From today's earlier thread on the Kucinich announcement, I'd like to flag one comment from ArthurKC:
Kucinish carefully answered a broad question about concessions to him for his vote in a way that did not close the door to him having asked for and gotten a deal on ERISA. He answered in terms of denying anything particular to him or his district. And, it seems that both he and the WH are aware of the blowback on the Louisana Purchase and had gamed out what would be said to avoid stepping in a similar pile on ERISA.
But in the interview, Mr. Lieberman said that he grew apprehensive when a formal proposal began to take shape. He said he worried that the program would lead to financial trouble and contribute to the instability of the existing Medicare program.
And he said he was particularly troubled by the overly enthusiastic reaction to the proposal by some liberals, including Representative Anthony Weiner, Democrat of New York, who champions a fully government-run health care system.
"Congressman Weiner made a comment that Medicare-buy in is better than a public option, it's the beginning of a road to single-payer," Mr. Lieberman said. "Jacob Hacker, who's a Yale professor who is actually the man who created the public option, said, 'This is a dream. This is better than a public option. This is a giant step.'"
Lieberman went so far as to name liberals (albeit somewhat inaccurately) whose opinion he took seriously and used them as justification for throwing away the deal. It seems to me if you could pick any liberal liking something who could make conservative House Democrats think twice about supporting this bill, 499 out of 500 panelists would pick Dennis Kucinich announcing some awesome concession he got to push this bill to the left.
As an organizing discussion I'm sure this will start an interesting conversation over whether, when dealing with Joementum in the future, the Weiners and Hackers of the world should be lying in public and saying the compromise sucks just so he is tricked into being satisfied.
I suppose we'll know when this is all said and done.
Just now, Representative Dennis Kucinich announced he would vote yes on the Senate health bill and the reconciliation fix to that bill. Greg Sargent:
"In the past week it's become clear that the vote on the final bill will be very close," Kucinich, who voted No last time because of the lack of the public option, said at a presser moments ago, adding that he would have to vote "not on the bill as I would like to see it, but as it is."
"However, after careful discussions with President Obama, Speaker Pelosi" and others, Kucinich said, "I've decided to cast a vote in favor of the legislation."
This brings the total "yes" and "lean yes" supporters of the bill up to 208. Eight away from passage.
Update: More from Greg Sragent. Kucinich switched out of "compassion," didn't receive any specific promises:
"I left it with a real sense of compassion for our president and what he's going through," he said. "We have to be compassionate towards those who are called upon to make decisions for this nation. It's not an easy burden that he's taken up.
Kucinich said Obama didn't make any promises to take up the public option later.
"What he committed to was to continue to work with me on the broad concerns that I have," he said. "He didn't make any specific commitment."
Donna Brazile flags an interesting quote from Kucinich:
"I have taken a detour in supporting this bill, but I know the destination."
Representative Dennis Kucinich is holding a press conference tomorrow at 10 a.m., eastern, to announce his vote on the health reform package. On Countdown tonight, Howard Fineman reported that Kucinich is now a "yes."
There is no guarantee this is true. But, if true, there are many implications:
Only eight away from passage. Given the three other Democrats who came out in support of the bill today (Maffei, Doyle and Kirkpatrick), the "yes" and "lean yes" totals on the package would rise to 208, only eight away from passage.
Kucinich told Obama that he wants a full ERISA waver and a public option in exchange for his vote. And if he actually gets an ERISA waver, it will be the biggest victory of the entire health care debate. As Jon Walker says, "ERISA is the 900 pound Gorilla that has fucked up America's health care system something good."
I definitely don't agree that it would be the biggest victory in the debate. After all, this is just the possibility of state single payer, not actual single-payer (and no, Pennsylvania is not close to enacting single-payer). By contrast, Bernie Sanders has scored public primary care for 22 million people. But, it would still would become another way that progressives strengthened the bill.
