A Rasmussen poll was released today about the popularity of single-payer health care. According to the poll, only 32 percent favor single-payer health care, while 57 percent are opposed to it.
What to make of this? Without seeing the question, it's hard to make much of a conclusion. That's because the public's support of single-payer health care varies wildly depending how the question is asked. (Here's a link to previous polls for an illustration.) In fact, this Rasmussen poll is the first that found single-payer backers in the minority. Is it an outlier - or the result of months of Republican fear-mongering? Certainly those polled aren't overly familiar with the details of single-payer health care: only 24 percent thought that a single-payer system would lower costs.
In another, related poll, Rasmussen found that 51 percent "fear" the government more than private insurance companies. Which is kind of astounding, given that insurance companies have neither arms nor prisons. This poll, of course, is being used to explain why single-payer health insurance is unpopular; but those results belie the polls on Medicare users, who rate their insurance and care consistently higher than those who have private insurance. And we've seen how people react to the idea that Medicare benefits might be threatened. Yet a number of people don't realize that Medicare is a government program.
...public opinion polling is mostly useful under two basic conditions: when there is a clear choice regarding the issue being polled and when public information in the target population is high. Neither of those factor exist in regards to this poll. As such, it really isn't especially useful.
The astonishing ignorance around health care reform is reflected in the right-wing blog reaction to the Rasmussen poll.
Gaius of Blue Crab Boulevard writes, "Rasmussen's latest poll shows ObamaCare dropping like a rock," while Howie from the Jawa Report exults in the poll, chirping "Go ahead congress [sic], make the voters [sic] day, I double dog dare you." Of course, that single-payer health care has anything to do with any of the reforms being batted around in Congress has to come as a complete shock to single-payer advocates. We've discussed the details of the various plans ad naseum on this blog, so you know single-payer health care ain't in the equation.
Gateway Pundit ratchets up the ignorance: "Only 32% of Americans favor Obama's plan for a single-payer system," GP writes. "This video shows how ordinary Americans feel about getting socialized health care rammed down their throats by this Congress." Likewise, PowerLine's John confuses single-payer health care with socialized medicine:
Today's Rasmussen survey has data that shed considerable light on the health care debate. The question posed to likely voters was whether they favor a single-payer health care system. ("Single payer" is a euphemism for socialized medicine.) Americans overwhelmingly reject government medicine, 57-32 percent.
Of course, we've been over this before. "Socialized medicine" means that the government owns and runs all of the health care facilities and employs the health care workers. (Think VA.) "Single-payer health care" is a system where there's essentially one insurance provider. (It doesn't even have to be a government insurance provider.) Health care facilities and workers remain as they are.
Other little tidbits of ignorance abound in the reactions, too. Take this:
Obama says you can keep your plan if you like it (interestingly, he keeps saying that the entire system is broken and sucks, yet, you can keep the same health insurance that is broken and sucks?), and, he is correct. You can. Until you decide you want to make a change, even a tiny one. Then you must move into a government approved one. If you work for certain really big companies, you have a 5 year grace period before any change forces you into a government approved plan.
I have no idea what William Teach is talking about. "Government approved" plan? All insurance plans are already "government approved," in that they have to conform to the regulation and laws governing insurance in the various states. Or does he mean, a "government run" public option? Which is also false. I assume he's unclear on the concept of the Health Insurance Exchange, where people meeting certain criteria (right now in the written House proposal, those working in very small companies, the uninsured, and the unemployed) have the right to essentially shop around for the best plan, which might include a public option. But no one will be compelled to take any particular plan - although there's likely to be a mandate to take some kind of plan.
All-in-all, the profound ignorance seeping from these blogs is astonishing. And these are supposed to be the people who are, you know, actually interested in politics and policy. No wonder Tea Baggers are running around interrupting public meetings with slogans about "socialized medicine" and other delusional claims. They have no friggin' idea what they're actually protesting, do they?
