Does Max Baucus Get To Choose His Senate Successor?

Brian Schweitzer: "Don't listen to the bullshit you hear in Washington, D.C. If the election were held today, John Bohlinger would win 2-to-1 over John Walsh."

-by Bob Brigham

The last time there was on open US Senate seat out here in Montana was in 1978. As your author was in diapers, I didn’t get a choice. Those who did sent Max Baucus to Washington, where he’s remained to this day.

With poll numbers that have been in the toilet since he let health insurance lobbyists write his health care bill, Max Baucus announced this spring that he would not running for reelection. This set up the first open senate race in Montana since the one Baucus won thirty-five years ago.

It looked like popular former Governor Brian Schweitzer would run. Progressives were thrilled that a single payer supporter was the frontrunner to replace Baucus. But alas, the good guv didn’t run.

There are now two main candidates in the Democratic Party primary. John Bohlinger, who was Schweitzer’s Lt Gov for all eight years. And John Walsh, who since January has been the current Lt Gov under Governor Steve Bullock.

Max Baucus is backing John Walsh and bankrolling his campaign.

The DSCC is going along with Max Baucus, publicly backing John Walsh as senate leadership’s chosen successor to Max Baucus. Harry Reid even tried to get Schweitzer’s Lt Gov to drop out.

Unfortunately, the DSCC and DCCC have been all too successful at clearing primaries and denying grassroots Democrats a say in the direction of the party. They just assumed that Max Baucus’s chosen successor would be fine so there was no need to even have a vote.

Their scheme might have even worked, were it not for one critical flaw: John Bohlinger thought it an affront.

This came as no surprise to Montana political observers. David Sirota worked with Bohlinger and Schweitzer, he tells this story:

That’s the John Bohlinger that Montanans are familiar with. The last two decades of Montana politics are but a series of stories of political adversaries assuming that because he wears a bow tie and has a grandfatherly smile, John Bohlinger must be a pushover. Every single time they’re proved wrong. He was the only guy in Montana tough enough to be Brian Schweitzer’s second in command.

So when the consultants came up with a scheme to keep the Baucus gravy-train rolling despite his retirement, it should have surprised nobody that John Bohlinger did not abide.

And by the mere fact that Bohlinger is willing to stand up to the DSCC and Harry Reid, he’s won what Matt Stoller called, “the bar fight primary.”

So there’s going to be a primary. A Democrat named John facing a Democrat named John. This might sound familiar, in 2006 there was also a contested Democratic Party primary in Montana with a guy named John running against a guy named Jon.

In 2006, DC also lined up behind a candidate and ensured he had vastly more money. And DC’s candidate lost in a 25 point landslide.

While the DC power brokers have been very successful at minimizing the number of primaries, when they do occur, there may be no worse turf for them in the country than Montana. In Montana, there is an extremely low point of saturation after which spending even more money has returns diminished to the point it’s no better than just setting it on fire.

In Montana, the ante to compete against DC is very low.

Back in 2004, a full 23 months before Conrad Burns, Markos started pushing Jon Tester (although he spelled his first name wrong in his national introduction). In that piece, Markos quoted me saying:

Westerners want candidates with spine. You could probably run on gay marriage in Montana if your campaign plan was to bar-fight your way across the state-- people would respect that.

Liberals have been portrayed as pencil-necked spinless wimps for too long. Montana Democrats are showing the benefits of running with a spine, and while their state-level success doesn't translate to federal success, the potential is clearly there.

Nine years later, we have a chance to translate the bold populism of the Schweitzer administration to the federal level. And the success of the Schweitzer administration has made the state much friendlier territory for Democrats. And while the poll numbers may not be there yet for marriage equality, nobody thinks John Bohlinger and Brian Schweitzer’s support for marriage equality is going to hurt much in the general.

And already, progressives should be delighted by the two major fault lines have accented how this rare senate primary is going to be a battle for the soul of the Democratic Party.

HEALTH CARE

For the last decade, Brian Schweitzer has butted heads with Max Baucus over health care. Schweitzer made a name for himself pioneering the bold campaign tactic of taking busloads of seniors to Canada to get their prescriptions filled cheaper. Baucus on the other hand, is PhRMA’s top guy in the senate. Brian Schweitzer has been one of the country’s leading voices for single payer. Max Baucus took out the Public Option and replaced it with the Individual Mandate. And in this senate primary, Baucus’s hand picked successor is sticking with Baucus while John Bohlinger is changing the dialogue to health care as a right and trumpeting the success of the Schweitzer state health clinics for public workers.



Health care isn’t the only major fault line in deciding the future direction of the senate caucus.

CAMPAIGN FINANCE

Another big issue is the role of money in politics. Here again is a major split between the visions of Schweitzer and Baucus. Hilltop Public Solutions, the consultants trying to keep the Baucus Culture of Corruption going, are notorious purveyors of Dark Money (seriously, you must read this expose). In a separate bizarre scandal that came about by not using Free Conference Call dot com, last year’s Bullock/Walsh campaign listed on their finance reports, expenses for conference calls with Hilltop. While Hilltop was doing a ton of supposedly independent expenditures. There’s an complaint at the Commissioner of Political Practices on the scandal.

That’s quite the contrast with John Bohlinger. Last year, Brian Schweitzer and John Bohlinger lead on a grassroots citizens’ initiative, I-166. The initiative went after the legal fiction of corporate personhood, charging Montana’s congressional delegation with amending the US Constitution to clarify that corporations are not human beings entitled to constitutional rights. The initiative passed with over 74% of the vote. And Bohlinger is now running to go to DC and part part of the amendment fight.



It’s not often that we get a contested primary for a winnable senate seat. These truly are where we decide the direction of the party. And the fact this primary is occurring in Montana means progressives could give this fight the resources necessary to beat DC. It’s one to watch. And if every week is as exciting as the first week was, it’s going to be the most exciting Democratic primary of the cycle for political junkies.

If you want to keep up with how Schweitzer’s Lt Gov is doing, John Bohlinger’s campaign is on twitter and Facebook and has a website to sign up for emails: BohlingerForSenate.com.

NRA And K Street Lose A Powerful Senator-- Max Baucus Won't Run For Reelection

Helping the GOP filibuster background checks for the NRA made his reelection untenable

Max Baucus was certainly planning to run for reelection. His Glacier PAC has been collecting money from the special interests he serves and his campaign warchest already had $3,594,923 on hand by January 1 this year. Known as the Senator from K Street, last time Baucus ran (2008), special interest PACs contributed $4,959,391. Since then, he's further ingratiated himself to the big money groups that give the most, particularly the Medical-Industrial Complex and the banksters, who have contributed, respectively, $3,837,102 and $5,715,734 towards Baucus' shady career in politics.

And then came the vote on Manchin-Toomey, the very mainstream, very moderate commonsense background checks bill opposed by the NRA but favored by 91% of Americans (and 79% of Montanans)-- as well as by most NRA members and most gun owners. Bachus slipped... or his mask did. He voted wrong and ended his career in politics. There's nothing left for him now but the disgrace of working as a paid whore on K Street.




The last polling in Montana had already shown him losing popularity-- and vulnerable.

PPP's newest Montana Senate poll finds that the seat could be competitive next year...but Republicans are probably going to need a stronger candidate than Corey Stapleton or Champ Edmunds.

Max Baucus has a 45/48 approval rating, upside down numbers that reflect what we've found for him over most of the last couple years. Nevertheless Baucus would start out with pretty large leads over both Stapleton (45/38) and Edmunds (47/37) who have shown the greatest interest in the race to date.

Baucus would be in trouble if a stronger Republican candidate got into the contest though. He would trail by 5 point margins to both Congressman Steve Daines (49/44) and former Governor Marc Racicot (47/42). He would have a small lead over Attorney General Tim Fox (46/43).

The biggest threat to Baucus might actually be in a primary. Former Governor Brian Schweitzer would lead him 54/35 in a face off. Democratic voters like Baucus (76/18 approval) but he can't match up to Schweitzer's popularity with the party base (86/9 favorability). Schweitzer's up across the ideological spectrum of the party, leading by 34 with 'very liberal' voters, 17 with 'somewhat liberal' ones, and 15 with moderates.

