Category: Politics

Low Hanging Fruit on the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

This is a special post for Blog Against Theocracy Weekend. Yesterday’s post was a repost of my 2007 offering.

Nobody is harmed by the fact that “In God We Trust” appears on our money.

Most of us can ignore public prayers at a public school event —  or compose our own alternate prayers and meditations in our minds.

Some of us held our noses when considering the political implications of who was chosen to offer prayers at President Obama’s inauguration, but nobody died as a result.

But church meddling in our newly passed Health Insurance Reform bill may well cause harm and perhaps even death to some people. However, since those people are women, some people don’t care. Moreover, church meddling in civil law may well bring harm to the poor in Washington DC.

It is of course the low hanging fruit: the Catholic Church.

In a petulant fit of pique, Catholic Charities threatened to cut off services to Washington DC if they actually made it legal for gay people to marry. When they realized that they could not in fact do that without legal repercussions, they instead decided to deny benefits to all new employee partners, gay or straight. Further, they demanded that new employees sign a statement that they won’t violate the tenets of the Church!

Remove the plank from thine own eye, Catholic Church!

If there were ever a stronger case for a public safety net rather than depending on the fickleness of charitable organizations deciding that this issue is important and this not, I am not familiar with it. As much as we all appreciate the work that charities do, it is simply not acceptable to pick up your ball (or shelter, or food kitchen) and threaten to go home if you don’t get your way. And pressuring new employees into signing documents regarding their private lives is just a little onerous, particularly in the middle of a recession where the only new jobs really being created are temp positions with the Census. Denying partners health insurance within weeks of a law being signed requiring mandatory insurance in a few years? Just twist the knife already in the new employee’s back.

Of course, it is now well known how the Catholic Bishops meddled in the Health Insurance Reform Bill, even over the objections of the Catholic Nuns — who for all their own faults aren’t accused of covering up dozens of priests who committed sexual crimes against thousands of minors under the age of consent. There. I didn’t call them pedophiles, but what they did is criminal and should be prosecuted. Since there was a clear conspiracy, no statute of limitations applies.

So then, when something tragic happens to a woman in your life and she must make the terrible decision to abort an embryo or fetus, remember that it would have been covered under her mandated health insurance policy if it weren’t for these meddling kid-molesters. If she finds it difficult to find a provider who will help her, remember that it is Catholic groups that have hounded doctors out of the business. And remember, not a single one of these Bishops will ever get pregnant, will ever have a wife who might get pregnant, will ever have a daughter who might get pregnant. Talk about no skin in the game.

As easy as it is to lob shots at the Catholic Church right now, I don’t want to overlook another serious threat to the separation of Church and State. Susie Madrak has pointed out that there is now an investigation by CREW into whether the shadowy religious group known as “The Fellowship” or “The Family” has been breaking the law by providing below market rents to the Congressmen who live in their C Street residence. Rep. Stupak and Sen. Ensign both could have [additional] problems as a result. Since it is relatively well documented that the purpose of this group is to put control of Congress in “godly” hands — their narrow definition of godly, of course — this investigation is necessary and overdue.

In Closing: They don’t make recoveries like they used to; job creation looks even worse compared to population growth; huh, I guess it is possible to teach a large number of students at once; I’ll say it again on the 19th, but this is what Militias are about; You can’t talk bad about your boss!; bankruptcy filings up you say? Well, as long as they aren’t spiking!; it’s surely a sign of Armageddon for me to link to Politico, but Banking Hypocrisy; melanoma may be more complicated than staying out in the sun too long (which never seemed to hurt our great grandparents much); and no, you should not laugh out loud if you see somebody drowning.

And Now We Know

It’s official. The Obama plan for health insurance reform has been released. Anybody care to take a guess what’s not in it? The public option.

And what is in it? Mandatory insurance and an excise tax on plans that cost more than $27,5oo annually. “The plan includes a provision that allows low-income people who cannot afford health insurance to receive a waiver from the mandate,”  as opposed to some way to help pay for insurance, so basically it’s little better than what we have right now from the standpoint of covering the uninsured. Particularly in a recession, where states are cutting Medicaid because they have to balance the budget somehow.

Wow, Mr. President. Three strikes. As far as I am concerned, it’s outa there!

Now, to the plan’s credit, it does protect against insurance companies declining people with pre-existing conditions, but if it doesn’t regulate how much extra those people pay, say hello to the excise tax. It does regulate how much insurance companies can jack up the rates, and it does have an insurance exchange. I am unclear on how this “exchange” will be any better than websites like eHealthInsurance. It does close the Medicare prescription “donut hole”. Update: here’s a handy comparison chart; the President’s plan does prohibit rescission, which is an improvement over both House and Senate plans.

