Month: March 2010

If You Can’t Beat ‘Em

by digby

This is useful since a lot of people ask their doctors what they think about this issue. Not that all doctors are in favor, but this can’t hurt …

The nation’s largest association of doctors and the AARP senior citizens’ lobby are endorsing President Barack Obama’s revised health overhaul legislation.

James Rohack, president of the American Medical Association, said Friday that the pending bill isn’t perfect, but it’s the next step toward real reform of the nation’s health care system.

“This is certainly not the bill we would have written, but we cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” Rohack said.

The board of the Chicago-based group reached a consensus and voted unanimously Thursday night after a review of the House reconciliation bill…

The bill “goes a long way” toward assuring access to primary care for patients on Medicaid, the federal-state health program for the poor and disabled, Rohack said. The legislation gives primary care doctors a pay raise for Medicaid patients, increasing payments to the level of Medicare, as it expands Medicaid coverage to more patients in 2013 and 2014.

The bill would provide federal funding to states to cover that increase in Medicaid costs.

AARP has steadily supported health overhaul efforts. The organization’s CEO A. Barry Rand sent a letter Friday to members of the House of Representatives, urging them to vote yes.

AARP is going to have its hands full. The GOP is planning a full blown Soylent Green campaign and the elderly are going to wind up even more petrified than they already are.

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A Sorry Anniversary

by digby

It seems like it was only yesterday that I posted this terse announcement at the end of a long, difficult day:

The opening stages of the “disarmament” of Iraq has begun. The President will speak to the nation at 10:15.

Fasten your seatbelt and start praying. Human beings are on the other end of those bombs.

Seven years later, human beings are still being blown up in Iraq. What a horrible, wasteful folly.

Brave New Films has put together a great film looking at where we’ve come since that memorable day:

Today is the seventh anniversary of the Iraq invasion. There’s a temptation as we begin to end our combat presence in Iraq to search for a happy ending. But there has been no ‘victory’ in Iraq. We created this video as a reminder of the damage done to Iraq and to our country over the last seven years. We also know that there will be no economic recovery here at home as long as we’re spending $100 billion a year on another war that isn’t making us any safer – the war in Afghanistan. That’s why we’re asking you to report the Afghanistan War as an example of waste, fraud and abuse on the White House’s official economic recovery website, Recovery.gov, today. Simply scroll down to the field marked “What” and paste this message into the text box: “I’d like to report the waste of billions of dollars of our national wealth in Afghanistan on a war that doesn’t make us safer. It’s fraud to portray this as a war that increases our security, and it’s abusive of U.S. troops and local civilians to drag out this war any longer. End the war so we can have real economic recovery.”

Along those lines, I just heard Ohio Rep John Boccieri, an Iraq war vet, explaining his “yes” vote on HCR as stemming from when he was a pilot during the war and hearing that HHS secretary Tommy Thompson was in Iraq to deliver a check which would ensure that every “man woman and child” in the country would have health care. He said that he couldn’t explain to his constituents in Ohio why they shouldn’t have the same thing. It’s a good point.

Update: When I went back to look up what I was saying that day, this post came up first:

I find that my earlier post, “where’d they get all those flags?” has been answered. Jesse links to the Chicago tribune article reporting that Clear Channel “sponsored” all those pro-war rallies of the last few days. Now, why do you suppose they did that?

Clear Channel is by far the largest owner of radio stations in the nation. The company owned only 43 in 1995, but when Congress removed many of the ownership limits in 1996, Clear Channel was quickly on the highway to radio dominance. The company owns and operates 1,233 radio stations (including six in Chicago) and claims 100 million listeners. Clear Channel generated about 20 percent of the radio industry’s $16 billion in 2001 revenues.

The media giant’s size also has generated criticism. Some recording artists have charged that Clear Channel’s dominance in radio and concert promotions is hurting the recording industry. Congress is investigating the effects of radio consolidation. And the FCC is considering ownership rule changes, among them changes that could allow Clear Channel to expand its reach.

