The guy who thought up the public option has come out in favor of voting for the Senate bill, though he criticizes the lack of a public option quite harshly.
Let’s hope this doesn’t scare Lieberman off from voting for it.
by DougJ| 192 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Good News For Conservatives
The guy who thought up the public option has come out in favor of voting for the Senate bill, though he criticizes the lack of a public option quite harshly.
Let’s hope this doesn’t scare Lieberman off from voting for it.
Comments are closed.
aimai
The democrats are doing what they should have done all along–admit that its going to be a flawed bill and try to regain the trust of their own base that they will diligently go back and fix the holes. I’m cautiously optimistic that they, in fact, will. Axelrod came out today and said they’d fight for drug reimportation after this bill is through. And the other Dems who are speaking up for the bill are putting themselves on record as recognizing that there are some very bitter pills, especially for women, in this bill that must be addressed. Hell, even Evan Bayh (according to benen) is going on record as supporting this bill. When the democrats have finally grasped that their names are all on this bill *and no republicans* they will truly start to realize that “they will all hang separately if they don’t hang together.” The Netroots have been arguing for quite a while that the bill was going to be a wholly owned democratic phenomenon and as such the dems would have to be willing to stand behind it publicly and work to make it a good bill. Looks like they are finally getting the message and starting to make the right noises. Here’s hoping they can a) pass the bill and b) immiediatly start tinkering with it to make it better.
aimai
Thoroughly Pizzled
Now they’re accusing him and Al Franken of being corporate sellouts. The world is insane.
BenA
I think there’s a lot of people out there that just don’t understand the legislative process. This is hardly final bill… and it’s about what I expected out of the senate.
There’s still multiple ways to improve the bill before it even hits Obama’s desk.
The Grand Panjandrum
A bit ironic that Hacker lives in CT. It was the senior Senator from his state who was one of the most underhanded and deceitful in the entire process. I am relieved to read and hear that Obama’s people are publicly supporting fixing the bill once it has been signed into law. We’ll just have to see what the bill looks like when it gets to the President.
Unabogie
I posted my take on this on the GOS.
LINK
Anya
@Thoroughly Pizzled: I read the a fair bit of the comments from Senator Franken’s diary at GOS and I was just flabbergasted by the attacks. It is official the left is on a suicide mission and it will not end well.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
I pretty much agree with this, but for the “trust of the base” part, I take a small exception.
I only want to trust the base to do one thing and that is to show up and vote for the reelection of Obama in 2012. And the ace we have in the hole is that the GOP is sure to put up an embarrassing show with crazy, embarrassing candidates in 2012.
Put another way, “Obama sucks” only works until you are standing in the voting booth looking at Obama-Biden v Romney-Palin as your choices.
kay
I’ve learned a lot in the debate. This first step is about getting people covered and funding that, short term. It’s about insurance, not health care, because changing the health care system is politically untenable, and too scary.
We still haven’t looked at the for-profit health care system, or how to make that “affordable” or “sustainable”.
But we’ll eventually get there, because we won’t have any choice.
Gotta start somewhere.
beltane
I realize I’m being quite selfish, but one of my main objections to the bill was that it would gut Vermont’s medicaid program, which had been expanded to cover not just the poor, but the lower middle class as well. This was something Howard Dean repeatedly emphasized in interviews on local TV and radio. It seems that Sanders got a money deal for Vermont similar to Nelson’s, and that Leahy slipped in some kind of provision about the way the state’s medicaid program is administered. As I suspected, Dean was just looking out for the interests of his state, the same way Nelson and Landrieu did. More progressives should try this; it works.
BenA
You know the sad part is if the public option from the house bill is in the final bill and gets signed into law… all those morons who are killing Franken and co now will be patting themselves on the back… as if their hissy fit had anything to do with it.
beltane
@kay: There was a recent article in the NYT (sorry, no link) about how out-of-control costs in the Massachusetts program were forcing them to consider dropping the fee-for-service model of paying for health care. This is a very positive development, though it will not come about easily, because our fee-for-service system is largely responsible for the high cost of health care.
Davis X. Machina
I am looking forward to the defeat-repeal coalition. It should have considerable entertainment value, when you consider its likely membership. “Strange bedfellows” doesn’t begin to cover the topic….
You can go over to DemocraticUnderground.com and be in on the birth of a new Progressive party, if you wish. Opportunities like that don’t come up very often.
The Grand Panjandrum
@beltane: I wouldn’t consider that selfish at all. That is how the current system works. It may not be pretty but it is what it is. Bernie and Pat aren’t hypocrites either. They’ve been fighting for the working stiff for a long time and they don’t prance around like the phony deficit hawks. They would gladly raise taxes on upper income people to help this along if it had a chance of passing. I’m next door in NH so I have to deal with that disingenuous prick Judd Gregg for another year, but he’ll be gone soon enough.
stacie
I have to say, as this gets closer to passing, my feelings of disappointment are fading and I’m being struck by a weird stirring of patriotic pride. All of a sudden, I’m thinking, “Wow, this is what happens when our legislators actually work — we get a bill that isn’t perfect, but will ensure that tens of millions more Americans have access to basic health care.”
Maybe it’s so startling because it’s never really happened in my lifetime (I’m 33). Congress has spent a full year grinding the wheels of the sausage maker, and while it isn’t the bill that any one individual would have written, it’s a fine start to the idea that We Own Our Health Care System. My God, what a very American notion. We Americans own America, and we Americans, through the mechanism of the government we elect every two years, can meaningfully impact America.
Isn’t that a very revolutionary thought?
comrade scott's agenda of rage
You go into the legislative process with the Senators you have, not the ones you wish you had.
That being said, some of these asshats need to have their asses primaried to death. I’m no purity troll by any stretch but we really do have some folks there who have no bidness putting a “D-” before their state.
eemom
@Thoroughly Pizzled:
When I saw the post I was going to jestingly comment, Well, I’ll guess they’ll call Hacker a corporate sellout now too, ha ha……..but I see I’ve underestimated them.
Over at FDL they’re now whining about the vicious rumors that “progressives” are out to kill health care reform itself. Now where could anyone have gotten THAT idea? I mean, just because Hamsher wants to join forces with the teabaggers who think that HCR in any form is socialist communist nazi genocide…..
CalD
The Washington Post has an interesting comparator for the House and Senate bills stack up to each other:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/nation/health/compare-health-plans-2009/?hpid=topnews
(h/t PolicicalWire)
AngusTheGodOfMeat
From the cited Hacker article.
Hacker also goes on to say that “progressives have a right to be angry” that pinheads in congress have derailed some highly desirable reforms, such as Public Option. But in my view, that progressive anger is misdirected. It’s directed at figureheads like Nelson and Lieberman, when the real cause of the problem is that the voters can’t make up their collective mind what they want.
When voters elect a Joe Lieberman, they are sending a message that they prefer what Lieberman brings to the table over actual progressive policy. Lieberman is a symptom, not a cause. Basically the same thing is true of Blue Dog Dems, and members like Right to Life Dems (such as Nelson).
The kind of self-destructive rhetoric you see on GOS these days, and sometimes in here, is great for letting of steam, but if it doesn’t translate into electing a different kind of representative, what good is it?
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@CalD:
That kinda puts it in perspective. I’ve been fairly agnostic about the Senate’s bill figuring I can save my ire for the conference results. By looking at this, I don’t see where I’ll have much ire. I guess that means I lose my Librul Credentials Card.
And I’ve been a dues paying member my entire adult life. Voting for Carter, Mondale and Dukakis surely counts for something!
aimai
I take all the hysteria at Kos with a huge grain of salt. For one thing, I simply avoid reading any of the sidebar diaries at this point–But I doubt very much if those people are some kind of novel form of PUMA and will end up going over to the Republican side or even not voting.
I talked about the “trust of the base” and I do think that is an important thing that the Senate Dems and Obama have done their damndest to piss away. One of the things that troubled the relationship between candidate and supporter was the disjuncture between what they were saying and what they were doing. On the one hand we heard about the historic legislation and blah blah blah and cost containment, on the other hand we discovered the Pharma deal after it was a done deal. There are a ton of places, especially on civil liberties, where that has been the case. the kind of trust that the Democrats are asking for, at this point, is trust that they won’t be satisfied with just some bill but actually are in this, long term to pursue serious democratic and progressive change in the entire health care infrastructure. Its an argument they have been making with their mouths, but as we saw the legislation hammered out we didn’t see them publicly regretting or repudiating the bargains they were making that ran completely counter to the original goals of the legislation.
That being said I would never have dreamed of not continuing to vote Democratic, and not continuing to support progressive Senators. The idea that a reliable progressive becomes an enemy because they are forced to make a compromise to get some legislation through is absurd. But I really think the people making these charges are doing so because they lost faith in the top level. Frankly, would it have killed Obama to meet publicly with the progressives several times to assure them *and their supporters* that their concerns would be addressed as soon as possible, if not in this bill? Would it have killed the white house’s master plan to keep a tight leash on the corporatist wing of its own administration and not have them talk contemptously and publicly about “the liberals” while tongue bathing the centrists (I have no problem with being polite, even to lieberman and Nelson while you are trying to buy their votes, but a little deference to your actual constituents would have been nice). The point of doing so would have been to try to show, as well as tell, the skittish base that although things might need to be compromised away now they would be gotten back later.
