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Monthly Archives: January 2011

Vote to Repeal Health Care Reform Not Meaningless At All

20 Thursday Jan 2011

Posted by Craig in budget, Congress, Conservatives, health care, Politics, Republicans

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Boehner, CBO report, deficit, fever blisters, hangnails, health care reform, job killing, minor thing, Paul Krugman, Phil Gingrey, pre-existing conditions, repeal, Republicans, Steve King

My first inclination is to call the Republican vote to repeal health care reform yesterday meaningless, since it’s unlikely to even come up for a vote in the Senate and faces a certain presidential veto even if it did,  but it actually wasn’t meaningless at all. It told us everything we need to know about today’s Republican party. Since they offered no alternative, only a “no” to the current law, the message was loud and clear.

Republicans are in favor of denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. Republicans are in favor of Americans going bankrupt because of medical expenses. Republicans are in favor of insurance companies cancelling your policy for any reason, real or imagined, as soon as you get sick. Republicans don’t give a damn about the deficit. Republicans will lie about, distort, and ignore facts and figures that don’t support their positions.

Here it is straight from the horses mouths. Steve King sees the pre-existing conditions provision as a “minor thing”:

“Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) claimed Wednesday that he wasn’t worried about eliminating the popular preexisting conditions provision of the health care bill through the current GOP effort to repeal the law…This is too many pages, it’s too cluttered, it’s too big an argument to allow it to turn on one or two minor things.”

Phil Gingrey brushes aside the HHS report which says that up to 129 million Americans have a pre-existing condition that would deny them coverage, saying that number must include people with “hangnails and fever blisters” and that “if you believe those statistics, I’ve got a beach I can sell you in Pennsylvania.”

Gingrey is only following his leader. Speaker Boehner on the CBO report which says repealing health care will increase the deficit by $230 billion:

“…Boehner told reporters: “I do not believe that repealing the job-killing health care law will increase the deficit.” The budget experts are “entitled to their opinion,” added Boehner.”

The “job-killing” part of the statement is a distortion of another CBO report on whether or not health care reform would lead to job losses. But Republicans have never been ones to let facts get in the way of a good lie, See “death panels” and “pull the plug on Grandma.”

Paul Krugman gets down to the nitty-gritty:

“The key to understanding the GOP analysis of health reform is that the party’s leaders are not, in fact, opposed to reform because they believe it will increase the deficit. Nor are they opposed because they seriously believe that it will be “job-killing” (which it won’t be). They’re against reform because it would cover the uninsured — and that’s something they just don’t want to do. And it’s not about the money…the modern GOP has been taken over by an ideology in which the suffering of the unfortunate isn’t a proper concern of government, and alleviating that suffering at taxpayer expense is immoral, never mind how little it costs.”

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Just the Facts, Ma’am

11 Tuesday Jan 2011

Posted by Craig in Congress, Democrats, Politics, Republicans, Tea Party

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Andrew Klavan, City Journal, Congress, connection, federal crime, Giffords, Hateful Left, James Clyburn, Jared Lee Loughner, McClatchy, mentally ill, Mother Jones, mug shot, Patrick Kennedy, Robert Brady, Rush Limbaugh, Tea Party, threatening, Tom Cole, Wall Street Journal

As Sgt. Joe Friday used to say on the old Dragnet series, “Just the facts, ma’am.” The facts, as we know them, are these:

Jared Lee Loughner is a mentally ill young man. Even an untrained eye can take one look at this mug shot and plainly see that. Unlike noted ophthalmologists who like to play amateur psychiatrist on the side, I’ll leave the diagnosis of the nature and scope of Loughner’s mental illness for the experts in the field to decide.

There is no indication at the present time that Loughner’s motivation, as far as any motivation can be discerned from the actions of a mentally ill person, had anything to do with politics. Reports from various sources, such as McClatchy, the Wall Street Journal, and Mother Jones to name only 3, indicate that Congresswoman Giffords was the target dating back to a 2007 meeting similar to the one held this past Saturday in Tucson, during which Loughner asked Giffords a question, “What is government if words have no meaning?” Loughner didn’t get what he felt was a satisfactory answer. His friend, Bryce Tierney, recalls, “Ever since that, he thought she was fake, he had something against her.”

Despite claims from Republicans that Loughner is a “far left liberal” and from Democrats that he is a “Tea Party conservative,” neither appears to be the case. Although Loughner registered as an independent, he is currently on the “inactive” voter list in Arizona.

A few more facts brought to light in the aftermath of the shootings:

Nothing in our political discourse will change. Despite initial calls for a return to some degree of civility and a toning down of the incendiary rhetoric, Republicans will point fingers Democrats and Democrats will point fingers at Republicans. There is too much power and too much profit at stake to expect otherwise.

