Democrats-House

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

The New York Times Trashes Single-Payer Health Reform

dlindorff — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:54:50 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

In an article in the Sunday New York Times, headlined
“Medicare for All? ‘Crazy,’ ‘Socialized’ and Unlikely,”reporter
Katherine Q. Seelye did her best to damn the idea of government
insurance for all with faint praise.

To begin her article, Seelye quoted from a 2005 episode of the NBC
drama “West Wing,” in which two presidential candidates, a Democrat
played by Jimmy Smits and a Republican played by the always loveable
Alan Alda, are discussing health care reform. The Smits character says
his “ideal plan” would be Medicare for all. “That’s crazy” counters the
Alda Republican. Then Seelye sequed to an opinion piece recently penned
by real-life one-time Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern
(a noble figure who nonetheless has long-since been type-cast as an
out-of-touch extreme liberal loser), who favors expansion of Medicare
into a national single-payer system.

Turning to the real world, Seelye then trotted out several
economists, ostensibly to give a broad spectrum of arguments about the
idea of single-payer, but in fact carefully avoiding including anyone
who actually supports the idea of expanding Medicare.

As her representative liberal, she quoted Brandeis economist Stuart
Altman, an Obama adviser during the presidential campaign, who said
that while he is not “ideologically uncomfortable” with expanding
Medicare, such a move would be “disruptive.” Going then to what she
described as “the other end of the political spectrum,” Seeley quoted
Robert E Moffit, of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, who claimed
Medicare would mean too much government power over heatlh care.”
Finally, seeking what she could call middle ground, Seelye turned to
Dartmouth economist Jonathan Skinner, who claimed that expanding
Medicare would be good because it would cover everyone, but bad because
it would mean tripling the Medicare tax, currently 2.9% of paychecks.
If we were looking at a political yardstick here, Seelye started at the
16” mark (Altman), then went to the 36” mark (Moffit), and finally went
to the 24” mark (Skinner).

But where was an economist from the real left end of the political
spectrum, over in the single digits of that yardstick? Altaman,
representing the private insurance-based Obama approach, was hardly it!

Seelye might have gone to her colleague, columnist Paul Krugman, a
Nobel Prize-winning economist at Princeton, who has on a number of
occasions written and stated that a single-payer system such as
Medicare for all would be “far cheaper” than any private
insurance-based system. Krugman, at least, would be over by the 10” or
12” line on a political yardstick.

Never has the Times really analyzed the true costs and
benefits of the plan espoused in a bill, HR 676, authored by House
Judiciary Chair John Conyers (D-MI), which would expand Medicare to
cover every American. Seelye mentions Rep. Conyers’ bill, but says
innocently that it is “going nowhere” in the House. In fact, his bill,
despite having been co-sponsored by 86 members of the House, has been
blocked from getting a public hearing in committee by Nancy Pelosi and
the House leadership, at the behest of the Obama White House, which is
dead-set against a single-payer reform of health care.

The reason the Times and the insurance industry-besotted
White House and Congressional leadership don’t want that analysis is
that it would show clearly that a single-payer system would mean vast
savings for all Americans.

Seelye quotes economist Skinner as claiming that Medicare expansion
to cover every American would mean a tripling of the Medicare payroll
tax—currently set at 2.9% of wages. But even if we accepted Skinner’s
math, it is meaningless without looking at the savings side.

Sure expanding Medicare would mean higher Medicare taxes, but what about the following:

Medicaid, the program that pays for medical care for the poor, and
is funded by federal and state taxes, would be eliminated, saving $400
billion a year.

Veterans’ care, currently running at $100 billion a year, would be eliminated.

Perhaps two-thirds of the $300 billion a year spent by federal,
state and local governments to reimburse hospitals for so-called
“charity care” for treatment of people who have no insurance but don’t
qualify for Medicaid, would be eliminated.

Individuals and employers would no longer have to pay for private insurance.

Several hundred billion dollars currently spent on paperwork by private insurers would be eliminated.

Car insurance would be cheaper as there would no longer have to be coverage for medical bills.

Federal, state and local governments would no longer have to pay to insure public employees.

In short, if every person were on Medicare, the overall savings
would overwhelm the small increase in the Medicare payroll tax of 5.8%.

The bottom line is that Canadians, who have Medicare for all,
devote 10% of GDP to health care. Americans, who have
private-insurance-based health care except for the elderly, devote 17%
of GDP to health care.