Now they are doing what they should have done all along and I think it bodes well both for the legislation and for the selling of the legislation and the next round of elections.
aimai
kay
@beltane:
That’s what I think. I have health insurance and I would love to have one of Bernie Sander’s non-profit community health centers. I would sign up, today. I want that approach. I want a first-line preventative-ordinary maladies team and then the high priced talent if I’m seriously ill. I don’t need a “private physician relationship” unless I actually DO need a private physician, and the nurse can tell me that.
I’ll be first in line for the nurse-overseen-by-the-physician for primary care, and it saves 40%, I’m thrilled. I won’t feel ripped off or second class or Canadian or anything. Looking at outcomes, I’m not sure I’ll be worse off.
That whole approach makes sense to me, and I would volunteer.
aimai
Angusthegod of meat,
I have to come back to say that this is ridiculous–the voters who voted for Lieberman explicitly voted for a guy who was *for* all kinds of health care reform–in fact he told them he was more for it than Lamont. He also told them he would continue to work closely with the Democrats on everything even though he was an independent, nominally. “The voters” and what they want have nothing to do with this–the six year Senatorial slot is just too long, and Lieberman’s fall from humanity too fast, for us to claim that “the voters” want what he’s delivering.
aimai
zoe kentucky in pittsburgh
Ditto everything Stacie wrote.
As for my fellow lefties who find themselves apoplectic at this moment– please stop treating your allies like they’re your enemies. Please take a minute to step back from the whole thing, take a deep breath, and consider how wedded you want to be to being in a state of constant political misery because things are not as they should be. I think the Bush years conditioned many of us to always be miserable but we don’t have to be. I understand frustration– I have it too– but throwing bombs at everyone who doesn’t agree with you is counterproductive.
I think we can all agree that this bill is just the beginning– the work will continue to reform, improve and challenge everything from here on. I know it sounds all pollyannish but we really are in this together and need to start acting like it.
beltane
@kay: The best thing with the community health centers is that you actually do get a regular physician. If you have an emergency while your doctor is on vacation, then you see whoever is on call, but it’s like that everywhere. Plus, these centers attract doctors who went to medical school because they wanted to help people, not earn the big bucks (they make around $160,000 a year).
The health care system in this state is so wonderful and compassionate that it makes putting up with the very long winters and bad roads worthwhile.
John Cole
You can’t fool me. This bill is nothing but a corporate give-away to Rahm and Obama’s big money friends. I’m disgusted with fauxgressives like Franken, Sanders, Wyden, Feingold, Durbin, and others, and I’m sick of it. You other sheeple may think that just because we ended the right for insurers to discriminate based on pre-existing conditions, expanded medicaid and medicare and got rid of medicare advantage, as well as opening insurance to 31 million people and whole host of other things that this a good bill, but I know the truth. Without a public option, it is clear to me this bill is utter and total shit, and I can’t wait to make my own “OBAMA KENYAN SOCIALIST” sign and march with the teabaggers, because I’m really standing with the little guy against you corporate whores.
Napoleon
@aimai:
Really? Because that is one of the deals the WH cut with Pharma months ago (to nix reimportation) that sticks the knife in the back of the American public and line the pocket of Pharma. It was reported when in the last week when some Senators tried to put it in the bill that the WH flexed its muscle to keep it out.
Axelrod is a liar.
asiangrrlMN
@aimai: You said so beautifully exactly what I’ve been feeling about this whole thing (and other issues).
I will vote for Obama in 2012 unless he does something so egregious, I just can’t. And, no, I cannot envision anything that would be that egregious. I am not an Obot, and I have been unhappy with the way he’s dealt with some of the issues, but I cannot fathom Palin, Huckabee, Romney, or Ratface Pawlenty as president.
However, being on the left means having to eat a lot of shit. Obama and his team have been so intent on appearing bipartisan, he’s pretty much told the left to suck it–though much more eloquently, of course. He did it with the stimulus bill, and he’s doing it now. So, after this passes, he could throw the base a few bones, or as aimai said, at least appear to give a damn about his base during the process.
@John Cole: Hey. Funny. I like it when you comment in the threads.
kay
@zoe kentucky in pittsburgh:
I’ll third stacie. I’m pleased with the liberals who stayed at the table.
One of the things that Kennedy’s death made abundantly clear is that there’s a lot of honor in just chipping away at problems. He isn’t remembered for what he opposed. He’s remembered for keeping at it, and making progress.
I watched the clip of his last rant on the minimum wage and just admired the plain tenacity in fighting so long to get such a small concession.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@John Cole:
John’s come full circle. Kinda like Arlen Specter. :)
Corner Stone
@John Cole: This! it just can’t be said enough! You are the best! Thank you so much for saying so well what I just could never say here! This is why I come here! Best commenters on the tubes! It’s a place of sanity amongst the crazy! You’re a good man John Cole!
arguingwithsignposts
@asiangrrlMN:
Which brings up an interesting question: When will they lose that particular pipe dream?
Even with the concessions, HCR won’t be bipartisan. The GOP has no interest in dealing on anything. Can they just say “f**k it” and be partisan for a change?
beltane
@John Cole: Dear Aunt Jane, whatever will we do with you.
Cat Lady
@John Cole:
Is that you blahblahblah?
Just Some Fuckhead
It’s a little demoralizing fighting for a better bill when all of you are happy with the Health Insurer Bailout Act of 2009. Fine, I understand how arguing makes you tense and that is a very bad thing. So let’s light this candle, getRdun! and move on to the Stop Killing Baby Fetuses So Jesus Stops Trying To Cook Us Climate Bill Of 2010.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@aimai:
That’s a good point. But by the time he became the candidate of the Connecticut for Lieberman party, he was pretty well known as a weasel and prevaricator, wasn’t he? He reminds me of McCain here in Arizona. Everybody here, even the Republicans, know that McCain is all talk and no action, doesn’t work for Arizona interests, and dodged the Keating scandal by using his POW card. He says one thing and does another, like Joe. He plays the cards of maudlin emotion at the drop of a hat, like Joe. He screws over his friends, like Joe. He always is looking out for his own power interests, like Joe.
Despite all this, Arizona reelects him, knowing that his actual loyalty to any policy or position is never really known.
Ben Nelson is a 96% party line voter according to Wiki, but he plays his Right to Life card with great finesse and gets himself reelected in a red state with 64% of the vote.
I don’t see the point in being “angry” at these guys. They are who they are, and have always been. Do we think that the voters of Connecticut are going to reject Joe over this healthcare thing?
Well, I wish they would, but I have no illusions that they will. Joe is apparently what they want, and so there he is. You have to deal with him.
demkat620
@BenA: Who’s accusing Al Franken of being a sellout? The Kossacks?
God, this is worse than the primaries. I really wish everybody would take a deep breath and calm down.
I think I’ll take a few days off from the GOS. Too many flame wars going on.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Heh. That’s right, Headster, arguing is one thing I really hate.
That’s why I never argue. Like you.
Comrade Mary
@John Cole: Pitch perfect, John. You even got a “sheeple” in there. Gold star!
Al Giordano posted again today.
beltane
@demkat620: As I predicted, Howard Dean has softened his opposition to the bill. Perhaps Mike Gravel is available to carry the banner for progressive teabaggers.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@demkat620:
As aimai said above, if you don’t read anything on the right-side panels except the cat diaries, the GOS is fine. I think the FPers have been remarkably restrained in their rhetoric although the discussions have the usual insanity of the right-side panel.
Sly
@@arguingwithsignposts:
Not until after the vote. Then they can say “We tried to get Republicans to join us on an important piece of legislation that will help millions of Americans get better access to quality healthcare, but they were more interested in playing politics.”
There’s a reason why Reid is pushing for a particular schedule for the overall bill. There’s a lot of poetry in voting for the largest expansion in health care access and affordability in a generation on the day before Christmas. I expect the words “scrooge” and “grinch” to be invoked against anyone and everyone who tries to filibuster final passage.
El Cid
Crazy leftist ultra-hippie Jacob Hacker still moans about the bill, contradicting his earlier strong support for the Senate bill in the first paragraphs.
Pfft. Next thing you know he’ll be wearing a tricorner hat with teabags all stapled to it.
Davis X. Machina
I thought it was because Lieberman wouldn’t be able to vote on Erev Christmas, because it’s a yom tov.
Parole Officer Burke
I’m a little surprised that the left is still arguing about reform versus revolution.
Every generation has to learn its lesson, I suppose.
Stroszek
Can we please stop conflating issues activists with the party base? Those are two different things. The base of a party is not whoever occupies the furthest end of its particular segment of the ideological spectrum. The base of the party are the people who can be counted on to donate, volunteer and vote no matter what. They are, in other words, the party hacks, the bots, etc. The only reason issues activists call themselves the base is because they have an obvious interest in promoting the perception of their power and importance. Base voters, however, do not consist of people who have or would ever consider sitting out or voting for Nader.
With that said, the FDL crew are effectively single-payer activists, and they were done with this bill when it became clear that a robust PO wouldn’t survive committee. Hamsher’s goal for months has been to have slinkerwink post daily panic diaries to poison the well, stoke paranoia and eventually rally a small segment of the left to get behind killing the bill as a way of punishing Obama for that initial “compromise.” That’s fine. Whatever. This is what issues activists do.
