Open Left - Barack Obama

Weekly Mulch: No Treaty in Copenhagen?

The Media Consortium — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:06:17 GMT

By Raquel Brown, Media Consortium Blogger

Last weekend in Singapore, President Barack Obama acknowledged that a comprehensive international climate deal will not be reached during the climate change summit in Copenhagen. While many might view this as a letdown, lowering expectations might actually be a good thing, as Matthew Yglesias notes for the American Prospect. According to Yglesias, the conference can now be framed as a relative success whatever happens, and that will keep the momentum for climate action going after Copenhagen.
Now that the conference is no longer a shoe-in failure, it's more important than ever that the president is on hand. Obama's attendance will signify that the his administration is committed to passing climate legislation through the Senate.

In the video below, The Real News notes that Obama is simply trying to buy more time. Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Miliband, is hopeful that a legally binding treaty that focuses on the clear, main points, like how much to reduce emissions and finance the bill, are still attainable. Even though the Senate has not passed a climate bill, the United States can still play a constructive role in Copenhagen.

But will the international climate summit put any pressure on the Senate to actually pass a climate bill? Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly remains skeptical. "Republican [lawmakers] seem entirely unfazed when told, 'There's a health care crisis, and the entire country is waiting for you to be responsible and do your duty,'" writes Benen. "These same lawmakers will soon be told, 'There's a climate crisis, and the entire world is waiting for you to take your obligations seriously.' Will they find this compelling? I suppose time will tell."

In Mother Jones, Bill McKibben criticizes Obama's weak leadership on climate change. Rather than applying the necessary political pressure to reach a climate deal, Obama has made climate change a second priority to health care reform. Even worse, the Obama administration conceded a sturdy treaty because it was unrealistic that Senate would pass it. McKibben notes that the "White House is starting to use the Senate in the same way that the Bush administration used China - as a scapegoat for doing too little. You don't get to blame the Senate if you haven't pushed the Senate as hard as you possibly can."

Grist's David Roberts argues that the real culprit is not Obama, but the recalcitrant Senate. Calling Obama's leadership a failure is premature because he still has a chance to push reform and make a difference. Roberts also contends that McKibben's analogy of Obama using the Senate like Bush used China is unsound:

"The analogy is apt insofar as China was out of Bush's control and the Senate is out of Obama's. But it's inapt in that there's plenty Bush could have done without China and he didn't; there's plenty Obama can do outside the Senate and he's doing it. When it comes to matters under executive branch control, the progress over the last 10 months have been amazing - new fuel-economy rules, new enforcement of efficiency standards, EPA moving forward on CO2 regulations, energy standards and goals for all federal departments, tons of green stimulus money, national retrofit programs, delay of mining and drilling permits, sustained bi- and multi- lateral international climate diplomacy... the list goes on. Obama is doing what a president can do - more than any president has ever done."

Where do the American people stand on climate action? According to a recent poll featured on Yes! Magazine, 75% of Americans "favor government regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, cars, and factories" and 59% of Americans "favor the U.S. taking action on global warming, even if other countries like China and India do less."

To channel this national consensus for urgent climate action, Peter Rothberg of The Nation compiled a guide that outlines how activists can get involved before Copenhagen. The guide recommends tactics that average citizens can use to pressure the key actors at Copenhagen.

Progress at Copenhagen is still possible, but there's no guaranteed outcome. If the U.S. wants to play a valuable role at Copenhagen, it should rise above the fray in Congress and focus on producing a viable pact with international support in the upcoming year. Copenhagen needs to serve as a wake up call that climate change is a collective global problem that needs a collective global solution.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

Is This What Democrats Stand For?

Hound Dog — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:31:39 GMT

Cross-posted at FDL

Back in the 1960s, Time and Life had many subscribers. These magazines dropped plenty of photos about the reality of war onto tens of millions of coffee tables across the country, every damn week.

And, Walter Cronkite made sure that Mr. and Mrs. America had a close-up view on tv during the dinner hour.

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We don't see that anymore.

Let's take a look back.
Democratic Presidents, Then
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and Now
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Presidents doing some business with corrupt foreign leaders, Then
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(Pssst! does anyone have some good cartoon dialogue caption things for this one?)
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and Now
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Presidents cheered and urged on by War Advocates, Then
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and Now
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More! War! Cheerleaders! include John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman, along with William Kristol, Sarah Palin, Karl Rove and a whole battalion of chickenhawk neo-cons.
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If any of these historic and recent photos start to upset anyone at all, it proves you are normal and that there is nothing wrong with you.

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Presidents, with Four Star Generals with a Can-Do attitude who want MORE and MORE troops, Then
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and Now
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War, Then
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and Now
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Then,
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and Now
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Then,
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and Now
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Then,
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and Now
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Then,
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and Now
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Then,
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and Now
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Then,
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and Now
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Is it getting difficult to tell these wars apart, yet? Do they both smell and taste like a SHIT SANDWICH?

I know, I know, some wiseacre is going to say, " But....but....but.....they're NOT the same!"

I agree! One's a shit sandwich on rye, and the other's a shit sandwich on whole wheat.

And the only certainty in Afghanistan is MORE of the sandwiches which you see in the photos above.

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Is this what Democrats stand for? Is this what Democrats want done in America's name? do Democrats really want to align themselves with Sarah Palin, Karl Rove, John McCain, and William Kristol who push for more war? not to mention Democratic congress critters who just CRAVE constant endless war?

Constant, endless war.

More life-altering injuries.

More civilian deaths.

Hundreds of billion$ spent to export WAR to one one the poorest places on Earth, while we're in the middle of a massive economic downturn, and children right here are not getting adequate nutrition?

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Or do you NOT want more of this done in your name!

The troops won't be coming home without the populace tangibly expressing their will for it to happen.

The only things we have to accomplish this are our freedoms of Speech, Press, and Assembly.

An envelope and a stamp, a phone, an internet connection, and a visit to your favorite congress critter's office are all anyone needs to put these freedoms into action.

Push back HARD on your congress critters and on the White House.

Tell them to stop creating these -

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Ask them, Are more flag-draped coffins at Dover what Democrats stand for?

Tell them, Continued funding for constant, endless war makes WAR America's greatest export.

Tell them, Continued war funding does NOT support our troops, but only buys more boards and nails to crucify them.

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Send the mail, make the phone calls, and pound on their doors and desks in person for re-deployment. You can go to their local offices with an appointment, or without one. They are public places, and you pay for them. (Picture that in your head - going to the office, then knocking on the door.)

Then do it again, and again, and....

As Meteor Blades says,

Don't tell me what you believe. Tell me what you do, and I will tell you what you believe.

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Weekly Audit: Saying 'No' to Corporate America

The Media Consortium — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:03:38 GMT

By Zach Carter, Media Consortium Blogger

By proposing financial reforms that won't curb Wall Street excess, U.S. policymakers have offered an unacceptably weak response to our enormous financial crisis. If voters don't demand that their elected representatives help workers and consumers instead of simply boosting corporate profits, the economic downturn will last for several more years and leave the economy vulnerable to another bank-induced meltdown.

The banks have unbelievable lobbying clout. In an interview with Cenk Uyger of The Young Turks, Heather Booth, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform, describes how one-sided the Wall Street reform fight has been. Despite broad public support for a fundamental financial overhaul, going up against the bank lobby is, as Booth describes, "a David and Goliath fight." It's basically Americans for Financial Reform against every major corporation in the U.S.

Booth notes that the Chamber of Commerce has vowed to spend $100 million on a campaign to defend the "so-called free enterprise system"-you know, the "free market"-in which corporate lobbyists spend millions of dollars to write the rules of the economic game. Just seven financial lobby groups have spent a massive $147 million peddling influence over the past two years.

In fact, as Janine Wedel observes for Salon, the U.S. economic system is starting to look an awful lot like the clannish systems of government that looted Eastern European countries in the early 1990s. Today, the public good takes a backseat to the narrow interests of powerful corporations.

With the Obama administration working with advisers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, we're not just watching Wall Street write its own regulations. We're watching the financial sector re-write the official role of the government in the economy. In this new role, the government's top priority is securing profits for corporate America.

"The intertwined coterie of financial and policy deciders in the United States is creating not only the financial architecture of the future, backed by the power and billions of the state, but, more generally, new relationships between the bureaucracy and the market," Wedel writes.

GRITtv's Laura Flanders echoes this theme in an interview with John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, and journalist Russ Baker. Lobbyists have so thoroughly hijacked the U.S. economy, Perkins argues, that the nation's government now resembles those of Latin American nations he worked with in the 1980s and 1990s.

"I don't think the U.S. president has much power these days, to be honest with you. . . . It's the big corporate executives who call the shots today, and let's face it, they financed Obama's campaign," Perkins says.

The very efforts the government deployed to save the financial system are being perverted to create another disaster. In a five-part interview with Paul Jay of The Real News, Jane D'Arista, an influential economist and author of The Evolution of U.S. Finance, explains how Wall Street destroyed itself over the past decade. By borrowing massive amounts of money, Wall Street was able to place bigger bets in the capital markets casino, resulting in huge profits when those bets paid off. But when the bets backfired, the losses were just as massive. Companies couldn't pay them off, so the government stepped in to support them.

One of those support mechanisms came from the Federal Reserve, which began making incredibly cheap loans to firms that engaged predominantly in speculative trading. The Fed used to lend exclusively to commercial banks, which used the money to make loans that helped grow the real economy. But now those loans are being used to support risky securities trading, so we're seeing big profits in the financial sector, without much help for workers and consumers. This is a major long-term problem-if the economy can't keep pace with the Wall Street casino, those speculative trades are going to backfire and we'll be right back to the chaos of September 2008, only with an even weaker economy.

All hope is not lost. As Perkins and Baker emphasize in their interview with Flanders, citizens have to demand corporate accountability and a government that actually serves the public good. For much of the past decade in Latin America, governments have been elected that stood up to major corporations and demanded that they stop pillaging their nation's resources at the people's expense.

In addition to demanding much stronger reforms for the financial sector, we have to demand that the government respond seriously to problems facing workers. With the unemployment rate at 10.2% and expected to go still higher, we need jobs. As Steve Benen notes for The Washington Monthly, Obama's economic stimulus package helped stave off total economic devastation. What we need now is another stimulus to get people back to work, not just slow the pace of job losses.

"A bold, ambitious jobs bill can make a huge difference-the stimulus got us out of the ditch, a new effort can get us going in the right direction again," Benen writes.

And the only argument against this plan is that we "can't afford it." That is-the government's fiscal deficit is too high, and we just can't spend money to help people in real economic trouble.

But as Christopher Hayes writes for The Nation, the deficit excuse is pretty pathetic. Economic stimulus bolsters economic growth, thus improving tax returns for the government in the future. And any spending on any project can be taken out of the budget from other measures. Hayes notes that our massive military spending is almost never included in discussions about "fiscal responsibility." If we were really worried about how much it would cost to fix the economy, we could stop spending so much money killing people.

"Fiscal conservatism and deficit concern is nearly always code speak in Washington for something else," Hayes writes. "Most often, when someone in Washington says they're concerned about the deficit, what they're really saying is, 'I would like to make sure we have a government that focuses maximally on blowing people up.'"

