A Vote in April on Fast Track & TPP?

How "The Mouse" Sees TPP (source)

by Gaius Publius

A what-to-expect note on TPP. There will be several battles; the first is coming in the Senate Finance Committee, likely in April, with a vote on "Fast Track" enabling legislation. ("Enabling" legislation means Fast Track enables TPP by disabling Congress's ability to debate and amend it.) If Fast Track passes out of committee, it will go to the Senate floor. If it passes the Senate, it will go to the House. If Fast Track passes both houses of Congress, TPP will be introduced. If Fast Track fails at any of these points, TPP will never see the light of day (unless Wikileaks leaks more of it).

Therefore, the first chance we have to kill TPP is to kill Fast Track in the Senate Finance Committee. (To help that effort, see the last few paragraphs below, about Sen. Ron Wyden. Then send him a nice note discussing his re-election.)

The White House Thinks TPP Will Pass

According to this piece in The Hill, the administration thinks Fast Track will succeed in the Finance Committee and Congress as a whole, while left-leaning (pro-worker) forces are pushing Democrats hard to defeat it. The Hill reports this about the administration's view (my emphasis throughout):

An Obama administration official said Wednesday that lawmakers will pass fast-track within the next month.

“We believe that the votes are there to move forward," said Catherine Novelli, undersecretary of State for economic growth, energy and the environment, in Singapore.

"We do expect it to be passed soon, within the next month or so,” she said, according to a Reuters report.

They might be right. There may be enough NAFTA-style (mainly bought) congresspeople in both parties to get Fast Track out of committee and passed on a floor vote in both houses.

Progressives Are Pushing Back Hard

Or maybe not. Left-leaning (populist and pro-worker) groups and all labor unions are opposed. The group Credo is being particularly aggressive in their opposition:

Petition urges Hillary to oppose Obama on trade

Liberal groups are pushing Hillary Clinton to oppose the Obama administration’s ambitious trade agenda and swing momentum their way.

Credo Action unveiled a petition on Thursday calling on the former secretary of State and Democratic presidential front-runner to publicly oppose trade promotion authority (TPA), also known as "fast track," and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

“We can get a huge boost in our fight to stop this secret trade deal, which is being negotiated behind closed doors by the governments of a dozen countries in collusion with corporate interests, if the next leader of the Democratic Party publicly goes on record against fast-track and the TPP now,” the petition says.

Credo argues in the petition that the trade deal is in trouble because of the work of activists who have taken the fight to voters.

Clinton has yet to play her hand on the issues. While she has acknowledged that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) — a deal between the U.S., Mexico and Canada that her husband, former President Bill Clinton, ushered through Congress — likely hurt U.S. workers, she has shown no signs of opposing the current agenda.

Actually, Clinton has shown many signs of supporting neo-liberal "free" trade in general.

This is good strategy on Credo's part, since Clinton is front-and-center these days due to her widely expected candidacy announcement (note that there are no ifs in Credo's phrasing, "the next leader of the Democratic party"). She's also front-and-center due to her widely reported ties, in this Warren Wing moment, to Wall Street and Big Money in general. Ultimately the question becomes:

In a Warren moment, does Hillary Clinton support the money or the people?

The question is a sword that cuts two ways; it attempts to force Clinton's hand and also the Senate's. From that mentioned petition:

What does Secretary Clinton really believe on trade? If she wants to be president, she must commit to us that she stands for and with us.

As First Lady, she reportedly supported North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).[1]

As a senator, she voted for numerous free trade agreements, but she also voted against giving President George W. Bush Fast Track authority — the same authority Bill Clinton employed during the 1990s to pass NAFTA and that President Obama is now requesting.[2]

As a candidate in 2008, she criticized NAFTA and swore to do things differently.[3] But then, as Secretary of State, she actively helped to pass the very deals she vehemently opposed as a candidate, including the job-killing Korea agreement, and a free trade agreement with Colombia – a country notorious for its horrific labor rights and unionist assassinations.[4] And, she was a vocal promoter for the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty back in 2011.[5]

As Clinton makes the move towards her near-certain presidential campaign in her pursuit for the nomination of the Democratic Party, now is the time for her make it clear where she stands on a trade deal which has been called "NAFTA on steroids" – for good reason. If Secretary Clinton wants to become President Clinton, she must come out and oppose Fast Track authority for trade deals like the TPP.

