Category: Politics

So now, we have word that Presidential candidate John Edwards has proposed a so-called “universal” health plan. Here’s a couple of choice paragraphs from the ABC News version of the story:

“Can we finally say we stand, now and forever, for every single man, woman and child in America having health care, universal health care?” Edwards said before a speech at the Democratic National Committee. “We will leave no one behind. We will not allowed a single family or a single child in America to not have health care coverage and to not have the health care that they need and deserve.”

[snip]

Edwards plan would first require employers to cover their workers or help pay for their insurance. He would try to clamp down on rising costs with tax credits to help lower and middle income taxpayers pay for their plans, expanded government programs like Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, and changes to insurance laws to require coverage for all regardless of pre-existing conditions or other factors. And he would create nonprofit regional purchasing pools so that consumers would have a way to buy an affordable and high quality plan.

So on one side he claims he wants a plan that provides healthcare for every man, woman and child. And then it turns out his plan depends on employers buying healthcare policies. Apparently he has forgotten that children don’t have employers.

And that is merely the most obvious of reasons his plan won’t work. Everybody else is beating their chests about how it will mean higher taxes! Nobody is mentioning that his plan requires changes to insurance law in pretty much each of the 50 states. Nobody is mentioning that it is just another plan that siphons money out of doctor’s and patient’s and even employer’s pockets, and stuffing the bank accounts of mostly for-profit insurance companies. It’s just another Hillary-style band-aid on a fundamentally broken system.

It’s time for something completely different. Let’s hope we get it before there’s a real medical emergency.

Other Musings: job creation and unemployment numbers are in a place where economists can pretend they are good news; latest salvo in trade war with China; somebody has noticed that contractors amount to a “4th branch of government”, effectively outsourcing things that maybe shouldn’t be outsourced; Prince!; and thanks to frequent-poster Jukkou-san for pointing out that states are fighting back on RealID, so keep bugging your state legislature because it’s working!

Follow up: Some of you realize that Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon is working for the Edwards campaign. She posted a call for questions on the Edwards Health Plan, and linked this document, which confirms that this is a mandatory health plan rather than a universal health plan.

So we as a nation have had a chance to digest the State of the Union Address. And we’ve even had a chance to think about the various rebuttals.

It’s time to send some nice friendly mail to your Senators. Specifically, there are two things you need to impress upon them. The first has to do with their systematic destruction of the minimum wage hike bill that passed the House with flying colors. You may be aware that in the Senate, there has been an attempt to saddle it with a bunch of tax cuts. These cuts allegedly benefit “small businesses”, but I imagine that a close look would reveal a strange definition of “small businesses” is in play. It is worth noting that some news sources drop the word “small” altogether.

But what you may not know is that the Senate has also tried to use this bill to exempt agricultural workers from minimum wage laws! Talk about creating “jobs Americans don’t want”; Americans kind of like being able to — in the immortal words of Mr. Bush — “put food on their families.” And we will scratch our heads and wonder how the next food contamination scare happened. Funny thing about asking people who make under the minimum wage to use food sanitation guidelines.

But wait, there’s more!

This article only touches on a serious problem in the President’s Cabinet. We have an Attorney General for the United States of America who does not believe that we necessarily have the right of habeas corpus. None other than Arlen Spector called him on this, asking how the Constitution can say a right can’t be taken away unless we specifically have that right to begin with. The battle becomes bipartisan as Patrick Leahy joins the action. If you want to see the whole thing in context, these nice people have it.

You need to write both your Senators today. Tell them to pass a clean minimum wage hike, and stop screwing around. Or better yet, tell them that it is high time to demand the resignation of Alberto Gonzales for fundamentally failing to understand the Constitution he has sworn to uphold and betraying his duty as “the people’s lawyer.”

In closing: obligatory comments on health care; terrific site that addresses the practical considerations of travel in the modern world; speaking of travel, Bruce Schneier once more says the truth; yet another Federal voucher proposal, never mind what a bad idea it is; what R2D2 and Chewbacca were really thinking in Star Wars; been a long time since I said anything about Fannie Mae; a different spin on the ticking bomb scenario; a Government initiative that has the stated purpose of food safety but the actual purpose of driving small and sustainable faming operations out of business; and finally, I want a HoverJeep!

