Dennis Kucinich flips to the dark side:
Health care reform advocates inched closer to victory Wednesday morning as a high-profile liberal Democrat switched his position and announced his intention to vote for a sweeping $875 billion plan under consideration in the House of Representatives.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, said he believes “health care is a civil right.” He had previously characterized the bill, which passed the Senate in December, as little more than a boondoggle for private insurers.
Kucinich was publicly lobbied for his vote by President Barack Obama during the president’s visit this week to Kucinich’s congressional district in Ohio. He told reporters he’s had four meetings with Obama to discuss the bill.
“The president’s visit to my district … underscored the urgency of this vote,” Kucinich said. “I have doubts about the bill … [but] I’ve decided to cast a vote in favor of the legislation.”
He said he ultimately had “to make a decision on the bill as it is, not on the bill as I’d like to see it.”
No one here gets out alive.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Not on this issue . watch dems fall in line. one by one by one.
Joe Beese
Indeed, it must have been very difficult for Obama to accept all those
bribescampaign contributions from Big Pharm. Won’t someone find pity in their hearts?Ash Can
After bitching about the guy around these parts lately, I just want to go on record as saying hats off to Dennis Kucinich for doing the right thing.
Mike Kay
“Speak softly and carry a big stick” ~ Nakid Rahm!
beltane
The Republicans seem to be in some disarray over this. John Shaddeg was apparently on MSNBC complaining that this bill was a corporate giveaway and that he supports single-payer. They’re just flailing now.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Joe Beese: Yer tears are delicious.
Mike Kay
@Joe Beese:
whacya matter, is Jane gettin her daily pedicure, and you’re unable to suck her toes.
The Grand Panjandrum
Michael Moore is going to be on the Diane Rehm Show right now. Should be interesting after his open letter praising DK for his stand against the Senate bill.
joes527
@beltane: The republican message is clear and consistent:
themann1086
@Firebaggers: QQ moar n00bs, ur tears are delishus!
And while we’re at it: quick, someone call the WHAAAAAAmbulance!!!
Leelee for Obama
@beltane: Seriously? I would actually watch him if that’s true! Although he generally is muted on my TV; funny thing that. It just seems to happen.
Mike Kay
@beltane:
ahhahhahhhhahahhahhahhahhahhahahhahhahahhhhhahahhah
hahahhhhhahhhahhahahhahahhahahhahahahhhhahhahahhahh
hahahahahhahahhahhahhahhahahhahahahahhaahahahhahahh
Shaddeg calling for a “gubmitt take over” is too rich!
Legalize
I hope Dennis got something for his vote. If not, I’m still glad he came around. I guess the gazebo scheduled to be built in Lakewood has been canceled. Watch the media narrative shift to sucking up to Obama’s persuasive powers. I bet we’ll get at least one LBJ reference from Tweety tonight.
Mnemosyne
Phew! I have to admit, Dennis had me a little worried there, but I’m glad he finally came through and did the right thing.
And I liked his little message to the people who’ve constructed the perfect bill in their heads and don’t want him to vote for anything less: he “ma[de] a decision on the bill as it is, not on the bill as I’d like to see it.”
eyepaddle
@beltane:
Really? Shadegg said that? Oh my, this might be thestart of the bestest day ever.
OT: I’ve been monitoring the DU for close-ups of interneccine firebagger bloodletting. So far I’d say I have not been disappointed, but you can tell some folks are just getting warmed up.
mistermix
Loving the FDL headline: “Liveblogging the Kucinich Announcement: Flips to “Yes” on Health Care Bill, Appears to Get Nothing in Return”.
Would he have gotten something for a “No” vote (other than a few bucks he doesn’t need from FDL and virtual blumpkins from all the front pagers)?
JAHILL10
@Joe Beese
Gee, you really know how to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The single biggest piece of progressive legislation this country has seen in decades is on the verge of passing and all you can do is hang your head at the imagined corruption of the people on YOUR SIDE.
Have you not noticed the Repubs doing back flips of mendacity in the last several weeks pulling out all stops to try and kill this thing? Why do you think they are doing that? Out of the goodness of their hearts? They are doing it because this bill helps people and its going to make the Democrats popular.
Popular democrats get re-elected and less skittish about passing progressive legislation. This is a GOOD THING.
Talk about 11 dimensional chess. What dimension do you have to be playing from when your side winning is something to cry over?
beltane
@Leelee for Obama: A commenter at GOS saw this on Shuster’s show. The Republicans just want to kill the bill by any means necessary. If that means attempting to attack from the left, they will go there.
Joe Beese
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
I begrudge no one a good gloat.
I’ll have mine down the road when the reality of this bill bites its supporters in the ass.
Pangloss
@beltane: There’s a lot of soiled depends in DC this week.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Mnemosyne: I can’t remember where I read it, and not being a good policy wonk, didn’t understand it, but it was said that Obama’s personal fixes placed into the reconciliation package really did make this a much better bill. Don’t remember what the provisions were, or who wrote it, could have been Cohn, or maybe Ezra.
edit – and it seemed that a single tweak to one of the new industry regs was mainly why. If I remember correctly.
El Cid
I had been hoping that DK’s opposition had been a negotiating tactic, and that eventually many Democrats would decide they didn’t prefer a gigantic, embarrassing loss on the issue for which the party had run campaigns for generations.
eyepaddle
@JAHILL10:
While I try to avoid this sort of thing (on the infrequent occasions when I post):
This.
beltane
@mistermix: At the very least, Kucinich will be getting health care to some of his constituents. What is most distressing about the FDLers is their complete indifference towards human suffering. These are people who would deny famine relief on the grounds that the food provided was not certified organic and was a giveaway to big ag.
Ash Can
@beltane:
Holy crap. Was he sober?
J.W. Hamner
I wonder who the Firebaggers will be able to find to primary Kucinich from the left? I would think you could count the options on one hand.
gwangung
@mistermix:
Proving that stupidity transcends party lines.
