Month: August 2009

Fixing Our Left Coast Mistake

by dday

For so many people, the passage of Prop. 8 last November represented a civil rights failure. But it was just as much a political failure. A campaign that could have been about neighbor-to-neighbor contact and recognizing what brings us together rather than sets us apart was instead waged at 30,000 feet. The TV ads for the No campaign never showed one gay couple, and they never spent any resources on door-to-door canvassing. The consultants who ran that campaign (into the ground) claimed that visibility mattered more than personal persuasion (they actually told volunteers to get on a street corner and hold signs instead of interacting directly with people), and the entire race was waged in a defensive crouch, as the Yes campaign would post one lie after another to which the No campaign would belatedly respond.

In November there will be a chance to right this wrong, to apply the proper political means to achieve a civil rights victory. Gay marriage has been legalized by the legislature in Maine (that activist legislature!), and the same forces that passed Prop. 8 in California have qualified a ballot measure to overturn it. Instead of a state with 17 million registered voters, the universe of likely voters in Maine is just around 500,000. The No on 1/Protect Maine Equality campaign figures that they will need between $3-$5 million to wage a successful campaign. Considering the netroots provided nearly $1.5 million for the failed No on 8 campaign, putting a similar amount into a campaign that will actually identify supporters and turn them out to the polls should be an easier task.

If you have any suspicion that the Maine folks don’t know what they’re doing, take a look at this first commercial, one of the best I’ve seen on this subject:

The theocrats are targeting Maine as the place where they can turn back the momentum on marriage equality from the past few months. Civil rights campaigns are long and often painful, and sometimes they have to go directly to the people. We can win this time. Support Maine Freedom to Marry.

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Bypassing Senate Finance

by dday

Leaks keep springing that the White House is ready to give up on bipartisanship and just pass a health care bill with Democrats. My message would be, hurry up!

The only committee still working on the health care bill is the Senate Finance Committee. They’ve been systematically dismantling it on a number of fronts. Not only have they ditched the public option, as well as the employer mandate which would require businesses to either provide health care for their employees or pay a percentage into the system (I may be OK with dropping that), they are striking at the very heart of what will tangibly help people in the bill – the subsidies for insurance:

The saving grace of those four bills was that the consumer protections and financial assistance in them remained reasonably strong. If reform ends up looking like those four bills, then financial assistance would be available to people earning up to four times the poverty rate–or around $88,000 a year in family income. (Subsidies would be available on a sliding scale, so that a family making $70,000 would get very little, a family making $60,000 would get more, and so on.) Such a measure would also limit out-of-pocket expenses to $10,000 a year per family, while providing other crucial protections. And, of course, it would include a real public insurance option.

If Conrad and his supporters get their way, the new health care system won’t be nearly as generous–or protective. They’ve made clear they want a package that costs less than $1 trillion. A lot less. And, thanks to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, we have some sense of what that would mean in practice.

Based on previously leaked drafts of legislation going through the Senate Finance Committee–the last of the five considering health legislation, and the only where it’s still hung up–the Center was able to project what a scaled back plan would look like. Their conclusions, as noted previously in this space, were pretty discouraging:

…an individual with income above $32,490, and a family of three with income above $54,930, would not receive any subsidy to help pay for coverage.

Substantial numbers of people with incomes modestly above 300 percent of the poverty line could face difficulty paying the full price for coverage. The average job-based insurance policy today would cost a family of three at 300 percent of the poverty line about 23 percent of its income. This could leave the family short of funds for other expenses such as housing and child care.

So people making between three and four times the poverty line–that is, families with incomes between roughly $66,000 and $88,000 a year–would get no assistance whatsoever. Families making less than that would still get some assistance, but it’d be a lot less than they’d get otherwise.

It gets worse. In the Finance Committee bill, the basic policy would cover only 65% of total medical costs, far less than even the current standard of 80-90%. For the poor, you’d be paying a premium of indeterminate size that don’t actually cover you. Sure, the insurance company brochure and the glossy ads will say that their plans offer you affordable coverage and piece of mind. But when you try to use it, you’ll find it to be junk, and you’ll be on the hook for major out-of-pocket costs. Even if they’re capped at $10,000 annually, that’s far more than a lot of people can afford.

As Jon Cohn says, this sounds like a Trojan horse to bring Republicans back to prominence more than anything else:

Put aside, for a moment, whether this makes sense substantively. It makes absolutely no sense politically. Scaling down legislation basically means gutting the benefits that would go to the working and middle class. In other words, it would help fulfill the fear many of these voters already have and that opponents of reform have tried hard to stoke: That reform doesn’t have much to offer the typical middle-income American.