Follow up: It seems that someone managed to sneak in an amendment that would pre-empt state laws mandating a higher minimum wage. What on earth were they thinking??

Or, “Yo Quiero Job at Taco Bell”

Yesterday, some people commented on Jeb Bush’s comments that he had no [political] future:

“No tengo futuro (I have no future),” Jeb Bush told Spanish-language reporters in Miami, when asked about any possible political ambitions after he steps down next month.” Jeb Bush told Spanish-language reporters in Miami, when asked about any possible political ambitions after he steps down next month.

Senator Brownback thinks that’s just a shame. Yes, that Senator Brownback.

The nice folks over at The Moderate Voice have a nice commentary with roundup and a brilliant picture of soon-to-be-ex Governor Bush and his esteemed brother, the President.

Now of course political pundits say the Governor is in his current state for no better reason than his brother’s poor approval ratings. Nope, couldn’t have anything at all to do with Terri Schiavo. Nope, everybody secretly hopes the Governor will interfere in their family’s most difficult decisions. Nor could it possibly have anything to do with his stance on the issues, including not even teaching about abortion, supporting “abstinence only” sex-ed, refering to feminism as a “modern victim movement”, repealing motorcycle helmet laws, supporting draconian criminal punishments, spending more money on drug enforcement, bringing in more farm workers from Mexico, and a host of other things that just might not sit well with Joe and Jane Average. At least he supports the Kyoto Treaty.

Alright then, Governor Bush’s comments tend to suggest he is officially planning on not running for President in 2008. Very well. Brother Neil is probably not a viable candidate either. That’s expected; this country has had father/son presidents before, but never brothers. Not even the Kennedys pulled that off.

Now I figure we have 20 years until it’s time to worry about the twins. And even then, I don’t think Jenna is the political one. Barbara is the Yalie, after all. Barbara is in fact the one named after a former first lady, the one who is a fourth generation Yale graduate, the one who was voted most likely to be on the cover of Vogue, and the one who has been clever enough not to say anything stupid on the internet (yet, of course). Oh, and if something she says does get quoted in a bad light, she can always blame Gramma.

In closing: make a better life for yourself, but do it without job training, more education, or help with childcare; “Um yeah, it turns out the economy isn’t doing as well as we told you before, sorry about that”; strangely enough it turns out that contraception reduces infidelity while increasing women’s income potential, put that in your “root of all modern society’s problems” and smoke it; it’s purely a coincidence that yesterday Mr. Bush was talking about a bigger military and today the Canadian news is reporting a test of the Selective Service system; still trying to find a gift for a teenager?; parents, experts agree “maybe we don’t have to drug little Johnny”; how long can Americans continue too spend more than they earn?; an item on ethics, food, restaurants, and you (thanks to Elisa); and finally, GIANT SQUID! Oishii desu ka? (Is it delicious?)

“Same as it ever was, same as it ever was.”

Ok, now think about this for a couple minutes. Exhibit one, Joe and Jane Average support the idea of a minimum wage increase, protecting the environment, getting the heck out of Iraq, repealing the Bush tax cuts, and a host of other “liberal” ideas. In fact, Joe and Jane and the majority of their neighbors support such “liberal” ideas.

Exhibit two, “Purple America,” the idea that America is far more Democratic leaning and liberal than the pundits would have us all beleive. This author focuses on the South, but I think far more interesting is the bright blue of the Dakotas and Upper Midwest.

And exhibit three, the fact that so many elections went to the Democratic Party in light of what was expected to be massive voter fraud ranging from selective purges of voting rolls to voting machine irregularities. In fact, it turned out better than most Democratic strategists honestly thought it would. Now, some of those races were real squeakers, but the Dems won. And the President was seeming downright contrite on Wednesday the 8th. Could that be because — without the fraud — the Dems would have had a genuine landslide? We will of course never know.

So the Democratic Party has a genuine mandate from the people. Not one of those faux mandates President Bush claimed back in 2004.

So if that is the case, why are we hearing stuff from the Sunday talk shows about how there are no liberal plans for the next Congress? If you want to read the comments in context, here they are over at Fox News (yeah yeah I hate to link to them but they are the source). Other sources note that the Democratic faction in Congress is “cautiously moving forward on some issues.”

