Today David Sirota warns of the demise of the Democratic party if high-finance candidates represent the party, using the upcoming Illinois Senate Democratic primary as an illustration. In that race, the bank owned by Senate candidate and Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias' family was chided recently by state regulators for essentially funneling depositors' funds into owners' pockets instead of the institution's reserves. As the Bloomberg analysis Sirota linked to points out, it's a bad time to run a high-fiance scandal-plagued candidate for office.
Sirota:
Thus, if Giannoulias, it would be a clear disaster. He is literally the walking personification of all that the public clearly despises right now - an Establishment politician closely connected to the industry that has destroyed the economy.
With him as the nominee, Democrats could lose yet another senate seat, and more broadly, they could lose any national high ground they need to reclaim. At a time when the Democratic Party desperately needs to reclaim the populist economic mantle and prevent Republicans from being able to mount their own right-wing populist campaign, Giannoulias would become the face of a Democratic Party that has already become increasingly synonymous in voters minds with the most hated aspects of the financial industry.
Like Sirota, I've been railing against big business and its too-cozy relationship with government for...years? At least ever since I've had a blog to write on. And one of the most egregious abuses of taxpayer money was the recent bank bailout, in which the high-finance institutions that caused the recent financial crash with rampant and irresponsible investing after lobbying the government to deregulate its industry received billions. (Meanwhile, we can't even pass a health care bill that would give subsidies to people without health insurance.)
There's been some financial regulatory bills circulating in Congress - most notably Chris Dodd's, which, among other things, would create a Consumer Protection Agency intended to streamline bank and finance regulations and protect consumers from the predatory actions of lenders. (Hint: you can't have a "free" market without consumer access to information and protection from swindlers.) And in the SOTU speech yesterday, President Obama vowed to impose a "fee" on the high-finance institutions that caused the crash.
Tester is less enthusiastic about the administration's plan to impose a new tax on financial firms that received government aid through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.
"I'm very concerned that the tax could be passed on to customers," said Tester, who called for the idea to get close examination by lawmakers....
Proposals to create a new consumer financial protection agency aren't high on Tester's list of desired changes, though.
"Fundamentally, I'm not crazy about building another agency," he said, but added that the idea "wouldn't be a deal-killer on my part" and indicated that Senate lawmakers are debating whether the consumer-protection function might be folded into an existing agency, rather than assigned to a newly created one.
That's right. Our progressive populist Montana farmer is planning to use his Senate Banking Committee to...oppose consumer protection and a tax on big banks?
Let's be frank. Banks are not popular. And the Democratic party is quickly becoming identified with high financial interests, not only in Illinois, but apparently closer to home, in Montana.
And hasn't Jon seen the results of the Massachusetts special election? They weren't clamoring for more backroom dealing and a cozier relationship with corporate America. They voted against Coakley because she was seen as the establishment candidate. This position is electoral suicide. And it's bad policy.
Look, I'm fine with Jon being a one-term Senator...if he lost his seat fighting for his core values. But this? Defending huge, East Coast financial institutions' interests from the little guy?
"Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests- including foreign corporations- to spend without limit in our elections," Obama said. "Well I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that's why I'm urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong."
Justice Alito was seen mouthing the words, "not true," during this passage. Reaction from the right is hilarious.
In the history of the State of the Union has any President ever called out the Supreme Court by name, and egged on the Congress to jeer a Supreme Court decision, while the Justices were seated politely before him surrounded by hundreds Congressmen? To call upon the Congress to countermand (somehow) by statute a constitutional decision, indeed a decision applying the First Amendment? What can this possibly accomplish besides alienating Justice Kennedy who wrote the opinion being attacked. Contrary to what we heard during the last administration, the Court may certainly be the object of presidential criticism without posing any threat to its independence. But this was a truly shocking lack of decorum and disrespect towards the Supreme Court for which an apology is in order. A new tone indeed.
This is certainly somewhat different than previous outcry from conservatives about "judicial activism," eh? Especially when Citizens United was an actual example of judicial activism, where conservative SCOTUS justices saw fit to greatly expand the scope of a case brought before them to undo a century of precedent concerning the regulation of corporate money and politics. And as former SCOTUS justice, Sandra Day O'Connor, noted, Citizens United poses more of a threat to the reputation, independence, and efficacy of our judicial system than any paragraph in a speech ever could:
She added that last week's decision was likely to create "an increasing problem for maintaining an independent judiciary."