You don’t have to play 11-D chess to know how blitheringly stupid that headline is.
artem1s
You might hate Dennis but at least he fights for his constituency. Ohio handed the White House to Bush twice and the GOP spent 8 years crapping on the state in every way possible. Dennis was one of the few who didn’t drink the Lemming Aid of the Iraq war and spoke out loud often about the multiple abuses of the Cheney reign of terror.
We might not have such a huge deficit and crappy economy if a few more people had listened to him instead of making fun of him. He’s been in politics for longer than most of us have been alive. You may think his ideas are wacky but most people thought Governor Moonbeam Jerry Brown was a wack job too. Now environmental concerns are a common part of the Governators policies.
Dennis was willing to loose his seat to voice his concerns while his own state party has been attacking and trying to unseat him while turning a blind eye to massive corruption in the party in Cuyahoga County. They will probably run some Republican-in-Independent(GOP)-clothing against him again in 2010 just like they did in 2008. Trust me, I’ve seen the dreck they are trying to replace him with. They make Stupak look reasonable. If the DNC gets their way you will be crying to get Dennis back.
Mike Kay
@Joe Beese:
shorter Firebagger: “I HOPE HE FAILS!”
maye
My oldest friend called me yesterday to ask my opinion on the healthcare bill. She is a retired military officer, a registered Republican, and a resident of one of the reddest states in our union. She’s also thoughtful and well-educated. When I told her I wanted the bill to pass, she began throwing up each and every Fox News talking point (2000 page bill! Government takeover! Death panels! etc.) I quietly gave her my side of the story. At the end of a 30 minute conversation, she still held her position.
I cannot stress enough the power of the propaganda on this issue (or any issue). If lies are left out in the public domain without vigorous refutation, they are internalized by people predisposed to believe them (and picked up by people with no predispositions).
It’s like getting out in front of pain after surgery. It’s much harder to reel it back in once it’s allowed to start. Start those demerol injections early.
Right wing propaganda is corrosive and intractable.
unabogie
@Joe Beese:
Hey Joe, my friend, who is recovering from a massive stroke, and his family, who will not be bankrupted if this bill passes, kindly tell you to DIAF.
The absolute nerve of you “liberals” to think that banning rescission and pre-existing conditions will somehow become unpopular. You’re not “liberal”. You’re not a “true progressive”. I am. I actually care about my fellow man while you care about ponies.
So go shove one up your ass.
Comrade Mary
@Joe Beese: Well, we’ll see. I don’t think it’s a perfect bill, and I have my Jesus-driving-the-moneylenders-out-of-the-temple moments over how it’s so tough for Americans to get the damn insurance companies under control, but until then ..
Let’s make a [shit] sandwich!
Shygetz
@Joe Beese: How many times has Medicare been tweaked, fixed, and modified over the past ten years? Now, imagine if there had been no Medicare to fix, tweak, etc…how likely would it have been to pass an already fixed Medicare from scratch. I have met no one that likes the bill as is, but it’s better than the status quo and gives us something real to build upon later.
beltane
@J.W. Hamner: Alan Keyes is most likely available. Or else some random LaRouchie. Crazy transcends labels.
evie
Thank you, Kucinich. Just as you won’t revoke your criticisms of HCR, I won’t revoke the many times I called you an asshole. But I do appreciate you agreeing that this HCR bill is a place to start, which is a key reason to say Ay.
Chyron HR
@Joe Beese:
Yes, yes, Timmy. Thank goodness we have real “progressives” who aren’t afraid to tell the truth about the Democrat Suicide Bill that’s chock-full of Socialist Death Panels.
Svensker
@Mike Kay:
My kind of man.
shortstop
What a coincidence. So did all of us.
I’m glad he caught up, and I don’t mean that snarkily. Thanks, Dennis.
eemom
I believe it is now safe to say that Jane Hamsher is The Only True Progressive Left In America.
This would be a perfect time for her to lead her cultbots to Guyana and leave the rest of us the fuck alone.
FormerSwingVoter
@joes527:
Is it worth noting that the firebaggers seem as lacking in minorities as their teabagging compatriots?
Tattoosydney
@unabogie:
Bravo!
YellowJournalism
Another positive thing is that we are one step closer to Limbaugh moving out of the country. Someone buy him a new set of luggage and deliver it to his station headquarters.
Oh, you mean he won’t make good on that vow? Damn.
slag
I’m pleased to see that the rumors are true and that Kucinich did finally do the right thing. It’s about time.
But…@mistermix:
I’m unhappy to see some of us demeaning these people’s participation in the process. FDL–as wrong-headed as they have been lately, are still, and will most likely continue to be in the future–at least put their money where their ill-advised mouth is. We need more people participating in this process–not fewer. So, I think it’s wrong to insult that particular effort in this particular fashion.
That is all.
Fergus Wooster
@Comrade Mary:
This. As objectionable as I find many aspects of the bill (obviously single payer would be superior, obviously public option would be a good thing, obviously subsidizing big insurance is unpalatable), the ban on recission and pre-existing conditions is huge, and will mean the difference between life and death for members of my family.
It’s time to stop bemoaning the imperfections and pass the damn bill. We can tweak it later, especially as the insurance companies continue to misbehave.
stevie314159
I heard that the Japanese soldiers hiding in those caves on Iwo Jima and Okinawa for years were reading FDL.
Tom Hilton
I made the mistake of looking at the Firebagger comments. How can people that fucking stupid even remember to breathe?
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@slag: Well, I hate to see a few make it personal, as it should not be that. But politics isn’t a congenially contest either. There is often too much at stake to be good sports about it all. Jane plays rough and sometimes (recently often) dirty, that is cool and allowed, but same rules apply for everyone. And that goes double on a piece of legislation that is literally life and death to millions of Americans.
Steeplejack
Testing . . . Is the time stamp still screwed up?