Seelye and the Times have never mentioned any of this. Neither does President Obama or the Democratic Congress.
______________

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

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

Progressives Should be Shutting Down These So-Called 'Town Meetings' Too!

dlindorff — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 17:09:13 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Many progressives are getting all bent out of shape over the "brown
shirt" rabble organized by health industry PR firms to disrupt the
so-called "town meetings" being organized all over the country by
Democratic members of Congress.

What they are conveniently forgetting is that these are not really
"town meetings" at all, at least in the sense of the town meetings I
grew up with, and started out covering as a young journalist in
Connecticut--that is, meetings called and run democratically, with
leaders elected from the floor, open to all residents of a community.

These "town meetings" are really nothing but propaganda sessions run
by members of Congress who are trying to burnish their fraudulent
credentials as public servants, and trying to perpetrate a huge fraud
of a health care bill that purports to be a progressive "reform" of the
US health care system, but that actually further entrenches the control
of that system by the insurance industry, and to a lesser extent, the
hospital and drug industry.

ObamaCare is to health reform what bank bailouts are to financial
system reform, which is to say it is the opposite of what its name
implies.

The right-wing nuts who cry that ObamaCare is introducing euthanasia
for the elderly and infirm, or that it is socialism, are ignorant
wackos, to be sure, but they are right about one thing: Americans are
about to be royally screwed on health care reform by the president and
the Democratic Congress, just as they've been screwed by them on
financial system "reform."

The appropriate response to this screw-job is the one the right has
adopted: shut these sham "town meetings" down, and run the sell-out
politicians out of town on a rail, preferably coated in tar and
feathers they way the snake-oil salesmen of old used to be handled!

This is not about civil discourse. This is about propaganda. The
Obama administration and the Democratic Congressional leadership have
sold out health care reform for the tainted coin of the
medical-industrial industry, and are holding, or trying to hold, these
meetings around the country to promote legislation that has essentially
been written for them by that industry--legislation that will force
everyone to pay for insurance as offered, and priced, by the private
insurance industry. What a deal for those companies--a captive market
of 300 million people! There will be little or no effort to control
prices, and the higher costs will be financed through higher taxes, and
through cuts in Medicare benefits.

This isn't "reform." It's corruption, pure and simple.

Any mention of a system that works--single payer--the system we
already have in the form of Medicare for the elderly and disabled, and
the system that has proved successful for almost four decades in
Canada-- has been systematically blocked and censored out of the
discussion. Every effort has been made to bury an excellent bill, HR
676, offered up by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), which would cover every
American by simply expanding Medicare to cover everyone.

The only proper response at this point is obstruction, and the more militant and boisterous that obstruction, the better.

Instead of opposing the right-wing hecklers at these events,
progressives should be making common cause with them. Instead of
calling them fascists, we should be working to turn them, by showing
them that the enemy is not the left; it is the corporations that own
both Democrats and Republicans alike.

The only proper approach to the wretched health care legislation
currently working its way through Congress at this point is to kill it
and start over. At these "town meeting" staged events, Obama and the
Democrats need to hear, in no uncertain terms, that we don't want no
stinkin' ObamaCare. We want Medicare for all.
_________________

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

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

Barney Frank Disses Anti-War Progressives

Bob Fertik — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:54:22 -0400

Politico's David Rogers recapped the Supplemental vote in the House and quoted an anoymous Massachusetts Democrat dissing progressives:

The dynamics were striking in the Massachusetts delegation, where House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank — a nay vote in May — took a strong stand in favor of the IMF money and two other Democrats also shifted to support the president on this round.

“Off the record, it’s what we call the responsible left,” said one Massachusetts lawmaker. Frank himself was scathing toward both sides, who had often mimicked one another’s arguments that the IMF money constituted a European bank bailout.

“The left and the right live in parallel universes,” Frank told POLITICO. “The right listens to talk radio, the left’s on the Internet and they just reinforce one another. They have no sense of reality. ... I have now one ambition: to retire before it becomes essential to tweet.”

