Quick Observation
by digby
I was watching the George Stephanopoulos round table this morning and realized that the Villagers think the health care bill can best be sold to the public by arguing that if everybody hates it, it must be good.
.
Saturday Night At The Movies
Fear and loathing in New Orleans
By Dennis Hartley
Somewhere on the edge of the 9th Ward, the drugs began to take hold…
Who could have guessed that the man who helmed art house classics like Fitzcarraldo
Herzog’s latest film, arguably adorned with the year’s most unwieldy title for squeezing onto a marquee, is a (sort of) sequel to Abel Ferrara’s highly controversial 1992 neo-noir
To my observation, Cage has demonstrated two basic personas in his repertoire over the years. First, there is the Slack-Jawed, Dead-eyed Mumbler (Peggy Sue Got Married
As far as I could glean, there is no effort to bridge with Ferrara’s film and explain how Lt. McDonagh transitioned from NYC to New Orleans. Not that it really matters. Anyone who has followed Herzog’s career probably has figured out by now that he is perfectly content to wallow in his own peculiar universe. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing-it’s what makes his work so continually interesting to me. The “plot” ostensibly concerns itself with the murder of a Senegalese family, and the police investigation. Not that the “plot” really matters, either (although Herzog’s post-Katrina milieu is quite atmospheric).
No, if you are going to watch this film (which has “destined to become a midnight cult item” written all over it), I’ll tell you right now that you needn’t concern yourself with trying to follow the (probably deliberately) convoluted and complex murder mystery. You’ll be too busy asking yourself questions like “Did I just see what I think I just saw?” and making exclamations like “Oh no-he DIDN’T!” as Herzog and screenwriter William M. Finkelstein proceed to turn the “cop on the edge” genre on its head with every blackly comic twist and turn. Cage and the rest of the cast (including Val Kilmer, Eva Mendes, Fairuza Balk, Brad Dourif and Jennifer Coolidge) all seem to be in on the director’s joke, and play it to the hilt. By the time you’ve processed Herzog’s use of the “alligator/iguana-cam”, you will have to make a decision to either run for the exit, or go with the flow and say to yourself “Well…I’ve bought the ticket, I’m gonna take the ride.”
This is the most twisted noir I’ve seen since Tough Guys Don’t Dance
Noir Orleans: Tightrope
.
Oh For Crying Out Loud
by digby
Here’s the Nelson abortion compromise:
In the House health care bill, consumers who receive federal premium subsidies would be forbidden from buying any insurance policy that covers abortion. That provision–the so-called Stupak amendment–threatened to blow up health care reform. Originally, it’s the language Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) wanted to see in the Senate health care bill. In the end, he didn’t get that.
But what he did get might still draw the ire of pro-choice activists and legislators. According to a senior Senate leadership aide, under the Nelson compromise, “[i]ndividuals receiving subsidies will have one premium that they pay with two distinct transactions.”
Put another way: If you’re buying insurance with help from the government, and the policy you want to buy covers abortions, you have to write two checks (or authorize two credit card transactions, etc.) for your plan. If the plan costs $1000 a month, and the insurer plans to sequester $50 to put into a pool that covers abortions, you have to make one payment of $950 and a separate payment of $50.
Are anti-abortion zealots really appeased by this silly provision? Is there any point to it at all except to make women prove they are godless little sluts by leaving a paper trail?
“The negotiations, whoever did them, threw unborn babies under the bus,” Coburn said.
God this country is stupid.
Update: Kagro muses on Stupak and Nelson and what it all means.
And this from Ezra Klein:
I liked David Waldman’s response. The problem with leaving the decision up to the states, he says, is that it doesn’t go far enough. “I think states should leave the abortion question up to the counties,” he explains. “Then I think counties should leave the abortion question up to municipalities. Then the neighborhoods should leave the abortion question up to each block.” And each block, as you might have guessed, should leave the abortion question up to each household. var entrycat = ”
Yes. Get the government out of our lives!
.
History
by digby
Ryan Grim has a rundown on the Senate bill if you’d like to see the major provisions as well as the feelings among fellow Senate Democrats according to Al Franken:
Overall, Franken said, his colleagues are happy with the bill. “All of us believe that we need to make basic reforms and that this does that,” he said of the product. “It’s an enormous step forward. It’s something we can build on. Social Security passage was just widows and orphans.” Social Security gradually expanded over time.
“I think it’s a really important, really historic bill, but I’m just worried that we don’t over-promise but at the same time we do tell them all the great things the bill has,” said Franken.
He’s right on the politics but wrong on the facts. There have, of course, been expansions, notably SSI, over the years, but Social Security was not just widows and orphans when it was passed. It had certain exemptions for domestic and farm workers, churches and non-profits. And those who already had pensions from the government and the railroads were not covered. But everybody else went immediately into the system under the same rules. It was very easy for people to understand how it worked.
These Democrats have their work cut out for them.
