Americans Don’t Think Employer Belief Should Impede Their Access To Insurance Coverage

A solid nominee for the “Duh!” moment of the day: polling shows that Americans think they should have unfettered access to insurance coverage – that procedures and treatments should be available to those who are insured.

Put another way – why should employers get to decide what insured Americans get access to?  The Teabaggers didn’t think that the government should have that ability (not that the recent health insurance legislation ever proposed doing so), so why should it be okay for employers to restrict access, as Republican politicians are advocating?

All that said, this whole thing wouldn’t even be an issue if universal health care was enacted instead of forcing millions of Americans into the for-profit insurance industry.

Health Law “Casualty”: Excessive Timeline Requirement

Any long-time reader of this blog will know how bitterly disappointed I was with the health care law insurance giveaway that the Obama administration bungled last year.  Part of that law was dropped by the White House because of an insane requirement: a 75-year solvency clause for the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program.  Much like what will happen with the Postal Service, which was recently saddled with the same requirement, this negotiated capitulated requirement ensured the program’s demise.

How pathetic is this?  Where was the 75-year solvency clause for the mega-banks which have received $14 Trillion in taxpayer dollars?  Where was the 75-year solvency clause for war and occupation activities?  Oh, that’s right, our republic has been all too happy to transform itself into an imperialist oligarchy.

Quality health care for everybody?  We’re too busy destroying countries and cultures while ensuring the largest upward transfer of wealth in history continues unchecked.

Forget the crazies on the right and ask yourself this: is this the change you voted for?  How many more decades have to pass before this ludicrous incrementalist approach is ditched?  The Republican Teabaggers are playing to win while Democrats want to play nice.  Brilliant!

Update To Obama’s Bad EPA-Ozone Decision

President Obama has become the epitome of a primary negative for Democrats: he’s too concerned with being called nasty names and not concerned enough with enacting good policies.  Policies such as the recently killed ozone regulation, which is painful on many fronts as more people weigh in on the latest capitulation.

Enter Paul Krugman, a person who won the Nobel Prize in economics (perhaps someone Obama might want to listen to…):

Let’s talk about the economics. Because the ozone decision is definitely a mistake on that front.

As some of us keep trying to point out, the United States is in a liquidity trap: private spending is inadequate to achieve full employment, and with short-term interest rates close to zero, conventional monetary policy is exhausted.

What might this have to do with ozone regulations?

And now you can see why tighter ozone regulation would actually have created jobs: it would have forced firms to spend on upgrading or replacing equipment, helping to boost demand. Yes, it would have cost money — but that’s the point! And with corporations sitting on lots of idle cash, the money spent would not, to any significant extent, come at the expense of other investment.

U.S. corporations are sitting on Trillions of dollars they got for basically nothing from sources like the Treasury.  Do you want to know why too many Americans don’t have jobs, and of those Americans that do have jobs don’t make any more in real terms than they did in 1970?  Because of those Trillions of dollars sitting on the economic sideline.  Money that doesn’t move through the economy means the economy falters, then fails.  That’s what today’s Republican Teabaggers want for America: a failed economy so the black President also fails.

It’s too bad President Obama is more worried about being called bad names by those Teabaggers.  There are good jobs that could have been created by implementing and enforcing ozone regulations.  Instead, no Americans will get new jobs, money will stay out of the economy, Americans’ health will continue to be worse than it should, and President Obama will still get called bad names!  Bad politics, all around.  Better Democrats, please.

Obama Caves Again: Smog Rules

Many people lauded George Dubya for being so consistent during his reign.  It seems that President Obama is looking to establish his credibility as a consistent kind of guy as well.  Unfortunately, the only consistency President Obama is to retreat and capitulate in the face of any kind of Republican Teabagger resistance.

The most recent case (and there’s been a few this week, to be sure) is his order to EPA administrator Lisa Jackson to “withdraw the proposed regulation to reduce concentrations of smog’s main ingredient”.  Why?  He offered the weak-kneed reason that businesses have too many regulations and that’s part of the reason why zero jobs were created in the month of August.

In a similar vein as taxes, this President doesn’t seem able to do some simple math.  As tax rates plummeted for the wealthiest elite in the 2000s, were millions and millions of jobs created?  As regulations were eased on industry after industry in the 2000s, were millions and millions of jobs created?  No, that never happened.  Instead, the weakest job growth since WWII occurred in the 2000s, after unpaid tax cuts were passed and after regulations were eased on most industries.  The thought that reducing regulations or cutting more taxes will create a single job for an American is absurd.

