Month: September 2013

The saga of Obamacare: the reckoning

by digby

Politico is out this morning with a history of the health reform implementation called “One blow after another” which brings up a lot of bad memories for people who followed the saga closely back in 2009 — particularly those, like me, who were supportive of the final bill based on the most liberal piece of it, the Medicaid expansion:

“It’s underappreciated how fundamentally the Supreme Court changed the law when it made Medicaid a state option,” said Drew Altman, president and chief executive officer of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. “The law that is being implemented is not really the law that passed the Congress.”

The Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2010 that Obamacare would reach 32 million uninsured over a decade. Now only 25 million people are expected to get covered over the next decade.

As written, the law required states to expand the Medicaid program to cover people who make up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level — or about $31,000 for a family of four. Now there will be a coverage gap for people who are too poor to qualify for federal subsidies to purchase insurance on the exchanges but not poor enough to access Medicaid in states where governors refused to broaden the program.

In Texas, where Republican Gov. Rick Perry is one of the law’s staunchest foes, that decision will have a wide-reaching impact, said David Lopez, president and CEO of The Harris Health System in Houston, one of the nation’s most uninsured cities.

Of the 1.5 million patients who visit his hospitals or clinics each year, about 400,000 would have qualified for Medicaid payments if Perry had expanded the program, Lopez estimates. But now, nearby residents will be forced to pick up the tab.

“If we don’t have Medicaid expansion, the responsibility of the care of those individuals falls back to the local community,” he said.

The good news is that the blue states have all implemented it, like sane people, and their health insurance coverage is going to reach a lot more people when all is said and done. Sadly, many of the poor people who live at the mercy of Republican assholes will just have to suffer and die. Ain’t that America …

But never let it be said that some of us didn’t predict that this Medicaid expansion for the working poor would be the first to go or that the GOP would work night and day to obstruct implementation. December 17, 2009:

The Medicaid provision is obviously a good expansion of the safety net. But with Ben Nelson an alleged Democrat already arguing for scaling that back along with the inevitable convergence of deficit fever, immigration and tiresome old “welfare” arguments to attack it, I think it’s awfully vulnerable as well. (The Medicaid constituency could probably use some ACORN organizing to vote on the issue, but the congress decided to throw them under the bus on the basis of a doctored gonzo video and some shrieking from FOX news.)

There has been no public education about responsibility to buy insurance in all this or any strategy to manage expectations of what people will get with Health Care Reform. And because of that the right is going to have a field day telling everyone that the nanny state liberals are forcing them to give to money to insurance companies and then spending their tax money on poor (brown/black) people. So, again, running around saying “Mission Accomplished” is bad politics.

As for the promise to fix all the problems once the bill is in place, I think people are vastly underestimating the forces that are going to be brought to bear to prevent that from happening. Republicans aren’t so disorganized that they forgot that they must stop Democrats from giving people reason to believe in government. In addition to deploying their formidable communications apparatus to present health care reform as a massive failure to the majority who are currently covered by employers and will only see the effects from afar, they are going to strangle improvements in the cradle by any means necessary including leveraging their most valuable new voting demographic in the age of Obama — the elderly. On top of that, we are entering an era of deficit fetishism and have an industry that has shown it will do everything in its power to protect its interests. It’s not impossible, but watching the Democrats operate at the zenith of their institutional power over the past year does not give me any confidence that they want to, much less can, battle all that back.

I never said to kill the bill. I don’t actually think it’s possible to do it at the hands of liberals. (It’s health care.) I was hopeful that it would be better. Now the Democrats are going to have to sell this plan to the public, fight off the deficit scolds and the industry and keep the teabaggers from immolating themselves on the steps of congress just to prove that death panels exist. I think it’s going to be a hard sell and the political risks of this particular bill at this particular time are tremendous.
[…]
I don’t know how this bill will play out politically. It’s not what I thought health care reform would be, but it is definitely is better for the working poor if we can hang on to the funding, which I think is dicey. As for the rest, we’ll see.