But they’re not the base and they had about 1,000,000,000x less to do with electing Obama than the millions of actual base voters in places like South Carolina who (a) are actually the ones primarily responsible for Obama’s initial success and (b) will be the primary beneficiaries of a couple of hundred billion dollars in health insurance subsidies. The same is basically true for Franken, Anthony Weiner and Bernie Sanders. It’s one thing for Keith Olbermann to play for the handful of hardliners who watch prime time cable news and rally against the bill while he sits on a mountain of health benefits courtesy of General Electric. It’s another thing for Al Franken to do the same then go to the Minnesota State Fair and have to explain to a family of reliable Democratic voters why they haven’t received one buck of relief for their medical bills.
demkat620
@Cat Lady: Naw, John’s a registered demonrat now. He decided if he was going to switch he wasn’t doing anything half ass.
Corner Stone
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
Your argument is a little off in that Joey was re-elected by Republicans. It is true as you state that Conn voters sent him back but that has nothing to do with the furthering of progressive policies or bills.
He’s serving his constituency now, and IMO that’s what everyone of us but D leadership realizes.
arguingwithsignposts
@Sly:
well, I was speaking in terms of future legislative agenda items, not necessarily HCR. I’m just tired of the whole “bipartisan” mindf**k that’s going on. Obama isn’t “changing the tone” because the GOP is tone-deaf at this point.
Just Some Fuckhead
I’ll be goddamned if I can figure out how a majority of Republicans can deliver what a minority of Americans wants but a majority of Democrats can’t deliver what a majority of Americans wants.
Roger Moore
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
This. The same thing could be said about the House, President, and popular opinion. I’m very much in favor of trying to push all of those things in a better (i.e. more progressive) direction, but that has to wait for the next election. We need to achieve what we can today with the elected officials we have right now.
demkat620
@Just Some Fuckhead: Because they keep listening to the former members of the DLC and the Liberal Media tell them this is a center right nation.
Beeb
I think Prof. Hacker is right; if the final product has appropriate levels of subsidization and federal regulation, it will be a worthwhile achievement. (I’m still not so sure about Nelson’s version of Stupak, but we’ll see.) But note his continued use of the word “must.” So, Prof. Hacker, what if it doesn’t? I’m reserving judgment until I see what comes out of conference.
Best to avoid the comments at GOS until the flame war dies down, IMHO. This is the sort of thing that brings out all the Naderites and Kucinich supporters there. No one who can actually win an election is progressive enough for them. Plus which, it might be worthwhile to check user ID numbers on some of them. They might just be recent. Think troll. I think most of the “corporate tool” commenters are genuine, if hyperbolic, but some could also be posted by paid wingnut shills trying to keep the divisions going. Wouldn’t be the first time. Nothing like fractures in the Democratic base to divert attention from the Republican civil war.
BenA
@Corner Stone:
There were a fair amount of Democrats that voted for Lying Joe as well. It was the perfect coalition of stupid.
ellaesther
@Parole Officer Burke: Someone, somewhere, on the internetz said something this week about how not voting for this bill because it isn’t progressive enough would have been like not voting for the civil rights act of 1964 because it didn’t contain the expansions and reforms that came along later.
That cleared my sinuses a little. As much as I would like a revolution, revolutions almost never happen. People do things damnably slowly, but if they get started, they keep moving. Better-than-nothing really, truly is better than nothing, and if this becomes law, the ball will finally be in motion.
Comrade Kevin
@Unabogie: You know what was great about your diary? The first comment was from one of the very petulant, whiny, self-important assholes you were talking about, with a stupid, condescending remark.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Corner Stone:
Can’t disagree with that, but the reason people are angry at him is that he represents multiple interests that don’t agree with each other. So he is like a political eel.
But I don’t see the point in people being angry at him. He is just being himself, and we pretty much saw him for what he really is in his last time out for reelection. As of now he is caucusing with Dems but that’s no reason for him to go along with the caucus in lockstep. Why should he?
And in a body where votes are literally bought, sold and traded, why think he will respond to angry talk? If I am him, I want something of value to me in exchange for my vote. That’s the way it works in that club. So, find out what he wants, and try to get it for him.
It’s the Obama “cut him a deal” idea, but described much less succinctly than Obama did it. That’s why America will never elect a cow to be president.
BenA
@demkat620:
I’ve seen it a few times today at a couple of sites.
Nellcote
@beltane:
Apparently Sanders added med school loan forgiveness for doctors who go into primary care.
ellaesther
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
You go into the legislative process with the Senators you have, not the ones you wish you had.
This is so very true!
You know, when Rumsfeld made this comment about the army, I couldn’t help thinking: Well, that’s true! You don’t necessarily announce it to the young men and women might come home in a body bag but — yeah. It’s pretty much true.
Anya
@beltane: Arianna is their queen. Just you wait and see, she will call for a third party progressive challenger or she will publish from a blogger who is calling for that. God I abhor that site. It reduces every complicated issue to “Obama is controlled by corporatists”
gwangung
Which, strictly speaking, is true.
But how do you fight that? Not by executive fiat. Not by government alone. You have to have an organizational structure just as large and just as money rich as corporations–or at least something to combine with government to do so.
I’m afraid that’s too much work for many people.
J. Michael Neal
@arguingwithsignposts:
They won’t stop talking about that pipe dream until it is possible to get to 60 votes in the Senate without doing so. It’s possible that Obama believes in it so strongly that he’ll never give it up.* At the moment, though, that’s irrelevant. Even though bipartisan talk doesn’t get any Republican support, there are Democratic Senators who just wouldn’t be on onboard with an all-out partisan assault. If we want legislation passed, we have to live with it. We need Ben Nelson and Evan Bayh.
*I’m also in the camp that doesn’t necessarily think that this is entirely a bad thing. There are ways in which going relentlessly partisan would help, and others in which it would hurt. Frankly, I put the blame back on the American public, and its insane desire to take the politics out of politics. Even when the voters are on your side, they generally don’t want you to be too explicit about your conflicts. It worked for the Republicans, but only for a short stretch, and then only with a war to help them. The problem with partisanship as a public strategy is that it is very difficult to turn off when it starts to hurt you.
Jack
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
Translation: “We only want you to confirm the power of our guys. Then, go away.”
Roger Moore
@ellaesther:
And I thought, “That’s true, Rummy, but that’s not good enough. As Sec Def, your job was to provide us with the army we need, and you’ve just admitted that you fucked it up. Not to mention that this was a war of choice, so if you knew we didn’t have the army we needed, you should have tried to stop the fucking thing.” But that’s just me.
aimai
No one is going to go through with any threats of primarying Obama. No one. I don’t care what they write today–they won’t be writing it after the bill passes and they won’t be writing it any time after 2010. There isn’t going to be any alternative as glamorous, thoughtful, elegant, and powerful as Obama to run in a primary against him. Its just not going to happen. And the republican field is going to be entirely composed of the Peacock family from the X files. After the snaggle toothed, holy rolling, deficit hawking and spitting, palinite wing of the party gets through snake handling their way through their primary the entire of the country is going to turn back to the crypto-fascist-gay-muslim-cokehead in the white house with a sigh of relief.
aimai
John Cole
@Stroszek:
I thought it was funny that Americablog was posting videos of the great “Netroots Snowball Fight of 2009 at DuPont Circle” in DC. Apparently the netroots now resides predominantly inside the Beltway and spends their days yelling outwards at the insufficiently pure of heart.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Anya:
And yet.
Even assuming he isn’t, any time we try to put leftward pressure on him as he has asked us to do: (“Make me do it”, he sez), you Obots bring out the fainting couches and start crying, “Leave Obama alone!!!” like that little turd crying about Brittany Spears in the youtube video.
So I’m not sure how we make any true progress at all if every lever we can pull is off limits. Obama, appealing to a majority of the electorate, the filibuster, reconciliation, etc. So we get what everyone universally recognizes as a poor bill with poor public support and a shiny pony that one day, fifteen years from now we’ll magically have what a majority of Americans wants.
One of you geniuses game out Climate Change legislation for me. Pass a huge subsidy to corporations and then wait fifteen years until we’re under water?
Corner Stone
@AngusTheGodOfMeat: I agree, no reason to be mad at Joe. He did exactly as he should have, and anyone who expected differently is a fool.
WTS, he should definitely be targeted and called out for his actions. If he can be defeated then he should be. Otherwise he should be negotiated with as an effective R – as I think Reid has done throughout.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Jack:
One way to look at it, I guess. You’ve got a continuum of voter ideology out there from one extreme to the other.
The game is built around building coalitions and trying to find a sweet spot at the national level. Locally, different game.
So you have the right and left “wings” of the two parties, and you have to court them to some extent, but you can’t govern from their positions, on either side.
Your translation describes a rather negative view of this, but I tend to take the more positive view. The idea that any government can function in such a whirlwind of different interests and views is pretty fascinating. We’re all making deals and trading and compromising, all the time, in politics. Some deals are made with the devil. Well, at least that keeps the devil at the table where we can see him.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Corner Stone: Joe Lieberman is with us on everything except the war. Give him a committee chairmanship and he’ll do our bidding. Besides, he promised not to filibuster anything Democrats wanted. That’s good enough for me.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
I’m all for that. But I am on the opposite side of the country, I don’t really understand politics in the East. I’m a western cow, we chew our cud slowly out here.
