Democrats-Senate

The Democrats: Really, You Just Gotta Laugh

dlindorff — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:46:07 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

The Democrats in Congress, and their main man Barack Obama in the
White House, have taken tens of millions in legal bribes from the
health insurance industry over the past year, and have obligingly been
hammering out in Congress a health “reform” bill that, instead of
helping people, has been designed to help the insurance industry.

They started out by immediately blackballing any discussion of real
health reform in the form of an expansion of Medicare to cover everyone
of every age, which of course would have ended the problem of the
uninsured, while cutting the nation’s overall health bill by at least a
third, but in the process shutting down the private health insurance
business.

Then they chipped away and are at this point on the verge of
eliminating any so-called “public option” or government-run health
insurance plan to even compete with the private insurance sector.

Finally, in a move as breathtakingly accommodating of the insurance
industry as was the multi-trillion-dollar bailout financial bailout of
Wall Street’s biggest banks, they proposed to require (on pain of a
$3800 fine by the IRS) to require everyone in America to buy a health
insurance plan from the private sector—a gift to the industry of some
40-50 million new captive customers.

But a combination of public outrage at this forced program of
compulsory insurance and recognition that the inevitable government
subsidy of low-income insurance buyers would be humongous has led
Congress to backtrack, and start backing away from the mandatory aspect
of this plan.

And now the private insurance industry, not satisfied that it has
managed to practically dictate the terms of the health reform
legislation so far, and angry that it might not get those 40-50 million
new forced customers, is reportedly threatening to turn around and
knife the president and the Democratic Congress in the back,

They’re threatening to (gasp!) start running attack ads on the “reform” legislation.

Remember the old “Harry and Louise” ads the industry ran attacking
Hillary and Bill Clinton’s health reform proposal back in the early
1990s? Well, this time, it’ll be Harry and Louise attacking ObamaCare.

I can see it now. America’s Health Insurance Plans, the lobby for
the insurance industry vultures, will set up some nice-sounding front
group with a name like People for a Healthier America, and they’ll fund
a new ad campaign like this:

Harry will be sitting at the breakfast table, reading the local
paper. He’ll look up from his coffee as Louise is puttering around by
the sink.

“This ObamaCare looks like it’s gonna drive up our insurance premiums, hon.”

“What do you mean Harry?”

“Well it says here that they’re not going to force the poor
folks to buy insurance, so most of ‘em will probably wait until they
get sick and then buy it.”

“Well what’s wrong with that, dear?”

“Nothin’ ‘cept that the law would also prohibit the insurance
companies from charging those sick folks higher premiums when they do
finally come in to buy insurance.”

“Well, wouldn’t it be unfair to charge them more, when they need it?”

“It might seem that way Louise, but if the insurance company
has to take a loss on them, they’re going to make it up by charging us
good folks who have insurance more.”

“Oh my god, Harry! We’re already paying $6,000 a year for our insurance. What will our premiums go up to?

“Says here they could go up by another $1000 a year!”

Announcer: Don’t let Congress make you pay for the uninsured.
Call your Senators and Representatives and the White House, and tell
them to demand that every American be required to buy insurance
immediately! This announcement is brought to you by People for a
Healthier America.

It’s funny really, to see Sen. Max Baucus (D-Montana), the biggest
recipient in Congress of insurance industry money, who has spent the
last few months working hand-in-glove with the insurance industry
lobbyists to craft a bill to their liking, suddenly accusing his
erstwhile financiers of doing a “hatchet job” on his bill. Actually,
his bill has been a hatchet job itself on the whole concept of health
care reform.

All of this, of course, was entirely predictable. Like HillaryCare
before it, ObamaCare has been doomed from the start by its
unwillingness to address the basic issue behind America’s twin crisis
of health care: lack of access for those with lower incomes, and
absurdly high cost for everyone.

What makes it all so pathetic is that America already has
an excellent model for delivering quality health care: a single-payer
system called Medicare. Everyone in America gets this program, just
like in Canada, Germany, France, Taiwan, Japan and elsewhere. The only
difference is that in those other countries, people get it from the day
they’re born. In America, you have to wait until you are permanently
disabled, or until you reach the age of 65.

Far from having to “start from scratch,” as Obama duplicitously
claimed in his last address to Congress in explaining why he was not
proposing a single-payer solution despite its obvious success in other
countries, solving America’s health crisis by adopting a single-payer
system would be a simply matter of taking a well proven system that
works and is popular, and expanding it to cover everybody.

But of course that would have made the insurance industry furious.
They’d have to go back to just selling life insurance and homeowners
insurance and car insurance.

And so we can expect a new round of “Harry and Louise,” and ObamaCare will go down in flames.

