Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Catfight

by digby

Beck vs Limbaugh

Beck is on a huge roll. Over the last month, the right-wing Fox News talker has claimed the scalp of the president’s green jobs czar; motivated thousands of conservatives to turn out for town hall meetings and a Sept. 12 march on Washington; pummeled Democrats over ACORN and Obama’s czars; and landed himself a spot on the cover of Time magazine.

“Beck is the man of the moment,” says the Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb. “Everybody in town is watching him, waiting to see what he’ll do next, who he’ll take down next.”

But if Beck is the man of the moment, where does that leave Rush?

In an e-mail to POLITICO, Limbaugh said any attempt to compare him with Beck in terms of Washington influence rests on a “flawed premise.”

[…]

“I don’t rally people and haven’t since the first year of my radio show,” he wrote to POLITICO. “At that time, all local talk hosts were attempting to prove their worth by getting people to cut up gasoline credit cards, call Washington, etc. I thought it was cheap and disingenuous. The few times I did, early on, suggest people call Washington, the reaction to it from the media was that the response was not genuine (I shut down the House switchboard) because people only did what they did because ‘Limbaugh told them to.'”

Limbaugh hasn’t abandoned the call to action entirely; last year, he launched “Operation Chaos,” urging his listeners to register as Democrats and vote for Hillary Clinton in Democratic presidential primaries to prolong the nominating process and weaken Obama.

But now he suggests that conservatives don’t need any egging on – and he seemed to downplay Beck’s role in goosing the turnout for last weekend’s march.

“The rally Saturday was special and important precisely because there was not a single, charismatic leader behind it,” he said. “I never mentioned it, on purpose. People are rising up from genuine passion and concern, they are NOT being whipped into a frenzy. This is REAL and not inspired by anyone. This outpouring has been effervescing for years and Obama has brought it all to the boiling point. PEOPLE DO NOT NEED TO BE TOLD. They are living it.”

Meow.

Rushbo is being eclipsed by a barking madman. How perfect.

And speaking of madmen:

The masses were summoned by Glenn Beck, Fox News host and organizer of the 912 Project, the civic initiative he pulled together six months ago to restore America to the sense of purpose and unity it had felt the day after the towers fell.

In reality, however, the so-called 912ers were summoned to D.C. by the man who changed Beck’s life, and that helps explain why the movement is not the nonpartisan lovefest that Beck first sold on air with his trademark tears. Beck has created a massive meet-up for the disaffected, paranoid Palin-ite “death panel” wing of the GOP, those ideologues most susceptible to conspiracy theories and prone to latch on to eccentric distortions of fact in the name of opposing “socialism.” In that, they are true disciples of the late W. Cleon Skousen, Beck’s favorite writer and the author of the bible of the 9/12 movement, “The 5,000 Year Leap.” A once-famous anti-communist “historian,” Skousen was too extreme even for the conservative activists of the Goldwater era, but Glenn Beck has now rescued him from the remainder pile of history, and introduced him to a receptive new audience.

What has Beck been pushing on his legions? “Leap,” first published in 1981, is a heavily illustrated and factually challenged attempt to explain American history through an unspoken lens of Mormon theology.

[…]

As Beck knows, to focus solely on “The 5,000 Year Leap” is to sell the author short. When he died in 2006 at the age of 92, Skousen had authored more than a dozen books and pamphlets on the Red Menace, New World Order conspiracy, Christian child rearing, and Mormon end-times prophecy. It is a body of work that does much to explain Glenn Beck’s bizarre conspiratorial mash-up of recent months, which decries a new darkness at noon and finds strange symbols carefully coded in the retired lobby art of Rockefeller Center. It also suggests that the modern base of the Republican Party is headed to a very strange place.

Here’s more on Beck’s pot luck radicalism from Neiwert. Plus this:

.

Pre-Beck Beck

by dday

Uncanny.

(h/t MBH)

.

Spoiled Delinquents

by digby

It’s almost impossible to believe that he would have the nerve to whine after saying what he said, but I guess no matter how old you are, if you are a Republican senator, you can’t help being an obnoxious brat:

Grassley Resentful Of White House Treatment

Thursday, Sept. 17, 2009
by Anna Edney

President Obama got under Senate Finance ranking member Charles Grassley’s skin over the August break by linking the Iowa Republican with fringe groups spreading death panel rumors to skewer a healthcare overhaul, Grassley said today.