But anyway, the guy is a slippery eel. I think he escapes any attempt to grab him up. But I would love it if the voters of Connecticut were to decide they have tired of him.
aimai
Just some fuckhead is absolutely right. People aren’t mad at Joe because they didn’t know just what an asshole he is, or because Harry Reid dealt with him “like a Republican” in a “thoughtful manner” but because the Democrats went against what any sensible party would do in keeping a party renegade in a high party position when he *campaigned against the president* and against the party in a particularly ugly way. As fuckhead points out the quid pro quo was that Lieberman would be protected by Obama and would smoothly give his imprimatur to any major Democratic legislation, at least as far as cloture. This was *obviously* a bad bargain. Lieberman couldn’t have done more damage to the bill if he had been a republican. And now because of his committee chairmanship he’s set to do more setting of the agenda for the caucus as a whole. That was really stupid and totally foreseen by the actual realpolitikers in the audience.
aimai
Anya
@gwangung: Many reforms might be complicated and stalled because of the strangling hold corporations have on our political system but I would not agree that Obama is wholly owned by corporatists. The simple fact is our system is skewed in favor of corporations but Obama and his administration did not create that system and they cannot fight it in few months. Arianna and her ilk complicate issues and poison the well when everything to them is Rahm is Satan, Giethner is evil and Obama is weak. It does not help nor does it advance reform. It just bids allies against one other.
John Cole
@aimai: Without Lieberman you would not be getting the bill you are getting.
And now we go to the “reconciliation and a pony” debate again.
ellaesther
@Roger Moore: Well, yes, that too. I’m at the point where all of that seems to go without saying anymore! So, yeah. Not just you.
Just Some Fuckhead
@aimai: Thanks aimai, but there is an alternative explanation that Joe Lieberman did the bidding of President Obama. Not saying it’s so, just saying we don’t know. But there he still is, sitting up on his perch, untouched.
Davis X. Machina
Reading Richard Reeves’ bio of Mill, John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand, and just came across the following,
From his speech On Perfectability
AngusTheGodOfMeat
FWIW, LATimes has a different twist on this:
Lieberman won several days in the spotlight for abruptly announcing that he would vote against any bill that included either of two measures favored by liberals: a government-run health insurance plan (known as the “public option”) or a plan to offer Medicare to people younger than 65 (known as “Medicare buy-in”).
In an instant, both ideas were vaporized. Liberals outside the Senate excoriated Lieberman as a traitor and a hypocrite, noting that he had once advocated allowing people over 55 to buy in to Medicare.
But inside the Senate, Lieberman’s colleagues were not as harsh — at least, not on the record; you never know when you’re going to need a 60th vote.
And in fact, Lieberman may have done his colleagues a favor. Several centrist Democrats weren’t happy about the public option or Medicare buy-in either. Neither proposal was likely to attract 60 votes, even if Lieberman had stayed in the fold.
In effect, Lieberman volunteered for the role of scapegoat (intentionally or not), taking the blame for shooting down liberal ideas that were already doomed. At any rate, by the end of the week, he was promising to help Reid move a rejiggered bill forward.
–//
How accurate this account is, time will tell, but I think it probably describes something closer to the truth of what goes on back there than the boilerplate cable tv story is likely to do.
Maybe Joe was just our embed in the opposition the whole time, and took the heat for more chickenshit members. Lord knows, Joe has no reluctance to take heat.
Just Some Fuckhead
@John Cole: Yeah, just like the tax cut pony Republicans got with reconciliation. Hell, I’m not even for reconciliation until three or four options down. But I’m all for some sorta brinkmanship that at least postpones the act of rolling over and dying.
And I understand what I am saying is deeply unpopular here. I’m holding out hope for a better outcome, asking us to all fight for something worthwhile. And I’m saying it to a group of people that has, by and large, been conditioned to accept whatever the man gives us, beaten down, dirty, undeserving. I’m saying, you don’t have to accept the crumbs that fall from the master’s table and yer snuffling around on the ground, filling your aprons with juicy bits of dirty bread and replying, but we gotta eat. I get that. But we can play hardball and then settle for crumbs.
Just Some Fuckhead
Can I get an AMEN?
aimai
I think the liberman conundrum is really one for the ages. The Republicans are all going to vote against this bill because the logic of their party demands it. I mean, even Snowe and Collins are planning on voting against it. Lieberman held up the bill not for filthy lucre, like Nelson, but for some bizarre combination of coporatist buy off (although the bill is pretty good for corporations right now) and personal pique. He forced the Dems to strip out of the bill many of its most popular features, and he did so publicly while pissing on the entire rest of the senate and on Obama. One version of things is that, in the end, Reid and Obama knew that Lieberman was just posturing and would come around. In that case they simply kept giving ground publicly while knowing that the clock would run out and Lieberman would come around. Another version is the one JSF is arguing for which is that, as Jane and the FDL’ers think, Lieberman was in on a kind of “sting” of the liberals. they argue that what we are getting is more or less the Senate Finance Bill, and that that is the bill that Obama always wanted because it didn’t have the Public Option.
We really can’t know, at this point, whether we are getting a good bill despite Lieberman, or a bad bill because of Lieberman, because we don’t know if his motive was to kill the public option/medicare buy in or to kill some portion of the bill before he moved over and was welcomed home with open arms. And we don’t know what, if anything, Obama and Reid knew or hoped of their negotiations with Lieberman.
We’ll only know if, going forward, the Democrats and Obama vigorously pursue fixing things like the Public Option/medicare buy in, the anti abortion provisions, and etc… or if Lieberman bolts from the party again and gives as his explanation that Obama/Reid didn’t come through for him on some private promises. We just can’t know what really happened.
And I feel silly for even talking as though we know what the bill is going to look like, or whether Nelson and Lieberman have actually condescended to vote for cloture on the bill out of conference (I mean, saying that maybe they won’t could be more posturing, or could be a real threat, and their bluff could be called).
aimai
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Amen. And moo.
Anya
@Just Some Fuckhead: No one is saying don’t challenge Obama or put his feat to the fire. In fact, I am dissapointed about a number of things the President did and other things he did not put as priority but I am sick and tired of the unhinged criticism and the tactics borrowed from the teabaggers. Some in the left are showing unreasonable hatred toward this president that astonishes me.
As I said, I grew up in Canada and I was too young to care about politics during Clinton, so maybe, the left hated him too and undermined him but I find it hard to swallow.
SGEW
@Davis X. Machina:
Are you purposefully trying to irritate DougJ?
Good quote, tho’.
aimai
Yes, the left hated Clinton. But people’s hatred and anger is in exact proportion to their love and disillusionment. The people who are reacting badly to this “sell out” are people who feel *sold out.* That’s typical in politics when you’ve been aske to give money, time, attention, work, votes to a “cause” and then the cause gets elected. I wish everyone would stop condescending to, and lecturing, other people about how they should understand politics, or compromise, or some other bullshit. Its obvious that the progressive left compromised tons in the bill as it is. But some things seemed like a compromise too far, or too ugly. That was totally obvious. Its a political problem for Obama and his team–just like a problem you face on the campaign trail when it turns out that part of your potential voter base needs to have its feelings taken into account. Just do it and move on–just deal with the fact that the people who are supporting you want certain things. Maybe they can’t have what they want but reconciling them to that fact is just part of the job. Its not something that you can just slough off because you got elected. Fan service. Constituent Service. Politeness. call it whatever you want but its just ordinary common sense. Don’t piss on your own voters and their needs. And don’t let anyone else look like you are letting them piss on your voters and their needs. If you have tom ake compromises to get something good make them, but make it part of your strategy to calm the fears of your base. yeah. Your base. Activists, hard core voters, and new voters. They are all your base. And they all need to be taken care of.
That’s why, to me, this is all a totally unforced error. It simply didn’t have to be this way. We could have the same bill we have now and all the left, such as it is, would be “oohing” and “aahing” about how great Obama and Reid are if they had tried as carefully to work with, and assuage the anger of, their partisans as they worked to be bipartisan. Its theater. Its all theater. They don’t have to be sincere. They just have to give the audience what it wants.
aimai
Davis X. Machina
I thought it was interesting that the Cult of Contrarianism is older than Slate, and Mickey Kaus didn’t invent it.
kay
@aimai:
But, aimai, there’s some facts that are missing here.
There’s a really simple explanation for why Obama didn’t push for a strong public option. He knew he’d never get to 60.
There’s a really simple explanation for why they didn’t move towards reconciliation. They knew they didn’t have 51. I count 44. Do you have a better number?
Rather than even consider these good faith and extremely credible explanations, the “netroots” forced Reid’s hand and had him include a public option that quite possibly had no chance of being enacted. Obama didn’t force Reid’s hand. You did.
That’s not reality based thinking. That’s ignoring what’s right in front of your noses and setting this up as a slap in the face.
Finally, and this is really, really important, a weak public option with a mandate is WORSE than no public option with a mandate, because insurers will just dump the most expensive on the public option. Yet the netroots didn’t oppose the weak public option with a mandate, which was a freaking GIFT to insurance companies. Arguably, Medicare at 55 is a gift to insurance companies, because it takes the older and sicker and puts them on the taxpayer, leaving the private companies with the younger and healthier.
These things have to be considered.
Refusing to look at any of that is not reality. Refusing to take responsibility and insisting that Obama has to explain each step to the netroots or he deserves their wrath is not reality.
J. Michael Neal
@aimai:
So now it’s Obama’s opponents on the left that think he’s playing 11-dimensional chess.
How could we possibly have gotten the same bill by working those on the left the same way they have the centrists? The dynamic isn’t the same. There is zero way that the administration/leadership could have started with a bill and then compromised towards the left, which is what you seem to be wanting. You would have flipped out had the original bill started conservative enough to do that, and the end result would have been even worse than what we have now.
Like it or not, the 60th vote is not on the left.