"In invalidating some of the existing checks on campaign spending," Justice O'Connor said, "the majority in Citizens United has signaled that the problem of campaign contributions in judicial elections might get considerably worse and quite soon."
But based on previous rulings by the SCOTUS' conservative majority - from Bush v Gore to rulings on voter ID laws to Citizens United - it appears that some justices think the law should align with corporatist Republican electoral strategy by discouraging voters from going to the polls and removing roadblocks on corporations to allow them to dictate policy.
I do get sick of the way everything revolves around boomer narratives. We all joke about hippie-punching, but when Joe Klein goes off on the "far left" (or whatever he calls us now), that is what he thinks he's doing. And the electorate is polarized along age lines as never before (since the advent of demographically detailed exit polls), though the greatest divide is between those over 65 (who are too old to be boomers) and those under 30, not between Leno's generation and Conan's.
Wulfgar! mentions that a Boomer's been harassing him about how his generation could organize and "get things done," apparently contrasting that to how kiddies organize these days. I'll get to that canard in a moment, but first I want to touch on something similar I heard recently from a respected source, that young voters abandoned Obama "just like they did McGovern," and that his campaign was therefore essentially illusory.
Or, as Hunter S. Thompson said about the youth vote in 2004, "yeah, we rocked the vote all right. Those little bastards betrayed us again."
But here's the thing. McGovern, despite all the organizing around young voters, barely topped Nixon among 18 to 29 year olds, as Nixon carried 48 percent of that age group. Compare that to 2008 voting statistics: 18 to 29 year olds went sixty-six percent for Obama. And turnout for the young in 2008 was fractions of a percentage point from matching that generation's record-setting turnout rate in 1972, the first year that 18 to 20 year olds had the right to vote.
Young voters are still supportive of Democrats. According to a forwarded email from CIRCLE, young voters went for Coakley in the Massachusetts special election at a 58 - 40 rate...but only with a 19 percent turnout rate. But then Coakley didn't bother with any GOTV aimed at her biggest supporters.
The way I see it, is that Obama did a much better job organizing and appealing to the young than the McGovern campaign. I think Coakley's campaign illustrates that you still have to earn their votes every election. The lesson? Winning the youth vote - and elections - means pursuing good, progressive issues that impact the young, and rolling up your sleeves to get them to the polls.
Young voters are hardly the vanishing and illusory voting bloc that many long-time politicos believe...it's just that, for many establishment politicos, the work, creativity, and risk-taking policy agendas needed to woo them aren't worth the effort.
There's been a lot of angry comments from the left over Congressional Democrats' and President Obama's job performance thus far this year. But it's not all universal. To some, Obama's first year in office has been historical in the amount of progressive legislation or government functions that have been passed or implemented.
For one, Kossak bacalove posted Professor Robert Watson's list of Obama's "90 accomplishments" during his first term. Watson claimed Obama's "first six months have been even more active than FDRs or LBJs..."
Sadly, though, Watson's list is peppered with meaningless items. Like #1: "ordered all federal agencies to undertake a study and make recommendations for ways to cut spending." Uh, call me a cynic... Other items are nice, but neither critical nor transformative, like #5, "families of fallen soldiers have expenses covered to be on hand when the body arrives at Dover AFB." Yes, it's a meaningful gesture to the troops and their families, and is likely to have positive effects on troop morale, but it's a service provided for a few, not a major "accomplishment."
Don't know if any of y'all caught the "Rethink 08" discussion, but the one thing it did for me was to cause me to question the very premise of the whole project.
Again, the genesis of the project from the Indy report:
During a visit to the University of Montana Oct. 8, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina spoke briefly about the political fire ignited among America's youth by President Barack Obama's 2008 campaign. Their passion, sparked by the unconventional tools of the digital age, helped sweep Obama into office.
But Messina's comments painted a discouraging picture for the future of that movement. He said voters ages 18 to 29 continue to rally around the issue of climate change, but the enthusiasm generated by the Obama camp has cooled over the last nine months....
In the wake of Messina's visit, Bloomsburg and seven other UM journalism students grew increasingly puzzled about the change of heart during the first months of Obama's presidency. They began asking young voters in Missoula a compelling question: If you could recast your 2008 presidential vote, would you?
Rethink 08 seems to be based on certain assumptions. First, that young voters are disproportionately unenthusiastic about the president - falling into the old meme that the young are unreliable - and that this un-enthusiasm would manifest itself into a turn to the right, that voters might have opted for the other guy if they had the information in 2008 they possess now.