You can imagine why Republicans might think this is a dandy idea. But why on earth would Democrats agree?

A lot of needed attention has been paid to these scale-backs. But understand – all of them are in the Senate Finance Committee version of the bill. The competing versions all have a higher percentage of coverage for basic policies, higher subsidies, more protection for consumers and a public option. It’s good to have this information because we know what to look out for, but if the Administration is truly committed to giving up on bipartisanship, they can give up on all of these coverage scale-backs borne out of the bipartisan process. Simply put, if Republicans will not be needed for a bill, the Senate Finance Committee version gets thrown in the trash bin. All of the offending items under discussion exist there. Bypass the committee, borrow the House’s funding mechanism and Medicare provisions (which is really the only elements under the jurisdiction of Finance), and get a bill to the Senate floor. Even reviving Max Baucus’ original document as a blueprint, which by the way INCLUDED a public option, could work. This may offend Chuck Grassley, but that’s a feature, not a bug.

Beating back the army of insurance lobbyists is as simple as devaluing the Baucus caucus.

…I kind of mentioned this at the end, but please take note: Max Baucus’ sketch of principles for health care reform from last year is to the left of ANY bill that has come out of any Congressional committee thus far. It not only included a public option, a bigger role for the insurance exchange, an employer mandate, and subsidies up to 400%, but opened up Medicare to anyone aged 55-64 who didn’t get coverage from their employer. Seems to me Sen. Reid could just take that sketch and run with it.

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Joke Of The Day

by digby

Chris Matthews and Joe Klein derisively asserting that bloggers don’t fact check.

Whew! That’s a good one …

Think Progress points out:

It’s ironic that a cable news host such as Chris Matthews would attack bloggers for supposedly not checking their facts, considering the amount of falsehoods and factually inaccurate statements he regularly utters on the air — which have all been fact-checked by bloggers.

And I think we all know why Joe Klein gets downright hysterical at the mention of Glen Greenwald, don’t we?

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Respect

by digby

If you ever thought the Republicans have any respect for Democrats, even the Lion of the Senate, think again:

Kennedy, one of the major proponents of health care reform, has missed most of the recent debate because of cancer. Both Hatch and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Kennedy’s absence has taken a toll on the process.

“He had a unique way of sitting down with the parties at a table and making the right concessions, which really are the essence of successful negotiations,” McCain said.

Somehow I don’t think Teddy thought “he made the right concessions” was going to be his legacy.

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Flank Stake

by digby

I haven’t given this a lot of thought, but this post by Howie makes me wonder if the next few years in American politics aren’t going to be incredibly volatile … and fascinating. He contemplates the odd fate of:

stop listening to hate-talk sociopath Glenn Beck earlier this month. Now it looks like Inglis– like two other South Carolina conservatives, Henry Brown and Joe Wilson, who consider themselves more in line with Reagan Republicanism than Limbaugh Republicanism– may well be in for some serious trouble holding onto his seat.

[T]he 2010 election will test whether Inglis’ strongly Republican-leaning constituency in the South Carolina’s 4th District believes he is conservative enough. That’s because the six-term congressman has drawn four Republican primary challengers who argue that he isn’t.

Republican State Sen. David Thomas, when he launched his primary campaign in June, said he was “disappointed” in Inglis for voting in early 2007 against the buildup of U.S. troops in the Iraq conflict– a policy, instituted by President George W. Bush, known as the “troop surge”– and for voting in late 2008 for the financial industry assistance, or “bailout,” measure (PL 110-343).

Candidate Christina Jeffrey, a professor at Wofford College in Spartanburg, said in a statement on her Web site that Inglis is “symbolic of the path many Republicans have taken over the past few years as he has continued to compromise our conservative values.”

Other candidates include Trey Gowdy, a prosecutor, and Jim Lee, an information technology and business consultant. Gowdy, on his Web site, said there is a “near total disconnect between Washington and the people of the 4th Congressional District,” while Lee derided Inglis as a man who has “lost his focus and is now part of the system he originally went to Washington to change.”

When Inglis returned to Congress in 2004 he was less of a radical right firebrand and more of a pragmatic conservative. He backed a few Democratic proposals, though not as many as, say, far right kook Eric Cantor. Inglis grouses that he’s drawn so much opposition this year to his own party’s lunatic fringe. “Apparently I don’t spit and flail enough,” he said.

The right-wing website, We choose to keep Glenn Beck and replace Bob! may auger rough sailing ahead in a crowded primary where Inglis needs to get 50% to avoid a run-off that could expose him to a major push from the kinds of passionate far right Know Nothings who are overwhelming Charlie Crist in Florida and giving wild-eyed extremist Marco Rubio wins in all the GOP district straw polls.

