Drawing On A New Hobby

(Cartoon by Rogers published 12/3/13 in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and found here.  Click on image to enlarge.)

The War on Women continues apace.  The latest battle is at the Supreme Court as arguments were heard on the issue of whether an employer of a non-religious corporation could refuse to include contraceptives in the health insurance provided employees.  The owners of these businesses, I'm embarrassed to say, are some of my co-religionists who are still into the punishing the Eve in all of us.  They claim (but I don't think they really believe this) that the contraceptives are a form of abortion, and therefor evil and against their deeply held religious beliefs.

Further, they argue, the requirement that contraceptives be included in the health insurance under the ACA is an intrusion by the federal government into their religion.

I'm not buying the arguments, nor is the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times.  In the editorial published 3/25/14, the board also pointed out the danger that the employers might not have noticed in making those arguments.

From that editorial:

American law has traditionally bent over backward to accommodate individuals forced to choose between obeying the law and complying with their beliefs. If that privilege is pushed too far, public support for accommodating religious objections could erode.

Two principal issues will be argued Tuesday: Can a for-profit business claim a religious exemption from the mandate under the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act? And does the requirement that employers provide contraceptive coverage impose a "substantial burden" on their exercise of religion? Under the law, such a burden is permissible only in pursuit of a compelling government interest and only if the law is narrowly tailored.

The first question is easily answered. It isn't just, as a federal appeals court in Philadelphia pithily put it, that businesses "do not pray, worship, observe sacraments or take other religiously-motivated actions." It is that business corporations are legal entities distinct from the individuals who create them. As the Obama administration persuasively argues, the owners of Hobby Lobby aren't entitled to an exemption for their businesses "based on their individual religious beliefs."

But even if moneymaking corporations were to be viewed as religious believers, the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive mandate isn't a substantial burden on their exercise of religion. The mandate doesn't require an employer to do anything more than make it possible for a female employee to decide for herself whether to use contraceptives.   [Emphasis added]

The arguments made on behalf of the employer relied heavily on the First Amendment freedom of religion clause.  The freedom of religion rights of the female employees apparently don't matter.  And, of course, their right to choose didn't come up, even with the Roe v Wade still being the law (at least for the time being).  Once again, given the current make-up of the Court, it will be a close decision, with Justice Kennedy probably being the swing vote. 

We certainly do live in interesting times.

Damnit.

That River In Egypt

Poor Mitt Romney.  I almost feel sorry for him.  He's being consigned to the GOP "black hole" like George W. Bush was, and Romney never even got to be president.  Like I said, though, I almost feel sorry for him.  If he'd have kept his mouth shut after the election, say, for about a month, he might not have been the target of barbs from the likes of Newt Gingrich and Bobby Jindahl.  He might even have achieved some respectability like John McCain has, crazy as he is, and been invited regularly to the Sunday Morning Bobbleheads.  But, alas, no.  Romney had to keep yapping to his buddies, as David Horsey pointed out in this column, giving ammunition to those in his own party and the Democrats.

As many pundits have noted, Romney's characterization of government programs as gifts was an echo of his earlier disparaging remarks about the 47% of Americans who pay no income taxes. On both occasions, he was speaking privately with a bunch of fat-cat contributors and reinforcing their demeaning stereotypes of less fortunate Americans. It seems that Romney cannot help but be himself when he is around rich people.

The so-called gifts Obama gave included partial forgiveness of student loans, a provision of Obamacare allowing young people to stay on their parents' healthcare plans to age 26, suspension of deportations for immigrant children who have grown up in the United States and healthcare for people who otherwise do not have it or cannot afford it.

What Romney calls gifts, others call lending a hand -- no different than helping people hit by a hurricane. They are programs aimed at providing opportunities for people struggling to get a start in life or rise up from chronic poverty. They are a means to end dependency and create more productive citizens. Other Republicans apparently understand this. As Los Angeles Times reporter Morgan Little described in a Sunday article, several prominent GOP leaders have taken hard shots at Romney’s elitism in recent days.

It's quite clear that Romney's elitist comments really were a turn-off  to a lot of Americans during the campaign, and several of his wife's comments (like "You people ...) grated on folks as well.  The fact that he kept changing the message to fit the audience didn't help either, because the American voter isn't always as stupid as Republicans think.  And that's the part that fascinates me right now.

The Morgan Little article cited by Horsey (see the link in the quote) is really quite telling in a lot of ways.  The GOP has decided that Republicans need to make nice to the electorate, or at least sound like it.  They are now willing to at least talk about immigration reform.  Apparently someone shoved a census report in front of party leaders and coughed loudly.  But as far as I can tell, that's about all that's been changed in the rhetoric.  Black people, the poor, the elders, gays, even the Middle Class are still not terribly important. 

The reports on the "fiscal cliff" and how the lame duck session and even the next Congress will deal with it makes it clear that Republicans are still only interested in keeping the fat cats fat and on a weight-gain program.  Fighting the Democrats on every issue and fighting the President on every appointment is still uppermost in the Republican plans.

Of course, it doesn't help that at least at this point the Democrats haven't unsheathed their swords and probably won't.  Social Security and Medicare are still being talked about as "entitlements" and compromise is still the word of the day. 

I guess I'll just have to wait for the 113th Congress and the 2014 campaigns to see what changes are possible.  I hope I have the stamina and the popcorn for that.

The 111th Congress

It's been a tumultuous two years when it comes to the 111th Congress. Some big legislation got passed (health care reform, 'stimulus' packages, etc), most of which were hardly the progressive programs we envisioned when we voted in 2008. The stuff we wanted just never happened. The excuses emanating from the White House and the Senate all boiled down to the same line: "We just don't have the votes!"

