New Congressional Endorsement Alert In Georgia: Lisa Ring

Georgia's whole coastline, from Savannah on the South Carolina border down to St. Mary's on St. Mary's River that separates Georgia and Florida, is part of the 1st congressional district, basically bright blue Chatham (Savannah) and 17 smaller mostly, rural counties-- all red except for Liberty County near Savannah. Last cycle progressive Democrat Lisa Ring challenged conservative Trumpist Earl "Buddy" Carter. The final vote was 144,741 (57.7% to 105,942 (42.3%). Carter outspent Ring $1,181,229 to $205,896, the DCCC refusing to recognize the race as legitimate. Lisa is trying again this cycle, again with no DCCC backing.

First she has to win a primary against Barbara Seidman, a crackpot anti-Choice nut who admitted (here on this local TV show) that Republicans recruited her to run... and then God gave her the go-ahead. Ring is the chair of the first district Democratic Party and was a Bernie delegate to the DNC. Her platform includes Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, tuition-free public colleges and the other populist, sensible positions you can expect from Blue America-backed candidates. And, indeed, this morning, she was endorsed by Blue America. She wrote the guest post below for us. Please take a look and if you like what you read, consider contributing to her campaign by clicking on the thermometer on the right. The primary should be pretty easy for her but the general election is going to be close and she needs all the help she can get for it. What a shame that the DCCC sees her as "too progressive"!


Leading With Integrity, Strength And Vision To Empower Voters And To Create A Government That Reflects OUR Values While Leaving No One Behind
-by Lisa Ring

I’ve always been an activist but I had never seriously considered running for office until I witnessed first-hand a lack of leadership in Coastal Georgia. Not only were we forgotten by party leadership whose focus was Atlanta, we didn’t have choices on election day. 85% of all seats in Georgia before 2018, were incumbents with no challengers. This was the case with Buddy Carter in 2016. With the exception of one write in candidate, he had no opposition. Because Carter didn’t have to cater to voters, he started to tell his constituents that he didn’t care what they wanted and that he would do what he thought was best.

Unfortunately, what Carter thinks is best is whatever he and his supporters can profit from without regard for the wellbeing of all of his constituents. The contrasts are stark between Carter and myself. I believe it is time for everyone to have the same healthcare every developed country in the world provides its citizens. We’ve been fighting for a universal healthcare system for over 100 years and every year we do nothing, thousands of people die due to lack of healthcare. Carter has been campaigning against “Obamacare” since he came a congressman in 2014 and has gone so far as to tell the people begging him to protect their healthcare that he doesn’t care what they want. This is coming from the self-proclaimed “only pharmacist” in Congress who fancies himself part of the healthcare community.

We are opposites in every regard. Carter is anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ, anti workers’ rights and living wage, against equal pay, against common sense gun reforms, and wouldn’t even vote for the most recent Violence Against Women Act because it limited gun possession for abusers. He is for the privatization of everything...prisons and detention facilities(in which he owns stock), our educational system, and our military and veterans services. As a former military spouse, a military mom, and running for office in a district with six military installations(2 Coast Guard) and over 75,000 veterans, I find Carter’s lack of understanding about what veterans and military families need quite troubling. Our veterans and military families are barely surviving on less than standard wages and inadequate housing and healthcare. Food banks near bases can’t keep up with the number of people serving who rely on their help.

While the inequities, lack of understanding, and lack of compassion are staggering, there is no difference quite as glaring between Carter and myself as our environmental policies. Rep. Carter, despite facing increasing pressure from 1st district voters, was the only legislator from both political parties in Georgia who believed it was a good idea to open up the Georgia coast to offshore oil drilling. All of our coastal communities and state legislators, as well as the GOP governor and other coastal congressmen, signed resolutions to not allow offshore drilling in Georgia. Not Buddy Carter. He continued to espouse the same tired argument that we should pursue “energy independence” for the good of our district and the nation.

