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There was a captain with whom I served in the Army who might be the dumbest human being I have ever met. Moreover, he was positively the most egotistical man I have ever met. The combination would have surely gotten people killed had the Russians and East Germans ever crossed the border. He lacked respect for non-commissioned officers. He could not read a map. He regularly sucked all the motivation from my soldiers. It was a constant battle to respect the two bars on his collar. It was a constant battle to maintain my soldier’s respect our commander. It was made worse by his lack of respect for his chain of command.
At the end of the day however, I always waded through his crap with the respect his office deserved. I ALWAYS addressed him as sir.
Tonight on live national television in the hallowed halls of Congress someone called the President of the United States a LIER. Those halls have seen wars from without and wars from within. In those halls, good men and women who we elected have discussed the bill of rights, war, civil war, slavery, women’s suffrage, terrorism and impeachment. Those men and women were just as diametrically opposed as they were tonight yet, people didn’t call each other liars. They especially did not call the President of the United States a liar to his face.
I have disagreed with Presidents. I have been violently opposed to the policies of many Presidents. A certain recent President who defamed the house we let him borrow made me both livid and sad at the same time. After all, the White House was never designed to be the President’s sex palace. I never called him a liar.
Maybe I am being over sensitive but, I believe a Congressman who believes it is ok to call the President of the United States a liar under these circumstances has no capacity for compromise or moderation. I believe his constituents should be embarrassed. I think all Republicans should demand an apology in writing tomorrow.
Shy of that demand for an apology and a rethink by conservatives of how the public trust should affect their behavior, I am sad for our country tonight. I wonder if the Congressman and those who support him are capable of the civility required to run this country. I wonder what other things the same rationalization which allowed the Congressman to call the President a liar, will allow he and his supporters to do.
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What the crap are some Roman Catholic Bishops thinking when they decided this week to help legislate healthcare reform. When Archbishop Joseph Naumann and Bishop Robert Finn wrote a joint pastoral statement on the subject this week, they sounded more like some right-wing think tank than spiritual leaders. This is in spite of the Associated Press reporting the letter “was not meant to scuttle reform or help Republicans.” Naumann and Finn were not alone. Many other Catholic Bishops who agree seem to also be more worried about costs and out-year deficits than morality. Naumann and Finn write:
The writings of recent Popes have warned that the neglect of subsidiarity can lead to an excessive centralization of human services, which in turn leads to excessive costs, and loss of personal responsibility and quality of care.
If Bishops were concerned about abortion issues or end of life issues, I could understand why they would be obligated to give guidance on the morality of such sections of the legislation. I however, think they should rethink their political stance. Centralization may be producing better results than they might think.
Since the bishops are now policy wonks and have mentioned Medicare insolvency by 2019, I am confused by what is said later:
A hasty or unprincipled change could cause us, in fact, to lose some of the significant benefits that Americans now enjoy, while creating a future tax burden which is both unjust and unsustainable.
The key to Medicare solvency and our nation’s ability to reduce its debt is the reduction of exploding healthcare costs. They mention the exploding costs while seeming to advocate the status quo. They are also silent regarding healthcare profiteers and what I believe are immoral profits by insurance companies and pharmaceuticals. Protecting the status quo for profiteers is sadly what right-wingers do. These Bishops and their supporting peers seem to have caste their lot in with the right wingers. They latch on to a few items in a bill which has not even been voted out of committee in the Senate and try to scare us to death about healthcare reform. Unlike the right wing politicians however, they do this with the vestiges of the Roman Catholic Church.
The moral authority of the Roman Catholic Church can be a powerful catalyst for change. Archbishop Desmond Tutu helped bring down Apartheid and Pope John Paul the Second helped bring down the Soviet Union. This power however, brings with it, at a minimum, a social responsibility. Using the church’s clout to make political hay seems beneath the Bishops. Maybe they should keep in mind the Catholic Church has also been a part of other governments in history with less than stellar results.
