It's a Christmas-week miracle! The Senate, in a vote that astonished everyone, brought the Food Safety and Modernization Act back from the dead on Monday, as Siddhartha Mahanta reports in Mother Jones. The bill, which will enact tougher consumer protections against E. coli and other deadly contaminants in staples like eggs and peanut butter, died in the Senate last week when the omnibus spending bill it had been folded into kicked the bucket.
At Grist, Tom Philpott explains the initial demise, and the basis for the ultimate resurrection of the bill. The House passed the bill on Tuesday, having already passed it twice before.
President Obama is expected to sign the bill into law, which will usher in the first major overhaul of the country's food safety system in more than 70 years. Food poisoning strikes 48 million Americans (1 in 6), lands 128,000 in the hospital, and kills 3,000 ever year, according to CDC figures released last week. Now that's something to talk about with your relatives around the holiday dinner table.
Wisconsin clinic backs off 2nd trimester abortion care
A clinic in Wisconsin has reneged on its commitment to provide second trimester abortion care, as Judy Shackelford reports in The Progressive. Shackelford is outraged that the Madison Surgery Center walked back on its promise to patients. She knows first hand how important later term abortion access can be.
Shackelford found herself in need of a second trimester abortion when she developed a blood clot in her arm during her second, much-wanted pregnancy. She decided to terminate rather than risk leaving her 7-year-old son motherless. It was hard enough to find an abortion provider when she needed one, but if she needed the procedure today, she would have nowhere to turn.
Teen birth rate at record low
The birth rate for women ages 15-19 fell to 39.1 per 1000 between 2008 and 2009, the National Center for Health Statistics announced Tuesday. Many commentators, including Goddessjaz of feministing attribute the drop to the recession. The economy seems to be an important factor because birth rates dropped in all age groups, not just among teens.
Predictably, proponents of abstinence-only-until-hetero-marriage are trying to take credit for the falling birth rate. It's not clear why they think ab-only is finally starting to work after years ofunrelenting failure. Perhaps it was Bristol Palin's electrifying performance on "Dancing With the Stars"?
Get the government out of my Medicare
We've become accustomed to the ironic spectacle of senior citizens on Medicare-funded scooters decrying the "government takeover of health care." Medicare is wildly popular, even among those who decry "socialized medicine." When the Affordable Care Act is finally implemented, it won't feel like a government program, either. Paul Waldman of The American Prospect wonders if this "private sector" feel will undermine support for the program:
The Republican officials challenging the ACA in court have characterized its individual insurance mandate as an act of tyranny ranking somewhere between the Stalinist purges and Mao's Cultural Revolution. But in the "government takeover" of health care (recently declared the 2010 "Lie of the Year" by the fact-checking site PolitiFact), Americans will continue to visit their private doctors to receive care paid for by their private insurance companies. The irony is that if the ACA actually were a "government takeover," people would end up feeling much better about government's involvement in health care. But since it maintains the private system, conservatives can continue to decry government health care safe in the knowledge that most people under 65 won't know what they're missing, or in another sense, what they're getting.
If people don't realize that they're benefiting from government programs, they are less likely to support those programs. In an attempt to deflect Republican criticism, the Democrats assiduously scrubbed as much of the aura of government off of health reform as they could. This could prove to be a disastrously short-sighted strategy. If health reform works, the government won't get the credit, but rest assured that if it fails, it will take the full measure of blame.
Funding for community health centers at risk
One of the lesser-known provisions of the Affordable Care Act was to expand the capacity of community health centers (CHCs) from 20 million to 40 million patients by 2015. This extra capacity will be key for absorbing the millions of previously uninsured Americans who are slated to get health insurance under the ACA.
CHCs have been praised by Democrats and Republicans as an affordable way to provide quality health care. However, state budget crises are threatening to derail the plan, as Dan Peterson reports for Change.org. States must contribute to the program in order to qualify for federal funding. However, state funding for CHCs has plummeted by 42% since 2007. So far this year, 23 states have cut funding for CHCs and eight have slashed their budgets by 20% or more.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
I have a lot of radical friends who don't think voting makes a difference, that it only legitimizes a corrupt system, and that on principle they shouldn't do it. (Perhaps you're one of them.) I used to agree with this, and, unlike many of my not-so-radical friends, I respect the arguments people are making. I have no trouble seeing why people would write off the whole enterprise as pointless.
I take a more complicated view though. I've been meaning to write a comprehensive piece before the elections about how and why real progressives and leftist radicals - these labels really do trip us up - should engage our flawed electoral system and the Democratic Party. Unfortunately I didn't have time to write that piece... yet.
