Al Franken was declared the winner of the 2008 Minnesota Senate race. Democrats now have 60 seats in the Senate. A "supermajority": enough votes to effectively avoid a filibuster. Right?
The persistent absences of two veteran Democratic senators because of serious illness, the varied ideological makeup of the Democratic caucus and the willingness of individual senators to break with the party if they do not get their legislative way make the new mathematical might of the Democrats a bit illusory.
"We have 60 votes on paper," Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, said Wednesday in an interview. "But we cannot bulldoze anybody; it doesn't work that way. My caucus doesn't allow it. And we have a very diverse group of senators philosophically. I am not this morning suddenly flexing my muscles."
But for a party and a majority leader that has been whining that it can't get anything done because it doesn't have 60 votes -- well, now it does. In other words, that excuse is now laid bare. I mean, remember how we had to be nice to Joe Lieberman because he got us closer to 60? We laughed at that logic because he didn't get us closer to shit. He would still vote with Republicans half the time, whether inside our caucus or outside it.
So yeah, I know that the "60" mark is arbitrary, and like I said in that MSNBC appearance, a new invention since it didn't exist in the Bush years. In fact, no one has promoted that notion more than Harry Reid himself, afraid to be held accountable for the actions of his caucus. Well, he's no longer got cover. Any failures from here on out will be at his feet, and his feet alone.
Right now, of course, Democrats own health-care reform. If it fails, they lose. If it passes, but it's watered down, and it doesn't fix at least some of the problems everyday Americans are experiencing with their health care insurance, they lose.
The key to healthcare reform is that it be popular with the public. The Medicare prescription bill, for example, was generally popular because it provided a clear and concrete benefit. Broader healthcare reform, however, is going to have a harder time. If there's no public option, for example, and most people simply keep the employer-based healthcare they already have, then what's the selling point? Most people will just see higher taxes funding better coverage for the poor, and you don't have to be the world's biggest cynic to understand that this isn't going to be overwhelmingly popular. Helping the poor is all well and good, but like it or not, most of us want to know what's in it for ourselves if our taxes are going up. That's just life.
Right now, we're running the risk that the answer is "not much." Healthcare reform needs a little more obvious sizzle if it's going to survive the coming tsunami of conservative agitprop, and the bills wending their way through Congress don't have much of that left...
Just a reminder to Democrats everywhere. Yes, it's sporting to find a "bipartisan" solution - but then the Republican party's strategy to make you fail. Yes, it's quite popular with newspapers to appear as a "moderate" by working with major institutions, like the health-insurance and health-care industries. Yes, I know you're always running scared, thinking about the next election, thinking about what your Republican opponent is going to say about you. But the bottom line is, you must pass health-care reform that's effective and meaningful for everybody.
Or else you'll lose.
You've now got the means. Use it, even if you have to bloody your knuckles to do so.
Ezra Klein recently noted that 1 in 4 coal-state Democrats voted against the recent cap-and-trade bill in the House, and saw that as a reason for optimism:
Even so, that means only one-in-four of the coal state Democrats voted no. I'd like to see those results drilled down to coal-dependent districts, but still, that's quite a bit less parochial defection than one might imagine. Indeed, hailing from a coal state wasn't nearly as strong a predictor of a given representative's vote than whether his district voted for Barack Obama. While one in four Democrats in coal states voted against cap-and-trade, three in five Democrats in districts that McCain carried voted against the bill. Similarly, seven of the eight Republicans who voted for the bill hailed from districts that Obama carried.
Another way of putting this is that the evidence suggests that this vote was less about parochial interests than partisanship and ideology. Plenty of Democrats from coal states made the judgment that they could defend this legislation to their constituents.
What's more interesting is that a quarter of the coal state Dems voted against the bill even though it had already been massively watered down to reflect coal state interests. In its current state, Waxman-Markey has very little effect on coal state interests for at least the next decade, and possibly for more like 20 years. But even so, lots of coal state Dems voted against it despite the fact that passage is a major goal of the party leadership, it's a major goal of the president, and it's the right thing to do. I'd call that pretty damn parochial.
