Month: May 2012

One week to go until Progressive Super Tuesday

by digby

This is the letter Blue America sent out to all of our friends today. It’s important:

Next Tuesday, June 5th, is primary day in several states, including three where we have critical contests pitting progressive, dynamic leaders against, at best, garden variety Democrats. In California, two races stand out above and beyond all others: the CA-2 primary to replace retiring Lynn Woolsey and the first shot in twenty years for the Democrats to replace corrupt reactionary curmudgeon Buck McKeon. Our candidates, respectively, are Norman Solomon and Lee Rogers. Also here in the West, there is a primary for Montana’s one at-large House seat and there is one outstanding candidate, state Rep. Franke Wilmer. Similar story in New Mexico, where the Albuquerque district has a corrupt conservative and a well-funded careerist being challenged by one of the most important progressive leaders running anywhere in America, state Sen. Eric Griego. These are 4 of the most outstanding candidates for office running anywhere and it’s crucial to elect each of them– and polling in all 4 races looks good.

Blue America would like to appeal to you to help us hit the ground running for these candidates for the general election. We want to get right into action against House Armed Services Committee chairman/bigot Buck McKeon in northeastern L.A. County and against extremist crackpots Janice Arnold-Jones in New Mexico and Steve Daines in Montana. And, because California’s strange new “jungle primary” is likely to force Norman Solomon to face off against a corporate garden variety type Democrat, Jared Huffman, we need to help explain to voters why Norman is the exceptional candidate worth their trust and support. A lot of work. And we’re asking for your help again.

Here on our Blue America ActBlue page, it’s easy to contribute to all of our candidates or any one or two or more of them. And we love you for doing it. We’d also like to ask you to think about contributing to the Blue America PAC this week as well, a fund we use for one thing: communicating to targeted voters. We’ve been using TV, Internet and radio spots, mailers and billboards. There is no such thing as a contribution being too small. So whatever you can do, we’d be really grateful.

Last week Dennis Kucinich sent a note out to his own northern California supporters– as did Alan Grayson and Raúl Grijalva. (By the way, Raúl has also endorsed Lee Rogers, Franke Wilmer and Eric Griego.) This is what Dennis told his folks why he’s so enthusiastic about Norman, who he referred to as “one of the top peace candidates for Congress anywhere in the country”:

Norman and I have been friends for almost 15 years. He is a powerful intellectual, a gifted writer and an activist who is willing to put himself on the line for the principled causes of peace, justice and the environment. He will be one unique member of Congress… Norman is a true progressive. He is an independent thinker. Too many Democrats go along with outrageous military spending, deadly wars and Wall Street greed, all of which demoralize our nation, drain our federal treasury and cause resentment around the world. Norm Solomon is unafraid to stand up and speak out when others are silent. Norman will stand up to the Wall Streeters who continue their high-stakes gambling at public expense. He refuses to take corporate PAC money or lobbyist donations. That puts him at a disadvantage in this primary battle. As you know, I will not be returning to Congress next year. We need Norman in Congress so that he can share his insight with all members. Because of his fierce dedication to the public interest, Norman will be an instant leader in Congress– on war, on bloated military spending, on Wall Street, on threats to Social Security and Medicare (from either party). Norman Solomon was an advocate for the 99%– challenging the 1%– before there was an Occupy Wall Street movement. Every supporter of mine should be a natural supporter of Norman. Help him carry on the legacy of strong peace and justice advocacy in the U.S. Congress.

And that is what Blue America has sought out in all of our candidates and it’s what these four candidates all have in common– proven leaders who will be advocates for the 99% and will not buy into the abysmal bipartisan corrupt ways of Washington. Unless you live in Montana you’ve probably never heard of Timm Twardowski. He runs AFSCME in that state and knows Rep. Wilmer well. “There is no doubt that Franke is the only candidate that understands what it means to do the ‘work’ for Montana in Washington,” he told us. Which is why AFSCME endorsed Franke. “Franke’s Montana experiences have shaped her deep commitment to the issues that affect us here at home and I know she will bring that message and hard work to Washington. Franke understands the unique nature and challenges of America’s working families and will work to protect the middle class and restore the American Dream. It’s not about politics; it’s about doing the ‘right thing’ and putting our trust into someone who has walked in our shoes. Franke understands the work that needs to be accomplished in Washington and will always defend our beliefs.”