The New York Times recently opined that the SCOTUS' DNA decision was "appalling," because it denied citizens the right to access conclusive evidence towards their guilt or innocence:
Thursday's ruling will inevitably allow some innocent people to languish in prison without having the chance to definitively prove their innocence and with the state never being completely certain of their guilt.
As a matter of public policy, there is a legitimate question of how best to chivvy the states along as they legislate access to what amounts to new evidence made available by advances in technology. However, as the WaPo explains, this was an awkward case on which prisoner's rights advocates chose to hang their hats, since the prisoner is almost surely guilty...
Here's the thing, both the innocent and the guilty have a guaranteed constitutional right of due process. Mr. Osborne - the defendant in the case - may, in fact, be guilty. But...why should suspected guilt be a deterrent to the test? Aren't all convicts assumed to be guilty? Should the courts be furthered burdened by resolving requests for DNA tests on a case-by-case basis? Should due process be extended only to the innocent?
As I've written, prosecutors have already fought numerous tests for convicts who were subsequently cleared by DNA tests; those tests, then, serve as a citizen's last recourse for justice against the arbitrary caprices of the state.
The big buzz on the 'Tubes today is about a DHS report on the increased danger of right-wing extremists:
The Department of Homeland Security is warning law enforcement officials about a rise in "rightwing extremist activity," saying the economic recession, the election of America's first black president and the return of a few disgruntled war veterans could swell the ranks of white-power militias.
A footnote attached to the report by the Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis defines "rightwing extremism in the United States" as including not just racist or hate groups, but also groups that reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority.
"It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single-issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration," the warning says.
Rightie bloggers have been apoplyeptic about the news -- Malkin's response is typical -- they claim it's a "hit job" on the right hours before their tax-day protests.
My initial reaction was two-fold. The first was, hey! I've been saying for years that right-wing extremism is a much more real and present threat than Islamic extremism. Or have we forgotten the violence latent in the anti-abortion movement? The militia movement? Timothy McVeigh? That the Bush administration and its agencies were focusing our attention on the Middle East -- and not terrorism, per se -- was a political decision. They used the specter of terrorism to further their foreign-policy objectives, not to actually combat or curb terror. Especially the rightwing domestic kind, because that's kind of embarrassing, isn't it?
Check out Steve Benen's post questioning George Will's accuracy. I don't really want to jump on the attack, though. Yes, Will's column on global warming was worse than shoddy, and it looks like Will's ego prevented at least one other correction of a column, but in general Will is one of the better columnists.
But why do we trust columnists? Bloggers -- at least the good ones -- link to the information or data that support their arguments. Objectively that makes blogs more trustworthy than print columns. (Yet, still, I wouldn't trust a blogger further than I could throw her.) What guarantee do we have that a syndecated columnist doesn't invent facts to support predetermined political bias?
Like Steve Benen noted, a correction for Will's column has yet to appear.
Keep a citizenry in submission to whatever it wants? What, like passing trillion dollar spending package in one month's time? Like the daily doom and gloom tour, promising that the economy will face an "economic crisis as deep and dire as any since the days of the Great Depression" unless this spend-ulus bill is passed? (Is President Obama guaranteeing that if the bill is passed, catastrophe will be avoided?)
I have to think that a terrorist attack on the US (which has actually happened) is at least as likely as an "irreversible" recession (which has not).
Note that the green line is not projected job losses, but actual job losses.
Let's see. On one hand, you have the right-wing fantasy of the extinction of Western civilization by "Islamo-fascists" and the need to jettison all of our civil liberties to prevent it...
...on the other, you have an actual recession, thousands out of jobs, foreclosures, and an economic stimulus strategy that's supported by Nobel winners that should, at least, mitigate the effects of the downturn.
The terrorist threats might have been real, but we know now that a lot of the "facts" marshalled to support the rhetoric wasn't. In the case of the economic crisis, though, maybe Americans aren't panicking as much as they should: the job market spiraldown continues, and more apocalyptically, the rate of decline is picking up. The labor force is contracting rapidly; the unemployment rate is close to its 1990s peak at 7.8%. (Want higher than that? Go to the 1970s.) Americans are working fewer hours, too. Scary! Christina Romer, the White House's chief economist, noted that of the 3.6 million jobs lost over the past year, most of them have been lost in the last four months. The rate is comparable to the rate recorded by economists in 1938, during the....yep.