Looks like it isn’t just the Democrats with a little explaining to do to their own base.

Think about that. You have the bases of the two parties challenging their leftmost and rightmost congresspeople to move further left and right. Now, I would make the argument that the leftmost are not nearly as far left and the rightmost are far right. After all, if we were like the teabaggers, we would be showing up at town halls packing heat and demanding the nationalization of industry and worldwide revolution. But the general phenomenon is the same.

I would suggest that this is different than the 70s and 80s when the Democrats fell apart. They immediately distanced themselves from what was perceived to be their crazies and, in fact, nominated a conservative southern Christian at the first opportunity. Sure, there were still big protests against nukes and the like, and the Jesse Jackson coalition in the 80s was widely considered to be a “far left” endeavor. But for the most part, once the Dems lost it in 1980, the party very quickly moved to the center, even though the press continued to pretend that it hadn’t.

What we are seeing now is a right wing that has ben mobilized and animated by a certain set of ideas and kept alive by a separate communications infrastructure which will likely not allow the party to drift back to the middle as it might naturally do. And so the party stays in the far right quadrant. And the left, rightly believing that they voted in a Party which should be answerable to their concerns, is flexing its muscle at the same time. It makes for an unbelievable amount of personal tension.

My personal belief is that in a case like this, the political establishment should throw off its Nehru jackets and toss their Madonna bustiers once and for all and grok that times have changed. This is a period where active citizens are going to demand that their political institutions, especially congress and the presidency, use their power to the maximum effect whether to achieve or obstruct.

It would be unpleasant and somewhat brutal, I have no doubt. But it is also a perfectly legitimate way to govern. A liberal party and a conservative party can simply exercise their institutional prerogatives and take the results to the people every two, four and six years. There is nothing in the constitution requiring that the whining Kent Conrads be allowed to have veto power over legislation. (And there is nothing that says progressives can’t bring the hammer down on their leadership the same way the Republican base does theirs.)

As average folks without a lot of institutional juice, we citizens don’t have a whole lot of options. So we do what we can. But there is one thing we should all probably recognize and deal with: the president, the congress and the media of both parties are all in agreement about one thing: they do not like the rabble at both ends of the spectrum making demands. Remember, it’s their town.

And I include the president in that for a reason. It’s not a matter of him “miscalculating” or failing to understand the nature of the opposition. He, like all establishment politicians, has an interest in maintaining the status quo, and I would imagine that the fear among all establishment politicians is that this phenomenon might actually bring about real change (as opposed to the fluffy, Madison Avenue version they like to sell.) After all, the president has large majorities and a huge amount of power. It’s hard to believe that if he wanted to get real health care reform passed that he couldn’t do it. It’s not 1994 and the Republicans aren’t in ascendance and dominating the discourse. It’s not outrageous to make the obvious assumption that he’s not doing it for the simple reason that he doesn’t want to. And it’s not ridiculous to think that one of the reasons for that is that it would empower the base of the Democratic Party and inflame the base of the GOP. At this moment that particular problem appears to be the biggest threat to the permanent political establishment of both parties there is.

Let’s face it, the most potentially destabilizing political battles right now are within the parties — between the leaders and their most ardent adherents. That’s actually somewhat encouraging to me. I’m not sure how you could ever break through the ossified structures of the village without something like that. Whether anything actually happens remains to be seen. But it’s interesting to think about.

Update: As Greenwald once again thoroughly documents, the media establishment frames all politics as being the Real Americans vs the hippies — and I’m sure the Democratic establishment couldn’t be happier. The Republican establishment actually has a harder task, which may or may not be fortunate for us.

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An Exceptional Proposal

by digby

David Gergen says that Americans can’t do comprehensive health care reform because we are so darned special:

GERGEN: I think one of the other aspects of this is very fundamental to who we are as a people. There are a lot of sociologists and historians will tell you we as American people are just different. We’re an outliers measured in many ways. Our value system is different. We don’t think like Canadians. We don’t accept government the way it is. We’re not deferential to authority the way Canadians are or in Western Europe.

He’s cute, isn’t he?

But it does make me think about some creative ways to get around our dilemma. Perhaps the best way to get health care reform would be to have police and the military run the system. Everyone on this program (except Sanjay Gupta, who foolishly questions whether becoming health nazis will work) believes that people are unhealthy because they asked for it. They are convinced that the most important thing to do to cut costs is to punish people for their bad health so those who “do the right things” don’t have to pay for sick peoples’ health care anymore. (Presumably, those with better genes were deemed superior by God from the get go, so they wil be rewarded right along with those who “do the right things.”) Et voila, the costs are contained and everyone is healthy. America is the new Sparta.