The government has to start saying 'no' to corporate America. Corporate profits are not the same thing as a strong economy. We need to demand an economic policy that answers to workers, not just bank balance sheets.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

Trumka to Launch Jobs Initiative Tomorrow

Seth D Michaels — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:58:06 GMT

Tomorrow morning, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will announce a major new initiative to create and save jobs.

(Watch the live webcast at aflcio.org/createjobs starting at 9 a.m.)

Trumka will be part of a noted panel in "Spotlight on the Jobs Crisis" at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

With unemployment at its highest rate in more than 20 years, Trumka says America needs bold, quick action to put people back to work, in addition to longer term, structural fixes for our economy. The AFL-CIO initiative he announces will include calls to extend help for the unemployed, rebuild the nation's infrastructure, provide aid to struggling states and communities, create federally funded community-based jobs and increase lending to small and medium-sized businesses to spur job creation.
Other panelists, representing constituencies particularly hard hit by the current economic crisis, are Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change; Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights; Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP; and Janet Murguía, president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza. Lawrence Mishel, EPI president, will moderate.

The Spotlight on the Jobs Crisis and Trumka's announcement come as President Obama is preparing for the December jobs summit on job creation. According to the latest data, the official unemployment rate of 10.2 percent rises to 17.5 percent when the underemployed are included.

Tune in tomorrow at aflcio.org/createjobs for this critical conversation on the future of our economy and jobs, or follow us here on Twitter.

(Cross-posted from the AFL-CIO Now Blog.)

Time for 'The Chicago Way'

jcullen — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 19:21:50 GMT

From The Progressive Populist

Much of the debate on health-care reform has concerned the creation of the "public option," which is limited in scope and would not take effect until 2013, and the amendment demanded by Catholic bishops that would expand the prohibition on federal funds paying for abortions to also prohibit subsidized private insurance coverage for abortions. But HR 3962 (the Affordable Health Care for America Act), as it emerged from the House on Nov. 7, would provide important help for middle-income families immediately. Effective Jan. 1, it would stop insurance companies from arbitrarily rescinding coverage when patients file claims. It strips the health insurance industry of its exemption from antitrust laws covering market allocation, price fixing and bid rigging. And the bill would end lifetime caps on how much insurers will cover, which is a leading cause of family bankruptcy
It also would provide the following relief for working families in 2010:

• A $5 bln insurance program to help get coverage for high-risk people who are turned down by private insurers.

• Ending "rescissions" - by which insurers nullify coverage when patients file claims - except in case of fraud.

• Ending the lifetime caps on how much insurers will cover.

• Allowing young people to stay on their parents' policies until age 27.

• Allowing workers who have lost coverage because they lost their job to extend COBRA coverage until the Exchange is in place.

• New incentive programs to increase the number of primary-care doctors, nurses and public health professionals.

• Funding for community health centers to double the number of patients the centers can see.

• A new $10 bln fund to help employers pay for coverage for early retirees.

• For seniors, it eliminates co-payments for preventive services under Medicare and reduces the "donut hole" in Medicare prescription drug coverage by $500 and give seniors a 50% discount on brand-name drugs in the donut hole in 2010. Right now Medicare doesn't cover any drug costs between $2,700 and $4,050. The donut hole will be phased out by 2019.

(See also Dispatches)

By 2013, HR 3962 would create an exchange in which millions can buy insurance - including the choice of a public health insurance option to compete with insurance companies. Businesses with payrolls greater than $500,000 would have to pay at least 72.5% of their employees' insurance and 65% of family coverage. Small businesses would get tax credits to offer health coverage. Lower- and middle-income families up to 400% of the poverty level ($88,000 for a family of four) would get federal subsidies to help them buy insurance.

The bill also would end denials of coverage for pre-existing conditions and it would end co-payments for preventative care.

The bill allows the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate drug prices for Medicare and it requires pharmaceutical companies to rebate the government for drug overcharges that arose after 2003 when low-income elderly people who got their drugs through Medicaid were enrolled in Medicare Part D.

Under the House bill, 36 million uninsured Americans would become eligible for coverage. Medicaid would cover 15 million of the poorest children and adults while 21 million would buy coverage on a national national insurance exchange, either from private plans or from the government-run "public option" with the federal subsidies for low- and middle-income families. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that only 6 million people would choose the public plan, making it a relatively small player.

Among major differences between the two chambers, the House bill would require employers to provide coverage; the Senate does not.

The House pays for much of the 10-year $894 billion cost with a surtax on people earning more than $500,000 a year (or $1 million for couples). The CBO projected that the House bill would cut $104 billion from budget deficits over the next decade. The Senate would impose fees on the health-care industry and a 40% tax on "high-value" insurance plans, which would encourage businesses to cut back on their benefits. That has organized labor as well as business groups howling. On financing, the Senate should defer to the House, which is responsible for originating tax bills anyway.

For those 36 million who will at least have a shot at getting insurance - and for the rest of us who have insurance but cannot be sure that our medical needs will be covered when they come up for review by corporate bureaucrats - we cannot agree with single-payer advocates who say the compromise bill is worse than no bill at all.

This bill will not be the last word on universal health coverage. If we elect more and better progressive populists to Congress, we can try to make it better. But this bill is an important first step.

Now that the House has passed its version of health-care reform, the action moves to the Senate, where grandstanding Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) renewed his pledge to join the GOP in a filibuster of any health reform with a public option.

If that's the case, if Democrats lose their 60th vote needed to shut down the Republican filibuster, Lieberman should be stripped of his committee chairmanship, since cannot be trusted on important procedural matters by the caucus. Then Democrats should proceed to pass a Medicare-for-All public option in the budget reconciliation, which is not subject to filibuster.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will try to attach an amendment to the Senate bill similar to Kucinich's stricken provision allowing states to proceed with their own single-payer plans. Good luck. But the Senate should reject the House's overreaching language restricting abortion coverage in private insurance plans.

So far it's been progressives who have been called upon to compromise on the principle of universal health coverage. It's past time for Democratic leaders to stiffen their backbones. Republicans like to call Obama a "Chicago pol" but we'd like to see a little more hard bargaining as we near the end-game of health-care reform. Democrats need to show the insurance lobby that the cost of obstruction is greater than the cost of agreeing to a compromise - which is what the House produced and the Senate is preparing to debate. The best way to get the insurance lobby to play ball is to make a credible threat that the alternative to a bipartisan vote in the Senate agreeing to the insurance reforms with a strong public option is a party-line vote that will put the insurance companies on the fast track to going out of business next year. That's the Chicago way.

See the entire editorial at The Progressive Populist. Reposted by permission.

DNC, OFA Abandon Women In Healthcare Action Alert

Natasha Chart — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:30:00 GMT

Nancy Keenan, head of the national NARAL group (and most obedient of the obedient losers) was apparently personally promised before the health care battle by the Obama administration that they would look after the organization's constituency interests in the health care bill and preserve the status quo. In return, NARAL was asked to stand down its activism.

They did. So with all their colleagues, they got caught with their pants down when a floor vote on the Stupak amendment was imminent.

Today, I got a press release from the DNC, and their Organizing For America project, on their plan to drum up more support for the health care reform bill: targeting Republicans.

It says nothing about women's healthcare. Nothing. Like it isn't even at issue. OFA is still watching NARAL's back, women's backs, as well as they always have.

OFA is crowing about the 500,000 phone calls they've prompted on the health care issue. Were any of them centered around preserving reproductive health care when it mattered? Ha! As Femlaw says at the link, "The idea is to build organizational capacity, so when really critical moments in the campaign happened, OFA could deliver huge numbers."

Targeting Republicans is critical. Encouraging Democrats to stand together for women's health and rights, not critical.

Whee, Joseph Cao voted for the House bill! Too bad it contains the worst blow to women's rights in a generation, while Obama and his pet DNC's reactions continue to be tepid.

The DNC's women's page has, at this time, nothing on it about reproductive care issues. It's latest post is a brief endorsement of the health reform bill from the League of Women Voters, which also says nothing about the odious Stupak language, nothing about the lack of contraception and basic ob-gyn checkups.

(Psst - Did you know that women are supposed to not only get a yearly physical through their family doctor, but have a separate ob-gyn well woman checkup every year from puberty onwards? That's where they check for cervical cancer, look for signs of domestic or sexual abuse, etc. You know, little stuff, but we're supposed to get it checked. Well, neither Obama, nor Congress, nor the DNC seems to know that nor cares. Medical care that all adult women are supposed to get every year won't be going in the required benefits package and there has been no organizing around it.)

The WhiteHouse.gov homepage says nothing about any of this right now. Their women's page says only this:

(More in the extended entry)

President Obama has been a consistent champion of reproductive choice and believes in preserving women's rights under Roe v. Wade. At the same time, he respects those who disagree with him. The President believes we must all come together to help reduce unintended pregnancies and the need for abortion.

Total disjoint from reality. Our champion couldn't even spare a Tweet for women's health last Saturday. Here, let me fix that statement for you:

President Obama has been a consistent champion of reproductive choice on the campaign trail when he needed women to vote for him. At the same time, he respects those who disapprove of reproductive health care even more. The President believes we must all come together to help reduce unintended pregnancies and the need for abortion, which is why he'd like women's health advocates to stop insisting that there's a need for abortion. Because there isn't a women's America and a men's America, there's just the United States of America. And men don't get pregnant unintentionally or need abortions, so we should stop dividing the country over this narrow, silly issue.

I hate our stupid politics. Friends are proud of each other and they stand up for one another. I've said it before and I'll say it again; in politics, a secret friend might as well be an imaginary friend. Particularly for women.

Not only are women raised to always think of others first, whenever there's something to be sacrificed women are always the first ones asked to be good sports and give something up for the good of the team. It plays out again and again. For women, secret friends are really just the people most likely to ask for an uncompensated and costly favor.

And indeed, if the Obama administration is a friend to NARAL, or any other reproductive justice group, it would be hard to tell. National NARAL secured no promises from Obama, received no press conference for their endorsement in the primary, and as far as anyone can tell, didn't even have him fill out an issue questionnaire with which to mollify their enraged constituent base.

I hope the money, support and access groups like national NARAL got from Obama was worth the epic betrayal women are facing now at the hands of our alleged allies. Maybe they'll use all those resources to negotiate a better deal for us. Or, you know, they could just keep gawping at how lucky they are that they get meetings at the White House.

Full text of the DNC press release (sans the sample constituent letter) follows:

Washington, DC - Following passage of the Affordable Health Care for America Act in the U.S. House of Representatives on Saturday, Organizing for America (OFA), a project of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), announced today that its volunteers would be called on to drop by the offices of the 32 House Republicans who voted against reform and represent districts won by President Obama in 2008. OFA volunteers are being asked to drop by these offices beginning as early as tomorrow through the middle of next week to remind these members that voters in their districts voted for change last year and urge them to reconsider their position when the House votes again on a final bill later this year. The office visits are being organized online through an email sent to OFA supporters in the 32 Congressional Districts from OFA Director Mitch Stewart. The email can be found at the bottom of this release.

Volunteers and supporters of health insurance reform in these districts will join together in a show of support by visiting member offices to ensure Representatives know their constituents support President Obama's plan for reform that would achieve three goals; provide more security and stability to people who have insurance; provide more quality, affordable options to those who don't; and lower the cost of care for American families, businesses, and government.