You have to laugh at these Democrats. Even when they brazenly try to sell out, they get screwed.

________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. He is author
of “Marketplace Medicine: The Rise of the For-Profit Hospital Chains”
(Bantam Books, 1992) and most recently of “The Case for Impeachment”
(St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

It's Congress: Don't Forget to Wash Your Hands After Hearings

dlindorff — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:06:35 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Some years ago, my wife and I, together with our young daughter,
took a circuitous summer train trip through France, Italy, Austria and
Germany. The last leg was an overnight express from Berlin that
deposited us at the Gare du Nord in Paris just at sunrise. Feeling
washed out from the ride, we made our separate ways to the facilities.
I was standing at the urinal with a bunch of other men, relieving
myself, when I heard this awful groaning coming from a stall. The
groaning grew louder and more painful sounding. Some guy was obviously
having a terrible time with his bowels. The agony continued, to the
point that we who were by now washing our hands at the sinks were
looking at each other in puzzlement, wondering what was going on. I
even wondered if someone should ask if the poor wretch if he needed
help.

Finally there was this enormous, impossibly long fart of incredible
volume and duration. This was followed by a long sigh of relief and an
awful stench.

We men in the rest room all looked at each other, shrugging and
stifling laughs. A few of us couldn’t contain ourselves and actually
burst out laughing.

There was a shuffle in the stall, and the latch was turned. We
couldn’t resist. Everyone turned to see who had just produced such a
prodigious noise and odor, expecting to see some huge, ponderous guy
lumber out. Instead, a shrivled little old man left the booth, nodded
silently at the rest of us, and exited the room.

I’m reminded of this incident by the recent efforts in Congress to
produce a health care reform bill—especially of the efforts in Sen. Max
Baucus’s Senate Finance Committee, which yesterday, after weeks of
allegedly painful negotiating among the so-called Gang of Six—three
conservative Democrats and three Republicans—and several weeks more of
discussions among members of the whole committee, produced a bill that
essentially leaves us with the status quo, except with some rather
smelly additions, such as a mandate that the uninsured and unemployed
buy some crummy health insurance plan offered by the private health
insurers or face a stiff fine by the IRS.

If the stench of corruption from the legal bribes of the insurance
industry lobby were not so vile and pervasive, we would all be rolling
in the aisles at the tiny fart produced by all that straining and
pushing on the part of Sen. Baucus (D-Montana) and his Finance Committee
colleagues.

Of course, it’s not over yet. Once both houses of Congress have
voted to approve the bills that have emerged from committee in House
and Senate, there will be another session on the pot—this time in a
secret conference committee, where members of the leadership of both
houses will negotiate to come up with a single bill to send back to
their respective houses for an up-or-down vote.

It can be safely predicted that the final legislation will resemble
much more the Senate version than the House version, because Senate
Democrats long ago surrendered control of that body to the minority
Republicans by accepting the so-called Rule of 60, whereby any
Republican can simply threaten to filibuster a piece of legislation and
the Democrats will immediately take it back and hack off any offending
piece of it to ensure that either all Democrats will vote for it, or
that one or two allegedly sane Republicans will join the majority of
Democrats, thus making a filibuster impossible.

Not once since at least 2006, when Democrats took over the Senate,
has the Senate Democratic leadership demanded that all Democrats in
that body support a bill or face retaliation, in the form of lost
committee assignments or sabotage of a bill important to local
constituents—the kind of thing that Republicans have done with their
members for years.

Indeed, Democrats seem to like the imaginary Rule of 60, as it
gives them a ready excuse to never have to actually do anything
progressive, as demanded by their electoral base.

And so, whether it’s health care reform, financial industry
regulation and reform, climate change legislation, civil liberties,
investigations into torture and war crimes, or ending the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan, Congress has come to resemble a French railway station
lavatory, with committees grunting away in the stalls behind closed
doors, while a little old lady in the corner collects change from the
visitors who regularly come in to take a piss and monitor the
proceedings.
________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-area journalist. His latest book
is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is
available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

The Best Health 'Reform' Money Can Buy

dlindorff — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:29:29 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

When the White House or Democrats in Congress talk about health
care reform, and about wanting to preserve the central role of the
private insurance industry in health care, it pays to look at just what
it is that they they’re so anxious to preserve.

According to the Health and Human Service’s department’s National
Health Expenditures report, private insurers will pay out $854 billion
in medical claims for health insurance policyholders this year. That
represents about one-third of the nation’s estimated $2.5-trillion
medical care bill for this year. But that’s not the whole story. The
premiums paid for those claims payments will total $1.2 trillion, which
includes $179 billion in “administrative” costs (21% or over $1 out of
every $5 dollars spent on health care) and another 150 billion in
profits (a tidy 15% return). That is money that was paid out in
premiums by individuals and by employers (who every year are shifting
more of the cost of health coverage onto employees).