Schweitzer would be a stronger general candidate than Baucus. He leads Stapleton by 10 at 49/39 and Edmunds by 15 at 52/37. It would still be competitive even with Schweitzer as the nominee if a top tier Republican ran though- he would lead Daines only 48/45 and start out just behind Racicot at 46/45. He leads Fox by 6 points in a hypothetical match up at 49/43.

Baucus, the ConservaDem best known as the person who wrecked Obamacare by killing the public option, could have never faced Schweitzer-- a single-payer populist-- in a primary. Perhaps he was aware Schweitzer was going to run-- even if Schweitzer is being publicly coy right now and allowing Baucus to save face. The Missoulian ran a story Baucus couldn't have missed about how Montana voters overwhelmingly prefer Schweitzer to him. Schweitzer came out as the most popular political figure in the state and Baucus came out as the least popular figure.

Schweitzer is helping make it easier for Baucus to retire from the Senate. "Max has served in the U.S. Senate longer than any other Montanan in history," he said yesterday. "Every Montanan would like nothing more than to spend another day in Montana and the sacrifice he's made with all that time in Washington...  If someone said, 'Well, I want to spend more time in Alabama; I want to spend more time in the Bayou.' What are you crazy?' But if they say to you, 'I just want to spend more time in Montana,' they mean it. It's real... God bless him for all his years of service... I'm the kind of guy that, when I see a broke-down pickup, I'll get out with my tools and try to fix it, and I can tell you looking at Washington, D.C., from Montana, there is no bigger broke-down pickup than the Senate in Washington, D.C."

Those polled were asked to rate the job performance of top Montana politicians and President Barack Obama in one of four categories: "excellent," "pretty good," "only fair" or "poor." The "excellent" and "pretty good" scores generally are combined to provide a positive job-performance rating.

Schweitzer, a Democrat, had a 60 percent job performance rating, followed by Democratic Sen. Jon Tester at 50 percent and Republican U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg at 48 percent... Baucus was last at 38 percent. His job performance rating has plunged from 67 percent in the last Lee Newspapers poll in May 2009, when he led the pack.

Polls by other groups have shown that Baucus' job performance scores have fallen drastically since his role in passage of the federal health care reform law in 2009 and 2010. The Montana senator was a leading architect of that bill.

Republicans hate Baucus because, among other things, they view him as having helped pass Obamacare. Democrats dislike him because he ruined Obamacare at the behest of his corporate allies. He's widely seen as one of the Senate's most corrupt members, more like a Republican in that regard than a Democrat.

How worried should we be about the "fiscal cliff" negotiations? Bill Moyers talks to Bruce Bartlett and Yves Smith

"Is the fiscal cliff just a metaphor or is it for real?" After Bill Moyers introduces us to the picturesque way he visualizes a "fiscal cliff," this is the question he poses to segment guests Bruce Bartlett and Yves Smith.

by Ken

We keep hearing reports about the ongoing negotiations between the president and House Speaker "Sunny John" Boehner to arrive at a "compromise" on the so-called "fiscal cliff." Sometimes they're making progress, and sometimes they aren't, but it's tricky to separate the parts of these accounts that are theatrical display and the parts that are seriously worrying.

About the theatrics of it, maybe you have to have lived through some of the Age of Big Unions, when contract negotiations in critical situations regularly came down to the last minute -- and beyond. (Remember the old practice of "stopping the clock"?) Sometimes there was a last-second settlement, and sometimes there wasn't, but from the outside you really couldn't tell which way the negotiations were heading.

And eventually you figured out that there was no other way that really high-stakes labor-management negotiations could go. Because the negotiators for each side were performing for their constituencies. On both sides, any indication that they had settled for anything less than they might have gotten could be presumed to result in a loss of face -- or, more importantly, loss of future employment and high-price compensation.

On this week's edition of Moyers and Company, Bruce Bartlett, onetime economic adivser to Presidents Reagan and G.W.H. Bush, made the point splendidly as applied to the "fiscal cliff" negotiations, especially on the Republican side:

I think the important thing to remember is that there's no possible way of a deal before the last possible minute, and one reason for this is that John Boehner, the speaker of the House, is in a very precarious position regarding his own membership. It's an article of faith among Republicans that any deal that is arrived at too soon is to their disadvantage, because they could have always gotten a better deal if they'd simply held out and hung tough longer. And so Boehner is in a position where even if he knew exactly what the deal would be today, he cannot deliver on it until, you know, 11:59 on December 31, or else his own members will attack him for having given away the store.

Before proceeding, we have to marvel once again at how wonderfully different Bill Moyers's sense of "balance" is from the standard media model. Instead of the usual far-right wing demagogue squaring off against some milquetoast centrist Village stooge, we got Bruce Bartlett and Yves Smith, whom I think we can describe as an authentic conservative and an authentic liberal, but both in close touch with reality, and as a result, in talking about the current economic and political situation they agreed way more than they disagreed -- a reminder, I think, that there aren't always two sides to every issue. Or at least not two sane and responsible sides.

Here's how Bill introduced them:

Bruce Bartlett was an economic adviser to the supply-side icon Jack Kemp, and to two presidents, Ronald Reagan and the first George Bush. He got into hot water with his conservative cohorts when he wrote a widely quoted book critical of the second President Bush. His most recent work is The Benefit and the Burden: Tax Reform -- Why We Need It and What It Will Take.

Yves Smith is the founder and editor of the popular blog Naked Capitalism. After 25 years in the financial-services industry, she now heads the management consulting firm Aurora Advisers. She's the author of this book, ECONned: How unenlightened self-interest undermined democracy and corrupted capitalism,

After asking both guests about the "fiscal cliff" metaphor (not terribly useful, they agreed) and covering some other ground, Bill wonders:

[W]hy are we talking about reducing the deficit instead of creating jobs? Because when people have jobs, they spend money. When they spend money, businesses have customers. When they have customers, the money keeps circulating. And yet Washington isn't talking about jobs.

Bruce jumps in, proposing two reasons. First, and this is certainly surprising coming from a conservative, he cites the decline of labor unions:

[W]hen the union movement was much bigger and more powerful, and especially when private sector workers dominated the union movement, the AFL-CIO sort of looked out for the working class. They looked out for all workers, not just union workers. They understood that a healthy working class having lots of jobs was ultimately to the benefit of their members.

The other reason, he suggests,

is that fundamentally Barack Obama's pretty conservative. He really is. He's an Eisenhower conservative. He's not a liberal. I mean, he's-- and I think that's one of the problems with the Democratic Party is they're looking for leadership to a guy on an issue like why aren't we creating jobs? Why isn't there more aggregate demand in the economy? And it's because their guy doesn't really want it.

Yves agrees "100 percent," saying she's "always shocked when people call Obama a socialist," and "I think you might be doing a disservice to Eisenhower." She points out that "even, you know, Nixon is to the left of Obama on many, on most social issues. I mean, Nixon proposed a negative income tax, which everybody forgets about."

Neither guest puts much stock in the Republican side of the debate. Here's Bruce:

There was a poll just the other day that you probably saw. Something like half of all Republicans believe that the 2012 election was stolen for Obama by a group called ACORN, which was -- which went out of business several years ago. It doesn't even exist. I mean, they just believe these conspiracy theories. And they circulate without barrier, because nobody will say anything to disagree with it. And if you hear the same propaganda over and over and over again, eventually you're going to start to believe it.

But to return to the Democratic side, Yves notes later that cutting entitlements "is where Obama wants to go. . . . He just needs the Republicans to make noise so he can go where he wants to go." She recalls the dinner with prominent conservatives before he was inaugurated where "he made it very clear" --

that as soon as the economy was stabilized that he wanted to cut Social Security -- well, "reform." But that's just code for "cut" Social Security and Medicare. Obama really believes that this will be a signature accomplishment of his, that he will go down in history positively for.

