, defying government warnings not to participate in the rally against the Internal Security Act, which allows the indefinite imprisonment of people regarded as security threats.

The crackdown could erode support for Prime Minister Najib Razak, who took office in April and has been battling efforts by opposition parties to portray him as a leader who disregards public opinion on issues such as human rights and freedom of expression.

Kuala Lumpur police Chief Mohammed Sabtu Osman said authorities arrested 438 people after about six hours of mayhem in which riot police wielding batons chased protesters down the city’s streets, scuffled with them and dragged many into detention trucks.

Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy with a bicameral legislature and a British-style Parliamentary system. The Prime Minister is elected by the people. And yet the Internal Security Act, or ISA, has been around since the 1960s, designed to detain “security threats,” no doubt including those detained yesterday after the protests. Incoming Prime Ministers traditionally let several ISA prisoners go when they first assume office, only to capture others soon after. Further, Malaysia has a troubled recent history when it comes to detention:

Human rights lawyers fought off an application by the Malaysian police to remand two youths aged 16 and 13 for allegedly taking part in an August 1 mammoth rally to protest a draconian law – the Internal Security Act – that allows for indefinite detention of civilians without trial.

“The two kids are free now. The application was denied but it was an eye-opener to see the grounds put forward by the police. They were so flimsy,” said Jonson Chong, who together with a team of other lawyers including N Surendran and S D Arunasalam challenged the bid to put the under-aged pair in jail […]

But perhaps another key reason for the hysteria over the remand of the children was also because of the long string of custodial deaths. Through the years, hundreds of suspects and witnesses have died suspiciously while in the custody of federal agencies such as the police and the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission.

Barely two weeks ago, a 30-year Selangor state political officer Teoh Beng Hock fell to his death from the 14th floor office of the MACC after a marathon investigation. There is widespread belief that his interrogators contributed to his demise and an inquest is now taking place.

“Police ought to be trained in children’s rights. This is so basic. But what happened was that they were only concerned to carry out the bidding of their political masters without respecting the children’s rights. These two are clear cut cases of political retaliation because both parents are known activists,” said Jonson.

Another 16-year old Faizudin Hamzah was less fortunate. Arrested at 11.55pm on Friday night at the central bus station, he was remanded for four days. Police have still not given any reason. The magistrate granted an omnibus remand order without even seeing the boy, who was sleeping when he was detained.

So we have a country which engages in indefinite detention of those described as threats, though that has crept from threats of terrorism and security to “threats” of dissent. They have imprisoned even minors under this statute. And they have beaten, tortured and even murdered people in custody.

Absolutely none of this is in conflict with the recent past in America. The only thing different here is that Malaysia’s indefinite detention law has proven durable and lasting, coming up on its 50th anniversary. Once an executive is handed such powers, one after another has sought not to repeal them but to implement them, even after initially freeing some prisoners. Prime Ministers of all political stripes have used the law. And the nature of power being what it is, that would surely be the outcome if Obama decided on a system of preventive detention here.

Last September, the US State Department actually had the nerve to criticize the Malaysian government for implementation of the Internal Security Act to silence dissent:

The United States summoned Friday Malaysia’s top envoy in Washington to protest its crackdown on dissent at a time when the opposition was attempting to take over power in Kuala Lumpur […]

“Peaceful expression of political opinions is a fundamental right and critical to a democracy,” a State Department official told AFP.

“The United States believes that the Malaysian government should provide due process and treatment consistent with Malaysian law and international standards,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“We expect that democratic countries that purport to advocate free expression of political views will not curtail such freedom,” the official said following the trio’s arrest.

The Obama Administration should probably take a lesson in humility before making a similar statement. And they should look at how indefinite detention has endured in Malaysia and other countries throughout the world, with painful consequences, before trying to implement it here.

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Vulnerable Pups

by digby

I just watched yet another one of those stories about the poor Blue Dogs who simply have to vote against health care because the upstanding Real Americans in their district just won’t stand for all these liberal elites socializin’ our excellent health care system. This CNN piece with John King was filmed in bucolic Idaho where the surrounding countryside is breathtakingly gorgeous and the food looks amazing. It is the perfect picture of Real Murika. As required by law, much of it was filmed in a breakfast diner and featured tables full of salt ‘o the earth middle aged white people saying adorable things like, “I voted for Reagan even though he was too liberal.” The rare Democrat defending the congressman takes a position of quiet subservience, agreeing that those liberals in San Francisco and New York don’t know diddly about diddly.