Now, let me get this straight. Celebrities are stepping out of bounds when they express political views opposing the President. But, large media companies sponsoring phony pro-military “rallies” replete with free flag swag is perfectly a-ok. Just trying to get the rules straight.

“I think this is pretty extraordinary,” said former Federal Communications Commissioner Glen Robinson, who teaches law at the University of Virginia. “I can’t say that this violates any of a broadcaster’s obligations, but it sounds like borderline manufacturing of the news.”

No kidding. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this story is the fact that while rallies were extremely well covered this past week-end, they were presented as spontaneously growing up out of the pro-military grassroots. They were not portrayed as having corporate sponsorship and they certainly were not reported as being a product of a concerted talk radio campaign of right wing nut jobs and their GOP corporate masters.

Plus ca change and all that rot, eh?

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Conscience Claws

by digby

I don’t like Indiana’s Brad Ellsworth much, but at least he’s not willing to lie about the Nelson Amendment. Greg Sargent reports that he’s voting for the HCR bill and said this:

Ellsworth’s office sends over his statement. The key nugget on abortion:

“As a pro-life Hoosier, one of my central concerns has been preventing federal funding of elective abortion. Throughout my brief time in Congress, I have held firm to my pro-life principles, even when it meant going against my party, and I am proud of my 100% pro-life voting record on abortion-related issues. I have spent time listening carefully to constituents, pro-life leaders, policy experts and reading all the details of every bill.

“After assurance from the Catholic Health Association, Catholic Nuns and pro-life advocates I am confident in my heart that this bill meets my pro-life principles and upholds the policy of no federal funding for elective abortions. More than that, it invests $250 million in support services for women facing unplanned pregnancies and over a billion dollars to help families afford adoption services. These investments will reduce the number of abortions in America.

Any “pro-life” Democrat with the tiniest bit of belief in social justice should be able to see that this bill does not make anyone pay for abortions. In fact, it makes women go through hoops to pay for their own abortion coverage with their own money and will lead inevitably to less access over time.

These statements are not much help for the pro-choice advocates who had to vote against their own interests to gain subsidies and government coverage for more poor people, but at least it doesn’t mean they did that for nothing. If some ardent “pro-life” Democrats are willing to admit that the bill doesn’t say the opposite of what Stupak and the Bishops say it says, perhaps we can start to crawl out of this rabbit hole now.

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Pulling The Plug Redux

by digby

You’ll probably be hearing Republicans screeching like enraged Gorgons over this memo allegedly written by Democrats that says they’re going to be suffocating Grandma.

Unsurprisingly, it likely that it’s BS:

A senior Democratic leadership aide told TPMDC in an interview the memo, obtained and printed by Politico and leading the Drudge Report this afternoon a few days ahead of the health care vote Sunday, is “a hoax.” [READ THE MEMO HERE] “We have checked with every Democratic office, no one has ever seen it. It did not come out of a Democratic office,” the aide said, adding that media outlets printing the memo have not checked with leadership offices if the memo is authentic. A second Democratic leadership aide confirmed the memo was not sent by the Democrats. A third Democratic aide also said the memo is fake, citing the “draft” stamp and saying no one uses such things.

Sometimes I think the “Rathergate” scandal permanently damaged the brains of the conservative movement. They have been obsessed with forged memos ever since. Last time they insisted that the Democrats had forged one, which turned out not to be true. This time, it appears that they forged one themselves. (Of course, it may turn out that some idiot staffer wrote the thing, but I’m doubtful anyone’s that stupid, even the Democrats.)

Still, you can’t blame them. They have a network and a pipeline devoted to passing around lies, and their main approach to dealing with health care will be a continuous round of ever more ridiculous lies about the Democrats destroying Medicare. It’s smart politics for them. Their only growing demographic is the over 65s.