Edit: Why, yes. Yes, it is. Damn it, I was playing catch-up on the threads and deleting them because there had been no action in a while, but now I realize that the time stamp is an hour off.
C’mon, Cole. This is bush league. Every time change this happens. At least this time it didn’t cause comments to get out of order. Grr!
Tom Hilton
@slag:
Actually, there’s good participation and there’s bad participation (the Dick Armey are ‘participating’, but it would sure as shit be better if they didn’t).
Apart from the reality that all of the lobbying everyone did for the public option probably had no effect whatsoever, I think the Hamsherite caterwauling probably had a significant negative effect. If so-called ‘progressives’ are constantly telling other progressives that the bill is a piece of shit, that’s going to diminish participation by people who would otherwise be supporting it now.
Pangloss
@stevie314159: Awesome.
Mnemosyne
@artem1s:
Governor Moonbeam sat on his ass and did nothing as Prop 13 was passed, which is the anti-tax proposition that got us into the horrific budget situation we’re in now here in California. It turns out that if you turn off a huge source of tax revenue, the government can’t do things like provide roads and schools. Who’da thunk it?
If that asshole Brown thinks I’m going to vote for him in November, he’s got another think coming. The only way I’ll even consider it is if he admits he was wrong to not oppose Prop 13 and says he’ll work to rescind it, or at least change it.
maye
Don’t forget prisons. We need those prisons to lock people up for life after they steal videotapes from 7-11 on their third strike.
Steeplejack
@maye:
And your friend, as a retired military officer, has very good
sociaIistgovernment-run medicine. But I’m sure the irony is lost on her.PTirebiter
@unabogie: Don’t sweet talk him man, tell him!
robertdsc
I’m glad he switched.
slag
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Agreed. But this attack seems more like an insult to the concept of participation if the participation happens to end up on the losing side of the issue. I do think the rules have to apply equally. Which is why I’m not running around insulting Balloon Juicers for throwing money at Martha Coakley even though she lost. We tried, and that’s more than a lot of people did.
@Tom Hilton:
I’m not a fan of Dick Armey’s band of miscreants. I’m not a fan of their tactics, and I’m not a fan of their positions (whatever they may be at this moment in time). But, as a small-d democrat, I don’t get to preemptively decide what constitutes “good participation”. I can only hope to get more participants on my side than they get on theirs.
As to the matter of liberal influence, it’s hardly a well-kept secret that we have none. But rather than pointing and laughing at people who have no influence (as we will, invariably, have three fingers pointing back at us), we might be better off figuring out what we can learn from them to gain more influence for ourselves.
I’m all about mocking people for their dumb ideas or ill-intentions. I’m not about mocking people for just showing up. I don’t know what brand of liberalism can logically make space for that particular kind of cynicism, but it’s not mine. If I were against active participation in government, I would–from a purely rational standpoint–have to become a Republican.
joes527
OK. Granted. Prop 13 (and the whole Howard Jarvis movement) has been a disaster for California. Schools, roads, libraries … etc. … etc… have all suffered. This is all true.
But the *problem* that prop 13 addressed – That folks were being priced out of the homes that they had already bought by the tax impacts of an insane real estate run up that they weren’t even participating in – was real.
Yes. Prop 13 (and more importantly, the Howard Jarvis branded movement that followed to oppose any revenue for the state) threw the baby out with the bathwater.
But there was a real problem in there. If Prop 13 hadn’t been followed by a religious movement which prevented fixes to the fix, then its impacts would not have been so great (terrible).
Shade Tail
@Joe Beese:
Quoted in full for truth. I have severe chronic asthma, so God help me if my husband ever loses his job. And you, Joe Beese, don’t give even one shit about that. You only care about your wonderful platonic ideals of the perfect health care reform.
So go fuck yourself and the magic pony you rode in on.
Anyway, with that unpleasantness dealt with, I wonder what persuaded Kucinich. Maybe he was happy with the deem-and-pass tactic that basically passes and amends the bill simultaneously.
joes527
@Mnemosyne:
Cool. I always wanted Meg Whitman for my Governor. (yeah, I know … She has already started her tailspin. Substitute the last republican standing)
bayville
Irony alert:
Jon Chait – last seen riding around Stamford in his Beemer adorning a “Lieberman for Connecticut” bumper sticker, presumably on the hunt for those still-missing WMDs – calls Kucinich crazy and stupid.
Puzzling. Kucinich will vote as the so-studious, Progressive Intellects want and they still resort to name-calling.
Meanwhile, Timmy Geithner is in more hot water as the financial system gets that much closer to ruin once again. For the most complete analysis of this scandal watch Al Jazeera, the BBC, Bloomberg or Comedy Central.
FlipYrWhig
Good for Dennis. That’s obviously the key point and has always been. I remember when Atrios used to make fun of how the decision to support the Iraq war was inseparable from the fact that Bush and his flunkies were prosecuting the war, meaning that Tom Friedman and Ken Pollack and others who had a “pony plan” to support A war in Iraq, if not BUSH’s war in Iraq, were just wanking off. That’s the issue here. Is the health care bill as good as Jane Hamsher’s or Joe Beese’s Pony Plan or “Those Ranting Weirdos on Yglesias’s Blog” Pony Plan? Of course not. But, you know, we all have Pony Plans too, but we’re not in a fucking position to make fucking policy, so this is what we have, and this is what I support.
Llelldorin
@Mnemosyne:
Can we afford not to, though? Given the state of the state, a Meg Whitman administration would be catastrophic. We’re in no position to weather chirpy bullshit about reducing the tax burden while miraculously “improving” education.
Llelldorin
@joes527:
Oh, sure, of course there was an existing problem. It was no accident, though, that the bill (by applying the same rules to seldom-sold commercial real estate and rental properties that it did to traditional housing stock) effectively transferred the weight of the property tax burden from companies to homeowners.