Bruce points out that in 2011 Obama put "vast, vast cuts in entitlement programs on the table," and "the Republicans walked away from it, which only goes to prove that they don't have the courage of their own convictions." However, he says,

Yves's point is exactly correct. Obama really is maybe to the right of Dwight Eisenhower fiscally, and it's really at the root of so many of our economy's problems, because he didn't ask for a big enough stimulus. He's let the housing sector, basically, fester for four years without doing anything about it. He's really, you know, focused more on cutting the deficit than people imagine.

When Bill points out that people on the Democratic side, like columnist Jonathan Chait, have argued that the president should go along with raising the Medicare eligibility age, which Yves describes as "one of these sort of penny-wise and pound-foolish measures," which "results in more old people getting sick" and "winding up with more costly care." Bruce is just as skeptical, pointing out that the total projected saving, "maybe $100 billion over ten years,"

is really a drop in the bucket, if you're really trying to reduce deficits. So it's the fact that Obama's willing to talk about this, I think, would give me a lot of concerns if I was someone on the left.

There's a great deal more of interest in the three-way conversation, but at the end Bill asks both guests where they would compromise if they were "called upon to break this deadlock."

YVES: I'm not sure that compromise is worthwhile. If we go over the fiscal cliff or into the fiscal slope, we're going to have the tax increases kick in. If Obama were interested in negotiating for a better deal for the ordinary person, he should actually go into January. But the whole fact that he wants a deal now says that, says that he is as conservative as Bruce says he is.
BILL: You You mean we should go over?
YVES: We should go over.
BILL: And see what happens?
YVES: We should go over, just because then we've already had tax increases put in. Republicans don't have the leverage of, you know, "Oh, these -- ," you know, of doing a deal without the tax increases already having taken place. You're in a very different negotiating position. Going past January 1 would actually be a very good outcome for ordinary Americans.

Whereupon Bruce jumps in:

I'd go even further. I'd say let the fiscal cliff take effect permanently. Now everybody's afraid to do that. They think the economy's too fragile. But if you look at what the Congressional Budget Office has estimated, they say, "Yes, we'd lose some growth for about half a year, but the medium- and long-term growth would actually be higher, because it would actually do exactly what everybody says they want to do, which is cut a lot out of the long-term deficits. And it would do so fairly by raising revenues a lot and cutting spending." How else are we going to cut the defense budget if we don't allow the sequester to take effect? Both parties are pretty much into that. So I say let's just let the whole thing happen. If I was a member of the Senate, I'd filibuster anything to get rid of it.

Setting aside the theatrics of the Obama-Boehner "negotiations," there's already plenty to be concerned about in what we're hearing the president -- the new, supposedly tough-negotiating incarnation -- is already prepared to concede, like an increase the Medicare eligibility age and the now widely-reported agreement to use "chained CPI" as the basis for determining cost-of-living Social Security benefits increases. I want to talk about this a little tomorrow, but for now, even without going into the specifics of the various ways of computing the cost-price index, I'll just quote the end of a post by economist Dean Baker (to which I expect to return tomorrow):

The current effort has the spirit of using statistics for political ends, for example by refusing to have BLS produce a full elderly CPI so we would actually know the inflation rate experienced by the elderly. There also has been some discussion of leaving some programs, such as Supplemental Security Income, tied to the current CPI so as not to hurt a seriously disadvantaged population.

Congress can decide the benefit formula for these programs as it chooses. The honest way to cut benefits is for Congress to explicitly vote to cut benefits, not to try to hide a cut behind a statistical manipulation. This is the sort of behavior that encourages public contempt for politicians and the political process.

BY THE WAY, LATER IN THE SHOW, BILL TAKES
A SNARKY LOOK AT THE  D.C. REVOLVING DOOR

There's a riveting segment, at 25:00, on the government-industry revolving door, focusing on health-industry plant Elizabeth Fowler, who was credited by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus as the architect of the health-care "reform" legislation, and who went on to fill key roles in the Executive Branch overseeing the execution of the ACA law, and is now returning to industry to cash in. And this is only the first of Bill's "aha moments" in the segment.

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What Will These Fan Favorites Be in Their Next Lives?

Leading off our procession is our new House speaker. Has that skin tone ever existed anywhere in nature?

by Noah

I’ve always been interested in the Hindu concept of karma. Having been brought up by severely Christian parents with their quaint notion that God punishes, the idea of karmic payback has a special place in what passes for my soul. So this morning, for some reason that shrinks get paid to uncover for a hefty fee but I can uncover for zippo, I started to muse on what might be the fate of certain cretins who walk among us and inhabit our TVs. Not that I’m judgmental or anything, but herewith I give you my version of what marma might provide for the future lives of some of the creatures who soil our existence on this planet.

1. Incoming House Speaker John Bo(eh)ner. He will be an orange-patent-leather ladies' handbag and matching shoes. He will live in a city that lacks one of those anti-dog-poop-on-the-sidewalk laws.

2. Rush Limbaugh. A highly over-inflated, bulging rear tire on a 1962 “Unsafe at Any Speed” Corvair speeding down the highway on a very hot summer day.

3. Michelle Malkin. The driver of the Corvair in (2).

4. Incoming Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul. A starving, impoverished black man in the rural south of the 1930s, being chased through a Mississippi swamp by Trent Lott’s relatives and a pack of hounds.

5. Rahm Emanuel. He’ll get his wish to be Mayor of Chicago, but the year of his election will be 1922 and the city will be a living hell run by Al Capone, and there will be no Eliot Ness. Be careful what you wish for Rahm. Welcome to Chicago politics, Roaring 20’s style, Rahm.

6. Former Vice President Dick Cheney. He will be Darth Vader, with a twist. His voice will be high and squeaky and his ability to use the force will leave him at the darndest times. The sound he hears more than any other will be laughter. Much of the laughter will be directed at him, but, much of the laughter will also be stark evidence of the happiness of the general population. Both things will make him completely mad and utterly miserable.

7. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer. A piñata at a remote desert Mexican birthday party.

8. Ann “Coultergeist” Coulter. She will be a particularly tough piece of stale beef jerky in the mouth of a tobacco-spitting cowboy in Wyoming. The cowboy will get nowhere with his attempts to gnaw on the jerky and will toss it to the ground in frustration. That night, two rabid foaming at the mouth raccoons will come along and indulge in an epic tug of war.

9. Cyclist Lance Armstrong. A bicycle seat in the Tour de France.

10. Montana Sen. Max Baucus. A beat-up attaché case used to carry germ and drug encrusted cash in drug deals by people who will end up as K Street lobbyists.

11. Sean Hannity. A nationally known white supremacist suddenly dropped into the middle of the 1968 Detroit riots.

12. Politico. Toilet paper in bin Laden’s cave.

13. Incoming Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. Rush Limbaugh’s cigar.

14. Incoming House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa. A ten-year-old boy’s plastic Nazi soldier on the sidewalk about to meet the magnifying-glass death ray.

15. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. A Fire hydrant in a future city where 8 million humans have disappeared into thin air, only to be replaced by 8 million dogs.

16. Bristol Palin. A dime-a-dance girl in an Alaskan dance hall during the 19th Century Alaskan Gold Rush. Don’t worry Bristol, those sloppy-drunk, reeking prospectors can’t dance either but that’s not what they’re really interested in anyway.

17. Incoming Washington State Rep. Hans Zeiger. A Girl Scout-in-training.

18. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. A little girl’s favorite dolly, complete with a doll-size set of a hundred dresses, bikinis, lingerie, spike heels, and evening wear. Oh wait, he’d like that!

19. The entire U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Pregnant women chained to a work bench making 15 cents per day making cheap sneakers and day-glo shower slippers in a Southeast Asian factory. Same goes for everyone at Goldman-Sachs.

20. Osama bin Laden. Lab rat for a scientist who's looking for a cancer cure.

21. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Luau pig.

22. Glenn Beck. One of those big fat bright yellow very dented bumper guards at a very busy toll plaza on America’s number one drunk driver highway.

23. Goldman Sachs Chairman-CEO Lloyd Blankfein. A Dumpster-diving homeless man who learns the value of humility and integrity but gets the crap kicked out of him by a pack of drunken, coked-out Wharton Business School grads on a near-daily basis.