Before the Rethink 08 discussion kicks off, I thought I'd kick in my own two cents on the topic. And I'll start with a quote from Markos Moulitsas:
A look at key Democratic constituencies shows how demoralized the party's base currently is. Among African-Americans, just 34 percent are likely to vote, versus 54 percent unlikely to do so. Republican-leaning white voters clocked in at 66-29. Only 41 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds, a key constituency for Democrats in both 2006 and 2008, are likely to vote, compared to 49 percent likely to sit things out.
If these numbers hold for the next year, it won't matter what those generic congressional ballot questions say, nor will it matter whether Democrats can increase their performance with independent voters. If base Democratic voters don't turn out, like what happened in New Jersey and Virginia this year, Democrats will suffer at the ballot box.
Moulitsas attributes the drop in the base's enthusiasm to the moribund policies of Democrats, the endless wrangling in Congress over a less-than-stellar healthcare reform bill, the Afghan escalation, etc & co. I think he's right on - up to a point. Let's face it: the majority of voters have only a passing familiarity, say, with the details of healthcare reform, and it's likely most support the president's decision about increasing troop levels in Afghanistan. Nor is the administration's foot-dragging on DOMA or DADT probably even familiar to most of the electorate. In short, I don't think it's policy alone that's dampened Democratic voters.
To understand the current mood of Democrat-voting citizens, I think you have to go back to Obama's campaign and its rhetoric. It was bold, and hopeful. A campaign for change! And while the hope and change were worded in vague terms to allow voters to project their own values onto the campaign, the overriding sense was that Obama's election would usher in a new post-partisan government, with mature, reasonable men and women working soberly to solve the country's most pressing problems: climate change, Iraq, the economy. We were - are - in a time of crisis, and Obama's election was meant to be a signal for maturity and action.
Obviously that hasn't happened.
I don't think voters necessarily blame the president. He still has high approval ratings, given the low scores voters give to, say, the direction the country's moving in, or the attitude towards healthcare reform. Instead, I think many Obama supporters look at DC, hear the rabid Beck-ian insanity on the lips of Republicans, see the gridlock in Congress and the paucity of legislation, and grow discouraged. We worked our *sses off to elect Obama and usher in a new era of politics - and nothing happened. Nothing's happening.
Not that Obama has helped much. It's easy to forget after the bold proclamations of the campaign season and the magnificence of the campaign itself in the way it was organized and run that Obama is essentially a legislator. Instead of a bold push for a legislative slate from the White House, we see the president hand over critical reform to Congress, letting Congressional committees draft tepid, overly compromised bills. Where's the Green New Deal? What happened to single-payer healthcare?
Now, I'm not saying this wasn't the best way to get something done, that it isn't realistic or pragmatic. But it's also discouraging, ineffective reform. The president - and a lot of Democrats - seem completely unaware they can drive the media narrative, not just react to it with paranoia and skittish, scuttling side-steps to the right. The Bush administration got it. They were an inept, amoral, egoistical bunch whose policies were national disasters, but they understood how to control the narrative and push through an ambitious agenda. Why can't the president do that - but with good policies and ideas? Answer: he's a legislator, as is his CoS, Emmanuel. They think in terms of intra-legislative compromises and negotiations, of committeework and votes.
But we want to be inspired. We want to work for tangible and beautiful goals.
During a visit to the University of Montana Oct. 8, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina spoke briefly about the political fire ignited among America's youth by President Barack Obama's 2008 campaign. Their passion, sparked by the unconventional tools of the digital age, helped sweep Obama into office.
But Messina's comments painted a discouraging picture for the future of that movement. He said voters ages 18 to 29 continue to rally around the issue of climate change, but the enthusiasm generated by the Obama camp has cooled over the last nine months.
The question of why (or if) enthusiasm for Obama among young people has declined intrigued some members of UM's journalism program, enough for them to start a seminar that "seeks to answer why youth enthusiasm is dwindling."
Counterpoint from Forward Montana's Chief of Stuff, John Bacino:
In general, the most common complaint heard so far is the pace by which change has occurred under the Obama administration, said Bloomsburg. Most had hoped for more immediate results.
"We need to keep in mind, even after so much effort by so many people, (government) still moves slowly," Bacino said.
While Bacino supports questioning the effectiveness of elected leaders, he thinks Rethink'08 may be asking these questions prematurely. It's only been a year, he said. And sure, some polls show a decline in Obama's approval ratings among young voters. But the highest declines are among other age groups, he said.
