Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) threw a wrench into Democratic efforts to get a public option passed through reconciliation, saying that he thought the maneuver was overly partisan and that he was inclined to oppose it.
"I don't think the timing of it is very good," the West Virginia Democrat said on Monday. "I'm probably not going to vote for that, although I'm strongly for the public option, because I think it creates, at a time when we really need as much bipartisan[ship] ... as possible."
Rockefeller added: "I don't think you [pursue] something like the public option, which cannot pass, will not pass. And if we get the Senate bill--both through the medical loss ratio and the national plans, which have in that, every one of them has to have one not-for-profit plan, which is sort of like a public option."
Rockefeller fought hard for the public option in 2009. He led the fight for the pubic option in the Senate finance committee, and he helped forge the short-lived Medicare buy-in compromise. As such, having Rockefeller turn against the public option is a blow.
What I find particularly difficult to accept about Rockefeller's statement is that he He railed against replacing the public option with co-ops during 2009, but seems to be supporting them now. It is also difficult to accept someone calling himself a strong support of the public option, but saying that bipartisanship is more important. Because, like, a lot of Republicans voted for the health care bill when the public option was dropped.
Still, in the end, Rockefeller is only one vote. Democrats can afford to lose nine, and still pass the public option. Also, there are other ways of achieving increased public health insurance, such as Medicare buy-ins, expansions of Medicaid and CHIP, or just directly providing health care through expanding community health center funding. The goal is to provide more people with the option of choosing public health insurance, and that is still achievable.
With today's plunge in the stock market, the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index has now fallen 42 percent over the last year. Just how bad is that?
It's nearly as bad as one terrible 12-month period from late 1973 to late 1974. Other than that, it's the worst decline since 1932.
These historical comparisons are best done in real - that is, inflation-adjusted - terms, so that's what we will use from here. In real terms, the decline since Oct. 9, 2007, has been about 45 percent. From the end of September 1973 to the end of September 1974, the S.&P. 500 dropped 48 percent.(...)
The worst 12-month period happened between June 1931 and June 1932, when the stocks fell 62 percent. (Mr. Shiller's data is monthly, so there was probably a 365-day period that was slightly worse than this.)
Given that this was published yesterday, we have probably blown past 1973-1974, trailing only 1931-1932. And there is reason to believe that it will continue to fall.
McCain's "maverick" mythos is partly pure bluff, and partly the result of how lockstep the GOP is, compared to the Democrats--a fact which, of course, is utterly obscured by the omnipresent "balance" myth, which requires, among other things, that both parties be treated as equally partisan and extreme. The pure bluff is covered by numerous bloggers noting his reversals on crucial "maverick" positions such as dissing the religious right, favoring a moderate immigration policy, and opposing torture.
But there is a bit of underlying temperamental truth there. McCain did rebel against the legacy of his father and grandfather--both admirals--and was a fairly insubordinate young officer, who left the Navy for politics at least partly because he was never going to make that rank himself. Of course, one could characterize that same temperament as "hot-headed," "erratic," "stubborn," nnd "unpredictable," as well.
But one thing a statistical view of McCain's record shows quite clearly--using figures from Progressive Punch: McCain looks a good deal more "moderate" and "independent" compared to other GOP Senators in large part because the GOP is a much more lock-step, and extreme party in the Senate than Democrats are.
This can be seen at glance in the following chart, where McCain's Progressive Punch scores are compared to the one standard deviation range of both parties, with the Democrats' range inverted (100->0, 99->1, etc.). While McCain generally shows up on the moderate side of the GOP range, he generally scores closer to the middle, and often more extreme on the Democrats' range:
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) on Thursday condemned Intelligence Committee Democrats for brokering a deal with the White House that would provide retroactive immunity for telephone companies that assisted the Bush administration's controversial warrantless wiretapping program.
At the second day of confirmation hearings for President Bush's Attorney General-nominee Michael Mukasey, Leahy warned that "the Intelligence Committee is about to cave on this," citing pressure from the White House and press reports suggesting the administration had gotten its way.
Administration officials] know that it was illegal conduct and that there is no saving grace for the president to say, 'Well, I was acting with authority,' " said Leahy. "Otherwise there wouldn't be so much pressure on us to immunize illegal conduct by either people acting within our government or within the private industry."
That Leahy heard about this in the press and from the White House might give you some idea of how poor the communication lines actually are in the Senate. And then there's this, from Senator Feinstein.
Not all Democrats on the Judiciary Committee appeared to share Leahy's concerns. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who sits on both the Judiciary and Intelligence panels, signaled she was likely to support the bipartisan approach.
"At this stage, it is a bipartisan bill," Feinstein said. "I'm absolutely convinced that the only way we can legislate on this is on a bipartisan basis. This bill so far is bipartisan - that's good news."
I guess that's the expectation. So here we have Rockefeller and Feinstein versus Dodd and Leahy on amnesty for the telecom companies.
I just got off the phone with Caroline Fredrickson from the ACLU, and the news is about what you'd expect if you have witnessed Democratic House behavior over the past six months. The bottom line is that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are disorganized and giving no signals to members on the FISA wiretapping expansion and retroactive immunity to telecom companies, which is going to result in horrific legislation. In the Senate, Jay Rockefeller is once again inviting Mike McConnell into closed hearings on how to fix the FISA law, and the markup is next week. There are no drafts of legislation around, which is a bad sign. The Senate Judiciary Committee is hamstrung by Dianne Feinstein, who prevents a majority, and by the instincts of Democrat leaders who, in a conflicts between Judiciary and Intelligence, will go with Intelligence because of a perceived fear of national security weakness.
Rockefeller, in order to get something 'bipartisan' that can pass the Senate, is working with Kit Bond to draft something that can get to 60 votes. Bond of course is close to McConnell, and so it's likely that the bill coming out of the Senate Judiciary is going to contain retroactive immunity for telecom companies (thank you lobbyist Jamie Gorelick) and a permanent fix to FISA that expands executive power. Reid and Pelosi, ironically, by ordering Democrats to move quickly so as to fix the problem they caused in July, are just accelerating the process of crafting this horrendous bill. This is complicated of course by the millions that telecom companies give to members on the Hill to prevent things like net neutrality from passing, though of course here too there's no logic since much of that money goes to Republicans.
In the House, the Intelligence Committee is slightly better, but we have no drafts of legislation and it's going to be marked up next week. Conyers on Judiciary, though opposed to FISA expansion, isn't doing anything about this through his committee. The alternative to 'fixing' this legislation is to simply let the six month FISA extension of authority expire in February, and go back to the regime we had prior to August. There is literally no reason to do what the Democrats are about to do in the House and Senate.
The DCCC and DSCC need to be aware of what's going to happen when this legislation passes, which is that online fundraising is going to drop as it did in July. Only this time we're going to organize around it and try and actively seize those revenue streams to pursue primary challenges, since it's obvious that Democratic leaders are simply out to lunch.
Caroline's going to be blogging on this on Open Left. If the Democratic leadership doesn't step up and stop this, we have to figure out a way to react that creates pressure, real pressure, on them. Any suggestions?
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