So who dissed us? Here are the votes of Massachusetts Democrats:

"Responsible Left" Yes on $106B Ital=switched	"Irresponsible Left" No on $106B
William Delahunt Barney Frank Stephen Lynch Ed Markey Richard Neal John Olver	Michael Capuano Jim McGovern John Tierney Nikki Tsongas

So among the six who voted "responsibly" yesterday with Barney Frank, three flip-flopped from May 14 - Frank, Ed Markey, and Richard Neal. To paraphrase another famous Massachusetts Democrat, they were "against the war before they were for it."

Ed Markey would have a hard time dissing progressives over Iraq, since he cast a disastrous vote for the invasion of Iraq on October 10, 2002 and obviously regrets his vote (or damn well should). That leaves Richard Neal and Barney Frank.

Neal is a quiet Member who is rarely quoted in the news. Barney Frank, on the other hand, is the single most voluble Member of Congress. Obviously during Frank's otherwise on-the-record interview with Rogers, Frank simply said "now this is off the record" and then "anonymously" dissed progressives.

So Barney Frank, I'm calling you out. Are you "responsible" enough to admit that you dissed progressives?

And if so, would you like to debate whether wasting another $85 billion on the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan-Pakistan is the "responsible" progressive position?

Progressives, RahmBots, and BlueDogs

Bob Fertik — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 06:55:20 -0400

One thing we learned from the War Supplemental battle is there are three kinds of Democrats in the House.

1. 32 progressives who truly fight for their principles:

Tammy Baldwin WI02
Michael Capuano MA08
John Conyers MI14
Lloyd Doggett TX25
Donna Edwards MD04
Keith Ellison MN05
Sam Farr CA17
Bob Filner CA51

Alan Grayson FL08
Raul Grijalva AZ07
Michael Honda CA15
Marcy Kaptur OH09
Dennis Kucinich OH10
Barbara Lee CA09
Zoe Lofgren CA16
Eric Massa NY29

James McGovern MA03
Michael Michaud ME02
Donald Payne NJ10
Chellie Pingree ME01
Jared Polis CO02
Jose Serrano NY16
Carol Shea-Porter NH01
Brad Sherman CA27

Jackie Speier CA12
Pete Stark CA13
John Tierney MA06
Nikki Tsongas MA05
Maxine Waters CA35
Diane Watson CA33
Peter Welch VT00
Lynn Woolsey CA06

2. 146 RahmBots who blindly take orders from Rahm Emanuel:

Neil Abercrombie HI01
Gary Ackerman NY05
John Adler NJ03
Robert Andrews NJ01
Xavier Becerra CA31
Timothy Bishop NY01
Earl Blumenauer OR03
John Boccieri OH16
Robert Brady PA01
Bruce Braley IA01
G.K. Butterfield NC01
Lois Capps CA23
Russ Carnahan MO03
Andre Carson IN07
Kathy Castor FL11
Judy Chu CA32
Yvette Clarke NY11
Lacy Clay MO01
Emanuel Cleaver MO05
Steve Cohen TN09
Gerry Connolly VA11
Jerry Costello IL12
Joe Courtney CT02
Joseph Crowley NY07
Elijah Cummings MD07
Danny Davis IL07
Susan Davis CA53
Peter DeFazio OR04
Diana DeGette CO01
William Delahunt MA10
Rosa DeLauro CT03
John Dingell MI15
Michael Doyle PA14
Steve Driehaus OH01
Eliot Engel NY17
Anna Eshoo CA14
Chaka Fattah PA02

Bill Foster IL14
Barney Frank MA04
Marcia Fudge OH11
Charles Gonzalez TX20
Luis Gutierrez IL04
John Hall NY19
Debbie Halvorson IL11
Phil Hare IL17
Alcee Hastings FL23
Martin Heinrich NM01
Brian Higgins NY27
Jim Himes CT04
Maurice Hinchey NY22
Mazie Hirono HI02
Paul Hodes NH02
Rush Holt NJ12
Jay Inslee WA01
Steve Israel NY02
Jesse Jackson IL02
Sheila Jackson-Lee TX18
Hank Johnson GA04
E. B. Johnson TX30
Steve Kagen WI08
Patrick Kennedy RI01
Dale Kildee MI05
Carolyn Kilpatrick MI13
MaryJo Kilroy OH15
Ann Kirkpatrick AZ01
Larry Kissell NC08
Ron Klein FL22
Suzanne Kosmas FL24
James Langevin RI02
Rick Larsen WA02
John Larson CT01
Sander Levin MI12
John Lewis GA05
David Loebsack IA02