Our esteemed Congressmen are saying things like:

Well, I think what we really need to do is understand, Democrats like winning elections. We want to win elections, and we’re going to do our best to do so. This doesn’t mean to get into any extreme positions on any matter. We’ll do what makes good sense on Iraq, what makes good sense on tax policy, what makes good sense on the environment and on energy, and we’ll come up with a package that the people will like and that will make good sense in the middle.

Guess what, the Republicans never wanted to meet you in the middle on anything. And “a package that the people will like” is going to be far, far further to the left than your corporate sponsors will allow. Live with it.

Look, nobody expected the Democrats to get really radical. Particularly since they have to get some Republicans on board to make legislation veto-proof. But the least they could do is “the people’s work.” I will agree with Mr. Frank that a minimum wage increase is a good first step (how about instead of a dollar amount, we index that sucker to the poverty line? [Poverty for a family of 4] divided by [52 weeks X 40 hours] = minimum wage]? That way the thing moves every year withoug you guys having to wage any floorfights.)

But for pity sake don’t stop there! And don’t expect anybody to meet you halfway. Do the right thing whenever it is clear there is a right thing to do, and to hell with anybody who would do otherwise. There is a smorgasbord of issues that you can act on the people’s will instead of big money’s will; don’t be afraid to act on them.

The Center is not where you think it is.

In closing: Americans, danger, and risk assessment; the drug crisis that adults make for their kids; and an awesome post from another blog I just discovered. I hope everybody had a good Thanksgiving and are happily preparing for the Midwinter Holidays.

From Snowy Seattle, Peace and Good Wishes and Happy Thoughts.

Yay, it’s over. A lot of good decisions were made yesterday, and kudos to you if you were part of them. Shame on you if you didn’t vote. As usual, a great roundup of stuff on The Moderate Voice. And here’s a great summary of some of the invasive psuedo-morality that got defeated yesterday: “We believe South Dakotans can make these decisions themselves.” Yes indeed. I believe all Americans can make decisions themselves, too.

One last thing, The President has invited Democratic leadership to lunch at the White House. My inner cynic hopes someone tests for poison. I imagine it’s a good thing looks can’t actually kill.

You know it isn’t very often that I find something compelling enough to make a second post of the day. But here we are.

As you are doubtlessly aware, the 2006 elections will be here in a few weeks for those of us who live in the United States. Issues you, Dear Voter, will have to decide upon include every member of the House of Representatives, a slate of state officials, a bevy of ballot initiatives, a locust swarm of local officials, and maybe even an amendment or two to the State Constitution. Your mileage will vary by jurisdiction.

Controversy on voting machines aside, the Republican party is concerned about what will happen next month. They are “focus[ing] on best bets” and trying to convince us that low taxes are the answer to all our problems (again) Allow me to gloss over the deficit and that the lions share of tax cuts have gone to people who don’t need them.

Why the sudden backtracking? Because the so-called “Values Voters” have become disenchanted with the Republican Party. Nor is the problem just a Foley Backlash:

While such issues [as gay marriage and abortion] motivated the Republicans’ social-conservative base in the past, they are overshadowed in this year’s congressional election campaign by concerns about the Iraq war, the economy and national security, according to opinion polls and political strategists. “Poverty, the wealth gap, health care — people can’t afford Medicare. Something’s got to be done about that,” Sue Harrell, a school teacher in Monroe City, Indiana, said recently.She said “Christian values” were important in previous votes but her top issues now are education and the prevalence of methamphetamine abuse and poverty in Knox County, Indiana.

Such talk has Republicans nervous and Democrats scenting opportunities to recapture the House of Representatives after 12 years in the minority, as well as reduce the Republican advantage in the Senate.

More to the point, perhaps it turns out that doing the right things on poverty, the wealth gap, health care, education, the War in Babylon, and drug abuse are “Christian values.”

In closing: goodbye, Cheyenne Mountain; East is the New West as American kids learn Mandarin; and the upcoming 3 Branches of Government Showdown on suspected terrorists and their (lack of) rights.