That petition is here, by the way. If you want to do a progressive good deed — by pressuring Clinton and money-led senators as well — feel free to lend your name by signing it.

DC Democratic Leaders Want a "Path to Yes"

Mainstream Democrats — and I include "progressive" Nancy Pelosi here (who also supported Social Security benefit cuts) — are still seeking "a path to yes" on TPP. From the same Hill article:

Democratic leaders like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) have said they want to find a way to “yes” on the trade deals.

But first her caucus intends to closely examine whether the TPP is good for U.S. workers.

This is both the problem and the "out," the hoped for "path to yes." Finding a way to declare TPP somehow "good for U.S. workers" is all the ground cover any money-financed Democrat needs to follow the yellow brick road and vote Yes on Fast Track. I'm hearing that Pelosi is not actually in favor of TPP (via private pushback against this earlier article), but vehicles like The Hill keep printing otherwise. If Nancy Pelosi wants to make these articles say something different, I suspect she knows how to do that — tell them to print something different. I'm sure they'd be glad to.

TPP Is the Next Piketty Battle

TPP is the next "Piketty battle" in the war between the Rich and the Rest, and it's a major one. NAFTA involved three countries. TPP, at last report, involves twelve:

Nations whose governments want to sign TPP. Indonesia
is considering it as well. You can see the original
"NAFTA Three" in the upper right. (Click to enlarge.)

The Hill is aware of how critical this fight is (as you should be as well):

Meanwhile, the trade debate is hitting at a critical time for lawmakers up for reelection or chasing a bid for the White House.

Labor unions and other groups opposed to fast-track are pressuring Democrats to bring a halt to the trade agenda or face backlash at the polls.

“I don't think anyone can credibly argue that America's trade policies are accomplishing our key national objectives — whether you point to our chronic current account trade deficits, our unsustainable net international debt, or the broader labor market data on wage stagnation and growing inequality,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a Thursday op-ed in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

“If we keep at it, this could turn out to be a decent deal for us.”

Does that last sentence, attributed to Trumka, frighten you? It did me until I looked up the source and found his next sentence:

"If we keep at it, this could turn out to be a decent deal for us. But that won't happen with fast track."

On reading the whole source paragraph, it seems Trunka thinks that adding provisions to "fix weak rules of origin that China will exploit" and others to "address climate change and rebalance the pro-Wall Street tilt in the financial services, procurement, and food safety chapters" — that somehow this kind of language will make TPP a good deal.

It won't. Here's how that fantasy of NAFTA-enforced environmental regulations — used to sell NAFTA to the unwary — actually plays out:

After over ten years, it is now evident that in many ways NAFTA’s environmental initiatives were flawed from the outset, sundered by decisive weaknesses within its institutional frameworks and intentionally imprecise mandates. These only compounded the problems of insufficient funding and support for environmental efforts. Several specific shortcomings are particularly noteworthy. First off, in relative terms, NAFTA’s environmental institutions are painfully under funded: the CEC’s original $9 million budget has remained unchanged. Furthermore, the language of the agreement framing the institutions was made intentionally murky. The use of non-binding, toothless phrases like “fostering protection,” underscores the NAEEC’s fundamental lack of regulatory authority. What few rules do exist regarding monetary fines or sanctions are practically dormant, and serve more as a symbolic gesture than as a means of enforcement.

This is the way any progressive-friendly selling points will end up: underfunded, underdefined, unenforced.

But if Trumka wants to make Fast Track his bottom line, he's helping kill TPP for good, environment-protection "mandates" or not. TPP is so toxic that its authors don't want its text to become public until four years after it's signed. That's a toxic treaty. Without Fast Track, TPP is dead.