Ironically, after the Democrats got whacked, and whacked hard, in the November elections, somehow the votes magically appeared during the lame duck session. All sorts of legislation got passed that bore at least a little resemblance to the progressive ideals. The DREAM Act failed, but the New START treaty passed, as did a bill to provide further health care treatment to the 9/11 first responders.

What is significant about the latter two victories is that for weeks the Senate Republican leaders made it clear that both were dead in the water. After their victory in the November elections, Republicans figured they'd take over now, rather than later. Somehow, however, that just didn't happen.

From the Los Angeles Times:

The Senate approved a nuclear arms treaty with Russia and a bill to aid Sept. 11 first responders Wednesday, wrapping up a lame-duck congressional session that left Democrats jubilant and some Republicans feeling whipsawed. ...

"President Obama was on the verge of being the next Jimmy Carter, and incompetent GOP messaging and legislating has made him into a modern-day FDR," said Brian Darling, a Senate analyst for the conservative Heritage Foundation. ...

"It seems that the GOP snatched defeat from the jaws of victory," Darling said.

Only the Republicans could see the past two weeks' flurry of activity as an unmitigated disaster. Unless they get everything they want, the aren't satisfied. The 9/11 first responders bill isn't the one originally introduced: to get Republican votes, the initial appropriation was reduced by nearly one-half. That's a huge difference, but the compromise and the pressure being brought by public disgust at the GOP's recalcitrance worked. Harry got the votes.

Well, the 111th Congress is going out with a bang, but it would have been nice if Harry had pulled a few of these noisy tricks earlier on, say, starting in the second week of January, 2008. His job is going to be more difficult in 2011, and I don't see any major changes in Democratic messaging, so the 112th Congress will probably be even less satisfying for liberals than the 111th.

A Long Talk

Instead of just threatening a filibuster, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) delivered, speaking over eight hours from the Senate floor with just a couple of breaks. The subject was the Obama "compromise" with Republicans on extending the Bush tax breaks, which was no compromise at all since it gave the GOP and its masters just about everything in the federal store. Sen. Sanders made his point, repeating himself just in case folks missed key points the first time around.

"It has been a very long day," he said as he concluded his remarks, including a five-hour period in which he spoke without interruption. "I do believe that if the American people stand up … I think we can defeat this proposal. I think we can come up with a better proposal which better reflects the needs of the middle class." ...

"I'm not here to set any great records or to make a spectacle," he said at the start of his effort. "I am simply here today to take as long as I can to explain to the American people the fact that we have got to do a lot better than this agreement provides."

And explain he did. What he had to say resonated with enough of us who watched the live stream on his web site that we crashed it for a period of time. Many of us called his office to urge him on, which meant his staff had quite a long day as well.

I suppose an argument can be made that Sen. Sanders just delayed the inevitable. After all, as the LAT article makes clear, there was no real business scheduled for this particular Friday (as is usually the case because most congress critters are anxious to get home). But he did it anyway, and I think that filibuster may have some long term consequences, at least if we are lucky.

Ironically, one of the consequences is that several Republicans have openly voiced their displeasure with the deal. Sen. DeMint is unhappy with the "compromise," primarily because he discovered a few things in the federal store that his colleagues overlooked, and he wants it all. Sen. McCain tweeted his unhappiness with the deal (but then later indicated he would vote for it -- in typical McCain fashion).

At the same time, however, Sen. Sanders' long day, especially because it generated some excitement among the Democratic base, did give some cover to Democrats who happen to agree that the president gave up too much for too little. This will not be an easy vote, but it just became harder for Harry, and Sen. Reid obviously hates a real fight, especially one originating within his own ranks.

What would be the best consequence, however, would be a Congress who just said "NO!" to a president. We haven't seen that in ten years. The result would be a rebalancing of power, one that throws the "unitary executive" concept out the highest window in Washington DC.

And that would be a good thing.

A Welcome Sight ...

... but a little late.

Senate Democrats showed a little spine yesterday regarding extending the tax cuts to the wealthy, but as this article points out, it's probably too late to make a difference.

... after days of internal debate, and as liberal outside groups began stepping up advertising and outreach efforts nationwide, Democratic lawmakers returned Friday to a common-man narrative, trying to shake off the listlessness of their midterm election rout last month.

Their efforts came as the unemployment rate crept up to 9.8% and a presidential commission said dramatic action was needed to avoid a crisis of government debt. To contemplate $700 billion in tax breaks for wealthy people under such circumstances, Democrats said, should lead conservative activists who fueled the midterm election results to "take up pitchforks."

It was nice to see that the message was delivered by a group heavily weighted with the more conservative Dems: Dianne Feinstein, Claire McCaskill, Chuck Shumer, and Robert Menendez, but it would have been even nicer if this posture had been taken three months ago when it might have made a difference. Right now, the White House is "negotiating" with Republicans on the issue, which means the GOP is going to get what it wants: an extension of the tax cuts for the wealthy.

Still, it shows that the Democrats are learning some pretty important lessons, among them taking their positions directly to the American public in a forthright manner rather than sitting back and whining about the lack of votes. It may be too late this time around, but come January, it might be a tactic that will put a little pressure on Republicans and on the White House.

And that's what needs to happen if the Democrats are going to make a decent showing in 2012. It's also what needs to happen if the nation is going to be pulled out of its current morass.

Really Lame

The lame-duck 111th Congress will end with none of the high hopes and bravado with which it began two years ago. With the Democrats in charge of both the White House and the Congress, the horrid economy, it was hoped, would be healed by real pump-priming, returning people to work. Universal health care access was a real possibility. Ending the unconstitutional policies of warrantless wiretapping and domestic spying was on the horizon. Heady days, those first ones.