But here are a few main points for anyone on the fence today. I want you to be on the voting side of the fence.
Here's a main argument against voting:
"If voting made any difference, they'd make it illegal."
The fact is, "they" have made it illegal all throughout history and continue to try to today. Black people and women couldn't vote for more than half our country's history, and they had to fight incredibly hard to win that right - and there are still major skirmishes about systematic voter disenfranchisement in elections today.
But the "they" in "they'd make it illegal" betrays some assumptions that I think are embedded in most anti-voting arguments.
Weekly Audit: Your Vote, Your Economy-Why Today's Election Matters to Your Pocketbook
by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Election Day is finally here, and control of the House and the Senate hangs in the balance. The differences between parties could not be more stark. Republicans have promised to repeal health care reform and slash government spending for social programs, all while preserving tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Some of the more radical ideas bandied about this election season-by conservative candidates with a decent shot at winning-include privatizing social security and eliminating the Department of Education.
It wasn't but a couple of days ago that we had a conversation about The Fear and the emails that are used to spread it, and I figured with that out of the way we had dealt with the topic, and that we'd move on to new things.
Well, we would be moving on, Gentle Reader, if it wasn't for the fact that an email came in today that was so ugly, so disturbing, and so indicative of what we are about to see as the battle over the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) begins to heat up (ENDA being possibly the next "big contentious thing" that this Administration hopes to accomplish), that I had to interrupt my story schedule to bring it to your attention.
This is the fifth part of an analysis of the swing state Pennsylvania. It focuses on the traditionally Republican region between the Democratic strongholds in the southeast and southwest. The last part can be found here.
Pennsyltucky
Outside the Pittsburgh and the Philadelphia metropolis, Pennsylvania is a very different place. Political analysts often label this area "the T," while others call it Pennsyltucky.
Popular culture mythologizes Pennsyltucky as red-neck capital - a rural region dominated by NASCAR-loving red-necks. Politically, James Carville compared Pennsyltucky to Alabama without the blacks.
In fact, this stereotype is inaccurate on two accounts.
This is the fourth part of an analysis of the swing state Pennsylvania. It focuses on the industrial southwest, a once deep-blue region rapidly trending Republican. Part five can be found here.
Pittsburgh and the Southwest
Pennsylvania's southwest has much in common with West Virginia and Southeast Ohio, the northern end of Appalachia. Electoral change in the region is best understood by grouping these three areas together as a whole.
Socially conservative (the region is famously supportive of the NRA) but economically liberal, the industrial southwest voters typify white working-class Democrats. These voters can be found in unexpected places: Catholics in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, loggers along the Washington coast, rust-belt workers in Duluth, Minnesota and Buffalo, New York.
In a post on Salon today, Glenn Greenwald reveals to readers the essential tactic of the Democratic Party leadership. It's not trying to get Republican support, it's not filibuster reform, it's not registering people to vote. It's much more manipulative than that.
It is an explanation for the "lack of spine" that Democrats are often said to have - which, we can now see, is merely a convenient illusion for prominent Democrats. It is a scapegoat that they can use so that progressives will continue voting for them even though we get nothing that we ask for, and instead have to take whatever crumbs are given to us.
So what is it?
This is what the Democratic Party does; it's who they are. They're willing to feign support for anything their voters want just as long as there's no chance that they can pass it.
The conservative videographer who donned a pimp suit to embarrass the anti-poverty group ACORN was arrested in New Orleans, LA for allegedly conspiring to bug the office of Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu.
It's not clear why Landrieu was targeted, but many suspect that she was singled out because she played a pivotal role in advancing health care reform.
Filmmaker James O'Keefe and three other men have been charged with been charged with entering federal property under false pretenses for the purpose of committing a felony, according to Justin Elliott of TPM Muckraker. At RH Reality Check, Rachel Larris notes that, if convicted, the four could face up to 10 years in prison.
Like chum in the conservative shark tank
Landrieu, a conservative Democrat, negotiated an extra $100 million in Medicaid funds for Louisiana in exchange for allowing the health care bill to come to the senate floor. Accepting health care for the poor in the interest of health reform was like chum in the conservative shark tank.
Rush Limbaugh called her the most expensive prostitute of all time. "She may be easy, but she's not cheap," crowed Glenn Beck. It got so bad that Democrats call on Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) was called upon to denounce the chorus of conservatives attacking his fellow Louisiana senator as a prostitute. (Correction: Vitter did not call Landrieu a prostitute.)
O'Keefe must have realized that an exposé of Mary Landrieu would be a hot commodity.