“[Obama] associated me with other efforts to kill [the overhaul], and I was answering a question for a constituent at a town meeting in Iowa, stating a position that I stated here back in March, and I kind of resent that when I’ve been very candid with the president,” Grassley said.

Grassley said he has not talked with the president since the beginning of August. The exchange started when Grassley commented at a town hall meeting that the health overhaul should not include provisions “that determine whether you’re going to pull the plug on grandma.”

A few days later, Obama called such arguments “simply dishonest.”

White House senior adviser David Axelrod also accused GOP negotiators on the Finance Committee of being political and of not working seriously with Democrats, Grassley said.

“Being accused of being political during the month of August, when I didn’t say anything different in Iowa than I’ve been saying in Washington, you know, that’s not a very good environment to carry on a conversation,” Grassley said. He added that the bipartisan “Group of Six” — which has yet to agree on a bipartisan package — held 31 meetings.

Oh boo fucking hoo. If the guy felt he had to kiss the asses of a bunch of circus clowns with Hitler signs, fine. But he did it and in doing so took a side. He really should spare us this petulance and suck it up now that the Democrats have finally realized that they might as well be negotiating with a piece of petrified dinosaur feces as negotiate with him.

Update: Grassley also whimpered about how the democrats shouldn’t have deadlines and let them “continue their work.” He’d be pathetic if he weren’t so mean:

HOLD AND DELAY: Building on Luntz’s plan, Senate Republicans made every attempt to delay the Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee’s reform measure by offering nonsensical amendments, eliminating affordability measures for middle class families, offering non-starter alternatives, arguing that the committee should terminate hearings, and fear-mongering over the measure that eventually passed. Former Bush chief of staff Andrew Card argued yesterday that health care reform needs to be slowed down, calling it “contrived haste.” “Let’s do it smart, not fast,” Card said. Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne reported that Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), one of the few GOP senators negotiating reform, is “under immense pressure from Republican colleagues not to deal at all.” A memo written by veteran GOP consultant Alex Castellanos is being circulated among Republican leaders insisting that it is “crucial for Republicans to slow down what it calls ‘the Obama experiment with our health.'” RNC Chairman Michael Steele delivered a speech yesterday that was “based, almost word for word,” on the Castellanos memo

.

Bipartisanship For Dummies

by digby

I just heard Kent Conrad on Chris Matthews carrying on about bipartianship on health care like he’s living in some kind of time warp. He obviously knows better, but is pretending for the benefit of easily led villagers like Matthews. He pretty much reprised the shockingly revealing admissions he made yesterday on Andrea Mitchell:

Republicans should just love this bill. It cuts out all the things that would have an impact on health care reform. Here’s Kent Conrad’s ode to da republicants.

Mitchell: How did you do? Are you guys going to get any Republicans to join you in this?

Conrad: Well, we certainly hope so. Look, they asked a series of things be excluded.

*They didn’t want a public option, it’s not in this package. They didn’t want an employer mandate, it’s not in this package.

*They wanted tax reforms so that the high end Cadillac plans would have a levy on them to discourage over utilization, that’s part of the package.

*They didn’t want illegals to benefit, many Democrats agreed, that’s not in the package. Those here illegally will not benefit.

*They wanted to make certain that federal dollars not be used to support abortion and so they’re not.

*There’s the beginning of medical malpractice which many wanted to see be included. There’s a clear statement on that.

So I hope that they’ll see as we go through the process that there’s much here that’s worthy of their support….

I guess the fact that Olympia Snowe gave some very tepid support (maybe) for the bill made all that worthwhile. Except those aren’t things she particularly cares about.

I find this fascinating. Conrad is out there saying that they made all kinds of concessions to get Republican support like that has relevance, when clearly it didn’t work. Does he think that this still makes sense? Apparently Tweety does.

Clearly, it’s Democrats who want this, not Republicans. If they did, they would vote for it — and if Democrats didn’t want it, there would be no need to keep it in the bill. Old Kent and his pals in the conservadem caucus simply cannot hide behind the idea that this is about bipartisanship and will have to take responsibility for it themselves. These senate Democrats are pandering to conservatives on abortion, illegal immigration and tort reform. Meanwhile they have put together a plan which regressively taxes the middle class to line the pockets of the insurance companies as they screech about fiscal responsibility.