Unfortunately, Americans have some bad habits that are going to be hard to break. It seems to me that a little tasing would go a long way to keeping people on the straight and narrow and cutting those costs. After all, unlike the authoritarian Canadians who subserviantly submit themselves to a socialistic medical system, we individualistic Americans are more than happy to allow certain authorities great discretion. They are even allowed to torture innocent people merely if they don’t like their attitude. Putting the health care system under the auspices of the police, makes all resistance to Big Government authoritariansim vanish completely.

If we simply redefine illness as a crime (which these panelists largely agreed it already was) we can incarcerate the sick people and provide them with health care without running up against our freedom loving anti-authoritarianism. In fact, the concept of an individual mandate without adequate subsidies and a public plan will automatically turn the 47 million uninsured into criminals if they don’t immediately start paying the private insurance companies an expensive tribute (the coverage will be nearly non-existant, after all), so we’re part way there already!

Clearly, we have no problem putting people in jail; it’s government providing health care that offends our reverence for liberty. Let’s “reboot” the health care debate and make getting sick a crime. In the land of the free, it’s pretty much the only way to get to universal health care. I have no doubt it would be a huge bipartisan victory.

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Well, Yes, Kevin, But…

by tristero

Kevin Drum on a recent Krauthammer call to have a serious, non-Palinized discussion about end-of-life counseling care:

The only thing that’s subtle here is Krauthammer’s faux evenhandedness. Up until two minutes ago, politicians and pundits across the political spectrum universally believed that advance care counseling was an entirely sane and uncontroversial practice, one that any compassionate society would encourage. Those same politicians and pundits knew perfectly well that it was never about guiding patients in any particular direction and has never been motivated by cost savings in any way. They knew that other countries reimburse for advance care planning — just like any other use of a doctor’s time — and it hasn’t led to any pressure, subtle or otherwise, to pull the plug on grandma.

They knew this. Until two minutes ago. But now they’re pretending — subtly, temperately — that maybe it isn’t true after all. And they’re doing this not because they’ve changed their minds, but because they want to kill healthcare reform for political reasons and they don’t care whether innocent bystanders get hurt in the process. Their “Yes, but” campaign might ensure that patients forevermore mistrust doctors who talk about advance care directives, but they also know that sober, serious, subtle op-eds endorsing this point of view are more likely to derail healthcare reform among the chattering classes than Sarah Palin’s Facebook maunderings. It is intellectual venality of the first order.

Well yes, but…they’ve been doing it the entire 6 plus years Kevin and I have been blogging, and far longer before that.

Lesson #1 about modern conservatism: You cannot have a serious conversation with movement conservatives.

Lesson #2 about modern conservatism: Lesson #1 plus About anything.

Lesson #3 about modern conservatism: Lesson #1 plus Lesson #2 plus Ever.

Cost Cutting For Liberty

by digby

In case you were wondering, Joe Lieberman said this morning on John King’s show that we need to concentrate on cost controls in the health care sector in order to bring down the deficit and forget about universal coverage. We just can’t cover everyone, but we have to figure out a way to cut costs dramatically because health care is bankrupting the country.

Considering that Lieberman doesn’t understand that universal coverage with everyone paying in will mitigate health care inflation, and that he considers cost control the most important thing, one can only assume that he’s the guy who wants to off granny — and you too, if you don’t have insurance. After all, we know that people who aren’t insured get some very expensive, inadequate care if they do get sick because we require that hospitals treat people in an emergency. If cutting the deficit is the point of health care reform, then you’ve got to go where the money is — sick people.

Lieberman and Richard Lugar both agree that Obama shouldn’t have put Health Care on the agenda at all because there is a recession. But, of course, if the recession was over you couldn’t put health care on the agenda because Lieberman and Lugar would say it would hurt the recovery. And if the economy is rolling, everyone who is willing to work should be able to get covered, so there’s no need for health care reform. It’s funny how that works.

Everyone agreed that the Democrats needed to cut back their plans immediately and throw a few crumbs at health care that will only make things worse and then move on to the Republican agenda on national security, trade and financial reform which they all agreed could be passed with no problem. Otherwise, Obama will have a failed presidency.

Can we all see what’s wrong with that picture?