Well, all that hope and all that change just didn't pan out. The president was more for making nice to the people who brought on the disasters of the past eight years than for leading the nation out of the swamp he inherited. The Senate Majority leader was constantly counting votes rather than forcing the opposition into votes which would spotlight its true nature. In other words, nothing of any real value to the 98% of the country who didn't own multiple homes and yachts got accomplished. As a result, the Democrats got whupped soundly November 2.

Buoyed by the victory, the Republicans have made it clear that absolutely nothing will get accomplished these last few days of the lame duck session.

Among congressional Republicans, confidence levels are so high that they are barreling over what might be considered standard political traps. As they fight to preserve tax cuts for the wealthiest taxpayers, for instance, they are prepared to let unemployment insurance benefits run out for 2 million jobless Americans unless offsetting spending cuts can be found.

Republican Senate leaders on Wednesday threatened to derail a bill that had previously received bipartisan backing — a food-safety measure — on the grounds that nothing should move until a deal on tax cuts is reached.

I think it safe to assume that the 112th Congress will present us with more intransigence and less accomplishment than the 111th. The economy will remain stagnant for most of us, and states will continue to face horrible choices in trying to balance their budgets. The already frayed safety nets will finally rip all the way through, exposing not only the vulnerable but also the near-vulnerable to misery. And then, when the 2012 elections roll around, the Democrats will be punished even further, losing the White House and the Senate.

Heckuva job, Barack.

Heckuva job, Harry.

Oh, Please!

I find it very interesting that Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House for the 110th and 111th Congress is under attack for the disastrous midterm election, yet Harry Reid's leadership position in the Senate is apparently quite secure. Many of the important bills which she "rammed" through the House (according to the Republican Party) languished in the Senate under Reid's timid leadership. She did her job well as Speaker of the House. He, as Senate Majority leader, eh, not so much. Yet she is being attacked by her own party and by some major news outlets and being urged to step aside.

Amazingly, the "center left" editorial board of the Los Angeles Times holds the same opinion I do. Nancy Pelosi didn't cost the Democrats control of Congress. Barack Obama did.

One cogent argument for Pelosi to step down posits that she did a poor job of selling Democratic policies to the electorate. Yet Pelosi, the first female speaker, has been extraordinarily effective as a legislative leader and fundraiser, shepherding through historic reforms amid solid GOP opposition. Getting such legislation passed is her job — drumming up public approval for it is not. That role properly falls to the Democrats' spokesman in chief, President Obama.

Obama himself has acknowledged this, saying the election taught him that leadership isn't just about passing bills but "making an argument that people can understand." Judged solely by her record, and not by GOP attacks trying to paint her as either a Leninist or the Wicked Witch of the West, Pelosi deserves to stay on as her party's leader. [Emphasis added]

I would only add that not only did President Obama not articulate convincing arguments as to the accomplishments of the Democrats during this difficult times for the country, he also failed to actually lead in crucial fights for the badly needed change he promised, preferring to compromise before the real battles even began. As the editorial noted, the electorate didn't vote against Nancy Pelosi's leadership skills, they voted for an improved economy, jobs, and secure housing, things which the Democrats promised in 2008 and failed to deliver. That failure wasn't Pelosi's; it was Reid's and Obama's.

All of the boys in the blue column should take a hint from Pelosi's style. They should grow a spine.

A Different Kind Of Tea Party

Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland is still one of my favorite pieces of literature. These days I find myself going back to the Mad Hatter's tea party time and again as the perfect metaphor for so much of what is going on in this country. Take, for example, this bit of news on the division of tasks between the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture when it comes to managing the safety of the nation's food supply.

As lawmakers prepare for hearings into the largest egg recall in U.S. history, food safety advocates say the congressional probe could give momentum to a long-delayed measure that would enhance the power of the Food and Drug Administration.

If passed, say policymakers, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act could be the first major step toward streamlining the often unwieldy food safety system.

For example, in the U.S. cheese pizza is regulated by one federal agency, but a pepperoni pizza is overseen by another. An open-faced turkey sandwich, likewise, falls under the purview of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but one with two slices of bread is under the jurisdiction of the FDA. Liquid beef broth and dehydrated chicken broth? USDA. Liquid chicken broth and dehydrated beef broth? FDA. ...

The USDA regulates the quality of eggs still in their shells; it also inspects liquid, dried and frozen egg products. The FDA is responsible for the safety of eggs still in their shells, but until recently it could intervene only after problems became evident. So neither agency was proactive about examining the production facilities operated by Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms of Iowa, where federal inspectors recently found giant manure piles, rodents and maggots.

In other words, there is no coherence in the way food producers are regulated. Nor, at least at this point, is there any way to force recalls when dangerous conditions lead to polluted food. When bad food hits the markets and people are sickened, all the FDA can do is recommend a recall to the producer of that bad food. Generally, the industry complies, primarily to avoid litigation, but they can delay the recall while they lawyer up.

The bill currently pending in the Senate would at least grant the FDA the power to force recalls. It doesn't, however, address the problems of the insanely crafted overlap of jurisdiction between the two agencies. Consumer advocates still think the bill would get things started in that direction, and most food producers seem to be behind the bill unless too many costly amendments are added. At least one Republican (Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma) has threatened to hold the bill up because it expands the authority of the FDA too much. No surprise there.

The real problem is going to be to get the Senate to act on the bill at all this term. November elections are looming, and there's an enormous backlog of business still to be considered. Harry Reid may not feel that such a bill has any priority at this point. And that's a shame.

Clean cups! Clean cups!