The only way this bill could be called bipartisan is if Conrad and his pals make the leap and formally join the Republican Party. Otherwise, this is an all Dem reform and if the Mad Max bill gets passed, in a few short years it’s very likely that the Democrats are going to get a taste of what it’s like to be as unpopular as Republicans are today.

.

Cards

by digby

Amato caught the Fox Allstars wringing their delicate hands about the teabag faction being called racists (which I mentioned in this post when I argued that it showed that the Democrats should be willing to pursue this charge:)

Transcript via an email from Bob Fertik:

Bret Baier: Don’t you have to be careful when you level the charge?
It’s such a blunt object, when you say “racism” is a big charge. Stephen Hayes: There is absolutely zero evidence that saying You Lied to the President of the United States had anything to do with race whatsoever and it is a disgusting smear for anybody to suggest that. It is a sad day when a columnist in the NY Times can just imagine that somebody is saying something, literally putting words in her mouth. Sheprefaced the statement by saying “fair or not I heard him say ‘You Lied
Boy.'” That’s not fair. As a journalist, you can’t imagine people saying things, you have to criticize them based on what they actually say and he didn’t say this … Krauthammer: The accusation of racism is a sign of desperation by
people who know they are losing the national debate and they want to hurl the ultimate charge in American politics. This is dealing from the bottom of the deck and I agree that it is a disgusting tactic. It’s done as a way to end debate. The minute you call someone a racist the debate is over, you don’t continue. Accusations of racism are the last refuge of the liberal scoundrel. As for Maureen Dowd imagining a word that wasn’t said, in my previous profession I saw a lot of people who heard words that weren’t said. They were called patients and many of them were helped with medication. The reason she won’t be and others who are hurling the accusation is because it’s a deliberate attempt to change the subject and discredit the opposition with unprovable and unproved ad hominem.

They were in quite the tizzy, weren’t they?

Now, what’s important about Krauthamer’s snotty little whine is this:

This is dealing from the bottom of the deck and I agree that it is a disgusting tactic. It’s done as a way to end debate. The minute you call someone a racist the debate is over, you don’t continue. Accusations of racism are the last refuge of the liberal scoundrel.

Right. Now substitute that with this:

This is dealing from the bottom of the deck and I agree that it is a disgusting tactic. It’s done as a way to end debate. The minute you accuse someone of not supporting the troops the debate is over, you don’t continue. Calling someone unpatriotic is the last refuge of the conservative scoundrel.

Or this:

This is dealing from the bottom of the deck and I agree that it is a disgusting tactic. It’s done as a way to end debate. The minute you say someone is Anti-Christian the debate is over, you don’t continue. Accusations of religious bigotry are the last refuge of the conservative scoundrel.

I actually think these examples are debate enders, all of them. But they are now part and parcel of our political discourse and unless liberals get off their high horses and use these tactics against these other side (particularly when they are actually true!) conservatives will continue to dominate and shape the debate. They made these rules, now they should have to live by them.

And since their leadership, Limbaugh and Beck, are working their followers into such a frenzy that they are taking automatic weapons to political events, I’m fairly sure it’s not a good idea to ignore this stuff. These are, after all, people who have a pretty recent history of blowing stuff up based on racist and anti-government propaganda.

.

The Banksters Lose One?

by dday

SAFRA, the student loan bill to end the privatization of loans already backed by the government, passed the House today by a vote of 253-171. 6 Republicans (Buchanan, Cao, Johson (IL), Petri, Platts, Ros-Lehtinen) voted yes; 4 Democrats (Boyd, Herseth Sandlin, McMahon, Kanjorski) voted no. Considering that Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin is from the wholly owned banking state of South Dakota, that’s impressive party unity, probably because it’s indefensible not to be for this bill. As Gail Collins explains today:

It would simplify the federally guaranteed loan system, save an estimated $87 billion over 10 years and use that money to increase aid to low-income students, improve community colleges and raise standards for early childhood education.

Let us stop here and recall how the current loan system works:

1) Federal government provides private banks with capital.

2) Federal government pays private banks a subsidy to lend that capital to students.

3) Federal government guarantees said loans so the banks don’t have any risk.

And now, the proposed reform:

1) The federal government makes the loans.

Wow. You really do wonder why nobody came up with this idea before.