This year Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, is working harder than I’ve ever seen progressives work to help elect more progressive candidates to Congress. Raúl has endorsed all 4 of these candidates. Here’s what he had to say about Eric Griego in the state next door, New Mexico:

Eric Griego believes that “the last thing we need to send to Washington is a Democrat who’s a kinder, gentler version of the Republicans.” I agree. Democrats must fight for a government that works for all people, not just those with deep pockets and fancy titles. Eric fought to get corporate money out of politics as an Albuquerque City Councilor, where he passed one of the strongest local campaign finance reforms in the nation. As State Senator, he took on the Big Oil companies and put middle-class workers first by passing a green jobs bill into law. Eric is supported by leading progressive groups and major labor unions– and he is the only candidate in the race to have a lifetime 100% rating from Conservation Voters New Mexico. I need Eric Griego fighting by my side in Congress.

Alan Grayson also wants one of our candidates fighting on his side when he’s back in Congress next year. Last year Alan sat down with Lee Rogers at a medical convention in Orlando and got to know him and to give him some of the helpful advice that is helping Lee beat the Buck McKeon machine. Here’s the endorsement of Lee Rogers that Alan Grayson sent us yesterday:

I’m happy that Dr. Lee Rogers, candidate in CA-25, is a solid progressive. I’m happy that a Rogers victory means the defeat of Buck McKeon, who has been called the most corrupt Member of Congress. But I’m especially happy that Dr. Rogers knows something about something– a quality that Congress sorely needs.

When I was a lawyer, I had a client with a severe case of diabetes. I watched his health deteriorate over the years. The circulation in his legs weakened to the point where a foot was amputated.

It was terrible.

Dr. Rogers is a podiatrist and medical researcher. He pioneered a new protocol for such cases that reduced amputations by 72%.

Dr. Rogers runs the Amputation Prevention Center in Los Angeles. He teaches medicine. He has received awards for his research.

Healthcare is now one-sixth of the US economy. Imagine how good it would be to have someone in Congress who knows it so well.

Let’s face it; many Members of Congress are good at only two things: getting elected, and getting re-elected. Whether Dr. Rogers is good at either of those things remains to be seen. But for the good of Congress, and our health, I’d like to see it happen.

All the Blue America candidates are on the same page. And they all will need the help to go all the way in November. And the race to keep an eye on for today? Progressive insurgent Beto O’Rourke is challenging corrupt El Paso incumbent Silvestre Reyes in Texas’ 16th CD. This could be another blow against the DC Establishment Machine and polls show Beto winning handily among early voters..

A societal crime

by David Atkins

Many will already have seen this excellent piece of work by the L.A. Times, but it bears repeating:

A Long Beach hospital charged Jo Ann Snyder $6,707 for a CT scan of her abdomen and pelvis after colon surgery. But because she had health insurance with Blue Shield of California, her share was much less: $2,336.

Then Snyder tripped across one of the little-known secrets of healthcare: If she hadn’t used her insurance, her bill would have been even lower, just $1,054.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said Snyder, a 57-year-old hair salon manager. “I was really upset that I got charged so much and Blue Shield allowed that. You expect them to work harder for you and negotiate a better deal.”

Unknown to most consumers, many hospitals and physicians offer steep discounts for cash-paying patients regardless of income. But there’s a catch: Typically you can get the lowest price only if you don’t use your health insurance.

That disparity in pricing is coming under fire from people like Snyder, who say it’s unfair for patients who pay hefty insurance premiums and deductibles to be penalized with higher rates for treatment.

The difference in price can be stunning. Los Alamitos Medical Center, for instance, lists a CT scan of the abdomen on a state website for $4,423. Blue Shield says its negotiated rate at the hospital is about $2,400.

When The Times called for a cash price, the hospital said it was $250.

“It frustrates people because there’s no correlation between what things cost and what is charged,” said Paul Keckley, executive director of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, a research arm of the accounting firm. “It changes the game when healthcare’s secrets aren’t so secret.”