A big part of that $179 billion you and your employer pay for
insurance company “administrative expenses” goes to fund private “death
panels” whose job, as insurance company whistleblower Wendell Potter
has testified in Congress, to deny coverage to sick policyholders.

And that $179 billion wasted on administration (Medicare, a
federally-run program, only devotes 4% of costs to administration by
way of comparison), isn’t all. Doctors, hospitals and pharmacies also
spend a similar sum on administrative expenses, much of it devoted to
fighting to get paid by those same insurance companies. How many of us
have spent hours struggling over claims forms, and getting signatures
from physicians in order to get reimbursed for care, or on the phone
arguing with insurance company “customer service” people on the phone?
Doctors, hospital administrators and pharmacists do the same thing.
That’s why your doctor’s office has such a large staff of people who
aren’t there to take your pulse or blood pressure—just to work with
paper.

Insurance companies, in their discussions with investment analysts,
actually refer to their payouts for patient care vs. their premium take
as their “medical loss ratio,” a figure which they vow to improve by
clamping down on “losses” (meaning benefits paid).

I took a look at the latest 10-Q financial statement filed by
Aetna, one of the nation’s largest private health insurers. Through
June 30, Aetna took in $14 billion in premiums, $10.7 billion of that
amount from employers and employees, $2.9 billion more from Medicare
recipients who bought a supplemental insurance plan to cover the gap in
what Medicare covers, and another $400 million for handling Medicaid
claims. Aetna reports that it paid out $11.9 billion in health care
reimbursements, and $2.3 billion in administrative expenses (20%).

By the way, this same Aetna is headed by CEO Ronald A. Williams,
who earned 24.3 million in 2008 according to Forbes magazine (about the
norm for insurance CEOs), as well as another $296,639 as a board member
of American Express. Williams also has unexercised options on Aetna
stock worth $194.5 million, according to Forbes. He owns a palatial
home in Farmington, CT assessed at $1.7 million. According to
Opensecrets.org, Williams has spent close to $10 million on lobbying
activity for his company and the insurance industry since 2005.

Somebody tell me why this is a system we not only want to keep, but
that, under proposals working their way through House and Senate, would
force another 40-50 million currently uninsured people, most of them
low-income, to pay into under threat of being assessed a $3800 tax
penalty by the IRS.

Common sense says that if this insurance intermediary were removed
from the process, besides Williams and the other industry CEOs and
other executives losing their fat paychecks and bloated homes, planes
and portfolios, the whole American healthcare system would run a lot
more smoothly and cheaply.

I remember back in 1990, when I was working on my book Marketplace Medicine
(Bantam 1992) about the for-profit hospital industry, talking to the
administrator of a Canadian hospital in Ontario. He told me he had
formerly worked as a hospital administrator in the US. He reported that
back then, when new less-invasive technologies, as well as reforms
introduced to Medicare, had begun reducing the amount of time people
were spending in hospital beds, his hospital had been able to shut an
entire wing because of a declining patient census. “But one year later,
we had to reopen it to accommodate all the staff needed to deal with
paperwork from the insurance industry,” he said. That problem has only
gotten worse over the ensuing two decades. Meanwhile, this same
administrator told me, “In Canada, I have only three people doing
paperwork for the whole hospital: one for Canadians, and two to deal
with paperwork for the occasional American tourist who gets sick or
injured.”

Let’s be clear. The only reason Congress and the White House are
pushing a plan that relies on the private insurance industry is that
the private insurance industry is flooding the capital with money. It’s
a great investment for them. If health insurers are collectively
earning $150 billion in profits in a year, and it only costs them
perhaps $50 million in legal bribes to keep their scam operating,
they’re earning a 3000% return on investment!
We would all be far
better off if Congress just passed Rep. John Conyers’ bill, HR 676, to
expand Medicare to cover everyone. As I have explained in an earlier article,
expanding Medicare would result in no net increase in taxes, and
because it would eliminate insurance premiums, workers’ comp and public
employee health expenses while also lowering car insurance rates, not
to mention lowering the prices charged by doctors, hospitals and
pharmaceutical companies, also a substantial savings for all Americans.

Some people worry that if we were all on Medicare, medical research
would suffer. But this is a spurious fear. Much of the most important
research in medical care and treatment is funded by the federal
government through the National Institutes of Health. In fact,
arguably, the profit motive leads industry to focus research on highly
profitable, but much less urgent things, so we get research on cosmetic
uses for Botox, but little or no research on finding a cure for Malaria
or drug-resistant TB.