But the first thing Democrats need to do is dial down the end-zone dance and start talking about this bill for what it is. Indeed, if I were them, I’d work hard to lower expectations. I do not believe this legislation will be exempt from repeal or serious whittling away as time goes on nor do I think that the political system will allow the quick fixes that will be necessary to keep people on board while they get the reforms in place, regardless of whether the Republicans come back into power during the implementation period, which they very well could. This just isn’t a big New Deal style social insurance program and selling it in those terms is setting the stage for a backlash. It’s going to be tough. People should be prepared for that.

Unfortunately, the Democrats in DC were so busy taking victory laps and congratulating themselves for their historic FDR-like statesmanship — and repeatedly assuring everyone that Miss Bringdowns like me were full of shit because: awesome that they didn’t see this coming:

Republicans haven’t even gotten close to repealing Obamacare — Democrats insist they never will. But they’ve made the law exponentially tougher to implement than the White House anticipated.

The extent of the challenge became clear soon after Obama wrapped up the East Room signing ceremony in March 2010.

White House aides quickly got to work on a technical corrections bill to clean up messy language in law. They assumed Congress, as it has done so many times in the past, would send it through. Republicans refused — and that cemented flaws in the law that continue to cause problems.

For instance, workers can opt out of their employer insurance — and go on the exchange — if their share of the premium is more than 9.5 percent of their household income. But the law calculates that based on the worker’s premium, not the whole family’s. Advocates of the law have dubbed that “the family glitch” — one that will limit coverage.

Congressional Democrats had also assumed that most governors, particularly Republicans who consider local control a core party philosophy, would set up and run their own state-based exchanges. Drafters of the law didn’t even add the federal backstop until late in the legislative process.

But only 16 states and the District of Columbia decided to take the lead. Six others are partnering with the federal government. The federal government will run insurance exchanges by itself in the other 28 states.

“I didn’t support Obamacare, but it is the law of the land,” New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, a Republican, said in March when she signed a bill to set up an exchange, which later was converted to a state-federal partnership for 2014. “My job is to implement this law in a way that best serves New Mexicans.”

The disparity adds another layer of confusion to the rollout. A recent Pew Research Center survey found consumer awareness about the exchanges is much lower in states that have deferred to the federal government. Only 44 percent of people in those states said they’d have access to an exchange versus 59 percent in places with state-based exchanges or state-federal partnerships.

“Everyone knew it was complex,” said Alan Weil, executive director of the National Academy for State Health Policy. But as the law is actually put into practice, “you see more complexity than anyone thought when the law was passed.”

I would have thought it was obvious to anyone who tried to explain how it was going to work
but again, most political supporters just said that the government had “given” health care to 30 million uninsured and left it at that. It was inevitable that there would need to be many fixes to such a complicated bill even before the courts got hold of it. And it was obvious that the Republicans would not help. Not that this should have stopped them from doing it — but it should have guided their approach to explaining it at least.

I feel for the bureaucrats who are doing this work. It’s not easy. But if you want to see how a state that is committed to making it work has laid it out for the public, take a look at Covered California , the California exchange website. It’s certainly no more complicated for the person trying to buy insurance than the current marketplace — and it’s going to result in a lot of middle and working class independent workers getting cheaper, better health insurance. And hopefully, a lot of struggling workers at the lower end will find out that they now are entitled to government health care through Medicaid.

Is it as good as government programs that guarantee health care for everyone like Medicare or the VA? Obviously not. But if it’s properly implemented it will be a substantial improvement on the status quo. And I would have thought that anyone who had observed the American right wing over the years would have known they would do everything in their power to ensure that it didn’t work. Did they think they were going to take this lying down? They take nothing lying down.

I don’t know how fair this Politico article really is. Not only are the reforms complicated, but the story about the reforms is complicated and this is a very village centric piece. But there are pieces of it that are correct just on its face, most obviously the fact that the Democrats seemed to truly believe that simply passing the bill would be enough to insure its success. As with so many other issues, they spent so much time patting themselves on the back that they were taken by surprise when the Republicans managed to mount a successful propaganda campaign against the reforms and the right wing Court dealt it a lethal blow to the most liberal piece of it.