Snyder’s experience is hardly unique. In addition to Los Alamitos, The Times contacted seven other hospitals across Southern California, and nearly all had similar disparities between what a patient would pay through an insurer and the cash price offered for a common CT, or computed tomography, scan, which provides a more detailed image than an X-ray.

This is not a political problem. It’s a crime against society.

And a political system that takes the only obvious solution to this problem, single-payer healthcare, off the table from day one is broken beyond all reason.

This election will be fought between two men whose “solutions” to this debacle are based on a system that cannot possibly solve it, and who contradict their own positions on the subject from just a few short years ago. The makeup of what passes for our legislative branch is already guaranteed to produce no answers of any kind when it deadlocks after the next election, even as what passes for our judicial branch seems likely to throw the entire muddled mess into turmoil with an abjectly partisan, closely divided ruling.

At what point will the jingoists step back and admit that not only do we not have the best healthcare system in the world (which is obvious to anyone paying the slightest attention), our political system is pretty rotten, too?

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Quebeckers!

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Droney, the friendly flying death robot

by digby

Remembering Pat Tillman

by David Atkins

Every Memorial Day, this is at the top of my mind:

I still want an answer to who murdered Pat Tillman. His fellow soldiers deserve an answer. The country deserves an answer. And the people who turned his death into a propaganda opportunity should be seriously punished for disgracing and dishonoring this nation’s military.

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“Progressive thinking is a miasma arising from a cauldron of toxic ideas”

by digby

Throughout this long lazy week-end, I’ve been having some fun sharing some of the right wing hysteria one runs across on the innertubes these days. Here’s the last one, a review of United in Hate:The Left’s Romance with Tryanny and Terror:

…Glazov documents, with extensive footnoted excerpts, the Left’s romance with dictators from Hitler, to Stalin, to Castro, to Mao, to the North Vietnamese commununists, to the Sandanistas, showing that this romance is the strongest at the height of the terror unleashed by each regime and falls off when the terror is abated. The new darlings of the Left are the barbaric jihadists of radical Islam that he shows has elements of western-style tyranny borrowed from Hitler and Stalin and mixed with religious texts advocating Islamic supremacy and death to the infidel and to the Jews.

Just like religious folk, the believer espouses a faith, but his is a secular one. He too searches for personal redemption–but of an earthly variety. The progressive faith, therefore, is a secular religion. And this is why socialism’s dynamic constitute a muted carbon copy of Judeo-Christian imagery. Socialism’s secular utopian vision includes a fall from an ideal collective brotherhood, followed by a journey through a valley of oppression and injustice, and then ultimately a road toward redemption.

Later in the book, he shows how this redemption is built on the blood of those killed for the sake of the new society and calls up a suicidal longing in true believers on the Left. He also points out the parallels between the socialist utopia and that of the reign of Islam. In other words, profound insights into the old Leftist phrase of having to break a few eggs if you want to make an omelet–so what you purge society of the intellectuals and the bourgeois, and those who refuse to sink their individuality into the collective. Glazov writes:

“In rejecting his own society, the believer spurns the values of democracy and individual freedom, which are anathema to him, since he has miserably failed to cope with both the challenges they pose and the possibilities they offer. Tortured by his personal alientation, which is accompanied by feelings of self-loathing, the believer craves a fairy-tale world where no individuality exists, and where human estrangement is thus impossible. The believer fantasizes about how his own individuality and self will be submerged within the collective whole.”

These assertions come relatively early in the book and some might have a hard time accepting them at first, because they so go against the grain of progressive thinking that’s like a miasma arising from a cauldron of toxic ideas. But he provides the proof, over and over again, from diaries, from writings of prominent leftists who turned a blind eye to the Stalinist purges etc. etc. and romanticized the blue pajamas that obliterated sexual distinctions and individuality at the height of China’s cultural revolution. He even makes a convincing case for why the burka holds such allure for western feminists.

Yes, sluts love burkas, everyone knows that.

I have never been able to understand how it’s possible that the slutty, homo, hippie secularists of the left are in league with the most uptight religious fundamentalists on the planet. I guess I’ll have to read this book to find out. I’m sure I’ll either end up joining the swashbuckling individualists on the right who march to their own drummers instead of following the crowd or committing suicide because of my own alienation and self-loathing. I’ll let you know.