Certainly, these places really are incredibly beautiful and the people who live there are as American as apple pie. But so is San Francisco and the residents who live there are as American as Cioppinno. The idea that these folks in the diner are some sort of perfect representation of the average American is a fantasy cooked up about 80 years ago by the immigrants who created the movie myth of middle America. Whether of not John King meant it that way or not, by framing his story the way he did, he perpetuated this narrow view of the average All American small town man and woman.

Even worse, the idea that the Blue Dogs are in particular danger of losing their seats is not necessarily correct. Michael Tomasky looked into it recently:

So what I’m trying to get at here is: how vulnerable, really, are some of these Blue Dogs? To hear them talk sometimes, you’d think if they depart one iota from a basically conservative agenda, the voters will toss them out. I’m not insensitive to that prospect. As we will see, some Blue Dogs have very legitimate concerns. And obviously, one who represents a mostly rural district can’t establish a pattern of voting like Maxine Waters. Everybody gets this.

But a lot of them play that violin way too often, confident that big-city reporters in Washington and New York will just accept that their district is full of reactionaries and that they have to pander to that reaction constantly to stay in office. So I went to the numbers to try to gauge how vulnerable they really are.

As you may have guessed he determined that, for the most part, they aren’t very vulnerable at all:

You’ll notice, if you’re familiar with the current debates and with some of these people, the interesting fact that some of the more vocal Blue Dogs are among those with the most comfortable margins. As I noted in a post the other day, Mike Ross of Arkansas is a leading healthcare Blue Dog. His MVM is a gaudy +67. Collin Peterson of Minnesota, who helped weaken the cap and trade bill, has an MVM of +41.

You will also notice if you really study this list that McCain won many of these districts rather narrowly. In fact, he won 24 of them by 10 points or fewer. This hardly makes these districts scarlet red.

You can see also how many of these members either run unopposed or face only token opposition in these red districts. Many of them are long-time incumbents and fixtures. Even some with only modestly positive MVM figures are solid incumbents, as you can tell by looking at their margins: Gene Taylor (number 24 on the list, +50), Ike Skelton (number 31, +32), Dan Boren (number 32, +40).

My conclusion? Yes, some Democrats have to be very careful and not be seen as casting a liberal vote. But they’re a comparatively small number. A very clear majority of these people have won by large enough margins that it sure seems to me they could survive one controversial vote if they some backbone into it.

But many of these folks manage to sell this story line to Washington reporters who’ve never been to these exurban and rural districts and can be made to believe the worst caricatures. I say many of these Democrats are safer than they contend. People need to start challenging them on this.

I agree. But it probably wouldn’t change anything because these people actually are conservatives who believe in the things they are doing. Their “vulnerability” is simply the excuse they use to collect money and power within the Democratic Party. In fact, they are Trojan horses, operating inside the Big Tent to carry out conservative goals no matter which party is in charge. And the party leadership surely knows this and allows it to continue for reasons of their own.

The media, on the other hand, keeps up the mythmaking because it’s a fun story that allows them to continue the lazy pretense that the world is constructed like a TV sit-com. And that’s probably an even bigger problem than the Blue Dogs being Blue Dogs.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

Every comedian wants to be an actor…

By Dennis Hartley

…and vice versa: Adam Sandler comes full circle

I have good news and bad news about writer-director Judd Apatow’s Funny People. The good news is that he’s made a terrific 100 minute film. The bad news is that no one will ever get to see it without suffering through an additional 40 minutes of self-indulgence.

Adam Sandler stars as comic-turned-actor George Simmons, who has become an A-list box office draw through a series of low-brow yet successful comedy films (*cough* auto-biographical *cough* type casting *cough*). He lives the requisite movie star bachelor lifestyle to the hilt; soaking in public adulation, living in a Hollywood mansion with a revolving door of beautiful women, etc. His biggest daily chore is sorting through the piles of script offers. Everything in his life is going swimmingly, until the staple of every Disease of the Week Movie appears: The Results of Your Blood Test Are in Scene. Better get your affairs in order, pal (Uh-oh. This isn’t gonna be “ha-ha” funny Apatow?).

Meanwhile, somewhere across town (in the low-rent section) we are introduced to a trio of roommates-Ira, Leo and Mark (Seth Rogan, Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman, respectively) who are much farther down the show biz ladder. Ira and Leo are aspiring stand-up comics; Mark is an actor who has recently got his first major break with a starring role on a middling sitcom. Using their own sliding scale of success, Mark is at the top of the pyramid (he’s on TV!) and Leo has a slight lead over Ira, because he has received kudos from Budd Friedman (to fledgling L.A. comics, a “thumbs up” from the founder of the legendary Hollywood Improv is tantamount to an anointment by the Pope).