You would not know it to look at CNN right now. Top stories over there include speculation over whether the girls taken hostage at a Colorado high school might have been singled out based on their MySpace pages, a high school freshman who had enough and shot his principal, a filmmaker shooting off his mouth, a woman who killed her husband because her lover was hiding in the closet, police shooting a suspected cop killer, a store clerk beating up a would-be thief on camera, something entitled “Guy in neon Speedo-thingy embarrasses nation”, Anna Nicole Smith getting married again, and one actual item of importance to the whole country, it turns out Abramoff talked to people in the White House lots of times, and “people” includes Karl Rove.

Nope, it isn’t at all important that the Senate passed something called “A bill to authorize trial by military commission for violations of the law of war, and for other purposes.” Please, take a moment to find out how your Senators voted on the matter. You can read the actual text here, or you can get the short version from the Washington Post’s write-up. It wasn’t even front page news over there; go figure. But here’s the ShortWoman’s even shorter version:

• It’s ok to lock up any “individual engaged in hostilities against the United States” as an unlawful combatantant. Contrary to what many are reporting, this definition does not contain any mention of “citizenship” or “alien”. Sure, “hostilities” implies trying to do actual physical harm. But is that the definition they are using? Or could protesters be considered to be “engaged in hostilities”?
• They can gain this status by doing something against the United States, or by giving material support to someone who does. So, uh, check out charities very carefully before giving anything to anybody, mmkay?
• Such people have no rights whatsoever in American courts.
• Nevertheless, some people like Arlen Spector have gone on the record as saying Well yeah, it’s not Constitutional but that’s ok because The Courts will clean it up!
• Such people will have access to military tribunals, but they won’t get to see evidence against them, evidence in their favor may be supressed, and evidence obtained through beating someone until they say what the prosecutor wants is ok.
• Anybody who is against this is accused of “supporting the rights of terrorists who want to harm us.”

If you haven’t had enough, please check out the excellent items posted at The Moderate Voice and The Boston Globe and — just for a bit of flavor — Buzzflash, twice. Even guys who don’t talk politics like Wil Wheaton are saying this is a sad, sad day for our nation.

They no longer have any reason to hate us for our freedoms, for our freedoms are fleeting.

Nobody — at least nobody sane — is saying we have to coddle people who were captured trying to harm Americans. But torture is illegal under World Law (which supercedes our mere American law much the way Federal law supercedes State law), doesn’t work, breeds resentment and mistrust around the world, and puts Americans at risk of harsher treatment in the event of their capture anywhere in the world.

These will be no “in closing” today. This is too important.

OK, I don’t normally write about local politics. I have readers from all over the world, and I realize that the majority of you don’t particularly care about issues local to my area unless they are particularly interesting for whatever reason. However, this is in regards to a Senate race in a state with almost 6 million residents. I honestly figured I should talk about the housing data that was such bad news yesterday, particularly when correlated to the bad durable goods numbers. Just to give you an idea, Ford is having to give 0% financing to subprime borrowers to move just about everything, including trucks. As icing on the cake, the rental market is heating up in some places.

But no, instead I bring you an overview of the 2006 race for United States Senator in Washington.

Six years ago, Maria Cantwell defeated incumbent Slade Gorton (yes, he’s related to the fish stick people). That means she’s up for re-election. Although the primary is not for another month yet, her presumed opponent is Mike McGavick.

Mr. McGavick’s ads focus on nice, fuzzy, feel-good things like how great it would be if instead of politicians, we were just people working together for the common good. No talk of issues, no stances, nothing. But it turns out he supports Lieberman. And it turns out that when you scratch the surface, he’s just another Republican, with pretty much the same slate of Republican ideas, who falls in line with the President’s ideas. He’s not an outsider, but an old political behind the scenes hack who was Chief of Staff to former Senator Gorton, and then a lobbyist who tried to weaken Superfund rules.

And now he’s trying to get his “youthful” indiscretions out in the open and out of the way. Let’s start with this:

McGavick began his letter on the Web site by asking rhetorically, “What’s wrong with politics today?” Then he excoriated the tenor of his race with incumbent Cantwell, in which he said he is being attacked.

Um, sorry. When someone holds themselves up as a political candidate you can have a friendly chat and a beer with, they have to expect someone will reply “No he’s not! And sorry, what’s that got to do with anything?”

Mr. McGavick went on to confess that he was on marriage #2 (having divorced the mother of his son many years ago), and that he was arrested for drunk driving in 1993 (at the tender youthful age of 35). Oh and yeah he dismissed 450 employees after telling everyone there would be no more layoffs.