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This week I attended a town hall meeting in Florence, Alabama hosted by my “Democratic” Congressman Doctor Parker Griffith (D? –AL). I think someone handed him the wrong talking points because for a minute I thought I might have stumbled into a town hall hosted by Representative Trent Franks (R-AZ). It was all there. He promised he would support no public plan. He went on to tell us tort reform and insurance across state lines would fix our healthcare ails. In a nutshell, he told us 85 percent of us were happy with our healthcare and it was a matter of tweaking the system. He said all this after beginning the conversation so beautifully. He began by telling us about a woman he had treated for cancer too late.
As he relayed the all too common story woman with a master’s degree who had lost her job and health insurance, I thought about the good a choice north Alabama had made by electing a doctor to Congress in the midst of a healthcare debate. He told us how she waited because of the lack of insurance as the lump to grew in her breast, I thought he would be tired of dealing with mountains of paperwork from insurance companies. I thought he would be tired of low Medicaid reimbursements and how the healthcare profiteers rob badly needed dollars from the system for obscene profits. I thought he would want to get rid of incompetent doctors who smear his profession. I thought there would be well planned attacks on problems of the uninsured, bad doctors, low Medicare reimbursement and healthcare profiteers.
Instead, we were told our healthcare system needed only to cover a few more Americans with an intellectual appeal only Rush Limbaugh could love. He told us it was Henry Waxman’s fault that we did not have a good house bill.
To be sure, many in the red-state right-wing crowd cheered. He was giving them what they wanted. Those in the crowd had heard weeks of lies and some were still mad about President Obama being elected. He told them exactly what they wanted to hear. It’s what it takes to win elections, right?
Maybe his election as a Democrat was a calculation. Since there was apparently little difference between he and his right wing challenger, maybe he decided the coattails of President Obama were just enough to push him over the edge.
President Obama is on the edge of historic healthcare reform and his biggest challenge may be those right-wing wannabes in his own party. I am beginning to understand how consensus is fleeting in Washington, especially when supposedly moderate “Blue Dogs” sound more like right wingers. I would have assumed a Blue Dog would have at least mentioned cost containment.
Griffith’s right wing stands weren’t limited to healthcare. He told us the first consideration in immigration reform would be to “shut down that border”. I am sure he didn’t mean the Canadian border. Oh, wait, maybe he wasn’t talking about immigration at all. Perhaps he referred to shutting the Canadian boarder to drug imports.
It would seem the Blue Dog’s have collectively decided to be a part of the no crowd. Instead of being the moderates they hold themselves out to be and legitimately trying to reduce healthcare costs, they have decided to stop any real reform. I hope they reconsider because the out-year deficits which they crow about so much could be greatly reduced if they decide to be part of the solution instead of the problematic no crowd.
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Talking heads all over the news shows today eulogized healthcare reform. Many were right-wing Republicans with crappy grins on their faces. A few were liberal Democrats who think the President should ram legislation through which includes a public option. They feel this should be done with the reconciliation process designed for votes on budgets. The reconciliation process would allow no debate or amendments and pass with fifty-one votes. Shy of the reconciliation option, liberal Democrats would rather have no legislation at all.
During the President’s vacation I think he should consider a process he talked about in his campaign.
September 8th, President Obama should publicly invite the Speaker of the House, House Minority Leader, House Majority Leader, House Minority Whip, a spokesman for the Blue Dog Coalition, Senate Majority Leader, Senate Minority Leader, Senate Majority Whip, Senate Minority Whip, Chairmen of the five committees who have heard testimony on healthcare legislation and the ranking members of those committees to the White House. He should call C-SPAN and tell them the entirety of the proceedings will be on air. He should instruct both parties to have, in hand, a real plan for fixing healthcare. The plan should include numbered priorities. The meetings should begin on the 10th.
Neither party should have trouble meeting the deadline of the 10th because, according to their interviews, they have all the answers. The President should play the honest broker and alternate from one party priority to the other. No stakeholders like the insurance companies, doctors or pharmaceuticals should be there. They have already spread enough money around to the attendees. The stakeholder voices have been heard loud and clear.