Hopefully, these delays and glitches will work themselves out over time. If states like California succeed in the next few years in getting most of their people insured and rates
stay reasonable, it is likely inevitable that the other states will eventually put omething together to match it. Employers will demand it if nothing else. But a little humility in the beginning would have gone a long way toward preparing everyone for this fight and given Democrats, at least, a heads-up that it wasn’t over until it was over. It was all about “putting points on the board” and moving on to the next play. That’s sports, not governance.

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What if they had called it “Johnsoncare?”

by David Atkins

What if, instead of Medicare, Ronald Reagan and his fellow conservative Republican friends had mockingly called it “Johnsoncare”? A quick Google search tells me I’m not first or second person to think of this, but it nonetheless illustrates the delicious corner into which Republicans have painted themselves.

Back when Medicare was created, Republicans opposed the idea fairly strenuously. Just as a reminder, here’s Ronald Reagan saying that Medicare would surely lead America to a socialist dictatorship:

But by and large, conservative opposition was muted. Once Medicare was passed, conservatives didn’t choose repeal of Medicare as their hill to die on, nor did they decide to attach Lyndon Johnson’s name to the program in an attempt to destroy both. And that’s how today Republicans can try to claim with a straight face that they are the true defenders of Medicare. Few today would know that when Medicare was first introduced, it faced angry opposition.

Imagine if Republicans had taken up the full politicized revolt against Medicare that they have against the Affordable Care Act. If they had, LBJ would be remembered more for “Johnsoncare” today than for the Vietnam War, and his face might adorn Mount Rushmore. Every election cycle for a generation or two, Democrats would take great pains to remind voters just how much the opposition had stood against Johnsoncare, preferring to see the elderly die in misery and squalor.

Some conservative extremists even today want to repeal “Johnsoncare.” But most were wise enough to avoid placing themselves into such a trap.

But not so today. Today, Republicans have placed all their chips against the Affordable Care Act. Not for a generation or more will Republicans be able to credibly claim to voters that they want to “protect” Obamacare, after voting 42 times to repeal it. Nor for a generation or more will they be able to credibly praise President Obama compared to, say, a presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren if she promotes true single-payer healthcare. It’s hard, after all, to claim that there’s anyone worse than the Communist Kenyan AntiChrist. Nor again will it be possible to “rebrand” Obamacare as anything other than Democratic President Barack Hussein Obama’s healthcare plan.

No, the battle lines here are set. Either Republicans make the President’s signature healthcare plan a failure, or Republicans see their brand badly tarnished as voters are reminded daily of the positive effects of a healthcare plan Republicans opposed, enacted by a President Republicans despised, bearing that President’s own name.

Repealing, defunding and sabotaging Obamacare isn’t an ideological statement by Republicans now so much as a survival mechanism. They’ve placed all their chips on red and spun the wheel, and woe betide them if the roulette ball falls on black. Their only saving grace is that Obamacare isn’t as universal or socialistic as Johnsoncare, and thus won’t be quite as popular. But the general dynamic remains the same.

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Global exceptionalism

by digby

Today:

Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova: “Why I have gone on hunger strike”

In an open letter, the imprisoned Pussy Riot member explains why the brutal conditions at Penal Colony No 14 have led her to undertake a hunger strike in protest

Three months ago:

On 6 February, reacting to the military’s attempt to search their Qur’ans, Guantánamo detainees began a general hunger strike. The strike has since broadened into a protest against indefinite detention. The strike is now in its fifth month and shows no sign of abating. The hunger strikers have vowed to strike until the US government stops searching Qur’ans and resumes transfers, even if that means they will strike until they die.

The military initially denied that there was a hunger strike. It now concedes that 104 of the 151 “low-value” detainees are hunger-striking, and that 44 of the 104 are being force-fed (although the military does not use the term “force-fed”). More than a dozen of my own clients are hunger-striking, including four who are being force-fed.

