Politics Plus

While I was still offline last fall, I volunteered to help Jeff Merkley defeat goose-stepping Gordon Smith to become Oregon’s junior Senator, so I worked the phone banks for his campaign.  In this article, he makes me proud to have done so.

Last night, we took a huge step forward towards passing health care reform. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid unveiled details of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the CBO score stating that the bill will reduce the budget deficit by $127 billion dollars over the first 10 years and provide coverage to tens of millions of Americans who are currently uninsured.

The CBO score obliterates the arguments opponents of health care reform have been using for months. They’ve been claiming the Senate health plan will be a ‘costly’ government takeover and it will lead to ‘delays’ and ‘denial’ of care. For months, the Minority Leader has claimed that Americans will be "forced into a government plan they don’t like." These false claims are deplorable scare tactics. The American people deserve better. They deserve the truth.

Truth- The bill will reduce the deficit by $127 billion dollars and brings down health care costs for individuals and businesses.

Truth – This bill will result in health care coverage for 94% of all Americans.

Truth – The bill includes a public option which will create much-needed competition with the private industry and give Americans more choices.

Truth – The bill will ban the egregious practice of insurance companies denying care on the basis of pre-existing conditions and will make it illegal for insurance companies to drop your coverage if you get sick.

Truth – The bill will end arbitrary lifetime limits and unreasonable annual caps that limit care to people who need it the most.

Truth – The health care bill increases patient care by investing in preventive care, wellness programs and helps families grapple with the high cost of long-term care.

Opponents of health care reform are not only peddling lies created by manipulative messengers like Frank Luntz, they’re also doing whatever they can to obstruct progress. My colleagues across the aisle are going to use every weapon in their arsenal to block health care. They have no qualms about delaying and stonewalling this critical piece of legislation – after all, they have just spent two weeks blocking a bill providing vital health care services for our veterans. This is shameful.

Members of both parties know this bill will reduce the deficit. They know what a difference this bill could make in the lives of the uninsured and the under-insured. They know that it will help improve the bottom lines of the small businesses on Main Street.

We have a duty to ensure that patients don’t have to worry whether they’ll be dropped from their coverage if they get sick. Small business owners shouldn’t have to break the bank to provide coverage to their employees. And families should not be forced into bankruptcy because of a medical crisis… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Huffington Post>

Go Jeff!

And if that isn’t enough Oregon Congressman Peter DeFazio showed he knows what to do with Tim Geithner and Larry Summers.

Go Peter!  I’m most fortunate to live in Oregon!

Douglas L. Hoffman has unconceded the election for New York’s 23rd Congressional District yet again.

For the second time this week, Conservative Party congressional candidate Douglas L. Hoffman sought to rescind his concession in the special election in New York’s 23rd district, telling supporters that new information showing the results of the election closer than believed on election night made him reevaluate his decision to throw in the towel.

"I am therefore revoking my statement of concession," he wrote in a fundraising letter titled "Stop Another Stolen Election!" and posted on his Web site Wednesday night.

"ACORN and the unions did their best to try and sway the results to Obamacare supporter Bill Owens," he told supporters, naming the Democrat who claimed victory and has been seated in the House of Representatives, though election results will not be certified until next month. "I was forced to concede after receiving two pieces of grim news – – down 5,335 votes with 93 percent of the vote counted on election night — and barely won my stronghold in Oswego County. On Election Night, the information we received was far different from what we received this week!"

But by Thursday night, Hoffman’s hopes appeared dashed. "It’s over. Rep. Bill Owens, D-Plattsburgh, leads by 3,105 votes with 3,072 absentee ballots left to be counted," the Watertown Daily Times reported.

That this would be the outcome was widely expected, despite Hoffman’s protestations. According to a report last Friday in the Daily Times, "it’s mathematically possible" for Hoffman to pass Rep. Owens in the final count in the 11-county district, but "the math is daunting." Most observers saw little chance that the election outcome would change, with a recent unofficial result reported before Thursday evening showing Hoffman trailing Owens by 2,832 votes and 4,262 absentee ballots remaining to be counted, the Watertown paper reported.

Jerry O. Eaton, Jefferson County Republican elections commissioner, told the Times that Hoffman’s allegations of ballot-tampering and the election having been manipulated or stolen are "absolutely false."

"No one has touched those ballots or has access to those ballots except board of elections staff — and in a bipartisan manner," he said.

Brian Kettenring, ACORN’s deputy director of national operations, called Hoffman’s accusations unworthy of serious response. "We confess we stole the election in the 23rd and our lead staff person for it was Elvis Presley," he said sarcastically. "He ran a first rate organizing effort in the district and we’re proud of his work."…

Inserted from <Washington Post>

Now that ACORN has formally admitted that Elvis stole the Election, I expect Glen Beck to lead a huge hoard (at least 10) of Tea Party Farties in the burning of Elvis DCs.

The combined health care reform bill is here.  To be honest, there’s a lot about this bill that I don’t like.  However, compared to no change at all, I shall support is as the first step in the right direction.  Like Social Security and Medicare, when they were first passed, this will not be the end of needed change, but at least it will open the door.

Senate Majority Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Wednesday unveiled his long-awaited plan for expanding medical coverage to millions more Americans over the next decade, setting the stage for a historic Senate debate on a health overhaul.