But it may not be pressure from the coal industry that decides this thing in the Senate; instead, according to a New York Times report, it may be agricultural interests that does it in. And consider this insight from public policy professor, Barry Rabe:
[Agriculture] organizations wield greater clout in the Senate, because members there must be protective of an entire state, rather than a small congressional district, he said. With a huge swath of the country containing farmland, the complaints raise the possibility that a group will gain the ear of a sympathetic member of Congress with the power to filibuster, he said.
Sens. Baucus and Tester were singled out as especially vulnerable to the beef industry on the topic.
I'd also assume that energy lobbies would enjoy the same advantages over their states' Senators, and that coal-state defection would be at a higher rate than 1-in-4. And given that Montana is both a coal and agricultural state...I'd say we're not going to see support from Jon and Max on a cap-and-trade bill...unless we let them know anything else would be unacceptable.
I've tried to articulate this before, but most of the focus of Congressional health care reform has been on covering the uninsured and keeping health care costs down. But the New York Times has a report today that reminds us why we so desperately need a robust public option:
Health insurance is supposed to offer protection - both medically and financially. But as it turns out, an estimated three-quarters of people who are pushed into personal bankruptcy by medical problems actually had insurance when they got sick or were injured.
And so, even as Washington tries to cover the tens of millions of Americans without medical insurance, many health policy experts say simply giving everyone an insurance card will not be enough to fix what is wrong with the system.
As anyone who's ever held an insurance policy knows, having insurance isn't the same thing as having coverage.
There are those that don't realize this, like our state's only representative, Dennis Rehberg, who believes the problem with health care is limited to about 8 million Americans who don't have insurance. But then, if you're a multi-millionaire real estate developer with a nifty government-provided health insurance plan, your ignorance isn't all that surprising.
In essence, those that repeat the mantra, "single-payer, single-payer," are aware there's a difference between universal health care insurance and universal health care coverage, that a solution that gives the private insurance and pharmaceutical industries a leading role may not solve the problems we experience with health care. Will we still be bombarded with denial-of-claim slips every time we see a doctor? Will "pre-existing conditions" follow us to our graves? Will general practitioners still be driven out of business by the byzantine administrative requirements of insurers? Will we still have to work that crap desk job for that multinational corporation to keep our insurance? Will the insurers continue to abandon their promises in our times of greatest need?
Yes, it's fine that Congress is seeking to extend health care coverage to the uninsured. Yes, it's fine we're talking about health care exchanges that would allow consumers to buy the best coverage available at the best price. Yes, it's swell that Congress is looking at ways to reduce the cost of health care. But a health-care reform bill that doesn't directly address the pitfalls of private insurance and guarantees that insurance translates into coverage is a bill that doesn't address our nation's health-care crisis.
Trevis Butcher, Montanans in Action's treasurer and chief spokesperson, called Unsworth's findings "spurious" and "absurd." He said the investigation was part of a political vendetta stemming from Butcher's past support of term limits for Montana politicians.
"The Commissioner's office uses what are supposed to be the people's courts," Butcher said in a statement Monday, "to say, 'We'll ignore you and the signatures of 125,609 registered Montana voters. We'll make you waste hundreds of thousands dollars in legal fees. And we'll continue to do things just the way we want. Welcome to Helena, your state Capitol. Oh, and if you happen to get one by us, like term limits, we will punish you by any other means at our disposal then, now, and in the future.'"
That's Butcher's response to the conclusions of an investigation with which he refused to cooperate. Dennis Unsworth also apparently thinks Mr. Butcher broke the law by lying to or misleading investigators (maybe Jake Eaton can help Trevis duck those charges, though).
Here's the good news for Montanans:
"I honestly see this as a witch hunt, and we're going to stand up to it. Our legal team is right now reviewing this, and we'll obviously be prepared for whatever is ahead," Butcher said. "We really believe a citizen's right to free speech is fundamental to our form of government. This form of harassment is a real abuse to our constitutional rights."
Butcher's legal team to date has proved incompetent beyond belief. It must be hard to comply with the law when you don't believe in it -- and I don't mean an individual law, I mean the existence of any laws, period.
The full 105 page PDF is available for review online. If anyone finds time to read it, let us know: unfair harassment or Dennis Unsworth doing his job.
(Just wanted to put this back at the top. By all accounts, Helen Tester had a hell of a run and I know she was deeply, deeply loved by her family. I know a lot of our thoughts are with Jon, Sharla, and the whole Tester family. - promoted by Matt Singer)
Helen Tester, 89, died of natural causes this past Saturday.