.
Clarifying Debate
by digby
After reading a number of posts and emails misinterpreting this piece of mine, it’s obvious that I need to elaborate. There’s an awful lot of literalism on all sides going around these days, so it’s important to be precise with my hyperbole.
To clarify, when I wrote “most people are already “free” to buy insurance” it was in direct response to the language being used to sell the bill: “We are giving health care to 30 million people” and “this is the greatest progressive achievement since Social Security.” I was making an argument about the politics not the substance of the bill. However, it’s not inaccurate to say that policies are available to many of the 30 million — even some of those with pre-existing conditions, by joining the high risk pools that exist in 31 states. The problem, obviously, is that they just can’t afford them or have made the assessment that they would rather take the risk than spend the money. I certainly never said that fact made the reforms completely meaningless. (Indeed, I said the opposite.)
But that wasn’t the point of my post. In my view these mandates make this bill something quite different from “entitlements” as people know them. And it’s a psychological/philosophical difference as much as a practical one which I believe it makes these reforms much more vulnerable to repeal.
I’ll let Robert Kuttner make the point much more artfully, as he did on Bill Moyers last night:
ROBERT KUTTNER: Think about it, the difference between social insurance and an individual mandate is this. Social insurance everybody pays for it through their taxes, so you don’t think of Social Security as a compulsory individual mandate. You think of it as a benefit, as a protection that your government provides. But an individual mandate is an order to you to go out and buy some product from some private profit-making company, that in the case of a lot of moderate income people, you can’t afford to buy. And the shell game here is that the affordable policies are either very high deductibles and co-pays, so you can afford the monthly premiums but then when you get sick, you have to pay a small fortune out of pocket before the coverage kicks in. Or if the coverage is decent, the premiums are unaffordable. And so here’s the government doing the bidding of the private industry coercing people to buy profit-making products that maybe they can’t afford and they call it health reform.
You should watch the whole thing if you missed it. Shrill bloggers aren’t the only ones who have this point of view.
One thing the old political hands may not realize is that in this era of 24/7 cable and the internet this is the first time most people have watched a big piece of legislation enacted in such close-up detail. And what they are seeing is shocking and disturbing — the obvious corruption of the process by wealthy corporate interests. There’s a lot of populist resentment out here and it’s coming down on the heads of the Democrats who are now ironically seen to be funneling taxpayer dollars to rapacious corporations which have been making people’s lives miserable, insurance companies being among the worst of them. This health care debate has reinforced that perception. (And sadly, that perception isn’t exactly wrong.) It makes health care reform a very different animal than our other social welfare programs.
On the practical political level, I think that rather than being thrilled they are “getting health care” many uninsured people are going to be very disappointed to find that the “benefit” is that they are going to be required to buy something — especially from companies they don’t like or trust. And even if they get subsidies, it’s still going to be expensive by the standards of people who make between 30 and 60k a year. Suddenly requiring healthy people to come up with a few hundred dollars a month to pay Aetna isn’t really mitigated by the argument that it would have been more before the reforms. I realize that’s how mandates work but I don’t think people are being adequately prepared for that reality.
In addition, there are others in the individual market who don’t qualify for subsidies and Medicaid who currently have expensive private insurance. Many of them are expecting to financially benefit from this reform but may instead see no change. Their coverage will eventually improve and be more secure but they are not likely to feel that improvement is an advance on par with the New Deal or the Great Society, the biggest achievements of which were straightforward government programs that benefited everyone equally. This reform does not feature the same psychology of the social compact, which FDR and Johnson both understood to be requirements to keeping such a structure in place.
The Medicaid provision is obviously a good expansion of the safety net. But with Ben Nelson already arguing for scaling that back and 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 it 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 time are tremendous.
As for the internecine politics, there were numerous graceful concessions from the left from the beginning on health care that were not exactly easy to make, from single payer to the abortion language to immigrants. But it was the late dangling of a swap on the long held dream of a medicare buy-in, getting liberals to sign on and then allowing the loathed Lieberman, of all people, to capriciously snatch it away that was the real gut punch. And admonishing them to “get with the program” within minutes of that outrage while Lieberman preened that the president thanked him was gratuitous. Lucy and the football is an overused metaphor, but this was a classic. You’d have to be soulless not to be angry about that.
However this discussion has actually gone a long way to assuage my personal anger and give me some hope that the netroots are much more powerful than I realized if people are so worried that our utterances can affect turnout and public opinion. And that means that the era of lazy Democratic politicians reflexively using the left as a punching bag in order to prove their Real American bonafides may finally be coming to an end. Of course, the likes of Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson are still the deciders so the establishment should relax, secure in the knowledge that liberals’ actual effect on policy is still properly marginal.
I don’t know how this bill will play out politically. It’s not what I thought health care reform would be, but perhaps it is better than nothing. Your mileage may vary. I think it 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.
.