Tea For Two Hundred

Immigration reform didn't happen in the 111th Congress, which was a mistake by the Democrats. Admittedly Congress was busy the last two years, what with the economic mess it inherited, and the full court press for health care reform from the White House, but immigration reform should have at least begun wending its way through both houses if only to keep the discourse at a sensible level. It didn't, so the discourse has devolved to a level of irrationality that is going to be difficult to counter during the election season.

Now, instead of sane approaches to protecting our border and finding a way to legitimize undocumented workers who've been here for years, paying taxes and staying out of trouble, we hear talk of the 14th Amendment and "anchor babies." Instead of discussing what to do with employers who increase their bottom line by hiring undocumented workers at lower wages than citizens or documented workers, we have states passing legislation allowing "stop and detain" for no reason other than the mere suspicion that the detainee might be an illegal.

And, of course, we have a couple of hundred right-wing xenophobic zealots holding a tea party at the Arizona border and getting coverage by the New York Times.

Hundreds of Tea Party activists converged on the border fence here in what is typically a desolate area popular with traffickers to rally for conservative political candidates and to denounce what they called lax federal enforcement of immigration laws. The rally brought a significant law enforcement presence as well as numerous private patrols by advocates of a more secure border.

The tea partiers were urged to leave their rifles in their trucks, which was about the only rational suggestion at the event. Apparently the participants complied, because there was no mention of any shooting, accidental or otherwise.

Instead of gunning for the illegals massing at the border, the participants got to listen to the likes of J.D. Hayworth, who is running against John McCain for the senate seat and who claims that Sen. McCain is soft on immigrants. They also got to listen to the entirely-too-famous Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who played the crowd like a professional lounge singer:

“If I had all the national TV here, I’d probably climb the fence to show you how easy it is,” Sheriff Arpaio said from the rally’s stage, a flag with the words “Don’t Tread on Me” flapping behind him.

Apparently the networks didn't get the email invite from the Tea Partiers, or ignored it. Unfortunately, the NY Times did and did not ignore it. Hence the article.

Well, it's not like the White House and Congress don't deserve the hoopla over a few hundred zealots baking in the Arizona sun. They didn't want to touch the issue, so now that issue is rolling all over them.

The problem is that it's also going to roll all over the rest of us, and when the issue finally is forced on the Congress and the White House, it will be drenched in this kind of nonsense. We'll get a bill just like Health Care: inadequate, unfair, and guaranteed to make our owners even wealthier.

I wish we had a real Democratic Party in power. Maybe next time.

More Shame

Yesterday was another bad-news day all the way around. By mid-afternoon all I wanted to do was go home so I could climb into bed and pull the covers and the pillows over my head. Perhaps the one item that especially punched my abdominal region was the news of a report which had issued suggesting that doctors and other medical personnel colluded with the Bush torturers by studying ways to make torture techniques more painful, and (presumably) more effective.

Even the New York Times was outraged by the "white paper" prepared by Physicians for Human Rights if today's editorial is any indication.

Now Physicians for Human Rights has suggested that the medical professionals may also have violated national and international laws setting limits on what research can be performed on humans. ...

The group’s report focused particularly on a few issues where medical personnel played an important role — determining how far a harsh interrogation could go, providing legal cover against prosecution and designing future interrogation procedures. The actual monitoring data are not publicly available, but the group was able to deduce from the guidelines governing the program what role the health professionals played, assuming they followed the rules. ...

The group concludes that health professionals who facilitated these practices were in essence conducting research and experimentation on human subjects. The main purposes of such research, the group says, were to determine how to use various techniques, to calibrate the levels of pain and to create a legal basis for defending interrogators from potential prosecution under antitorture laws. The interrogators could claim that they had acted in good faith in accord with medical judgments of safety and had not intended to inflict extreme suffering.

The report from Physicians for Human Rights is available for downloading here. It is far from complete or exhaustive, but it was hampered right from the start by the usual government response to requests for information. The papers sent to the group were heavily redacted by the official censors. Enough was there, however, for the group to reach at least some tentative conclusions. Medical personnel actively violated the Hippocratic oath to do no harm.

That the Bush government would subvert the physicians and other medical personnel for such horrifying human testing and that the physicians and medical personnel would acquiesce is bad enough. But there's more: no one in the all-new-and-improved government, whether in the White House or Congress, seems to care, which I, and the New York Times editorialist find just as profoundly disturbing.

The report from the physicians’ group does not prove its case beyond doubt — how could it when so much is still hidden? — but it rightly calls on the White House and Congress to investigate the potentially illegal human experimentation and whether those who authorized or conducted it should be punished. Those are just two of the many unresolved issues from the Bush administration that President Obama and Congressional leaders have swept under the carpet. [Emphasis added]

I have given up holding my breath waiting for this administration or this congress to do anything with respect to the crimes of the last administration and congress. Nearly 18 months into the new regime it has become clear that no one has the slightest inclination to delve into the most shameful period of our history.

Hope?

Change?

Not likely.

Poor Posture

I sometimes think that the center-left editorial board of the Los Angeles Times writes its editorials only after it sees how the readers react to a particular news story. Today's edition is a good example of that process.

The subject is the Senate Republican's dog-and-pony show over the past week while the Senate dealt with the reconciliation bill for Health Care Reform. Nearly every nationally-read newspaper contained articles about the process, including the L.A. Times. Today, the editorial board decided that the Republicans didn't behave too well.

...they trotted out more than 40 proposals over the last two days, about half of them aimed at overturning or gutting the measure that President Obama signed into law Wednesday morning. These included amendments to repeal the long-term care provision, cancel the new federal panels that will review healthcare quality and efficiency, and protect the excessive subsidies paid for Medicare Advantage plans. Those proposals had no chance of passing, but at least they were substantive.