Clearly, this meeting will be manageable because only twenty people will be in attendance. If the President has other pressing business, he should be excused and Vice-President Biden may stand in his place. Otherwise, attendees will be excused only to eat and sleep. No staff will be allowed. Questions for staff and their responses will be read allowed and posted on the internet. No communication with lobbyist should be conducted in the halls during bathroom or lunch breaks and phone call logs should be published while the members are at their residence.
The Blue Dog Coalition will be there in a non-voting advisory capacity only. Each priority will be voted on. All ties will result in both parties returning with alternatives to the proposed legislation which created the tie.
C-SPAN should split screen the person speaking with their top twenty campaign donors. They should also give the topic of discussion along with the speaker’s name and state. Side negotiations should also be televised on one of the other C-SPAN networks. C-SPAN should also rerun the program in its entirety overnight.
No one should be dismissed until a concurrent bill is agreed on.
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Some of the people who have helped form opinion on the healthcare debate apparently do not believe what they are saying.
It makes me cringe when normally reasonable people quote me something said on The Glen Beck Show. I cringe because it is just that, a show. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ed Schultz and Bill Moyers are interested in something beyond the truth. Granted Moyers is more cerebral than the rest but, he pushes an agenda like no other. No one really knows their motivation. I can tell you however, they are not really interested in hashing out the problems of the day. I think the fictional President Andrew Shepherd said it best:
…whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you who’s to blame for it.
This is not a movie or a sideshow for entertainment purposes. Healthcare spending threatens our economy and our very democracy.
A democracy depends on an educated or at least aware electorate. Do your part. Read the bill(s). Better yet, go to moderate websites like this one and ferret out some real information. Start with the Congressional Budget Office. The problem with some Americans is that they are too lazy to read the charts and graphs. They like their politics simple. The “Liberal good, conservative bad,” absolutist approach is the easy way to take a position on any question. Just be careful who installs your label.
Asking an entertainer to label an idea is dangerous and beneath the American people. We have reached an age where popularity has been confused with wisdom and knowledge. Because an entertainer says so, some have attended town hall meetings with doctored pictures of the President of the United States sporting a Hitler mustache. Does anyone really believe Obama is/was/want’s to be Hitler? He is trying to solve a problem. He needs our help.
The President seems to be getting little help from Capitol Hill. I have a feeling there are a few lawmakers who are less certain about their absolutist approach than Glen Beck. I think, as I have blogged before, many are motivated purely by political self preservation and campaign contributions. Those lawmakers need our help too. They don’t need Hitler pictures and shouting matches. They need a real effort, on our part, to understand the issues and discuss them intelligently. They certainly won’t be helped by a citizen regurgitating the view of an entertainer who may not believe his own propaganda.
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Today, my six year-old daughter told a lie. It’s pretty easy to catch her in a lie at her age. The funny thing is how her mom and I give her an opportunity to tell the truth and faced with no TV, desert or not having friends over, she unexplainably sticks to her guns. She continues to tell the lie at her peril. It’s almost as if she believes her telling the same lie over and over will make it the truth. There are politicians in the health reform debate who also seem to have my daughter’s mentality. The problem with their lies is that so far these politicians have not gotten as much as a “time out.”
The problem with giving the former Lieutenant Governor of New York, Betsy McCaughey, the time out she deserves is there will be too many others in the time out chairs. It will be more like party.
A time out is supposed to be a time of quiet reflection on breaking the rules. A child’s life is so full of other things; a parent must slow the child down and make him or her think about the rules and why they are important. McCaughey needs a time out because she told a whopper on Senator Fred Thompson’s radio show on July, 16th. According to factcheck.org she said:
“the Congress would make it mandatory … that every five years, people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner, how to decline nutrition, how to decline being hydrated, how to go into hospice care … all to do what’s in society’s best interest … and cut your life short.”
The bill said none of that hogwash. The bill was designed to only pay for end of life counseling if someone wanted it. The bill went on to explain what end of life counseling was. AARP was kind enough to call what McCaughey said a “misinterpretation.” At my house, we call it a lie. Moderates everywhere applaud discussion and debate but, this lady apparently subscribes to the “let them eat cake” brand of healthcare we have today. Moreover, she will obviously tell any lie to keep the status quo. It is hard to have a discussion with someone who we can not trust to tell the truth.