Asking what happened to the enthusiasm for the 2008 presidential election is like asking "what happened to the enthusiasm associated with last year's World Series," Bacino said.
IMHO, while Obama has made some very questionable moves - defending DOMA in Bush-ian language, compromising on Gitmo detainees, using Bush Doctrine language to support the Afghan troop escalation - blame for stalled or sputtering reform lies with Congress. From the Indy report:
"She's still very active in politics and still definitely approves of Obama," Bloomsburg says of [young voter Chavvahn]Gade, who interned in Obama's Senate office during the election. "Where she was disappointed really was in the Democratic Party itself, particularly [Sen. Max] Baucus. She feels like she worked so hard to get Obama into office and was very excited for it. Now that the Democrats control everything, she feels they should be getting more done."
So...has enthusiasm for politics among the young waned? Or is it enthusiasm for Obama that's waned? Or Democrats? Or will the young be back at election time?
According to the Rethink 08 website, there'll be on online discussion about these questions between Missoula city councilman Jason Wiener, U of M poly sci professor Jeffrey Greene, and poly sci grad, Ctibor Jappel tomorrow at 2pm...
But why wait? Let's kick off the discussion now...
The news last weekend of the death of White Sulfur Springs soldier, Michael Rogers, in Iraq was a grim omen of Barack Obama's decision to send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. Rogers' death reminds us that war has a grim arithmetic. More Americans will die because of Obama's decision. More Afghanis will die because of Obama's decision.
Me? I'm not really sure I know what the right decision is. I really like Fred Kaplan's take on the war, not necessarily because of the suppositions, but because he honestly feels gross ambivalence about what to do:
Columnists are supposed to have firm views and express them with steadfast certainty. Since I write a column called "War Stories," the least a reader might expect from me is a clear opinion on whether the United States should escalate or pull out of the war in Afghanistan.
Recently, a friend told me that he couldn't quite figure out where I stood on the issue. I replied that I couldn't quite figure it out, either.
Personally, I supported going into Afghanistan. The Taliban - unlike Saddam Hussein - was connected to al Qaeda, and was harboring Osama bin Laden. Seemed the right thing to do. But now? It seems like our only goal is to keep the Taliban from returning to power. A fool's errand at which we keep throwing troops and money, hoping that the political and cultural system will somehow magically change while we're there. And while we all squabble over health care reform - you know, on programs that actually help people, that improve health and lives - we're throwing a sh*tload of money at a black hole of a war, without knowing why we're there, or what it is we're actually trying to accomplish.
Seymour Hersh was on Fresh Air recently, talking about the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. He had this to say in reaction the news that President Obama had demanded an "exit strategy" from Afghanistan from his national security team:
...this could be a...really important step for the president. Because many are concerned...about the fact that he delegated much of the war-making policy to the generals in the field...There isn't a general in the armed forces asked to do that would say, I can't win...So he put himself into a box, and he was very passive for a long time about it. That's why, if you had asked me four days ago about it, I would have thought he was going to make a political decision to do something, to send some token troops, because he doesn't want to lose more independents, he wants to show he can run the war, he can be a tough guy.
But what Obama's done - if he has done what he seems to have done - is he's telling the military, you know what? I don't think it's going to fly. This is huge, because he's basically saying, I'm not going to play politics with the war, I'm not going to do what other presidents have and continue fighting a war that I don't think we can win, and I'm just stalling for time until I can find a way out.
That's what I would have guessed three or four days ago.
Well, Obama's speech last night didn't exactly signal a break from the kind of politicking with the war that Hersh was hoping for - Rachel Maddow even compared Obama's rhetoric to the "Bush Doctrine", the radical rhetoric that endorsed pre-emptive war - but he did set a kind of amorphous exit timeline, something that hasn't yet been discussed for Afghanistan. Still, it reeks of compromise and politics. Worse, all the support from the same folks who were egregiously wrong about Bush's foreign policy - Fred Barnes at the Weekly Standard, say, and otherassortedrighties - should give us pause.
The reality is that any justification for us going into Afghanistan in the first place is long gone. We're there to baldly protect our own "national" interests, which obviously have more to do with the exchange of commodities than they do with national security or democracy or anything like that. And while there's a commitment to an exit, I guarantee we'll see this whole debate again when it comes up again in a year-and-a-half, at which time we should expect another "compromise."
But...did Obama promise us anything else during the election? Isn't this exactly what he said he was going to do?