The rest were exercises in political posturing. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) offered amendments to protect the gun rights of mentally incapacitated or incompetent veterans and bar sex offenders from obtaining Viagra through federal health programs. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) proposed to let companies deny health benefits to new hires picked up from the unemployment lines. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) called for protecting jobs in the banking industry that would be lost by switching to a less costly federal student loan program. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) wanted to waive a tax on exotic fuels for mobile mammography vans. And Sen. Robert F. Bennett (R-Utah) proposed to block same-sex marriages in the District of Columbia until residents there could vote on the issue.

Not bad, not bad at all, I must admit. Unfortunately, true to its "center-left" stance, the board then found the bright side of the whole exercise in Republican obstructionism: it could have been worse. The Republicans could have introduced more amendments.

Oh, please.

If the editorial board really intended to show how badly the Republicans behaved (something David Frum lost his job for pointing out), it should have cut to the conclusion:

...Republicans are more interested in a law they can campaign against than one we all have a stake in.

I guess this is LAT's version of "fair and balanced."

Me, I think the Republican's aren't the only ones with poor posture.

Unsurprising News

Confirming the obvious, a report from UCLA's Center for Health Policy Research notes that the number of those Californians without health insurance rose dramatically in 2009, according to the Los Angeles Times. The primary cause, of course, is the increase of the newly unemployed who counted on employer-provided insurance for coverage.

The numbers, however, are staggering:

The number of Californians without health insurance jumped to 8.2 million in 2009, up from 6.4 million in 2007, according to UCLA's Center for Health Policy Research.

Nearly 1 in 4 Californians under age 65 had no health insurance last year, the report found, as soaring unemployment propelled vast numbers of once-covered workers into the ranks of the uninsured.

People who were uninsured for part or all of 2009 accounted for 24.3% of California's population under age 65 -- a dramatic increase from 2007 driven largely by Californians who lost employer-sponsored health insurance, particularly over the last year. [Emphasis added]

If ever there were a good reason for a single payer system, these numbers provide it. People without insurance, especially those without a job, simply do not go to doctors for routine health problems. Instead, they wait until a condition is out of hand and then go to the nearest emergency room, thereby increasing the cost to local governments and straining ERs' ability to provide services.

But the unemployment rate is not the only cause for the increase in the uninsured. Because of the dire straits in which the state finds itself, Governor Schwarzenegger wants to cut funds for the program that covers poor children, essentially closing the door to new enrollees. The number of uninsured children rose to over 13% in 2009 and will no doubt rise above that this year. Trying to balance the budget on the backs of poor families is deemed more reasonable than raising revenues in this state.

Meanwhile, the Democrats in the 111th Congress dithers, straining mightily to pass a half vast health care bill which doesn't even include a public option.

Hard times, indeed.

Hopey Changey Stuff, Or ...

...Been down so long it looks like up to me.

Welcome to America, brown brothers and sisters, and welcome to the table, the one that you will set but will not be allowed to sit at. It's not your time.

Like African Americans, women, and gays, you will have to wait your turn, and that will be years from now because more important issues will take precedence. The economy which brought lower billion dollar profits to the mega-corps, health care reform to fully fund insurance companies, Wall Street bailouts for the dim bulbs who lost billions but were paid millions: they are more important than your piddling concerns about legalization of your status after you have paid huge amounts into government accounts you will never be able to access, or about deportation splitting your families at the drop of a hat at the whimsy of a county sheriff who is all about padding his hours on prime time television.

You are simply not that important, even though hundreds of thousands of you spent ten times that number to become citizens so that you could introduce this country to its latest citizens by electing a man who promised to give you a break, to level the playing field. He isn't interested, nor are those members of Congress you turned out for in November, 2008. They have a crisis, or several crises, or something, to deal with, and a bunch of Mexicans, Central Americans, Chinese, Ethiopians, Haitians, Armenians will have to do what my Polish ancestors and my colleague's Japanese parents did. Sit back and wait your turn.

Or you can do something about it, as Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-Chicago) hinted at recently in Los Angeles:

Many Latinos are furious at President Obama for failing to deliver on promises to push immigration reform legislation and may stay away from the polls during this year's midterm elections if they don't see concrete progress, including legalization of undocumented immigrants, a key Democratic legislator said Monday.

“People are angry and disillusioned,” U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Chicago) said in an interview with The Times.

Gutierrez said that Obama’s failure to push immigration reform was symbolized by his State of the Union address last Wednesday, when he devoted only 38 of about 7,300 words to the issue. The “throwaway line,” Gutierrez said, was the final straw for many activists who have been perturbed by the continued pace of deportations and other enforcement actions without concomitant progress in moving reform legislation forward.

Gutierrez said he was short at least 12 votes in the House to pass his immigration legislation, which would legalize most of the nation’s 12 million undocumented migrants, provide more family visas, increase worker protections and offer other reforms. He acknowledged that selling the bill to the American public at a time of double-digit unemployment would not be easy.

Of course it won't be easy, but it's not impossible. It took just a couple of brave students to sit in at a Woolworth's lunch counter and one woman to refuse to sit in the back of the bus to get the nation's attention. Two years ago, a million of you hit the streets in Los Angeles and got the same attention. That wasn't quite enough then, but it might be now.

A hundred thousand of you, along with those of us who know your time has come, showing up in Washington, DC might get a little attention. But if those hundred thousand of you make it clear that you are willing to stay home in November, 2010 rather than vote for the Democrats who sold you out in the 111th Congress maybe, just maybe, the Democrats will have to pay attention. Barbara Boxer is in for a serious fight. President Obama's "safe seat" in Illinois doesn't look so safe anymore. Harry Reid may find himself on the board of some mining company come January 2011.