"Just one year ago, Americans in these congressional districts voted to send President Obama to the White House and these Republican Representatives to Congress. The message was clear in these districts: Americans want change, and they expect their Representatives to work with President Obama and reach across the aisle to help deliver it," said OFA Director Mitch Stewart.

"Last weekend's vote on health reform offered a clear choice to these members: Stand with your constituents and support a bill which draws upon ideas from both parties to guarantee Americans secure, affordable health coverage, or stand with the insurance companies and right wing pundits to put politics above doing the right thing. Unfortunately, these Representatives made the wrong choice."

Organizing for America, a grassroots project of the Democratic National Committee, is committed to supporting President Obama's agenda for change. Over 2 million people have taken action as part of OFA's health reform campaign. Since June 6, OFA has held 20,000 events in all 50 states and every congressional district encouraging support for President Obama's health insurance reform plan. On October 20, OFA helped to generate more than 315,000 calls to Congress in a single day, more than three times the initial goal.

The full list of congressional districts and members can be found below;

Reps. Dan Lungren (CA-3), Elton Gallegly (CA-24), Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (CA-25), David Dreier (CA-26), Ken Calvert (CA-44), Mary Bono Mack (CA-45), John Campbell (CA-48), Brian P. Bilbray (CA-50), Michael N. Castle (DE-AL), C.W. Bill Young (FL-10), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-18), Peter Roskam (IL-6), Mark Steven Kirk (IL-10), Judy Biggert (IL-13), Donald Manzullo (IL-16), Tom Latham (IA-4), Dave Camp (MI-4), Fred Upton (MI-6), Mike Rogers (MI-8), Thaddeus McCotter (MI-11), Erik Paulsen (MN-3), Lee Terry (NE-2), Frank A. LoBiondo (NJ-2), Leonard Lance (NJ-7), Pat Tiberi (OH-12), Jim Gerlach (PA-6), Charlie Dent (PA-15), J. Randy Forbes (VA-4), Frank R. Wolf (VA-10), Dave Reichert (WA-8), Paul D. Ryan (WI-1), Tom Petri (WI-6).

Discerning the Meaning of the 2009 Elections

Steven J. Gulitti — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 02:48:45 GMT

It will be weeks, if not months, before the analysis of 2009's off year election results fade from the forefront of political commentary, particularly among conservatives. While the White House spin machine is content with downplaying the results as purely a function of local issues, conservatives have attempted to paint these contests as a referendum on the Obama Administration, or more bizarrely, the next step in "the American people taking back their country". Most seasoned political observers know that off year, special and mid-term elections are characterized by low voter turnout and that party activists play a much greater role in determining the outcome. Viewed through that prism, the 2009 contests fall clearly into the pattern of typical off year elections. Thus, the primary question is this: If the 2009 elections exhibit all of the characteristics of other off year elections, how can they logically be seen as a referendum on the Obama presidency or the opening volley in some great populist uprising. After all, if the American people are so disgusted with the Obama Administration, would the rising chorus of conservative opposition not propel them to action and would we not observe a significant up tick in voter turnout?

Analyzing the Gubernatorial races first, it is impossible to deny that local issues dominated. Democratic strategist Steve McMahon pointed out that property taxes and the increase in insurance rates, both of which are state level issues, are a big part of why Jon Corzine was not re-elected. While not directly involved, scandals played a role in Corzine's demise as well, culminating in last summer's roundup of a cast of characters from politicians to rabbis. Corzine's affiliation with the investment firm Goldman Sachs and his aloof political style did nothing to endear him to the people of New Jersey. As one NPR reporter put it: "Corzine never mastered the art of retail politics." Political columnist A.P. Stoddard pointed on November the 3rd that if Corzine lost it would not be Barack Obama's fault as in New Jersey; Obama had an approval rating in the vicinity of sixty percent in contrast to Corzine's thirty nine percent. In the end, Corzine wound up losing by four percentage points to Chris Christie.

In Virginia, the issues that Republican Bob McDonnell focused on were improving the state's economy, job creation and solving longstanding statewide transportation problems. Of these, only job creation could conceivably be linked back to the Obama Administration. While many voters are skeptical as to just how many jobs the Administration's stimulus has created, most people still believe that Obama inherited a difficult situation, the blame for which cannot be laid at the door of his White House. In contrast to McDonnell, the Democratic challenger, Creigh Deeds was a relative unknown who struggled with name recognition till the very end.

What is notable about both races is that the Republican winners eschewed the currently fashionable conservative think tank groupthink, which prescribes a political philosophy that hews to the hard right. As you will recall, following the defeat in the 2008 election cycle, most of the outspoken conservative commentators and theorists claimed that when the G.O.P. moved to the center it lost elections and that future electoral victory could only come by moving further to the right, the further, the better. Neither of the winners in New Jersey or Virginia dwelled on aspects of the "Culture Wars" nor did they resort to the now hackneyed rant about "a slide toward European Socialism." Moreover, both Christie and McDonnell ran upbeat, politically moderate campaigns, devoid of the shrill histrionics that have come to dominate rightwing talk radio or the "political commentators" currently practicing their craft on Fox News. In contrast both Corzine and Deeds ran very negative campaigns to which the voting public now turns an increasingly deaf ear.

Another big issue that can't be ignored is voter turnout. Political writer Paul Loeb summarizes voter turnout as follows: "In exit polls, Virginia voters under 30 dropped from 21% of the 2008 electorate to 10% this year and from 17% to 9% in New Jersey. Minority voting saw a similar decline. In both states, over half the Obama voters of a year ago simply stayed home, more than a million people in both Virginia and New Jersey. With this collapse of the Democratic base, even relatively modest Republican turnout could carry the day, and did." That said if this off year election is characterized by such low turn out levels, how could conservatives make an argument that there is such a dramatic rejection of the Obama agenda? Were the races in New Jersey and Virginia truly a referendum on Obama? If exit polls are any indication, they apparently were not. Edison Research provided a view as to whether or not Obama was a factor in people's decision to vote by way of these exit poll results:

New Jersey:
Support for Obama - 19%
Oppose Obama - 20%
Obama not a factor - 60%

Virginia:
Support for Obama - 18%
Oppose Obama - 24%
Obama not a factor - 55%

Thus in both races over 70% of those who answered exit polls said that Barack Obama did not play a role in their getting out to vote in what were essentially local elections. So much for the idea that the results of this past election constitute a rejection of Barack Obama, whose approval ratings have only moved up since the August Town Hall Follies. Meanwhile, the G.O.P. is polling its lowest approval rating since polling began and only twenty percent of Americans identify with the Republican Party.

Let's now turn to New York's 23rd Election District, where a Republican has held the Congressional seat since 1871. It is in the 23rd, a district that has all of the demographics that favor Republicans, that the newly energized national Conservative movement chose to show just how effective it can be in both defeating a Democrat, upending a moderate Republican and turning the tide on Barack Obama. Prior to the election the district was besieged with conservatives from all over the country including volunteers from prominent conservative grass roots organizations like, The National Organization for Marriage, FreedomWorks, of Tea Party fame, and the Club For Growth, which spent one million dollars backing the conservative candidate Doug Hoffman. Such conservative luminaries like Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, Dick Armey, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, who predicted a conservative victory, tried in vain to nationalize the election. The cause of Mr. Hoffman was championed by both the Wall Street Journal's editorial board and by the NeoConservative organ, the Weekly Standard. In the face of this unprecedented conservative effort, Bill Owens won by endorsing the Obama Agenda, in an economically depressed region where unemployment has been north of ten percent for some time. This is the second time since the election of Barack Obama, that a Democrat endorsing Obama's agenda has beaten a Republican with national conservative support in a district that demographically favored the G.O.P. The other instance is the special election for Kirsten Gillibrand's vacated Congressional seat earlier this year.

What the outcome of the election in New York's 23rd Congressional District shows is that beyond the world of right wing talk shows, the blogosphere, tea parties and grass roots activism, the appeal of the radical right may be much more limited than had been previously assumed. Could it be that the "August Town Hall Follies" with their tenor of rejection, vitriol and political dramatics have convinced few that conservatives have anything meaningful to offer an electorate that is essentially moderate, but that has been trending to the left over the previous two election cycles? It certainly leaves one to wonder just how effective Sarah Palin can be as a national political figure, seeing as she has yet to have any significant outcome on any race in which she has been involved. After all, isn't she the darling of the base, the one individual that can really turn out a crowd?

Don't get me wrong; there is a wake up call for the Democrats in the results of the 2009 elections and in 2010 there is no guarantee that they won't lose more seats, the incumbent party usually does. If it happened to Ronald Reagan, it can certainly happen to Barack Obama. Obama has clearly lost support among independents and people are rightly concerned about the upward growth in federal spending. At the same time, Americans know that this is no ordinary time and that the situation we currently find ourselves in is not the work of the Obama Administration. But those jumping to the conclusion that 2009 is all that meaningful should heed the words of Purdue University Professor of Political Science, Bert Rockman: "I see no particular harbingers for 2010. While people are deeply unhappy about current conditions, they are also keenly suspicious of Republicans." But the bigger takeaway from all of this is that as far as 2009 is concerned, rumors of Barack Obama's demise have been greatly exaggerated. Based on the facts cited above, claims that a great anti-Obama populist revolution is underway cannot be substantiated. More to the point, the great citizen's revolt to "take back their country" seems only to be alive and well in the delusional fantasyland of tea parties, birthers and far right conservatives who can't seem to abide a climate of much needed political change.

Steven J. Gulitti
New York City
11/6/2009

Weekly Mulch: The Grown Ups are Back in Charge

The Media Consortium — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:51:50 GMT

By Raquel Brown, Media Consortium Blogger

Senate Democrats in the Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) finally squelched Republican boycotts and passed a version of the climate bill yesterday morning. Last week, Republican Senators refused to show up to committee hearings in an attempt to stall the bill. Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo notes that EPW has now set "the stage for other panels to amend the legislation."
To no one's surprise, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) immediately complained about the legislation on Fox News. Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) was the lone Democrat that did not vote, which Inhofe interpreted as a sign that the bill is "dead."

Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) was much more upbeat and argued that the Republican boycott actually marred their credibility. "The absence of the Republicans during the Environmental Protection Agency's presentation was a clear message that their criticism of the EPA analysis was not a substantive one," Boxer said. "We are pleased that despite the Republican boycott, we have been able to move the bill."

Inhofe also condemned Boxer for passing the bill through the committee unconventionally. Aaron Wiener writes for The Washington Independent that "Without a quorum that included at least two Republicans, the committee was unable to open formal debate on amendments to the bill. But passage requires just a simple majority, and Chairman Boxer and the Democratic leadership chose to forgo amendments in order to move the legislation quickly, given that the end of the GOP boycott was nowhere in sight." Luckily, now that the bill is moving on to other committees, Inhofe and his Republican EPW colleagues will no longer have much of a say on the bill's final outcome.

With Copenhagen just a month away, Kate Sheppard argues for Mother Jones that the odds of passing a viable climate bill before the climate summit are very grim. On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will run a series of studies after each committee's climate and energy bills are combined into a single piece of legislation. Even though the bill passed through the EPW committee, other committees, such as the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Finance Committee, and Agriculture Committee, need to weigh in before the bill is reviewed by the EPA and sent for a vote in the full Senate. How will this affect climate talks in Copenhagen? Sheppard writes that, "Without the urgency imposed by the Copenhagen deadline, any little momentum that the climate bill had could disappear very fast."