It was a classic Republican dodge–use a legitimate beef about residential taxes to engineer a massive tax giveaway to corporations.
eemom
Someone made a good point yesterday that there is very little daylight between FDL’s fundraising for Dennis on Monday when his vote was no, and demanding it back now that he’s changed his mind, and, you know, BRIBERY.
joes527
@Llelldorin: But you missed the point. Of course Prop 13 was imperfect. (and yes, from the R side, that was a feature, not a bug)
But the real problem was that the fight over Prop 13 gave rise to a cult that blocked any subsequent fixes.
Easy to see in retrospect, but to blame Governor Moonbeam for not opposing an imperfect proposition on this particular day, on this particular thread seems … ironic.
PTirebiter
@joes527: Having left L.A. some 20 years ago, I haven’t thought about Prop 13 in a long time. My lasting image is that of all the closed neighborhood libraries and how quickly it happened.
bemused
I haven’t been to fdl in a long time. I checked out the comments to the DK post & I didn’t see but a couple of commenter handles that I recognized. Maybe the people that used to be there all the time are still there commenting on other posts but it does feel like a different crowd.
RedKitten
Something that I wish the Hamsherites would keep in mind as well is this: if this bill fails, do they honestly think that another sweeping health-care reform bill will be introduced in their lifetime? It’ll be considered a political career-killer — nobody will even want to GO there.
Even though the bill isn’t perfect, if it’s passed, then that hurdle is cleared. Then, it can be tinkered with and hopefully improved as time goes on. But if it’s not passed, then there’s nothing to improve, is there?
Hell, civil rights in your country still have a ways to go. So it stands to reason that if the Civil Rights Act hadn’t been passed until everything in it was perfect, then it would have NEVER been passed. Some stuff is just so important that you’ve just got to say, “It’s not perfect, but holy shit, it’s better than what we have now. Let’s get this rolling, and we’ll fix it as we go.”
ericblair
@FormerSwingVoter: Is it worth noting that the firebaggers seem as lacking in minorities as their teabagging compatriots?
I think it’s more a class thing. When you’re starving, it’s not so easy to hold out for that loaf of organic asiago focaccia instead of the WonderBread sitting in front of your face.
Zuzu's Petals
@The Grand Panjandrum:
I hope someone calls him on his claim that the bill “doesn’t really cover pre-existing conditions for the next four years.” Because:
Tom Q
Just a quick (and, from me, rare) support/correction on the part of Jerry Brown:
Brown was completely OPPOSED to Prop 13 prior to the vote. He campaigned loudly against it, warned what it would do to the state.
You may remember otherwise because, on the night the referendum issue passed (by a wide margin), the Gov. executed an extraordinary 180, proclaiming “The people have spoken” and explaining how brilliantly he would implement it. It was such an audacious flip that Doonesbury took to calling the bill the Jarvis-Brown Act.
As was said above, resentment of ever-rising taxation was a prime concern 30 years ago (witness Reagan’s ascension two years later). You could argue that there was a strong element of “I want everything without having to pay for it” to the movement, but it was where we were in the pendulum swing then, and to politically dismiss it was suicidal.
The important thing to note is, that was a long time ago, and at some point Democrats are going to have to get past that “Taxes is poison” phobia, especially when it comes to the wealthy, or there’ll never be any way to run a government.
Tom Hilton
@PTirebiter:
I would love it if someone with better graphics skills than myself would design an official-looking poster (a la CalTrans) that we could put up at all the closed libraries/state parks/decaying infrastructure/etc., reading “Your tax cuts at work!”
Tom Hilton
@Tom Q: there was another kind of resentment at work behind Proposition 13, and that was (white) well-off people who resented paying for (non-white) less well-off school districts. The Serrano-Priest decision was absolutely right, but an unintended consequence was that property owners in Hillsborough and Beverly Hills and Carmel were no longer seeing their taxes go to their own (and only their own) kids.
Tom Hilton
@slag: we may be arguing semantics at this point, but I don’t think anyone is mocking people for “just showing up”; I think we are mocking them for their dumb ideas and ill intentions. And given the impact of what they’ve been doing (i.e., dampening enthusiasm for healthcare reform altogether), I think that mockery is well-deserved.
Llelldorin
@Tom Hilton:
This. People cheerfully paid huge sums to their cities’ “educational foundations” that were outrageous! when paid as property taxes.
That’s part of why it took so long for anyone to engineer a fix for prop 13: Weathy neighborhoods were insulated from the effects by educational foundations, special assessment districts, and the like. Poorer areas cratered immediately.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Why are the usual suspects in the comment section using this occasion to spew adolescent taunts? The grown-up response to good news is, you know, celebration.
If Kucinich’s remarks can be taken at face value then it’s apparent that a persuasive man with a kickass airplane can accomplish much.
Tom Q
Tom Hilton: Absolutely — and this was part of the entire Tax revolt era: convincing well-off whites that their tax money was only going to darker races. Something rebutted by the facts but substantially believed even unto today. In fact, to bring the topic full circle, it underlies some of the more virulent anti-health care protest today.
Elie
@maye:
I just wish that right wing propaganda was accessible to rational discussion and evaluation. Most of the time, the slogans people hold in their head about something has little to do with facts, even when the facts are given and corrections made timely.
The emotion — fear,tribal affiliation to certain notions of power and entitlement (“what we believe is right because we are the only ones who get to call the shots — our reality is the only right way, facts be damned”), is what makes these views so stubborn and unchangeable, not that facts and refutations are not available timely.
Elie
@Tom Q:
Absolutely agree…
Mnemosyne
@joes527:
Which is, of course, why corporations had to be exempted from property tax increases as well — to protect the little guy!
There was a problem but, frankly, the cure was worse than the disease. Not only that, but it gave the legislature the idea that they could pass all of the tough issues on to the voters and not actually have to pass unpopular legislation, which is the other reason we’re in a death spiral right now.