However, there is a very good likelihood that this bill will place limits on abortions. Since it’s very hard to know when an abortion will be a medical necessity, this is very shortsighted. Unless you want to be the dad who loses his wife to complications of pregnancy or the parents of a child doomed to die by his 4th birthday, this is a no-go.

In closing: secrets of the ER; credit card rules change today; on the job loss numbers; it’s not terrorism when a white guy does it, only brown people can be terrorists; even terrorists deserve a fair trial and even John Ashcroft says so; already up to 20 bank failures for 2010; and an update on the school that decided to spy on its students in their homes. They had better hope there are no outraged dads who decide that the courts are too slow for justice.

Public Option: Resurected or Zombie?

Let’s put the pieces together and see if we have something functional, or some kind of Frankenstein’s Health Insurance Reform. Americans are rightly disgusted by the thing that Congress has brought forth, mostly because it includes such odious things as mandatory coverage and taxing of “decent” health insurance plans. There is still a big health care reform “summit” next week, which is looking more and more like a circus the closer it gets. Health insurance premiums are continuing to rise steeply, and health insurance company profits are rising too, even though they managed to increase “political giving” — that’s legal bribes — 14% in 2009. Add the fact that more Americans are depending on Medicaid, while there is less money for the states to cover them.

Gee, no wonder Americans are disgusted by the idea of mandatory coverage and taxing plans that the tax code decrees too expensive.

Amid this backdrop, the President has finally announced that he will throw an official, Presidential seal of approval health insurance reform bill into the mix, and is planning on stapling it to a budget bill so it can’t be filibustered. He’s even indicated that he’s willing to back a public option — but only if Senator Reid will jump with him. Harry’s in a tough re-election race this fall, and could really use something to bring his polling numbers up. Ah, the real reason for his Nevada visit is out — it’s certainly not because the President feels he owes the Mayor a martini.

Perhaps the feds should start by killing two birds with one stone. If they fully fund Medicaid, the states will have an easier time making their budgets balance and all those extra people on the rolls (see above) will be proof that a public option can work!

But what about this new public option that might be under consideration? We don’t have any real details, so it’s hard to support it. Is it going to be a decent plan? Is it going to be cost competitive with the for-profit insurance companies or will it be a higher priced insurer of last resort? Is it going to have gutted provisions for women’s health so as not to offend the far religious right? Is it going to be available to all Americans, or only to a small percentage of us? Is it going to be saddled with triggers and means tests and all sorts of other crap that will cripple it?

In short, is it some variant of Medicare For All, or is it just another favor for insurance companies?

If this is the real deal — a resurrected public option — I will preach the gospel for it. But beware, if it is a zombie, I will be ready with my blogging boomstick to blow its head off.

In Closing: Getting ahead at the office and getting head at the office are mutually exclusive (I love the story of what was found in a certain executive’s office); a great t-shirt; there has to be some balance between what the community thinks education should be and what the educators think education should be; Japan has overtaken China as America’s biggest creditor; more people trying to ditch “too big to fail” institutions; Dude, where’s my stimulus funds?; class, race, and the War on (some) Drugs; TrueMajority; “Rich people create jobs, all we have to do is cut their taxes enough”? Might just as well wait for Santa to put one in your stocking; if this is true, the dumbest school administrators in the nation thought it would be a good idea to spy on students in their homes using the webcams in their school issued notebook computers; Catholic Charities has decided that politics is more important than that “helping the poor and the sick” crap that Jesus was on about (one more reason my charitable giving is secular whenever possible); and why people pirate DVDs.

Reform. For Freedom.

We have officially gotten to the point where corporations control us.

They control how much money we are allowed to make. They control our finances on the national, international, and personal level — badly. They control our health care in a system that is doomed to collapse under the weight of its own expense real soon now. Worst of all, they play by whatever rules they like while squeezing ordinary people to desperation. Now they have a green light to even more openly control our government.

And unless this worthless Congress remembers that the one thing corporations can’t do — yet, anyway — is vote, things are going to get worse rather than better. We desperately need real financial reform now, the kind that restores rules that worked through most of the 20th century and not the kind so riddled with loopholes as to be a gift to the financial services industry. We need insurance reform that puts more of our health care dollars to work providing health care and curtailing the abuse of patients who foolishly want the care they think they (or their bosses) are paying for, not a “reform” that forces everyone to participate in a broken system through mandatory coverage.