If I thought the Democrats were devious and talented enough to pull it off, I might encourage them to put social security on the agenda just so they can force Republicans to turn themselves inside out trying to keep this constituency happy while maintaining the fiction that they are fiscal conservatives.

But I don’t think we can chance it. The Dems would likely only succeed in destroying social security and their reputation for protecting the safety net for the elderly.

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Tim’s Xerox

by digby

Can I just say how creepy it is to see Little Luke Russert sagely talking about the vote count on MSNBC as if his father went through some time machine and came back out at age 19? All he needs is a white slate board and he’d be doing a full-on impression. It kind of makes my skin crawl.

(This is weird. Just a few minutes after Shuster spoke with Lil Luke, he teased a segment featuring time travel. Coincidence? I don’t think so …)

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Willingly Brainwashed

by digby

If you watched Fox and listened to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck all day, you’d be ignorant too:

On March 16 the Tea Party crowd showed up for yet another demonstration on Capitol Hill in Washington. Curious about the factual knowledge these people have regarding the issues they are protesting, my friend David Frum enlisted some interns to interview as many Tea Partyers as possible on a couple of basic questions. They got 57 responses–a pretty good-sized sample from a crowd that numbered between 300 and 500 people. (Survey results are here.)

The first question that was asked concerned the size of government. Tea Partyers were asked how much the federal government gets in taxes as a percentage of the gross domestic product. According to Congressional Budget Office data, acceptable answers would be 6.4%, which is the percentage for federal income taxes; 12.7%, which would be for both income taxes and Social Security payroll taxes; or 14.8%, which would represent all federal taxes as a share of GDP in 2009.
[…]

Tuesday’s Tea Party crowd, however, thought that federal taxes were almost three times as high as they actually are. The average response was 42% of GDP and the median 40%. The highest figure recorded in all of American history was half those figures: 20.9% at the peak of World War II in 1944.

To follow up, Tea Partyers were asked how much they think a typical family making $50,000 per year pays in federal income taxes. The average response was $12,710, the median $10,000. In percentage terms this means a tax burden of between 20% and 25% of income.

Of course, it’s hard to know what any particular individual or family pays in taxes, but according to IRS tax tables, a single person with $50,000 in taxable income last year would owe $8,694 in federal income taxes, and a married couple filing jointly would owe $6,669.

But these numbers are high because to have a taxable income of $50,000, one’s gross income would be higher by at least the personal exemption, which is $3,650, and the standard deduction, which is $5,700 for single people and $11,400 for married couples. Owning a home or having children would reduce one’s tax burden further.

[…]

Tea Partyers also seem to have a very distorted view of the direction of federal taxes. They were asked whether they are higher, lower or the same as when Barack Obama was inaugurated last year. More than two-thirds thought that taxes are higher today, and only 4% thought they were lower; the rest said they are the same.

As noted earlier, federal taxes are very considerably lower by every measure since Obama became president. And given the economic circumstances, it’s hard to imagine that a tax increase would have been enacted last year. In fact, 40% of Obama’s stimulus package involved tax cuts. These include the Making Work Pay Credit, which reduces federal taxes for all taxpayers with incomes below $75,000 by between $400 and $800.

According to the JCT, last year’s $787 billion stimulus bill, enacted with no Republican support, reduced federal taxes by almost $100 billion in 2009 and another $222 billion this year. The Tax Policy Center, a private research group, estimates that close to 90% of all taxpayers got a tax cut last year and almost 100% of those in the $50,000 income range. For those making between $40,000 and $50,000, the average tax cut was $472; for those making between $50,000 and $75,000, the tax cut averaged $522. No taxpayer anywhere in the country had his or her taxes increased as a consequence of Obama’s policies…

In fact, there hasn’t been a federal tax increase of any significance in this country since 1993.

I’m guessing that most of these people don’t know much of anything that’s true they’re just consumed with inchoate rage that the “bad guys” are in power and therefore they must be doing all the bad things everyone tells them they are doing.