Frankly, I don’t think Meg Whitman could make things much worse than they already are. Of course, being a Republican, I’m sure she’ll think of new and innovative ways to fuck all of us over.
Sorry, but I just don’t think that Jerry Brown is going to be able to fix a thing. I don’t think any governor can at this point, which is why no other Democrat is even thinking of running.
artem1s
@Mnemosyne:
my point about Brown and Dennis is that they were out there pushing radical change and talking about the issues and the real consequences of ignoring inconvenient political truths. I don’t think either was perfect or always proposed perfect solutions. I do think they were willing to voice their concerns even though they knew they would get branded as nut jobs and maybe even lose their jobs. I don’t always agree with Dennis or his ideas but I appreciate that he isn’t afraid of unpopularity like so many members of Congress.
The concept of proposing a Department of Peace during one of the most violent and aggressive administrations was completely crazy. But that’s the way Dennis thinks. he thinks that you can decide to not follow the stampede.
You don’t get the incremental legislation that changes the whole landscape of the discussion unless someone is willing to stand up and say the unthinkable. Dennis will always be the guy in the room reminding us that we can have a public option if just a few more people are willing to admit it isn’t crazy and it isn’t impossible. All it takes is will.
The pols that want to be popular insiders and fit in comfortably with the opposition will get rid of Dennis one day but I hope its not for a long, long time.
slag
@RedKitten:
QFT
PTirebiter
@Tom Hilton: Yea, one of the more pernicious effects of a disappearing middle class, people really can’t afford to think past their next paycheck. That ivory poachers don’t have much of a global perspective is frighteningly understandable. But I must say, Hancock Park had never looked better by the time I left the state.
Joe Beese
@58 – Shade Tail:
Quite right. I don’t give a shit about your asthma. Just as I’m sure you don’t give a shit about my allergies. [Though let me tell you, they’re just awful.]
You know who else doesn’t give a shit about your asthma? Barack Obama. If he gave a shit, he wouldn’t have suckered you out of your vote with a promise to allow drug re-importation and then worked behind the scenes to make sure it was kept out of the bill.
See, in the end, it had to be either more affordable asthma drugs for you – or continued high profit margins for the Big Pharm folk who so generously underwrote his campaign.
Sorry about that.
Mnemosyne
@artem1s:
And yet California had a series of Republican governors after Brown, because people didn’t like what Brown had to say. The only radical change was in the opposite direction as the tax revolters refused to have their money go to black or brown people (as Tom Hilton pointed out).
If your ideas for radical change actually cause people to go radically in the opposite direction, you’ve done more harm than good.
jrosen
“Payment of monthly Social Security benefits began in January 1940, and were authorized not only for aged retired workers but for their aged wives or widows, children under age 18, and surviving aged parents.
On January 31, 1940, the first monthly retirement check was issued to Ida May Fuller of Ludlow, Vermont, in the amount of $22.54. Miss Fuller, a Legal Secretary, retired in November 1939. She started collecting benefits in January 1940 at age 65 and lived to be 100 years old, dying in 1975.”
Will
@Ash Can:
I’m not surprised at all. Shadegg is Glenn’s favorite Republican. He’s been cozying up to the Firebaggers a lot, and loves f*cking with their heads like that.
geg6
Glad to see that Dennis has reached the exact same conclusion I did on this bill. This is what we have and we aren’t getting anything else any time soon. So we go with what we have. Perhaps my niece’s great grandchildren will finally get the health care reform we all deserve.
Barack and Nancy have rocked this the last two weeks. Kudos to both.
Bruce Webb
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: “and it seemed that a single tweak to one of the new industry regs was mainly why. If I remember correctly.”
It was more than a tweak. At the last minute a requirement for a mandatory minimum MLR or Medical Loss Ratio of 80% for the individual market and 85% for the group market was reinserted by the Team of 10. That minimum MLR requirement was a feature of both the original House Tri-Committee Bill and the Senate HELP Bill and was what I tried to point out last July the absolute most important cost control measure in the bill.
http://www.angrybearblog.com/2009/07/hr3200-sec-116-golden-bullet-or-smoking.html In this post I explained the mechanics and how these two sentences by themselves upended the current predatory model used by the insurance companies, in short you can’t make money by gaming the risk pool if you have an enforced MLR.
Over the course of the summer this proposal was first stripped out by Senate Finance and then reinserted in a temporary and useless way in the Reid and Pelosi versions. But then at the very last minute came the Christmas present by the Team of 10, after CBO rejected a stronger MLR requirement of 90% (they said they would score that as a total government takeover) they allowed the 80/85 compromise.
http://www.angrybearblog.com/2009/12/medical-loss-ratio-revisited-cost-and.html
Meaning that if you only insure healthy young people who you expect to make few claims and kick off the rolls anyone who gets sick you have to rebate their premiums to get your provider payout back up to 80 or 85% respectively, at the extreme you have to rebate the whole thing and go bankrupt.
With this “tweak” the bill works, without it it might well not. Under this scenario the PO is important because it establishes a basemark to keep the private companies from boo-hoo-hooing that they can’t deliver mandated services at these margins, if the PO can do it they should be able to do it. But even without the PO it works, assuming you have a Secretary of HHS and new Health Choices Administrator who want it to work.
Bruce Webb
@artem1s: “Dennis will always be the guy in the room reminding us that we can have a public option if just a few more people are willing to admit it isn’t crazy and it isn’t impossible.”
Well it would be helpful if the legislative vehicle you were backing in that effort was not itself crazy and impossible. HR676 could never have passed, I doubt that even a lot of its sponsors would have voted for it in the end.
http://www.pnhp.org/nhibill/nhi_bill_final.pdf
We exist in a political environment where the powers that be have determined that we will not allow undocumented workers to buy insurance even if they use only their own money. Where the consensus is that it is impossible to even offer legal health services to women if even a penny might rub up against a penny supplied by the federal government. We have crazy people in the streets and in the TV studios shouting “socialized medicine” at the notion that even Americans should have access to routine medical care. I don’t like it, and a lot of commenters here probably don’t like it but that is where we are.