The opposite is true. The small pie shaped area that could be drilled is believed by scientists to have very little oil. The oil would be exported to other countries(because we don’t need it) for profit only by the companies who are drilling. We have nothing to gain and everything to lose if there is a spill and as we contribute to the severity of climate change. It makes one wonder if Carter is making decisions because he has personal connections to the fossil fuel industry since he refuses to listen to the DOD telling him this would be a threat to national security, or his constituents who not only worry about the economic impact but are very concerned about the environmental impact. Clearly he has no concern over the impact of climate change on our coast and to inhabitants. While he now admits climate change is real( a small victory), he does not believe it is man-made.

I believe we can have energy independence in a way that benefits all of us. Before the Green New Deal, I had a plan for the 1st Congressional District of Georgia that I hoped would be a national model. My plan was to make Coastal Georgia the “Silicon Valley” of clean, safe, renewable energy sources. I believe we can be a hub of research in new energies such as wave and tidal energy and improve existing technologies like solar and wind. We can bring decent paying jobs to rural areas where there is no opportunity by bringing the solar and wind energy industries here. By offering tuition free training in the renewable energy sector through universities, technical schools, and internships we can provide opportunity to all while caring for our veterans and those displaced from the fossil fuel industry. We can guarantee that all who wish to work, will, by providing a federal/state job guarantee. And we can build a green infrastructure that solves several problems: a crumbling infrastructure, a lack of public transportation(especially in rural Georgia), and mitigation of rising sea levels which causes property damage and failing systems (such as sewage) that are not suited to deal with the crisis of climate change.

We can become global leaders as we research and implement technologies suited to move us to a healthy, fossil free, economically booming future. There is simply no way to fail in a plan that considers the needs and wellbeing of all and simply makes sense economically and environmentally. Living in a district that has 100 miles of pristine coastline and a unique ecosystem created by tides that reach ten miles inland, I find it hard to accept we have a congressional representative that cannot see beyond his own pockets.

Who Will Go To Prison Sooner, Nunes Or Trumpanzee, Jr.?

Currently, Buddy Carter is in a fierce competition with Louie Gohmert to be recognized as the most clueless member of Congress. Yesterday he told NPR has "every State of the Union that the president has given has gotten better and better" and went on about how he's become one of the great presidents of all times. The "president" has given two of those addresses, but perhaps Carter has dreamed of being at dozens of them. Earl Leroy "Buddy" Carter, a pharmacist, represents the southeast corner of Georgia. In his recent reelection bid, he was trounced in the 2 counties where people graduate high school-- Chatham (Savannah) and Liberty (Hinesville), he just owned all the counties where the average education doesn't go beyond the 4th grade (Glynn, Camden, Bryan Effingham, Ware, Wayne, Pierce, Brantley, McIntosh, Long, Bacon, Charlton, Clinch, Lowndes and Echols).

Luckily, Earl Leroy Carter is not on the Intelligence Committee. Republicans on that committee are Devon Nunes (CA), Mike Conaway (TX), Mike Turner (OH), Brad Wenstrup (OH), Chris Stewart (UT), Rick Crawford (AR), Elise Stefanik (NY), Will Hurd (TX) and John Ratcliffe (TX). Nunes is dumb enough without having to drag Carter into it. How dumb? Dumb enough to be the subject of an investigation by the committee he used to chair! It's hardly news that Nunes routinely obstructed justice and sabotaged his own committee's investigation into Russian interference with the U.S. elections, all that being done to protect Trump. When the new chairman, Adam Schiff announced how the committee would conduct its investigation into Russian interference, there was a special paragraph that has Nunes' name all over it: "Whether any actors-- foreign or domestic-- sought or are seeking to impede, obstruct, and/or mislead authorized investigations into these matters, including those in Congress." That likely also spells trouble for one non-committee member, Dana Rohrabacher, who was defeated for relection in 2018, largely because his constituents came to see him as a Kremlin operative. Mueller has already been investigating both Nunes and Rohrabacher.

Wednesday, in its first act since the Democrats have taken over, the committee voted to send interview transcripts from its Russia investigation-- including the deceitful, sworn testimony from Donald Trump, Jr.-- to Mueller, who could use them to prosecute perjury. Schiff: "The special counsel’s office, the Justice Department and its elements will now have access to those transcripts for any purpose which will facilitate justice."

When Republicans controlled the committee last year, then-Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) ended the panel’s Russia investigation and concluded that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives.