President Obama keeps working with Republican Teabaggers to make him look like a court jester.  I’m not sure how that will help him win re-election.  More importantly, millions of Americans’ health will be negatively impacted.  Oh, now I get it: the health insurance corporations he helped out with his 2010 legislation needs to keep Americans in poor health so they can keep raising insurance rates by double-digit percentage increases year after year.  It actually makes perfect sense.  But is this the change Americans voted for in 2008?

Will Democrats Push Back On Republican Teabaggers’ Attempt To Gut Medicare?

No.

And I really do think it’s that simple.  Obama has already ceded the majority of the ground that could honestly be considered liberal.  That’s the way he wants it; that’s the way his handlers want it; it’s become the way his supporters want it.  He’s made plenty of pretty-sounding speeches about the topic, saying over and over he won’t let Medicare be turned into a voucher system.  Which tells me that is where things will end up when all is said and done.  Contractual obligations don’t matter to this man or his staff.  Staying in power does.

Mark my words: the big 3 contractual obligations run by the federal government will look very different after Obama and other “Democrats” are done with them.  Those changes might not take place immediately, but they’ll take place.  Just like his health care system reform insurance giveaway – the biggest changes still won’t take place for years, but they’re coming.  And when they get here, it’s not as if the system will be better than was before the reform.  And the Obama drones will swear up and down that the destruction of Medicare will be as good for all of us as the health insurance giveaway was.

Want to prove me wrong, Obama?  Fine, prove me wrong.  Don’t let Republican Teabaggers start the process to destroy programs that have worked quite well for generations.  Actions speak louder than words.  Stand up to extremists for once instead of trying to figure out a way to help them stab the rest of us in the back.

House Republican Teabaggers Vote To Increase Deficit By $1.25T; Does Teabagger Base Care?

I’m guessing not, since today’s vote in the House to repeal the Affordable Care Act was simply the culmination of a go-nowhere strategy that was well publicized since last year and the Teabagger base hasn’t interrupted Republican Teabagger town halls or offices to date.  You see, they only care when Democrats spend more than is available.  When their Teabagger Representatives vote to do the same … there’s nothing but silence.

Teabaggers, whether the base or in office, don’t care that they want to jack up the deficit by $1.25 Trillion.  As long as they can symbolically vote against the duly elected President of the United States who happens to be a Democrat, that’s all that matters.  Stay classy, folks.

Will Republicans Stop Reforms By Not Funding Them? Probably.

One of the little details lost among the health care reform, financial reform and every other reform since President Obama took office was when those so-called reforms were going to take effect.  It turns out that little detail might just come back and bite Obama and the Democrats in the butt.

None of the reforms were scheduled to take effect right away.  That’s because they had to be funded by Congress to take effect.  And since the Congressional Democratic leadership and President Obama’s staff couldn’t take the time to organize themselves and get their business done as quickly as possible, there wasn’t enough time left in this session to pass the 2011 fiscal year budget.  Even though the fiscal year started on October 1st (yes, 2.5 months ago).  So what Congress has done instead is pass funding through continuing resolutions.

Unfortunately, they mean what they sound like: they continue current funding.  They don’t allocate new funding.  They don’t change funding levels for anything.  They continue funding.  The latest continuing resolution that passed Congress today funds the government through March 2011.  That’s after Republican Teabaggers take control of the House of Representatives, where all spending bills must originate.  There will be fewer Democratic Senators in March 2011 than there are now.  The President has displayed an obsessive desire to negotiate with right-wing extremists and beat up on his base.  Guess what’s going to happen the next time the budget comes up for debate and votes?

I’m betting Republican Teabaggers take the budget and de-fund all of President Obama’s and the Democrats’ absurdly over-negotiated reforms. Furthermore, I’m betting President Obama doesn’t fight the Republican Teabaggers on not funding his “victories”.  He’s shown himself to care more that nobody is fighting than in passing good policies.  Too few Democrats realized this political weakness prior to putting him into office.  Now they have no choice.  Democrats got frustrated in 2009 and 2010 when Obama didn’t push for the most he could get even when perfect situations screamed for him to do so.  Just wait until he rolls over on issue after issue as Republican Teabaggers warm up their “spending is too high” talking points and begin investigating his administration for every silly, petty thing Teabaggers can dream up.

Which leads me again to address all the incrementalists that told liberal activists that we had to take what we could get and not expect a centimeter more: if your so-called reforms aren’t funded, what good are they?  How much time, energy and money was wasted moving a pathetic distance toward solving some of this nation’s crises but won’t be enacted because of your overwhelming pragmatism?

How willing will Democrats be to donate to President Obama’s re-election campaign when these things happen?  How many doors will they knock on?  How many phone calls will they make?  When the reforms go down in flames and unemployment stays high (because Obama never seriously addressed the Great Recession), will there be a 2012 “enthusiasm gap” that outshines the 2010 version?  Only time will tell.