There are reasonable proposals out there that would move us to Single Payer over time, notably the April 2007 Kennedy/Dingell Medicare for All bill.
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2007/april/kennedydingell_medi.php
But it is worth noting that when Kennedy and Dingell were tasked with being the lead authors on HCR last year they didn’t even use as a starting point their own legislation. Why? They knew it would never get through, just as it didn’t get through in any of the 50 previous years that a version of it had been advanced.
Which gets us to HR676 the Conyers/Kuckinich etc so-called Medicare for All bill
http://www.pnhp.org/nhibill/nhi_bill_final.pdf
This bill goes far beyond Kennedy/Dingell, for that matter it goes far beyond even the British National Health Service model. Instead it proposed to use eminent domain to buy-out every for-profit medical provider in the country: hospitals, mental health clinics, dentists, pharmacies. It proposed to extend the full range of not only medical, but also vision, dental and long time care to everyone physically resident in our borders regardless of their citizenship or work status, prohibited all forms of cost-sharing, which is good because they at the same time made all forms of private supplementary insurance illegal.
Even for those sympathetic to the concept of totally Nationalized and Socialized Medicine and open to the idea that the people who pick our crops and do our cement work desire access to the system, the idea that all you need to do to qualify for free long term care and unlimited surgery is to overstay your visitor visa (before they tightened it up anyone could fly to the US and sign in for free hospital stays) is both crazy and impossible.
Under HR676 supermarkets could no longer over pharmacy services unless they managed to set it up as a non-profit subsidiary and standalone pharmacies become illegal altogether. As does on my reading the optical shop at the mall. Yet the FirePups blindly following the talking points of Kip Sullivan at PNHP assured us that all we had to do was put this up for a vote.
HR676 never made it to hearing, its legislative history started and stopped on Jan 26th, 2009. It never got a CBO score, maybe because its three new revenue sources never had their specific levels established, not the income tax on the top 5%, not the “modest and progressive” payroll tax increase across the board, not the “small” tax on stock transactions, how do you get a dollar figure out of THAT?
And even if you can swallow that series of camels who exactly thinks you can sell elimination of the VA Hospital system?
Kucinich is not listed as the author of HR676, that was Conyers, but he is the first listed co-sponsor and was perfectly willing to be its public face all summer, fall and winter. Which is why after reading the bill language I refused to take him seriously, I mean did we really want to go to the country this fall under the slogan “Eliminate the VA so we can give free care to illegal aliens!” The mind reels.
CalD
When Jane Hamsher’s head explodes, we can put it in a jar next to Mickey Kaus’s.
Mike Kay
@geg6: This!
Mike Kay
@Joe Beese: toe sucker
BombIranForChrist
I don’t know if this was Kucinich’s line of thinking, but on this issue, I think there is a point where you just have to support it, because people will literally get sick and die from a lack of action. This isn’t financial reform, this is Life reform. This is reform that addresses the means and nature by which people die. As much as I don’t like this bill, I don’t see any other way but to support it, and people like Jane are forever damaged in my eyes. Jane and people like her are the modern equivalent of those ideologues throughout history who would prefer to see people die than see those same people live in a world that is not made in the ideologue’s exacting image.
bay of arizona
I don’t want to interrupt the hippie punching, but you know when you guys accused people of wanting Obama to wave a “magic wand” – this is it. Its called leadership. If only he started that 9 months ago.
Dr. Morpheus
@Tom Hilton:
That’s a brilliant idea! Right now the Republican candidate for Governor of Illinois is (of course!) running on tax cuts.
I’d love to start pasting signs like what you suggested on all the closed schools, libraries, shitty roads, etc. all across the state.
Nancy B.
He is so off Grover’s Christmas card list.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Bruce Webb: I just love our resident wonks. Gracias Amigo, that was it.
Ruckus
@Joe Beese:
I’m not going to list my ailments and at my age the timing of the bill won’t give me much of anything before I’m eligible for medicare but I’ll still fight for this bill, not because it is great or even good, but because it is what is possible. Now.
It’s nice of you to fight for better and to want the best, but fighting for the best or nothing is politically ignorant. This country is so divided (along extremely stupid lines most of the time) that the best is just not politically possible. For any idea or need. And at some time during the
debateprocess a politically astute person has to accept the good is better than the nothing, take what you can and move on. That’s not to say one should not be working all the time for the better. Just know when to stop trying to sink the ship and climb on board.Tom Hilton
@Dr. Morpheus: feel free to steal the idea–I would love to see it spread.
Tax Analyst
@Mnemosyne:
I wasn’t happy with Brown after Prop 13 passed, but that was a long time ago and as I recall nothing he could have said or done would have stemmed the tide. FYI – Prop 13 was passed in the 1978 election. It received 65% of the vote.
My question is this: Are you going to vote for Whitman or Pozner or just sit on your hands? I would hate for either of those two to be sitting in the Governor’s Mansion after this election is over. With Prop 13 Brown took a pragmatic position that I didn’t really care for and maybe he even did it to try and position himself for a Presidential run…a rather cynical move if that was the case, but overall he was not a bad governor and we certainly have done much worse in the years following his terms.
Our current governor just vetoed a bill that would have provided Tax Conformity in CA to a large number of Federal rule that would have been beneficial to many CA taxpayer’s and also would have helped simplify the preparation of CA individual income tax returns. It would have brought CA into conformity with the FED Mortgage Relief Act of 2007 with regard to excluding Cancellation of Debt Income for taxpayer’s who lost their homes in foreclosure (as long as they had not refinanced beyond their original loan amount). It would also have cleaned up more than a few corporate tax loopholes.