But Democrats said they would press on with the probe, arguing that key witnesses had not been interviewed. Schiff is reviving the investigation, placing a focus on potential money laundering and pledging to dive into The Trump Organization’s finances, among other issues.

On Wednesday, the committee announced the parameters of its investigation, which Schiff said will “go beyond Russia” and “will allow us to investigate any credible allegation that financial interests or other interests are driving the decision-making of the president or anyone in the administration.”

In a statement, Schiff said House investigators will broaden the scope of the Russia probe by looking into whether Trump or his associates “have sought to influence U.S. government policy in service of foreign interests” and “whether any foreign actor has sought to compromise or holds leverage, financial or otherwise, over Donald Trump, his family, his business, or his associates.”

In response, Trump lashed out at Schiff, accusing the chairman of unfairly singling him out.

“Under what basis would he do that? He has no basis to do that. He’s just a political hack,” Trump said Wednesday from the White House. “He’s trying to build a name for himself. And I think that’s fine because that’s what they do. But there would be no reason to do that. No other politician has to go through that. It’s called presidential harassment. And it’s unfortunate. And it really does hurt our country.”

Trump will, no doubt, soon be learning that Schiff can tweet too. "I can understand why the idea of meaningful oversight terrifies the President. Several of his close associates are going to jail, others await trial, and criminal investigations continue. We’re going to do our job and won’t be distracted or intimidated by threats or attacks."

What A Disastrous Health Care Rollout Ryan Orchestrated!

Yesterday, Houston cancer specialist and brand new TX-07 congressional candidate, Jason Westin, led a deep dive into Republican health care "policy" for us. Even as we were posting it, the extremists inside the Republican House Conference-- the "Freedom Caucus-- was attacking the Ryan-Pence-Price TrumpCare proposal from a very different perspective. Justin Amash, one of the only serious members of that crackpot caucus, was on CNN Wednesday morning not just claiming that Ryan and McCarthy don't have the votes to pass their abomination but that it's not even a "real" Republican piece of legislation. Of course, he may be right about the vote count but he's very wrong about trying to brand it as "not Republican." What he told CNN is that Ryan-Pence-Price have "taken the Obamacare framework and are trying to call it a Republican piece of legislation." Of course, the Obamacare framework is a Republican framework, having come directly from Massachusetts' RomneyCare (which was put together by... the Heritage Foundation, a very right-wing Republican think tank. A Democratic piece of legislation would be Medicare-For-All.

There are about 30 members of the Freedom Caucus, several having retired (like Curt Clawson, Cynthia Lummis and Matt Salmon), several having been beaten by the Republican establishment (like Tim Huelskamp and Scott Garrett, and several having found them too insane so resigning from the group (like Tom McClintock, Keith Rothfus and, before retiring, Reid Ribble. The new chairman is Mark Meadows (NC) and it's home to sociopaths, racists and extremists like Mo Brooks (AL), Trent Franks (AZ), Dave Brat (VA), Jody Hice (GA), Jim Jordan (OH), Scott DesJarlais (the Tennessee doctor famous for drugging and raping his female patients), Ken Buck (CO) and Rod Blum (IA).

Jordan (plus Rand Paul in the Senate) filed their own bill to repeal Obamacare, which just makes the Affordable Care Act disappear outright and doesn't offer any hope for the millions of Americans dependent on it for health insurance, except whatever hope people have of marrying an heiress, winning a lottery or getting elected to Congress.

Ryan and McCarthy are working furiously to lock up the 218 votes they need to pass their bill. Presumably not even fake Democrats at the bottom on the shitpile-- like Colin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN), Tom O'Halleran (Blue Dog-AZ), Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ), Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ), Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX), Stephanie Murphy (Blue Dog-FL), Charlie Crist (FL), Lou Correa (Blue Dog-CA) and Jacky Rosen (NV)-- would dare vote with the Republicans on this. So all 218 votes have to come from the 241 GOP majority. If 30 Freedom Caucus extremists vote NO and none of the Blue Dogs and New Dems vote YES, the bill doesn't move on to the Senate, where it would likely die anyway, since McConnell could only afford to lose 3 votes-- even the most conservative Democrat in the Senate, Joe Manchin, said he won't vote for it-- and there are already between 3 and 8 who have said they won't vote for it or won't vote for it in its current form. So far we have pretty definitive NOs from Lisa Murkowski (AK), Shelley Moore Capito (WV), Ron Portman (OH), Cory Gardner (CO), Susan Collins (ME) and possibly Dean Heller (NV) and Bill Cassidy (LA). Even Rand Paul (KY) has threatened to break with the party if they don't make significant changes more in line with what the extremists at the Freedom Caucus are asking for.