Keep in mind that in both cases, the prisoners were railroaded for political reasons which these governments now find politically difficult to reverse. Very exceptional indeed.

h/t to LM
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We had an election about this

by David Atkins

As Republicans bloviate and threaten to shut down the government in order to stop the Heritage Foundation’s plan to line the pockets of private insurance while expanding access at somewhat lower prices, it’s important to remember that America just had an election relitigating these issues less than a year ago. It was an election in which Republicans tried to tear down the President using Obamacare, deficits, and burdens on “job creators” as attack lines. And Republicans lost that election–badly.

Not only did Mitt Romney lose, House Republicans lost as well. Ted Cruz and his ilk are using their position in the House majority to claim to do the “will of the American people.” But it’s important to remember that House Democrats won 1.4 million more votes nationwide than did House Republicans in November 2012. In an election, I must repeat, in which Obamacare was a top 5 electoral issue.

John Boehner holds his gavel by virtue of gerrymandering shenanigans, not popular will. In a just world where the popular will was fulfilled, Nancy Pelosi would be Speaker and taxes on the ultra-wealthy would be doubled.

There is no sense from any perspective from which House Republicans can legitimately claim to be acting according to the popular will.

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The 2016 GOP clown car

by digby

Dear God, each one is worst than the one before:

That comes from a profile of Ted Cruz in GQ which is well worth reading. I heard Toure laughing about Cruz as some kind of a harmless joke earlier, which is what liberals everywhere are doing. I certainly hope they’re right because he is one creepy guy:

It’s hard for Ted Cruz to be humble. Part of the challenge stems from his résumé, which the Texas senator wears like a sandwich board. There’s the Princeton class ring that’s always on his right hand and the crimson gown that, as a graduate of Harvard Law School, he donned when called upon to give a commencement speech earlier this year. (Cruz’s fellow Harvard Law alums Barack Obama and Mitt Romney typically perform their graduation duties in whatever robes they’re given.) Even Cruz’s favorite footwear, a pair of black ostrich-skin cowboy boots, serves as an advertisement for his credentials and connections. “These are my argument boots,” he told me one morning this summer as we rode the subway car beneath the Capitol to a vote on the Senate floor. “When I was Texas solicitor general, I did every argument in these boots. The one court that I was not willing to wear them in was the U.S. Supreme Court, and it was because my former boss and dear friend William Rehnquist was still chief justice. He and I were very close—he was a wonderful man—but he was very much a stickler for attire.”
[…]
[W]hat kept drawing my eye was a giant oil painting above the couch depicting Cruz as he delivered the first of his nine oral arguments before the Supreme Court. “I was 32 years old,” he recalled. “It was abundantly clear we didn’t have a prayer…. And I’ve always enjoyed the fact that as I’m sitting at my desk, I’m looking at a giant painting of me getting my rear end whipped 9-0.”

He gazed at the wall. It is an unusual painting: From the artist’s vantage point, we see three other courtroom artists, each also drawing Cruz—so the painting actually features not one but four images of young Cruz before the bench. “It is helpful,” he explained to me, “for keeping one grounded.”

Yah. He’s very grounded. But he does have a plan apparently:

For a party in the midst of some serious soul-searching, Cruz offers a simple, reassuring solution: Forget the blather about demographic tidal waves and pleas for modernization; all Republicans need to do is return to their small-government, anti-tax fundamentals. “I don’t know a conservative who didn’t feel embarrassed voting in 2006 or 2008,” Cruz told me—a remark that’s sure to endear him even more to McCain. “I think the Republican Party lost its way. We didn’t stand for the principles we’re supposed to believe in.”

Should he run for president, in 2016 or beyond, Cruz’s strategy will be to superglue himself to the conservative base and hope it carries him to the GOP nomination. It’s been tried over and over since Reagan—and it has failed every time. Just not enough wacko birds out there. Then again, the men who have tried it—from Pat Robertson in 1988 to Rick Santorum in 2012—possessed nowhere near Cruz’s political acumen, not to mention his life story. Or, to put it the way Cruz himself might: None of them were Ted Cruz.