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Statistic ‘o the day

by digby

From America’s shooting gallery:

More Arizonans were killed by guns in 2009 than in motor-vehicle incidents, evidence of the need for stricter gun laws, according to a report released last week.

The report, by the Violence Policy Center, said Arizona was one of 10 states where firearm deaths outstripped traffic deaths in 2009, the most recent year for which numbers were available.

An Arizona politician explained that this is apples and oranges because cars aren’t used in self-defense. One might point out that guns aren’t useful for anything other than killing, but I guess that would be un-American.

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Koch foots the bill for the “grassroots”

by digby

Lee Fang at the Republic Report writes:

David Koch, co-owner of the Koch Industries petrochemical, manufacturing and commodity speculation fortune, hasn’t been shy about supporting Governor Scott Walker (R-WI), whose controversial union-busting agenda has forced a recall election this summer. Earlier this year, Koch told the Palm Beach Post: “We’re helping him, as we should. We’ve gotten pretty good at this over the years. We’ve spent a lot of money in Wisconsin. We’re going to spend more.”

Evidently, they are paying for transportation and meals for people to come to Wisconsin to help Scott Walker.

Fang reminds us of the Koch’s previous generosity in funding the “grassroots” Tea Party:

Here’s a video I shot of Koch providing dozens of free buses for anti-health reform protesters back in 2009:

They did this back in 1993 too.

I don’t know, it seems to me that this would be a good story for some mainstream newspaper, but I guess they figure this is just standard operating procedure. except, of course, the left doesn’t have anyone funding its “grassroots” operations. Too bad for us, I guess.

The good news is that the LA Times finally picked up the big Lee Fang expose from 10 days ago about the 55 million in previously unknown Koch expenditures in the last election. Of course, they published it on a holiday. Wouldn’t want everyone to see it or anything.

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Arlington West

by digby

Here in the very heart of hateful godless liberalism, every Sunday Veterans for Peace creates what is known as Arlington West at Santa Monica Beach:

The skewing effect of Republican extremism, healthcare edition

by David Atkins

NPR had a great report a few days ago on the presidential candidates’ “evolution” on healthcare and the individual mandate. To make a long story short, the two men were not altogether different in their approach to the healthcare problem. Whether through pragmatism or ideology, both sought to base a solution on the current private system. Then-candidate Obama was against the mandate before he was for it, because he felt that a mandate would be an imposition on those who could least afford it. Then-governor Romney liked the mandate to buy private insurance as a market-based solution that would eliminate the healthcare “free rider” problem (one of the reasons the Heritage Foundation proposed the plan as the alternative to the Clinton plan in 1993.)

President Obama felt that promoting such a conservative plan in order to at least address pre-existing condition denials and bend the healthcare cost curve would lead to acceptance and goodwill in Washington across the board. Romney believed that improving people’s lives through a market-based approach would make him a conservative darling.

Regardless of the actual benefits and drawbacks of the specific policies involved or whether any form of single-payer healthcare had a prayer of passing in Congress (both which are other, multiple-book-length topics), the politics of the situation are instructive. Both men’s best laid plans were thrown far off course by one thing and one alone: the radical extremist shift of the Republican Party, which suddenly opposed the Heritage mandate plan as the pinnacle of socialism, and portrayed Mitt Romney has only just slightly right-of-socialist.

As the NPR story says:

Health care has become one of the starkest contrasts between President Obama and Republican rival Mitt Romney in the 2012 campaign. And that’s surprising, given that once upon a time they both came up with similar plans to fix the system.

Stuart Altman, a professor of health policy at Brandeis University, says the two men once occupied the same political space on health care.

“I would define Obama as a moderate liberal and Romney as a moderate conservative. … Both of them came to the same conclusion,” he says. They decided what was needed was a system “built as much as possible on the existing health insurance system.”

Both men embraced what was considered to be mainstream health care policy thinking: maintain the employer-provided system but get everyone covered through an individual mandate — a requirement to buy insurance.