Don't let them kid you: this is your time, just like it is the time for those of us who believe in the promise of this nation. We just have to stand up and shake our fists. Given the condition of the spines of those in elective office, that should be enough.

No, Nothing

I fear President Obama still doesn't get it. The Republicans have absolutely no intention of playing nice, not even after the president asked them to in the politest terms imaginable. The response is clear: "No, nothing." Whether the issue is jobs, the economy, health care, discretionary spending: the GOP continues to refuse each and every proposal put forth by the White House. That tactic extends especially to presidential nominations, as the Los Angeles Times noted in an editorial yesterday.

Law professor Dawn Johnsen was nominated by President Obama to head up the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, the office which advises the executive branch on the legality of White House proposals and actions. More than ten months ago, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to recommend the confirmation, but because Harry Reid didn't then have the magical, mystical 60th vote, the nomination was put on hold. Of course, that was before Arlen Specter switched parties as part of a deal to get him re-elected. Now he's willing to vote for Prof. Johnsen, but, unfortunately, Harry doesn't have the 60th vote again, and Senate Republicans are fully aware of that.

...[Republicans] now say they'll try to delay a second committee vote on Johnsen ... Citing "several incidents affecting our national security" -- including the attempted destruction of an airliner on Christmas Day -- they're again raising questions about "her dedication to aggressive executive action in national security matters." ...

Opposition to Johnsen isn't completely, or even primarily, about national security. Anti-abortion groups oppose the nomination because she served as legal director of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League from 1988 to 1993. But whether rooted in nostalgia for Bush terrorism policies or antipathy to her abortion-rights stance, the obstruction of this nomination is and always has been unjustified. The committee should promptly send it to the floor.

The moderate-left editorial board still doesn't get it. The opposition to Prof. Johnsen has nothing to do with her history. The president could have nominated John Yoo, who held that position under President Bush and wrote the legal memos justifying torture, or even Scott Roeder, currently on trial for the murder of a doctor who performed abortions, and the Republican "No, Nothings" would still balk.

And, sadly, the Democrats don't seem to have a clue on how to respond.

Apparently elections don't matter unless the Republicans win.

Rule 22

Someone, Thomas Geoghegan, finally explained just why Senate Rule 22 which requires 60 votes for cloture is not only a bad rule, it probably is unconstitutional. In his New York Times opinion piece he traces the history of the rule, which allows him to pinpoint just why the rule is contrary to the Constitution and the intentions of the founders, and then suggests several ways to roll it back. His characterization of the effects of the rule, moreover, shows just why so little of benefit to the nation as a whole comes out of that august body.

So on the health care bill, as on so many other things, we now have to take what a minority of an inherently unrepresentative body will give us. Forty-one senators from our 21 smallest states — just over 10 percent of our population — can block bills dealing not just with health care but with global warming and hazards that threaten the whole planet. Individual senators now use the filibuster, or the threat of it, as a kind of personal veto, and that power seems to have warped their behavior, encouraging grandstanding and worse.

It turns out that the "nuclear option" threatened by the 109th Congress as led by Republicans might have effectively turned things around, but it is clear that the threat was only that, a threat. Republican senators knew that rolling back Rule 22 would have lessened the power of individual senators of both parties, and nobody wanted to mess with those fiefdoms. Instead, lining up votes by bribery was considered to be a much more "collegial" approach, one that ultimately benefited both the Senate as a whole and the individual senators on the make and on the take, the public weal be damned.

Mr. Geoghegan's carefully reasoned essay should be required reading in civics classes. It also should be passed around the Senate, with a note suggesting that the public just might be ready to force one or more of Mr. Geoghegan's suggested remedies. The subject might not be as sexy as health care reform, but it certainly is one that affects each and every bill that comes out (or doesn't come out) of the Senate.

Some Good Things Happened

For all the kvetching and cavilling I've done about the White House and Congress in 2009, I have to admit that some good things did get done this year, or at least are in progress. David Lazarus, financial columnist for the Los Angeles Times, feels the same way and points to three areas in which we've made progress.

it was also an extraordinary year for consumers, with significant progress made in making banks play more fairly, reforming the healthcare system and improving product safety.

We may not get everything that we want. But the mere fact that all these things have gotten so much high-profile attention, and that at least a modicum of change seems likely across the board, underlines consumers' higher standing in public policy.

First, making the banks play fairly with respect to credit cards was a significant move:

The big win for consumers on the financial front this year was a revamping of credit card rules that introduce some much-needed transparency and fairness to the lending market.

The Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act, which President Obama signed into law in May, requires card issuers to give at least 45 days' notice of any significant change to their offerings, and to ensure that cardholders have at least 21 days to pay their bills each month.

It also prevents issuers from boosting interest rates in the first year after an account is opened and blocks banks from raising rates on existing balances.

Mr. Lazarus also points out that there are few more goodies consumers deserve with respect to the banking industry. Congress needs to crack down on bank overdraft procedures and put in place the new watchdog program President Obama suggests is needed, a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Banking lobbyists already have their knickers in a twist over both, but I suspect Congress will be working on both even if after the 2010 elections.

Health care reform, as Mr. Lazarus points out, is still a work in progress. First of all, the House and Senate bills have yet to be reconciled. Second, whatever emerges is going to be far less than what I and millions of other Americans wanted. Still, it's a start.

We may end up with a comprehensive, turbocharged overhaul of the healthcare system and something approaching universal coverage. Or we may end up with table scraps.