While this news is discouraging, Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly points out that, "It's worth remembering that it wasn't too terribly long ago that reports said the same thing about health care reform. Legislative battles can often take some unpredictable twists and turns." This is certainly true, but in order for the legislation to pass, more Republicans will have to get on board. Democrats are trying to gain Republican support for a bipartisan bill by pledging to meet them halfway.

"For several GOP lawmakers, the key on energy policy is building new nuclear power plants. So, Dems are willing to make a deal -- they'll back approval for expedited construction of U.S. nuclear reactors in exchange for support for the rest of the bill," Benen writes.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC.) showed that some Republicans are capable of exerting leadership. In a press conference with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Graham criticized Republicans' childish behavior toward climate change legislation. He asked, "If you can't participate in solving the problem, then why are you up here?"

David Roberts writes for Grist that the three senators pledged to work with the White House to rescue the climate bill. The senators' plan is not meant to undermine Sen. Boxer's efforts but to strengthen the bill overall through a "dual track."

"By stepping in, Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman are letting the political establishment know that the Very Serious grown-ups are back in charge. (It's pretty telling that Kerry feels the need to craft another bill alongside the one with his name on it.) They will go to the White House, close the door, and hash out what kind of bill can really pass," writes Roberts.

The road ahead won't be easy. Congress' inability to pass climate change legislation could ruin any chance of success in Copenhagen. In weeks to come, the bill will move on to other Senate committees and the world will be watching. Stay tuned.

Correlation Between Unemployment and Obama Disapproval: 99%

tremayne — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:25:00 GMT

New jobless numbers out today: the official number for October is 10.2 percent. I decided to see how closely related President Obama's approval numbers are with unemployment. I used these data points for unemployment:

Feb: 8.1 percent

Apr: 8.9

Jun: 9.5

Aug: 9.7

Oct. 10.2

I got average disapproval numbers from Pollster.com:

Feb: 24 percent

Apr: 32

Jun: 35

Aug: 40

Oct: 44

When you run a simple correlation you get 0.987544 or about 99 percent. Now, correlation is not causation. These trends could be entirely independent. Lots of other things have probably trended upward over the same period. But: 1) there is a logical connection between these two and 2) the trends are not just similar but are almost perfectly correlated.

Conservatives would say the correlation is really between Obama's disapproval and the national debt. But consider this: are people more concerned about their ability to feed and clothe their families or about the abstract debt? And if people worried about debt are offered the choice of lowering the debt by ending wars or by eliminating job creation plans, which will they choose?

We need a stronger focus on job creation regardless of who bears the most blame for job destruction.

One Year Ago, One Year From Now

Mike Lux — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:30:00 GMT

This is the one year anniversary of Barack Obama's historic and incredibly exciting election as President of the United States. I was proud of our country that day, that after slavery, Jim Crow, the terrible treatment of Native Americans, and the nasty anti-immigrant laws and rhetoric of our history, that we could elect an African-American son of an immigrant, a man with an African Muslim name, to be President of these United States. The fact that he was the first Democratic Presidential candidate elected with a clear majority of the vote since 1964 made it especially sweet.

I had been a financial contributor, an occasional advice giver, an endorser in the primary fight, a steady blogger about the race, and a frequent doorknocker for the campaign, so I felt like I had contributed in a variety of ways. And when I was asked to lend a hand helping out the transition team, I was honored to do so, and happily volunteered a great many hours to the effort. This combination of things made me feel fully excited and invested in the Obama Presidency, and greatly looking forward to his first term.

As fate would have it, I also had a book that came out in January (The Progressive Revolution: How The Best In America Came To Be)) that told the story of what I called "Big Change Moments" in American history, and the progressive political and movement leaders who had brought them about. I went around the country on my book tour spreading the message that if progressives helped President Obama with the big change on his political agenda, that this would be another era of major, history making progressive change in this country.

A year after that incredible moment when people in America were literally dancing in the streets in elation, and one year from the crucial 2010 elections when the American people will register their first big judgment on what Obama has delivered them, I find myself genuinely torn about how this Presidency is going, conflicted in a number of ways. While I am more optimistic than pessimistic, I also find myself troubled about some important things a year after that momentous Election Day.

More in the extended entry.
On the one hand, there are so many things I am happy about. It is such a wonderful thing to once again feel pride and confidence when the President leading the country that I love is representing us abroad. The values that the President brings to world affairs, the honest and respectful engagement with other leaders in the world, and the intelligence he brings to the discussions are such a relief in contrast to our last President. Even when I disagree with him on major international issues such as what to do about Afghanistan, I deeply respect the thoughtfulness and thoroughness with which he approaches the incredibly complex decision-making he has to engage in. And on his overall legislative agenda, I am deeply impressed that he is taking on the big important complicated fights like health care, climate change, immigration reform, and banking legislation, even while all the while paying constant attention to our incredibly damaged economy. He has kept us from sliding further into the economic abyss, and both his stimulus package and first year budget proposal make big and transformative long term investments in things that will build our economy for decades to come, including energy efficiency, universal broadband and other technology, infrastructure, and education.

He has also begun to change the terms of the debate in American politics, bringing a sense of community values and thoughtful intelligence to our national debate that we haven't seen for quite a while. It is wonderful to have a President with his kind of values be able to inspire and move so many of us to action.

Here's where I find myself deeply troubled and conflicted, though. When I look back on the towering Presidents of American history, the ones who faced and conquered the massive challenges of their eras that at least equal the big challenges of our time, I read about them taking on the entrenched powers that be, and forcing them to bend so that America could make a much needed course correction. I find myself wondering: did progressives in those eras feel the sense of frustration and slowness about the prospects of fundamental change that many of us feel today? They may well have, which makes me aware I should be patient. My problem is that change doesn't feel like its coming fast enough, that the President has not been bold enough in taking on the powers that be. When I see Tim Geithner seeming perfectly comfortable with the size, power, and risky behavior of the big banks, it makes my blood boil. When I see all those appointees to the administration who used to work at Goldman Sachs, it makes me really nervous. When I see a White House that seems too comfortable with cutting deals with big business lobbyists, and unwilling to challenge the pro-big business members of their own party, it bothers me.

I am looking for big, deep, transformative, history making change, and am looking for an administration eager to work with the progressive movement to help make that happen. My optimistic side sees the good things that have happened, and appreciates them. I remind myself that it took Lincoln almost two years to free the slaves, and it took FDR more than two years to pass Social Security- even in big change eras, it doesn't always happen immediately. But it's only a year until the next election, and if we don't start delivering real change and real results- tangible results- for the American people soon on jobs and health care and other big issues, we won't have a chance for bigger changes in 2011.

Barack Obama raised our expectations through the roof with his stirring campaign. He needs to deliver change we can believe in. He needs to convince us that "yes, we can" is more than a political slogan. He needs to take seriously the history of struggle he is always talking about, and create the same kind of big transformative change that Lincoln and TR and FDR and LBJ did.

Weekly Audit: Too Big to Fail is Just Too Big

The Media Consortium — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:32:32 GMT

by Zach Carter, Media Consortium Blogger

Last week, President Barack Obama released key legislation designed to fight the banking industry's too-big-to-fail problem. But Obama's plan doesn't actually address too-big-to-fail at all. It reinforces a broken system in which economically dangerous companies are bailed out whenever they drive themselves to the brink of failure.

If we want the economy to support all people, we have to break up the big banks and start treating the creation of good jobs as an economic priority on par with Wall Street rescues.

The editors of The Nation break the political debate over banking into three camps:

The first camp is composed of bank lobbyists, Republicans and conservative Democrats and wants to do nothing.
Camp two, endorsed by the White House and influential Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), would impose tougher regulations on too-big-to-fail banks to keep them from getting out of control.
The third camp wants to go even further: If a bank is too-big-to-fail, it is also too-big-to-regulate. Companies that pose a danger to the economy have to be split up into smaller firms that cannot induce economic ruin.

The Nation editors rightly see the third strategy as the most sensible. While the "break-up-the-banks" policy is being portrayed as a left-wing pipe dream by cable news networks, the policy actually relies on an age-old observation of conservative economists. Regulators make mistakes, and they often get co-opted by the very industries they are supposed to be supervising.

The practical policy is to impose structural limits on what activities banks can participate in and how big they can get. Just look at the list of high-profile supporters: former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, former Citigroup Chairman John Reed, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King. I don't remember seeing any of those guys at the Iraq War protests.

Many of the regulatory blind spots that brought down the economy were obvious to some policymakers for years. Back in 1994, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) wrote an article for The Washington Monthly warning that derivatives trading was putting the economy in grave danger. Commodities Futures Trading Commission Chair Brooksley Born tried to take action on these derivatives, but was overruled by other regulators, including then-Fed Chair Alan Greenspan, and then-Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, now the top economic adviser to President Obama. Summers and Greenspan even convinced Congress to pass a law banning the regulation of key derivatives, including credit default swaps, which ultimately brought down insurance giant AIG.

Fifteen years after Dorgan's article first ran, The Washington Monthly is featuring it again, along with a recent speech by Dorgan that details massive failures in Wall Street and Washington.

"We had regulators come to town in recent years and willfully boasted that they wanted to be blind as regulators," Dorgan says.

There are good elements of Obama's plan to deal with too-big-to-fail. It gives policymakers the option of putting a too-big-to-fail institution through a special bankruptcy process administered by the executive branch, thus avoiding the problems created in bankruptcy court when Lehman Brothers failed. But the bad part is really bad: Officials would also have the option to provide unlimited bailouts to Big Finance via loans, guarantees and even asset purchases.

As Mike Lillis notes for The Washington Independent, some responsible Democrats like Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) have been objecting to this aspect of the legislation for months. Sherman, in fact, calls it "TARP on steroids," noting that the bank bailout at least came with some meager oversight and a limit on the program's actual size.

The bank lobby is spending money like mad to maintain their stranglehold on the economy. Neither Congress or the administration will change course without intense public pressure. So it was very reassuring last week to see thousands of people protesting the annual meeting of top bank lobby group, the American Bankers Association. David Moberg chronicles the protest in a blog post for Working In These Times that covers speeches by both key union leaders and ordinary people facing foreclosure after watching their tax dollars go to the very bankers who wrecked the economy.

"There was broad agreement on anger at the banks for providing so little, if any, public benefit for the massive bail-out, and for so quickly returning to the greed and abuse that precipitated the crisis," Moberg writes.

Laura Flanders covers the protests for GRITtv, including video of protesters chanting "Bust up big banks!" In a roundtable discussion with Christina Clausen of the United Food & Commercial Workers Union, George Goehl of National People's Action and Rob Robertson of the Right To The City Alliance, Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi explains the overriding impotence of the regulations Congress is about to approve. Regulators will not be able to crack down on abusive derivatives, a full 8,000 of 8,200 banks will be exempt from Consumer Financial Protection Agency oversight, while the same agencies that screwed up heading into this crisis will be charged with preventing the next one.

"They've had sweeping powers to do whatever they wanted," Taibbi says. "They've had this regulatory power all along."

What we need are good jobs, and lots of them. Obama's economic stimulus package has made tangible economic progress. It's saved hundreds of thousands of jobs, and is clearly responsible for the turnaround in gross domestic product (GDP) we saw in the third quarter. But a full 17% of the workforce remains unable to find full-time work, as Julianne Malveux explains for The Progressive.