To which I add only this: Wonderful news; now please help. Those votes are coming soon. You can start with Sen. Ron Wyden, the pro-TPP Democratic gatekeeper (enabler) for "free trade moderates" in the Senate. Why Wyden? See here. Ron Wyden's contact information is here:

Senator Ron Wyden
221 Dirksen Senate Office Bldg.
Washington, D.C., 20510
tel (202) 224-5244
fax (202) 228-2717

If TPP passes, on the economic front it won't matter who's president. And if the "first woman president" abets sending yet more jobs to Asia in order to send yet more money to billionaire cash accounts ... maybe we need a different "first woman president." Or none at all until we find a good one. Just a first-woman-president thought...

GP

The G.E. Loophole-- Bankrupting America To Make G.E. Executives Richer, Part I

On April 2, the Senate Finance Committee is planning to renew 55 major tax breaks worth $700 billion over 10 years, which is mostly to the benefit of the corporations like General Electic, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, which underwrite the political careers of our political elite in general and the members of the Senate Finance Committee in particular. They will move the tax extender package, which guarantees that some of these mega-corporations and crooked Wall Street banks will continue to rake in billions of dollars in profits every year while paying a far lower tax rate than families and small businesses. $80 billion of the $700 comes from 2 major loopholes-- pardon the jargon: the Active Financing Exception and the CFC look-through rule, both of which were designed and maintained to assist corporations shift U.S. profits offshore to tax havens.

But, but, but… this isn't the House, controlled by corrupt corporate whores like Boehner, Ryan and Cantor. The Senate is controlled by the Democrats. This could never happen without the Democrats being on board. Precisely. Let's begin with the members of the Committee. The new chairman, replacing Big Buisness-owned Max Baucus, is Ron Wyden (D-OR) and the ranking member is Orrin Hatch (R-UT). There are 22 other members:

• Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)- $2,000
• Chuck Schumer (D-NY)- $2,000
• Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)- $27,750
• Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
• Bill Nelson (D-FL)- $4,000
• Bob Menendez (D-NJ)- $5,750
• Tom Carper (D-DE)- $17,800
• Ben Cardin (D-MD)- $14,000
• Sherrod Brown (D-OH)- $32,600
• Michael Bennet (D-CO)- $8,000
• Bob Casey (D-PA)- $9,000
• Mark Warner (D-VA)- $10,500
• Chuck Grassley (R-IA)- $4,000
• Mike Crapo (R-ID)
• Pat Roberts (R-KS)- $7,500
• Mike Enzi (R-WY)- $7,000
• John Cornyn (R-TX)- $15,000
• John Thune (R-SD)
• Richard Burr (R-NC)- $2,000
• Johnny Isakson (R-GA)- $3,000
• Rob Portman (R-OH)- $14,800
• Pat Toomey (R-PA)- $4,000

Partisanship and ideology aside, a bigger bunch of bribe-taking crooks won't be found anywhere in American government. The only member who could be counted to to consistently put the well-being of his consistence first is Sherrod Brown. General Electric has countless ways to funnel legalistic, thinly veiled bribes to senators. The numbers next to each member's name indicates direct payments by just one of the many General Electric PACs made during the 2012 cycle and so far this cycle. Why G.E.? These men and women are about to decide whether or "not" to extend the G.E. loophole that allows one of the most profitable corporations in history to pay no taxes. Time to go back to David Kocieniewski's classic NY Times investigative piece about GE's tax chicanery from March 24, 2010, G.E.'s Strategies Let It Avoid Taxes Altogether. Profits that year were $14.2 billion and their U.S. tax bill was zero; in fact, G.E. claimed a $3.2 billion tax benefit!

That may be hard to fathom for the millions of American business owners and households now preparing their own returns, but low taxes are nothing new for G.E. The company has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for years, resulting in a far lower rate than at most multinational companies.

Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore. G.E.’s giant tax department, led by a bow-tied former Treasury official named John Samuels, is often referred to as the world’s best tax law firm. Indeed, the company’s slogan “Imagination at Work” fits this department well. The team includes former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.

…A review of company filings and Congressional records shows that one of the most striking advantages of General Electric is its ability to lobby for, win and take advantage of tax breaks.

Over the last decade, G.E. has spent tens of millions of dollars to push for changes in tax law, from more generous depreciation schedules on jet engines to “green energy” credits for its wind turbines. But the most lucrative of these measures allows G.E. to operate a vast leasing and lending business abroad with profits that face little foreign taxes and no American taxes as long as the money remains overseas.