Does Kucinich bring anyone with him? While Kucinich is the last House Progressive holding out on the bill, and thus can't bring anymore votes with him, it is worth asking whether his support brings along any progressive activists. If Kucinich won at least one of his demands, such as the ERISA waiver, will any of the not insignificant amount of progressive activists supporting Kucinich come along with him? Or, will those activists reject Kucinich, too, because he didn't win all of his demands? (or many his demands were never enough in the first place for some).
This is certainly the most interesting vote update of the day. I wasn't going to watch before, but now Kucinich's press conference has become a must-see.
Air Force One took off from suburban Maryland today at 11:13 a.m. and landed 48 minutes later in Connecticut.
For Sen. Joe Lieberman -- who says he plans to vote no on the president's health-care bill -- it must have felt like a much longer flight. Obama invited Lieberman to the ultimate pressure cooker as he tries to nail down a majority for his top domestic priority.
...there was a public hint of the kind of pressure he is under. When Obama introduced Lieberman at his rally, someone in the audience called out, "Vote yes." Obama, not missing a beat, turned to his traveling partner. "Did you hear that, Joe?" he asked.
Near the end of his speech, Obama said he had told Lieberman on the flight: "You know what? It's been such a long time since we made government on the side of ordinary working folks, where we did something for them that relieved some of their struggles."
This is the presidential bully pulpit at work. Using the full force of the presidency to pressure opponents. Awesome!
UPDATE: Sorry for the typos. Turns out all references to Joe Lieberman were actually Dennis Kucinich.
UPDATE III: I corrected "bullypulpit" to "bully pulpit." It's been used so little recently, the correct spelling escaped me. Thanks for the correction, folks.
Let me get this straight. The Senate will pass a public option if the House will. And the House will, because it already did. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi won't allow it. So the mortal enemy of public-option backers is . . . Dennis Kucinich.
Why? Because when Congressman Kucinich said he'd stand for a public option he stupidly thought he was supposed to mean it.
In a lengthy interview on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman, Congressman Dennis Kucinich explained why he would not vote for the present health care bill and defended his position against attacks from people on the left like Markos Moulitsas. He also spoke about the subjects of Afghanistan, campaign finance, and the passing of activist Granny D.
I mean, I have a responsibility to take a stand here on behalf of those who want a public option. There's about thirty-four members of the Senate, at least, who have signed on to saying they support a public option. If I were to just concede right now and say, "Well, you know, whatever you want. All this pressure's building. Just forget about it," actually weakens every last-minute bit of negotiations that would try to improve the bill. So I think that it's really critical to take this stand, because without it, there's no real control over premiums. Without it, we have nothing in the bill except the privatization of our healthcare system.
In a ridiclously lively Quick Hit discussion this week ("Markos, fiery leader of the Democratic left blogosphere, calls Kucinich a 'little prick' who should be primaried"by VLaszlo ) folks said all manner of things about both Markos and Kucinich. It got pretty silly at times. I called Markos a "recovering Republican", which he is. And asked if someone could find him a meeting. Which may be a bit silly--I knew that when I wrote it--but is also probably a good idea. At one point, the term "nihilist" came up with respect to Kucinich, he was so critical, so negative that Blue Dog would be preferable in his district, it was said. But of course, that's bull, as I pointed out, referring to his DW-Nominate score among the top 10 liberals last year:
111 29325 71 51 CALIFOR D FILNER 16 686 0.977 1.000
111 14053 71 13 CALIFOR D STARK 33 563 0.941 2.500
111 29778 71 9 CALIFOR D LEE 6 687 0.991 2.500
111 29106 71 35 CALIFOR D WATERS 19 656 0.971 4.000
111 20727 33 5 MINNESO D ELLISON 13 627 0.979 6.000
111 29309 71 6 CALIFOR D WOOLSEY 13 672 0.981 6.000
111 29748 24 10 OHIO D KUCINICH 66 688 0.904 6.000
111 15619 12 10 NEW JER D PAYNE 10 664 0.985 8.000
111 20713 82 2 HAWAII D HIRONO 8 679 0.988 9.000
111 10713 23 14 MICHIGA D CONYERS 21 622 0.966 10.500
111 20733 13 11 NEW YOR D CLARKE 11 678 0.984 10.500
Still, I take people's point that Kucinich can be annoying, even infuriating at times. The reason, as I see it: his principled passion outruns his capacity for effectiveness by quite a fair stretch. So much so that I understand when folks speak of him as a prima donna, even though I disagree. My point is, even if I did agree, it would be wrong to want to get rid of Kucinich. We need a diversity of different kinds of strengths in Congress, and whatever his flaws, Kucinich has strengths that no one else has.