Jordan said his repeal-only plan "is consistent with what we told the voters we’re going to do: Repeal Obamacare and replace it with a market-centered, patient-centered, and doctor-centered plan that actually brings down the cost of insurance," except it doesn't offer anything to anyone except for tax cuts for mammoth millionaires and billionaires. "[T]he first thing that Republicans are bringing forward is a piece of legislation that we are going to put on a Republican president’s desk, that doesn’t repeal it, but keeps Medicaid expansion-- and actually expands it-- that keeps some of the tax increases. That is not what we promised the American people we would do."

After the American Hospital Association and the American Medical Association came out against the proposal, the White House sent Pence and Price over to the House to quell the panic. (Remember, the American Medical Association's PAC-- AMPAC-- is huge and gives cycle after cycle after cycle, primarily to Republicans. Last year it contributed $1,501,000-- $774,500 to Republicans and $515,500 to Democrats, including $10,000 pops to Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise, Tom Price, Fred Upton, and to Roger Marshall, the Kansas crackpot who was babbling about how Jesus says the poor don't want healthcare. AMPAC also gave $30,000 each to the NRCC and the NRSC (and $10,000 each to the New Dem Coalition and the Blue Dog PAC). AMPAC also runs independent expenditure campaigns for candidates they like. And they give like clockwork... every single cycle. Here was the statement the White House put out when they sent Pence and Price scurrying over to the House:

The Vice President today met with conservative leaders in the House to discuss the failures of Obamacare and the need to repeal and replace that disastrous law. Participants discussed their shared desire for fiscally responsible, market-based reforms that encourage competition and provide individuals and families with the ability to choose the health insurance option that is best for them. The Vice President stressed this is the first step in the process to deliver on the President's promise to the American people and looks forward to House passage of the American Health Care Act.

MO!

As far right extremist Mo Brooks was leaving the meeting he told the media hanging around outside that "Right now the Speaker of the House does not have the votes to pass this bill unless he's got substantial Democratic support." Another fanatic, Rep. Raúl Labrador (R-ID) floated the idea that Trump doesn't really think much of the bill either. "I find it a little bit interesting when I heard leadership say that they have a bill that is the set bill and that the president is fully supportive of the bill. I think he's fully supportive of the process. Trump's OMB Director, Mick Mulvaney-- a far right extremist who was a Freedom Caucus member before Trump drafted him-- was in that meeting and came out of it emphasizing that Trump isn't really fully on board yet anyway. Mo Brooks happily accused the White House of sending "mixed messages." In fact, after the meeting, Freedom Caucus chairman, Mark Meadows, said Mulvaney let them know that the White House is still open to negotiations. "We heard that directly from him. This is not something that is in stone."

Kyle Cheney at Politico senses something similar: Pence and Price are pushing hard but Trump...? No one knows for sure and he's... unpredictable and feckless. He referred to the rollout as a "negotiation," which probably wasn't what Ryan, Pence and Price wanted to hear from him. Señor Trumpanzee has managed, wrote Cheney, "to plunge his party into days of turmoil with stray tweets about Russia. Similar snafus wouldn’t just be distractions now that the repeal drive is underway; they’d be detrimental to the GOP policy agenda and message... And Trump hasn’t always spoken from the same messaging playbook as Republicans on health care, a fact he once wore proudly during his presidential primary fight. 'You cannot let people die on the street, OK?' Trump said during a February 2016 primary forum. 'Now, some people would say, "that's not a very Republican thing to say." … I said, you know, the problem is everybody thinks that you people, as Republicans, hate the concept of taking care of people that are really, really sick and are gonna die ... That's called heart. We gotta take care of people that can't take care of themselves.' Watch how he responds if the CBO says millions would lose coverage." But he's certainly correct that that wasn't a very Republican thing to say. As long as it doesn't impact their reelection efforts, House Republicans could care less if people are left without healthcare-- including "dying on the street," as Trump phrased it.

