NBC says Dems only 5 votes short (0.00 / 0)

So a handful of Dems have given private assurances that have escaped your's and D-day's whip count.

John McCain won't insure children

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by: magster @ Thu Mar 18, 2010 at 14:04:50 PM UTC

So when do we find out about the 1% adjustment (4.00 / 1)

to the excise tax indexing? Is it in the current bill or was that some kind of funky false alarm?

Theoretically that score should force any Conservadem to support the reform. Theoretically they'd never vote to increase the deficit by 1.3 trillion and cut a decade from Medicare's solvency.

Theoretically.

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by: FairEconomist @ Thu Mar 18, 2010 at 14:20:16 PM UTC

It's not in the current bill. (0.00 / 0)

The bill now has CPI instead of CPI+1 (source).

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by: tdub @ Thu Mar 18, 2010 at 15:28:40 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Center Right Democrats? (4.00 / 2)

Given what I do for a day job (business writing, among other sins), the phrase 'center right Democrats' here bugs me. Last I checked, progressives and liberals currently represent the center of the Democratic party. You know, we believe that if the government is more efficient and less costly than the free market, the government should do the job. If the government can protect the interests of majorities (or minorities) better than the free market, the government should do the job. That it is unfair for the wealthiest to not repay taxpayer funded infrastructure that makes wealth possible. I don't believe that is the world view of these 'center right' Democrats.

As progressives, we really need to educate the media and ourselves that what a politician calls themselves does not matter. It's their policies that define what they are on the political spectrum. While many politicians push policies that range across a spectrum of choices, every politician has a rut they prefer. To use the short hand a politician or group of politicians use to define themselves allows this sort of bs. Please let's call the media on it when it happens. No more free rides, no more pretending to be a 'center right' Democrat when you really push Republican policies.

Otherwise, I'm happily surprised at this CBO score. It's tons better than anything the Republicans would offer. And, of course, the bill suffers most from what Matt Taibi and others have pointed out: it uses the government to force people to buy a crappy product from private companies who have, to date, shown themselves unworthy of that gift. Lets hope progressives, I mean real Democrats, can push Grayson's medicare buy in (or something like it) and other improvements this year and next.

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by: TSlavin @ Thu Mar 18, 2010 at 14:26:32 PM UTC

bogus media lables (0.00 / 0)

As we all recognise, the corporate media is very conservative, to the point of damaging their market share. This doesn't bother them, as they see this as just another cost of doing business (like advertizing, which it is in a sense). The corporate media always labels moderate to average rightwingers as centrist, to constantly move the overton window to the right for their own benifit.

This same effort always claims; We are a center right nation, Anyone to the sanity side of Hitler is a LIBERAL!, conservatives outnumber progressives, and all other lies necessary to continue their plunder of the general public.

They know they lie, so I don't believe calling them on it will have any effect.

Government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob..... FDR

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by: reggiewhitefish @ Thu Mar 18, 2010 at 16:23:46 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Who seriously believes Dems can fix this mess 'later'? (0.00 / 0)

The Congressional Dems power is dropping by the hour, for a host of both valid and bogus reasons.  If we couldn't get the PO or something like a medicare buy in now to counter this chicken-shit mandate, Dems simply won't have the votes to get anything but minor fixes. Even caving Progressive Sherrod Brown acknowledged it "might take one year or even five", but rest assured he'll be on it.  Reid too thinks he's coming back to fix this.
Not if I and a shitload of others have anything to do with it.o

Most Democrats and Obama know what a slap that mandate in particular is.  Might as well shoot me now before I'll get on my knees to buy anything from any one of those bastards.

I wouldn't be so angry if the Dems really tried. Many did but had the rug pulled out from under them repeatedly by Obama and others who chose to keep the corporations/donors happy by pre-arranging secret deals at the beginning.
No wonder he handed it to Baucus and then walked away.
But Obama wasn't done yet. The most despicable talking point I've heard recently from the Obama 'team' was hinted at in the Kucinich reason for giving in,  and that was "to think what this would do to Obama if HCR fails."
Personally, I think they he should have paid that price.  

Nationalism is not the same thing as terrorism, and an adversary is not the same thing as an enemy.

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by: worldlymother @ Thu Mar 18, 2010 at 19:56:59 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Numbers, Maybe (0.00 / 0)

My hope is that Democracy for America and other groups will pressure the media and politicians to force change. There is a huge difference between today and when Obama was inaugurated. Then Obama was mostly a blank slate. He had been a corporate conservative Democrat (e.g. his vote to legalize the FISA warrantless wiretapping WITHOUT any hearings or legislation, despite supposedly being a Harvard Law school-trained constitutional scholar). But people can change once President. In the same way, many congressional Democrats in January 2009 could claim, without much push back, to be on the side of traditional Democratic constituencies and values.

Well, what a difference a year makes. We know now 100% which Democrats are not really Democrats. Or, to be more precise, we know which Democrats actually push Republican policies. They can't run or hide from their votes over the past year. Public outrage is high and likely to get higher if we keep a mandate with no public option of any sort.

This is an opportunity for Democrats who are for working people and who believe in core Democratic values to step up and push back. Let's primary conservative Dems and throw them out. Let's back up the Democrats who act like Democrats and work to get them re-elected. Let's write thousands of letters to the editor and journalists every time they lazily tag a politician as center right Democrat when the policies they push are Republican. Bury the bastards.

With the right messaging, any politician who sided with corporations at the expense of the 45,000 of us who die needlessly each year for lack of adequate health insurance, they're toast. It's up to us to call them out as loud and as often as possible in the years ahead.

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by: TSlavin @ Thu Mar 18, 2010 at 20:35:05 PM UTC

[ Parent ]