...she had a kind word for President-elect Barack Obama, who she said called her during the campaign to wish her luck.
"He was cool," Ms. Palin said, with almost a giggle. "He said, 'good luck, but not that much luck.'"
In the interview, she also basically said whether she runs again in 2012 will be up to God. Oh, and she said this, too:
Ms. Palin directed most of her media criticism at liberal bloggers, whom she twice called, "those bloggers in their parents' basement just talkin' garbage."
D*mn, I'd get angry about this if weren't so d*mn cold down here. Gotta talk to my Mom about getting a space heater or something...
I understand that it's a rough year to be a Republican. I understand that it's rough having conservative ideals, and watching them fail, spectacularly. Conservative foreign policy gave us Iraq. Conservative governance gave us the prosecutor purge, deficeits, collapsing bridges, torture, and the banking crisis. I also understand it's human nature to retract and get defensive rather than fess up and change your way.
Still, the rhetoric emanating from the right over the Obama campaign is, frankly, reprehensible.
Kevin Drum posted a compiliation of some recent examples a couple of weeks ago:
One: Bill Ayers really wrote Obama's book, Dreams From My Father. Two: Obama had an underage, gay affair with a pedophile. (That, by the way, is called "molestation," folks. -- Jay) Three: It's entirely possible that Obama was involved with bombing the South African rugby team while he was at Columbia in the 80s. Four: Obama, Bill Ayers, and Jeremiah Wright (via a chain of associations too Rube Goldbergesque to summarize) were engaged in a conspiracy to teach Pan-African "cultural nationalism" to Chicago schoolkids during the 90s. Five: Obama was having an affair with one of his fundraiser babes in 2004 until Michelle found out and banished the woman to a "little Caribbean island."
And then there was serious discussion about whether Obama is a Maoist or a Stalinist...and this was at the Corner, the blog for the National Review, a "reputable" magazine. This week's hooplah is that Obama was accused of altering a United States flag to put an "O" in the field of stars and standing it alongside US flags during a speech in Toledo. Turns out it was an Ohio state flag. To sum it up, apparently Obama is a "black Muslim, anti-Christian socialist plotting with an evil Jewish billionaire."
And let's not ignore the fact that a lot of this is encouraged, if not abetted by the McCain/Palin ticket. It's McCain and Palin, for example, who are pushing the Bill Ayers line of attack. It's McCain/Palin who are pushing the ACORN story. It's Sarah Palin who's identifying certain areas of the country as "pro-America."
But we're in this mess, ultimately, because our political elites thought it was good social policy to encourage banks to give mortgages to uncreditworthy people, resulting in what Sailer months ago called the "Diversity Recession" (if this doesn't work, make that the Diversity Depression). In other words, if poor people in general, or blacks or Hispanics in particular, were less likely to be approved for a mortgage, the only possible reason was racism or classism or whatever. Thus "creditworthiness" was an illegitimate, dead-white-male concept, like middleclassness. Because, after all, isn't everyone entitled to credit? Therefore, I propose any bailout bill start with these words: "It is the sense of Congress that credit is not a civil right."
A fascinating case involving a libel suit and anonymous comments posted on the Billings Gazette was decided yesterday. Basically Judge G. Todd Baugh decided that Montana's shield law that "protects reporters from disclosing anonymous sources" also protects the identity of anonymous commenters.
At the end of a hearing into the Gazette's motion on Wednesday, Baugh said the state's Media Confidentiality Act protects the newspaper from being forced to provide the information sought by Doty.
Baugh also noted that the information Doty was seeking from The Gazette was related to comments made long after the 2004 campaign. The judge asked Doty whether the anonymous comments have enough credibility to reach the legal requirements of libel and defamation.
"I can't imagine an anonymous comment has much credence whatsoever," Baugh said.