There may be a valid argument for competitive markets, say for cars
or food production and distribution. But it should be abundantly clear
by this point that when it comes to health care, the market doesn’t
work. In fact, it is perverse. The end user—your and me—will never have
the information needed to make a wise decision regarding either cost or
quality. Furthermore, unless we were all buying our own insurance and
selecting our own doctors unimpeded by “preferred provider” or HMO
lists, we are being forced to chose, if we get any choice at all, from
a limited selection made available by our employers, who are motivated
only by bottom-line concerns. In fact, in countries like Canada or
France, which have Medicare-like single-payer systems, people have
vastly more choice as to physician and hospital than any American
patient.

Some people also worry that a government-run single-payer insurance
system, by pushing down the reimbursements to doctors and hospitals
through its monopoly position as sole paymaster, would lead to a
defunding of hospitals and would drive away the “best” students from
choosing the medical profession. But really, if you look at what
hospitals in the current “competitive” market spend much of their money
on, it turns out to be cosmetic things like fancy building exteriors,
pretty rooms, etc.—things that help lure patients, but that do nothing
to improve patient care. As for future doctors, does anyone really
think that having people go into medicine because of the prospect of
earning millions of dollars and driving fancy sports cars results in
better doctors than having people choose a medical career because of a
passion to serve humanity, or a passion for research into curing
disease? What changes is not the quality of the medical students, but
their motivation.

All the sturm and drang in Washington and in the media over the
course of health care “reform” in Washington is really much ado about
nothing. We are not getting real reform.

In a replay of last year’s to-do over mess in the banking industry,
we are watching our dysfunctional and corrupt government simply, to
quote President Obama, “kick the can” down the road, leaving the next
Congress and the next President to deal with the same disaster.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Americans will continue to die
needlessly every year because the care they need will be denied to them
by insurance companies that are focused on making as much money as
possible, and by a government that has sold its soul to the lobbyists.
_______________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. He is author of
“Marketplace Medicine: The Rise of the For-Profit Hospital Chains”
(Bantam Books, 1992) and more recently of “The Case for Impeachment”
(St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

How do we fix Social Security/Medicare and the lack of Health Care for the general public?

jtbutler — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 19:35:52 -0400

September 12th, 2009

Everyone wants to fix the Social Security system, the Medicare system and provide Health Care for the general public. Hello, everyone is going at these issues from the wrong angle. What needs to be introduces is:

1. A law that stops the Senate and House of Reps from drawing such large salaries from the taxes us common folk pay. Yes they should be paid, but come one everyone, Social Security folk will not be getting their normal Cost of Living Increase for the next 2 or so years because the system is failing. But yet members of the Senate and House of Reps will still draw their huge salaries.

2. A law that says that once a Senator or House of Rep retires, the gravy train is done. Right now these people collect their pay for the rest of their lives with not exception. This is not right when we have millions of people that are living in poverty because there are no jobs. This is an issue of no money because the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer.

3. A law that says Senators and House of Reps has to pay into the Social Security System and collect the same amount as the rest of us common folk. After all right now they draw their full salary after leaving the job and never were made to pay into the system... How freaking backwards is this?

Well gee wiz, if Senators and House of Reps were forced to pay into the Social Security System and collect from it after they leave their jobs I would think that the Social Security System would be fixed in no time.

As far as Health Care for the General Public goes. I think the major issue is that when you pay for insurance you are covered for your health care. The insurance companies only pay a portion of the bill that is incurred. If you are an uninsured person you pay 100% of the cost of your health care. So dollar for dollar the poor person is getting hit with a full bill. I think that people that are paying cash/from their pocket should be getting the same deal that insurance companies make with Health Care Providers and Doctors. Then at least the poorer folk that are paying 100% would me more able to pay for their health care because they do not have to pay 100% of the bill.

My opinion is that if Elected Officials had to pay into the Social Security System like everyone else (and not be allowed to vote themselves a raise whenever they feel like it) and collect from it for their retirement instead of getting their full salary without ever paying into the system, the Social Security System would be fixed really quickly. Also, if uninsured people were given the same break that Insurance Companies get they would be able to afford Medical Care.

One other point I would like to make. We have lent millions upon millions of dollars to many countries that have never even attempted to pay us back. Why are we still helping these countries and giving to them when they already owe us? If I over borrow from the bank they will not allow me to borrow anymore until I pay it off... So why are we giving money to people whom on the most part do not even like the American People???

Thank you for reading my statements, it would be nice if the American people woke up and started telling the Government what to do instead of them doing whatever they feel like and totally ignoring the issues that face the general population of our great country.