Helen was a great person. She was a joy to know. I'm sure that anyone who had the pleasure of meeting Helen feels the same way I do, and feels keenly for the Testers' loss. My condolences to the family.
Here's a reprint of a Spokesman Review profile of Mrs. Helen Tester:
Mrs. Tester goes to Washington Helen's youngest son new junior senator for Montana
Jeri McCroskey
Correspondent
March 10, 2007
On Jan. 5, Helen Tester, who makes her home north of Hayden, flew to Washington, D.C., to see her youngest son, Jon, sworn in to office as the new junior senator from Montana.
"She had a ball - she was running on adrenalin," said her eldest son, local veterinarian Dr. David Tester. "Our family was going to visit the Capitol building and planned to climb the three flights of stairs into the dome, and my mother insisted she was going to go, too. I didn't think it was a good idea, and we didn't want her to try it. But she really wanted to go up there and thought she could make the climb."
Helen, who stands straight and tall and moves with confidence, celebrated her 87th birthday on Feb. 7.
On the day before the planned climb into the dome, the family visited the three floors of the Ford Theater, where John Wilkes Booth fired the shot that killed Abraham Lincoln. After negotiating the theater's stairways Helen announced, to the relief of her family, that she had changed her mind about climbing into the dome of the Capitol building.
The family also had scheduled a guided tour through other government buildings. "We got her a wheelchair," David Tester said, but, at first, she resisted the idea.
She now says that she was glad the family insisted on the wheelchair. "The buildings are so big and the halls so long and their floors are so hard and our guide took such big steps. ..." She shakes her head and smiles.
What buildings did she find most impressive? "We didn't have time for everything," she said. "We arrived in Washington on Tuesday and were there just four days."
The buildings she found particularly impressive were the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court building, and she loved the paintings, murals and statues that seemed to be everywhere.
"And, of course, there was the Lincoln Memorial," she added.
After the swearing-in ceremonies came receptions - tables spread with food and crowds filling the rooms.
"We were invited to the reception the Kennedy family hosted in one of the large rooms of the Capitol complex," she said. "An older woman came to where I was sitting and put her hand on my shoulder and introduced herself saying, 'We are so glad you are here.' It was Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Robert Kennedy. "I also met the Clintons, who were together at the reception."
"And," her son added, "She got a hug from Senator Obama."
She has pictures, taken by one of her nephews, to prove it.
Back home, far from the excitement of the nation's Capitol, Helen lives quietly in the house she and her late husband, David, built, next to her son David and his wife, Becky. Some of David's oxen and several horses graze just beyond her windows. She has two cats, Charlie and Kitty, and a dog who answers to Willie. She plays bridge regularly with other women who didn't realize she was the mother of a soon-to-be U.S. senator.
"I didn't talk about it until one day one of them asked if I was related to him," she said. "I told her, yes. Even though I didn't talk about my son's running for office, I feel it is very important for us to pay attention and know what is going on in Washington, to be informed. After all, those people are making decisions that are affecting our lives."
Helen and her husband turned their ranch at Big Sandy, Mont., over to Jon and his wife, Sharla, in 1978 and moved to the Rathdrum Prairie.
"After giving the farm to Jon and his family we didn't want to stay and be tempted to tell them how to do things," she said. "My husband became manager of the Kootenai County Fair and I agreed to be assistant manager. He did the talking and I did the work," she said. "He loved to talk to people."
On the subject of raising children, Helen said she feels the farm in the Big Sky Country was a great place. "The boys learned responsibility early because they had to help." Bob, the middle son and now retired, spent 32 years in the National Guard, and Jon, has farmed, taught school, served on both the local school board and in the Montana Legislature.
Helen explains one story that has been circulated about how Jon, , at the age of 9, lost three fingers on his left hand in a meat-cutting machine. The family had a small meat-cutting business on the farm and packaged meat for local people.
"I felt terrible about the accident," she said. "My husband had to go to town and Jon and I were just cleaning up. Jon tried to remove a shred of meat that had become caught and the blades just took the outside three fingers right off. They found the fingers later and if I had just thought maybe we could have packed them in ice and taken them with us to be sewed back on. They do that, you know. But," she shudders. "I was so anxious to get him to a doctor. My husband blamed himself, too."