My theory of telling a lie enough times to make it truth is also in play in this discussion. Representative John Boehner (R-OH) and Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) have also parroted many of the same lies McCaughey began in July. They tell us the legislation “encourages” doctors to force seniors to literally sign their lives away. Why didn’t they just tell the truth and say McCaughey’s assertions were inaccurate? Why perpetuate complete lie?
I have not yet figured out why my daughter tells a lie but, I think I know the motivation of the three public liars I have pointed out in this article. The intent is to create mayhem, cut off legitimate debate and finally, to kill reform. If you have watched TV news lately you might agree they have done a pretty good job.
Even though my daughter feeding the cat is not that big a deal, around here, a lie is a lie. In a family, we rely on telling the truth. In Washington, they call it something else like spin or misinterpretation. Around here, you get the TV taken away, no dessert or a time out. Maybe McCaughey and the others should have an old elementary school time out. Maybe some time to think about integrity and why we as a society reward truth tellers while dismissing liars will do her some good. Apparently, she knows we give all politicians a pass on lies so there wouldn’t be much to think about.
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When the Senator from South Carolina, Jim DeMint, told the group Conservatives for Patients Rights,
“If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him,”
most pundits and others passed the comment off as pure politics. I wish it were just politics. When I look at DeMint’s top twenty donors I begin to believe DeMint is using politics to take care of his campaign donors. If you look at his top twenty according to www.opensecrets.org you might begin to get another picture also.
The donor picture begins with the Club for Growth at 70 thousand. This is a right-wing bunch who believes in “freedom” among other things. DeMint and the Club for Growth using the word “freedom” is a little like yelling ice cream at a day care. I guess the implication is to disembowel the rest of us of our fondness for tyranny. The Scana Corporation, a utility, comes in second with 53 thousand. I don’t think we need to guess where he stands on climate change. Third on the list at 32 thousand is Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, LLP. On their website they say:
Our attorneys guide healthcare providers, healthcare service companies, and investors through the sensitive hurdles and strict scrutiny of governmental and societal factors faced by the industry
I guess one way for healthcare profiteers to negotiate government’s strict scrutiny is to donate to a senator. Fourth on the list at 27 thousand is AT&T. I wonder how he voted on the keeping the phone companies from getting sued for wiretapping. Fifth on the list is Edens & Avant at 19 thousand. They own 130 shopping centers on the east coast. At sixth, eighth, ninth and twelfth were Cancer Centers of the Carolinas, US Oncology, Blue Cross/Blue Shield and United Health Group, respectively, for around 63 thousand dollars. Since they are second only to the right-wingers, I think I would be safe to say the healthcare industry helped DeMint get elected. I guess he feels like he owes them something. Maybe if he uses words like “freedom” to tell conservatives they can politically finish the President, he can motivate conservatives to kill health reform. Maybe if he delivers, he will have settled his debt.
To be sure, I may have been a little hard on Senator DeMint. Campaign finance is just too tempting. As a disclaimer, I must refer you to a previous article and tell you there are left wing DeMints too. All of them are in the pockets of those who would prefer to continue to profit from our literal misery. The forces aligned against healthcare reform are very good at the money game. They have one win under their belt and are pretty cocky. Since they only have to create enough doubt about a plan to maintain the status quo, I guess I would be pretty cocky too.
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Today a very good friend of mine invited me to Washington for a protest against healthcare reform among other things organized by Tea Party people. I told my friend I did not like runaway spending but, I felt something had to be done about healthcare. My friend is a very intelligent person who is always open to intelligent debate. Last week I would have told him the cost cutting in healthcare reform would decidedly reduce government expenditures in the long run.
I no longer have the luxury of the cost cutting debating point in light of last week’s Congressional Budget Office Report.