Given all of the other profit centers that the banking industry has opened up, and the clear logic of the bill, maybe they figured they can’t stop this one. If it runs into trouble in the Senate, it could easily move through reconciliation since the whole point of it is to end wasteful subsidies to the private lending market, which expand the deficit. I think there will be 50 votes for this, as Pell Grants are popular, the private loan market serves no purpose whatsoever, and another part of the bill offers challenge grants for early childhood education, another broadly popular priority.

So I believe we are going to see this change in higher education. And millions of college-age students, many of whom supported Barack Obama in record numbers, will recognize this almost immediately in higher Pell grants, cheaper loans and simpler forms. Savvy play, as well as a good policy.

.

Comebacker

by digby

Chris Cilizza writes that the numbers on health care haven’t actually changed much over the past two months in spite of the August hoohah. And then he sagely notes:

The Gallup numbers provide a worthwhile reminder that even while Washington is consumed with the daily back and forth over health care, the public at large is less invested in the tit for tat inside the Beltway. And, they also suggest that for all the doom and gloom talk regarding how Americans view Obama’s health care plan, there may well be room for the White House to pull out a victory on the legislation.

A signing ceremony in the Rose Garden — and the resultant favorable media coverage — could well be the last (only?) time some Americans pay close attention to the health care debate and give the president a chance to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Well isn’t that good news. But I’m a bit puzzled. Cilizza himself writes in the same piece that polls show that a majority support Obama on health care reform — and always have. Why in the hell should there need to be “room” to “pull out a victory?” And what “jaws of defeat” is he pulling victory from?

This is typical beltway narrative building. Despite the fact that the teabaggers have done everything in their power to change public opinion, it hasn’t worked. Despite the fact that the Republicans have vowed to do everything in their power to kill health reform, it hasn’t worked. Despite all the “doom and gloom” talk in the media, people still support the bill and every vote in the congress that has been taken thus far has advanced the bill. But apparently all of this shows Republican strength and it’s the Democrats who will be snatching victory from the jaws of defeat if they manage to pass the bill. Same as it ever was.

.

When Faced With A Parliament, Act Like A Parliament

by dday

Ron Brownstein has been unusually perceptive of late, but this isn’t quite right.

America is steadily moving away from the ramshackle coalitions that historically defined our parties and toward a quasi-parliamentary system that demands lockstep partisan loyalty. It is revealing that Obama is facing nearly unanimous Republican opposition on health care just four years after President Bush couldn’t persuade a single congressional Democrat to back his comparably ambitious Social Security restructuring.

Bush couldn’t persuade many Republicans either. Republicans held the majority in 2005 when he tried to privatize Social Security, and they never even brought a bill through a committee. In this case, votes will be held on the floor of both houses on health care.

The truth is that one side acts like a Parliament while much of the other thinks we still live in the days of bipartisan consensus. Both parties have different visions of how to govern, and despite that giving Villagers the willies, it’s OK and expected. But if you have one side bending over backwards to work together, and the other side unyielding, the debate necessarily tips in favor of that unyielding side, as a matter of basic physics.

Brownstein does acknowledge this to an extent:

Today, these centrifugal forces most affect the Republican Party. The Right has more leverage to discipline legislators because conservative voters constitute a larger share of the GOP coalition than liberals do of the Democratic Party. The Right’s partisan communications network also remains more ferocious than the Left’s.

The GOP’s homogenization has been accelerated, moreover, by its losses in swing areas since 2006. Far fewer congressional Republicans than Democrats must worry most about moderate public opinion. Fully 31 of the 40 Republican senators, for example, were elected from the 18 ruby-red states that twice backed Bush and also opposed Obama. Just four Republican senators were elected by states that voted Democratic in at least two of the past three presidential elections. (Not coincidentally, those four include Maine’s Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, Obama’s best GOP prospects on health care.) By contrast, 22 of the 59 Democratic senators were elected by states that voted Republican in at least two of the past three presidential elections.

But again, this is truly wrong:

Party-line governing is intrinsically flawed. Any bill that must pass solely with votes from the majority party can’t realistically incorporate ideas that divide the party. And that fact of life rules out half the tools in our policy toolbox. Though medical-malpractice reform would advance Obama’s cost-control goals, for instance, it’s impractical to include it in legislation that must pass solely with Democratic votes. Legislation is more balanced when both parties shape it.