The loss of the three fingers on his left hand changed Jon's ambitions to play the sax. David said that where they went to school, once you reached the age of 8 you could pick an instrument and learn how to play. "My brother picked the sax. But after the accident the sax was out, he didn't have the fingers needed," David said. "So he just changed to the trumpet."
"He never griped about the loss of the fingers," Helen added. "He just went ahead and did what he wanted to do."
That included forming a high school musical group that played for various events around the area. Jon also served as student body president. As a result of his musical experience, he was offered a scholarship in music to the University of Great Falls.
What do the sons believe their parents gave them in the way of a values for living their lives?
When asked, Jon said there is so much but, "I will just list three: Honesty; straight talk, don't beat around the bush. Just tell the truth. Hard work. Anything worth accomplishing will require hard work. Don't take your health and your family for granted. You cannot afford to lose either."
After more thought he added, "My folks were always positive about the future and were not afraid to go to work to affect change for their own future but more importantly for the next generations' future. Common sense played into their actions and I hope mine. They lead by example."
When it comes to her sons, of what is Helen most proud? She thinks for a moment before answering. "They are good, they are honest and they would do anything for me," she said. "They are just nice to be around."
...we're facing a clear and present danger to our way of life, perhaps even to civilization itself. How can anyone justify failing to act?
Well, sometimes even the most authoritative analyses get things wrong. And if dissenting opinion-makers and politicians based their dissent on hard work and hard thinking - if they had carefully studied the issue, consulted with experts and concluded that the overwhelming scientific consensus was misguided - they could at least claim to be acting responsibly.
But if you watched the debate on Friday, you didn't see people who've thought hard about a crucial issue, and are trying to do the right thing. What you saw, instead, were people who show no sign of being interested in the truth. They don't like the political and policy implications of climate change, so they've decided not to believe in it - and they'll grab any argument, no matter how disreputable, that feeds their denial.
Indeed, if there was a defining moment in Friday's debate, it was the declaration by Representative Paul Broun of Georgia that climate change is nothing but a "hoax" that has been "perpetrated out of the scientific community." I'd call this a crazy conspiracy theory, but doing so would actually be unfair to crazy conspiracy theorists. After all, to believe that global warming is a hoax you have to believe in a vast cabal consisting of thousands of scientists - a cabal so powerful that it has managed to create false records on everything from global temperatures to Arctic sea ice.
Yet Mr. Broun's declaration was met with applause....
Still, is it fair to call climate denial a form of treason? Isn't it politics as usual?
Yes, it is - and that's why it's unforgivable.
Do you remember the days when Bush administration officials claimed that terrorism posed an "existential threat" to America, a threat in whose face normal rules no longer applied? That was hyperbole - but the existential threat from climate change is all too real.
Of course, not quite understanding that Krugman was turning the right-wingers' use of the word "treason" against them - pointing out the hypocrisy of an earlier, hyperbolic use of the term for a threat that wasn't quite all that it was made out to be, by contrasting it with the same folks' laconic attitude towards an all-too real and present catastrophic threat - naturally the usual people went completely bath*t.
Mac: "...how can you look at a plan to save the planet and decide that it's too expensive?"
And Dan Savage has a d*mn good point as he mulls Kristof's column on the increasing number of male genital deformities and the ever-decreasing sperm cell count for which scientists think a certain class of chemicals found in "agriculture, industry, and consumer products" may be responsible. Savage:
Sperm counts are falling and birth defects in boys are increasing... and to address these problems we're going to need to change the way we grow food and eliminate certain chemicals used in tens of thousands of industrial and consumer products. These kinds of big systemic changes seem unlikely when you consider that making the simplest and most obvious changes to benefit the environment-things like banning plastic shopping bags-are nearly impossible, to say nothing of taking action on climate change. We're fucked. The planet is going to roast and our sons' penises are going to fall off.
And it's because of the selfish intransigence of consumers who threaten rebellion over sparkly dishes and the politicians that feed their ignorance and misdirect their anger. I mean, shouldn't these people be p*ssed at the corporations that put the poison into our environment, the businesses and ad agencies that conned consumers into believing that easy livin' was theirs for the low, low price...? Well, it turns out easy livin' does have a price. And the long-term payment plan is a b*tch.