Sincerely,

Joseph Butler

San Antonio, Tx

CIA’s Lies About Secret Program Should Have Congress In Open Revolt

dlindorff — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:04:06 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

If this were the democracy that the Founding Fathers thought they
were creating, word from CIA Director Leon Panetta that his agency had
lied to Congress and specifically that it had lied repeatedly from
9-11-2001 through the end of 2008 concerning an as-yet undisclosed
secret program, would have virtually every member of Congress in a
state of rebellion, demanding answers.

After all, the CIA is required by law to report to at least the
majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence
Committees and to the majority and minority leaders of both houses of
Congress about such things.

But not only did the spy agency not report on what it was up to; it lied about what it was up to.

Now, given what we do know about the Bush/Cheney
administration—that it initiated a massive campaign of spying on
Americans by the Defense Department, the FBI, and the National Security
Agency, as well as other intelligence agencies, that it initiated a
campaign of torture of captives, including American citizens, while
asserting that the President didn’t even need to notify the courts or
the public about the arrest, detention, torture or even execution of an
American citizen if he, acting on his own, deemed that person to be an
“enemy combatant,” and given that we also know that Bush and Cheney
lied repeatedly about the justification for their invasion of Iraq, and
refused to be put under oath in their “interviews” by the 9-11
Commission, you would think the members of Congress, which was
railroaded into supporting everything from the USA PATRIOT Act to the
Iraq War invasion based on all these lies and deceptions, would be
demanding answers regarding this mysterious program.

For the rest of this story, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net
_________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest
book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work
is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Where's the Goddamn Outrage: When It Comes to Labor Laws, We Have a Corporate Crime Wave

dlindorff — Wed, 20 May 2009 11:50:06 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

A new study of 1004 union organizing drives conducted by the
director of labor education research at Cornell University’s School of
Industrial and Labor Relations has found that two-third of the
companies involved were violating US labor law by holding one-on-one
interrogations of workers, by threatening workers about their union
support, by firing union organizers or using half a dozen other illegal
tactics to defeat unionization campaigns.

Prof. Kate Bronfenbrenner, author of No Holds Barred: The Intensification of Employer Opposition ot Organizing,
says that these illegal tactics by employers have been used to drive
union representation at American companies down to only 12.4 percent
from a level of 22 percent just 30 years ago.

If a similar level of illegal behavior by companies was reported
dealing with, say, false billing of customers, deceptive reports to
shareholders or violation of environmental laws, there would be a
clamor for action in Congress, and among the public, but so far, there
is no outcry over this wholesale violation of the nation’s labor laws.

One reason may be because nobody except the unions themselves and
the companies breaking the law would know about this particular
corporate crime wave.

The only article I’ve seen on this study was published by the New
York Times, but it was run in an inside page of the Times business
section, which is largely ignored by most readers.

Why would an article about workers be consigned to the business
pages? Is it only of interest to businesses and investors? Surely not.
The author of the piece, Steven Greenhouse, one of the nation’s last
journalists to actually have a labor beat, is a fine reporter, and
writes his articles not in business jargon but in a style that would be
easily understood by anyone who could read. His article, headlined
“Study Says Antiunion Tactics Are Becoming More Common,” surely belongs
in the front section of the newspaper, and in fact, given its shocking
evidence of rampant criminality on the part of employers on a national
scale, should be on the front page of the paper if editors were
applying honest news judgement (How many people are impacted? How new
is the information? How dramatic is the new information?).

But a second reason may be that unions themselves are doing a poor job of getting the story out.

Right now the US labor movement is desperately trying to win
passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill which, if passed as
currently written—a long shot at this point—would address some of the
issues raised in Prof. Bronfenbrenner’s study by eliminating the need
for secret ballot unionization votes. Those elections, companies and
their labor-busting lawyers have long ago learned, can be delayed for
years while they illegally whittle away at union support. But because
the unions are trying to keep the support of a wavering President
Barack Obama and of Democrats in Congress for passage of EFCA, in the
face of massive lobbying by big business interests, they are avoiding
the kind of street politics that would make this corporate crime wave a
big story.

What should be happening is mass marches in the nation’s cities,
and especially in Washington, demanding action on EFCA. President Obama
and most Democrats in both Houses of Congress, all campaigned saying
they backed EFCA, but now many are backing away from that promise.

A million angry workers massed and shouting on the Washington Mall
would stiffen their spines, as would big demonstrations in the major
cities of the country.

Mass action would also force the media to look at the way companies
are simply thumbing their noses at the nation’s labor laws, which
outlaw intimidation of workers, outlaw firing of union activists, and
guarantee free elections on the issue of whether to have a union at a
workplace.