Man, I had no idea how much Hoffman's ACORN conspiracy tapped into conservative illogic. Check this out, from Public Policy Polling:
PPP's newest national survey finds that a 52% majority of GOP voters nationally think that ACORN stole the Presidential election for Barack Obama last year, with only 27% granting that he won it legitimately....
Belief in the ACORN conspiracy theory is even higher among GOP partisans than the birther one, which only 42% of Republicans expressed agreement with on our national survey in September.
Un-freaking-believable. Only twenty-seven percent of Republican voters thinks ACORN didn't steal the presidential election for Obama? Seriously?
Man...I don't know what to say. It's one of those polls that really challenges your faith in the human race. What's going on over there on the right? I mean...it's like an alternate universe over there, a place hardly impacted by reality.
Attention LiTW readers: this post was actually written by the always stellarJamee Greer, but for some reason, there was a bug in the piece that prevented him from posting it. I found the error, and put it up for him...
There's plenty of discussion among LGBT circles right now about whether or not the Obama Administration is doing a good job of moving civil rights policy forward, or if they're willfully stalling or even dismissing the community. It appears that many in the LGBT blogosphere are joining in on a boycott organized by the founders of AmericaBlog in an attempt to push resolution on a list of about thirty grievances directed at the Administration.
Joe and I are launching today a donor boycott of the DNC. The boycott is cosponsored by Daily Kos, Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake, Dan Savage, Michelangelo Signorile, David Mixner, Andy Towle and Michael Goff of Towle Road, Paul Sousa (Founder of Equal Rep in Boston), Pam Spaulding, Robin Tyler (ED of the Equality Campaign, Inc.), Bil Browning for the Bilerico Project, and soon others.
It's really more of a "pause," than a boycott. Boycotts sounds so final, and angry. Whereas this campaign is temporary, and is only meant to help some friends - President Obama and the Democratic party - who have lost their way. We are hopeful that via this campaign, our friends will keep their promises.
This is ill-informed to the point of recklessness, and all equality advocates should be offended that John Aravosis would use his influence, such as it is, to attack the most pro-equality environment we've ever seen in this country.
Was the DNC right in failing to provide much-needed financial support for the No on 1 campaign in Maine? No. Should people sit down and find out what happened and why and publicly demand accountability? Yes. Is President Obama right in maintaining his campaign position opposing marriage equality? No. Should the LGBT community continue to push the president to fulfill his campaign promises that would advance LGBT equality? Of course.
Equality is black and white. We are either treated with the same respect and opportunity to uphold the same level of dignity as every other citizen, or we are not. The path to equality isn't as clear, but I don't accept that equal rights can be produced by the grey middle. I fight the middle, I resist it out of instinct because it can so often be two steps forward and another back.
In just the last month we saw fully inclusive federal hate crimes legislation signed by the president, the repeal of housing discrimination against gay and lesbians utilizing HUD services, the repeal of the HIV travel ban, the announcement that gays and lesbians will be counted in the 2010 Census, the first Senate hearing on a fully inclusive ENDA and the strong promise by DOJ officials that they'll make ENDA one of their top legislative priorities. There were extraordinary provisions included in the House health care reform bill that impacted the LGBT community and people living with HIV/AIDS. I'm forgetting some others, I'm sure of it.
I agree, mistakes have been made by the Administration, by the Democratic National Committee, and Organizing for America on LGBT issues. But that list of what's been done right, and the growing national momentum on equality, means so much to someone living in a state where a gay man can be denied the right to visit his partner if they are dying in the hospital, a trans community facing the daily threat of being fired for blurring the lines of gender, and a lesbian who spent years and thousands of dollars in the courts for something as simple as joint custody of a child she helped raise since birth. And I, for one, and possibly others, am extraordinarily grateful for what is happening in America today.
At this time I just can't see why I should support this boycott.
There's plenty of discussion among LGBT circles right now about whether or not the Obama Administration is doing a good job of moving civil rights policy forward, or if they're willfully stalling or even dismissing the community. It appears that many in the LGBT blogosphere are joining in on a boycott organized by the founders of AmericaBlog in an attempt to push resolution on a list of about thirty grievances directed at the Administration.