“I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free,” the song goes. Free to do what? Free to get involved in staged protests of issues we don’t understand? Free to loudly proclaim “facts” with no basis in reality? Free to watch propaganda dressed up as news? Free to owe everything to the companies that hire us, care for us, and mis-manage our money with no hope of anything else?

If you don’t mind, I’d prefer a different flavor of freedom.

In Closing: Roman Army Knife; “Um, because it was the right thing to do and we didn’t want any lawyers saying we did wrong later? Was the 5th Amendment repealed while I wasn’t looking?”; nice to see that we are going to count job losses more honestly, but it’s a shame that Mr. Obama will be blamed for “losing” these jobs when he merely counted Bush Administration losses correctly; I couldn’t have said it better either; at least child abuse is down!; where genetic testing and “pro-life” collide; trees are loving global warming (much more so than the polar bears); and Americans are drinking more, but we’re not paying for the Good Stuff. So, uh, maybe the price of Scotch will return to rational levels? No? I thought not.

Wake-Up Call

Wake up call! Come home from the polls
With another one in my Senate!
Don’t you care about Ted anymore?
Care about Ted? I don’t think so!

No 60 votes, health care bill in trouble
So I had to shoot it dead.
Won’t come around here anymore.
Come around here… I don’t feel so bad!

Yesterday, everybody went crazy trying to figure out what went wrong and what was going to happen next. So what went wrong? You can’t blame it all on Coakley’s terrible and tone-deaf campaign as much as some people would like to. The party has to take some blame for not delivering on very darn much.

Very interesting that all of a sudden today, we are talking about financial services reform. The administration spent a year playing nice and begging the banks to do likewise, and now we’re playing hardball. Go figure! My theory is that it’s a combination of quid pro quo (they didn’t do their part towards making sure that seat went to a Democrat, any Democrat), and a desire to at least appear that they are finally going to protect the American people from the predatory financial services industry that has been robbing the economy blind.

So, let’s hope the Democratic party takes the situation in Massachusetts for what it is: a wake-up call. They have 10 months to get their act together! That means doing The People’s Work, and not just for show.

In closing: reasons profiling won’t catch terrorists go beyond Tim McVeigh; don’t feel too bad about your house’s value, even the White House lost value last year (hold the jokes about the President, please); better shoelace tying; and giant cattle.

Crystal Ball

Or — Back to the Future Part 3962

Or — How to Confirm that We’ve Been Screwed.

Ok. By now we all know that the House passed a health insurance reform turd — I mean bill — last night. While it still needs to get through the Senate (and there are signs that might be difficult), it’s being hailed as historic. It squeaked through on a 2 vote margin, and apparently to get that they had to insert something called the Stupak Amendment which effectively prevents health insurance from covering abortions.

Now, don’t start thinking this is about sluts. Sure, it’s easy to support this if you are thinking “dirty sluts can pay for their own abortions.” The overwhelming majority of women seeking abortions are not sluts who need retro-active birth control. The vast majority of abortions are sought because either birth control failed, the pregnancy is the result of rape (after all, good girls wouldn’t need to use the pill, now would they??), the fetus is too deformed to live, or the mother will DIE if she tries to carry the pregnancy to term. And follow me on this for just a moment, women living in poverty are more likely to be the victim of crime and less likely to have access to the very best pre-natal care. This puts the women who can least afford an abortion without financial assistance at risk of 3 out of 4 of the above.

This isn’t about sluts. This is about life saving surgery.

And now it won’t be covered by insurance. Thanks a whole bunch, Congress.

To be brutally honest, that’s not really even the worst of it. This turd is littered with gifts to highly profitable insurance companies, highly profitable drug companies, and other highly profitable health care companies at the expense of the voter and taxpayer. I left hospitals off the list of corporate beneficiaries for now because many hospitals, [Diety] bless them, are still not for profit entities. In fact, in Michigan, hospitals are non-profits by law. This is why Dennis Kucinich couldn’t bring himself to vote in favor of the bill — I highly encourage you to read his complete statement, because it is informed and eloquent.

Tomorrow is Monday, and we will find out who really benefits from this bill. I predict that the real winners will be apparent on CNBC tomorrow. Keep an eye on company stocks like these:

I bet the majority of them will be up tomorrow on news of the “reform” bill passing. Maybe if there were a large, profitable corporation that represented the American people, we could get Congress to listen to what we want. In the meantime, I’m with Susie: the party gets no more money if they continue to treat us like crap and then make us stories about how that’s a good thing.