Romney went first. In 2006, as Massachusetts’ governor, he talked about the state’s mandate in decidedly nonideological terms: “We’re going to say, folks, if you can afford health care, then gosh, you’d better go get it; otherwise, you’re just passing on your expenses to someone else. That’s not Republican; that’s not Democratic; that’s not libertarian; that’s just wrong.”

Getting rid of free riders was a moral issue for Romney and many Republicans back then, says Jonathan Gruber, an MIT economist who helped the Romney and Obama administrations design the individual mandate. Gruber says he could tell that health care overhaul had a particular appeal for Romney — a businessman who specialized in turning around troubled companies…

Just as passing a national health care law was supposed to be the legacy achievement for Obama, Gruber says that back in 2006, as Romney got ready to run for president, the Massachusetts law also looked like a surefire political winner.

“You can understand his thinking, right? He thought, ‘Look, I can run for president by saying I solved this intractable problem by bringing conservative principles to bear — individual responsibility, the health insurance exchange.’ I mean, there was a guy from the freaking Heritage Institute on the stage with Romney at the bill-signing,” Gruber says. “This was a victory for Republican ideals, a victory for using market forces to solve an intractable problem, and I think that Romney probably thought, ‘Isn’t this a great thing I can run on as a Republican?’ … I would have thought so, too.”

As for Obama?

Over time, Obama and Romney have had a mirror-image relationship with the linchpin of their health care laws: Romney was for the mandate before he was against it. Obama was against the mandate before he was for it.

“The irony is even worse than that,” says Altman, the Brandeis professor. “I worked for Obama during the election and he was adamantly opposed to the individual mandate. … I was on his advisory group, and we said, ‘But you know, you really do need an individual mandate to make this all work together.’ He said, ‘I won’t support that because you’re asking, you know, not wealthy people to buy expensive insurance. We’ve got to get the cost down.’ “

During the 2008 Democratic primary, the mandate was the single biggest policy divide between Obama and opponent Hillary Clinton.

In a debate, candidate Obama blasted Clinton’s plan for an individual mandate by citing the experience in Massachusetts.

“Now, Massachusetts has a mandate right now,” he said. “They have exempted 20 percent of the uninsured — because they’ve concluded that that 20 percent can’t afford it. In some cases, there are people who are paying fines and still can’t afford it, so now they’re worse off than they were. They don’t have health insurance and they’re paying a fine.”

What happened? The obvious:

And Romney and Obama have something else in common, Altman says. They were both victims of the same political sea change: The Republican Party got a lot more conservative.

“Obama campaigned that he was going to be a different kind of a president. He was going to get things done; he was going to compromise,” Altman says. “And when he got to Washington, he realized that the Washington that he thought was there wasn’t there anymore. So the movement of the Republicans to the right … hurt Obama and really put Romney in a bind.”

Romney’s bind was apparent in the GOP primaries, when conservatives questioned his ability to attack the president on a plan so similar to his own. But now, with the nomination virtually in hand, Romney is making health care the heart of his argument against the president.

“The president’s plan assumes an endless expansion of government, with rising costs and, of course, with the spread of Obamacare,” Romney says. “I will halt the expansion of government, and I will repeal Obamacare.”

What was once a common bond is now a deep divide.

“I will not go back to the days when insurance companies had unchecked power to cancel your policy, or deny you coverage, or charge women differently from men,” Obama says. “We’re not going back there. We’re going forward.”

There is no overlap at all in the two men’s current approaches to health care. If Romney is elected, he’ll work to get rid of the law that was based on his own plan. If the president wins a second term, he will fight to keep what he can.

This, at long last, is honest journalism (even if the lede is buried toward the bottom.) Nothing–absolutely nothing–in American politics makes any sense anymore without addressing the real story: the radical shift of conservatives to the far right, combined with the desire of Democrats to find consensus by tacking to the new, formerly conservative “middle.”

There are forces that underlie that dynamic, of course: they are largely a function of the prioritization of assets over wages in elite policymaking circles. But that secondary level of analysis is perhaps asking too much. At the very least we should expect journalists to make an honest assessment of the rapidly increasing Republican extremism that is turning all of American politics on its head, causing Presidents and Presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle to make self-contradictory fools of themselves in the span of just a few short years.

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