The entire Rube Goldberg formation of health care reform, the likes of which we see in all the Democratic bills, are fundamentally Republican ideas. They basically mirror a bill by Republican Senator John Chafee from 1994. The same on climate change and its market-based cap and trade formation. Democrats have very liberally borrowed from the bipartisan “policy toolbox,” often to a fault. They haven’t added ideas like privatizing everything (yet) or handing out cash to industry (only in part) or forcing poor people to live on cat food, but those are not what I would call the sharpest tools in the shed.

Because of the rump Southern faction taking over the GOP, and because of… well, people like Ron Brownstein, telling us that bipartisanship conquers all and hippies must be punched in the face repeatedly, the trajectory on all these issues has moved sharply to the right over the past few decades, such that a bill like Max Baucus’, a virtual handout to the health industry (who love it), can be described on the right – and taken seriously by the media – as a government takeover of health care.

You need look no further to see how Democrats deal with these issues than Jeffrey Toobin’s article in this week’s New Yorker on the Obama Administration’s judicial nominees:

The Obama Administration wanted to send a message with the President’s first nomination to a federal court. “There was a real conscious decision to use that first appointment to say, ‘This is a new way of doing things. This is a post-partisan choice,’ ” one White House official involved in the process told me. “Our strategy was to show that our judges could get Republican support.” So on March 17th President Obama nominated David Hamilton, the chief federal district-court judge in Indianapolis, to the Seventh Circuit court of appeals. Hamilton had been vetted with care. After fifteen years of service on the trial bench, he had won the highest rating from the American Bar Association; Richard Lugar, the senior senator from Indiana and a leading Republican, was supportive; and Hamilton’s status as a nephew of Lee Hamilton, a well-respected former local congressman, gave him deep connections. The hope was that Hamilton’s appointment would begin a profound and rapid change in the confirmation process and in the federal judiciary itself […]

But then, as the first White House official put it, “Hamilton blew up.” Conservatives seized on a 2005 case, in which Hamilton ruled to strike down the daily invocation at the Indiana legislature because its repeated references to Jesus Christ violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment. Hamilton had also ruled to invalidate a part of Indiana’s abortion law that required women to make two visits to a doctor before undergoing the procedure. In June, Hamilton was approved by the Judiciary Committee on a straight party-line vote, twelve to seven, but his nomination has not yet been brought to the Senate floor. Some Republicans have already vowed a filibuster. (Republican threats of extended debate on nominees can stop the Democratic majority from bringing any of them up for votes.)

“The reaction to Hamilton certainly has given people pause here,” the second White House official said. “If they are going to stop David Hamilton, then who won’t they stop?”

The answer, of course, is that they will try to stop everyone and everything, if only to gum up the works and force the majority to move more slowly on its priorities. The new Republican Party comes up from the mold of the college Republicans, taught early to use every dirty trick, every strategy, not to govern but to beat your opponent. They may have poisoned American politics and taken it completely away from the high-mindedness where Villagers like to think it has always been (it hasn’t), but there’s really only one way to deal with that. Brownstein concludes:

But with Republicans operating as a parliamentary party of opposition, Democrats will have to pass health care reform virtually, if not entirely, alone. That leaves them with a binary choice: Democrats can either fragment into stalemate or function as a parliamentary majority party by unifying enough to advance their agenda. The choice would seem straightforward. If one side in a firefight is operating with military cohesion and the other devolves into ragged, undirected units, it’s not hard to predict which will suffer more casualties.

That’s just an obvious sentiment, though from the looks of things, one with which Democrats have not yet reconciled themselves.

.

You Don’t Say

by digby

Rod Dreher opens his eyes to the people with whom he surrounds himself. And doesn’t like what he sees:

Gang, some of you are going to crack on me hard for this, but I just took down the post from earlier today about the white kid being beat up on the bus by the black bullies. I used that incident to talk about black male violence and the reaction middle-class whites and blacks have to it, and how we don’t talk about that openly in our culture much. It has since come out that the police officer who initially described the beating as racial has changed his mind. It appears it was just bullies being bullies, which is bad enough, but not as bad as we first thought. But that’s not why I took down the item and the link to the video. I took it down because now we have Rush Limbaugh blaming Obama for black kids beating up a white kid on a school bus. This is what happens in “Obama’s America,” he said today on his radio show. How low will these people go? Look, I think it’s important to talk about black male violence, or at least as important as it is to talk about any other important social trend. I don’t think we should be squeamish about discussing it in a responsible and fair-minded way, despite what the politically correct say. But good grief, Limbaugh is up to something wicked. He’s plainly trying to rally white conservatives into thinking that now that we have a black president, blacks are rising up to attack white kids! Christ have mercy, what is wrong with these people?