Open Letter to Dr. Howard Dean

Dear Doctor:

Or, do you prefer Governor? Mr. Chairman?

On last year’s Election Day, we elected our first African American President, and validated your strategy for the Democratic party — the 50 state strategy. My husband and myself were two of the people out there on the ground, giving what little money we could, literally knocking on doors asking people to vote for Mr. Obama, and turning a “red state” blue.

Frankly, now we’re not sure we got a good deal.

Our troops are still in Iraq and Afghanistan, with “support” from profiteering corporations instead of fellow servicemen. Guantanamo is still open for business, and few of the men there are seeing anything that might approach “due process.” The Obama Administration is defending the use of warrantless wiretaps. The GLBT community has a list of grievances and what they see as broken promises.

The government pleads poverty when it comes to helping ordinary citizens weather the biggest recession ever, yet there always seems to be plenty of money for bankrupt banks and poorly run auto makers. We’ve got long term, possibly structural unemployment, and we are being told that private industry is going to have to pick up the slack and hire people. Few companies are hiring, and the combination of a banking mess and a health insurance mess means that few new companies will be opening their doors anytime soon. This is no longer a land of opportunity for anybody willing to work for it. Too much depends on luck, knowing the right people, and having the money up front. Instead, it’s a land where half of all kids will at some point receive food stamps.

And lets talk about this health insurance reform thing for a minute, can we? I’m really sick of writing about health insurance reform, but there are things that must be said. To be honest, I knew we were in trouble when Rahm Emanuel arrived and you weren’t offered any position in the Administration. Let’s face it, Doctor: nobody has experienced the insurance industry from more angles than you. You’ve been insured, bought insurance for your employees, bought COBRA (you mentioned that in the debates, remember?), negotiated contracts and received reimbursement from insurance companies, and helped regulate insurance on the state level. You managed to get coverage for every kid in your state, no questions asked!

Fixing the health insurance mess is critical to getting people back to work — which is in turn critical to getting our economy moving again, fixing the housing market, and getting long term stability for our banking sector. Most Americans want a public option (preferably Medicare For All) that is going to bring prices down, they want “pre-existing conditions” to go away, they want insurance companies to pay what is owed promptly and without argument. Instead, Congress has argued and cut back-room deals with the insurance companies and drug companies that, in the eyes of Joe and Jane Average, are screwing us.

Once they finally put together legislation that looked like it might not be horrible, they set right back to work messing it up with junk like coverage for prayer treatments and separate coverage riders for abortion — which like it or loath it is sometimes a life-saving surgery that shouldn’t require an extra fee to be covered! These are only 2 items that have come to light today; who knows what other junk is in there to turn this franken-bill into a real monster?

I’ve stopped giving money to the Democratic Party in all its forms for the reasons outlined above. Every time they call, I send money to Democracy for America or Move On. And that, Doctor Dean, is where you come in.

It is clear to me that for the most part my [former] party is hopeless: hopelessly corrupt, stupid, spineless, and generally worthless. You were clearly right to leave when you did, while you still had a reputation as a winning political tactician. I think that with your guidance, DFA and MoveOn could and should form a new political party, reclaiming “liberal” as a good word, and based firmly on the principles of the Bill of Rights. I feel certain there are a number of Democratic figures that would want to be part of such a movement (Dennis Kucinich and Ed Schultz come to mind), and if you truly embrace civil liberties right, there might even be some “moderate” Republicans who might at least be friendly.

Please just consider it. Let’s be real here, if you thought there was hope for the party, you’d still be Chairman.

Thank you for your time. I hope all is well for you and your family.

— Bridget Magnus, AKA the ShortWoman, Realtor, former Democrat, and proud American

Sorry, comments closed due to too much spam.

Let the backlash begin

Over the weekend, I happened to hear a piece on NPR about young adults without health insurance. Why didn’t they have coverage? Because they couldn’t afford it. One young lady explained that it was a simple choice between paying for insurance or paying the rent. One Democratic Senator they interviewed agreed that this was a problem, and the answer was the individual mandate, or as I prefer to call it mandatory insurance. How exactly forcing people to buy something they can’t afford solves anything, I don’t know.

And that’s where the public option comes in. The insurance companies have proven that given the chance, they will raise prices and deny coverage whenever possible, or offer “affordable” plans so spartan that they don’t actually cover anything. A public option that anybody can buy into keeps the insurance companies honest, because We The People can say “enough of enriching my **** insurance company!”