The purpose behind these revelations is to minimize their value. Don’t let them get released a week before the elections, for example. But there’s more. Getting this information out there means that he doesn’t have to actually talk about issues for a while. And Mr. McGavick doesn’t want anyone noticing that his stance on the issues is pretty much neo-con.

I hope Ms. Cantwell is in a position to say “Yes, he’s right. We need to focus on the issues, not 13 year old DUIs. So here’s where I stand. And according to Mr. McGavick’s website, he stands for this.”

On a related note, Elisa is right on times three. And now for something completely different: Bernanke “Argues for work retraining programs and other ways to ease pain caused by economic shifts; no comments on interest rates or inflation”; a scary statistic; and finally over 1800 pictures of Hello Kitty.

I used to consider myself pretty centrist. I mean, alright, I was a member of the Progressive Student Union in college, but probably its most conservative member. But I believed enough of the same things they did that we could work together for things that seemed doable and important on campus. I considered myself centrist at the turn of the millennium, when Clinton –Bill Clinton, the one that was actually President — had survived impeachment, and when Dubya was a Governor with Presidential aspirations, back when air travel didn’t mean slip-on shoes.

Then, somewhere along the line, the Center apparently took a turn to the right, and I found myself out in the cornfield among lefties, liberals, activists, and other progressives.

Or at least, that’s what I thought.

To listen to the rhetoric, “everybody” agrees we must support our troops and that means nobody can say anything bad about the Bush Administration. Because, well I don’t know, maybe the insurgents are quoting Randi Rhodes at our troops instead of trying to kill them. Well, you know my stance on that. I do support the troops: I pray for peace.

But then, yesterday, out of the blue, I read this item by Molly Ivins, who I had considered to be just a tetch to the left of me. And I realized that the center had not moved after all! The highway signs had just been changed. To quote:

The majority of the American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing Bush’s tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) wants to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.

The majority (77 percent) thinks we should do “whatever it takes” to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) thinks big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools. WHO ARE YOU AFRAID OF?

So let me get this straight. Most Americans want to bring the troops home, have health insurance, get a living wage, have the rich pay higher taxes, cut the deficit,* and protect the environment; yet somehow that’s a crazy liberal idea? And more to the point, why can’t our elected officials who claim to be so mindful of public opinion manage to do what it turns out the sometimes overwhelming majority of us want?

I hope Howard Dean has these figures, because it seems to me the Democratic Party doesn’t need an angle so much as they need to play to Peoria, the real Peoria, not K Street. Corporations do not vote; people do.

*As an aside, I’d like to point out that if more Americans earned a living wage, they would pay taxes on that money. And if we got rid of nutty tax breaks, that would be more taxes paid too. Now, you don’t suppose that could help reduce the deficit, do you?

I do not nearly have the time I would like to explore this topic more completely, so here is the short version.

The border security bill currently under consideration in the House of Representatives contains language that would “requir[e] the Social Security Administration, Treasury Department and Department of Justice to study the concept of a machine-readable Social Security card with a photo ID.”

This is a bad, bad idea. Thanks to changes in tax law, most Americans get Social Security Numbers as babies. A photo ID Social Security Card will have to be renewed regularly to be used as identification. This will incidentally create a photo database of every American, perfect for feeding into biometric recognition devices. It is also clear — since it’s laminated — that it is intended to be the sort of thing that everyone will carry in their wallets all the time, presentable to any Government official who asks. Even the Social Security Administration advises against actually carrying your Social Security Card. This is beyond the concerns of the Liberty Coalition:

“Even setting aside concerns of intentional ‘blacklisting’ of innocent Americans, even a small error rate could mean millions of Americans forced out of work by computer mistakes,” said Liberty Coalition Policy Director James Plummer. “Homeland Security has a poor record of putting innocent Americans on secretive “no-fly” lists, and should not be entrusted with determining who is allowed is to make a living in this country.”

Let’s face it: the only reason this is being considered at all is that the States are balking and doing everything they can to keep from implementing Real ID. Good for them. Keep the pressure on your State Governments. And tell your Representative and Senators to kill this internal passport requirement.

In closing: real quotes by Tom DeLay.