Month: January 2011

Congressman Gingrey (R-Versailles)

by digby

Wow. I thought these people were out of touch, but this really takes the cake:

Yesterday, the Department of Health and Human Services released a new report showing that up to 129 million Americans have a pre-existing condition and would likely be denied coverage in the individual health insurance market. According to the analysis, examples of what may be considered a pre-existing condition include, “heart disease, cancer, asthma, high blood pressure, and arthritis.”

Republicans have questioned the results of the report by arguing that many Americans with pre-existing conditions already have insurance coverage, but during this afternoon’s floor debate in the House, Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) took the argument one step further, belittling the ailments:

GINGREY: One hundred and twenty nine million people with pre-existing conditions! They would all have to have hang nails and fever blisters to have pre-existing conditions and if you believe those statistics, I’ve got a beach to sell you in Pennsylvania.

These pampered princes with their federal cadillac plan have absolutely no idea what it’s like to try to deal with the private health insurance market. I was denied health insurance from three different companies because I had been treated for gingivitis in the previous five years. I kid you not. It took me appealing all the way to the top, with proof that the condition had been reversed, before a fourth would take me.

Not a hangnail or a fever blister, but close. They will use any excuse to exclude you, particularly if you are over a certain age. Gingrey is a privileged ass.

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The Era of Lost Dreams

by digby

Via @WalterShapiro, I got pointed to this post by demographer Cheryl Russell, who lays out why all this talk of Morning in America is tripe. This recession is devastating to average Americans and its effects will felt for a long time to come.

More than 1 million homes were foreclosed in 2010, a record. (RealtyTrac.com)

4.5 million Americans have been unemployed for a year or longer, a record. (Bureau of Labor Statistics) Never before have so many American workers been unemployed for so long.

Median household net worth fell 30 percent between 2007 and 2009. (Federal Reserve Board)

Her thesis is that this is all a consequence of the quantum leap that the internet brought upon us, and I’ll have to think more about that. But the point that this has been, and continues to be, a devastating economic era for large number of people, the effects of which in lost time, potential and possibilities will never be reversed for many. People will be digging out of this hole for a very long time and their futures have been altered irrevocably. The ignorance of that wrenching loss of dreams and prospects is one of the great failures of our leadership.

Update: Here’s an interesting statistic for you from this same blog:

Expected years of life, at birth: 77.7
Expected years of healthy life, at birth: 66.7

That’s lucky for me. It’s exactly when I’m allowed to start collecting social security. Too bad for those who are going to be forced to keep working when they’re sick — or starving until they can collect. Of course that won’t be the case for the pampered privileged class that thinks it’s just dandy to raise the retirement age. They’ll be just fine.

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Weak follow Through

by digby

Dday deftly deconstructs the administration’s keystone cops routine yesterday on “regulation reform” and sees the pattern under all the confusion:

Administration announces policy. One side or the other goes ballistic. Administration backtracks and assures people that policy won’t really change much of anything. People who supported initial policy go ballistic. Rinse. Repeat.

This is how the villagers prefer it to be done, by the way. They really like it when they can report these thing like little passion plays. It’s been that way as long as I can remember. I’m not sure why Democrats feel they need to play along, but they always do. I think it’s because they always get praised for the retreat. Republicans handle it differently — they behave like dominatrixes, something the villagers also like. I guess they all have their roles to play …

But dday actually uses this pattern to point to something else, which I think has always been the Achilles heel of the President’s signature issues — implementation (you could look it up):

Rather than put out misleading press releases that amount to “we’re going to be efficient,” the Administration might want to take a look at how they’re implementing the new regulatory environment for which they fought for two years. It’s clear that the regulatory agencies don’t have the funds or manpower to implement health care and financial reform right now, and as a result the laws will not even reach the modest goals laid out when passed in Congress. Regulators did manage to get a study done on implementing the Volcker rule yesterday (and at first glance, it actually looks OK), but on many other fronts, financial regulators are missing deadlines left and right.