Joe and I are launching today a donor boycott of the DNC. The boycott is cosponsored by Daily Kos, Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake, Dan Savage, Michelangelo Signorile, David Mixner, Andy Towle and Michael Goff of Towle Road, Paul Sousa (Founder of Equal Rep in Boston), Pam Spaulding, Robin Tyler (ED of the Equality Campaign, Inc.), Bil Browning for the Bilerico Project, and soon others
There's plenty of discussion among LGBT circles right now about whether or not the Obama Administration is doing a good job of moving civil rights policy forward, or if they're willfully stalling or even dismissing the community. It appears that many in the LGBT blogosphere are joining in on a boycott organized by the founders of AmericaBlog in an attempt to push resolution on a list of about thirty grievances directed at the Administration.
Joe and I are launching today a donor boycott of the DNC. The boycott is cosponsored by Daily Kos, Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake, Dan Savage, Michelangelo Signorile, David Mixner, Andy Towle and Michael Goff of Towle Road, Paul Sousa (Founder of Equal Rep in Boston), Pam Spaulding, Robin Tyler (ED of the Equality Campaign, Inc.),
Obama's speech yesterday honoring the slain soldiers at Ft. Hood eloquently honors not only those who fell last week, but those serve, and have served:
A bill to make violence against gays and lesbians a federal hate crime cleared the Senate on Thursday and headed to the White House.
The 68-29 vote was a victory for civil rights groups that have long sought to expand the federal statute beyond attacks motivated by religion, race, color or national origin.
The bill, which President Obama is expected to sign, includes penalties for assaults based on a victim's sexual orientation, gender, disability or gender identity.
It's a nice start. Again, while many of the gay civil rigts' issues are legislative matters and out of the president's hands - overturning DOMA, say, or the protection of gays from housing or employment discrimination - President Obama can do something about Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell.
Putting an end to DADT once and for all does require a legislative act. True. But suspending its enforcement would put pressure on Congress to do get off its butt and pass that legislation.
Ending DADT would save taxpayer money. It would make the military better. It's the right thing to do. And it's popular among Americans...
On Sunday, over a 100,000 supporters of civil rights for gays and lesbians marched in the National Equality rally in Washington, DC, demanding equal protection under the law and access to institutions from which they're excluded. A smaller rally was held in Missoula on the same day - although you wouldn't know it if you read the Missoulian.
Among other issues, civil rights' supporters demanded an to the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy that disallows gays to serve openly in the US military; the overturning of the Clinton-era Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits the federal government from extending federal benefits to the same-sex spouses of federal employees; the inclusion of sexual orientation in the federal definition of hate crime; and an end to many states' - including Montana's -- legal discrimination against gays seeking housing or employment. In many instances, gay partners have no spousal rights over medical decisions, children, or financial matters.
As Pete Shea recently wrote, this institutionally accepted discrimination against gays and lesbians has real and dramatic consequences to human lives:
Even though approximately 10 percent of our population may identify themselves as LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender), they are invisible in our society in many ways. Many remain "in the closet" for life in an effort to hide. In our military, we can't ask and we can't tell. Where this invisibility is most damaging is in our own homes, where our children are coming to terms with their own sexual identities - alone and terrified. All too often they can't tell their parents and family because the reality of rejection is still too common.
Schools are places of bullying and terrorism, not just for teens who identify publicly as LGBT, but also for those whom others perceive to be gay because of some physical or personality trait. Homosexuality is still a topic that we dare not discuss openly, so we hide the topic and we hide those who are "it." Is it surprising that the suicide rate for gay teens is three or four times greater than for teens who don't have to struggle with sexual identity issues?
It's simple, isn't it? Gays simply want the right to pursue life, to choose the way in which they form their bonds of love and friendship, and to do so without facing government-approved institutional discrimination from employers, teachers, landlords, and bureaucrats. And by standing by, those of us who are straight are essentially approving of the state's involvement, not just in the affairs of gays, but in our lives, because in where we allow our government to discriminate against one group lies the potential for discrimination against others, perhaps even ourselves, and for equally arbitrary reasons.
Matt responded to some comments made by Dennis Rehberg about health care reform, likely in this September 9 Mike Dennison article...
Congressman Rehberg:
I read with interest your comments in yesterday's Lee Newspapers regarding the President's proposal for health care reform. Over the past three years, Forward Montana's members and volunteers have engaged thousands of Montanans in one-on-one conversations regarding health care. While we've heard opinions from across the political spectrum, much of the feedback we have received matches up with the concerns you raised: will we focus on preventative care, what can be done about malpractice costs, and can we increase the size of insurance pools to lower rates?
In part because of these needs, we are extremely optimistic about the President's proposed reforms. As I'm sure you heard, his speech touched on each of these points.