The important thing is that this is the furthest we've gotten on healthcare reform in decades, and the issue clearly isn't going away (like, say, Social Security reform, which has all but vanished from the legislative horizon).

Mr. Lazarus is clearly a glass half-full kind of guy, but he's right about the fact that it's been fifteen years since anyone in Washington has even thought about doing something about that 900 pound gorilla in the room.

Finally, and this is something I hadn't considered until reading his column this morning, Mr. Lazarus notes some advances in the consumer safety arena.

Clearly, there's still much work to do on the product-safety front. But that's not to say there weren't some pretty noteworthy advances this year.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission finally got a full-time leader. The position has been open since former President George W. Bush nominated a manufacturing-industry lobbyist for the job in 2007 who later withdrew from consideration once Congress started asking questions.

After remaining vacant for nearly three years, the commission's top spot was finally filled in May when Obama named Inez Tenenbaum to the job.

Moreover, this year saw a new law taking effect that significantly beefed up the Consumer Product Safety Commission and provided federal authorities with more resources for keeping unsafe goods off store shelves.

So, while it may have been a year of weak soup, at least there was some soup to be had. I'm still not thrilled with the Obama presidency or the 111th Congress, but a few good things did get done. I'll toast those few things on Thursday night.

Spooky Stuff

As the year winds down to a close, one thing the 111th Congress has not rushed to do (yet) is to extend certain provisions of the Patriot Act set to expire at the end of the year. What I suspect will happen is that in the next day or two, short-term extensions will pass which will enable Congress to revisit that detestable legislation in 2010. Hopefully the entire act will be reviewed and not just those set to expire.

An article in the NY Times gives some concrete reasons for why such a full-scale review is necessary.

In February, a Department of Homeland Security intelligence official wrote a “threat assessment” for the police in Wisconsin about a demonstration involving local pro- and anti-abortion rights groups.

That report soon drew internal criticism because the groups “posed no threat to homeland security,” according to a department memorandum released on Wednesday in connection with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The agency destroyed all its copies of the report and gave the author remedial training.

In March 2008, the office produced a “terrorism watch list” report about a Muslim conference in Georgia at which several Americans were scheduled to speak, even though it “did not have any evidence the conference or the speakers promoted radical extremism or terrorist activity,” and such speech is constitutionally protected, an internal report said.

And in October 2007, the office sent a report, “Nation of Islam: Uncertain Leadership Succession Poses Risks,” to hundreds of federal officials. Department guidelines had called for the files to be destroyed because the assessment of the group had lasted more than 180 days without uncovering evidence of potential terrorism.

As the article points out, all three reports and the files which generated those reports were ordered destroyed by DHS. While that is some comfort, it is cold comfort at best. First of all, I am not convinced that all traces of those investigations have disappeared. Somewhere there are files containing the names of subjects just waiting to be pulled up. And at least one of those reports was ordered destroyed after it had been sent to "hundreds of government officials."

Second, and perhaps even more important, the Patriot Act, in both its iterations, fostered an atmosphere in which such unlawful intelligence gathering was bound to happen, especially when the penalty for such snooping on citizens was nothing more than "remedial training." That means that such behavior will continue, especially since the current White House has done nothing concrete to ensure the behavior stops.

And that means that Congress should do the job by just repealing the Patriot Act. Of course, such a bold move is unlikely, given the current make-up of our national legislature, unless a few feet are held to the fire. One way to do that is to publish more articles like this one. Let's see if our press is ready to return to work.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

I don't know which surprises me more: the fact that both the Senate and the House bills on health care reform contain a "cost-saving" provision that will result in much higher costs to Medicare in the long run or the fact that the NY Times would point that out on the front page of today's edition. The provision in question would cut Medicare spending on home health care.

Now, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger just did the same thing to Medi-Cal (the state's Medicaid program), but he at least was honest enough to admit that the result would be a mass migration of beneficiaries from their own homes to nursing homes at a much higher cost to the program. His position was that the state could deal with that problem as it arose. Of course, Arnold is a lame-duck (term limits), so he doesn't have to worry about it. The 111th Congress isn't being quite so candid, as the NY Times article points out.

As they are across the nation, Medicare patients and nurses in this town in northern Maine are anxiously following the Congressional debate because its outcome could affect Medicare’s popular home health benefit in a big way. The legislation would reduce Medicare spending on home health services, a lifeline for homebound Medicare beneficiaries, which keeps them out of hospitals and nursing homes.

Under the bills, more than 30 million Americans would gain health coverage. The cost would be offset by new taxes and fees and by cutbacks in Medicare payments to health care providers. [Emphasis added]

The theory is that home health care providers would become more efficient to offset the loss in revenue. The problem with the theory is that home health care is not like an assembly line geared to mass production. A home health care worker can only deal with one patient at a time, and visits frequently take much longer than the time it takes to check a healing wound or listen to a heartbeat. What Congress is contemplating, while not as dramatic as the "death panels" the GOP fringes keep talking about, is taking money for services provided to elders and transferring it to underwrite the uninsured.

Home care shows, in microcosm, a conundrum at the heart of the health care debate. Lawmakers have decided that most of the money to cover the uninsured should come from the health care system itself. This raises the question: Can health care providers reduce costs without slashing services?

Under the legislation, home care would absorb a disproportionate share of the cuts. It currently accounts for 3.7 percent of the Medicare budget, but would absorb 10.2 percent of the savings squeezed from Medicare by the House bill and 9.4 percent of savings in the Senate bill, the Congressional Budget Office says. [Emphasis added]

More importantly, however, the "savings" will not be savings at all. With fewer to zero home health care visits, elders dependent on that health care to remain in their own homes or with their families will have to move into hospitals which can provide the needed care. The whole point of home health care is to save Medicare funds by allowing people to remain at home. Really, it's not that difficult a concept, unless, of course, one is a member of congress which has the best health care program around.