24. South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint. A slave owned by a very sadistic plantation owner in a place that is remarkably like South Carolina in 1820. They will break him, badly.

25. Sarah Palin. one of those jack-in-the-box heads on a Slinky thingie. Lots of chips in the paint.

26. George Dubya Bush. An abandoned three-year-old boy in Crawford, TX, whose daddy was last seen disappearing over a hill with the family’s prized ewe, never to be seen again. Little Georgie will now have to fend for himself if he’s to ever amount to anything.

27. Former BP CEO Tony Hayward. A brown pelican.

28. Brett Favre. A model for airport porno-scanners.

29. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Mitch McConnell.

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Say, what if congresscritters did have to split their bribe takings with the folks back home?

Max and Chuck G: Might they and their congressional colleagues be "encouraged" (to put it tactfully) to "give something back" to the folks back home?

by Ken

This morning Howie had a post called "Maybe Louisiana Voters Think That When Their Senators Get Bribes It Somehow Accrues To The Whole State." It may just be the way my mind works, but the idea I first took in from this head was: "Maybe Senators Think That When They Get Bribes It Somehow Accrues To Their Voters." And I was utterly taken by the notion that congresscritters may forget that their constituents don't share in any of the bribe money they collect.

Now I'm wondering, would the system be any better if the bribe money did have to be shared with their constituents?

First let's back up to my initial misapprehension: This seemed to me an almost believable manifestation of Inside the Beltway-ism, where reality is only what happens Inside the Beltway, or perhaps even more locally what happens inside a Beltway Insider's head. As opposed to what happens, for example, in the Gulf of Mexico, which most of them probably couldn't find on a map. Again, I can almost believe in legislators whose sense of self-importance becomes so outsized that they really aren't aware of any separation between their interests (financial interests, just to pick a random example) and their constituents'.

One thing that has fascinated me as Howie has become more directly involved with both congressional candidates and actual live sitting congressmembers, and of course congressional candidates who became congressmembers, is the disconnect from reality that sets in as soon as they become Certifiably Important. Sometimes, for a previously longshot primary contender, it may be after the previously hopeless underdog becomes the official candidate. Almost without exception there's a transformation, of varying degrees of inclusivity, when a onetime insurgent is certified The Winner, the "in," in the general election.

As I hear it second-hand, the differences turn up quickly in relations with staff members, and it isn't always immediately clear how much of this is traceable to the candidate-turned-electee. But suddenly the staffer who the week before was begging for time and attention doesn't have time for you. The online chat he would have run over his grandma for a month before? Now we have to check his schedule, it's so tight, and you know that that schedule check is never going to be completed, which no doubt explains why they never get back to you.

Especially once the Washington staff is assembled, you often find you're dealing with literally different people. Often with the "assistance" of their party's congressional machinery (which often comes, curiously, from the party's congressional campaign people, underscoring the frequent observation that today's congressmembers are in permanent campaign mode), formerly insurgent candidates lustfully mainstream themselves, and that often includes hiring staff members, indeed often the senior-most staff members, who've done it before, and so are familiar with the Way Congress (or Washington) Works, aka Inside the Beltway-ism. And the new gatekeeper understands that he/she is a gatekeeper only in the sense of being mostly a gate-blocker.

Remember, we're talking here about a not-even or barely even first-term congressmember. At this stage of relative Beltway naïveté, I can almost believe in this state of mind, where the member begins to blur his/her own interests with those of his/her constituents. Still, these days it takes a really special person, or else a really oblivious one, to retain that degree of naïveté even as far as the day of his/her swearing in. Now imagine that same member down the road a ways, having been through three or four election cycles and begun to acquire a bit of seniority, some better committee assignments, maybe a subcommittee chairmanship. And a lot more interest from the jackals of K Street.

Imagine then a U.S. senator from a typical state -- by which I mean not a state that has more senators than House members, or even a state with equal numbers. Now we're talking about the kind of pol who's really had to sweat his/her way up the political ladder to land one of those seats in the 100 Club. I still love the idea of a Max Baucus or Chuck Grassley or Blanche Lincoln or David Vitter thinking that his/her interests are indistinguishable from those of his/her voters. I can even buy it where we're talking just about money that is legitimately intended for campaign spending, because I can believe that such people really believe they are providing their voters with the privilege of being represented by theirs truly.

But that accounts for a terribly small portion of the loot they extract from the money-givers. Now I'm prepared to believe that people like Max Baucus and Chuck G (not to be confused with Chuck S, though for our immediate purposes there's no signficant difference except that we've been talking about Chuck G's particular appeal to bribers as either chairman or ranking minority member of the SFC) and Blanche and the Diaperman don't carry around in their hands a to-the-dollar accounting of who's given them how much money. I'm not saying for sure they don't, just that I'm prepared to believe they don't. Nevertheless, I think they have at all times a powerful and powerfully accurate ongoing sense of their answer to the old Kojak question, "Who loves ya, baby?"

So what would happen if a system whereby all that cash donated by all those good-government benefactors had to be divvied up with the folks back home? Think just of the loot the insurance industry poured into the health care battle. This would do more than anything I can think of to align the interests of members with their constituents, although I suppose it would actually work vice versa, aligning constituents' interests with members', but at least we might have "representatives" acting in the interests of their constituents.

And imagine the stimulative effect on the economy. Of course it's already having some stimulative effect, wherever the money-catchers currently spend their hauls. This way, though, at least that portion of the take would be pumped directly into the members' home districts or states.

I admit I don't have all the details worked out. Like the proportions of the split. My first instinct is 50-50. If the people of the member's CD or state are sporting enough to endow Mr./Ms. X with a seat on the K Street "receiving committee," shouldn't they be entitled to a decent share of the loot?

The manner of determining the distribution list would also need to be worked out. I assume that confidentiality of census records would rule out using them to determine who shares in the wealth. All registered voters? All voters who actually participated in the election of Mr./Ms. X? And somebody's bound to suggest that the money should only go to people who voted for Mr./Ms. X, that the other people in his/her CD or state didn't even want him/her there, or at least not enough to trouble themselves to actually vote. Why should they profit?

I suppose the counterargument would be that the K Street briber is greasing Mr./Ms. X on behalf of his/her constituents, though this reasoning breaks down somewhat in the cases of those lions of the Senate Finance Committee, Senators Baucus and Grassley. Churlish as it is to suggest that their K Street hauls are less expressions of affection and support for the good people of Montana and Iowa than quid-pro-greenbacks for the big cheeses of the Senate committee through which most of the money the government spends passes, there are cynical people who would make just that suggestion.

(In some of the above suggested distribution plans there are also issues involving the fabled sanctity of the American ballot box. How would a prospective citizen payee prove that he/she voted, or that he/she voted for the winner? Nevertheless, with any reasonable amount of cash on the line, I'm thinking that the sanctity of the secret ballot might prove negotiable.)

Naturally the question arises as to why sitting House and Senate members would accept this new system of having to part with, for the sake of argument, half their bribe money. Many of the poor dears undoubtedly think they've earned that money. In all too many cases, this can be easily documented. I like to think, though, that they can be helped to understand that bribery isn't just a potential social faux pas (which may not even register a jolt, given the social circles they travel in), but is also unethical and illegal. Sure, the illegality is tough to prove, but what would happen if you indicated to the dears a willingness to try? There's the potential for the lawyers' fees alone to eat up all that money they've so arduously wheedled out of their donors.

There isn't much that Max and Chuck G and Blanche and the Diaperman and their kind can do about the environmental catastrophe in the Gulf, and significantly less still that they're prepared to do. Under my plan at least the beleaguered citizens of the Gulf states would get something out of their representatives in Congress.