That’s funny. We need to talk about the “important social trend” of “black male violence” (which isn’t ever talked about enough …) but he’s shocked, shocked! that people are using it to say that blacks are rising up to attack whites. Glory be.

I don’t know what it is about this subject that makes people unable to see the obvious, but it happens so often that you have to assume that they just don’t want to. Of course, that’s what Limbaugh is doing. It’s certainly not the first time. In fact, it’s what Republicans have been doing since Nixon and the boys devised the Southern Strategy.

Why it’s even remotely surprising that the election of the first black president would bring up this longstanding, racial paranoia is beyond me. Happening as it is at a time of economic crisis, I’m only surprised it has taken this long for Limbaugh and his minions to get really explicit about it. I guess that’s progress.

But not all that much. One of the most potent weapons the right has had over the past forty years was the “law and order” issue. And “law and order” most often was the thinly disguised fear of the black underclass revolting. I suppose when you treat a population as badly as America has treated African Americans, fear of retribution isn’t entirely delusional. (But if that’s the case, putting millions of them in prison seems not only excessive, but counterproductive.)

This is the oldest story in the American book and it should have been completely expected that some vestige of it remains and that it would be energized by our new president. Those who believed otherwise were naive.

And, by the way, it doesn’t end with African Americans. One of our other ugly racial stories is recurring nativism (in a country of immigrants, no less), which comes to the fore most strongly during times of economic stress or other social tensions. If there’s one rallying cry you can count on in this country is “send them back to … wherever,” when the going gets tough. So this shouldn’t surprise anyone either:

As Congress’s debate over health-care legislation lumbers toward a defining test for the Obama presidency, partisans on both sides of another issue — immigration — escalated their own proxy war this week, concluding that the fates of the two issues have become politically linked.

Trying to beat back a furor over whether President Obama’s centerpiece initiative would subsidize health care for illegal immigrants, liberal supporters of an immigration overhaul on Monday called a main proponent of that claim a “hate group,” citing its founder’s ties to white supremacists and interest in racist ideas, such as eugenics.

The counterattack comes as opponents of illegal immigration plan a Capitol Hill lobbying push, starting when 47 conservative radio hosts hold a “town hall of the airwaves” in Washington on Tuesday and Wednesday to highlight the costs of illegal immigration.

Strategists on both sides said the clash underscores how Republican activists have stirred populist anxiety against not only Obama’s health-care effort but also other parts of his agenda.

Yup.

And, by the way, the school bus is a long standing racist lizard brain symbol, right along with “law’norder”:

(Nixon’s ads were much slicker and safely targeted the hippies thus leaving the more explicit racial overtones to Wallace. But it all worked together quite nicely.)

Update: you really need to read this rundown of Rush’s comments on Tuesday. It’s pretty unbelievable, even for him. He calls for segregated buses.

h/t to bb

.

The Reviews Are In!

by dday

Everybody’s talking about Max Baucus’ plan for health care!

Mostly, people don’t like it!

Republicans don’t like it because… it’s a health care bill. Democrats don’t like it because… it’s a bad health care bill designed to kowtow to Republicans who won’t even vote for it. Health care advocacy groups don’t like it because it “would give a government-subsidized monopoly to the private insurance industry to sell their most profitable plans – high-deductible insurance – without having to face competition from a public health insurer.” A good reason not to like it! And unions don’t like it because there’s no employer mandate and it would “tax health plans.”

A bill of particulars:

• The bill spends too little on coverage subsidies. While putting a price tag on something that is paid for inside the budget window is misleading, the fact is that Baucus artificially lowered that price tag to meet some conception of centrism, and the lowered subsidies have a direct impact on affordability.