Everywhere today the talk is Brian Schweitzer. That's the buzz. From national news sources to bloggers, the reaction is nearly the same. Schweitzer brought the crowd to life. Schweitzer stole the show from Warner.
But not everyone's happy. Erik Iverson's response to the Schweitzer coup? "'He took it up a notch in the partisan department,' said Erik Iverson. 'What struck me about (the speech) is it's not the Brian Schweitzer he tries to portray back here in Montana, where he runs with (Lt. Gov.) John Bohlinger being a Republican, and working in a bipartisan fashion.'"
Everyone says Iverson is a smart guy, but I think he's in a little over his head here. Incredibly lame response to a stellar performance on a national stage by the Governor. Iverson's response is going to look petty, mean-spirited, and partisan to Montanans who, today, are proud of how their governor wowed the nation.
Okay, I've been a little lax in describing what it's like here at convention, I admit. In short, it's complete chaos. A "Fear and Loathing"-style Convention would be easy enough to do. Who would notice that you're completely drug-addled? And frankly, between all the different events and forums and panels and meetings and dinners and conventioneering, there's not much time for reflection, let alone writing.
Brian Schweitzer in the Big Tent. Courtesy of Left In Alabama.
My typical day:
Up at 6:30am. Stumble groggily into shower. Dress.
Breakfast at 7:00am. With the delegation downstairs. A great way to start the day. Lots of good people hanging out and talking politics. History of Montana politics, gossip, districts or races in trouble, etc & co. I like to sit near Michele Reinhart because she's cool. Typically Matt Singer sleeps through breakfast. Lots of coffee, lots of liquids...
Sorry for the absence of posts. To be honest, everything's been a logistical nightmare, and right now is the first time I've been able to get an Internet connection.
I'm in the Big Tent; today was jhwygirl's day to sit with the delegation, but she's been given the runaround on her accreditation. She's been looking for credentials all day to no avail.
I'll keep you posted, and hopefully we'll be seated in time for Schweitzer's speech tomorrow night...
I'll have a post in a little while about the Oregon Bus project and the rest of the trip to Denver, as well as some posts on other topics later...
It took twenty-six hours to get from Denver. That's right. Twenty six. Basically we zig-zagged across the West, visiting some of the region's finest cultural landmarks, crawling, crawling to Denver.
Looks who's going to be a story at the Convention! Those Dirty F*cking Hippies (TM), the bloggers!
Hosted by Daily Kos, Progress Now, and the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado, the Big Tent will be a 9,000-square foot, two-story erected structure a few blocks away from the Pepsi Center where the convention will be held. It will be specifically geared toward new media - bloggers, podcasters, vloggers- and its sponsors include both Google and Digg.
Aaron Nelson, project director for the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado, told me that the discussion for organizing the tent began about seven or eight months ago.
"We recognize that more and more people are turning to new media and as a result new media has become a powerful driving force," he said. "We're providing access to resources and platforms to discuss politics and sustainability. We made it a non-partisan event and bloggers that have access to our tent represent this. For example we have people from Daily Kos and we also have bloggers from the Heritage Foundation - completely different sides of the spectrum."
(The Heritage Foundation???)
Ah, yes. The Big Tent. I'm glad to tell you all, that not only did your LiTW bloggers -- Matt, jhwygirl, and me -- get credentialed to sit with Montana's delegation, we also got passes to the Big Tent. So we've got pretty good access and can hopefully keep you appraised of what's going on, and what it's like to be at a Convention. (Tho' frankly, I'm thinking the bloggers' hotel room is going to be the place to be.)
It's finally sinking in that I'm actually going to this thing. Saturday night we're meeting up with the Oregon Bus Project's...well...bus in Idaho, driving all night to Denver. (With a French film crew tagging along?) And then -- we're there!
Anyhow, with the media's insatiable quest for stories, expect some coverage of bloggers at this convention, especially of the credentialed 50 "official" blogs, etc & co. And given this blog's insatiable quest for post fodder, expect to find some coverage of the coverage of blogs. We'll stand around pointing our cameras at one another! What fun!