If the GOP takes over in 2012, these things will completely fall apart. Even if they are unable to completely repeal it, they will certainly make sure that it doesn’t work properly. How better to prove that government can’t do anything right?

Of course, that might happen under this administration and a Democratic congress if in their zeal to prove how “fiscally responsible” they are, they keep starving the government of workers and money to implement their own program. It’s hard to believe they could be so self-defeating, but in this weird environment anything’s possible.

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Reduce the Dept!

by digby

I just have to share this email from one of my wingnut chain emails. I know it’s a cheap laugh, but I’ll take the laughs wherever I can get them.

Reduce the Dept!

Stop All Welfare to Illegal Immigrants, End Generational Career Welfare Recipients and cut Foreign Aid by 75%.

After that, we tax Politicians more, put Politicians on Social Security and STOP their Lucrative Retirement Fund. Then Politicians pay 10% of their Medical Insurance.

All Corrupt Politicians go to State Prison for 25 years with them paying their own way with the money they STOLE.

Then DRILL BABY DRILL!

Now that’s an economic program.

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Enter Stage Right

by digby

They’re coming out of the woodwork now with silly plans to “leverage” the debt ceiling vote to supposedly force Democrats to compromise and enact their preferred spending cuts. This one by the new Tea Party/Club for Growth radical Senator Pat Toomey, is a doozy. He’s basically proposing to pass a law which will require that in the event of the debt ceiling not being raised, all interest owed to bond holders must be paid first (so as to ensure the business and markets don’t feel “uncertainty” dontcha know.)Meanwhile, the rest of the budget would have to be slashed by at least a third, with massive, immediate cuts to programs. He doesn’t want to have to do this …

Projects would be postponed, some vendor payments would be delayed, certain programs would be suspended, and many government employees might be furloughed. Default would easily be avoided, but these cuts would certainly be disruptive. That’s why I hope we can avoid this scenario.

But it would be even worse simply to raise the debt ceiling without regaining control of federal spending. The recent surge in spending, both in absolute dollars and as a percentage of our GDP, has driven us to record deficits and an explosion of debt. The growth in discretionary spending has been the most dramatic, but in the future mandatory entitlement spending will be the deficit driver. Congress must address both in order to put the government back on a sustainable fiscal path.

The vote on whether to raise the debt ceiling—and, if so, by how much—is our best opportunity to insist that any increase in our nation’s debt be coupled with concrete steps toward fiscal sanity. Congress should make increasing our debt contingent on immediate cuts in spending and effective reforms of the spending process that helped get us into this mess.

Remember: the Republicans have no leverage. They know they cannot refuse to raise the debt limit and Eric Cantor has already made that clear to his fractious teabaggers. The President can veto any nonsensical bill like this. The Senate doesn’t have to pass it. Any capitulation is unnecessary. If they do it, it’s because they are pretending that the Republicans have taken a hostage, not because they actually have one.

It’s going to be quite entertaining to watch these kabuki dances over the next few months. I only wish I had more faith that the Democrats weren’t going to jump on stage and join in.

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Making Palin Happy

by digby

Jon Stewart on poor Palin:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
		The Daily Show on Facebook

It’s funny, but also annoying. The only people who listen to these admonitions not to “politicize” tragic events are liberals. Right wingers don’t care about Jon Stewart’s opinion. Indeed, they organize themselves in direct opposition to it. So basically, this just shames liberals while giving the radical right more reason to double down on both their persecution complex and hate rhetoric — exactly what Stewart was criticizing Palin for doing.

Moreover, condemning those who allegedly “politicized” the shooting in this context is annoying. You don’t have to be a paranoid leftist to suspect that when someone attempts to assassinate a politician by shooting them point blank in the head and then sprays the crowd, that it might just be political. And it’s even more understandable considering the fact that Democratic politicians are constantly being threatened both on the air by rabid talk show hosts and by their gun-toting fanatical followers — particularly in Arizona. Any cop who didn’t immediately suspect a right wing perpetrator in that case would be derelict in his duty.