It’s awfully hard to see how that can work in today’s political environment. Cruz is good, but he’s no Ronald Reagan. In fact, the Republican president he reminds me of the most was Richard Nixon. A man who managed to win the office at the very zenith of American liberalism…

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The Senate leadership confers

by digby

.@SenatorReid, seated, and @SenTedCruz, standing, conferring on the Senate floor about what might transpire next.
— Ed O’Keefe (@edatpost) September 23, 2013

Jim DeMint must feel like a proud papa.

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Who needs good health anyway?

by digby

I’ve been a long-time observer of right wing thinking (my whole life, actually) and thought I had them pretty well nailed. But I have been surprised by the level of hostility toward the health care plan and even more by their hysterical reaction to Michelle Obama’s anodyne “cause” — childhood obesity. I shake my head in wonder every time I see them lose their heads over her trying to get kids to eat more vegetables.

Amanda Marcotte’s piece today at RH Reality Check is a revelation on this subject. She points out that conservatives have been coming to the position that medicine — indeed, health itself — is a liberal plot and points to the anti-choice zealots as the ones who pioneered this bizarre philosophy. She uses that strange Koch Brothers funded “Generation Opportunity” Uncle-Sam-in-your-crotch ad as a perfect example of the philosophical synergy they’ve achieved:

The ugly, hostile attitude toward medical professionals that’s evident in the Generation Opportunity ad is quite reminiscent of the hostility toward the medical profession that has been part of the anti-choice movement since protesters began picketing abortion clinics. Bloody fetus pictures are waved around, with the implication being clear: Since surgery is gross, it’s best avoided, even if you dislike the alternative. One of the absolute most common tactics among anti-choicers is to demonize abortion and contraception care as painful, scary, and gross—as if the alternative of pregnancy and childbirth is a walk in the park.

No surprise, then, that Generation Opportunity hired the former vice president of Americans United for Life. If you want someone with a lot of experience trying to scare people out of getting the care necessary for them to have full, healthy lives, then of course you call an anti-choice activist. They’ve been leading the way on trying to intimidate Americans from getting health care.

It’s not just the anti-choicers, of course. For years now, there’s been a streak of conservative rhetoric that is openly suspicious of health itself, especially the idea that everyone—whether rich or poor—deserves good health. There’s always been a tendency to be hostile toward good health on the right, though it only cropped up on those occasions where there was a conflict between big business and people’s health. Conservatives consistently defend corporate profits over people’s health in battles over things like pollution, tobacco, gun safety, and now junk food. But in recent years, this tendency has taken a turn toward the radical side, with the very concept of healthiness increasingly becoming an object of scorn and mockery on the right, with dark intimations that a healthy lifestyle is somehow a threat to their nebulous, ill-defined concept of “freedom.”

Indeed, it’s common for anti-choicers to imply that using contraception is a form of “enslavement.” No wonder the same notion—that voluntarily choosing to take care of your health is somehow a capitulation to fascism—cropped up with the attacks on Michelle Obama’s healthy eating programs.

Unfortunately, this idea that promoting health  “enslaves” the masses isn’t entirely confined to the right. There are plenty of liberals who bridle at anyone telling them that access to unlimited cheap junk food isn’t a constitutional right. But I think she’s right that this antipathy to the very concept of good health, whether it be getting kids to eat vegetables or allowing women to have access to reproductive services, is rapidly becoming a fundamental tenet of conservatism. It’s not that they don’t think government should promote good health through programs, laws and communication, although they certainly don’t believe that. They don’t think people need to be or necessarily should be healthy.

That’s rather shocking, isn’t it? And yet I think it’s true. They don’t see good health as a value that affects every human being’s ability to live fully in this world. In fact they are hostile to the very concept. Wow.