But Arnold vetoed it because it also would have imposed penalties on large corporations and individuals with AGI’s (Adjusted Gross Incomes) of over $20 million who filed a refund claim in an excessive amount. Here’s a listing of those who the governor sided with on this:
California Bankers Association
California Chamber of Commerce
California Taxpayers’ Association (an anti-tax group)
California Manufacturers and Technology Association
Tech America
Western States Petroleum Association
Yes, this veto certainly served the interests of the average rank-and-file citizens of California, didn’t it?
While you could probably expect Brown to sign the bill you could also probably expect Whitman or Poizner to act as Arnold just did and oppose and then veto it.
Just something to possibly consider before blowing off Jerry Brown’s candidacy this year.
Corner Stone
@bay of arizona:
Blasphemer! Hippie! Jane-bot! Unbeliever!
Yeah, it’s pretty amazing what actually using your bully pulpit can produce.
Or is taking AF1 to a certain place, revving up the crowd, and basically shaming the shit outta a politician not using the pulpit?
It’s kinda fucking crazy to think about, but people somehow respond to a leader who fights for things.
Mnemosyne
@Tax Analyst:
Probably sit on my hands. This state is irretrievably broken and the only thing that could conceivably help us is a new constitution. Even electing a Democrat will only postpone the inevitable crash.
Assuming they even let Brown stay in office, of course. I’m sure the recall drive will begin about two hours after he’s elected since the Republicans are very fond of going back to the well.
Mnemosyne
@bay of arizona:
I’m sorry, the insane egotists in the Senate have not yet demonstrated to your satisfaction that we wouldn’t have a bill from them at all if Obama had not stayed hands-off for as long as he did?
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Mnemosyne: The mental gymnastics they go through to take credit and confirm their Monday morning quarterbacking rightness all along is something to be marveled at, then promptly dismissed.
Da Bomb
@Mnemosyne: Thank you.
As much as this sentiment is emphasized, it never ceases to amaze me that for some strange reason, people think that if Obama would have became LBJ this bill would have passed already.
Let’s try this again: See Bill/Hillary Clintoncare circa 1993-1994.
FlipYrWhig
@bay of arizona:
Yeah, if only he was barnstorming campaign-style around the country talking about the benefits of health care reform in the summer of 2009. Why didn’t he think of that? It’s a crazy what-coulda-been fantasy.
Tom Hilton
@Mnemosyne: you scoff, but the logic is sound: if Obama had only been more focused on the news cycle instead of the long haul, he might have won the election.
gwangung
@bay of arizona: Actually, that is an interruption and not particularly warranted.
You don’t get style points for winning more prettily. You get points and political capital by winning. Period.
Corner Stone
@Mnemosyne:
I’m curious. Seeming proof, right before our eyes, that a little focused pressure brings results – that’s somehow further proof that staying hands-off was the right decision?
Corner Stone
@Tom Hilton:
Obama and his team worked their ass off to get elected. This is similar in what way exactly?
Parrotlover77
Man I am so sick of the media leading articles about EVERY SINGLE DEMOCRATIC BILL with the cost. “…sweeping $875 billion plan.”
Why not say “health bill that will reduce the deficit by [whatever]” or “health bill that will provide health care to 30 million more people.”
It’s so tiring that the estimated cost is the absolute most important thing in the entire universes to the beltway media, even when a bill is going to reduce the deficit in the long run. And even when people are dying!
Remember in the lead up to Iraq all the headlines discussing the one trillion dollar war we were about to have? Or any time since then?
Me either.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: I like “focused pressure” too. There was “focused pressure” last summer. The same campaigning, the same high-profile involvement, culminating with a big speech in September. It didn’t result in passage. But it was a rather similar effort. IMHO, they did all of this last year, so I’m not sure why they should get second-guessed about why they didn’t do something sooner, when they, you know, actually did it sooner.
FlipYrWhig
@Parrotlover77:
I remember the ones about how the Iraq War was sure to pay for itself. And was, hence, effectively free! Woohoo!
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig:
Hmmm, September…September…
I’m a little fuzzy. What happened with HCR right prior to September?
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: What is your gripe? That they’re doing something now they should’ve done before? If so, they did do it before. If your gripe is that it seems to be working better now, that’s the product of several factors, and IMHO isn’t reducible to “trying harder.”
les
@Parrotlover77:
Too true; and never a mention of the savings. Shit, on NPR yesterday some jerkoff referred to it as the 2 trillion dollar plan, without contradiction.
And, a nice summary of Kucinich’s goody bag for flipping his single vote and changing no one else’s mind. Not bad.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: Yes, they never did figure out how to negate the Tea Party disturbances of the town halls. There are plenty of tactics to criticize. My beef is the idea that “targeted pressure” is a new discovery that the nincompoops in the White House only just stumbled upon.
Brian J
@beltane:
Wait, that can’t be right. That fucking guy is claiming to support single payer?
Mnemosyne
@Corner Stone:
As Flip has repeatedly pointed out, Obama wasn’t hands-off over the summer, and it got us exactly nowhere. Being hands-on right now at this exact moment is getting us somewhere, but it did diddly-squat the other times he tried it.
Are you arguing that Obama just didn’t try hard enough and if he had wished real hard and clapped his hands, it would have worked sooner?
Mnemosyne
@Corner Stone:
It’s similar because the media was constantly crying that Obama was blowing the election because of his hands-off approach. If you’d listened to the media, you’d think we had President McCain right now because there’s no way Obama could possibly have won.
It seems that Obama didn’t work his ass off in your preferred manner, so therefore you want to discount any actual work that he did do. Kinda like the media did during the election.
Corner Stone
@Mnemosyne:
You guys are hilarious. The “clap louder” defense?
This is just fucked.
Corner Stone
@Mnemosyne:
You’re a clown. There was never any possibility of McCain winning the Presidency.
As for HCR – please just fucking pick one or the other. Obama worked his ass off and flew everywhere promising/threatening people or he was hands-off.