Company officials say that these measures are necessary for G.E. to compete against global rivals and that they are acting as responsible citizens. “G.E. is committed to acting with integrity in relation to our tax obligations,” said Anne Eisele, a spokeswoman. “We are committed to complying with tax rules and paying all legally obliged taxes. At the same time, we have a responsibility to our shareholders to legally minimize our costs.”

The assortment of tax breaks G.E. has won in Washington has provided a significant short-term gain for the company’s executives and shareholders. While the financial crisis led G.E. to post a loss in the United States in 2009, regulatory filings show that in the last five years, G.E. has accumulated $26 billion in American profits, and received a net tax benefit from the I.R.S. of $4.1 billion.

But critics say the use of so many shelters amounts to corporate welfare, allowing G.E. not just to avoid taxes on profitable overseas lending but also to amass tax credits and write-offs that can be used to reduce taxes on billions of dollars of profit from domestic manufacturing. They say that the assertive tax avoidance of multinationals like G.E. not only shortchanges the Treasury, but also harms the economy by discouraging investment and hiring in the United States.

“In a rational system, a corporation’s tax department would be there to make sure a company complied with the law,” said Len Burman, a former Treasury official who now is a scholar at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. “But in our system, there are corporations that view their tax departments as a profit center, and the effects on public policy can be negative.”

The shelters are so crucial to G.E.’s bottom line that when Congress threatened to let the most lucrative one expire in 2008, the company came out in full force. G.E. officials worked with dozens of financial companies to send letters to Congress and hired a bevy of outside lobbyists.

The head of its tax team, Mr. Samuels, met with Representative Charles B. Rangel, then chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, which would decide the fate of the tax break. As he sat with the committee’s staff members outside Mr. Rangel’s office, Mr. Samuels dropped to his knee and pretended to beg for the provision to be extended-- a flourish made in jest, he said through a spokeswoman.

That day, Mr. Rangel reversed his opposition to the tax break, according to other Democrats on the committee.

The following month, Mr. Rangel and Mr. Immelt stood together at St. Nicholas Park in Harlem as G.E. announced that its foundation had awarded $30 million to New York City schools, including $11 million to benefit various schools in Mr. Rangel’s district. Joel I. Klein, then the schools chancellor, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who presided, said it was the largest gift ever to the city’s schools.

…As it has evolved, the company has used, and in some cases pioneered, aggressive strategies to lower its tax bill. In the mid-1980s, President Ronald Reagan overhauled the tax system after learning that G.E.-- a company for which he had once worked as a commercial pitchman-- was among dozens of corporations that had used accounting gamesmanship to avoid paying any taxes.

“I didn’t realize things had gotten that far out of line,” Mr. Reagan told the Treasury secretary, Donald T. Regan, according to Mr. Regan’s 1988 memoir. The president supported a change that closed loopholes and required G.E. to pay a far higher effective rate, up to 32.5 percent.

That pendulum began to swing back in the late 1990s. G.E. and other financial services firms won a change in tax law that would allow multinationals to avoid taxes on some kinds of banking and insurance income. The change meant that if G.E. financed the sale of a jet engine or generator in Ireland, for example, the company would no longer have to pay American tax on the interest income as long as the profits remained offshore.

Known as active financing, the tax break proved to be beneficial for investment banks, brokerage firms, auto and farm equipment companies, and lenders like GE Capital. This tax break allowed G.E. to avoid taxes on lending income from abroad, and permitted the company to amass tax credits, write-offs and depreciation. Those benefits are then used to offset taxes on its American manufacturing profits.

G.E. subsequently ramped up its lending business.

As the company expanded abroad, the portion of its profits booked in low-tax countries such as Ireland and Singapore grew far faster. From 1996 through 1998, its profits and revenue in the United States were in sync-- 73 percent of the company’s total. Over the last three years, though, 46 percent of the company’s revenue was in the United States, but just 18 percent of its profits.

Martin A. Sullivan, a tax economist for the trade publication Tax Analysts, said that booking such a large percentage of its profits in low-tax countries has “allowed G.E. to bring its U.S. effective tax rate to rock-bottom levels.”