Nita Lowey NY18
Ben Lujan NM03
Stephen Lynch MA09
Dan Maffei NY25
Carolyn Maloney NY14
Edward Markey MA07
Betsy Markey CO04
Doris Matsui CA05
Carolyn McCarthy NY04
Betty McCollum MN04
Jim McDermott WA07
Michael McMahon NY13
Kendrick Meek FL17
Gregory Meeks NY06
Brad Miller NC13
George Miller CA07
Alan Mollohan WV01
Gwen Moore WI04
James Moran VA08
Steve Murphy NY20
Christopher Murphy CT05
Jerrold Nadler NY08
Grace Napolitano CA38
Richard Neal MA02
James Oberstar MN08
David Obey WI07
John Olver MA01
Frank Pallone NJ06
Bill Pascrell NJ08
Ed Pastor AZ04
Nancy Pelosi CA08
Ed Perlmutter CO07
Tom Perriello VA05
Gary Peters MI09
Pedro Pierluisi PR00
David Price NC04
Mike Quigley IL05

Nick Rahall WV03
Charles Rangel NY15
Laura Richardson CA37
Steven Rothman NJ09
Lucille Roybal-Allard CA34
Bobby Rush IL01
Tim Ryan OH17
Linda Sánchez CA39
John Sarbanes MD03
Janice Schakowsky IL09
Mark Schauer MI07
Kurt Schrader OR05
Bobby Scott VA03
Albio Sires NJ13
Louise Slaughter NY28
Adam Smith WA09
Bart Stupak MI01
Betty Sutton OH13
Ellen Tauscher CA10
Harry Teague NM02
Bennie Thompson MS02
Dina Titus NV03
Paul Tonko NY21
Edolphus Towns NY10
Chris Van Hollen MD08
Nydia Velázquez NY12
Peter Visclosky IN01
Timothy Walz MN01
Debbie Wasserman Schultz FL20
Melvin Watt NC12
Henry Waxman CA30
Anthony Weiner NY09
Robert Wexler FL19
David Wu OR01
John Yarmuth KY03

3. 79 BlueDogs who take their orders from Big Money:

Jason Altmire PA04
Michael Arcuri NY24
Joe Baca CA43
Brian Baird WA03
John Barrow GA12
Melissa Bean IL08
Shelley Berkley NV01
Howard Berman CA28
Marion Berry AR01
Sanford Bishop GA02
Dan Boren OK02
Leonard Boswell IA03
Rick Boucher VA09
Allen Boyd FL02
Bobby Bright AL02
Corrine Brown FL03
Dennis Cardoza CA18
Christopher Carney PA10
Ben Chandler KY06
Travis Childers MS01

James Clyburn SC06
Jim Cooper TN05
Jim Costa CA20
Henry Cuellar TX28
Kathy Dahlkemper PA03
Artur Davis AL07
Lincoln Davis TN04
Norman Dicks WA06
Joe Donnelly IN02
Chet Edwards TX17
Brad Ellsworth IN08
Bob Etheridge NC02
Gabrielle Giffords AZ08
Bart Gordon TN06
Al Green TX09
Gene Green TX29
Parker Griffith AL05
Jane Harman CA36
Stephanie Herseth Sandlin SD00
Baron Hill IN09

Rubén Hinojosa TX15
Tim Holden PA17
Steny Hoyer MD05
Paul Kanjorski PA11
Ron Kind WI03
Frank Kratovil MD01
Daniel Lipinski IL03
Jim Marshall GA08
Jim Matheson UT02
Mike McIntyre NC07
Jerry McNerney CA11
Charlie Melancon LA03
Walt Minnick ID01
Harry Mitchell AZ05
Dennis Moore KS03
Patrick Murphy PA08
John Murtha PA12
Glenn Nye VA02
Solomon Ortiz TX27
Collin Peterson MN07

Earl Pomeroy ND00
Silvestre Reyes TX16
Ciro Rodriguez TX23
Mike Ross AR04
Dutch Ruppersberger MD02
John Salazar CO03
Loretta Sanchez CA47
Adam Schiff CA29
Allyson Schwartz PA13
David Scott GA13
Joe Sestak PA07
Heath Shuler NC11
Ike Skelton MO04
Vic Snyder AR02
Zachary Space OH18
John Spratt SC05
John Tanner TN08
Gene Taylor MS04
Charles Wilson OH06

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