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Another bogus legend: Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky

by digby

One of Blue America’s favorite candidates for this congressional cycle is Daylin Leach, known as the liberal lion of the Pennsylvania state legislature. He is running for the open seat held by Allyson Schwartz (who is running for Governor.) His opponents include, in Howie’s words:

…a cast of characters that includes state Rep. Brendan Boyle an ambitious and virulent anti-Choice fanatic, the choice of the corrupt Philly Machine and of the forces trying to dismantle public education in Pennsylvania; physician Val Arkoosh who knows a lot about medicine and public health policy and… nothing else; and Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, an increasingly loopy one-term congresswoman from 1992 whose son, a Goldman Sachs investment banker, married Chelsea Clinton

I’m sure most political junkies my age remember Margolies-Mezvinsky from the famous Clinton Budget Act of 1993, in which she played the role of heroic sacrificial lamb and lost her seat in 94 allegedly because she was the “deciding vote”. The Clinton Machine is fond of her for obvious reasons. (In fact I’ve heard they see this seat as destined for her daughter-in-law. She is now in her 60s 70s, so it’s not all that far-fetched.)

Anyway, Howie turned this up which should be of interest to all progressive activists who follow House elections — and it should be of very serious interest to the constituents of the 13th district:

Margolies is a liberal on women’s issues but, for a Democrat, a raging conservative on issues of economic justice. A few days ago she told the Philadelphia Daily News why she almost didn’t vote for the Clinton budget. She claims President Clinton asked her “What would it take?” to get her to vote for the budget. “I said I wanted to talk about entitlements, I wanted further cuts, and I’ll only be your last vote– if you need it. And he did.” Cutting entitlements and screwing working families is the kind of Democrat Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky has always been– and that’s one old dog that is definitely not learning any new tricks. If you go to http://www.margoliesforcongress.com/ you come upon a Phildadelphia Inquirer story from June, 1994, “Social Security Curbs Proposed Marjorie Margolies-mezvinsky Is Touting Major Changes. Her GOP Foe, Jon Fox, Opposes The Plan.”

Voters in PA-13 should read it carefully. This is a candidate who is eager to cut Social Security and other benefits for working families. She sounds like a garden variety Republican, although the Republican that beat her in 1994 was more a defender of Social Security than she was– and the way she disappointed the Democratic base and kept voters away from the polls is why she was really defeated that year. Her proposal to cut back on Social Security for retired Americans was even too conservative for Bill Clinton, who pointedly told her that “we do not deal with a problem like the deficit by (creating) income stagnation among the elderly.”

“We do not deal with a problem like the deficit by creating income stagnation among the elderly” Good line. Correct philosophy. Perhaps he can have a word with his daughter’s mother in law (and President Obama) about that. But I can’t say I’d believe her is she says she’s changed her mind, which apparently she hasn’t. If you thought 20 years ago that Social Security was bankrupting the country and learned absolutely nothing from the ensuing ups and downs of the budget debate (and how irrelevant it all is to anything resembling our real problems) then you aren’t likely to be a secure “no” if it ever comes to the floor.

Check out that article from 1994:

Calling it the first fruit of last year’s conference on entitlement spending, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky announced legislation yesterday that would raise the retirement age for Social Security recipients and limit their cost-of-living adjustments. Margolies-Mezvinsky, who is seeking re-election, said the proposals would ensure Social Security’s solvency and keep her pledge to control the costs of politically sensitive entitlement programs.

Social Security officials predicted in April that the trust fund would go broke in 35 years because of demographic shifts that would leave fewer workers supporting more retirees. Margolies-Mezvinsky’s proposal is a political gamble for the freshman Democrat, who is already in the doghouse with many constituents because of her 11th-hour switch last year in favor of President Clinton’s budget bill and tax increases.

The current legislation, which Margolies-Mezvinsky is sponsoring with Minnesota Democrat Timothy J. Penny, would raise the retirement age to 70 by the year 2013– beginning in 1999 and increasing the age by four months annually. The retirement age currently ranges from 65 for those born before 1938 to 67 for those born after 1959. Those who retire earlier get reduced benefits. The proposal would give only the bottom 20 percent of Social Security recipients the full cost-of-living adjustment, which is tied to the Consumer Price Index. Other recipients would receive a flat cost-of-living adjustment equal to that for recipients at the 20th percentile.