And now Trump has to grapple with what his home-town paper is saying about the plan, namely that "the biggest losers under the change would be older Americans with low incomes who live in high-cost areas. Those are the people who benefited most from Obamacare."

Obamacare's subsidies were structured to limit how much low- and middle-income Americans could be asked to pay for health insurance. Under the G.O.P. proposal, many of the people whose tax credits would fall sharply would be likely to end up uninsured. For people with few resources, a gap of several thousands of dollars between their tax credit and the cost of coverage would be impossible to make up.

That's why many policy experts believe that the new system would result in fewer Americans having health insurance.

This morning John Harwood made the case that Ryan's proposal hurts Trump voters even more than the country as a whole. (Don't be tempted to think they deserve it. Most are more stupid or steeped in ignorance than evil.) "Instead of broadly rewarding Trump's backers," he wrote, "the House bill hands huge benefits to the tiny share of his voters earning the highest incomes. Their gains come at the expense of the much larger group of older, blue-collar whites who flocked to his "Make America Great Again" banner... Exit polls showed that just 10 percent of Trump's votes came from Americans earning $200,000 or more. Yet those voters would derive all benefits from the repeal of the two individual tax hikes targeting them: a 0.9 percent tax on their earnings, and a 3.8 percent tax on their investment income. An even smaller group, the top 1 percent of earners, would receive an average tax cut of $33,000, according to the Tax Policy Center. The top 0.1 percent of earners would receive an average tax cut of $197,000. But half of Trump's votes came from white voters without college degrees. And those less-affluent voters stand to lose in multiple ways if Congress rolls back Obamacare in favor of the House GOP plan."

An Urban Institute study found that Obamacare reduced the number of noncollege whites without insurance by 6.2 million between 2010 and 2015, a drop of 39 percent. In 20 of the 30 states that Trump won, more noncollege whites gained coverage than any other group.

Under the House GOP bill, those who have gained coverage would face higher costs because the bill's tax credits are generally smaller than premium subsidies through Obamacare exchange marketplaces. An analysis led by Harvard health economist David Cutler estimates those increased costs will total an average of $2,409 in 2020.

Whites aged 45 or older provided 56 percent of Trump's votes. Older Obamacare enrollees would be hit particularly hard by the House bill because it curbs age-based insurance subsidies.

Enrollees aged 55 to 64, the Cutler study found, would face higher costs averaging $6,971 in 2020.

The House bill would also produce major reductions in spending on Medicaid, the expansion of which generated a large proportion of Obamacare's gains in insurance coverage. The liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates the reduction in federal spending on the program at $370 billion over 10 years.

Medicaid has long been a target of Republican budget cutters, both because the party favors smaller government and because it provides health care to poor Americans who tend to support Democrats. Nationally, most Medicaid enrollees are nonwhite.

But in some key states that backed Trump, whites comprise a large majority of nonelderly Medicaid beneficiaries: 65 percent in Ohio, 60 percent in Wisconsin, 60 percent in Michigan. Those proportions are as high or higher in smaller Trump states such as West Virginia (89 percent), Montana (83 percent), Kentucky (77 percent) and Arkansas (62 percent).

The House GOP's reductions would affect all Medicaid beneficiaries, not just those added to the rolls under Obamacare. That includes more than 6 million senior citizens with incomes and assets low enough to qualify for the program.

Medicaid finances most nursing home care in the United States. Unlike the program's nonelderly beneficiaries, a 54 percent majority of beneficiaries aged 65 or older are white, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

That means the House bill would pinch Trump's blue-collar white supporters in two ways-- crimping their own Medicaid coverage, and that of their elderly parents.

CNN reported this morning that Trump met with Tea Party extremists in the Oval office and told them that if Ryan's bill fails, as looks likely, he'll "allow Obamcare to fail and let Democrats take the blame... During the hour-long meeting, sources said Trump chastised the groups-- including Club for Growth, the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks and the Tea Party Patriots-- for calling the House GOP proposal 'Obamacare lite,' warning the tea party activists, 'you are helping the other side.'" He really is the worst and most venal little man to ever occupy the White House.