When Wall Street crashed in 1929 and unleashed the Great Depression, the government eventually stepped in as an employer-of-last-resort. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). built schools, parks, roads and bridges which still serve our communities today. Both the WPA and the CCC employed literally millions of people-in the 1930s. It's a model that could work very well today.

As the current recession makes clear, ending too-big-to-fail and guaranteeing a good job for everyone in our society who wants one are the two most critical structural reforms our economy needs. Don't let lawmakers forget it.

No Rescue From Democratic Misogyny

Natasha Chart — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:30:00 GMT

Thank Digby for reminding us how different the health care debate was when Democrats weren't ashamed of women. See, when Hillary Clinton was First Lady, it was all right to fight for women's access to a full range of reproductive healthcare services. Democrats weren't embarassed by that then, but times have changed.

In the House, Rep. Bart Stupak is trying to both effectively ban insurance coverage for abortion and enact a back door parental/spousal consent law that would apply to the whole country. How's that again?

In sum, the current House bill includes the Capps amendment, explained here by Rep. Lois Capps. I'm not a fan of the Capps amendment, this bill's exemplification of Democratic cowardice in defending women's rights, but one thing anyone with decent reading comprehension can gather is that it forbids federal funding for abortion by continuing the existing ban on same (the same ban that Obama now regards as a hallowed tradition, never to be challenged.) Rep. Stupak has lied, saying that the Capps amendment mandates federal abortion coverage, when it only says that at least one plan covering abortion must be available in the exchange alongside one that doesn't.

As has been pointed out repeatedly, because the majority of private plans now cover abortion, the Capps amendment is a step backward.

Stupak's main lie, popular among misogynists, is that because money is fungible, no effective barrier can be set up between federal premium dollars and coverage for abortion. This was flatly contradicted by the testimony of counsel to the Senate Finance Committee when they were marking up their version of health coverage reform. The Senators were told that not only was it possible to separate the funds, but existing plans already do this in relation to other restrictions on the use of federal money for health care.

Stupak's insistence, based on this lie, is that all women purchasing coverage on the national insurance exchange have to get separate riders for abortion coverage. This will effectively mean that all women on their family insurance plans would have to negotiate with their husband or parents directly and in advance for access to abortion services. Considering that most of the third of American women (around 16%, or a sixth, of the overall population) who have, or will have, abortions didn't expect to be needing them, it's rarely going to sound like a good use of family funds and could pose a serious problem for people who don't have sane, unconditionally loving families.

Stupak's rule will likely have much of the same chilling effect as a spousal and parental consent law. Also, it will further stigmatize those who've had abortions, by singling out women who need the procedure. Even though the lifetime likelihood of having an abortion is nearly twice, among women, the lifetime risk of prostate cancer in men, and not much less than a woman's lifetime chances of getting diabetes.

A Capitol Hill source confirmed to me that if the House bill is opened to amendments on the floor, leadership expects that conservative Democrats and Republicans will combine forces to enact Stupak's ban on abortion coverage in the insurance exchange. If the bill goes to the floor under a closed rule, no amendments allowed, Bart Stupak will have had a lot to do with it.

(More in the extended entry)
Adding insult to injury, birth control isn't on the list of essential services insurers are required to cover in a basic plan. Thanks, House and Senate! Probably another nod to the religous right, who also hate contraception.

For his part, Obama is merely sorry this divisive issue has to get people "distracted" from such an important debate. Obama's former Senate colleagues consider reproductive health a pain in the buttocks, with Reid having joined Obama in calling for a conscience clause in the bill. (Conscience clauses, btw, are also known as career plans for the extremely lazy.)

If the final bill shakes out as it looks like it's going to, it will be hard for me ever again not to think of Democrats as enablers for abusive partners who get their wives or girlfriends pregnant as a means of control, because their idea of a defense of women's rights to control their bodies has come down to an embarassed, apologetic shuffling of feet.

Update: Being a woman is not a cause. Also.

Costs Of War Not Seen In Dover Repatriation Photos; and Bill Moyers Closing Comments

Hound Dog — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 06:33:14 GMT

Cross-posted at Daily Kos, Docudharma and Firedoglake

Hat tip to Henry Porter and the other diarists who posted on the videos and photos yesterday of the repatriation of service members slain in Afghanistan.

Henry wrote of how enraged he is that war criminals of the previous administration are walking free, of the pain he felt when he encountered a young disabled veteran, and that he finds "a measure of comfort in the hope that unlike his predecessor, this president has the courage, the character , the compassion and the judgment to make his decisions based on the best possible information and advice available to him."

It is not often that we are able to see photos depicting the cost of war to our troops and their families. Few people encounter our disabled veterans. The face of war is rarely seen.

During the war in Vietnam, Walter Cronkite made sure that Mr. and Mrs. America saw plenty of the reality, during the dinner hour.

Sensitivity to the wishes of our soldiers and their families must prevail over other considerations.

And, there are some soldiers and families who have been willing to share images of their sacrifice with us.

Below, we see grim realities which are not adequately conveyed by the flag-draped caskets in the repatriation ceremonies.

Bill Moyers' website has a small collection of photos by photographer Nina Berman. More of these photos may be viewed here. These are part of a section at Moyers' website titled "Picturing The Costs Of War".

Photographer Nina Berman better understands soldiers and their war by meeting face to face with those who had fought it. With no official list of the wounded to go by, she tracked down newspaper articles on returning vets. She put her photographs of twenty veterans and their stories in her book PURPLE HEARTS.

. .

Family photo of Ty Ziegel at his post in Iraq in 2004.

. .

Ty Ziegel has some help getting dressed in his Marine uniform for his wedding.

. .

Ty Ziegel at the candy store at his home in Washington, Illinois. When kids ask Ty what happened to his ears, he says, "the bad guys took them."

. .

Ty Ziegel and Renee Kline have their portrait taken before their wedding.

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The following photos from the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan are by Lynsey Addario for The New York Times. They accompany an article in The New York Times Magazine by Elizabeth Rubin, titled "Battle Company Is Out There", published Feb. 24, 2008. More photos by Ms Addario may be seen here.

. .

Sgt. Tanner Stichter tends to a wounded Specialist Carl Vandenberge.

. .

Specialist Carl Vandenberge, right, and Staff Sgt. Kevin Rice, left, are assisted as they walk to a medevac helicopter after being shot by insurgents in the ambush.

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U.S. troops carry the body of Staff Sgt. Larry Rougle, who was killed when the insurgents ambushed their squad in the Korengal Valley.

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For every flag-draped coffin which arrives at Dover AFB, there are three more members of our Armed Forces who sustain life-altering wounds.

If you want our troops to be re-deployed, please put your concerns into action, by contacting your members of congress, preferably in person at their local offices. It is not necessary to have an appointment to go to their offices and make your thoughts known. And go back to their offices, write, and call as often as you can. Also, please convey your thoughts to the President.

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May God bless these service members for their courage and sacrifices, and for their courage in sharing these visual stories.

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And, Bill Moyers closing comments tonight are now available as a transcript at his web site:

October, as you know, was the bloodiest month for our troops in all eight years of the war. And beyond the human loss, the United States has spent more than 223 billion dollars there. In 2010 we will be spending roughly 65 billion dollars every year. 65 billion dollars a year.
The President is just about ready to send more troops. Maybe 44 thousand, that's the number General McChrystal wants, bringing the total to over 100 thousand. When I read speculation last weekend that the actual number needed might be 600 thousand, I winced.
I can still see President Lyndon Johnson's face when he asked his generals how many years and how many troops it would take to win in Vietnam. One of them answered, "Ten years and one million." He was right on the time and wrong on the number-- two and a half million American soldiers would serve in Vietnam, and we still lost.
Whatever the total for Afghanistan, every additional thousand troops will cost us about a billion dollars a year. At a time when foreclosures are rising, benefits for the unemployed are running out, cities are firing teachers, closing libraries and cutting essential maintenance and services. That sound you hear is the ripping of our social fabric.
Which makes even more perplexing an editorial in THE WASHINGTON POST last week. You'll remember the "Post" was a cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq, often sounding like a megaphone for the Bush-Cheney propaganda machine. Now it's calling for escalating the war in Afghanistan. In a time of historic budget deficits, the paper said, Afghanistan has to take priority over universal health care for Americans. Fixing Afghanistan, it seems, is "a 'necessity'"; fixing America's social contract is not.
But listen to what an Afghan villager recently told a correspondent for the "Economist:" "We need security. But the Americans are just making trouble for us. They cannot bring peace, not if they stay for 50 years."
Listen, too, to Andrew Bacevich, the long-time professional soldier, graduate of West Point, veteran of Vietnam, and now a respected scholar of military and foreign affairs, who was on this program a year ago. He recently told "The Christian Science Monitor," "The notion that fixing Afghanistan will somehow drive a stake through the heart of jihadism is wrong. If we give General McChrystal everything he wants, the jihadist threat will still exist."
This from a warrior who lost his own soldier son in Iraq, and who doesn't need animated graphics to know what the rest of us never see.
So here's a suggestion. In a week or so, when the president announces he is escalating the war, let's not hide the reality behind eloquence or animation. No more soaring rhetoric, please. No more video games. If our governing class wants more war, let's not allow them to fight it with young men and women who sign up because they don't have jobs here at home, or can't afford college or health care for their families.
Let's share the sacrifice. Spread the suffering. Let's bring back the draft.
Yes, bring back the draft -- for as long as it takes our politicians and pundits to "fix" Afghanistan to their satisfaction.
Bring back the draft, and then watch them dive for cover on Capitol Hill, in the watering holes and think tanks of the Beltway, and in the quiet little offices where editorial writers spin clever phrases justifying other people's sacrifice. Let's insist our governing class show the courage to make this long and dirty war our war, or the guts to end it.

That's right: He said, Courage to make this war into a war that this nation truly supports, or end it. Thank you, Bill Moyers.

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Amazing Grace is sung by Leann Rimes

On Reality-Based Optimism

tremayne — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 01:00:00 GMT

The bulk of your "A list" progessive bloggers are now between the ages of 30 and 50. Many blog readers also fall into this age range. Those of us in this demographic are too young to have personal memories of progressive political power. There was some of that in the 1960s according to what I've seen on the History Channel and in books but I've never felt it.

This age group is also too old for unfettered idealism. Our political memories include the dark Bush-Cheney years, the "pragmatic" Clinton years (and an impeachment) and, for some, the Reagan-Bush years and the less-than-successful Carter years. There may be some idealism still lurking inside but it's, well, fettered idealism.

And so, perhaps unsurprisingly, your thinking can become limited by what has been rather than what could be. I think that, in part, explains the persistence of voices, even in Democratic circles, underestimating the chances for real progressive change. Today Nate Silver is acknowledging his error on the chances of success for the public option (though he noted, presciently, that is wasn't a done deal yet). As usual, Nate is trying to be reality-based when making predictions. He has not been alone is expressing pessimism on the public option's chances.

I would suggest to Nate and other empiricists that the ground has shifted and if you want to be reality-based you need to appreciate the new terrain. I'll describe this inside and offer what I think are reality-based reasons for embracing optimism for a progressive future.