#

GOP Demands Jobs Bill Include Billions In Tax Breaks For The Wealthy & White House Goes Along-- Harry Reid Puts His Foot Down

Progressives and populists in Washington-- I know, I know, but there are a few-- and people all over America who think corrupt politicians have given away enough of the store to the damned banksters let out a collective moan yesterday when two of the most corrupt politicians to ever prowl K Street, Max Baucus (D-MT-$4,763,037) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA-$2,540,450), unveiled a corporate feeding frenzy of a piece of crap legislative initiative under the guise of a jobs bill. The bill sucks from every possible angle except two: (1) It is "bipartisan" (i.e., the party afraid of being in the majority, and about to lose that status, gave the party that behaves as though, regardless of votes, it is the permanent majority party everything it wanted), and (2) it is completely larded up with goodies for Wall Street and Big Business, who, as we know, finance the political careers of the craven political hacks who are the United States Senate.

The White House loved it, of course. The guy who, in true bipartisan fashion, doesn't begrudge bank robbers like Blankfein and Dimon their take sent this out:

The President is gratified to see the Senate moving forward in a bipartisan manner on steps to help put Americans back to work. The draft bill released today by Senators Baucus and Grassley includes several of the President’s top priorities for job creation, including a tax incentive to encourage businesses to hire, a tax cut to make it easier for small businesses to invest and expand, further measures to keep people at work repairing our nation’s roads and bridges, and extended unemployment insurance and health care assistance for Americans who are out of work.

The American people want to see Washington put aside partisan differences and make progress on jobs. The House has already passed a constructive set of measures and the President is hopeful that the draft language presented today will lead to a bipartisan Senate bill. The President looks forward to working with members from both parties on this bill and on the additional job creation measures he has identified, including incentives for energy efficiency investments and increased access to credit for small businesses.

Now, I was just about to start singing hosannas to Harry Reid, who almost immediately did scrap the crap, diplomatically calling it "confusing." Despite profuse support from Wall Street, the White House and the GOP (or is that all redundant?), Reid put his foot down on the side of average working American families. It was good Reid did that, because it stops a giveaway of billions in breaks to the very richest few families in America, the ones who already grabbed everything when Bush was president. But I decided to hold the hosannas when I noticed that he killed the effort to reform the filibuster. (His rationale-- that it just can't be done-- is completely wrong. Last week Jerry Nadler laid out exactly how it would be done procedurally for me when I ran into him. Maybe I should try to get him and Reid on a call.)

Health Care Reform-- The Latest Wrinkles

Dianne Feinstein's name is spelled incorrectly-- and she's on board now anyway

The lobbyists outnumber members of Congress 6-1; they're well-armed; and they're not giving up. They mean to kill meaningful health care reform and they don't care what it takes to do it. They know no one is going to shoot them or put them in prison, not even someone who's family members are dying because of the screwed up status quo they're defending. This morning the most venal and untrustworthy of the Insurance Industry lobbying groups, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), ramped up its full attack against Obama and Senate Democrats, basically calling them liars and claiming that health care legislation would drive up premiums, rather than making coverage more affordable. They've spent billions on bribing politicians in the last two decades just for this moment. Even one of the really bad corporate whores, unscrupulous Nashville Blue Dog Jim Cooper admits “The lobbyists are winning." No detail of the complex legislation is too small for them and the politicians they own are willing accomplices to their perfidy.

But this isn't an obscure intra-banking regulation that people can't understand that theyy're trying to kill. This is health care reform meant to make the lives of tens of millions of Americans better and more livable (literally). Saturday in his national radio address, the president said the national consensus for reform is unprecedented (watch the clip below).

If Obama can't pick up the bipartisan support he so craves from the vicious obstructionist pygmies in the Republican congressional caucuses-- even self styled co-president Olympia Snowe is better at playing destructive cat-and-mouse games than at actually doing anything constructive-- Obama will take the support from Republican-lite governors, mayors and former office holders, even calling them "distinguished leaders." The Republicans in Congress... different approach, probably based on a growing sense of frustration:

[T]here are some in Washington today who seem determined to play the same old partisan politics, working to score political points, even if it means burdening this country with an unsustainable status quo. A status quo of rising health care costs that are crushing our families, our businesses, and our government. A status quo of diminishing coverage that is denying millions of hardworking Americans the insurance they need. A status quo that gives big insurance companies the power to make arbitrary decisions about your health care. That is a status quo I reject. And that is a status quo the American people reject.

The distinguished former Congressional leaders who urged us to act on health insurance reform spoke of the historic moment at hand and reminded us that this moment will not soon come again. They called on members of both parties seize this opportunity to finally confront a problem that has plagued us for far too long.

That is what we are called to do at this moment. That is the spirit of national purpose that we must summon right now. Now is the time to rise above the politics of the moment. Now is the time to come together as Americans. Now is the time to meet our responsibilities to ourselves and to our children, and secure a better, healthier future for generations to come. That future is within our grasp. So, let’s go finish the job.

Still not frustrated enough to say anything about the Blue Dogs and corrupt DLC Senators from his own party-- Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, Max Baucus, Ben Nelson-- (not to mention the always treacherous Joe Lieberman) who are also working full-time with the lobbyists to wreck the aspirations of the nation. I mean Bill Frist and Tommy Thompson, let alone confused ole Bob Dole, don't get to vote. Blanche Lincoln does and she and Ben Nelson are the two most likely to join the GOP filibuster to prevent an up-or-down Senate vote, something the Democrats would win. And now that most people acknowledge that the lobbyist-written Baucus Caucus (basically him and Conrad and a gaggle of the most corrupt of the reactionaries) plan for co-ops is dead, no telling how he'll vote on cloture. The new new strategy is for an opt-out provision for states that would rather do without health care for its poor (mostly minority) citizens. As many as a dozen states, primarily from the libertarian west (i.e., Idaho and Wyoming) as well as the worst of the old slave-holding Confederate states could go in that direction. The idea, even before that debate is taken up, is to get something on the table and agreed to so that the bill will get into the House-Senate conference committee, where it will actually get written.

The Post Claims The Insurance Industry Is Conning Baucus And Arvind Agrawal Wants President Obama To Protect Us From Them

Yesterday's Washington Post cut right to heart of the Republican/Baucus Caucus lies that all you have to do is legislate that the insurance companies can't discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions and-- voilà-- step right up and marvel at the reform. They're playing three card monte-- and we're the mark, the Insurance Industry is the inside con man and Baucus Caucus and the Republicans are the outside con man. If Obama is supposed to be the cop on the beat, he doesn't seem to be doing a very good job promoting Change or embodying Hope.

[S]imply banning medical discrimination would not necessarily remove it from the equation, economists and health-care analysts say... By itself, a ban on discrimination would not eliminate the economic pressure to discriminate.

"It would probably increase the incentive for cherry-picking," [Wharton Professor Mark] Pauly said. "I'm strongly motivated to try to avoid you if I'm not allowed to charge you extra."

...AHIP [Big Insurance's most insidious lobbying group] has been trying to shape the legislation in ways that could help insurers attract the healthy and avoid the sick, though it has given other reasons for advancing those positions. In a recent letter to Baucus, AHIP President Karen Ignagni said benefit packages "should give consumers flexible options to meet diverse needs."

There are myriad ways health plans can attract healthier members, from the messages they advertise to the overall level of coverage they provide and the smallest enticements they add to their benefits packages.

Anthem Blue Cross markets a line of insurance called Tonik that is explicitly aimed at young adults. "You're young. You're healthy. You're in shape," the Tonik Web site says, addressing its target market. Tonik policies bear such names as "Part-Time Daredevil" and "Thrill-Seeker." The latter is for people who "live life on the edge, and happily go over it," says the Web site, whose graphics and color scheme bring to mind an ad for the Apple iPod.

Arvind Agrawal is a Facebook friend of mine. Like all my Facebook friends, he's caught up in the debate over health care reform. Unlike many, he sent President Obama a note about why the Public Option is critically important to achieving real reform, beseeching him to do the right thing.

I would like to add a Public Insurance Option in the mix to provide a more timely and reliable way to foster competition and provide a choice from the get go. Without it is not possible to lower the cost structure with any degree of confidence. No regulation can demand that the Insurance Companies reduce their current premiums from the levels that are bone-crushing for John Q Public. Treasury coffers will continue to deplete as government pays subsidies at these high rates. The pattern of transferring money from taxpayer pockets to Corporate pockets will only grow stronger.