I’m sure Jon Stewart is unaware of the long list of political violence in this country over the past two years. Everybody in the media is. And apparently, even if you do know about it, it’s taboo to even speculate that there might be a pattern. But it’s damned annoying that the right bears no responsibility for cranking up all this political heat and then being allowed to cry victim when people suspect them of lighting the match when a fire breaks out.

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Another Isolated Incident

by digby

Luckily incomplete this time:

A backpack bomb with the potential of killing or injuring dozens of people was found Monday along the route of a Martin Luther King Day “unity march” in downtown Spokane, Wash., authorities said today.

“It was a device that clearly was intended to harm or kill people,’’said Frank Harrill, a senior FBI agent and spokesman for the bureau’s Inland Northwest Joint Terrorism Task Force.

The FBI posted a $20,000 reward Tuesday and released three photographs, including one of the black Swiss-Army backpack that contained the destructive device.

Harrill would not discuss the type of explosive or its construction, including whether the backpack contained an explosive shield intended to spray shrapnel toward potential victims. He also declined to say if the device was intended to be detonated remotely or by a timer.

“It was set to detonate during a unity march on the King Holiday, so, obviously it had political or social overtones,’’ Harrill said.

I keep hearing that there has been no political violence over the past two years and that it’s terribly unfair to keep claiming that paranoid, right wing conspiracy talk has anything to do with anything. Earlier today, I saw Gary Hart have to turn his comments against violent rhetoric into an abstraction, explaining that he meant that something will happen in the future.

Nobody on television seems to know about this, to which we may very well be adding yesterday’s averted bombing of a Martin Luther King parade. (I’m just going to keep posting it in hopes that somehow it will get out into the ether)

— July 2008: A gunman named Jim David Adkisson, agitated at how “liberals” are “destroying America,” walks into a Unitarian Church and opens fire, killing two churchgoers and wounding four others.

— October 2008: Two neo-Nazis are arrested in Tennessee in a plot to murder dozens of African-Americans, culminating in the assassination of President Obama.

— December 2008: A pair of “Patriot” movement radicals — the father-son team of Bruce and Joshua Turnidge, who wanted “to attack the political infrastructure” — threaten a bank in Woodburn, Oregon, with a bomb in the hopes of extorting money that would end their financial difficulties, for which they blamed the government. Instead, the bomb goes off and kills two police officers. The men eventually are convicted and sentenced to death for the crime.

— December 2008: In Belfast, Maine, police discover the makings of a nuclear “dirty bomb” in the basement of a white supremacist shot dead by his wife. The man, who was independently wealthy, reportedly was agitated about the election of President Obama and was crafting a plan to set off the bomb.

— January 2009: A white supremacist named Keith Luke embarks on a killing rampage in Brockton, Mass., raping and wounding a black woman and killing her sister, then killing a homeless man before being captured by police as he is en route to a Jewish community center.

— February 2009: A Marine named Kody Brittingham is arrested and charged with plotting to assassinate President Obama. Brittingham also collected white-supremacist material.

— April 2009: A white supremacist named Richard Poplawski opens fire on three Pittsburgh police officers who come to his house on a domestic-violence call and kills all three, because he believed President Obama intended to take away the guns of white citizens like himself. Poplawski is currently awaiting trial.

— April 2009: Another gunman in Okaloosa County, Florida, similarly fearful of Obama’s purported gun-grabbing plans, kills two deputies when they come to arrest him in a domestic-violence matter, then is killed himself in a shootout with police.

— May 2009: A “sovereign citizen” named Scott Roeder walks into a church in Wichita, Kansas, and assassinates abortion provider Dr. George Tiller.

— June 2009: A Holocaust denier and right-wing tax protester named James Von Brunn opens fire at the Holocaust Museum, killing a security guard.