It looks like it’s going to take a miracle to give Ira’s career a boost (so he can quit that day job at the deli); in the meantime he’s just another rubber-faced no-name standing in front of a brick wall on Open Mike Night. His deux ex machina arrives when George Simmons, still reeling from the bad medical news, figures that it might be good therapy to get back to his roots and do some stage time (on a night when Ira also happens to be on the bill). George sees something in Ira’s act that appeals to him (perhaps it reminds him of himself in hungrier days) and on impulse, decides to offer him mentorship and a job as his personal assistant. It becomes apparent that what George really wants is a genuine friendship before he shuffles off to that Great Gig in the Sky (even if he has to pay for it).

Now it would seem that this would be enough of a setup to carry a feature length movie. For most directors. Unfortunately, Apatow’s third act, revolving around an ill-advised attempt on George’s part to rekindle a romance with The One Who Got Away (Leslie Mann) while her husband (Eric Bana) is out of town just goes on and on and on, at the lumbering pace of a brontosaur (Apatowsaurus?) plodding through a Triassic swamp, crushing all semblance of levity in its path. In particular, there is an inordinate amount of screen time given to the two young girls who play Mann’s daughters. I didn’t learn until the film’s credits that they are Apatow’s kids. Coupled with the fact that Mann is their real-life mom, it instills the film with a cringing sense of nepotistic home-movie overkill. Another pace-killer is the seemingly endless parade of cameos, mostly from some well-known comedians (ironically, the funniest cameo is by Eminem). It started to remind me of those The Cannonball Run films that Burt Reynolds and his pals used to do in the 1970s.

Still, there are some things I liked about the film. Although I will admit that I am not a fan (his name on a marquee is usually anathema to me), I thought Sandler was decent enough in his seriocomic role (it reminded me of his work in Punch-Drunk Love). Rogan and Sandler play well off each other, and Hill (while a bit of a one-note player) fires off some of the film’s best one-liners. Newcomer Aubrey Plaza gives a wry turn as a fellow comic that Rogan has a crush on. Torsten Voges is a scene stealer as Sandler’s German doctor (a hysterical exchange in the doctor’s office between Sandler, Rogan and Voges is an instant classic-it’s too bad that the rest of the film can’t quite match up to it).

I would have liked to have seen more emphasis on the world of stand-up, because I think that it is during those brief interludes that the film truly shines. Apatow has a good handle on that (he came up from the comedy clubs) and every scene dealing with the creative process, the camaraderie (and, oh yes-the angst and the backstabbing) ring absolutely true, and I think he could have made a fabulous film just dealing with that subject alone. But then again, I may be a little biased, because I used to be one of those rubber-faced no-names, standing in front of a brick wall on Open Mike Night. Wait a minute…and I had a day job working at a deli, while I was doing stand up gigs at night. Um, excuse me (sfx knocking on computer screen) does, uh, anybody out there need a personal assistant?

Comedy is not pretty: The Jimmy Show, Punchline, Comedian, Mr. Saturday Night, The King of Comedy, Stages, Swingers , Mickey One, Lenny, The Joker is Wild, The Entertainer, The Tall Guy, Shakes the Clown, Pagliacci (1948), My Favorite Year.

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Pushing From The left

by digby

I don’t know where this is coming from, but I’ve just received several emails telling me that I’m a Dem whore, loser, stupid, boring useless piece of garbage for refusing to acknowledge that Nancy Pelosi agreed to allow a floor vote on single payer bill in the house. Please accept my apologies. I forget to check my blogging instructions this morning and neither did I happen to see this piece of information. (But it’s always a good move to assume my bad faith and despicable motivations anyway.)

I do agree that it’s significant, nonetheless.

Single Payer Gets A Vote
July 31, 2009

Anthony Weiner is about to be the new hero of the progressive crowd after getting a promise from Nancy Pelosi to debate — and vote — on a single-payer plan to solve health care reform.

Weiner got that promise after he agreed to withdraw an amendment to essentially create Medicare for the whole nation in the Energy and Commerce Committee health care markup session this evening.

The Brooklyn-Queens Rep. looked a little surprised when Chairman Henry Waxman said Pelosi would allow that vote, and made Waxman repeat the deal to be sure it was clear and on the record.