Or was it either/and/or at some certain times that make you happy inside? Gah.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig:
Besides courting Republicans and accepting their ideas, can you tell me where else this kind of obvious pressure=results situation has happened recently?
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: What do you think is different this time? You described:
To me that suggests you think that they never tried “focused pressure.” IMHo they tried “focused pressure” in Summer 2009, got knocked off the rails by the Tea Party stuff, slowly built back to the votes in December, got knocked off the rails again by Brown vs. Coakley, then gave up on trying to corral 60 votes (some of which involved being “targeted” in counterproductive ways; “targeting” Landrieu and Nelson in particular turned out to be a debacle). The campaign-style involvement seems like it arose from the decision to stop chasing 60 Senate votes.
Many people have been frustrated that there ever was an attempt to get 60 Senate votes and would rather have seen the 50-vote reconciliation strategy undertaken much earlier. I think that’s a very fair point.
My sense is that some of the center-right Democrats are only in the yes-to-reconciliation camp _now_ because of how amply it’s been demonstrated, again and again and again, that there’s just no way to get to 60 votes, so it’s this or nothing. I don’t think some of those yes-to-reconciliation votes would have been there in Summer 2009. Even “targeted pressure” on those middle-of-the-roaders might not have worked. (It may have worked; we’ll never know, they didn’t try, and FWIW I think that’s the complaint with the most merit about the process.)
So you could have seen either a big win in Summer 2009, OR a big loss that killed the whole thing in Summer 2009.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone:
OK, I don’t know. Are you referring to something in particular?
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@FlipYrWhig: corner stone is a die hard dead ender hillbot who came here pissing on Obama’s parade during the election and has been doing the same about every day since. It’s what the dude does, it’s all he does, and any of the Obama fail wanking making sense is entirely beside the point.
Tom Hilton
@Mnemosyne: This. And thanks for sparing me the trouble of responding.
Tax Analyst
@joes527:
Real life situation – My family purchased a home in the Baldwin Hills area of Los Angeles in 1959 for about $50,000. I don’t know what the property tax on it was at the time, but by 1966 it was around $2,000 a year. That might not sound so stupendous in today’s dollars, but as a small business owner my father was netting about $20,000/yr in pre-tax dollars to support a family of five. Long story shortened somewhat: He sold the house in 1966 for virtually the same $50K it was purchased for in large part because the property taxes were eating up too much of his income. The value had not increased a nickel in 7 years (this was well before L.A. housing values began to go through the roof), but the property tax had skyrocketed in the interim. By the mid-70’s the property tax rates had grown considerably more excessive.
This is essentially correct. If the CA legislature had addressed the Property Tax inequities that existed prior to Prop 13 that miserable piece of legislation would never have come into existence and perhaps we would have been spared the 30-some-odd years of having hear about what a God-like visionary Howard Jarvis was.
Prop 13 was a terrible solution but it only happened because our elected officials refused to address a festering situation.
BTW – Boy, did I hate Howard Jarvis and his mostly successful jihad against funding our state government.
Tax Analyst
@Mnemosyne:
This part is completely true and is the most shameful part of the legacy of Prop 13.
Ever since 13 the legislature has passed on virtually every substantial problem where any possible controversy might exist that might possibly upset a significant number of voters, thus tossing all these issues into the voter initiative hopper, from where confusing and deceptively worded propositions that generally had hidden agendas and were promoted by sensationalistic and usually misleading advertisements were thrown at the voting public to decide.
The only laws the legislature seemed to pass from that point on were those that either criminalized specific behavior or drastically lengthened prison sentences for existing crime. Not to mention specific legislation written and promoted in the immediate aftermath of singular horrific crimes committed against children.
Not a good way to make laws.
Tax Analyst
Hmmm….did I just kill this thread?
OOPS…
Corner Stone
@Tom Hilton: I enjoy all your pictures. They are really amazing, and I thank you for sharing them.
Corner Stone
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: Keep smoking the good stuff Stuck. I’m sure one day your Lord and Savior Cole will reveal himself to you, wrap you in His arms and fly you to His mountaintop for life and love eternal.
Until then, keep on wanking the good wank.
Mnemosyne
@Corner Stone:
Seriously? McCain and Obama were neck-and-neck until the financial crisis hit. The election would have been much, much closer if McCain hadn’t had a meltdown over that.
McCain had a very good chance of winning until he shot himself in the foot. That’s why we all worked our asses off for Obama.
Yes, it’s true: Obama did not restrict himself to a single strategy and stick to that no matter what happened. He used different strategies at different times, depending on the circumstances.
I know the firebagger meme is that Obama sat on his ass until two weeks ago but, as Flip has pointed out repeatedly, that does not represent reality. We can argue about whether he chose the best strategy for that particular time, but pretending like he was completely uninvolved for the whole year is idiotic.
Corner Stone
@Mnemosyne:
He had as much a chance of winning as Godzilla did of getting dinner reservations at the finest NYC restaurant on a Saturday night.
Mnemosyne
@Corner Stone:
Yes, that’s why the polls had Obama and McCain running neck-and-neck right up to the end — because no one was actually planning to vote for McCain.
This is pretty weak sauce, dude.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Corner Stone: Bottle worm got you again, looks like. I’m here for ya bub, being my second fav Huckleberry and all.
Corner Stone
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: Don’t you have a few bus stops to cruise?
Corner Stone
@Mnemosyne: That 183 EC vote win came out of nowhere. Nowhere I tells ya!
The very definition of a squeaka!
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Corner Stone:
Hilllllllaaaaaary was robbed!!
Tom Hilton
@Corner Stone: Thanks! Lots more (plus pics from Generik and Ahab, who are much better photographers than I am) at our photo blog.
Jerry Mead-Lucero
Anyone else ready to move to Costa Rica?
http://pilsenprole.blogspot.com/2010/03/update-kucinich-joins-darkside.html