Just Some Fuckhead
Fine kay, no one could do anything. Everyone is completely powerless. A Democratic president with Democratic majorities in the House and Senate is incapable of delivering what a majority of Americans wants. So we get a bill that is polling around 30% popularity and only because we’re all not clapping loud enough because it’s actually totally awesome and we’d be able to see that if not for the teabags hanging off our hats obscuring our vision.
I accept all that.
Now, game out climate change legislation.
John Cole
@Just Some Fuckhead: Health Care reform is always going to be unpopular, because the majority already has health care. You’re basically asking them to take a risk at what they already have for the unknown. Factor in decades of programming the public that the government can do no right and the fact that it is very easy to demagogue health care by telling people “You are going to lose your choice because we are expanding it to give to others,” with others being the poor and uninsured lazy bastards, factor in a deliberate campaign of lies, and then add in the fucking poutrage left that have no convinced themselves that they know more about health care reform than the Senators and House members who have been working on reform for three or more decades, and it is no shock it is polling at 30%.
Let small businesses start seeing the immediate subsidies to start purchasing plans for their employees, let the families with children with pre-existing conditions get care, and some of the other stuff that comes into action immediately, and the numbers will get better.
And if all you are really concerned with is the polling numbers, you could tell the progressive left to quit acting like this is the worst fucking bill since the authorization to invade Iraq. But that will never happen, because then they couldn’t call everyone Obots and cultists and would probably see their fundraising drop and their invites to CNN and MSNBC to trash the administration fall through the floor.
Mnemosyne
@John Cole:
Almost perfect, but you forgot to talk about the veal pen.
kay
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I resent how you characterize my position. Slightly. I’m not mortally offended or anything.
I’ve never presented it that simply, and you know it.
By the way, you’re the one who got me thinking about providers as a cost issue, so thanks for that. You were right about that.
We disagree on the politics of this. I don’t believe that the netroots, who are not (by and large) the demographic this bill is intended to help are relevant here. Sorry. You’re vitally important and influential people, but this remedy isn’t directed at you. The mandates aren’t going to apply to you either, by and large.
And the polling doesn’t mean anything. If 31 million people get affordable coverage, we’ll poll them then.
Mnemosyne
@CalD:
This is something that’s been bugging me: can anyone explain to me the functional difference between a public option run by HHS and national insurance run by the Office of Personnel Management? As far as I can tell, the only difference between the two is which government agency is running it, and yet people keep talking about the public option run by the HHS as manna from heaven and national insurance run by OPM as a shit sandwich.
Just Some Fuckhead
John Cole: Health care reform is very popular. What we’re getting is extremely unpopular because it isn’t health care reform.
Otherwise, your Republican-like appeal to authority and admonishment to simply clap louder is unmoving to anyone other than those that already agree with you.
John Cole
@Just Some Fuckhead: You forgot to call me a cultist, Mr. Sirota.
Just Some Fuckhead
@John Cole: That’s because I don’t think yer a cultist, dumbass.
Just Some Fuckhead
@kay: Well, kay, ya knows I adore ya and it ain’t personal. At this point, you all have won anyway so ya got that to feel good about.
Max
I wish someone could explain to me how, according to the manic-progressives, Obama is:
Strong-Arming and threatening people like Franken, B. Clinton, S. Brown, Harkin, Mrs. Kennedy, Sanders, etc. to come out in support of the bill
and, at the same time, is
Spine-less, weak and a pussy.
Corner Stone
@Just Some Fuckhead: Nobody wants to end the Iraq War more than Joe.
drillfork
OK, looking at how the Administration “regulates” Wall Street, I think we can toss out Talking Point No. 3…
Just Some Fuckhead
@Corner Stone: But isn’t that so we can start the one with Iran?
Beeb
@Mnemosyne: I’m not sure what you mean by “national insurance run by OPM .” As I understand it — which I hasten to add could be wrong — the bill calls for state exchanges, not a single national exchange, and the OPM will administer (not manage) one offering on those exchanges — of private, not-for-profit insurance, which basically means Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Given the number of state markets already dominated by BC/BS, that’s not exactly increasing competition. That doesn’t make it a shit sandwich, necessarily, but it’s not a government-owned and operated insurance program, either.
handy
@Corner Stone:
If that wasn’t snark I want a link. Considering Liebermann stumped for the guy who supported The Surge™ I find that hard to believe.
Laura W
@Just Some Fuckhead: Hey!
Clap Louder!
Just Some Fuckhead
@Laura W: Ya know, it just so happens I saw Michael McDonald in concert Thursday night. :)
The Sheriff Is A Ni-
@Just Some Fuckhead:
When polls actually translate into votes, then you might have an argument.
Mnemosyne
@Beeb:
That’s where I’m confused, because the Washington Post chart that CalD linked to seems to indicate that they would be nationwide insurance plans, not state-by-state. If they are, then what’s the difference between that and a public option?
ETA: And if the exchanges are state-by-state but the OPM administers the non-profit plan in every state, again, how is that different than a public option?
Chuck Butcher
Let’s just back the legislative train up a leeeetle bit. Mandated insurance would never have made this bill without choice. The rationale for mandates was contained in choices. Now you have what couldn’t have been gotten there without what got it there and that’s pouting by the “left.” Add to that the people who put it there are just fine without its mitigation factor.
Electorally you’ll have to defend this POS with none of its supposed benefits through an election cycle. You will have to defend it in the face of GOP absolute opposition from the outset and the campaign rhetoric about what you’ve actually managed to do. The people actually affected by this will see the personal cost and nothing else in 2010 and you cannot win the dollar argument with the horseshit I’ve seen around here. YOU CANNOT win with what you’ve put forward as arguments. I don’t care if you believe them, the people affected will just laugh at what you’ve got so far.
Don’t worry too much about the really stupid arguments we all like to laugh at. You better start gaming out the half-smart to actually smart ones. You’ve got a real problem and you’d best start hoping the GOP goes all teabaggery and Primaries the hell out of anybody remotely sane.
I think people do actually understand govt spending their money on them and they do actually know something about corporations and products. The 90+% that currently actually have insurance figure they’re spending too much for too little. A hell of a lot of those without have actually taken a look at what is there to be purchased.
You had better hire some really good PR people. I sure have no idea how you’re gonna do this one.
Corner Stone
@handy: It wasn’t snark, it was a direct quote from Joe’s 2006 campaign vs Lamont.
You’ll have to take the MYDD link for it as I don’t have time to search for the video.
Joe and war
Just Some Fuckhead
@Chuck Butcher: Alternative 20xx Democratic slogan: Christ, yes, we really suck, being unable to deliver what you really want despite having the Presidency, majorities in the house and senate and better ideas. But what are you gonna do??? Vote for Republicans. Yeah right.”
slightly_peeved
That’s because you are. You’re a big step rightward of every other first-world nation.
If a far greater percentage of your population voted, that might change. I’m pretty sure the voting population leans right compared to the total population. Certainly that’s what Republicans think, considering their continual efforts to suppress the voting of those they consider ‘not real Americans’. A concept that to them appears to be defined using a pantone colour chart.
This is the reason that threatening to not vote for Democrats because they are insufficiently progressive is like the man who discovers his wife in bed with another man, puts a gun to his own head then tells the other man ‘Don’t laugh, you bastard – your bullet’s next’. The left wants to get politicans listening to them – start primarying their asses. No-one’s moved further left in recent times than Arlen Specter.
Well yes, this is completely true. Your system of government is completely fucked because of the filibuster. The US upper house is far more powerful than its lower house – there’s no other bicameral system of government where the upper house is more powerful than the lower, AFAIK. Get rid of the filibuster, get more people voting, and get some decent progressive candidates in primaries (while keeping the Republicans down at the national level) and you might start to see legislation you actually like. But that would require US progressives to actually be organised, which isn’t their strong suit.
Beeb
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, the mechanics keep my head spinning too, especially when everything keeps changing. Hacker seems to think there’s a difference in how the exchanges will work, though. But I think the real bottom line difference is that private, not-for-profit is not the same as public. It sounds less evil-ish than private for-profit, but if you look at BC/BS overhead and administrative costs (including executive compensation) they are way above what a public plan would be. You can’t rely on BC/BS to offer meaningful price competition to the for-profit companies. Of course, the same might be said for the weak public option, not tied to Medicare rates, that made it into the House bill and Reid’s first cut. But that at least got the public camel’s nose into the tent. This doesn’t. Makes it harder to fix later.
General Winfield Stuck
@Max:
It’s called talking out of both sides of your arse. Youst to be wingnuts playing it, now it’s gone national by the real hippies.
I plan to stay up and watch the vote tonight and give thanks to the FSM that maybe a few of the 50 thou,( that die every year because we are sorry), might actually not become worm food when they needn’t be.
Since the evil democrats and Obama are big evil corporatists anyways, might as well get something out of it for a change.
My Clown Cannon runneth over..
Chuck Butcher
Maybe somebody around here needs to brush up on Blue Cross, Blue Shield – it is a for profit insurance association. It has been such since 1994. How it was founded and run in the past is immaterial today. You gotta do better than that.
kay
@Just Some Fuckhead:
It’s going to be horrible. Midwestern Senators (even liberal ones, like Sherrod Brown) are worried (rightly) that it’s going to increase energy prices, short term. I don’t know if we’ll even get Feingold. I am in a rural co-op for electricity, and I’ve already gotten a fact-free scare letter from the CEO, on co-op letterhead, inserted with my electric bill. I may have been the only customer who read it. It was way too long for a scare letter.