…Minimizing taxes is so important at G.E. that Mr. Samuels has placed tax strategists in decision-making positions in many major manufacturing facilities and businesses around the globe. Mr. Samuels, a graduate of Vanderbilt University and the University of Chicago Law School, declined to be interviewed for this article. Company officials acknowledged that the tax department had expanded since he joined the company in 1988, and said it now had 975 employees.

At a tax symposium in 2007, a G.E. tax official said the department’s “mission statement” consisted of 19 rules and urged employees to divide their time evenly between ensuring compliance with the law and “looking to exploit opportunities to reduce tax.”

Transforming the most creative strategies of the tax team into law is another extensive operation. G.E. spends heavily on lobbying: more than $200 million over the last decade, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Records filed with election officials show a significant portion of that money was devoted to tax legislation. G.E. has even turned setbacks into successes with Congressional help. After the World Trade Organization forced the United States to halt $5 billion a year in export subsidies to G.E. and other manufacturers, the company’s lawyers and lobbyists became deeply involved in rewriting a portion of the corporate tax code, according to news reports after the 2002 decision and a Congressional staff member.

By the time the measure-- the American Jobs Creation Act-- was signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2004, it contained more than $13 billion a year in tax breaks for corporations, many very beneficial to G.E. One provision allowed companies to defer taxes on overseas profits from leasing planes to airlines. It was so generous — and so tailored to G.E. and a handful of other companies-- that staff members on the House Ways and Means Committee publicly complained that G.E. would reap “an overwhelming percentage” of the estimated $100 million in annual tax savings.

According to its 2007 regulatory filing, the company saved more than $1 billion in American taxes because of that law in the three years after it was enacted.

By 2008, however, concern over the growing cost of overseas tax loopholes put G.E. and other corporations on the defensive. With Democrats in control of both houses of Congress, momentum was building to let the active financing exception expire. Mr. Rangel of the Ways and Means Committee indicated that he favored letting it end and directing the new revenue-- an estimated $4 billion a year-- to other priorities.

G.E. pushed back. In addition to the $18 million allocated to its in-house lobbying department, the company spent more than $3 million in 2008 on lobbying firms assigned to the task.

Mr. Rangel dropped his opposition to the tax break. Representative Joseph Crowley, Democrat of New York [one of the most blatantly corrupt Members of Congress in history], said he had helped sway Mr. Rangel by arguing that the tax break would help Citigroup, a major employer in Mr. Crowley’s district.

…While G.E.’s declining tax rates have bolstered profits and helped the company continue paying dividends to shareholders during the economic downturn, some tax experts question what taxpayers are getting in return. Since 2002, the company has eliminated a fifth of its work force in the United States while increasing overseas employment. In that time, G.E.’s accumulated offshore profits have risen to $92 billion from $15 billion.

“That G.E. can almost set its own tax rate shows how very much we need reform,” said Representative Lloyd Doggett, Democrat of Texas, who has proposed closing many corporate tax shelters. “Our tax system should encourage job creation and investment in America and end these tax incentives for exporting jobs and dodging responsibility for the cost of securing our country.”

As the Obama administration and leaders in Congress consider proposals to revamp the corporate tax code, G.E. is well prepared to defend its interests. The company spent $4.1 million on outside lobbyists last year, including four boutique firms that specialize in tax policy.

We'll dig a littler deeper in Part II, which will be the next post up.

Will Arkansas Voters Decide They've Had Enough Of Blanche Lincoln?

Yesterday, as expected, Lincoln voted against the public option in the Senate Finance Committee-- twice. She has a history of always sticking with her campaign donors when what they want conflicts with what Arkansas voters want. In this case only 38% of Arkansas voters-- almost all of them Republicans-- oppose the public option. 81% of Arkansas Democrats support the public option-- as do 55% of all Arkansas voters. During the committee markup process yesterday John Ensign taunted the Democrats on the committee by asking them why they couldn't pass a public option in the Senate with such large majorities in the country wanting it. Unlike almost everything Ensign said yesterday, this is a worthwhile question to ponder.