— February 2010: An angry tax protester named Joseph Ray Stack flies an airplane into the building housing IRS offices in Austin, Texas. (Media are reluctant to label this one “domestic terrorism” too.)

— March 2010: Seven militiamen from the Hutaree Militia in Michigan and Ohio are arrested and charged with plotting to assassinate local police officers with the intent of sparking a new civil war.

— March 2010: An anti-government extremist named John Patrick Bedell walks into the Pentagon and opens fire, wounding two officers before he is himself shot dead.

— May 2010: A “sovereign citizen” from Georgia is arrested in Tennessee and charged with plotting the violent takeover of a local county courthouse.

— May 2010: A still-unidentified white man walks into a Jacksonville, Fla., mosque and sets it afire, simultaneously setting off a pipe bomb.

— May 2010: Two “sovereign citizens” named Jerry and Joe Kane gun down two police officers who pull them over for a traffic violation, and then wound two more officers in a shootout in which both of them are eventually killed.

— July 2010: An agitated right-winger and convict named Byron Williams loads up on weapons and drives to the Bay Area intent on attacking the offices of the Tides Foundation and the ACLU, but is intercepted by state patrolmen and engages them in a shootout and armed standoff in which two officers and Williams are wounded.

— September 2010: A Concord, N.C., man is arrested and charged with plotting to blow up a North Carolina abortion clinic. The man, 26-year–old Justin Carl Moose, referred to himself as the “Christian counterpart to (Osama) bin Laden” in a taped undercover meeting with a federal informant.

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Listening To The People

by digby

Democracy Corps has released a new poll in anticipation of the impending assault against social security and it turns out that Washington is once again focused on the wrong problems:

Which TWO of the following do you think are the most important economic problems facing the country right now?

High unemployment……………………………..41
Outsourcing of jobs……………………………33
The budget deficit is big and growing……………23
Wages and salaries have not kept up with the cost of living……………………………………….18
The economy is not growing……………………..17
Taxes are too high…………………………….15
The government focused on bank bailouts and not on the middle class………………………………………..14
America is not keeping up with China and other countries…………………………………….12
The economic stimulus is not working…………….11
(Don’t know/refused)………………………….. 4

And they know what they want the government to concentrate on:

Now I am going to read you a list of issues and I would like you to please tell me which TWO should be top priorities for the new Congress.

Economic recovery and new jobs…………………………..46
Protecting Social Security and Medicare…………………..34
Making sure that our children receive an education for these times…………………………………………………27
Cutting spending and the size of government……………….25
Repealing the new health care law………………………..17
Reducing the federal budget deficit………………………15
Keeping taxes low………………………………………14
Investing in infrastructure, like roads and bridges, and in new industries…………………………………………….14
(Don’t know/Refused)…………………………………….2

Now I suppose if what you really want to do is please big business and Wall Street, this sort of thing would be irrelevant. But it’s not the way one would normally go about winning elections.

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Cheney’s Bunker

by digby

Is Dick Cheney saying here that Obama will never know how important it is to protect the country from a terrorist attack until he’s failed to protect the country from a terrorist attack? That’s what it sounds like to me.

Jamie Gangel: You said you believe President Obama has made America less safe. That he’s actually raised the risk of attack. Do you still feel that way?

Dick Cheney:Well, when I made that comment, I was concerned that the counterterrorism policies that we’d put in place after 9/11 that had kept the nation safe for over seven years were being sort of rapidly discarded. Or he was going to attempt to discard them. Things like the enhanced interrogation techniques or the terror surveillance program.

They’d been vital from our perspective in terms of learning basic fundamental intelligence about al Qaeda, about how they operated, who they were, where we could find them. And we were able to put in place a successful policy that did prevent any further major attacks against the United States over all those years. And he campaigned against all of that.

As I say, I think he’s found it necessary to be more sympathetic to the kinds of things we did. They’ve gotten active, for example, with the drone program, using Predator and the Reaper to launch strikes against identified terrorist targets in the various places in the world.