Today President Obama blamed the lack of Senate healthcare reform legislation on politics by people like Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC). I doubt DeMint’s motivation is primarily politics and there will be more on that in another article. I however, believe President Obama needs a little soul searching and possibly a new game plan on healthcare reform. So far, the President has put House Committee Chairmen in charge of writing healthcare legislation. The Chairmen include Henry Waxman (D-CA), Charles Rangel (D-NY) and George Miller (D-CA). Waxman has received more than 66 thousand and his committee has received more than 1.3 million dollars in campaign contributions from insurance and health interest groups. Rangel comes in at 70 thousand and his committee at 1.8 millon. The list is similar for both the Senate and House Committees who are drafting the legislation. Republicans seem to have the edge but, democrats too have received boatloads of cash from groups who would really like healthcare reform to go away.
That’s why the President needs to go away and rethink his approach to this issue he says he cares so much about. Instead of allowing legislators who have monetary motives to craft healthcare reform legislation which does not reform, he should do it himself. He should publicly propose amendments which may actually shift some of the obscene profits of the healthcare industry to covering all Americans. He should use his bully pulpit and notorious arm twister, Rahm Emanuel, to shame the legislative industry stooges into actually reducing potentially catastrophic spiraling healthcare costs.
Reducing the cost of healthcare, believe me, is the key to winning the argument with well-informed and well-meaning moderates and independents. These citizens legitimately want to know why adding another trillion dollars to our deficit is a good idea. The only answer to the question is saving money later.
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I know it will surprise you but, Democrats want credit for healthcare reform. While I give you a few minutes to collect yourself I will drop another bomb. They feel any reform which does not contain a Public Medicare style plan will not give the Democratic Party proper credit. Additionally, they would like to make the left wingers happy by providing a Medicare style plan which could be converted into Single Payer, although it will never be.
While you are digesting all of the new information, I would like to suggest what might work better. Give the Republicans their health insurance cooperatives.
If the Democrats are really interested in making our healthcare system better, should they care what the plan is called? In general, I would say a plan, let’s call it the I’m Tired of Getting Screwed by the Healthcare Establishment Cooperative (or ITGSHEC for short) should have four functions:
1. To reduce healthcare costs
2. To stop rationing for profit
3. To change the healthcare fee structure so it rewards health instead of sickness
4. To allow citizens economic independence from the current healthcare system
If the entity could perform the above functions, who cares what it is called. Democrats should take the power given to them in the last election and actually fix the broken system. The electorate is pretty smart. We can figure out who is really on our side. We can go to the websites and find out which politician is in the pocket of the Healthcare establishment. If you check your favorite Democrat on the linked site, you might find the Democrats are not always on the best side of the healthcare debate. Perhaps the Medicare style public plan is a way to get real reform killed.
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Yup, many Republicans feel a handout to the insurance industry will fix our problems. These are the same companies whose profits have grown by 43 percent over the last five years. This plan is funny because Republicans usually feel more tax money is not the answer. Right wing Republicans don’t even want to offer a government option. They justify this denial by saying the insurance companies will go out of business if they have to compete with a non-profit government sponsored version. They tell us semantics are important and insurance cooperatives would not doom our current system. Most of the co-ops I have seen are non profit too. Semantics don’t seem that important unless they plan to water down any bargaining power a co-op would have thereby killing any cost reduction.
While they kill any hope of cost reduction, they don’t tell us the insurance companies will get the mother of all windfalls when healthy young people are forced to buy insurance from them. This is because covering the 47 million uninsured will begin with forcing these rainmakers to buy insurance. Republicans will do this while they give government premium subsidies for people who might actually get sick. Instead of spreading the risk, which insurance was designed to do, healthy people will only add to health care insurance company profits while sick people are covered by the government. Somehow, as usual, the Republican Party has been taken over by the right-wingers. They want so bad to have a plan which seems to be a free market approach, they are willing to provide enough government intervention to make someone unfairly rich. They seem to want to continue to redistribute as much wealth as possible to the insurance companies.
The other unintended consequence of insurance co-ops will be cross state regulation. Since Republicans want people to organize across state lines in cooperatives they have cut out the existing system of state insurance regulators. You can bet Democratic control of the House, a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and control of the White House will not let that happen. Regulation is coming and it will be the kind of big brother federal regulation from Washington which conservatives say they hate. Again, Republicans gone around the mountain to placate the right-wing fringe of the party. Republicans will get us more government for their trouble.
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