Obama supporters bought into your agenda of changing the corrupt ways of Washington where Corporations will no longer be able to kill reforms which target their ill begotten gains. Instead, you admonish your progressive friends on the left not to be bound by ideology and accept the reality of compromise. Be like pots with a round bottom freely moving from left to right and back to the left as the situation demands. Maybe we will change our label from progressives to regressives .

However, Mr. President, ideology does not bind. It is what helps you pursue a cause with faith and vigor. It is what gives you Audacity of Hope.

According to yesterday's Chicago Tribune President Obama is trying to do just what Arvind and most other Americans want him to do-- push for the kind of meaningful reform that includes a public option. They claim he strongly supports a public option. Does he? Only delivery will prove it to many who have noted that the forces arrayed against meaningful reform just happen to be the forces that have largely financed his political career and are also the forces that Rahm Emanuel is counting on for a good part of the money for the 2012 race.

Despite months of seeming ambivalence about creating a government health insurance plan, the Obama White House has launched an intensifying behind-the-scenes campaign to get divided Senate Democrats to take up some version of the idea in the weeks just ahead.

He'll have to sign the bill before people I know believe a word of it-- and, despite the demands of the Insurance Industry and their conservative handmaidens in both parties, one without "triggers" and other cheap gimmicks to deny real reform. So... according to this morning's Roll Call Obama seems to be persuading the Democratic Party's senatorial right flank (other than arch-reactionaries Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson). The ConservaDems are under intense pressure from voters to stop holding up the public option and to stop playing footsie with their big campaign donors. "[M]any appear prepared to fall in line with Democratic leaders-- provided they are presented with a bill that can withstand public scrutiny in their home states... [T]hey are also loath to cross President Barack Obama by causing a health care bill to fail this year."

“All of us have no question in our mind that we must have health care reform and insurance reform, and we need to move a bill,” said moderate freshman Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska). “I think we have not done as good a job delivering the message as to what all this means in health care reform. I think the public option component, and the financial issues, are absolutely going to be debated and discussed.”

To seal the endorsement of moderates, Democratic leaders are working to wrap the controversial elements of reform in a politically attractive message to the centrists’ conservative-leaning constituents. That could include the addition of provisions aimed directly at problems or issues in each Senator’s state, such as tweaks to state funding formulas for federal programs, aides said.

Senate Democratic Conference Vice Chairman Charles Schumer (N.Y.) said last week that he has spoken with most centrists and that they are “open” to some form of a public option.

“Because we believe in Democratic unity, there is no line in the sand,” Schumer said. “Liberals haven’t put a line in the sand ... the more moderate members haven’t put a line in the sand because, here’s one thing you have to remember: I think every Democrat from the most liberal to the most conservative realizes that it serves America’s interests and our own interests to pass a bill. And that is going to be a force that will help get things done.”

Both Schumer and Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) indicated that state-specific or Senator-specific sweeteners might be added to secure centrist votes.

Democratic leaders and some centrists calculate that the final Senate bill is likely to include a component that critics can label a public insurance option or, in recent Republican parlance, a “government takeover” of health care. So moderates appear to be angling for the Democratic leadership to settle on a public option compromise that they can sell back home.

“It just all depends on how you’re defining a public option,” said Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), who voted against two public option amendments in the Finance Committee last week. “I’m not supportive of a government-run and government-supported public option. It’s got to be competitive. It’s got to create choice for people.”

Blue America started up a statewide cable TV ad campaign today that explains Lincoln's destructive role in the debate over health care reform on behalf of his corporate contributors. You can watch our TV spots and contribute to the effort at the Campaign For Health Care Choice. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, who, unlike Lincoln, will not be facing the voters in 2010, is also determined to kiss up to the Insurance companies and screw over her own constituents. "

“Most of the moderates really want to vote for health care. We’re for the little guy-- we’re Democrats. It’s what we do,” said one Senate aide who works for a moderate Democrat. “Getting the message out there is going to be difficult. But no matter what we vote on, somebody is going to call it a public option.”

But many centrists remain hard sells. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) said she is “not very, if at all” open to including a public option, but she expressed a firm commitment to enact a health care bill this year.

“There’s going to be a lot more discussion with the moderate members of our Caucus over this issue and how to move forward,” she said last week. “You know, we’re all firmly committed to reform that will result in lower costs to the government-- both at the federal and state levels-- to businesses, and to families.”

Many, including White House officials, see the answer to that problem in Sen. Olympia Snowe’s (R-Maine) proposal to create a “trigger” for a public option in the event other health insurance reforms in the bill do not successfully drive down health insurance costs nor increase coverage. The bonus, they calculate, is that Snowe would sign on to such a bill and help the leaders shore up the votes of wavering centrists.

However, Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), a leader of the recently formed Moderate Dems Working Group, has proposed allowing states to create public plans or co-ops if they so choose. Last week, senior Democratic aides said the proposal had significant potential as a possible compromise.

As a fallback, Senate Democratic leaders have stepped up their pressure on centrists to stick with the party on procedural votes. At a minimum, leaders have asked all 60 Democrats to allow them to bring a health care bill to the floor in order to make sure Republicans cannot filibuster it.

This is another great ad went up on TV today in Arkansas:

What's Wrong With Max Baucus And His Health Care Plan-- In 2 Minutes

Jerry Flanagan from ConsumerWatchdog.org teamed up with Brave New Films and put out a 2 minute video that gets right to the heart of the problems with Baucus' vision-- i.e., the Insurance Industry's vision-- for health care "reform:" give us your money and trust us... and give us your money.

He doesn't mention anywhere in the two minutes slot that Baucus has gobbled up $2,890,631 in thinly disguised bribes from the Medical-Industrial Complex during his disgraceful time in the Senate, and another $1,196,463 from the Insurance Industry, basically the same amount as Joe Lieberman, whose wife was an insurance industry lobbyist and who has a reputation of being one of the most corrupt characters to have ever served in the United States Senate. The only sitting senators to have taken more from the Insurance Industry Baucus are McCain, Dodd and Kerry, all of whom ran for president, and Ben Nelson, a former insurance industry executive, widely considered to be the industry's last line of kamikaze defense if everything else falls apart.

Yesterday ex-Cigna Insurance PR exec, Wendell Potter, wrote about some of the problems with what the Insurance Industry, through their boy Baucus, is proposing. He says that without a public option the whole exercise is a waste of everyone's time. And he reprints a letter he sent to Baucus last week that lays out what the senator should do if he were to decide that he works for his constituents rather than for his campaign donors:

As a former health insurance company executive, I am very concerned about the lack of transparency and accountability in the health insurance industry. That is why I urge you to incorporate Senator Rockefeller’s Amendments #C12 and #C13 into the America’s Healthy Future Act (AHFA), in particular with regard to the need for airtight regulations to protect consumer interests.

As proposed, AHFA will allow insurers to continue many of their most discriminatory practices without either transparency or real accountability: cost-shifting to their most vulnerable members through benefit designs that serve the needs of Wall Street; and rationing of care based on arbitrary opinions about what care is needed. In addition, there is no accountability for insurance companies to provide affordable and comprehensive health care coverage. A requirement that everyone buy health insurance accompanied by subsidies for people with low incomes does not ensure that Americans will have affordable care. The explosive cost growth in Massachusetts after health care reform is a case in point. And, AHFA has no mechanisms to enforce the insurance regulations that are included.

In addition, AHFA designates the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) to write key regulations. This is of great concern to me because this proposal delegates to the NAIC, a private organization, with rule-making authority that is generally reserved for an agency of the federal government. Any institution given the authority to define the rules that will determine health insurance coverage for millions of Americans must be completely independent of the insurance industry and have a demonstrated record of putting the concerns of consumers first. The institution must also have the will and the resources to carry out the rulemaking process in a transparent and unbiased manner, with opportunity for input from all interested parties at each stage of the process. Based on its traditional manner of conducting business, the NAIC fails to meet any of these standards. The NAIC does not operate independently of the insurance industry. In fact, the NAIC is a private corporation, funded, in large part, by the insurance industry itself. Without industry dollars, the NAIC would not operate as it does today. In addition, eight of the last 10 NAIC presidents, as well as numerous commissioners, have gone directly from their posts to industry positions, creating the distinct impression that leadership positions at NAIC are mere stepping stones to more lucrative careers in the insurance industry.