The modern conservative movement propaganda holds that government is the problem not the solution. The corollary is that is you have a problem, government must be the cause. You are short of money? It must be because of taxes. People don’t have health care? It must be because the government is running it. Crime? Big government. Lack of jobs? Government.

This isn’t about issues, it’s about a delusional worldview formed by people who listen to a bunch of hucksters who have successfully looted the country while persuading about half the people that the government was doing the looting and giving it in the form of “handouts” to people who didn’t deserve it. It’s a great scam and a lot of people have made a lot of money promoting it.

It’s a shame that these same people are getting screwed six ways to Sunday, but I’m getting less and less sympathetic as I see them throwing dollar bills into the faces of disabled citizens and telling them go somewhere else looking for a handout. These aren’t just misguided souls. They are cruel jerks.

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End Game

by digby

Sam Stein at HuffPo reports:

Democratic lawmakers, from the leadership on down, are facing what many describe as an unprecedented amount of political pressure as the party scrambles to pass health care reform.

In recent days, the message has been conveyed throughout the caucus that the failure to pass legislation into law would be a cataclysmic misstep. It goes beyond the certainty that activists in the base would be demoralized, that the president would be weakened or that Congress would seem entirely ineffectual (if not so already). The damage to the party would be so far-reaching, lawmakers have been told, that even the big-time donors who have long supported Democratic causes would be less inclined to contribute.

“The party is on a precipice,” said one longtime Democratic donor who asked to speak on the condition of anonymity. “If they pass this [bill], people will be jubilant. If they don’t, there are going to be a lot of us who consider just staying home in 2010.”

[…]

Messages like these aren’t isolated. Party strategists say that members of Congress have been getting these warnings for weeks. Coupled with rising angst among the party base and a mounting hysteria among the activist community, the result is a merging of Democratic forces usually witnessed only during presidential campaigns.

“I have, in the last week, seen folks in the grassroots and the netroots and the donor community threatening to [stop supporting Democrats] if they don’t get this done,” said Paul Begala, a longtime Democratic strategist who consults many party officials. “You rarely get all three of them together on the same page.”

I think most people just want to get this thing done.

And I hope that everyone is prepared for the level of frenzied dementia this is going to unleash on the right.

This is how the Republicans are going to look on Monday morning:

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More Sickening Behavior

by digby

You’ve probably heard about this despicable crusade against the little boy who testified about his mother’s death due to a lack of health insurance. Coming from the same group that crucified Graeme Frost and made fun of Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s disease. (Just yesterday a bunch of yahoos at an anti-health care rally told a different man with Parkinson’s that he was on the wrong side of town if he wanted a “hand-out.”)

But these comments among the hate radio creeps about the deaths of the 11 year old boy’s mother are unbelievable:

“Now this is unseemly, exploitative, an 11-year-old boy being forced to tell his story all over just to benefit the Democrat Party and Barack Obama,” Limbaugh said on March 12, according to a transcript his show. “And, I would say this to Marcelas Owens: ‘Well, your mom would still have died, because Obamacare doesn’t kick in until 2014.'”

And this is even worse:

Malkin also suggested there were other programs that could have helped Tifanny Owens, adding, “It’s not clear that additional doctors’ visits in the subsequent months would have prevented her death.”

Thank you Dr. Malkin. Take two aspirin and shut up.

Aside from these privileged idiots constantly insisting that there is no way people could possibly die because they can’t get health care, the idea that they both believe that “well, she would have died anyway” is some kind of an excuse is unbelievable. Recall that these people were all beside themselves at the suggestion that the brain dead Terry Schiavo would be allowed to die as she herself had wished. But this young 27 year old mother with pulmonary hypertension was just destined to die from her disease, so nobody can be expected to have any compassion for her plight. They are morally incomprehensible.

Meanwhile, the disabled man who sat quietly while disgusting pigs screamed in his face in that video that repulsed decent people everywhere, speaks:

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