Regarding preventative medicine, President Obama said last night:
[I]nsurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies, because there's no reason we shouldn't be catching diseases like breast cancer and colon cancer before they get worse. That makes sense, it saves money, and it saves lives.
In the greater details provided regarding the plan on the White House website, more details are given:
Eliminates extra charges for preventive care like mammograms, flu shots and diabetes tests to improve health and save money. The President's plan ensures that all Americans have access to free preventive services under their health insurance plans. Too many Americans forgo needed preventive care, in part because of the cost of check-ups and screenings that can identify health problems early when they can be most effectively treated. For example, 24 percent of women age 40 and over have not received a mammogram in the past two years, and 38 percent of adults age 50 and over have never had a colon cancer screening.
Regarding medical malpractice costs, the President wants to act immediately. His plan states:
Orders immediate medical malpractice reform projects that could help doctors focus on putting their patients first, not on practicing defensive medicine. The President's plan instructs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to move forward on awarding medical malpractice demonstration grants to states funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality as soon as possible.
Finally, you raised the important issue of increasing the size of insurance pools to lower costs. As an employer that currently purchases insurance on the small group market and as an individual previously insured through the individual market, I assure you that this concern hits close to home for me. The President's plan creates a new health insurance exchange specifically designed to tackle this problem. As he explained last night:
We'll do this by creating a new insurance exchange -- a marketplace where individuals and small businesses will be able to shop for health insurance at competitive prices. Insurance companies will have an incentive to participate in this exchange because it lets them compete for millions of new customers. As one big group, these customers will have greater leverage to bargain with the insurance companies for better prices and quality coverage.
I hope you find this information helpful as you consider whether to support this legislation that is, as the President explained last night, going to be fully paid for, rather than debt financed like past years' tax cuts and program expansions. This responsible plan will help today's Americans without taking out a second mortgage on the future.
Please contact me if I can be of any further assistance.
Atul Gawande liked what he saw of the president's speech, but worries about this bill.
I liked what I saw at the end of his column:
But this is just a start. Our current health-care system-bloated, Byzantine, and slowly bursting-presents seemingly insurmountable difficulties. It is too big, too complex, too entrenched. What may be most challenging about reforming it is that it cannot be fixed in one fell swoop of radical surgery. The repair is going to be a process, not a one-time event. The proposals Obama offers, and that Congress is slowly chewing over, would provide a dramatic increase in security for the average American. But they will only begin the journey toward transforming our system to provide safer, better, less wasteful care. We do not yet know with conviction all the steps that will rein in costs while keeping care safe. So, even if these initial reforms pass, we have to be prepared to come back every year or two to take another few hard and fiercely battled steps forward.
In this way, successful reform will have to be more like a series of operations, with x-rays and tests in between to show how we're doing. Embarking on the effort will be among the most severe challenges we take on as country. Outside the settings of war and economic collapse, we've never sustained any policy effort of this scope and duration. It is perfectly possible that our next push will be defeated, or used as an opportunity to dismantle the progress we've already made. But I can see no other choice. We can only forge ahead.
Nice speech last night, eh? The prez nailed it, talked to us like grownups, explained - very clearly - the concepts and morals of health care reform, righteously struck down the nay-sayers and trouble-makers.
The president's support for the public option was a little...ambiguous...to say the least, but it was support. Remember, it's the Progressive House Caucus that decides whether the public option gets into the bill, not the president, not Max Baucus. I think this speech aids them, and I'm more optimistic today about the public option than I was yesterday.
Thoughts...yes, we all know about Joe Wilson's outburst (which would have gotten him suspended from Britain's parliament), but the general boorish behavior of the Republicans would have been laughable if some of these *sshats weren't actively trying to derail reform that will protect Americans from insurers' predatory practices that drive many Americans into bankruptcy and often even death. What got me was when Obama decried the lie of the death panels, and the Republicans sat on their hands glumly, while the rest of the room stood and cheered wildly.
What? This is what they cherish? This is what they make a very public stand for? Lies and calumny?
This, in contrast, is what I stand for:
You see, our predecessors understood that government could not, and should not, solve every problem. They understood that there are instances when the gains in security from government action are not worth the added constraints on our freedom. But they also understood that the danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little; that without the leavening hand of wise policy, markets can crash, monopolies can stifle competition, and the vulnerable can be exploited. And they knew that when any government measure, no matter how carefully crafted or beneficial, is subject to scorn; when any efforts to help people in need are attacked as un-American; when facts and reason are thrown overboard and only timidity passes for wisdom, and we can no longer even engage in a civil conversation with each other over the things that truly matter - that at that point we don't merely lose our capacity to solve big challenges. We lose something essential about ourselves.