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Saturday Night At The Movies

John Hughes lives

By Dennis Hartley

I’m so glad we had this time together: Post Grad

Although it is presented with the surface trappings of one of those self-consciously “hip” post-millennial indie comedies about quirky families that are now fairly interchangeable (Little Miss Sunshine, Juno), the new comedy Post Grad is populated by characters who would have felt more at home in a mid-1980s John Hughes vehicle; in an odd way this makes it pleasantly anachronistic. You could almost picture Molly Ringwald as Ryden Malby (Alexis Bledel), a college lit major whose post-graduation dream is to jump right into the career track at a major L.A. publishing house. You have the male childhood friend (and fellow grad) Adam (Zach Gilford) who secretly pines away for her while gallantly respecting the platonic reality (yes…he is, and will forever be…her Duckman).

You even have the Hated Rival. Her name is Jessica (played to the hilt with amusingly snobby arrogance by Catherine Reitman) and she’s been Ryden’s academic arch-nemesis since high school. Much to Ryden’s chagrin, Jessica (along with her other fellow grads) all manage to breeze into immediate employment (obviously, the film was not made with the current economic realities in mind). Her road to that dream job runs into some bumps; consequently she faces every grad’s worst nightmare: Moving back in with the family.

This brings us to the Batshit Crazy Yet Lovable Family. There’s the D.I.Y. Dad (Michael Keaton, at times recalling his character in Night Shift) who manages a luggage store, but who is always dreaming up quirky money-making schemes on the side (he’s got one word of fatherly advice for his college grad daughter, and it’s not “plastics”…it’s “buckles”). Mom (Jane Lynch) divides her time between pinching pennies and reining in Ryden’s weird, sock-puppet wielding little brother (Bobby Coleman) who gets into trouble at school for, uh, licking his classmates (he apparently finds their heads particularly appealing). And don’t forget Grandma (a scene-stealing Carol Burnett, still an absolute riot at 76) who makes her grand entrance at Ryden’s graduation ceremony replete with clanging portable oxygen bottle and a rather noisy bag of Cheetos (not the only glaring product placement-Eskimo Pies get more screen time than some of the cast).

There’s not really a lot of room for character development within the film’s breezy 90-minute running time (don’t expect anything much deeper than a slightly better than average sitcom episode), but the cast is game, there are some genuinely funny scenes and the film is so good-natured that it’s hard not to like it. The only misstep of note is a subplot about a flirtation between Ryden and her 30-something neighbor, a wannabe filmmaker who directs TV infomercials (played by Brazilian beefcake Rodrigo Santoro). It just doesn’t ring true; and the romantic chemistry isn’t there between Bledel and Santoro. That aside, Bledel has a charming screen presence, although she is handily upstaged by Keaton, Lynch and Burnett (I’ll admit that I have never seen an episode of Gilmore Girls, which I’m told is a popular show; so this was my first awareness of her).

This is the first feature-length “live action” film for director Vicky Jenson, who has a background in animation work (she previously co-directed Shark Tale and Shrek). It’s also the feature film debut for screenwriter Kelly Fremon. Ivan Reitman (who directed Ghostbusters and Stripes) produced; which might explain the film’s 80s vibe. If you’re looking for a political message, steer clear (frankly the only reason I was intrigued to screen it was the vague inference in the trailer that it might signal Hollywood’s acknowledgment of our economic woes; it looks like we’ll still have to wait for Michael Moore’s upcoming Capitalism: A Love Story for that). In the meantime, don’t lose any sleep if you miss Post Grad in theaters, although it may be worth a rental on a slow night.

I shoulda just stayed in college: The Graduate, St. Elmo’s Fire, Reality Bites, The Last Days of Disco, The Devil Wears Prada, Working Girl (1988), Slacker, Diner, Wisdom, Baby It’s You, Getting Straight (1970), The Way We Were, Love Story, Four Friends.

Previous posts with related themes: Vicky Christina Barcelona

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Better And Better

by digby

Great:

Before they left Washington for the August recess, the Finance group, known as the “Gang of Six,” had crafted the outlines of a package that trimmed more than $100 billion from the House price tag and jettisoned a government-run insurance option, which has become a rallying cry for many liberals but is opposed by Republicans. The senators also were looking to provide insurance subsidies to a smaller, less affluent group than the House bill would.

After meeting via teleconference for more than an hour late Thursday, the Senate group is now looking to go further. They support a requirement that all individuals carry health insurance, but they are considering creating a bare-bones insurance policy that would be easier for people to afford without government help. They are also talking about further reducing the number of people eligible for subsidies, said an aide familiar with the talks.

Awesome, awesome plan. If we could just get rid of all subsidies and consumer protections, it would be perfect. All that would be left is the mandate.

Buy insurance stock.

Update: Robert Reich asks the perennial question — and answers it correctly.

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