That’s all well and good. That’s a plus that he’s learned in that regard. But I still worry that until you’ve been there — clearly a day I’ll never forget– 9/11– I mean most Americans will always remember where they were on that day. But to sit in the Presidential bunker under the White House as al Qaeda launches hijacked aircraft and hits New York, hits Washington and kills 3,000 Americans, that’s something I’ll never forget.

And– it requires you to– certainly stimulated in me and I think the President I worked for an absolute commitment that that’s never going to happen again on our watch. And that we’ll do whatever we have to do in order to prevent it. And I hope President Obama is to that point now where he has that same basic attitude. But we might never find out until there’s actually another attack.

Cheney seems to be grudgingly appreciative that Obama has adopted his policies and unhappy that there hasn’t been a terrorist attack.

But this tribute to Cheneyesque politics should make him happy:

“Internal U.S. government reviews have determined that a mass leak of diplomatic cables caused only limited damage to U.S. interests abroad, despite the Obama administration’s public statements to the contrary. A congressional official briefed on the reviews said the administration felt compelled to say publicly that the revelations had seriously damaged American interests in order to bolster legal efforts to shut down the WikiLeaks website and bring charges against the leakers.

‘I think they just want to present the toughest front they can muster,’ the official said.

” But State Department officials have privately told Congress they expect overall damage to U.S. foreign policy to be containable, said the official, one of two congressional aides familiar with the briefings who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity. ‘We were told (the impact of WikiLeaks revelations) was embarrassing but not damaging,’ said the official, who attended a briefing given in late 2010 by State Department officials.”

The only thing that would disappoint Cheney is that they let congress in on their little fabrication.

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Universal Weakness

by digby

It’s obvious that health care reform will not be repealed under President Obama. It is, after all, his signature legislation. But that’s not going to stop the Republicans from working on building consensus around their own “reform of the reforms” when they get into power. This article by Brian Beutler at TPM outlines the various angles they are developing as well as some further reforms from Democrats, which might end up being improvements if they could get through the House.)

But I think this one is the most vulnerable, and it’s the main provision that made it so difficult for liberals to vote against the reforms:

Republican governors are trying to tap the brakes on the law’s addition of 16 million Americans to the Medicaid insurance program for the poor, starting in 2014. They also want to axe a piece of the law that makes it more difficult for states to cut Medicaid enrollees to patch budget shortfalls.

“The health care legislation is really bearing down on the states,” said Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry. “The mandates that are in that legislation will most likely cripple health care delivery, with a price tag that will absolutely bust the budgets.”

That’s over half the uninsured who were supposed to be covered under the new reforms.
Sadly, I won’t be surprised to see the Democrats help them do it, and I have no idea if the White House would be willing to deal this piece away. After all, it’s not the part of the reforms that everyone is so proud of — it’s the old clunky government paid health care that we’ve decided isn’t sexy enough for our modern “market based progressivism.”

The White House would fight to the death for the exchanges and the mandate and the popular provisions like pre-existing conditions, lifetime caps on benefits. That’s the essence of HCR — the reform of the private health insurance market. It’s an interlocking plan that requires all the pieces to work properly and the Democrats won’t let that go if they have the power to stop it. But universality? Well, the debate over health care seems to have evaporated the bipartisan consensus on that. It’s not out of the realm of possibility to think that some Democrats would agree to cut the Medicaid coverage or that President Obama would sign the bill.

I never understood why universal coverage wasn’t the explicit goal of health care reform and the principle on which the whole thing rested. But it wasn’t. (Even the reform as finally passed fell quite a bit short, although it wasn’t bad.) The goals were fairness and cost savings, which isn’t quite the same thing, so the government funded portion of the bill was always the most vulnerable. I’ve always been skeptical that those provisions would be safe. And now that we are joining the global austerity crusade, I expect there will be tremendous pressure to starve this program or at the very least delay the implementation. Certainly the Republicans will do away with it the minute they get the chance. They can always be counted upon to stick it to poor people.

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