In fact when polling companies have asked voters in conservative-leaning states and districts if they will be more or less likely to vote for a candidate who votes to kill the public option, the answer is consistently coming back that it would make them less likely to vote for that candidate. Lincoln can hardly afford to lose any of her base. Her unfavorability rating is 49% (favorables are down to 43%) and so far the only thing keeping her from joining the ranks of the political walking dead is the fact that the Republicans can't come up with a credible opponent. (In fact yesterday the first poll came out showing her actually losing to any Republican who runs against her.) No one is polling the impact of the two independents in the race, Trevor Drown and Green Party nominee John Gray. Gray, a single payer advocate didn't mince words in his analysis of what happened yesterday in the Senate:

I’m not at all surprised. She has a rather large campaign chest, almost half of which is from the medical industries. The fact that she is loyal to her sponsors is not at all surprising... Eliminate the health care insurance industry… and you would save enough money to cover every man woman and child in the United States. Nobody blinks an eyelash if we lay off 40,000 autoworkers, who actually produce something. These health insurance brokers, it’s hard to say what they produce.”

The answer to Ensign's question applies equally to Democrats and Republicans. Most of the Senators on the Finance Committee should be in prison for taking bribes. Some, like Baucus, Grassley and Lincoln, have allowed the special interests over whose fate they were sitting-- the Insurance Industry and the Medical-Industrial Complex-- to finance their political careers. Not having the ethical compass or the common decency to recuse themselves after finding themselves in a direct conflict of interest between their donors and their constituents should mean they spend the rest of their days behind bars. But it's America... so forget that.

This afternoon while Grassley was babbling on incoherently I took a short break and ran down to the Blue America P.O. Box where I found the latest report of our cable TV ads running, this time in Benton and Washington counties. The ads ran on a Thursday and Friday night when she was speaking in the area. They ran on Larry King Live, The Rachel Maddow Show, The Colbert Report, The O'Reilly Factor, Headline News, Countdown With Keith Olberman, Hardball, The Chainsaw Massacre, Anderson Cooper 360, Showbiz Tonight, The Ed Show, Fast Money, CNN Newsroom and lots of other similar programs-- Nancy Grace and Shepard Smith but no Glenn Beck.

Keep in mind that Tom Harkin told The Hill yesterday that he feels he has enough Democrats, now that Massachusetts has their second seat covered, to break the Republican filibuster, get a bill with a public option onto the floor and pass it with 51 votes. That isn't reconciliation; that's simple cloture and majority rule. Would anyone break from the party and vote with the Republicans to filibuster the bill? Look at the photo up top; those are the two. The more female-looking one is Senator Blanche Lincoln. (The less female-looking one is Ben Nelson.) Those are the only two who could conceivably keep the public option from even reaching the floor. Lincoln, who also opposes climate and energy legislation and has already declared that she will join the Republicans in filibustering Employee Free Choice, is not a good player. She doesn't deserve another term. You say, "neither do Nelson, Baucus or Conrad?" I agree. But they're not up for election in 2010. Lincoln is.

We'd like to run some more ads. In fact, we're going to. If we raise enough money we'll put them on network TV. If not, we'll keep running them on cable. The 3 ads are on the Blue America Campaign For Health Care Choice page, which is also where you can donate to the cost of running more spots if you're so inclined.



UPDATE: Bye-Bye Blanche?

Although Rasmussen has been discredited as a reliable source of polling data-- we have a post coming up at 2pm explaining this-- it's still worth noting that they are another firm, even if a compromised one, showing that Blanche Lincoln is likely to be looking for a new line of work next year.

Arkansas' Blanche Lambert Lincoln trails all four of her leading Republican challengers in the first Rasmussen Reports Election 2010 survey in the state.

Lincoln fails to get 50% of the vote in any of the match-ups, and any incumbent who falls short of that level is considered vulnerable.

And here's some of the right-leaning twisting of facts that has made Rasmussen a joke: "The two-term senator, who was reelected with 54% of the vote in 2004, is perhaps made more vulnerable by her seat on the Senate Finance Committee which is now wrestling with the national health care reform plan, a measure which is highly unpopular in Arkansas. Just today she voted against including in the bill the controversial “public option” being pushed by liberal senators in her party."

Unbiased polling firms have shown that Arkansas voters overwhelmingly favor a public option. The Republican Rasmussen firm implies the opposite and implies that Lincoln is failing because she is identified with "liberals." The monkey business of tampering with numbers is what we'll be discussing at 2pm (PT) though.