Morons.

The Little Tent

Most of my liberal friends agree that if unemployment remains at 10% or higher, banksters continue to get bailouts and high bonuses, and the health care reform bill as currently written get passed, the Democrats will lose plenty of seats in the November, 2010 elections. This will happen not because moderates and independents will flock to the GOP but because the liberal base will not only not underwrite the campaigns financially and volunteer in mass numbers, they won't even vote. The few liberals who disagree with this assessment, well, they're still naive suckers.

Still, the GOP is doing its part to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, so I guess there is some hope. Here's some background. After being rightfully humiliated by the loss of a decades-long reliably Republican congressional seat in New York, a group of Republicans on the RNC have come up with a "purity test" which candidates would have to pass in order to get campaign fund from the national party. The proposed test will be submitted for approval at an upcoming meeting of the national party officials in that exotic state, Hawaii.

I went to Hot Air, a conservative blog distinguished by the fact that it's not all that crazy to see what the test looks like. Here it is in bullet point fashion:

You need to say yes to eight if you want to get paid, per Reagan’s saying that anyone who agrees with him 80 percent of the time is his friend, not his opponent:

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;
(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;
(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;
(4) We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check;
(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;
(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;
(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;
(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;
(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing, denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and
(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership

Well, the list certainly doesn't contain any surprises, and parts of it are actually a little soft, given the current rhetoric being used by La Palin and suchlike. But it still is the kind of purity test which could give a few well-entrenched Republicans some trouble.

Even conservatives are a little uneasy with the test. Kathleen Parker sure is.

Just when independents and moderates were considering revisiting the GOP tent.

Just when a near-perfect storm of unpopular Democratic ideas -- from massive health-care reform to terrorist show trials, not to mention global-warming hype -- is coagulating over 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Just when the GOP was gaining traction after gubernatorial victories in Virginia and New Jersey . . . Republicans perform a rain dance at their own garden party.

Things were just going too well. ...

The so-called purity test is a 10-point checklist -- a suicide pact, really -- of alleged Republican positions. Anyone hoping to play on Team GOP would have to sign off on eight of the 10 -- through their voting records, public statements or a questionnaire. The test will be put up for consideration before the Republican National Committee when it meets early next year in Hawaii. ...

James Bopp Jr., chief sponsor of the resolution and a committee member from Indiana, has said that "the problem is that many conservatives have lost trust in the conservative credentials of the Republican Party."

Actually, no, the problem is that many conservatives have lost faith in the ability of Republican leaders to think. The resolutions aren't so much statements of principle as dogmatic responses to complex issues that may, occasionally, require more than a Sharpie check in a little square. [Emphasis added]

Oh, my! That's got to leave a mark.

So, if the Democrats somehow manage to squeak by in 2010, it won't be because of the sterling job the 111th Congress has done. It will be because the GOP took a page out of Newt Gingrich's play book, crumpled it up, and then re-jiggered it in Mad Hatter style. But that's what happens without reasonable restrictions on gun ownership. Stupid people shoot themselves in the foot.

Dissed Again

Doyle McManus is one of those Los Angeles Times columnists who makes me crazy. I usually don't like what he has to say, but I almost always have to agree that he's right. His latest opinion piece is a perfect example of the discomfort he causes in me.

The great healthcare debate hasn't been a triumph of mass politics on either side. Congress isn't being stampeded by the public into passing a bill -- and it's not being stopped by the public from passing one, either.

Instead, the debate has turned out to be a battle of old-fashioned special interests and parochialism. The most important players have been the insurance industry, the American Medical Assn., labor unions and the AARP, the senior citizens lobby. As for parochialism, last week's most blatant action may have been Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's insertion into the bill of a $100-million Medicaid bonus for Louisiana, whose senior senator, Mary Landrieu, has been one of the holdouts.

One reason for this resurgence of backroom politics is simple: Polls show the public to be fairly evenly divided on healthcare reform and understandably confused by its details. But there's also a deeper reason. In modern American politics, with its professional lobbyists and millions of dollars in campaign advertising, public opinion isn't always the most important thing. ...

For members of Congress who anticipate tough reelection campaigns, what's most important is not what voters think of healthcare proposals today, but which interest groups will spend money in their states to shape voters' perceptions next year. Groups on both sides, from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the unions, have already announced millions of dollars in planned advertising spending to do just that. [Emphasis added]

Now, I'm not certain that Mr. McManus is correct about the polls showing that people are evenly split on healthcare reform. They might be split at this point on the watered down, weak-for-consumers, great-for-insurers bills which are currently being offered, but I suspect that more than half of the American public desperately want health care to be less expensive and more accessible than it is right now. In other words, Americans want some of that change President Obama promised during his campaign for the White House.

That's not what we are going to get. The promises of a grass-roots level campaign for important issues were just that, promises. We should have expected that once President Obama turned over his email lists to the national party. We also should have expected that after the president invited the insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and medical equipment providers to the White House for their input at the very start of the process. They got the first and largest bite.

Lawrence R. Jacobs of the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs has an assessment that pretty well sums up the process:

"This is not being fought by the White House as a grass-roots campaign," Jacobs noted. "Civic engagement at the community level has largely been bypassed. . . . The Obama strategy has been to neutralize the stakeholders so they don't block a bill -- so they don't pull a Harry & Louise," a reference to the insurance industry advertising campaign that helped sink then-President Clinton's healthcare reform proposal in 1994.

In other words, it's politics as usual from the White House and the 111th Congress. The sad part is that we let them get away with it.