I also was amused by the sight of a very dour Max Baucus during Obama's points on the public option. He, like his Republican peers, also refused to rise and cheer when Obama reiterated the importance of the public option.
(Quick note. FactCheck.org debunks Wilson's accusation; the language of HB 3200 reads, "Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States." Odious, yes. But true. So why the fuss? From what I can tell - and it ain't easy wading through the morass -- conservatives are angry that illegal immigrants aren't prohibited by the bill from buying any kind of health insurance, without government assistance. Which doesn't go far enough by half, I'm guessing. Why do we let those pesky Mexicans even buy food?)
But the best part of the speech was that it worked. Those that saw it, liked what he had to say. Which just goes to show that if you're a public figure, and you're forceful enough about the reform, and clear enough in explaining it - working hard to strip away the lies - people will support it.
President Barack Obama, in a high-stakes speech Wednesday to Congress and the nation, will press for a government-run insurance option in a proposed overhaul of the U.S. health-care system that has divided lawmakers and voters for months.
Hours before President Obama was set to deliver a make-or-break speech on health care reform, a top Senate negotiator conceded the government-run insurance program so dear to the president's supporters cannot pass the Senate.
Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont....made clear that the so-called "public option" would not be part of any deal with his name on it.
"The public option cannot pass the Senate," Baucus said. "I could be wrong, but it's my belief that the public option cannot pass."
"It's funny," Baucus says, "I don't know if it would be more accurate to say I've prepared my entire career for health care reform, or if my entire career has prepared me for it. And to be quite frank, it could be my whole life that has prepared me for this moment."
Somehow, I don't think that means what he thinks it does.
As you might expect, buzz over healthcare reform continues to heat up as we march towards the president's speech tomorrow.
First, notmanyfolks think too highly of Baucus' rumored proposal floating around the Senate Finance Committee.
Ezra Klein's taken some (deserved) heat for tweeting support for Baucus' proposal, but he's the same guy that wrote this post, "What Happened to Last Year's Max Baucus?" speculating the reason behind the yawning gulf that separates Max Baucus' white paper from the recent proposals he's doling out in committee, still relevant today:
...Baucus pulled a bit of a bait-and-switch. That paper proved less his plan than his effort to articulate the Democratic consensus in such a way that Democrats were comfortable with him leading the debate. In particular, Kennedy had to be happy with that paper, because Kennedy was the threat to Baucus's leadership.
But Kennedy's illness took him out of the game. Baucus no longer needed to worry about Kennedy stealing the leadership of health-care reform away from him, which meant he stopped looking over his left shoulder. The effect was a bit like shutting down a primary challenge against Baucus: His surprising leftward lurch stopped entirely, and he drifted back to the more centrist approaches that had defined his career. It's hard to say how the process would have differed if Baucus had spent his days worrying about keeping Kennedy onboard, but it seems possible that the practical impact would have been to keep Baucus closer to the paper he'd written to attract Kennedy's support.
Makes you wonder how this debate would have gone if Kennedy hadn't gotten sick, and Clinton hadn't accepted a post as Secretary of State.
And then it's important to remember that there are two bodies in Congress, and that the House will have as much say about how reform takes place as the Senate. The LA Times has a nice little primer on the difference between the House reform bill's and what's being discussed in the Senate - which only underscores how superior the House bills are.
Also, according to The Hill, 23 House Democrats have said they won't vote for any of the reform bills that have been discussed. Pelosi can afford to lose only 38 members of her caucus total; the defection of the 23 gives the progressive bloc all the more power, as only 15 have to keep their promise to vote against any bill without the public option to kill toothless reform.
And let's not forget to poke conservatives on this issue. There's been no leadership from the right. There's been no acknowledgment that there even is a problem with health care in this country. The Republican strategy all along has been to kill this bill and continue the status quo, and by any means necessary, even if that means obfuscating, Red baiting, and stirring up racist resentment to do so. Hugh Hewitt's post is on reform is unusually bald in this regard. He admits the goal is the status quo, and he ends his post by pimping for the RNC and the NRSC: a nice reminder that the ultimate goal of TeaBagging and Hitler signs and shouting down your neighbors is to put Republicans back in Congress and back at the lobbyists' teats.