Framing and Messaging: Republicans Get Them, Democrats Don’t

Democrats continue to refuse to look at how important framing and messaging is in driving a core set of principles.  Republicans figured out their importance decades ago and that’s a big reason why this country has taken such a radical turn to the extreme right since.

Why is these two abstract concepts so important?  Take the recent health care debate as an example.  Specifically, let’s look at the public option and what Republicans did about it internally:

At the height of the health care reform debate last fall, Bill Sammon, Fox News’ controversial Washington managing editor, sent a memo directing his network’s journalists not to use the phrase “public option.”

Instead, Sammon wrote, Fox’s reporters should use “government option” and similar phrases — wording that a top Republican pollster had recommended in order to turn public opinion against the Democrats’ reform efforts.

Did this doom the public option all by itself?  Of course not.  But these phrases resonate with folks who have been purposefully trained to think of anything the government does as inefficient and wasteful (on the nice side of the spectrum).  Republicans have mastered the two-word soundbite culture.  The phrases that pass through Luntz’s playbook and into the Republican machine are some of the most recognizable and effective in our political lexicon today.

Democrats do themselves and this country a disservice by continuing to brush framing and messaging off as something beneath their notice.  They think if they fully explain every nuance of every policy, the facts by themselves will win over enough of the public to implement their ideas.  It hasn’t worked in decades and it will be less effective in the future.

Arizona Gov Cut Transplant Patient Financing; AZ Gov Blames Obama For Results

Death Panels are alive and well.  Of course, ignored by the corporate media, death panels have been created by Republican Teabaggers like AZ Gov Jan Brewer.

Effective at the beginning of October, Arizona stopped financing certain transplant operations under the state’s version of Medicaid. Many doctors say the decision amounts to a death sentence for some low-income patients, who have little chance of survival without transplants and lack the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to pay for them.

You see, Republican Teabaggers think poor people want to be poor, so they have no one to blame but themselves for not being able to afford transplant operations that will keep them alive.

But the story has an added bonus: Jan Brewer is now blaming Obama and his health care reform insurance giveaway for killing these people.

The Republican governor has in turn blamed “Obamacare,” meaning the federal health care overhaul, for the transplant cuts even though the Arizona vote came in March, before President Obama signed that bill into law.

To uninformed Americans, this might resonate, since Republican Teabaggers have dishonestly attacked the legislation for 2 years now.  What Brewer and other Teabaggers will never discuss is how forcing Americans to buy private insurance translates into an Arizona state health program deciding to save $14 million per year while poor people die for lack of transplant organs.  Of course it doesn’t make sense.  Nothing the Teabaggers propose as policy actually makes sense.  This is simply what follows after millions of greedy, selfish old white people decide to exert their influence on politics.  Wake up America: these kinds of policies are coming to a neighborhood near you if you allow the Teabaggers to take this country back to the 1750s.

I could advocate that the President finally wake up too, if I thought it would make any difference.  Brewer’s cowardly assignment of blame is what results when you capitulate to everything extremists like her want.  By all means, keep capitulating though.  As long as Sarah Palin is the 2012 Republican Teabagger nominee, the President might be able to eek out a 2nd term.

Health Care Reform Already Being Weakened?

If the deficit peacocks get their way, Medicare could be seriously weakened.  Why?  Because the $519 Billion program is expected to grow to $929 Billion by 2020.  And since CorporateDems and Incrementalists insisted that the 2009-2010 Health Insurance Giveaway could be easily strengthened “the next time around”, a Medicare buy-in in place of single-payer in place of a public option, was never seriously considered, the growth in the cost of Medicare moving forward presents a nice, fat target for which the D.C. establishment can aim.

Opening Medicare up to a larger pool of customers would have helped keep the program’s overall costs down.  But the “serious people” involved with health care reform couldn’t allow that to happen.  That was too much change too quickly.  The health care apple cart might get tipped over, or some such nonsense.  Well, I would love to hear from the Incrementalists how accepting crumbs in the reform gutter will save Medicare or ensure more Americans have access to quality health care.  And no, insurance coverage doesn’t not equate to quality health care.  It should become obvious soon that forcing people into private insurance coverage doesn’t mean existing health care systems will get the changes they need.  There was a critical question that the Incrementalists could never answer during the health care debate: how will their version of “reform” be strengthened moving forward?  It turns out that it won’t.  The health care system doesn’t need tweaks at the edges, it needs revolutionary, fundamental change.

How disgusting will it be when a Democratic President oversees privatization of portions of Medicare?  How about Social Security?  The Incrementalists were dead wrong – the only thing their approach will accomplish is taking steps toward privatizing the social safety nets brought into existence by liberals and progressives in the 20th century.  This isn’t “Change we can believe in”.