Hillary Clinton (poor thing) had to advance the wildly unpopular idea that we’re bribing developing countries (that’s true too).
There is this, though. Environmentalism is a “mature” movement. They’re on third generation activists, so they know how to do this. They’re all belt and suspenders. They have a SCOTUS decision that allows the EPA to regulate 2/3 of greenhouse gases, and the EPA have strongly indicated that while they prefer legislation, they will act in the absence of legislation.
But it’s not going to be politically popular. I fully expect Sherrod Brown to run from the field, and I understand that, so leave him alone, okay?
I think that’s why that wily John Kerry is trying to hunt up some Republicans, and force them to make statements and write hopeful op-eds.
HORRIBLE. It’s going to be just awful. Okey-doke?
slightly_peeved
Average premium cost went down in Massachusetts after the changes were introduced. Mandate doesn’t cut in until 2013 at least.
What are the personal costs of this in 2010 ?
stacie
@Chuck Butcher: I’ve reached the conclusion that there’s real power in the mandate though, because the mandate makes us all health insurance consumers through the policy of our federal government. Ergo, if health insurance sucks, the federal government has a responsibility to fix it. And we have a responsibility to lobby like hell to make our legislators do their jobs.
In other words Chuck, this bill is pro-democracy, and those who oppose it hate our freedom. :)
(For the record, pretty much everyone here wanted a public option, if not a single payer system. I think we’ll eventually get there because it’s the only really cost effective mechanism to provisioning health care that I’m aware of, but politics is the art of the possible. Now we have to spend the next decade or two saying “Medicare for all” in every conversation about health care, but I do believe that eventually we’ll win that battle, too.)
General Winfield Stuck
@stacie:
This. all of it!!
geg6
I sympathize with Fuckhead, but am resigned to this turd. And I, too, think you all are wearing some pretty damn rosey glasses if you think this is gonna sell very well with Joe Public That Isn’t An Insane Teabagger. But the larger point made by aimai is exactly, perfectly, unassailably right and encompasses my own feelings after this fight. The amount of contempt shown to old Dem warriors like me, people who have year after year worked in the party trenches and filled party coffers and showed up no matter what, is insulting and infuriating. I, for one, am not able to forgive yet. Perhaps they’ll give me a reason, but I have no faith that will happen. And I’ve never felt this way about the party and its leaders before, ever. Deliberately insulted by the White House under a Democratic administration. It still flabbergasts me. That said, I have no choice about who to vote for in 2012, so they’ve only lost my efforts everywhere outside the voting booth. And I really don’t think they’ll miss me since they haven’t shown they place any value on it. So go Obama, I guess.
FlipYrWhig
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Ooh, ooh, I know! Demand zero greenhouse emissions by next year, and when that doesn’t happen, demand that there be no bill at all, because all compromise is “corporate.”
Chuck Butcher
@Just Some Fuckhead:
That’ll sell here where only the odd troll will vote R and the even odder, me, will just bow out. I’m not the electorate and they do actually vote R. After the cheering this crowd better figure out how to work it. I sure the hell have no idea how, but it ceased to be my problem.
The GOP will almost surely bring forward everything the Ds didn’t address from tort reform to selling across state lines. To start with, lawyers are damned unpopular people right up to when it’s your lawyer. The argument about a race to the bottom might work with wonks, good luck with ordinary folks. I don’t care about the actual realities of race to bottom or malpractice is a vanishingly small percentage of the same doctors and % small. They are going to play the fact of mandates hard and will exaggerate the costs and minimize the gains. Politics.
You have another problem, keeping long term costs down means getting people into doctors’ offices. Not happening. Keeping bankruptsies down, not happening with much of any size in excluded costs.
Paula
@zoe kentucky in pittsburgh:
“the work will continue to reform, improve and challenge everything from here on. I know it sounds all pollyannish but we really are in this together and need to start acting like it”
This is the kind of plea that is going to fall on ever-more-deaf ears. @Roger Moore:
slightly_peeved
What are the personal costs of this in 2010 ?
That is one thing the Democratic party, particularly Rahm, have screwed up. Thou Shalt Not Speak Ill Of Fellow Party Members. Just ‘cos Reagan said it doesn’t make it wrong or evil. Obama should have pulled Rahm up very quickly there.
Beeb
@Chuck Butcher: Some are, but some aren’t, or so I keep reading. There is no one BC/BS; it’s a federation of 39 different companies. But of course you may be right and the other folks I read wrong — in which case who, exactly, is going to provide the not-for-profit alternative in the OPM managed program? Are there any up and running NFP companies with enough size to offer much of anything? (I’m not arguing with you. I’m genuinely curious.)
Just Some Fuckhead
@kay: The fight for universal heath care has been waged now for a hundred years and we’re still not even getting that. We’re “allowing” a bunch more people to purchase insurance and hoping that does something other than further enrich and empower the FIRE sector.
So I don’t see what a mature environmentalist movement gets us.
Fact is, we need to blow up the Senate filibuster and tie reforms to populism. If the Health Insurer Bailout Act of 2009 is any indication of what is to come then we’ve already lost the battles on the rest of our agenda.
Paula
@aimai:
“After the snaggle toothed, holy rolling, deficit hawking and spitting, palinite wing of the party gets through snake handling their way through their primary the entire of the country is going to turn back to the crypto-fascist-gay-muslim-cokehead in the white house with a sigh of relief.”
I would stop banking on these comparisons. If real people in this country don’t begin to feel, personally and directly, relief in some form they are not going to be convinced that Obama is better than whatever repub. The real threat is not Palin – the real threat will be any reasonable looking republican at all.
Obama, in his effort to hamstring himself in every conceivable way, made the judgment from the beginning that he would be “bipartisan” AND that he would in No Way pursue or bring to justice any of the bush administration’s assorted criminals. Message: they weren’t so bad. Nothing they did is worth the trouble of stirring things up. So, instead of having republican’s on the ropes, having to spend time defending themselves, he’s freed the pubs to attack him and the democrats.
slightly_peeved
If the current bill had public option, wouldn’t the Republicans just be screaming “DEATHPANELSOCIALIZMKILLINGRANDMA” the whole time?
It seems those are issues with poor Democratic messaging rather than this bill specifically. And poor Democratic messaging has been an ongoing problem.
Hammer no recission. Hammer no pre-existing conditions, Hammer the ban on annual care limits. Hammer the free choice aspect of the exchange – once you are on the exchange, you can switch insurers if you don’t like what you are getting. The main issue that you and others have with these is that insurance companies are a cartel of grasping parasites that will find ways around them. Regardless of the truth of that, I can’t imagine the Repubicans campaigning successfully on it.
Seems like they’ve been spending more time attacking themselves, what with all those purity tests and all. Prosecuting war criminals in the previous administration should be done because it’s the right thing to do, but I’m not sure it would have made things any easier.
Paula
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I love you.
Anne Laurie
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
Fifty percent of all voters are below average. Some segment of them, I suspect, actually enjoy voting for someone who’ll screw them, just for the element of surprise in their otherwise dreary and tepid lives. See also, the Crazification Factor.
kay
@Chuck Butcher:
Chuck, they’re going to have to sell across state lines because they’re putting “at least” two national insurance entities in the exchange, and I don’t know how they do that without selling across state lines. I can’t figure it out from the language. I guess a state could opt out, or disallow its citizens to purchase from that national entity, but that might be a hard argument to make if the national plans are what their people want, as far as coverage and price. Maybe the national plans offer all the coverage requirements of the most restrictive state. That might work too. That way they’re not trumping state law. Insurance has been a state law province, traditionally.
I oppose that, because I think states have proven to be better regulators than the feds, over and over and over, but there it is. Everyone but me thinks it’s a fabulous idea that ought to be tried, including plenty of liberals, so I’m just rolling with it.
I have grave reservations. I want that noted.
General Winfield Stuck
@Paula:
I don’t disagree with not pursuing some of the top crooks in the Bush admin., especially, Cheney, and the evil fucking Addington. And I will be disappointed greatly if some effort in this area, to at least expose what happened, is not made. AT SOME POINT.
We are early on in Obama’s presnitcy, and at least there is a SP looking into what happened in secret. But I do disagree with the analysis that Obama pursuing cheney bush et all, will be any sort of political plus for Obama and dems. First, the public is not all that against tuning up terrorists with some pain, especially those behind 9-11 And given our current economic straights, and the utter political oxygen depletion an all out effort to prosecute the former administration, would not do dems any favors at the polls.
And would likely, imo, give the wingnuts the daddy party protector stage to wank on the “we were just doing it to protect American babies from being slaughtered in Chicago streets by evil terrorists” meme. And the media would lap it up with glee.
Better to do it in a second term, if Obama doesn’t get kneecapped by the real hippies and it’s not Presnit Sarah carrying the football. Yes, I do mean that football.
Joel
Nate Silver again.
slightly_peeved
In a large number of states in the US, insurers have near-monopolies. The monopolies are part of what allow insurers to up premiums, deny coverage and then tell the government to shove it. The health care bill needs to break those monopolies for the exchange to work.
There was an amendment by Wyden that any state could opt-out of the new system (and still receive funds) provided they could implement an alternative system that provided equal or better coverage and protection, while not increasing the deficit. Hopefully this is still in (it was Section 1332, I think) because it would allow the California attempts to switch to single-payer to continue.