Meet the Opposition to the Public Option in the Senate Finance Committee

Max Baucus, Kent Conrad, Blanche Lincoln, Bill Nelson, and Tom Carper.

That's who's standing in the way of passing a public option amendment through the Senate Finance Committee. The vote on these amendments will happen Tuesday.

They're standing in the way of lower health care costs:

In total, a public plan based on Medicare rates would save $110 billion over 10 years. That is $20 billion more than earlier estimates, a spokesman for House Speaker Pelosi said.

They're standing in the way of holding the insurance industry accountable, because simply regulating the insurance industry will never be enough to stop them from screwing over their customers:

...the practice of rescission - taking away your insurance policy when you become sick - is illegal now. And yet, the insurance companies admitted before Congress earlier this year that the practice is common.

Regulations are viewed by business in this country as obstacles to be overcome, not rules to be abided by. In even the best regulations, loopholes will be found, enforcement will be spotty, and fines will be chalked up to the cost of doing business.

So, what are you, the patient, supposed to do?

If you had a choice, a choice which President Obama wants you to have, you'd be able to choose a public health insurance option that's governed by the common good, not Wall Street Profits, and thus abides by the regulations. If insurance companies could lose customers because they don't want to abide by regulations, they'll think twice before looking for loopholes. In this way, a public health insurance option keeps the insurance industry honest and ends insurance company abuses.

And they're standing in the way of something a large majority of the American people want:

By a margin of 52 percent to 27 percent, Americans believe President Obama has better ideas about overhauling health care than Republicans do, according to a national poll conducted by The New York Times and CBS News. And nearly two-thirds of the country supports creation of a government-run insurance plan, or public option. Read the full story.

Instead, they want to give us the insurance industry bailout bill, with a mandate to buy unaffordable insurance from private companies, no cost controls, and no way to keep the industry in line. Not surprisingly, that prospect is immensely unpopular, something that will come out in elections all around the country in the coming cycles as Democrats get defeated for shoveling taxpayer money directly to the insurance industry.

If the proposed bailout to the insurance industry passes, over the objections of House progressives, Nancy Pelosi, and leaders in the Senate like Chuck Schumer, Jay Rockefeller, Tom Harking, and Sherrod Brown, these five will be the ones to blame.

The vote on public option amendments will be on Tuesday. Give the Senators on the Finance Committee a call and tell them where you stand. Make clear to the five that you will hold them responsible. mcjoan has the numbers to call, both to thank those who are standing up and put pressure on those who are caving to the insurance industry and conservative Republicans:

Max Baucus MT (Committee Chair)
e-mail
Phone: (202) 224-2651
Fax: (202) 224-9412  

John Rockefeller WV  
e-mail
Phone (202) 224-6472
Fax (202) 224-7665  

Kent Conrad ND
e-mail
Phone: (202) 224-2043
Fax: (202) 224-7776

Jeff Bingman NM
e-mail
Phone: (202) 224-5521
TDD (202) 224-1792
Toll Free (in NM) 1800-433-8658

John Kerry MA
e-mail
Phone (202) 224-2742  
Fax (202) 224-8525  

Blanche Lincoln AR
e-mail
Phone: (202) 224-4843
Fax: (202) 228-1371

Ron Wyden OR
e-mail
Phone: (202) 224-5244
Fax: (202) 228-2717  

Charles Shumer NY
e-mail
Phone:(202)224-6542
Fax: (202) 228-3027
TDD: (202) 224-0420

Debbie Stabenow MI
e-mail
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: (202) 224-4822
TTY: (202) 224-2066

Maria Cantwell WA
e-mail
Phone: 202-224-3441  
Fax: (202) 228-0514  
TTD: (202) 224-8273

Bill Nelson FL
e-mail
Phone: (202) 224-5274
Fax: (202) 228-2183

Robert Mendez NJ
e-mail
Washington, D.C. 20510
Phone: (202) 224-4744
Fax: (202) 228-2197 fax

Thomas Carper DE
e-mail
Phone: (202) 224-2441
Fax: (202) 228-2190

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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