Barack Obama would have been the perfect Presidential candidate for 1992 (if you put aside the issue of race and whether he could have won 16 years ago). Bill Clinton was good for that political environment but Obama would have been an even better fit. Obama's signature line, the one that catapulted him to political stardom: "...there's not a Red America and a Blue America...just the United States of America" would have resonated even more then. Coming off the bitter 1988 Presidential race, there was a large political "middle," people unhappy with both parties. Ross Perot exploited this opening and at one point led both Clinton and Bush 1. Perot was a flawed vessel for this movement and after his temporary withdrawal from the race Clinton-Gore quickly co-opted his deficit-cutting themes.

In the 1990s the DC crowd was obsessed with the political "middle." Mustn't Upset the Middle! Will it Appeal to the Middle? What Will Moderates Think? When health care failed and Republicans won big in 1994 conventional wisdom said Clinton had overreached and was being punished by moderate voters. Maybe. Maybe he was punished for failing to deliver a needed reform.

Today, most traditional media pundits are stuck in this 1990s middled-obsessed thinking. For the latest example, see Adam Green's post on Mark Halperin below. Halperin believes Democrats in purple-ish states should vote against health care reform. He's wrong for reasons Adam points out (the public option is popular in those states) and for another reason I'll describe below.

Times have changed. The media environment has changed. The middle is shrinking. Yes, the number of voters describing themselves as Independent has risen in 2009 but that temporary trend obscures the broader reality. At the end of a pitched Presidential election battle the number of people sitting on the fence is almost always at a low point. That number is bound to rise some the further away from election day we get. And there are people who lean conservative who are now embarassed to describe themselves as Republicans. But, I would argue, the main political lessons we've learned from 2006-2009 are these:

1. The political middle is shrinking. The Democratic party is becoming more progressive and the Republican party is ~~full of crazy loons~~ becoming more conservative. Fox News is very popular with Republicans; MSNBC has become very popular with Democrats and CNN is in the middle and struggling. Conservative blogs do well; Democratic blogs do better; very few successful blogs are "bipartisan." Democrats hate the moderate Joe Lieberman (and I wrote that before today's Lieberman news - perhaps despise is a better word). Republicans hate the moderate Olympia Snowe. John McCain became more conservative to enhance his popularity in his party. Harry Reid has embraced a public option more robust than one Obama would have accepted. Need I say more? Very few moderates are politically viable these days. Obama is one, or at least plays one very well, even if the ~~crazy loons~~ right portrays him as a socialist-Communist-Nazi-enemy-of-humanity.

2. Republicans are very unpopular and could be for a very long time. Evidence for the first half of the assertion is clear: Republicans were trounced in the 2006 and 2008 elections. What's happened since then? Republican party ID has fallen to further depths. Staunch Republicans like Newt Gingrich are now in the same hated moderate category that Republicans put Olympia Snowe. As the base moves to the right and gets smaller there is little opportunity for growth. Demographic trends will not be kind to them either as the country gets less white, less homophobic, less religious and as young voters, overwhelmingly Democratic in 2008, make up a larger share of the voting population (see Chris Bowers series on this at the previous link).

So, if you accept that the terrain has changed what are some likely outcomes?:

1. Democrats such as Harry Reid can only win elections if they energize the large Democratic base to work for them and/or donate. This is what Halperin doesn't get. In the past, perhaps, Reid would have to win "the middle" while holding onto his base. Today such a strategy would fail because the middle is small and the base is big. See Creigh Deeds for more on how to screw up a race by using rules written in the 1990s.

2. Conservative Democratic Senators can keep their jobs only if they don't piss off the base. The base has proven itself to be very motivated and vocal on the public option. It has simply become a bill you can't oppose and expect to survive your next election. You'll get challenged from the left and, if you eke out a victory there, you'll have an angry unmovitated base for your general election match-up. If you're in a "red" state how can you beat a Republican challenger (sure to be well funded by the insurance industry) under those circumstance? Let me make this point more clearly: Middle Small. Base Big. Big wins more elections than Small. Especially a motivated Big.

3. Republicans in blue districts (there are still some of those) will vote for Democratic bills. People assume Olympia Snowe can do anything she wants because she has been popular in the past. They are wrong. Her favoribility ratings are higher right now with Democrats in Maine than among Republicans. Her new base is Democrats. She's had a long run and maybe she doesn't care about winning another term. If so, she can do what she wants. But a vote against the health care bill will bring a strong challenge from the left, a possible loss right there, or a weakened candidate with an unmotivated base. The same dynamic applies for Sen. Collins and GOP representatives of blue districts.

4. Kill The Bill to Save The Bill. More progessive legislation will pass (and more easily). The light bulbs have gone on in some Congressional offices. The Alan Grayson phenomenon helps. But the public option victory would be huge. Progressives who band together in the House and Senate can block bills that are too weak. The key must be a willingness to "kill the bill to save the bill." Only the credible threat from the progessive caucus in the House (and the loud support and activism from the netroots) to vote "no" on phony health care legislation, coupled with Nancy Pelosi's non-stop repetition of "The House cannot pass a health care bill without a public option" kept this legislation going when so many though it would die.

And so the ground has shifted. There is reason for hope. Cliches apply here. You must first envision success in order to achieve it. We limit our potential when we dream too small. That is the lesson I take from the public option fight.

Update in light of Lieberman's filibuster statement: I don't think Lieberman has any intention of running for reelection which gives him the power to do whatever he wants. And by the way, keeping with my theme of optimism, I expect him to ultimately concede on this, perhaps after he's given something minor.

Red States and Camel Noses

Tom Rinaldo — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:19:47 GMT

I will feel bad for people living in states that opt out of a public insurance option. However it won't help them one bit if people in NO states are given the choice of a public option instead. Understand that I write this as someone who strongly supports establishing a Single Payer, or Medicare for All, public health insurance system in America; NOW. Sure I support that, but I also know that there isn't a prayer of a chance of making that happen, not now.

Call the system unfair, call the game rigged, unless someone has the power to change that system or nullify that game it will be go on being played under the rules in effect. I am not a defeatist, I am a fighter, and mine has been one small voice among many pushing the fight forward in the current session of Congress. I have witnessed our ability to move a mountain, against all seeming insider odds, to keep some form of a public option alive, to expose and reject the false promise of a "trigger to nowhere" being offered us as a sleeping pill instead. Our power is real. And so is the mountain. Our ability to move it slightly helped crack the aura of it's permanent invincibility. But that mountain is still there, pushed a few yards further down the road.
We weren't going to get Single Payer out of the players currently residing in Washington, and for several months it's been clear we weren't going to get a public option available to all in all 50 States either. We were going to get a mere fig leaf of a nod in our direction, a promise to look again at setting up some type of Public Option somewhere much further down the road, but we made the mountain move instead. And I'm proud of that, because though I may be an idealist I'm a realist also. I know how hard we pushed, and I felt the resistance to our movement. We pushed hard and they had to give, a little.

Some think what we just accomplished is insignificant, but I know that's not true. I know because if what we just won truly was insignificant, they would gladly have thrown it to us early in the game, to confuse, distract, and divide us if nothing else. But the vast gray Center Right that holds power in America today instead chose not to do that. We made them do it anyway. The entire Republican Party united against the Public Option, and a quarter of our elected Democrats were always with them in spirit, looking for some way to protect the private insurance monopoly in America. If the plan Harry Reid now plans to introduce in the Senate bore no threat to that monopoly, it would not have been so fiercely resisted.

Our adversaries are terrified of a camel's nose, because the walls of the tent that they occupy are very thin, and the inequities that it defends are so grievous. Not all tents that camels get their noses under collapse, but many of them do. So they did all they could do to keep it out, but we are shoving it under there anyway. The liberation of Europe in World War II began with the liberation of a beachhead in Normandy. The war goes on and people still do and will continue to suffer, but we just won an important battle, and the Right knows it.

Obama: How Long Will He Refuse To Fight?

AdamGreen — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:29:22 GMT

White House Deputy Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer posted this on the White House blog tonight:

A rumor is making the rounds that the White House and Senator Reid are pursuing different strategies on the public option.
Those rumors are absolutely false. In his September 9th address to Congress, President Obama made clear that he supports the public option because it has the potential to play an essential role in holding insurance companies accountable through choice and competition. That continues to be the President's position.
Senator Reid and his leadership team are now working to get the most effective bill possible approved by the Senate. President Obama completely supports their efforts and has full confidence they will succeed and continue the unprecedented progress that is being made in both the House and Senate.

Silly rumors.

Some of the multiple-sourced news stories about the White House not lifting a finger to help Reid are below the fold.

But here's and under-reported quote: The president all-but-saying the Finance Committee bill would be acceptable -- from his speech to OFA last week on Wed, Oct. 21:

Among Democrats and progressives, there are a whole set of views about how we should do health care.

But understand that the bill that you least like in Congress right now. The one you least like, of the five that are out there, would provide 29 million Americans health care.

29 million Americans who don’t have it right now would get it. The bill you least like would prevent insurance companies from barring you from getting health insurance because of pre-existing conditions.

Whatever the bill you least like would set up an exchange so that people right now who are having to try to bargain for health insurance on their own are suddenly part of a pool of millions that forces insurance companies to compete for their business and give them better deals and lower rates.

So there are going to be some disagreements and details to work out. But to the Democrats – I want to say to you Democrats – let’s make sure we keep our eye on the prize.

...Sometimes Democrats can be their own worst enemies. Democrats are an opinionated bunch. (laughter)

Yay bill we least like! Yay insurance for 29 million people -- by mandating they buy insurance from rip-off artists with no choice of a public option!

Here's what the White House needs to understand:

Expressing a preference for the public option is not the same as fighting for the public option. Telling Harry Reid "good luck with that" is not the same as the president saying, "I am there helping Reid fight for those final votes."

Americans clearly favor a strong bill over a bipartisan bill and are clamoring for President Obama to make good on the mandate for sweeping change that was given to him in the 2008 election. President Obama will be judged by many of his biggest 2008 supporters on whether he fights for a strong public option at this critical moment.

If you haven't yet signed the Progressive Change Campaign Committee's emergency petition to President Obama, you can do it here.

More silly rumors...

From the Washington Post's Ezra Klein:

On Thursday night, Reid went over to the White House for a talk with the president. The conversation centered on Reid's desire to put Schumer's national opt-out plan into the base bill. White House officials were not necessarily pleased, and they made that known. Everyone agrees that they didn't embrace Reid's new strategy. Everyone agrees that the White House wants Snowe on the bill...

Ridgelines and River Bottoms

Paul Rosenberg — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:30:00 GMT

America's political geography is fundamentally dysfunctional: we draw political divisions--most notably between states--along the bottoms of significant rivers, thus dividing regional ecosystems in half, rather than drawing those divisions along ridgelines. There's an understandable historical reason for this, of course: rivers are natural traditional dividing lines. People inherently tend to gather together on one side or the other. They've done so for eons. But even so, that doesn't make it any less dysfunctional today.

The same is true in a more abstract sense. We tend to draw conceptual divisions in same sort of naively naturalistic way, even though the functional result is deeply frustrating. Take, for example, the ongoing health care battle. It's the natural inclination of people on all sides to assume that the important distinction is whether we have "X" feature or not--whatever "X" may be. Obama says "X" is "cost controls" and he supports the public option as a means to that end. Most folks in the blogosphere would say that "X" is the public option. Some have argued that "X" is single-payer. But my view is that all these Xs are like river bottoms--or sometimes even just puddles--when what we ought to be thinking about is the ridgelines. It's the ridgelines that determine the broad outlines of things.