I saw that quite dramatically myself on February 17, 2002. I had been on the job at Random Lengths barely a month, and I went to cover a day-long event put on by the Southern California chapter of Americans for Democratic Action. It was five months after 9/11 and the purpose of the event was to try to hash out how progressives should be responding to what had happened, and what had already been done in our names in response. There were some very good, very insightful things said that day. But I can't remember a single one of them just now... except for Dennis Kucinich. Everyone was still struggling to figure things out-flailing, even... except for Dennis Kucinich. Kucinich gave a speech, which quickly became known as A Prayer for America, spreading across the pre-blogosphere internet like wildfire. It began slowly at first, but quickly gained traction:
Former Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) punked conservative talk show host Glenn Beck yesterday by recanting his earlier allegations that House Democrats forced him out of office because he refused to vote for health care reform. Massa resigned on Monday amidst allegations that he sexually harassed one or more male staffers.
Adele Stan has a nice recap of the implosion of Massa's political career at AlterNet. Massa initially said he was stepping down because he had cancer. Then the news broke that the House Ethics Committee was probing allegations that Massa sexually harassed a male staffer.
Beck gave Massa the entire show. Clearly Beck was hoping the former congressman would lay bare nefarious wheeling and dealing by House Democrats to pass health care reform. Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly argues that the Massa train wreck shows the weakness in the whole Beck schtick. Beck didn't bother to find out whether there was a conspiracy. He just assumed Massa was going to tell him what he wanted to hear.
Massa and the health care reform conspiracy
As Tim Fernholtz points out in TAPPED, the notion that Massa was forced out over his stance on health care reform was never very promising, even by conspiracy theory standards: Why would Massa take this moment to start listening to the Democratic leadership, having blithely ignored them throughout his brief political career?
More to the point, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel didn't force Eric Massa to act like a drunken sailor in front of his staff. Clearly, the Dems are relieved to see Massa go. In addition to a near total lack of interpersonal boundaries, he was an unshakable "no" on health reform. The guy is clearly a loose cannon, in the saltiest and most nautical sense. If House Dems had seized the opportunity to get rid of him, that would have been more sound management than conspiracy.
'I failed.'
But under the bright lights, Massa dropped the conspiracy allegations and blamed himself for ethical lapses, according Eric Kleefeld of TPMDC. "I wasn't forced out. I forced myself out. I failed," said Massa.
In fact, Massa seemed eager to preemptively confess to even more inappropriate behavior: "Now, they're saying I groped a male staffer. Yes, I did. Not only did I grope him, I tickled him until he couldn't breathe and four guys jumped on top of me," Massa told Beck, "It was my 50th birthday. It was kill the old guy."
Massa even brought visual aids to assist in his own indictment. He showed Beck a scrapbook of a "crossing the line" ceremony from his Navy days. "It looks like an orgy in Caligula," Massa chirped. His point being that he never got out of the creepy, gropey habits he picked up in the Navy.
He even whipped out an x-ray of his own gut to prove that he really does-or at any rate, really might-have cancer.
By the end of the show, Beck apologized to America for wasting the country's time.