Of course, a third problem is that American workers have long been
quiescent on the issue of labor unions. Polls show that a majority of
Americans would like to have a union where they work, but very few of
us seem willing to fight for that right. Maybe with polls showing that
over 50 percent of Americans now worry that they may be laid off, and
with companies clearly using the economic crisis as an excuse for
bashing employees, that quiescence is ending. The only way to find out
is for the labor movement to call for street action.

This is no time to be polite with politicians, and no time to limit
political action to writing email letters, signing petitions and making
phone calls.

This is a time to call out the corporate managers who are treating
the labor laws like so much toilet paper—a time for boycotts, for
marches, and for sit-ins.

End the American corporate crime wave of labor law violations!

Demand stiff penalties for breaking labor laws!

Support unionized companies and boycott anti-union companies!

Pass the ECFA, as written, with no compromises!

________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and long time labor
activist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s
Press, 2006). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

3.5 Trillion budget has now passed BOTH houses of congres!!!

seawolf1957 — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 01:29:33 -0400

HOUSE and SENATE have now BOTH passed the BUDGET...

FLASH

WASHINGTON POST

just off the press

Why Can Sen. Judd Gregg See What Obama Can’t?

dlindorff — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:38:40 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

Hand it to Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH). The conservative senator from
the Granite State turned down an appointment to the position of
President Barack Obama’s Secretary of Commerce citing “irreconcilable
differences.”

Citing the latest Senate vote on Obama’s economic stimulus package,
for which Gregg voted “no,” Gregg said, “ We are functioning from a
different set of views on many critical items of policy."

Truth to tell, that can be said about the entire Republican Party,
in both House and Senate, which voted almost unanimously against
Obama’s signature domestic effort to date to try and kick-start the
economy. The House vote on the measure was completely along party lines
with no defections, while in the Senate, only three liberal Republican
senators voted for that chamber’s version of the $800-billion bill—but
only after those three Republicans had managed to sabotage it, probably
fatally, by forcing Obama and Senate Democrats to agree to making a
third of the bill be in the form of meaningless and useless tax cuts,
instead of programs to ease the plight of laid-off workers and people
losing their homes.

The fact is, Obama and his supposedly brilliant political
strategists have adopted a bone-headed approach of trying to seem
“post-partisan” which has led them directly into a Republican trap on
many key policy fronts. The economy is just one such area, where
Republicans let Obama water down his stimulus program in an effort to
woo them, and then simply voted against the package in the end. The war
in Afghanistan is another example, where Obama has been so busy buying
into the right’s agenda of continued war that he is about to commit the
nation to years more of expanded war in that war-torn region. Even
Obama’s cabinet picks have been terrible, made with an eye to appearing
“centrist” and even Republican-friendly, with many key holdovers, like
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, or appointments like Treasury Secretary
Tim Geithner, Bush’s pick for head of the New York Federal Reserve
Bank, not to mention his attempt to put a Republican in as Commerce
Secretary.

That last botched appointment was particularly pathetic. It had
offered Obama the chance to pick up a key Democratic vote in the
Senate, since if Gregg had taken the job and left his Senate seat, the
Democratic governor of New Hampshire could, and surely would have
appointed a Democratic replacement. But Obama, again wanting to show
his post-partisanship, cut a deal with Gregg in which the governor
agreed to appoint a Republican replacement.

Having seen how needing to get two Republican votes in order to
avoid filibusters in the Senate on key legislation can destroy the
legislation, Obama now needs to rectify this mistake.

It’s clear that, even if Obama doesn’t sink himself as he has been
doing, that the Republicans are out to sabotage his presidency. That
being the case, Obama should change course immediately and develop a
new strategy based upon confronting and attacking the Republicans in
Congress forcibly. One way to do that would be to name a few liberal
(not Gregg-style) Republican Senators from states with Republican
governors to posts in the cabinet. Example: Maine Senator Olympia
Snowe, who has served on the Senate finance committee and on a
subcommittee on small business, would make an excellent commerce
secretary (much better than Gregg, who at one point had called for the
abolition of the department), and if appointed, could be replaced by
Maine’s Democratic Governor John Baldacci with a Democratic senator.
Obama could also put Gates out to pasture and name the other Maine
Senator, Susan Collins, as Defense Secretary. Collins has served on
both the Senate Homeland Security and Armed Services committees, and it
would be a great idea to have a woman running the Defense Department.
Again, Maine’s Democratic governor could replace Collins with a
Democratic Senator, giving Obama 60 votes, eliminating his need to
cater to that treacherous turncoat, Connecticut Senator Joseph
Lieberman, who backed McCain last fall, and who renounced his
Democratic Party membership after being denied the party’s nomination
back in 2006. (This calculus assumes an eventual win by Democrat Al
Franken in the still-unresolved Minnesota Senate race.)