In that spirit, I refer you to Digby writing:

I have, for months now, predicted that this was going to come down to what Barack Obama really wanted. We assumed the president would want "what works," particularly after fetishizing pragmatism throughout his campaign, which meant that he would require a real public option. But he had also fetishized bipartisanship. And then there were those side deals ...
But the picture is becoming clear:
President Barack Obama is actively discouraging Senate Democrats in their effort to include a public insurance option with a state opt-out clause as part of health care reform. In its place, say multiple Democratic sources, Obama has indicated a preference for an alternative policy, favored by the insurance industry, which would see a public plan "triggered" into effect in the future by a failure of the industry to meet certain benchmarks.

The administration retreat runs counter to the letter and the spirit of Obama's presidential campaign. The man who ran on the "Audacity of Hope" has now taken a more conservative stand than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), leaving progressives with a mix of confusion and outrage. Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill have battled conservatives in their own party in an effort to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. Now tantalizingly close, they are calling for Obama to step up.... "Everybody knows we're close enough that these guys could be rolled. They just don't want to do it because it makes the politics harder," said a senior Democratic source, saying that Obama is worried about the political fate of Blue Dogs and conservative Senate Democrats if the bill isn't seen as bipartisan. "These last couple folks, they could get them if Obama leaned on them."
....
It seems that the administration believes that it's better to deliver a bill that will not work than to take a chance on losing some seats. Since it's nonsensical to think that that Republicans would take those seats because of the public option but not health care reform over all, they must believe that they must deliver a devastating blow to the majority of their own party in order to prove their bipartisan bona fides and give Rahm's Blue Dogs a tea bag to take home with them. (Certainly, nothing would make the villagers happier...)
If the reports we are hearing are true (and that's a big if) it looks like we have bigger problems.

I quote this at length because I think it captures the larger situation exactly. It identifies the ridgelines. And in doing so, it clearly reveals why Obama is, at bottom, a conservative, notwithstanding some cultural inclinations to the contrary. When all is said and done, he wants to change things as little as possible, his desire for change is driven by a perceived necessity to avoid disaster, and the priorities and parameters of change are dictated by doing as much as possible for those representing existing power, and doing as little as possible for everyone else. This is what classic Burkean conservatives believe in, along with the ideal of unifying the polity, and marginalizing all divisive forces.

Divisive forces, for those not clued in, means you and me, pardners. Every bit as much as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. For a classic conservative like Obama, it really makes no difference whatsoever if the divisive forces are right or rational. All that matters is that they resist going along. And because of Obama's essential conservatism, it's you and I who are the problem in Obama's eyes. Not Baucus, Nelson, Lieberman & the like. You and I. We are the problem.

And since we are the problem, we've got to get a whole lot better at it. Because if we can make ourselves insoluble, then that will force Obama to accept us, however much he may hate doing so.

And that is the only way that we will get what we want.

And what do we want? That's where the ridgelines come in once again.
My sense of how to answer the question of what do we want is simple: we want a system that will evolve toward single payer, because anything less will be wastefully expensive and a strong inducement towards a variety of bad policy options. Naturally, the best thing ideally would be to go directly to a public option. But there are strong reasons why this isn't so practical--most notably the millions of workers who've sacrificed wage increases over the years for health plans that would now be abandoned. And so we need an equitable transition process as well as single payer, and we're simply not in a political position to make something like that happen. But we are in a position to reason together as progressive to strategize how to make it happen over a longer period of time--and that's what I believe we should be doing. Keep our primary focus on the long-term goal, on the ridgelines, and the shaping of political watersheds.

Of course, that's a vast over-simplification, since health care reform doesn't exist in a vacuum, and we face the same sorts of problems in other major areas as well--most notably global warming, and restructuring our economy away from its current dependency on financial sector gambling. But the principle should be the same--the important dividing lines should be those of the large-scale political ridgelines. And toward that end, we need to become very, very good at separating the wheat from the chaff. And very, very good at saying, "No!" and sticking with it.

In order to do this, we must be willing to risk taking losses. Because, quite frankly, losses are always a possibility--and generally become even more likely whenever you go on defense, no matter how reasonable it may seem. That's why I've argued that we should not, and cannot support a bill with individual mandates and no public option. This will be political poison, and the only question is "How fast will it act?"

Typical of the sort of hysterical "We'll all be killed" narrative that will be deployed against us have been numerous comments from BobTegas, such as those in my diary, "Against The CW: Health Care Reform DOESN'T Have To Pass This Year", in this comment thread, which begins with comment:

If reform dies, Democrats will not be given another chance
Republicans will get a hammerlock on Congress and by the time Democrats actually win it back, they will be far too afraid to touch healthcare.
by: BobTegas @ Sat Oct 17, 2009 at 18:05

As the thread unfolds it becomes increasingly obvious that Bob has not rational basis for his argument. He is simply afraid, and he will twist any facts he has to in order to make his fear appear to be the only rational, sane response. At one point he assets that 1994 was a realigning election, which it was not. I went on to write a whole diary dealing with that, and Bob proved that he didn't even have a fixed idea what a realigning election was.

More concretely, however, he had this exchange:

If Democrats had passed something in 1994, they would have held the House

Passing nothing was the worst possible outcome.
by: BobTegas @ Sun Oct 18, 2009 at 15:23

depends on what they had passed
if it was something good they'd have expanded their majorities
if it was something bad they'd lost even more seats then they lost
if they pass something bad 2010 it will be worse than 1994
republicrats will get a hammerlock on congress and democrats will be in the minority for generations
by: The Big Hurt @ Sun Oct 18, 2009 at 16:15

It cant possibly be worse than 1994
That year Democrats lost every possible race they could have lost and stayed in the minority for 12 years.
by: BobTegas @ Sun Oct 18, 2009 at 18:01

This example of unreasoing fear is much easier to refute, since it's directly refuted by cold hard figures. There we plenty of other seats the Democrats could have lost. I know, because I was a campaign worker in the coordinated (State Assemby/Senate and Congressional) campaign that saved one of those seats by less than 1,000 votes. Here is a list of close races we won that year--races we could well have lost if we had passed a terrible bill, just to "pass something":


AL-5  Wayne Parker (Rep)                 86,923
      Robert E. (Bud) Cramer, Jr. (Dem)  88,693

CA-24 Rich Sybert, (Rep)                 91,806
      Anthony C. Beilenson (Dem)         95,342

CA-36 Susan Brooks (Rep)                 93,127
      Jane Harman (Dem)                  93,939

CA-42 Rob Guzman (Rep)                   56,259
      George E. Brown, Jr. (Dem)         58,888

CT-2  Edward W. Munster (Rep)            79,167
      Sam Gejdenson (Dem)                79,188

FL-11 Mark Sharpe (Rep)                  72,129
      Sam Gibbons (Dem)                  76,821

KT-3  Susan B. Stokes (Rep)              67,238
      Mike Ward (Dem)                    67,663

MN-6  Tad Jude (Rep)                    113,190
      William P. Luther (DFL)           113,740

MN-7  Bernie Omann (Rep)                102,623
      Collin C. Peterson (DFL)          108,023

NC 7  Robert C. Anderson (Rep)           58,849
      Charlie Rose (Dem)                 62,670 

OR-1  Bill Witt (Rep)                   120,846
      Elizabeth Furse (Dem)             121,147

PA-15 Jim Yeager (Rep)                   71,602
      Paul McHale (Dem)                  72,073
 
TN-6  Steve Gill (Rep)                   88,759
      Bart Gordon (Dem)                  90,933

TX-5  Pete Sessions (Rep)                58,521
      John Bryant (Dem)                  61,877

I've gone on at some length with this one example not because it's important in itself, but because it's indicative of the sort of damage than mindless fear and pseudo-certainty can do. As we face some very difficult times ahead, it's going to be inevitable that we will have disagreements in the short run. And to resolve those disagreements we will need the utmost trust in one another. We will need to join together in raising the level of debate, and keeping ourselves free from the influence of unresoning fear, and the many sorts of deception that fear can lead us to blindly accept.

Above all, we should remember the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Keep your eyes on the ridgelines, not the river bottoms. The ridgelines are the keys to the river bottoms.

The Village and its Idiots

Adam Bink — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:30:00 GMT

So the Villagers have circled their wagons around FOX in the name of respect, comity and High Broderism. Why their don't actually join in the fun and report on FOX's biased coverage, since it might ultimately help their own ratings, is beyond me, but that's what we get. Ruth Marcus published an absurd piece in the WaPo on Monday, which Eric Boehlert takes apart, and yesterday ABC's Jake Tapper called FOX a "sister organization" and attacked Robert Gibbs over the White House's position. Other talking heads have taken up the banner. The Village doesn't actually recognize its Idiots, and has become them.

Or, what Digby said:

It's all very heartwarming to see all the little media Villagers gather around their wealthy potential future employer, Fox News, and defend it from the big bad White House, but seriously, is there any real doubt that Fox News (not the gasbags ---but Fox News itself) is biased? (As Boehlert asks here --- has Ruth Marcus ever watched Fox News?) There are so many examples that it seems ridiculous to have to make the case, but evidently the villagers are so brainwashed they can't even see what's before their very eyes.
[...]
But just as it took nearly 25 years for the villagers to grok that even though he was invited to dinner parties by important people, Rush Limbaugh is actually a malignant blight on humanity, those who don't watch Fox News (and therefore agree with it) simply assume they must be ok because they hire lots of credentialed journalists and are invited to all the important social events. It would be downright unseemly if it turns out that right wing fascists are walking among them.

The whole thing reminds me of when Dana Milbank called HuffPo's Nico Pitney a "planted questioner" and a "dick", jealously upset that a new media outlet like HuffPo actually got a question in a live White House press conference. It's Villagers guarding their corridors of power, whether the people trying to come in is the HuffPo or the Obama administration.

I'm watching for the reaction of congressional Democrats, which I haven't seen much of. FOX gets elected Dems, former elected Dems, and Dem strategists on their network as their bread and butter, and a key to their legitimization and continued existence.

In something of a win, FOX was told that they should not "expect" Obama to appear on their network for the rest of the year. MoveOn launched a petition yesterday asking Democrats to follow his lead and stay off the network. It's a start towards "fringe-ifying" FOX by taking away those that gets it legitimization and viewership.

Sign here to ask Democrats to follow Obama's lead, post the link on Facebook, and if you're on Twitter, retweet:

RT @MoveOn: @BarackObama will not go on FOX for the rest of this year. Ask Democrats to stand with him and stay off FOX: http://bit.ly/sLmTz

Using Polling to Marginalize the Republican Party

Adam Bink — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:00:00 GMT

A fun new poll shows 48% of Republicans think President Obama does not love America, according to TPM.

This follows the July 31st report that over a quarter of Republicans believed Obama was not born in the United States, and nearly a third weren't sure.

Besides the fun factor of seeing these polls, and the scary factor of seeing how many of our fellow residents actually believe this stuff, I think polls like this scare a lot of independents and non-hard-core, tacit Republicans. It makes the Republican Party look absolutely crazy.

To that end, I wonder if there are other interesting polling questions that can be used to marginalize Republicans as largely a wacky party out of touch with America. These two questions address Obama-related issues, but there might be some good public policy questions, or cultural orientation questions, too. It should be something that comes as surprising, not previously polled upon, and the results of which can spread virally through the traditional media.