Here's a sneak peak from John Adams about Dennis Unsworth slapping down Trevis Butcher's "Montanans In Action" for violating Montana campaign finance law during the 2006 election while campaigning for Howie Rich's terrible trio of ballot initiatives - CI 98, CI 97, and CI 154.
According to Adams' report, Unsworth found "substantial evidence" that "Montanans in Action" "violated the state's campaign finance reporting and disclosure laws by refusing to disclose the source of the $1.2 million the group spent on three ballot initiatives in 2006." Unsworth found "detailed connections" between Butcher's group and its 2006 campaign and Howie Rich's "Americans for Limited Government."
Not surprising if you followed Montana blogs that summer, when it was exposed that Howie Rich and the ALG were funding similar ballot initiatives across the country. (And, of course, Rich's own website eventually admitted its funding of the effort in Montana.) Montana's effort to put the initiatives on the ballot was marked by pervasive fraud from the paid signature gatherers shipped in from across the country, and the initiatives were thrown out, and an investigation into "Montanans In Action" was kicked off.
The result was this report.
Butcher's reaction? He said it was "nothing more than a political payback vendetta for stepping on the toes of big government by supporting term limits on Montana politicians."
Heh. Not entirely out of character for these *sshats. In short, apparently Mr. Butcher and his ilk believe they are above the law.
Dennis Unsworth:
The 2006 tactics suggest that the proponents of CI-97, CI-98, and I-154 may be more interested in seeking to invalidate campaign reporting laws that require public disclosure of the true source of money used to finance express campaign speech.
Sounds about right. Total contempt for the legal processes that comprise our democracy.
US Congressional candidate Dennis McDonald is today announcing his support for a single-payer health care plan. Over 100 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured, and when coupled with the high costs of health care it is clear that we can delay no longer in enacting comprehensive health care reform.
There is overwhelming public support for a single payer plan here in America. And as families continue to struggle financially across Montana, providing relief from high health care costs is a priority for McDonald.
One of the complaints (and rightfully so) of single-payer advocates is that single-payer health care is popular among Americans. Well, here's their chance to put that idea to the test: a single-payer candidate.
That position, of course, is in stark contrast to the incumbent, Dennis Rehberg's, who not only opposes any meaningful health care reform, but thinks the health care crisis is limited to about 1 in 50 Americans. (Maybe it is limited to 1 in 50 multi-millionaire real estate developers.)
I'm curious to see Tyler Gernant's reaction to this news. If Germant plays it cool, and doesn't endorse single-payer health care, this could be the big issue in the primary...
Of course, the situation isn't as simple as "democracy vs. authoritarianism," the way the WSJ would frame it. Nor is it simply "the people vs. power," as others would frame it. IMHO, MyDD's [Charles Lemos] explains it best:
President Manuel Zelaya's promotion of a referendum on constitutional changes plunged the small, poor Central American country into crisis by setting the president at odds with the military, the courts and the legislature who had branded the vote illegal. In his attempt to hold this non-binding referendum, President Zelaya deposed his Military Chief of Staff, which in Honduras remains a powerful post, ignored Congress, his own party and the country's Attorney General. The President refused to obey the Supreme Court's orders to reinstate General Romeo Vázquez, who had refuse to comply with an order to conduct the referendum. In Honduras, the military plays a role in conducting elections. President Zelaya undercut his own legal standing with his extra-constitutional attempts to amend the Constitution.
While President Zelaya paid the price for his strong arm tactics, his ouster hardly seems Constitutionally prescribed either. President Zelaya was dispatched into his exile in his pajamas. Troops surrounded the Presidential Palace at dawn. They took his cell phone, shoved him into a van and took him to an air force base, where he was put on a plane to San José, Costa Rica. I haven't read the Honduran Constitution but I doubt this is the procedure for impeachment.
It's not exactly a situation with clear-cut acts of injustice, is it? A bad event to hang your ideological hat on.
Still, with universal condemnation of the coup from American governments splayed out across the entire political spectrum, there's one thing that's clear: the Hondouran military overstepped its boundaries.
Which makes you wonder all the more why a group of US conservatives like the one who penned this editorial are so enthusiastic about military power being used to topple an elected leader...