Even short of enhancing the Democratic margin in the Senate, Obama
could change the political climate in the Upper House by making it
clear that Republicans who obstruct his agenda will be barred from
having any legislation passed for the next four years. Their bills will
not get hearing, and if somehow passed, will be vetoed. He and his
Democratic Party allies in the Senate, should, in other words, start
treating Republicans in the Senate the way they were treated by
Republicans during Bush’s presidency: as irrelevant.

Even with 57 or 58 seats, Democrats have a much stronger position
in Congress today than they had when they took over the House and
Senate in 2006. They also have a much stronger position than
Republicans had between 2002 and 2006, too. But they, and Obama, are
still acting as though they are the opposition party, not the ruling
party.

If Obama wants to be a successful president, and if he hopes to be
re-elected in 2012, he will need to simply run over Republican
opposition in Congress and start pushing through the agenda that he was
elected to promote.

Bi-partisanship, post-partisanship, or whatever caving in to forces
of the thoroughly discredited right is called, is a doomed strategy. It
only encourages the Republicans, like wolves pursuing a wounded elk, to
move in for the kill.

Right now, the public is still blaming Bush, Cheney and the
Republicans for the messes in Iraq, Afghanistan and the US economy. But
it won’t be long before all those crises will have Obama’s and the
Democrats’ name on them, which is precisely the goal of the Republican
policy of obstruction and sabotage.

Obama doesn’t have much time to start taking charge of this
situation. A good place to start would be by calling on his Justice
Department to appoint a special prosecutor or two or three to start
aggressively investigating the crimes of the Bush/Cheney
administration, including any collusion with Republican members of
Congress .Democrats in Congress, too, could get much more aggressive
about their investigations in to the abuses of the last two
presidential terms. That would sure signal to Republicans in Congress
that he is serious, and not to be pushed around.

_______________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and
now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

digg_url = 'http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/39800';
digg_title = "Why Can Sen. Judd Gregg See What Obama Can’t?";
digg_bodytext = "By Dave Lindorff\r\n\r\n\r\n Hand it to Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH). The conservative senator from the Granite State turned down an appointment to the position of President Barrack Obama’s Secretary of Commerce citing “irreconcilable differences.”\r\n\r\n Citing the latest Senate vote on Obama’s economic stimulus package, for which Gregg voted “no,” Gregg said, “ We are functioning from a different set of views on many critical items of policy.\" \r\n\r";
digg_skin = 'standard';

Will Progressive New Yorkers Accept Senator Kirsten Gillibrand?

Bob Fertik — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 10:12:12 -0500

Gov. David Paterson introduced Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to enthusiastic bipartisan applause (Al D'Amato? WTF!), but there's a decent chance Gillibrand will only serve two years.

Paterson chose Gillibrand because she's (a) a woman who is smart, young, and attractive, (b) from upstate, (c) close to Clinton and Chuck Schumer, and (d) a decent fundraiser. Theoretically these are all positives.

Unfortunately she's also a Blue Dog who caters to a solidly Republican district and is therefore completely out of step with New York Democrats, who are solidly progressive. Here's Wayne Barrett:

Gillibrand has described her own voting record as "one of the most conservative in the state." She opposes any path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, supports renewing the Bush tax cuts for individuals earning up to $1 million annually, and voted for the Bush-backed FISA bill that permits wiretapping of international calls. She was one of four Democratic freshmen in the country, and the only Democrat in the New York delegation, to vote for the Bush administration's bill to extend funding for the Iraq war shortly after she entered congress in 2007. While she now contends that she's always opposed the war and has voted for bills to end it, one upstate paper reported when she first ran for the seat: "She said she supports the war in Iraq." In addition to her vote to extend funding, she also missed a key vote to override a Bush veto of a Democratic bill with Iraq timetables.

(I contributed to her 2006 campaign because she promised to end the occupation of Iraq but she greatly disappointed me and many other progressive New Yorkers by giving Bush a blank check.)

Her neo-Republican voting record means she is guaranteed to face a divisive primary, and the results could be politically catastrophic. First, Democrats could lose the Senate seat after the primary if Republicans run a credible candidate. Second, Democrats will lose Gillibrand's seat in the upcoming special election. Third, Democrats could lose the seats of those who challenge her in a primary. Finally, the anger could spill over to Paterson's own race and elect a Republican governor just in time for redistricting. Epic Fail!

So who will challenge Gillibrand in a primary?