What do you think would be other good polling questions to marginalize conservative Republicans?

Obama's Education Shock Doctrine

Paul Rosenberg — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:45:00 GMT

In a Quick Hit, jeffbinnc writes:

No Research to Support the Obama Education Agenda
According to leading "education researchers" (sub required), the draft guidelines that the Obama administration has published for federal economic-stimulus money and Title I aid for schools "have no credible basis in research."
The researchers point to two regulatory priorities in particular that are lacking in research evidence: evaluating teachers based on students' standardized test scores and promoting the growth of charter schools.
"One theory of action seems to be that holding teachers more accountable for the gain in their students' test scores will induce them to become better teachers," writes Duke University's Helen Ladd. "At this point, I am not aware of any credible evidence in support of that proposition."
And research on the performance of charter schools has shown that their track record is "highly variable." ....

I wrote an earlier diary, back in June, about the research on charter schools--which came from charter school advocates, actually. I also managed to find an open link to the article, here.

Jeff goes on to say:

The article points out that the Bush administration was famous for insisting that schools adhere to policies and programs that were based on "scientific research" while it promoted an agenda that had nothing "scientific" about it.
Now, the Obama administration is insisting that schools make decisions based on "data that shows what works," while it pursues mandates that have no data to support them.
What's the difference?

The difference is, apparently, that just like Clinton with NAFTA, a Democratic President has much easier time screwing the Democratic base than a Republican would.
Due to the Great Recession, state and local governments are suffering massive cut-backs, and since education spending is generally their largest single budget item, schools are getting hit especially hard. This need not have been the case if Obama had either (a) asked for a $1.3 trillion stimulus, the size that many economists said was needed back in early 2009, or (b) altered the mix of tax cuts vs. spending through the states. And the blow could certainly have been softened if he had opposed the Snowe/Collins/Nelson/Scrouge "compromise" that cut something like $50 billion in school funding from the stimulus, rather than hailing those piggy-bank robbers for their "leadership." Whether or not it was all planned from the beginning, what's eventually shaped up out of this is that there's a small package of stimulus funds available for states and schools that jump through the federal education reform hoops--the exact nature of which is still being determined, although states that lift restrictions on charter schools will go to the heard of the line.

It's really hard to see this as anything other than a Shock Doctrine-style deal, since it's a way to force cash-starved states and schools to change education policy and practice, regardless of what they might normally and democratically choose to do. And not only that--because the funds are limited, they could make the changes, and still not get a dime for doing so.

That's the big picture surrounding the story that Jeff linked to--the story explaining that the proposed standards being considered have
no empirical support.

Here's how that story began:

Race to Top' Said to Lack Key Science
Scant Evidence for Policies, Researchers Tell Ed. Dept.
By Debra Viadero
Among education researchers, one complaint about the U.S. Department of Education under former President George W. Bush was that it relentlessly promoted "scientific research in education," while at the same time endorsing some policies that lacked solid research evidence.
With recently published draft guidelines for federal economic-stimulus money and Title I aid, critics are beginning to ask whether much has changed under the Obama administration.
"What is extraordinary about these regulations is that they have no credible basis in research. They just happen to be the programs and approaches favored by the people in power," writes Diane Ravitch, a research professor of education at New York University, in her blog, Bridging Differences, which is hosted by edweek.org. She served as the Education Department's assistant secretary for educational research and improvement under President George H.W. Bush.
For their part, department officials are not yet answering the criticism. They did not respond to repeated requests from Education Week to address such complaints.

In comments, Lambert wrote:

Let me guess
The process was completely "open" and "transparent."

And Jeff responded:

What process?
I'm not aware that there ever was any kind of process for how the Ed Department arrived at these guidelines. They just descended from on high. But I guess when you base policy on widely accepted, yet unproven, truisms, you don't even need a process. Much cleaner that way.

As we'll see below, Jeff is absolutely right--the stimulus bill was used to allocate funds via a program that completely circumvented Congressional hearings, which would normally be required for any such undertaking. Classic Shock Doctrine.

There is, at least, a public comment process. That much they couldn't avoid. But reading Helen Ladd's complete comments, which are available here in PDF, it's hard to imagine how these standards could have been adopted in any process that was remotely kosher. Ladd's comments begin:

I am writing to object to the heavy emphasis in the regulations on using student test scores for the formal evaluation of teachers and school principals. While student test scores clearly have a role to play in the overall effort of improving schools, they need to be kept in their place. The regulations you are proposing gives them a pride of place that will lead to little good and is likely to do much harm.
As an academic researcher with experience working with longitudinal data on students, teachers and principals, I have estimated value added models examining the effects of teacher credentials, examined teacher and principal labor markets, and evaluated school-based accountability programs.
Potential for harm
The main problem with the heavy focus of the proposed test-based approach is that it ratchets up the pernicious narrow test-based approach to education represented by No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The approach is narrow in part because the requirement that all students be tested every year means that students can be tested in only a limited number of subjects. The result is a heavy emphasis on the basic skills of math and reading, to the detriment of other skills and orientations that young people need to become effective participants in the global society. Further, the emphasis on test results for individual teachers will exacerbate the well-documented incentives for teachers to focus on narrow test taking skills and drilling. It is time to move beyond this misplaced emphasis on test scores in a few subjects to return to the broader goals of education that have been such an important part of our history.
Any positive effects are likely to be limited at best
Consider the main two arguments underlying the push for test based evaluation of teachers. One theory of action seems to be that holding teachers more accountable for the gains in their students' test scores will induce them to become better teachers. At this point, I am not aware of any credible evidence in support of that proposition. The best direct evidence on that point is likely to emerge next spring from a random-assignment study of performance based pay for teachers by researchers at Vanderbilt financed by the U.S. Department of Education. It seems premature at best to assume that those results will be positive.

Hmmm. Act first, test later. Sounds like the Bush plan for Star Wars deployment. Or perhaps for invading Iraq?

In addition to Ladd, the article notes:

Another expert, Matthew G. Springer, the director of the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., confirmed Ms. Ladd's observation. In a 2008 research review he co-wrote on the use of merit-pay programs in education, he found only eight studies on the topic, the most rigorous of which were conducted outside the United States. Some studies yielded positive results; others pointed to possible negative consequences.

Psst. Kid. Wanna buy some used yellowcake uranium?

Policy by fairy tale. Why not?

In her Education Week blog post referenced in the story, Ravitch wrote:

Nationally, the most important event [of the summer] was the release of the federal government's regulations for the "Race to the Top." Those regulations made clear that the Obama administration has fully aligned itself with the edu-entrepreneurs who favor market-based reforms. As I predicted on this blog, President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are now the spear carriers for the GOP's education policies of choice and accountability. An odd development, don't you think? The Department of Education dangles nearly $5 billion before the states, but only if they agree to remove the caps on charter schools and any restrictions on using student test scores to evaluate teachers.
What is extraordinary about these regulations is that they have no credible basis in research. They just happen to be the programs and approaches favored by the people in power. Under normal circumstances, the Department of Education would need congressional hearings and authorization to launch a program so sweeping and so sharply defined. Instead, they are using the "stimulus" money to impose their preferences, with no hearings and no congressional authorization.
Is any charter school better than any public school? As we learned from the Stanford CREDO study of charters a few months ago, only 17 percent of charter schools are superior to comparable public schools; the rest were either no better or worse. Yet the Obama administration wants to open up the nation's public schools-especially in urban districts-to massive privatization....
This will be an interesting year. But also a very dangerous year for American public education.[Emphasis added]

That was from her first blog post after the summer. More recently, she wrote another post in which she referenced comments on the stimulus proposals from California Attorney General Jerry Brown:

I will quote a few lines, as I think Brown's letter is brilliant. He wrote, "The basic assumption of your draft regulations appears to be that top down, Washington driven standardization is best. This is a 'one size fits all' approach that ignores the vast diversity of our federal system and the creativity inherent in local communities. What we have at stake are the impressionable minds of the children of America. You are not collecting data or devising standards for operating machines or establishing a credit score...In the draft you have circulated, I sense a pervasive technocratic bias and an uncritical faith in the power social science [sic]."
He goes on to write, "You assume we know how to 'turn around all the struggling low performing schools,' when the real answer may lie outside of school. As Oakland mayor, I directly confronted conditions that hindered education, and that were deeply rooted in the social and economic conditions of the community or were embedded in the particular attitudes and situations of the parents. There is insufficient recognition in the draft regulations that inside and outside of school strategies must be interactive and merged."

Boy howdy! The idea that kids' education can be dealt with entirely separately from anything else going on in their lives, or their community is so crazy, so unscientific that you might be tempted to think that only a Republican could believe that. Not so at all.

Of course Republicans want to ignore everything else, since their whole objective is to destroy public education. What's Obama's excuse?

In that same blog post, Ravitch also referred to recent news about the utter failure of Arne Duncan's purported "Chicago Miracle"--his calling card for getting the nod as Secretary of Education. Catalyst Chicago reported:

Chicago high school test scores stall, including those at transformation schools
Posted By Sarah Karp On Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Sometime over the past week, CPS officials quietly posted the 2009 Prairie State and ACT test scores. They didn't hold a press conference or even issue a release, as is the custom. And it is no wonder.
Scores on both exams stagnated this year. And the scores for juniors who have been part of the district's High School Transformation project since their freshmen year were no better, and in some cases worse, than their predecessors.
The district average ACT composite score inched down from 17.3 in 2008 to 17 last year and the percent of students meeting or exceeding state standards on the Prairie State rose ever so slightly, from 27.9 percent to 28.5 percent. The federal No Child Left Behind Act calls for 70 percent of students to meet standards this year.
The results of these exams were supposed to be the first definitive test of High School Transformation, built on a foundation of new, more-rigorous curricula and teacher training.
But the average ACT score for the 13 schools that started teaching the curricula in 2006 remained at 15.5-way below the 20 needed to get into a selective college. (A 14th school-Mose Vines, a small school that was on the Orr campus-was also part of the original group, but the school was absorbed into Orr last year. Orr is now a turnaround school.)
Only two of the transformation schools-Carver Military and Chicago Military in Bronzeville-saw more than a 1 percentage point increase in their ACT score since 2006. But as well, during this time the two schools have implemented a selective admissions process that also changed the caliber of the students entering.
Over the past year, there have been many indications that the $80 million High School Transformation was not the success that officials hoped. The first-year evaluation report pinpointed many implementation problems, such as high absenteeism among students and a need for better-prepared teachers. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which gave the district $21 million for the program, not only stopped funding it, but also pulled their support from future evaluation reports.
However, Chief Education Officer Barbara Eason-Watkins has previously said the district is committed to continuing the project, including supporting the curricula. She also said previously that the ACT and PSAE scores showed some promise.

Talk about deja vu all over again! Bush's first Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, got his job on the basis of the "Houston Miracle" a dramatic improvement in school dropout rates that turned out to be non-existent, just like Arne Duncan's "accomplishments" in Chicago now appear to be. The one difference--Paige's "Miracle" was the result of typical Republican fraud. Duncan's seems to have been due to simply accepting standard issue corporate hype as if it were gospel. It's hard to tell, ultimately, which is worse, since Duncan didn't even have to bother with deceit in order to gain an appointment he had done nothing to deserve.