Update: Hey! The Big Tent has its own website! And a Big Tent cam! There'll also be live-streaming of the Big Tent stage for all of the interviews and speeches, so you'll be able to peek in and see what's up. No doubt you'll see the LiTW gang downing their booze and food...
This is a pretty funny story: apparently Bill Donohue of the paleo-conservative Catholic League sifted through all 120 blogs credentialed for the Democratic National Convention, looking for offensive material.
Besides displaying a middle-finger waving child on the main page, Bitch posted on some balloon Jesuses she didn't like. Towleroad offended Donohue by unabashedly flaunting its "homosexual tendencies" and criticizing the Pope's choice in cape-wear.
The question here is, how in the world did Left in the West pass muster with the Catholic League? I mean, I'm an advocateof gay marriage and accused the conservative movement of being unhealthily obsessed with gay sex. I've also poked fun at folks who believe in creationism and applauded a California court for ruling denying students of religious schools credit for classes that substitute religion for academic rigor.
I mean, what does a blog have to do to get on Donohue's sh*t list?
Last week, Ochenski penned a column about his friend, Jackie Corr. He reiterated Corr's beliefs and political interests, his fervid antipathy for big corporations, their machinations against everyday people and the obsequious politicos that serve them. In short, he was kick *ss.
Ochenski recalled a specific event that Corr influenced, thanks to his "indefatigable research" and his flood of emails:
Jackie...is probably the single individual in this state most responsible for heading off the purchase of NorthWestern Energy by the Australian firm of Babcock-Brown (BBI).
Thanks to Jackie, members of the Montana Public Service Commission (PSC) were fully apprised of BBI's vast network of international business deals and the fallout from those deals. While Paul Polzin, the former head of the University of Montana's Bureau of Business and Economic Research, was cheerleading for the takeover, Jackie was busy sending hard data and news articles from around the world to reporters, columnists and those whose votes would ultimately decide the matter. In the end, Polzin turned out to be wrong, while Jackie, the man behind the scenes, turned out to be right when BBI's shares plummeted 27 percent just last month due to short selling and concerns about its debt levels. Not a bad call for a Butte taxi driver, eh?
Man, I had forgotten about that! It was Jackie! H*ll, he flooded my email inbox, too, and it was one of the times I ran with the information he sent me. I did a little research and learned a little about the sleazy business of corporate tax shelters and wrote a post (and someothers) that made both the Notorious Mark T and Dave Budge cringe. (It doesn't get any better than that!)
The point here is that Jackie knew a lot of stuff and tried to point me to good stories. When I chased his emails down, I was more often than not rewarded. But there were too many emails, too much to look up.
Well the emails have stopped. But I still have dozens in my inbox. So here's what I'm going to do. Every now and then, I'll dip into my email and retrieve a Jackie Corr email. I'll do a little research, and report back to you in a post. Hopefully in the end through the work I'll help seed another Jackie Corr or two. Lord knows we need 'em.
So, Dave Rye encounters someone with an advanced degree from the Harvard School of Education, a law degree from the University of Montana, who clerked for the Montana Supreme Court, who taught school in Browning and New Town, North Dakota, who worked in a law firm and in the Office of Public Instruction...
My question isn't for Dave Rye, it's for his boss, Taylor Brown -- now running for a state senate seat -- why the h*ll is this guy working for you as the voice of your radio network? Is this the kind of "leadership" you're going to bring to the state legislature?
I couldn't help notice Montana Headlines' gratuitous swipe at the left netroots community today -- which is as mean-spirited as it is false. It all starts with Fox News "liberal," Kristen Powers, who called netroots leftys "ninnies" because of their "obsession about Obama's recent flip-flop on FISA":
Newsflash to the netroots and the media (which seems perpetually confused on this issue): The netroots are not the base of the Democratic Party.
Overwhelmingly white, male and highly educated, they're a loud anomaly in a party that's wholly dependent on the votes of African Americans, women and working-class whites.