People in Massaschusetts are by and large satisfied with the Connector. It’s toughest on the fairly small number of families earning just over 300% of FPL (of which there aren’t that many), and on the larger number of young individuals who make just over 300% of FPL (which is $32,320 for an individual, so there are a decent number of those folks). Working class families earning up to 200% of FPL have fairly low premiums. $90 per month is going to pinch, but for uninsured households, they’ll get some real value out of that: Commonwealth Care plans include dental insurance, wellness checkups have low co-payments; chronic disease care is especially well covered, and so forth. Likewise, three hundred pre-tax dollars a month for a family with a gross income of $60,000 per year is Real Money, but it’s not going to break the bank. It’s less than what they should be saving for college, for instance.

But as you can see from the graph, the Baucus bill doesn’t fare as well. It’s not even close to faring as well. The eight million individuals without insurance who earn between 200% and 300% of FPL will pay more than twice what similar households in Massachusetts currently pay. And working class families will feel a real pinch; $250 per month ($3,000 per year) for a family of four with an income of $38,000 is going to hurt.

• The community rating provision, mandating that insurers offer the same price to everyone regardless of medical history, comes with a tremendous loophole that will allow them to change five times as much for a policy based on age, which is just another way to discriminate against the sick.

• The employer “free rider” problem, called “one of the worst policy ideas I’ve ever seen” by Ezra Klein, would penalize employers for hiring anyone who qualifies for subsidies, encouraging them to find people who get coverage through a spouse or illegal immigrants. It also gives large employers like Wal-Mart a competitive advantage for paying crappy wages. And you can’t opt out of the garbage insurance that giant employer – let’s call them Ball Bart – might offer you.

• The excise tax for violating the individual mandate could cost up to $3,800 but wouldn’t kick in if the individual could not find coverage that costs more than 10% of his income. In which case, you’ve built a robust architecture for a useless plan, because if millions opt out the coverage gets less universal and insurers want to stop come-as-you-are guaranteed issue.

• The co-ops are even weaker than imaginable:

The co-ops can only compete in the small group and individual markets. That is to say, if the co-ops prove effective, and The Washington Post would like to offer co-op coverage as an option to its workers, it can’t. The co-ops are not allowed to contract with large employers, which is to say, they can’t compete with private insurers in the largest market, and they can’t get the purchasing power that would come from a serious foothold among corporate customers.

Not only is their size restricted, so too is what they can do with their size. The co-ops can band together to increase their purchasing power, but they can’t set national payment rates for their members, a la Medicare. As I understand it, they have to bargain with each provider and drug manufacturer and hospital and so forth separately, meaning they’re denied one of the main advantages of size. The insurance industry is, in other words, being protected from not just public competition, but co-op competition.

Jay Rockefeller today sent a letter proving, based on tons of research, that co-ops were a complete sham that have failed in the marketplace on a number of occasions, saying that “I believe it is irresponsible to invest over $6 billion in a concept that has not proven to provide quality, affordable health care, when we know that a public health insurance option will rein in costs and save taxpayers billions of dollars.”

Marcy Wheeler has a lot more. There’s one promising sign that the exchanges look expandable and available to all businesses, a neat way to gradually wean the system off of exclusive employer-based insurance, but that’s about the only silver lining. Kent Conrad’s gambit of increasing the budget window to make the Senate Finance bill look better did work, as the deficit reduction aspects look improved for the bill over the House bill. But crucially, that’s a function of the funding, not the outlay in subsidies. Those will be too stingy to make the bill work for people, only for the bean-counters. In fact, the bill will start taking more and more from the middle class, much like the alternative minimum tax, and political reality will force scalebacks, so the budget picture doesn’t look as rosy as advertised.

But it also suggests some real dangers in the bill’s second decade. The unpopular elements of the bill become a lot bigger and more onerous. The excise tax on high-cost insurance plans begins affecting insurance plans that aren’t particularly high-cost. The Medicare and Medicaid savings begin to tighten. That said, there are a lot of potential savings that the CBO isn’t taking into account here, so that might ease the pain. Plus, at some point, we are going to have to start cutting costs in the system, and you can’t escape some eventual hurt in that. But you can be sure the GOP is going to run these numbers aggressively and spin them viciously.

The good news is that this is in no way “the bill” that will get signed by the President. It has to go through a significant amount of changes, and key Democrats are already balking at it. In fact, lil’ ol’ Roland Burris said he wouldn’t vote for anything without a public option, and with the numbers so tight, every Senator is in a bargaining position. Baucuscare is an abomination. But it doesn’t have to be the endpoint, only the beginning.

I should say that one group really, really likes the Baucus bill – insurance companies.

.