For all these reasons, as well as my inside knowledge of how easily insurance companies circumvent existing regulations, I support Senator Rockefeller’s Amendments #C12 and #C13 to AHFA, which will:

*Create a grant program for state insurance departments to help them better enforce market rules and protect consumers.

*Establish a federal role for private health insurance oversight and provide resources for the Department of Health and Human Services to hire expert staff to carry out these functions and coordinate with state regulators.

* Require health insurance plans to disclose clear, accurate, and timely information on their policies and practices to ensure that they do not circumvent new federal health insurance regulations.

* Add needed transparency requirements such as: establishing fair grievance and appeals procedures by health insurers; clarifying information for health professionals and freeing up time for patients by establishing transparency standards relating to reimbursement arrangements between health plans and providers; and requiring advance notice of plan changes so consumers get what they pay.

*Establish America’s Health Insurance Trust, a nonprofit, independent, consumer-driven organization that will evaluate and give ratings to all health insurance products offered through the National Health Insurance Exchange. Annual insurance product ratings will be based on factors such as affordability, adequacy, transparency, consumer satisfaction, provider satisfaction, and quality.

* Ensure that ombudsman offices in each state are open to consumers at all stages of the appeal process to allow for early intervention and increase the likelihood of successful appeals.

Health insurance reform requires that we not only create strong new consumer protections. It also requires that those rules be effectively enforced. American families and businesses must have health insurance that is accountable to them, not to Wall Street.

Now, back to the two minutes with consumer advocate Jerry Flanagan:



You see why people say Baucus sucks? Damn, I wish BooMan was the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee instead of Baucus!

How Bad An Idea Is Baucus' And Conrad's Substitution Of Coops For A Public Option? And What You Can To About It TODAY!

Well, to start, it isn't really their idea; it's an idea being pushed by the Medical-Industrial Complex, and Baucus and Conrad have been paid a great deal of money to champion the concept, respectively $4,087,094 and $2,200,650. But in case that isn't enough information for you, a nonpartisan analysis by Lewis Krauskopf for Reuters yesterday should fill in plenty of blanks. He starts out by reminding his readers that the "large health insurance companies need not worry about the would-be competition as proposed" in Baucus' Insurance Industry-penned bill since the puny regional coops Baucus, Conrad and their generous donors want "would likely lack the leverage in negotiating rates to strongly compete against established players... [and] they seem unlikely to establish a significant market presence in many areas of the country."

"If you want do something about the cost problem and you really want to change the competitive nature of the insurance market, you need a public plan," said Karen Davis, president of the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that advocates for better healthcare.

Co-ops that are run by their members have long been established in areas of agriculture, electricity and banking. Health co-ops emerged earlier this year as an alternative, and President Barack Obama has signaled an openness to co-ops if Congress cannot agree to back the government option.

..."The question ultimately is whether these co-ops are given strategic and competitive advantage by virtue of government power," [Dan Mendelson, ceo of Avalere Health, a research and strategic advisory firm] said. "I don't think that a local co-op that does not have special pricing power poses a terrible threat to an efficient, well-run health plan."

Baucus' $6 billion in start-up capital could let a plan offer coverage with rock-bottom premiums, posing a serious threat to insurers, said Leerink Swann analyst Jason Gurda.

"If that had gone toward a single plan, that's a decent amount of capital to get a good-sized, competitive company up and running," Gurda said. "But if it's going to be available as grants for a large number of companies around the country, how much is any one existing company going to get? Obviously going to be much, much less."

Gurda echoed several stock analysts in saying the co-ops appeared to pose "very little competitive threat" to publicly traded companies, which include WellPoint (WLP.N), Aetna (AET.N) and Cigna (CI.N).

Today progressive activists all over the country are taking to the streets to demonstrate on behalf of meaningful health care reform in a series of "Sick of It" rallies. The targets: big Insurance companies and the Medical-Industrial Complex who have together spent billions of dollars lobbying and bribing members of Congress to defeat real reform. Here in Los Angeles, people are meeting at 11 AM in front of Anthem Blue Cross, at 801 S. Figueroa Street. There is also a rally at 11:30 AM at Anthem Blue Cross in Pomona, which is at 3179 W. Temple Avenue. The other L.A.-area rally is in Woodland Hills, at a virtual ground zero for the country's biggest medical insurance companies. Within one block are the headquarter offices for BC/BS, Anthem, WellPoint, and Health Net. People will be gathering at 11AM at the intersection of Oxnard and Ownesmouth.

You can search for the rally nearest you at the MoveOn website. Closer to the center of the country there's a rally (11:30AM) in front of CIGNA at 7400 W 110th Street, Overland Park, Kansas. And in Little Rock, where Blanche Lincoln is doing so much to damage the chance for health care reform, a determined crew of activists will meet at noon at the State Capitol Complex, 1401 Capitol Street. They will be visiting United Health Care and Blue Cross Blue Shield.

Aww, Senator Grasshole's feelings are hurt. Those fact-hating GOP-ers always hate it when you quote back what they've said.

"When you see a bunch of people going around thinking that our president is the Antichrist, you have to draw one of two conclusions: Either these are racists, looking for any excuse to level the next accusation, or they're beyond crazy, and I think 'beyond crazy' is a better explanation, and that evangelical subculture has rotted the brain of the United States of America."

-- Frank Schaeffer, to Rachel Maddow on Wednesday's show

by Ken

We're developing a shelfful of valuable books describing and attempting to explain how the conservative movement and the Republican Party have converged in a farrago of ultra-extreme, fact-defying, junk-religious right-wing demagoguery. Howie has been regaling us with morsels from Charles Pierce's Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free,and before that Dave Neiwert's The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right.I myself found a half-price copy (sorry, Max!) of Max Blumenthal's Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party,and have it at the top of my approaching-Everest-size reading pile. We've talked about Jeff Sharlet's The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Powerand Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum's Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future,and I'm sure I'm leaving out a bunch of significant titles.

I'm just catching up with Frank Schaeffer's Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back.Somehow I missed Schaeffer's previous appearances with Rachel Maddow, but I got a jolt from Wednesday's.

Schaeffer writes from the unique perspective of someone who was in on the creation of the modern Religious Right. His father, Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984), a Presbyterian minister, was one of its shapers, and Frank himself was an eager participant until he made his break in the mid-'80s. I call attention in particular to this section, at about 1:15 in the clip:

The mainstream not just media but culture doesn't sufficiently take stock of the fact that within our culture we have a subculture which is literally a fifth column of insanity, that is bred from birth through home school, Christian school, evangelical college, whatever, to reject facts, as a matter of faith. And so this substitute for authentic historic Christianity -- and I may add as a little caveat here, I'm a churchgoing Christian -- really brings up the question, can Christianity be rescued from Christians? And that's an open question.

And when you see a bunch of people going around thinking that our president is the Antichrist, you have to draw one of two conclusions: Either these are racists, looking for any excuse to level the next accusation, or they're beyond crazy, and I think "beyond crazy" is a better explanation, and that evangelical subculture has rotted the brain of the United States of America. We have a big slice of our population waiting for Jesus to come back. They look forward to Armageddon; good news is bad news to them.

When we talk about the Left Behind series of books that I talk about in my book, Crazy for God, what we're really talking about is a group of people who are resentful 'cause they know they've been left behind -- by modernity, by science, by education, by art, by literature. The rest of us are getting on with our lives; these people are standing on a hilltop waiting for the end. This is a dangerous group of people to have as neighbors, and they're our national neighbors. And this is the source of all these insanities that we see leveled at the president. One way or another they go back to this little evangelical subculture. It is a disaster.

[Boldface emphasis added by yours truly.]

Did you get that? A subculture that rejects facts, as a matter of faith. They reject facts as a matter of faith. As Schaeffer says later, "This subculture has as its fundamentalist faith that they distrust facts per se."