First out of the box is Rep. Carolyn McCarthy of Long Island. She's "furious" because Gillibrand earned an "A" from the NRA by voting against all gun control measures. McCarthy became a prominent gun-control advocate after her husband died and her son was injured in the 1993 massacre on the Long Island Rail Road that killed six people and injured 19 others. On Hardball, Chris Matthews asked her if she was really willing to give up her House seat for a primary challenge; she said she'd definitely run if no one else does.

But someone else may spare McCarthy the trouble. Jonathan Tasini, who ran a vigorous progressive challenge to Clinton in 2006, has launched progressivenewyork.org to encourage a progressive primary. If you want to keep another Blue Dog out of the Senate, sign up there and get involved.

Update 1: James Ridgeway of Mother Jones says she hates New York City. Chris Bowers of OpenLeft wants to give Gillibrand a chance but he lives in Philadelphia.

Update 2: Progressive Democrats of America supports ProgressiveNewYork:

David Paterson's choice to fill the U.S. Senate in New York is an affront to the people of New York. New Yorkers do not deserve a caretaker Senator who is anti-immigrant, anti-gay rights, and proudly carries the endorsement of the National Rifle Association, an organization that is uniquely responsible for the death and injury by gun violence of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Update 3: Gillibrand immediately flipped her position to support gay marriage. On Hardball following Carolyn McCarthy, Rep. Anthony Weiner of NYC urged her to flip on guns too. Immigrant rights groups are pressuring her to flip on that as well. If she keeps flipping, she'll lose the next election both downstate and upstate.

Update 4: Gillibrand's Republican ties run in the family, according to Wayne Barrett:

The irony is that Paterson may be swinging from the nation's most prominent Democratic family to one with strong Republican ties. Gillibrand's father, Doug Rutnik, is an Albany insider and lobbyist whose ties to former GOP powerhouses Joe Bruno, George Pataki and Al D'Amato are legendary. In fact, Gillibrand won her seat when a state police domestic violence report about the GOP incumbent, John Sweeney, was mysteriously leaked, ostensibly with the acquiescence of the Pataki administration, which had its own reasons to oppose Sweeney. Bruno is under federal investigation now, and some of the subpoenas in the case involved a real estate deal that partnered Rutnik with Bruno and another lobbyist. Rutnik dated, and eventually lived with, a top Pataki and D'Amato aide for many years, until he broke up with her in 2006 to marry a cousin of his, Gwen Lee, who'd worked in high-paying state jobs secured by the same aide. Rutnik and D'Amato have been registered lobbyists for some of the same clients.

That would certainly explain why D'Amato was standing immediately behind Gillibrand (and grinning and clapping enthusiastically) during the announcement. It also explains why the "opposition" report she commissioned for herself in 2005 centered on this:

“Kirsten's family could cause her some political headaches. While her relatives have endured individual problems… the most likely attack she will face is that she is a product of Albany's political machine. The more voters learn about Kirsten’s family, the more they may not believe that she is a true political outsider, as she claims.”

Update 5: Politico has more on Gillibrand's sleazy father:

After divorcing Gillibrand’s mother, Rutnik lived for 13 years with Zenia Mucha, a former top aide to former Gov. George Pataki and former Sen. Al D’Amato -- and made most of his living brokering deals with government entities.

Rutnik, the report notes “was criticized for possible conflict of interests after companies for which he lobbied received lucrative government contracts.”

Zenia Mucha was Al D'Amato's political hatchetwoman and the powerful Karl Rove of New York State under George Pataki until Eliot Spitzer was elected Governor.

Update 6: Lawrence O'Donnell says Gillibrand's balanced budget ideology would force her to vote against all of President Obama's proposals.

Introducing "legislation that would require that our federal budget be balanced annually" is as childish as Congressional behavior can get. If Gillibrand had her way, Obama would have no tools to use to get us out of this recession/depression. Nor would we be able to continue paying soldiers in Iraq or buy the jet fuel to fly them home or enact any version of health care reform.

Franken Victory Tests Republican Bipartisanship

Bob Fertik — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:22:38 -0500

Remember all those sweet post-election promises of bipartisanship?

Barack Obama has certainly led the way. He could have filled his Cabinet with "aggressive progressives," but instead chose moderates like Treasury Secretary Tom Geithner and kept Republican Robert Gates in the most powerful job of all, Secretary of Defense.

Obama could also have demanded passage of a "share the wealth" stimulus bill, but instead reached out to Republicans with business-friendly tax cuts.

So Obama has done his share. What about the Republicans?

A good place for Republicans to start would be by telling Norm Coleman to drop his futile lawsuits and by agreeing to seat Al Franken immediately if he doesn't.

Isn't bipartisanship a two-way street?