Reid’s move capped weeks of difficult negotiations as Democratic leaders struggled to keep up momentum behind President Obama’s push to reshape the nation’s $2.5 trillion healthcare system by expanding coverage and beginning to control medical costs.

And although Democrats still are searching for crucial votes, the majority leader’s gambit marked an important milestone in the party’s drive to enact the most sweeping change to the country’s healthcare system in more than 40 years.

"This is our chance to end a journey that began more than 60 years ago when President Truman said every man should have the peace of mind of having health insurance,” Assistant Majority Leader Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said after Democrats met at the Capitol to discuss the bill.

Reid’s legislation, which he crafted by combining bills developed earlier this year by two Senate committees, would cover an additional 31 million people over the next decade, according to senior Democratic aides, who cited a preliminary estimate by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

That would boost the percentage of non-elderly Americans with medical insurance from 83% to 94% over the next decade – slightly less than the 96% who would be covered by the bill that House Democrats passed last week.

Reid’s legislation would also cost less than the House bill, committing the federal government to some $849 billion in new spending over the next decade to expand coverage, aides said.

And it would drive down federal deficits by an estimated $127 billion over the next decade, in part based on a series of prescribed cuts in Medicare spending, along with new taxes on healthcare industries, high-end "Cadillac" health plans and wealthy Americans.

Reid’s proposal still faces substantial obstacles… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Chicago Tribune>

The biggest of those substantial obstacles is the campaign against change by Big Insurance., assisted by their mostly Republican lackeys.  Part of that effort comes disguised as independent organizations.  Rachel Maddow had done a terrific job of exposing who they are and who is behind them:

The value of what Rachel has done here is not validation our beliefs.  Rather, it is digging out the detail that we can use to support our beliefs and discuss them intelligently with others.

I found an excellent article by Linda R. Monk outlining Geithner’s shortcomings.

It’s really not Tim Geithner’s fault. He’s spent all his professional life being an understudy to more powerful men — from Henry Kissinger to Larry Summers. He is the classic yes man, who can give you all the rationalizations you need to do whatever it is you wanted to do in the first place. So surprise, surprise — when the time comes to cut a hard deal with Wall Street players, he doesn’t have the stomach for the job. Just like Mickey Mouse in Fantasia, he has unleashed forces that he has no idea how to control.

The Nov. 16 report of the special investigator general for the TARP funds (SIGTARP) details chapter and verse. It was requested by several members of Congress who wanted to know why the big firms that had contracts with AIG wound up getting paid full market value for their bad investments, and whether government bailout money was involved. As head of the New York Fed, and thus Mr. Moneybags to Wall Street, Geithner failed to negotiate reduced payments from AIG to its customers (including Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and several large European banks) in the fall of 2008.

One of the excuses given by Geithner and his team was "the sanctity of contract." You know, the same reason that large bonuses to AIG employees had to be paid with TARP money. It’s always hysterical to me when a non-lawyer starts talking about how contracts must be held inviolable under the law. What a joke! Every good lawyer knows that if you have to go to court to enforce a contract, you’ve already lost. That’s why in law, as in many other fields, you don’t get what you deserve–you get what you negotiate. Any unemployed person knows this; the person holding the money has all the bargaining power. But Geithner really didn’t know how to fight back, unlike Hank Paulson who was the real muscle man as Treasury Secretary. Paulson could knock heads when he wanted, so it’s hard for me to believe that Geithner acted all by his lonesome while negotiating the AIG bailout.

If you’re giving out haircuts in a financial deal, you need a Big Bubba Bad Ass at the negotiating table representing the U.S. taxpayer. Somebody like Paul Volcker. Can’t you see him now, chomping a cigar with his bald head shining and, like LBJ, physically dominating the other players? Or perhaps an Elizabeth Warren, Ms. Transparency with her keen lawyer’s insight, who monitors the TARP program for Congress. She’d be sure to ask ask about the Fed creating a dummy corporation named Maiden Lane III to keep transactions with AIG hidden from inquiring minds. A dummy company that sounds like a brassiere manufacturer is a dead give-away…

…After Geithner went to Treasury to replace Paulson, he and his team refused to answer Elizabeth Warren’s inquiries about the use of TARP money. He should have been forced to give answers by Congress, but you know Congress didn’t really want the answers. None of us really did. We kept hoping that some "experts" would be able to figure it out for us, and we wouldn’t have to exert ourselves. That was Geithner’s thankless job, to sweat the details for us, while the economy was in a death spiral.

But keeping secrets, the lingua franca of Wall Street, is anathema to a democracy. Public money should always come with transparency, or else democracies cannot correct themselves. The SIGTARP concluded as much:

"The lesson that should be learned . . . is that . . . whenever Government funds are deployed in a crisis to support markets or institutions, . . . the public is entitled to know what is being done with Government funds."

The problem with Geithner is not that he is by nature a corrupt man. It’s that he is steeped in the Wall Street way of doing business, which itself is riddled with fraud, and billions of taxpayer dollars are at stake. Geithner is a player, not a regulator, and we need somebody at Treasury who will do a better job taking care of our money. Time for the apprentice to close up shop. [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Huffington Post>

I have objected to Geithner’s role at Treasury since the day he was was appointed.  He’s a “business as usual” guy when we need someone like Elizabeth Warren, a “change we can believe in” gal.  Obama should dump him yesterday.