"This is Watergate meets YouTube," said Mother Jones Washington Bureau Chief
Health care reform in limbo
The arrests could not have come at a better time for the Democrats. Health care reform is in limbo as congressional leaders plan their next move after losing their filibuster-proof majority. The bugging scandal is deflecting attention from tense internal negotiations.
Brian Beutler of TPMDC reports that the House Democrats are converging on a strategy to get reform done: The House will pass the Senate bill and the Senate will fix it through budget reconciliation.
The Republican counter-strategy
While the Democrats agonize over what to do next, that senate Republicans are honing strategies to thwart any Democratic attempt to pass health care reform through budget reconciliation, as Dave Weigel reports in the Washington Independent. The reconciliation process allows both sides to vote on unlimited number of amendments. GOP leadership is hinting that if Dems take the reconciliation route, they will be forced to vote on every politically embarrassing amendment the opposition can dream up.
The stakes are high. In the American Prospect, Paul Starr reminds progressives that there's till a lot worth fighting for, even without a public option. For all its faults, the Senate bill would still cover 30 million uninsured Americans, expand Medicaid, end discrimination based on preexisting conditions, and set up exchanges designed to keep rising insurance premiums in check.
A memo for reform
Finally, our sources tell us that Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly is making quite a stir on Capitol Hill with his memo advising the House Democratic caucus on the need to forge ahead with health care reform. In 1994, conservative commentator William Kristol wrote a health care memo to Republicans that became the backbone of their anti-reform strategy, even up to the present day. Benen hopes his memo will be a useful counterweight for Democrats. Benen warns the Democrats that it's far riskier to fail than to pass reform that doesn't please everyone.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
For much of this decade, immigration has been an important topic on the public agenda. Nowhere is that more true than in California. The state is home to 9.9 million immigrants, its governor is an immigrant, and it is a border state on the front lines of the debate over immigration reform. State and local policies concerning immigrants are hotly debated across the state, and the raucous debate over an anti-immigrant initiative in 1996, is widely perceived to have influenced the electoral landscape in lasting ways.
Understanding the values and perspectives that Californians bring to this debate is critical. In general, Californians hold a favorable opinion of immigrants, believing that immigration is a benefit to the state. Most California adults believe undocumented immigrants should stay and work in the United States rather than be deported to their native countries.
At the same time, Californians are concerned about the impact of some aspects of immigration on their state. Most Californians attribute the majority of their population growth to immigration, while most voters also see the population growth projected for California as unsustainable, and ultimately having a negative impact on the state.
Has anyone noticed that Chris Matthews has moved a bit off the center in the last year or so? He used to be reliably centrist in his yelling but at some point during the second term of the Torture Administration he developed a bit of a conscience. At least sometimes. Today he went off on Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) for using the phrase "Democrat Party." The Issa comments is at 4:43 and the Matthews upbraiding at about 5:05 in the video below:
If you can't play the video Matthews ignores Issa's point and instead points out his use of "Democrat" and asks "Why do we have to do this every night?" He also calls it "Mickey Mouse" and says "let's just call people what they call themselves."
by Zach Carter, Media Consortium MediaWire blogger
Despite a lofty launch last week, the good ship Bipartisan is sunk, at least so far as the economic stimulus is concerned. President Barack Obama and House Democrats bent over backwards to appease the GOP by including several tax breaks and excluding a major anti-foreclosure measure from the package, but when it came time to vote, zero House Republican backed the bill. Lawmakers who actually care about the fate of the U.S. economy are furious. Every day spent haggling with obstinate Republicans means heavier economic damage. What's more, many of the tax breaks the GOP insisted on are simply terrible policies, whatever the economic climate.
The election is over. It's time for America to move forward. Time to come together for the good of the country. Time for Republicans and Democrats to forget their differences and reach out to one another. But not to Joe Lieberman!! It's in this spirit of half-hearted bi-partisanship we present our latest parody. Think of it as a musical olive branch. Or maybe it's more like a stick in the eye.
Barack was adopted into Crow Nation. Below, Barack is arriving with his "adoptive parents" Hartford and Mary Black Eagle. Obama was given the name of "Awe Kooda bilaxpak Kuuxshish" which means "One who helps people throughout the land."
The last 4 months have been exciting and rewarding to travel around the 5th district campaigning. I've learned a lot about the district, the people and myself in the process. It all came to a climax on Tuesday, April 22nd as the voters in the 5th district went to the polls to select who would be the 2 remaining candidates to continue on to the November 4th general election.
From a personal standpoint, I learned that in politics, the best thing you can do is plan your strategy and stay the course. You have to be honest with the people, explain where you stand on the issues important to the people you want to represent and trust their instincts when they go to the polls.
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