Chuck Butcher
@Beeb
This is simple fact, BCBS is a for profit organization as a federal tax issue. As for in the states, whoever it is that state allows to do business in it. You seem to think you’ve done something about State Insurance Boards. You do have specific Federal language pre-empting them??? NO YOU DON’T
Chuck Butcher
@slightly_peeved:
Same bullshit different day, see above and State Boards. Go ahead and get mad at me about something I don’t support. I didn’t write this piece of shit you support. You sure better have facts, though.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Paula:
Cool, that’s one.
Joel
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
I think it’s important to remember than Lieberman represents Republican interests in Connecticut more than any others. Those were the voters that put him in office, taking advantage of the confusion that the primary left.
So, Lieberman has been a model republican.
Chuck Butcher
You are allowed to hope that this bill will do something, you are not allowed to wish into fact thing that are not fact. You cannot sell health insurance of any fucking sort in most states that is not licensed by that state. You could get around that, probably, with a federal program of insurance. You cannot get around that with a private company unless you specifically do so with Federal language. Point to it.
General Winfield Stuck
I really do understand why this compromised HCR bill is causing a lot of pain for some. But to keep saying that we who say it will save lives and has some good stuff in it are persecuting those who don’t think so, is just bullshit.
That road has run both ways. And if you want to consider the entire left blogosphere, it seems to me that more of the acrimony is directed at we who will support it, than the other way around.
Please don’t lay the smartass banner on those who don’t deserve it. I happen to one of the few who should get that banner, being one of the smartest of asses on this topic, in recent days on this blog. Though in my defense, it was done as a response in a give as good as gets spirit.
Someday, this war will end.
kay
@slightly_peeved:
I worry, a lot, about having the regulator at the federal level.
I think that if people are going to sign a contract, they need a state law forum and administrative and regulatory framework to protect them, because state law is more responsive to crooks. I have heard this monopoly argument my whole adult life regarding banks and lenders and I am not at all happy with the result of what was supposed to be a win for consumers.
I want state regulators in this. I want state AG’s in this. They act. There is more than enough federal law that preempts state law in insurance, and none of it is good.
I want the regulator close to the consumer.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Joel:
Fine with me if Jokin’ Joe becomes a damned Republican, really.
They deserve his lying ass.
Corner Stone
@Paula:
And one would think after seeing the benefit of the 50 State strategy in 2006 and 08, and having such a savvy campaign staff in 2008, that Obama and Rahm of all people would realize the benefit of this. And by “this” I mean keeping R’s on their heels defending things the D’s may or may not win.
Personally, I want the admin to go all out and start building legit cases against admin VIP’s – BUT – even if they deem this to be not politically viable (***blech***) then for God’s sake at least let the R’s spend time, money and mental energy fucking *worrying* about the possibilities.
To give them a free pass to play full court press is just bullshit.
The answer seems pretty clear at this point in.
ETA – edited a little here and yon.
Paula
@slightly_peeved:
“It seems those are issues with poor Democratic messaging rather than this bill specifically.”
It’s both.
Beeb
@Chuck Butcher: WRT ” As for in the states, whoever it is that state allows to do business in it. You seem to think you’ve done something about State Insurance Boards. You do have specific Federal language pre-empting them??? NO YOU DON’T,” all I can say is huh? I think you must have me confused with someone else. I haven’t said a word about state regulation. I don’t think the OPM option is an adequate substitute for a pubic option, whether or not BC/BS gets to participate. I take it that you don’t think it is, either. If you want to pick a fight, you’ll have to look elsewhere.
John Cole
And you’re allowed to hate this bill, quit volunteering for the Democratic party (because the alternative is somehow now palatable to you), and stay home in 2010 and 2012, but what you aren’t allowed to do is pretend that every fucking thing about this bill is bad. I understand you are pissed about the public option. But for fuck’s sake, it still does some really good things, unless you are just convinced that all 58 Democratic Senators are as big a corporate sell-out as Rahm and his puppet, Obama.
And Paula, I’m reasonably sure everyone on this forum wanted the Bush admin prosecuted. I know I did, but I can also understand why the Obama admin wanted to deal with other things, like the nosediving economy he inherited that was shedding 600,000 jobs a month and 200 dow points a day in January. Or the two wars. Or the stimulus bill. Or Lily Ledbetter. Or placing appointees throughout the admin to replace Bush appointees. Or all the other things that they’ve accomplished but no one wants to acknowledge, because it gets in the way of the flaming and the forum cock-swinging contests over who is the best liberal/progressive.
And I’m still waiting for someone to tell me who the 50 votes would be for reconciliation or the 60 in the Senate for the public option, and how Obama “using the bully pulpit” would force these arrogant, recalcitrant motherfuckers in the Senate to vote differently.
John Cole
But hey- when you try to bring perspective to the debate, you are just an obot or a cultist. Sorry about that, I forgot.
OBAMA SUCKS!
Beeb
@Just Some Fuckhead: I love you too. I’m waiting to see the final product before I decide whether to join you on the ramparts, but if it isn’t much better on both regulation and subsidies, or if it goes for the full Stupak, I’ll be carrying the third pitchfork on your right.
Elie
@kay:
You are, as usual, right on kay. And you use only the minimum necessary words. I appreciate that.
Carry on
General Winfield Stuck
@John Cole:
Ya stepped on my Obot Olive Branch.
Just Some Fuckhead
@John Cole: lolz.
I love the way you dive off the top rope leading with yer elbow and land a dirty crushing body blow and then call it “perspective”.
That’s why I keep buying a ticket.
John Cole
I’m honestly wondering what kind of speech to deliver or bully pulpit Obama would have to use to get that insurance owned whore Nelson to vote for a robust public option.
For fucks sake, for the bill we got he demanded full medicaid for his state and his state alone. What would he have wanted for a robust public option? Oklahoma?
And you don’t get to say “Go after Snowe or Collins.” They wouldn’t vote for a robust public option no matter what. Trigger was as far as they would go, because they know the wingnuts already want to primary them.
Oh yeah, we revert back to the magical thinking of reconciliation, where we get the pony.
Just Some Fuckhead
@John Cole:
Well, FWIW, Obama brought up the notion of reconciliation back when. (As well as expressing opposition to the individual mandate.)
So, at this point we’re all arguing over which ones of us are Christ’s real disciples.
General Winfield Stuck
@John Cole:
There are a many jokes here. If we try.
Chuck Butcher
Let me be pretty clear. you will have this bill and the Pres will sign it because it has become “must be.” You are going to have to deal with this and you better be pretty good at it. Once you have this, I’m done and any inside insights or influence I have will wane very quickly and as hard as it might be, I’m going to stay out. If the Rs don’t do something to themselves you are going to get hurt in ’10 and I think this thing aggravates it badly. Most of the left, for lack of anyplace to go, will at least vote D, effort may be difficult to drum up. ’12 will be an open question because by then consequences will start to be evident.
Look, you are Liebercrats now and you’d best figure out how to turn that pig into something other than a negative persuasively. I won’t be out against Ds, my unwillingness to be a Liebercrat and pick up pieces from another D stupidity hasn’t made me crazy. However, you do have real problems that need some real good tuning and you’d best be figuring them out because later is too late. I can think of no good reason for me to bother pushing back against this bill, anymore.
Paula
@John Cole:
Yes, yes, prosecuting etc. was just not gonna be worth it, too much trouble, too whatever…
It doesn’t matter WHY they haven’t done investigations/prosecutions, it matters that the message is that the crimes committed just weren’t serious enough to go to the mat for. And if they weren’t that serious, well maybe people have just been too tough on the bush administration. And maybe, if some smooth talking republican comes along that talks a good game and ISN’T Palin, well, maybe they’ll be worth giving a chance.
Don’t forget the other larger meta message here: rich, important people simply can’t be expected to pay the same prices as the little folks. YOU, poor citizen, will pay a fine for not buying insurance. Bush will lie us into a war and spend his post-presidency happily getting paid to do motivational speeches, while Dick Cheney remains an honored guest on Television.
It’s just another version of them against us.
John Cole
@Paula: I’m with you on everything you said. Everything. But I also understand why they didn’t want to deal with it.
Laura W
@Just Some Fuckhead: I used to love you.
Sadly, now…
General Winfield Stuck
Jeebus fucking Christ.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Laura W: Thursday night, he didn’t do any of the three songs you’ve linked to so far. See if you can keep the streak going.
Just Some Fuckhead
@General Winfield Stuck: I’m sure he didn’t mean you, Stuck. Yer too stupid to be seriously Liebercrat devious. I mean that as a compliment.
John Cole
@Chuck Butcher: You do understand that everyone here wanted the public option, right? And not the watered down one progressives were ok with, which would actually do nothing but serve as a dumping ground for folks the insurance companies did not want. Why they were in favor of the bill with that piece of shit, the effect of which Tim F. has discussed a number of times, but now are freaking the fuck out over no public option, is beyond me.
But hey- I’m a liebercrat.
FlipYrWhig
@John Cole:
There’s a lot of hyperbole that Obama shoulda done this, oughta done that. But like you I can’t figure out what good it would do to take a harder line when we’re in this 60-vote regime, keeping in mind that reconciliation is going to be a hard sell with the same Democrats who got involved in the Gang of 14 to defend the judicial filibuster (like Byrd and Inouye).