On both sides, we have politicians and pundits who ignore facts in pursuit of their political agenda, as usual. There’s former congressman Patrick Kennedy saying there’s an “obvious connection” between the rhetoric and the shootings. Rep. James Clyburn says there’s “no way not to make that connection” between Sharron Angle’s “Second Amendment remedies” statement and the events in Tucson. From what we know now, there is no way to make any connection.

On the other side there’s Rush Limbaugh’s diatribe against the “sick, desperate American Left” in which he blasts everybody from the sheriff of Pima County, who he calls a “fool,” to the usual Limbaugh targets which he calls the “Drive-by media.” There’s Andrew Klavan’s piece at City Journal ranting about “The Hateful Left” in which he runs the gamut from the “dishonest and increasingly desperate leftist media” to “the bankrupting of nations and states by greedy unions and unfundable social programs, the destruction of inner cities by identity politics, and the appeasement of Muslim extremists in the face of worldwide jihad.” Oklahoma Republican Tom Cole said, “I’ve never heard the Tea Party preaching violence; I’ve heard them preaching participation.” Apparently Rep. Cole missed this:


And this:

One more fact. Knee-jerk, finger in the wind politicians will be knee-jerk, finger in the wind politicians, no matter what.

“Shocked and saddened lawmakers grappled on Monday with the weekend shooting of one of their own, with some suggesting that new laws and regulations are needed to curb incendiary speech.”

New laws and regulations like this:

“Rep. Robert Brady (D-Pa.) reportedly plans to introduce legislation that would make it a federal crime to use language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening or inciting violence against a federal official or member of Congress.”

What could go wrong there?

White House Moving to Wall Street

04 Tuesday Jan 2011

Posted by Craig in economy, Goldman Sachs, Obama, Obama administration, Politics, special interests, Wall Street

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acquisition, bailout, Bush tax cuts, Chamber of Commerce, Ezra Klein, free trade, Gene Sperling, Goldman Sachs, India, JPMorgan Chase, Larry Summers, NEC, outsourcing, President Obama, South Korea, Wall Street, William Daley

Breaking news: In order to cut down on travel time through the revolving door for President Obama’s outgoing and incoming team of  advisers, the White House is moving from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Here’s the new location:


Might as well be:

“President Barack Obama is considering naming William Daley, a JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive and former U.S. Commerce secretary, to a high-level administration post, possibly White House chief of staff, people familiar with the matter said.

[…]

After serving as president of SBC Communications for more than two years, he joined New York-based JPMorgan, the second- biggest U.S. bank by assets, in 2004, serving as Midwest chairman and the bank’s head of corporate responsibility.”

Corporate responsibility. Like a 25% increase in outsourcing to India in 2009. Like using the $25 billion in bailout money that was intended to loosen up lending to become “more active on the acquisition side.” That kind of “corporate responsibility?”

Oxy (clap clap clap) moron (clap clap clap). Oxy (clap clap clap) moron (clap clap clap).

Why Daley?

“The administration is seeking to repair relations with the business community after coming under fire from industry groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The nation’s biggest business lobbying group opposed Obama’s health-care and financial-regulatory overhauls and committed $75 million to political ads in the midterm congressional elections, mainly directed against Democrats.

…Obama is generating more optimism among corporate executives after a series of actions and overtures, including a deal to extend the Bush-era tax cuts, efforts to boost exports such as a U.S.-South Korea free-trade agreement, and a loosening of controls on some technology sales.”

Well isn’t that just wonderful. Makes me feel all warm inside.

Then there’s the search for someone to replace Larry Summers as head of the National Economic Council (NEC):

“…it seems that the shortlist to replace Larry Summers at the NEC has been whittled down to three men — Gene Sperling, Roger Altman, and Richard Levin…The…notable characteristic of the three is that they’re all multi-millionaires with close ties to Wall Street. None more than Altman, of course, who has his own bank. But Levin is on the board of American Express, which paid him $181,362 in 2009, and where he has shares and “share equivalent units” worth $539,000.”

That leaves Gene Sperling, currently one of Geithner’s underlings, and the person who is reportedly the leading candidate for the job:

“Goldman Sachs paid Sperling $887,727 for advice on its charitable giving. That made the bank his highest-paying employer. Even Geithner’s chief of staff Patterson, who was a full-time lobbyist at the firm, did not make as much as Sperling did on a part-time basis. Patterson reported earning $637,492 from Goldman Sachs [in 2008].”

Ezra Klein:

“It is very hard to believe that Goldman Sachs wasn’t attempting to buy influence with a politically savvy economist who had good relations — and would later go to work for — the incoming Democratic administration.”

More on Sperling:

“…he has played key roles crafting the administration’s economic policies, most recently in forging Obama’s compromise with Republican leaders to extend the 2001 and 2003 income tax cuts.”

Just peachy.

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