Kucinich still opposed to reform
Meanwhile, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) remains steadfast in his opposition to health care reform, calling it a giveaway to the insurance companies. On the Ed Schultz Show, insurance company whistleblower Wendell Potter urged Kucinich to quit posturing and take the deal, according to Ruth Conniff of The Progressive. Potter agrees that the deal is a massive giveaway to insurers, but he thinks Kucinich is unrealistic to hold out for a better deal.
Stupak smoke signals
Fervent anti-choicer Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) has been threatening for months to derail health care reform over the abortion issue. This week, Stupak was back in the news with some cryptic remarks. He told a town meeting that there was "no such thing as a compromise" on the abortion issue, but he also said that he was more optimistic than he was a week ago that the House leadership could offer him some kind of acceptable accommodation. Stupack insisted that any such deal would have to be written before the bill goes to the Senate for a vote.
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The 21st Century Democrats' Youth Leadership Speaker Series is off to a great start teaching and inspiring tomorrow's progressive leaders of the Democratic Party with speakers like Congressman Barney Frank, Congressman Dennis Kucinich, and--soon--Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.
Congressman Dennis Kucinich is joining 21st Century Democrats' Youth Leadership Speaker Series tomorrow (November 4 at 12:30 P.M.), inspiring and education young progressive Democrats across Washington, D.C.
We are excited to have the participation of Congressman Kucinich, one of the fiercest fighters for progress and the welfare of the American people.
Congressman Kucinich recently appeared on MSNBC's The Ed Show, where he said of the healthcare bills in Congress that mandate health insurance without a single-payer or other public option, "What we're looking at here is another way that Wall Street's speculative engine can be fueled, this time with the help of the [health insurance] premiums of tens of millions of Americans."
by Zach Carter, Media Consortium MediaWire Blogger
With workers all over the globe trudging through a catastrophic recession, it's almost a given that governments will be battling the economic slide for a long time. Part of the effort to rebuild must involve new rules and regulations, but meaningful systems for economic accountability will be just as essential. If we do not hold the reckless executives who caused this crisis accountable for their actions, we risk regressing into similar turmoil in the near future.
If you're one of the seven people on the Planet Earth who haven't seen Susan Boyle on Britain's Got Talent, you should immediately watch this.
Dennis Kucinich is almost as homely as Susan Boyle, but way back in October 2008 he made some beautiful music about helping the rest of us instead of giving away $9 trillion to international banks, and you can read that beautiful music here.
But the Democrats didn't nominate Dennis Kucinich. They nominated a pretty man instead, and instead of a great Presidency, dedicated to helping the rest of us, we got something more like this...
One member of Congress stood alone 7.5 years ago against the original authorization to attack Afghanistan. And one member of Congress, a different one, stood alone last week against funding a massive escalation of that war.
On September 14th, 2001, Congresswoman Barbara Lee spoke, in tears, on the floor of the House of Representatives. She, alone, would vote No on letting the president decide on going to war in Afghanistan. She, alone, would refuse to authorize the president to use powers the Constitution does not give him, and trust him to use those powers wisely. Here's video.
How's that Wall Street bailout working out for you?
Even after Wall Street panicked Congress into approving up to $700 billion to buy "toxic" mortgage-backed securities, the stock market continued to plunge and credit markets tightened. But a week after Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson reportedly told President Bush "There is no Plan B," it turns out there is one: The Federal Reserve, on its own authority, plans to buy unsecured short-term debt ("commercial paper") to corporations needing credit to maintain operations.
"This will keep the credit markets working even if the zombie banks aren't up to the task," Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research wrote at Prospect.org (Oct. 7). "In other words, the threat of a complete meltdown in the absence of a bailout was nonsense and the media once again got taken for a ride by the Bush administration."
Baker, like many progressive economists, favored a direct injection of capital into the banking system instead of overpaying for bad assets, as Paulson proposed.
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