I think there’s a sentiment out there that the “bully pulpit” is a way to motivate the public, and that a properly motivated public can exert pressure on politicians to move in the right direction. But when was the last time pressure from the left actually moved policy leftwards? I think there’s a lot of groundwork that needs to be laid to create the conditions under which that pressure could be successfully applied.
slightly_peeved
@Chuck Butcher:
Section 1311(c)(1) denotes the rules required for a plan to be “qualified.” Section 1311(e)(1) describes the process of certification for a plan to be qualified, and there’s no mention of the states.
Section 1334, manager’s amendment: The requirement is that the Exchange plans be licensed in the state, and comply with state law not inconsistent with the section. In case of inconsistencies, federal law applies.
BCBS, GEHA, and APWU amongst others are already operating nationwide through the FEHBP.
So the state boards might be able assert supremacy if they pulled the licenses of everyone who wanted to offer a plan under the exchange. In which case, the state wouldn’t get any funding, and they’d have the federal government and a bunch of insurance companies throwing a shit fit. Otherwise, they have to set up an exchange which, in any case of conflict, fulfils the requirements set by the Secretary, not the state board.
Laura W
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Asshole.
Mnemosyne
@kay:
Anyone who thinks it would be totally awesome to have healthcare companies go national because there will be so many more consumer protections than there are at the state level must not have a credit card.
The state of California’s insurance department is working their asses off on rescission, but if the insurance companies were not subject to state law, they would incorporate themselves in South Dakota, buy their legislature, and thumb their noses at any state that tried to regulate them the same way that credit card companies do.
Removing that oversight on a state level is setting up a giant clusterfuck and I’m astounded that people complaining that this bill isn’t good enough are actually in favor of it.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
It’s always a pleasure to call you a pig ignorant jackass. That is not a compliment.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Laura W: Awwwwww. I’m sorry. He did that one. Your streak is over at three.
Paula
@General Winfield Stuck:
The problem is that, like all our other ponies, we have no reason to believe this administration will ever do squat with respect to bush admin crimes. Every year that passes makes that less likely, not more. Obama has expressed less than zero interest – he’s against revisiting the bush years.
Whether it would have been a political winner or not – who knows? That always has an awful lot to do with how it’s played. Who would have thought the pubs could become the champions of Medicare?
Corner Stone
@Paula: I’ve always thought that going forward building cases against the R’s would lead to a kind of polarization between the parties. It would agitate R’s into opposing pretty much all the legislation the Obama admin supported, and probably rouse the Village media into holding their hankies against their noses and looking frantically for their fainting couches.
The result would be a vociferous R party making all kinds of wild claims against Obama and the D’s, and the media amplifying any and all ludacris claims and posting them on the big board as if they were legit and to be taken seriously.
Sure as hell am glad that didn’t happen. It may have gotten in the way of HCR, financial reform, jobs stimulus, decisions on Afghanistan & Iraq…..
Just Some Fuckhead
@General Winfield Stuck: If commenting was real life, I’d be strutting around in a new suit made of Stuck hide.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig:
How the fuck would we know?
rachel
Here’s something I don’t get:
Some ignorant people keep talking about what a “shit sandwich” it’ll be for everybody over a certain income level to be forced to buy medical insurance. Well, guess what: I live in a country right now where everybody* over a certain income level is forced to buy insurance.
The South Korean government takes money from my salary every month to pay for my medical insurance. I have no choice but to pay even though I’m “mostly” healthy…
And I like it that way.
I don’t have to submit a monthly bill. I don’t have to shop around and compare rates. All I have to do is carry my insurance card with me and submit it when I get to the hospital cashier, and they take a big discount off my bill.
Sure, dental’s not covered. Sure, if I want an elective procedure, I have to pay the whole shot myself. But all necessary treatment is covered without any headache to me.
US residents would be damned lucky to get a “shit sandwich” like what I’ve got to deal with.
*Except my husband; due to an odd set of circumstances, is not allowed to buy into the Korean public insurance plan. It would make our lives so much easier and our expenses so much less if he was.
Chuck Butcher
@John Cole:
Every aspect of this bill is not bad, as I’ve repeatedly stated. I may be real doubtful how real the regs are without a dedicated enforcement agency, but as stated, they do no real harm. Not in fact or politically.
The mandates on the other hand are a problem campaigners had better be real effective on. “This sucks, but…” is not in the least an effective argument. “They’re worse…” doesn’t work either. Many Ds are going to hold still for this, that means 1/3 at best of the electorate and the other side has 1/4+. You know where your difficulty lies.
gwangung
Hm, yes. My position is that there’s wonkish, structural things to translate progressive pressure to legislative accomplishments (as in (eep!) gay rights matters). I don’t quite know enough to articulate exactly what those are, but just seems that the passion might be a bit too unfocussed.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Corner Stone: Nice, but maybe a little too subtle for some here.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
In fact of all the bullshit you have spewed here the past few days, the only real concern, or understanding, is how will this affects ME. That’s it. You have no clue of any other goddamn thing than that. so just shut the fuck up, or get a clue. I am sick of your tedious horseshit of knowing nothing the fuck whatsoever. and pretending you do.
slightly_peeved
@Mnemosyne:
States can require that exchange plans offer extra benefits in addition to the national plan: see Sec. 1311(3)(B)(i).
Futhermore, incorporation in states doesn’t really matter when the Secretary of HHS, through the OPM, is controlling what is or is not a qualified plan.
General Winfield Stuck
And if you motherfuckers want to run and hide cause you didn’t get your way and Obama so let you down. Then just do it and quit your embarrassing whiny ass titty baby routine day in and day out here. Find a candidate, primary Obama, or start a new party and independent him in 2012. I DO NOT CARE.
Just quit your never ending whining, I tried to make peace, but there is no way it seems.
Paula
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Too subtle for some here…
It took me a minute. But it is a beautiful piece of snark!
Paula
@Corner Stone:
Exactly.
Just Some Fuckhead
This is the part where Stuck goes crashing around with the dinosaur action figure knocking over everyone’s LEGOs.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone:
So what would be involved, besides carping on blogs or signing on to e-petitions? Those are easy, and have essentially zero actual effect. So what’s the strategy? I’m being serious. I don’t see how anyone can apply any pressure from the citizenry upon the government. I don’t understand how grassroots anything is actually supposed to work anymore, let alone “direct action.” It just annoys people. I said somewhere else recently that I’m pretty sure footage on the news of people getting blasted with fire hoses wouldn’t induce viewers to feel sympathy for the people getting blasted, but with the people with the hoses. This is why I’m not an “activist,” because all I see is futility.
Paula
@Just Some Fuckhead:
It has not been a happy week. Thanks for making me spit root beer through my nose laughing.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Look, the most condescending thing anyone can do is start talking to others in a comment thread about how dumb everyone else in the thread is.
Please, don’t do that, no matter who you are.
Paula
@FlipYrWhig:
Actually, and I’m serious here, although we activists have not gotten what we wanted with respect to this bill, we are definitely having an impact. The white house is actively trying to paper over this mess specifically because of the outcry it is generating. Will they make changes, now or anytime soon? Who knows. Will they have to at least consider making changes? I think so.
It’s important to note, too, that what we scream about now, the public will scream about later. We are their early warning system. Right now they are hearing the noise. They may not be actually listening, but they hear the roar. In my view, Obama cannot go on without some kind of course correction, and soon. Because once things move out of the netroots and into the mainstream, well, that IS how you lose elections.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Thoroughly Pizzled: It’s part of my charm as anyone with an IQ over 50 knows.
General Winfield Stuck
@Paula:
christ Paula, sorry we aren’t up to your superior intellect and perception.
General Winfield Stuck
@Paula:
the only thing the white house is concerned about is getting enough house members on board to get a bill passed. Shrieking internet bloggers come in a distant last. While at the same time not losing any of the 60 senate dems for cloture on a final bill.
Paula
@General Winfield Stuck:
Ouch! stop smacking my Legos!
Cat Lady
Obama has been President for 11 months out of a term of 4 years. He inherited fuck-ups as far as the eye can see, with every problem enmeshed in every other problem, with the media against him, the right against him, the vanity projects in the Senate trying to show him who’s the real boss, and the FAIL that is the media against him, and clueless about it to boot.
Now the left is against him?! Really?! The Bush crime syndicate had 8 years to work their fuck-up magic, and burrowed their evil minions deep into the machinery as insurance that nothing would really change – especially, and most importantly, quickly, so that they can continue to sow discord. It’s working, innit? You somehow think Obama wouldn’t like to snap his fingers and give you all of your ponies? No one is more left than me, and I want my ponies too, but grow the fuck up.
If we give Obama a second term, don’t you think he’d be freer to give out ponies? But, I am just an O-bot. Kucinich/Dean 2012!
+ a lot.
kay
@Mnemosyne:
Another state’s rights liberal! Kidding, just kidding.
This isn’t as bad as credit cards. There, the lenders got their choice of state law, race to the bottom, zoom, zoom, and then there was some federal law that preempted state law on usury.
This is not that. Here, they will be national plans, and the rules are right out there, in the bill. It’s not like they’re picking South Dakota because they bought the state legislature, and they then wrote the rules.
I’m not so concerned with a credit card disaster-like situation. I’m worried about feds as the (only) regulator because we found out that feds don’t or won’t police business interests properly. I just think that there’s NOT a level playing field when ordinary people are contracting with our ethically-challenged business community, and people need state law to fall back on when the fed regulators get captured.
kay
@Mnemosyne:
Okay, I found out more, it’s a federal plan that preempts state regs, but individual states will enforce the federal regs.
I can live with that. National standards, enforced by states, as to those national plans.