We The People understand this. Alas, our Senators do not. They are so beholden to special interests that they have killed the public option, or threatened to load it up with nonsense and requirements and triggers and abortion bans and only lobbyists know what else. Our healthcare debate has become so tortured that other world leaders are asking our President what the heck is going on.

If they pass nothing more than mandatory insurance and a few cosmetic reforms, Howard Dean correctly predicts a backlash.

Not everyone agrees that the public option is dead, but it sure looks to be in critical condition.

If this is what we are left with, let’s just scrap it all. Let’s put together 5 pages of legislation that does the most critical things we need out of health insurance reform:

  1. Outlaw pre-existing conditions in all forms and for every purpose including pricing, coverage, and claims.
  2. Regulate rate increases, perhaps indexed to inflation (CPI increase + 5%?).
  3. Put doctors, not insurance clerks, in charge of making medical decisions.
  4. Change the tax code so that everybody can deduct health insurance premiums even if they don’t itemize and even if they aren’t self-employed.

I think everybody except insurance companies and their purchased members of Congress can agree that these things are essential. If we can’t agree on anything else, let’s not make things worse.

Oh Nuts, Another Health Insurance Reform Post

I’m going to start by pointing out that not only are real wages down to levels not seen since 1997, not only is the poverty rate up to a level not seen since 1997, health coverage is down. One in every 20 people who had coverage from their employers last year don’t have it anymore. The only coverage gains were for government insurance programs such as Medicare (hrm, pesky socialism!) Moreover, income hasn’t kept up with reality for the last 40 years. No wonder things seem tight!

So despite the fact that We the People are  being squeezed, we get “reforms” that protect the profits of insurance companies, and helpful advice to not need coverage. Nothing is being done to make sure that “coverage” actually “covers” us. Nobody is offering to let Joe and Jane Average buy into government coverage programs that are actually known to work (and work pretty well for the most part).

Open Left is a little behind me on this one: the Democratic Party and its candidates don’t get a dime from me until they start to deliver on some of their promises. In the meantime, every time the Party calls me, I will be sending money to organizations that actually campaign for my interests. Don’t tell me the party has to be “centrist” to get “bipartisan support,” because the majority of people support a very progressive agenda by their standards, and bipartisanship once again means “do it the Republicans’ way.” Don’t tell me to be reasonable, because there is no reason we can’t do this right. And finally, don’t tell me that we can’t get it done in Congress, because they have majorities in both houses.

The party ran on hope and change. It’s time to deliver

In closing: VW’s 240 MPG car will go into production; wouldn’t it be nice if employers followed the law?; a follow-up on different ways to measure unemployment; Levi’s got it together; heart attack rates fall 17% after public smoking bans; the paradox of thrift; send the crooks to prison; scumbag banks; safety tips; and finally, Happy Equinox.

Baucused

Pretty much everybody has been focused on the Baucus Plan, announced this morning. Despite the fact that a public option is supported by the majority of the public and doctors, it has no public option. Instead, it has a watered down co-op provision. The CBO says that a public option would reduce premiums for everybody — and the average family health insurance policy now costs $13,375 annually! That’s more than double what it was in 2000 — the co-ops are only available to employees if the plan at work is not “affordable” (meaning 10-13% of income depending how you calculate it). No word on whether the co-ops are available to the self-employed. And for all that it has been pitched as something that can get bi-partisan support, not a single Republican supports it. It’s just another mandatory insurance plan with bells, whistles, and gifts to insurance companies.

So why exactly is anybody willing to compromise and support this?

If we can’t have real health insurance reform, let’s just get the few things everybody can agree needs to happen: make rescission illegal; make “pre-existing conditions” a thing of the past. I bet they could get that written up into a 3 page bill tomorrow and pass it by the weekend if they wanted. In an ideal world, give states the right to regulate rate increases (or just cap them at the rate of inflation) and let everybody deduct health insurance on their taxes. But please, let’s stop pretending that the crock of **** being stirred on Capitol Hill is good for any of us regular people.

In closing: One drug bust every 18 seconds, and that’s a decrease; former CNBC anchor complains that Americans are held hostage by Wall Street; on independent contractors, the DOL, and the IRS; Americans agree on how to fix Social Security (but will Congress do what needs to be done?); humans still evolving; Does Kanye have Asperger’s Syndrome?; and hiking safety tips.