Wow! Can it be said much better than that?

I bring this up because Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, best known as Montana Sen. Max Baucus's BFF (one of them is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and the other is ranking minority member, and even they never quite seem sure which is which, as long as the predatory corporatist agenda is being served), but known to our Noah as "Senator Grasshole," which I can certainly get behind, has lately been on a mission to buff up his image.

You remember that creepy post-election period when Chimpy the Then-Prez was still nominally the prez but seemed to lose most of his interest in the job and with it his always-limited focus, and concentrated instead on polishing his "legacy" -- as if the eight years he spent building that legacy could be tossed down a memory hole? Well, now Senator Grasshole seems to be searching for the opening to that memory hole. He's got a lot of crap it appears he'd like to dump down it.

I will stipulate at the outset that Chuck Grassley isn't the worst of the Republicans, or at least didn't used to be. He wasn't the best either. By Republican standards -- and I stress only by Republican standards -- he could legitimately pass himself off as a moderate. Remember that the Modern Movement Right has shifted the goalposts so that "right" is now way out in the vicinity of Uranus or Pluto, if not out of our solar system entirely, so that, relatively speaking, the "center' is, oh, out around Jupiter. By that standard our Chuck could pass as a moderate. I mean, using as our senatorial standard of comparison the likes of Arizona's John Kyl or South Carolina's Jim DeMint.

But that's only if our Chuck wanted to pass as a moderate. With the dawn of the new political alignment of 2009, he showed no inclination to buck the trend to make the GOP the Party of No. Well, perhaps he thought he was bucking it while he and his buddy Max played their joined-at-the-hip game of bipartisan health care whoring, for sale to the highest bidder.

Then Chuck had a bad August, a very bad August. Those angry mobs at his Iowa town halls seem to have unnerved him, which may not be difficult to do since he doesn't seem to have a whole lot of nerve, at least in the gumption sense. So he went with the flow and spent the month demagoguing his constituents.

Now he claims he's being attacked unfairly, because he was just answering constituents' questions. Right! Here he is, Senator Grasshole answering a constituent's question:



Senator Grasshole does say that he has nothing against "things like living wills" (here's the Young Turks' Cenk Uygur talking about it), except that they shouldn't be drawn up at the end of life but 20 years before. Try going to your lawyer and explaining, "I'd like to draw up a living will 20 years before I die." And if you miss the 20-year mark, does that mean you forfeit your right to a say in the decisions made on your behalf when you're no longer able to participate in them? And by the way, is Senator Grasshole, or Jesus Christ, his proposed solver of all end-of-life issues, doing anything to help Iowans face up to those end-of-life realities at that magic 20-years-before-death mark? Not that I've heard.

If Senator Grasshole were really answering his constituent's question, he would have pointed out, simply, clearly, and unequivocallyl, that it's pure fiction, don't worry, nobody's going to pull the plug on Grandma -- except maybe the insurance companies if they get tired of paying out on her. He could have answered her terror with fact. If he really wanted to answer the question, he could have gone further still: explaining that the "death panels" were invented by cynical politicians who spit on reality, and for that matter on people like the senator's scared-silly constituent, and seek only to scare the bejeezus out of gullible people for personal and/or political advantage.

But Senator Grasshole was too smart to be caught trying to fight hysteria with facts. He knows better than anyone that now we have a subculture that rejects facts as a matter of faith. So instead he served up bullshit. He gave his crowd: (1) Jesus Christ. "Hooray!" (2) Government interference. "Boo!" In our clip he derides the woman who tries to point out that what he's saying has nothing to do with what's being proposed.

Out of either a desire for shameless partisan political profit or else just plain gutlessness, Senator Grasshole propagandized for the loony right, acquiescing in and even amplifying its lies, when it was his job to stand up to the liars and try to ease the groundless fears of people who had been driven into a frenzy by merchants of ignorance who seek to turn the country into an autocracy, or perhaps theocracy, that would impose a reign of ignorance and terror, and turn the founding principles of America on their head.

And now Senator Grasshole's feelings are hurt! Because the president spoke less than kindly (finally! what the hell has he been waiting for?) about GOP pols collaborating with fringe loonies to legitimize the bogus "death panels" rumors, and the administration intimated that Senate Finance Committee R's may not have been "negotiating" with absolute good faith. (Ya think?)

Whatever happened to "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime"? I mean, if you make the decision to stoop to that level of behavior, and keep it up over those periods of time, I'm sorry, you have to be prepared if you' get caught. You really don't get to whine about shocking allegations or your hurt feelings. If you don't have the plain gumption to own up to it and say you're fucking sorry for having been such a fucking asshole, you at least have to come up with an excuse above the "dog ate my homework" level. Really, I'm not sure the senator's protestations even rise to the "dog ate my homework" level.

When Queen Marie Antoinette declared, "Let them eat cake," at least she was thinking happy thoughts for those breadless French peasants. Of course she gave no thought to the question of where the peasants were supposed to get that cake to eat, and in this sense I suppose you could say that Senator Grasshole has more completely considered his program for the needs of ordinary Americans. When he says, "Let them eat bullshit," he at least supplies the bullshit.

He seems to have a limitless supply.


AFTERTHOUGHT: DOES SENATOR GRASSHOLE
KNOW WHAT END-OF-LIFE COUNSELING IS?

Since writing the above, I've been thinking about Senator Grasshole's craven performance at those town halls, and it occurs to me, I'm not sure he even knows what end-of-life counseling (or planning) is. He does know enough to relate it to "things like living wills," which he declares he has no problem with. But then there's that whole "20 years before you die" business, not to mention the truly disgraceful demagoguery of invoking Jesus Christ for end-of-life planning. If there were any reason to think he believes that Jesus Christ can counsel you on how much suffering your incapacitated grandparent or parent should be forced to endure, then he should simply commit himself voluntarily to the nearest loony bin, and ideally have a staff member apologize to his constituents for treating them like brain-dead robots.

I've written before about this matter of end-of-life planning, and quoted from some of the (surely standard) language in my mother's living will, noting that she didn't have it drawn up until she was 74. As it turned out she has lived another 16 years, which means that by Senator Grasshole's standard she was too late, and I guess has to be thanked for playing our game and sent home with a consolation prize and no end-of-life plan. Well, sorry, senator, but fuck you!

I don't imagine that it came naturally to my mother to talk to her lawyer about a living will -- and as I mentioned, when she did, she not only made sure I had a copy but made it emphatically clear to me that when her time came, she didn't want her life uselessly prolonged by heroic measures, which can't have been easy for her to talk about either. My mother also planned as much as she could with regard to bank financial matters and funeral arrangements. Now that she's dying, I bless her not just for my sake and the sakes of her care providers, but for her own. Difficult as it is to watch this process, which has been going on now for more than a year and a half, we know that she doesn't want us to do anything to prolong it when there's no hope for meaningful recovery.

If Senator Grasshole and the rest of the legion of Republican rat bastards had even the tiniest shred of intelligence or honesty or decency or compassion, they would be applauding the long-overdue initiative of the government to assist all American to educate themselves about the kinds of issues that confront us at the end of life and how we can prepare for them. The people Grasshole and his kind are demagoguing on the "death panels" issue are probably the very people most desperately in need of information on the subject.

I'm hard put to think of a gentler word for such demagogues than "monsters." They better hope that this God they make such a mockery of every time they invoke Him doesn't exist, because if He does, they're in for an eternity of torment.

When a son of a bitch like Senator Grasshole invokes the name of Jesus Christ, I always wonder if he's smart enough to thank God that Jesus isn't around to speak for himself. But then, these Crap Christians, for all their hysterical fake religiosity, are shockingly ignorant of the actual teachings of Jesus, which are routinely falsified, even ridiculed, by the Religious Right.

One last point: On this matter of "just answering constituents' questions." If you're as genuinely uninformed on a subject as Senator Grasshole appears to be on end-of-life planning and what was proposed in the draft plans, then you can say, "I can understand why you're concerned, and that's something I will definitely have to look into."

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