First, Powers is about as "liberal" as Tokyo Rose was a good American patriot. Just as you'd expect misleading propaganda to fall from the lips of a personality on Axis radio, so should you expect a "liberal" promoted both by Fox News and the New York Post to be...well...not particularly up front about her motives. In short, she's the television version of a concern troll. Her mission: to drive a wedge between different groups in the Democratic party. (No wonder she's MH's favorite liberal!)
But is the progressive netroots "overwhelmingly white, male and highly educated"? The short answer: No. This is a movement who's "blogfather" is a first generation Latino-Greek who put himself through college with his military service. Several majorblogs include womencontributors or founders. As for "highly educated" -- what do Powers mean by that? College educated? Probably. PhDs? No. Would it matter anyway? No.
There's no doubt that the majority of bloggers are white men, that the netroots don't mirror the multicultural and class composition of the entire left. But -- unlike what MH insinuates -- that it's part of some institutional classism, sexism, and racism, inherent to the left -- well, all you have to do is look at the rightie 'sphere and the Republican establishment, which is overwhelmingly white and male, and you immediately realize that the marginalization of nonwhite, nonmale people and those of nonprofessional classes is a cultural problem. At least lefty bloggers, say, are trying to swim against the current.
To drum up the idea of a white, male overseer class in lefty politics, MH trots out a tired 80s era wisecrack that liberals seek to erect "a welfare state with a highly centralized government" and to install themselves as its bosses. Of course, what liberals and progressives want is an egalitarian society that offers all full and equal opportunity to succeed, prosper, and contribute to society. It is true that we don't always rule out government solutions or government-aided programs to ensure that egalitarianism, and that we think that government should be run as efficiently and effectively as possible and needs good, competent administrators to function. There's nothing wrong with working for the government -- if you do a good job.
Ironically, I suspect that not a few conservatives who read MH or LiTW are themselves members of government. They might not agree with MH's assessment as to our goverment workers' roles. Or they may. After all, which party was it that seeks to centralize government? Which president passed No Child Left Behind? Which president enacted the most far-reaching and intrusive domestic spy network in the history of the republic? Which president has blocked states' efforts to set its own legislative agendas, time after time? (Think California's emissions standards, or Montana's legalization medicinal marijuana.)
Of course, past and current Democratic members of government have been just as bad at clutching power and wanting to maintain or extend the power of the federal government. But isn't that more the result of the corrupting quality of money and power than it is of ideology? The natural reaction is to call for more sunlight on government activity -- but where are the conservatives in the call for ethics reform?
But the worst offense in MH's post was the insinuation that the netroots' problem with the recent FISA bill was a matter of a "transgression against progressive purity," and the proper subject of disdainful amusement.
Since when have civil liberties become a matter of "progressive purity"? Are we the only supporters of individuals' protections from unwarranted surveillance by the government? Are we the last group of people in the country who believing in inalieable rights? I'm not so sure we are -- and I'm certain we shouldn't be. Certainly there wasn't much support for the bill and for retroactive telecomm immunity, and certainly not from the Democratic "base," as Powers insinuated. Most folks shrugged, because they didn't really see the harm in it, and most Republicans and conservatives seemed to meekly support it because their "team" invented it.
But in the end, where you stand on the FISA bill reflects where you stand on constitutional guarantees of liberty. If you supported it, you think that certain freedoms and liberties should be curtailed in the interest of a greater national good. In short, you view our rights, in John Rawls' words, as a "socially useful illusion." The problem with that, of course, is that now any right can be limited if it's seen to serve public and societal utility -- but just who decides what's good, just, and useful?
In the end, if you opposed the FISA bill, you support inviolate rights, which extend even to those you don't like or disagree with. In 2009, when Barack Obama is sworn in as president, and our nation's intelligency agencies start tuning their equipment into the conversations and personal information of conservative activists and ideologues, I'll still oppose FISA.
It's ironc then, in the second half of MH's post, after a lengthy rehash of regurgitated talking-points, he writes this:
It is unfortunately true, of course, that all too many posts in regional blogs like those found in the Montana blogosphere simply rehash talking points about national politics that have already been endlessly regurgitated.