Margolies-Mezvinsky had made Clinton’s attendance at December’s entitlement conference at Bryn Mawr College a condition for her support of his budget. The budget increased taxes for affluent workers and for single Social Security recipients with incomes over $34,000 and couples with incomes over $44,000. Although Clinton attended the conference, he said there should be only minor unspecified changes in Social Security. “We do not want to deal with a problem like the deficit by (creating) income stagnation among the elderly,” Clinton said. White House officials could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Social Security is among the touchiest issues for Congress, due in part to the lobbying strength of the American Association of Retired Persons, which claims 33 million members. “They’re not opposed to this,” Margolies-Mezvinsky said. “We’ve been working with them so that we get their input.” But Martin Corry, AARP’s director of federal affairs, said he was unaware of any contact between his group and Margolies-Mezvinsky since December. He said AARP would oppose any form of “means testing” such as Margolies-Mezvinsky’s proposal on cost-of-living adjustments. “Changing the retirement age to age 70 is really premature,” he added. ”There may well be changes in the retirement age, and they can be done gradually. I’ve seen nothing to suggest it needs to go to 70.”

Republican Jon D. Fox, who will face Margolies-Mezvinsky in November, said he opposed her proposal, as well as another Democratic plan to increase payroll taxes. Fox said he would have to study the issue further before making a proposal of his own. “I’m going to be coming out in this campaign with proposals dealing with the protection of Social Security,” Fox said in a telephone interview. “I’ll be getting back to you on them.”

Margolies-Mezvinsky said she did not know how the proposals would play in her largely Republican Montgomery County district. “My feeling is it’s the right thing to do. I think that what happens when you get to Washington is you see people saying to their constituents what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear.”

She lost. And they blamed it on her vote for the Clinton tax increase even though it was 1994, the year Newt Gingrich took over the world, and her Republican opponent won as the protector of Social Security. Who says Democrats don’t have a talent for airbrushing history?

Daylin Leach is unequivocal on this. He supports the Grayson-Takano “No Cuts” pledge saying:

At a time when corporate profits, executive compensation, the stock market and wealth disparity are at near record highs, it is obscene to even consider balancing our budget on the backs of seniors and veterans.

That’s who we need in the Democratic caucus, not someone who has been trying to cut Social Security for over 20 years. If Margolies-Mezvinsky had had her way back then, the retirement age would be 70 right now. Are there a lot of jobs available to 69 year olds out there? (And considering the fact that people in their 20s can’t find work, should there be?)

What this points out is that Democrats have been offering up Social Security cuts for a very long time which makes no sense as a matter of ideology or practical politics. Republicans are much more ideologically suited to the task although they too have to deal with a constituency which does not want cuts. (Very few citizens do.) It’s past time for members of the Democratic Party to stop using this vital program as a convenient symbol for their alleged fiscal rectitude.

We need to expand benefits, not cut them. And we will never get there if we don’t stop electing Democrats to congress on a platform of cutting them.

You can be sure that every candidate on this list is running with a promise to protect the vital safety net.

Update: Corrected typo — Margolies-Mezvinsky is in her 60’s not her 80s! Also, Schwartz running for Governor not Senator. Apologies ..
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Oxymoron ‘o the day: Atheist “Church” 

by digby

Uhm, no thanks:

Yesterday, The Sunday Assembly—the London-based “Atheist Church” that has, since its January launch, been stealing headlines the world over—announced a new “global missionary tour.” In October and November, affiliated Sunday Assemblies will open in 22 cities: in England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, the United States and Australia. “I think this is the moment,” Assembly founder Sanderson Jones told me in an email last week, “when the Sunday Assembly goes from being an interesting phenomenon to becoming a truly global movement.” Structured godlessness is ready for export.

The Assembly has come a long way in eight months: from scrappy East London community venture (motto: “Live Better, Help Often and Wonder More;” method: “part atheist church, part foot-stomping good time”) to the kind of organization that sends out embargoed press releases about global expansion projects. “The 3,000 percent growth rate might make this non-religious Assembly the fastest growing church in the world,” organizers boast.

There’s more to come: In October, the Sunday Assembly (SA) will launch a crowdfunded indiegogo campaign, with the ambitious goal of raising £500,000 (or, about $793,000). This will be followed by a second wave of openings. The effort reads as part quixotic hipster start-up, part Southern megachurch.