Tool Of Tools
by digby
Looks like Ben Nelson has agreed to allow the Senate to pass a bill to send to conference. But that’s it:
“Without in any way intending to be threatening–to be more in the more of promising–let me be clear, this cloture vote is based on full understanding that there will be a limited conference between the Senate and the House,” Nelson said. “If there are material changes in that conference report, different from this bill, that adversely affect the agreement, I reserve the right to vote against the next cloture vote–let me repeat it–I reserve the right to vote against the next cloture vote if there are material changes to this agreement in the conference report. And I will vote against it if that is the case.
Basically he just told the House of Representatives to go Cheney themselves.
If there’s one thing that’s clear from all this it’s that the filibuster is the tool of egomaniacs and conservatives. Individual liberals don’t seem to have the temperament to use it and jackass conservatives do. It’s a problem.
Wack-A-Mole
by digby
Golly, it looks like somebody saw Lieberman change the goalposts and decided to throw up some new roadblocks:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) worked Friday to secure the needed votes to pass sweeping health-care overhaul legislation, as Republicans threatened to use parliamentary tactics to drag out debate of the measure.
Reid met with Sen. Ben Nelson (D., Neb.), whose vote could give him enough support–a total of 60 votes–to prevent a Republican filibuster of the measure.
Nelson remained noncommital about the bill, saying that “hopefully we’re making progress.”
“As I’ve said, there’s always a lot of room between the bid and the ask, and we’re seeing if we can close that gap,” he said.
In the negotiations, Nelson was raising a proposal to exempt nonprofit insurance companies from a proposed tax on the industry, individuals familiar with the negotiations said. It wasn’t clear how far the idea would get.
In the give and take, he was also seeking ways to ease the financial burden that would be imposed on his home state under the bill’s proposed expansion of Medicaid, the federal-state health program for the poor. Among the ideas on the table were proposals to raise the federal government’s share of financing of the program in Nebraska, but no decision was made on the topic.
In a letter to Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman on Wednesday, Nelson stated he has proposed an “opt-in” provision for the bill’s proposed Medicaid expansion that would allow states not to expand Medicaid. Since states pay a share of Medicaid costs, some governors complain that it has proven burdensome on their budgets.
I heard that Obama had Olympia Snow on the phone for an hour. Does anyone know what she wants now? Of course if she gets what she wants, there’s every reason to believe that King Joseph will steep back up and back Nelson.
And let’s not leave out some of the others. Why should they be left out of all this fun?
.
Good To Know
by digby
Turn off MSNBC. Tune out Howard Dean and Keith Olbermann. The White House has its liberal wing in hand on health care, says White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.
“There are no liberals left to get” in the Senate, Emanuel said in an interview, shrugging off some noise from the likes of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) that a few liberals might bolt over the compromises made with conservative Democrats.
As the White House leans on conservative Democrat Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska for the 60th health care vote, Emanuel has made the case that this generation of liberal political figures will not make the mistake of their predecessors. The late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s greatest regret was not cutting a deal with Richard Nixon on universal health care. Former President Bill Clinton has forever rued the day he did not take moderate Republican Sen. John Chafee up on a compromise that could have secured a health care bill early in his presidency.
[…]
The comments may not endear the powerful White House chief of staff to liberal activists, furious that Senate Democratic leaders, at Emanuel’s urging, cut a deal with Sen. Joe Lieberman to drop a federally run insurance policy option, then eliminate a Medicare buy-in proposal.
“I don’t think the White House recognizes how much trouble they’re in,” said one former Democratic official this morning. “I think they’re miscalaculating what’s happening with progressives and the left. They feel like they’re being taken for granted.”
But Emanuel pointed to a New York Times column by economist Paul Krugman and another coming from National Journal writer Ronald Brownstein pressing for passage of the Senate health bill. “What you’re seeing is the progressive backlash against the progressive backlash,” he said.
Rahm says, fuck the liberals, they don’t vote for us anyway. Oh wait …
.
Giggle This
by digby
So Matthews apparently had a little hissy fit today about the netroots. (He isn’t the only one.) Think Progress caught the exchange:
MATTHEWS: I don’t consider them Democrats, I consider them netroots, and they’re different. And if I see that they vote in every election or most elections, I’ll be worried. But I’m not sure that they’re regular grown-up Democrats. I think that a lot of those people are troublemakers who love to sit in the backseat and complain. They’re not interested in governing this country. They never ran for office, they’re not interested in working for somebody in public office. They get their giggles from sitting in the backseat and bitching.
Maybe he thinks Democrats would do better without this:
ActBlue
The online clearinghouse for Democratic action.
//
Want blue states?$114,543,896raised online since 2004
Only about one million of that was for Obama. No big donors. No corporate cash. Just the kids in the back of the bus putting their money where their mouths are.
Compare that to the measly $1,761,436 contributed to all politicians by Exxon since 1999.
You probably ought to start worrying Chris.
.