It’s an especially big deal for advocates of a single health care system — who see it as cheaper and simpler than the complicated measure being drawn up — because they have been complaining that they have not even been able to get an airing of their position.

And having the vote of the floor of the House will force members to declare a position, and bring much more attention to the idea.

Update: Weiner, who high-fived Tammy Baldwin after getting the deal, crows in a quick press release:

“It’s a Better Plan and now it’s on Center Stage,” says Weiner

Washington, DC – Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA), Chairman of the Energy & Commerce Committee announced today that Speaker Nancy Pelosi has pledged to give Single-Payer an up or down vote when healthcare reform is considered before year’s end.

Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY), Co-Chair of the Middle Class Caucus and member of the Energy & Commerce Committee who led the effort with Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI); Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA); Rep. Elliot Engel (D-NY); Rep. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL); Rep. Janice Schakowsky (D-IL); and Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT), released the following statement:

“Single-payer is a better plan and now it is on center stage. Americans have a clear choice. Their Member of Congress will have a simpler, less expensive and smarter bill to choose. I am thrilled that the Speaker is giving us that choice.”

Good for Pelosi. Even if there’s a fairly non-existent chance of SP being enacted in this go, a sizable vote in favor would be very meaningful at this point, to emphasize how far the progressives have already compromised. Aside from being the right thing to do on the merits, it’s a smart move politically. I hope everyone who believes in real health care reform will vote for it. It would certainly clarify matters and give progressives more strength going into the final negotiations.

Update: Matt Yglesias posted about this earlier today and one of his commenters describes a delicious scene that I’m really sorry I missed:

You missed the most interesting amendment that Wiener offered. While I was watching the health-care markup on Thursday night (because I’m a policy nerd and I think that sort of thing is fun), Anthony Wiener offered an amendment to repeal Medicare. It was, by his own admission, intended as a political trap to force the Republican members to vote for single-payer health care. It was a hilarious debate to watch.

Wiener observed that a lot of Republicans had been warning direly about the dangers of socialized medicine and government interference in the health-care market, and so offered “the amendment they’ve been waiting for” to give them the opportunity to vote to end the scourge of single-payer health care in America. As a counterpart to the now-famous Republican flow chart of Obamacare, Wiener had a nice simple chart demonstrating how Medicare works (with just 3 boxes: patients, providers, government). There was also a poignant moment when everyone paused to honor John Dingell, who actually voted for Medicare 44 years ago (and is now on crutches and looking rather feeble).

The Ranking Republican, Joe Barton of Texas, made some nonsensical and indecipherable distinction about “government-mandated” health care versus “government-run” health care, and said that Republicans support the Medicare because it is in the former category (if that’s true, they sure ought to be supporting the current House health care bill). Wiener asked if the Republicans would support a public plan if it looked like Medicare, and Barton dodged the question. Later Barton hit on the semi-coherent response that Medicare only pays 80% of the cost of treatment, so the private insurance market has to pick up the slack to ensure that doctors and hospitals stay solvent. My understanding is that that’s completely false, but at least it sounds coherent.

The debate on Wiener’s amendment got pretty heated, with Rep. Steve Buyer calling Wiener an “intellectual smart-ass” and Wiener calling all the Republicans hypocrites (with good reason, though). Initially, Chairman Waxman not amused by the amendment, since he was trying to keep the markup moving quickly in order to finish on Friday. By the end of the debate, though, Waxman was clearly enjoying it. In the end, despite Wiener’s “double-dare”, all the Republicans voted no (how often do you see a unanimous “no” vote?), thus proving on the 44th anniversary of the signing of the Medicare Act that nobody’s going to mess with Medicare anytime soon.

I would have loved to see that.

It’s nice to see the progressives feeling their oats a little bit.

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No Deal

by digby

The cash for clunkers program has a bunch of rules, one of which is this one:

Consumers with eligible vehicles qualify for either $3,500 or $4,500 toward the purchase of a new vehicle depending on the fuel economy difference between the old and new cars. This amount is in addition to any rebates or incentives offered by the manufacturer for that model, and dealers are not allowed to use the CARS credit to offset those discounts.

I’ve had a couple of readers write in to tell me that car dealers are telling their customers that the rebates supercede any incentives they had been offering and refusing to deal at all. Evidently, this has something to do with the fact that the rebates got to the dealers instead of the buyers.

Has anyone else heard anything about this?

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