…As of now, Jones is still tweaking the message. But he’s confident in the model: “It’s a way to scale goodness.”

Fergawdsakes. That’s exactly what’s wrong with religion in the first place, the idea that humans who adopt its teachings are somehow “good” in ways that others aren’t. The line between good and evil lines within each human being, regardless of what they “believe.”

I’m an atheist. The last thing I want to do is join some “church”. I was raised in one and I didn’t leave simply because I realized that I don’t believe in God. I also left because I don’t like dogma and I don’t like hierarchy and I don’t like hypocrisy, which I realize defines every human institution to some degree, but seems to permeate these “believing” organizations a little bit more than most. I need to be paid to put up with that crap.

And anyway if I did want to join a church, I certainly wouldn’t join one that features a slogan saying it’s a “foot-stompin’ good time”. I’m almost certain I won’t like the music. And that’s the best thing about church.

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“All the cuts they need are there to avoid a possible shutdown”

by digby

Richard Eskow has a good piece up at Campaign for America’s Future which lays out the same possible budget end-game I laid out last week. It’s impossible to know what will happen in a fluid situation like this, of course. But it pays to be a bit paranoid. When you find yourself in a position of counting on your enemies to be so stupid as to keep saving you from your friends, you are in a precarious position.

As I said in my earlier post, it’s important to remember that the earlier deals didn’t fail to materialize because the two ides disagreed on cutting Social Security. They didn’t. It failed because the president refused to give up on some sort of tax hike in exchange. Both sides are on board with the cuts. So now we have a situation where the Republicans have added another demand: defund Obamacare. If they want to come up with some sort of agreement in which the GOP saves face, to me the logical way to do that would be for the Democrats to agree to drop their demand for tax hikes if the Republicans drop their demand for defunding Obamacare. What’s left of the deal? You guessed it.

Here’s Eskow, who rightly points out that the deficit scolds are out in force on Capitol Hill as we go into this intense period of budget negotiations:

Boehner will want to give his party’s Tea Party wing something in return for dropping their futile Obamacare attacks, and entitlements would be the perfect prize. As for the president, in a terse conversation with Boehner on Friday he merely said “he wouldn’t negotiate with him on the debt limit,” according to Boehner’s office. The president and White House officials have consistently echoed the line taken last Sunday by presidential economic advisor Gene Sperling on a reporters’ call. “The President is not going to negotiate over the debt limit,” said Sperling. (emphasis ours)

That’s an argument about process, not content. When it comes to “entitlement” spending, the two sides’ positions are disturbingly close. The president’s budget still contains the “chained CPI” cut. Boehner has talked about cutting these programs for years. On the Senate side, Republican Rob Portman of Ohio called for cutting “the 65 percent of the budget that is not touched: entitlements.”

And Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma said this: “If we found $700 billion in savings from entitlements — Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security — it would relieve pressure on the Pentagon and on non-mandatory spending. All the cuts they need are there to avoid a possible shutdown.”

“I suspect that on Social Security, we’ve got a somewhat similar position.” That’s what President Obama said about Mitt Romney in a presidential debate last year. He’s probably right.

When it comes to Medicare the two sides aren’t as close, but there’s still room for negotiation. Obama has long described Medicare’s costs as “unsustainable,” while saying little about the private-sector drivers underlying them. While he’s categorically rejected the GOP’s proposed dismantling of Medicare, he has already proposed reducing program benefits.

Both sides presumably wants a face-saving deal that each finds palatable. They’re most closely aligned on “entitlement cuts,” so an agreement to cut them is a very real possibility. It’s one we should fear – and resist.

Again, who knows? So far, we’ve been saved by the administration’s insistence on temporary tax hikes in exchange for cutting SS and the silly tea partier’s unwillingness to accept a great deal when it’s offered. The question is if anything’s changed. Does the addition of a smart, ambitious pol like Ted Cruz leading the charge to defund Obamacare make a difference? Are they more or less willing to take it to the limit now that sequestration is in effect? I guess we’ll find out.

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