Ebenezer’s Return

     Hey!  I think something may have happened in the Senate today…I’m hearing they passed some kinda legislation.  Some Republican, whose last name rhymes with” Complainer”  called it bad names, which means it must be good for America. Good enough for me.  He said of it:

Not even Ebenezer Scrooge himself could devise a scheme as cruel and greedy as Democrats’ government takeover of health care

    I thought Ebenezer Scrooge ”knew how to keep Christmas well if any man alive possessed the knowledge.”   Well… by the end of the book he did anyway.  And isn’t how you end at least as important as how you begin?  And who is being the Humbug here?  Why do you Hate, Rep. Boehner?  You are lying about this bills adding to the debt when it doesn’t, talking about it being a takeover of health care when it doesn’t, and saying the rest of the bill will be “hammered out in secret” when that is clearly not the case.  Who’s the Ebenezer Scrooge here?

    John Boehner is in fact Rep. Bah Humbug from The Tanning Salon, and he’s the only one who doesn’t know it. Watch a viddy with George C. Scott in “A Christmas Carol”

   

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    Hugs aren’t always a good thing.  Proof?

     A crazy woman, who apparently wanted to “hug the Pope” was arrested, as she broke through a security barrier, rushed the pope and managed to pull the man to the ground, even with a security guard draped on her.   An 87 year old french cardinal broke his leg falling away from the melee,  although the good news here is that the Pontiff, unhurt, went on with the procession and said mass.  The woman is currently in the custody of Vatican police.  Maybe she was thinking about this?  Who knows…

      First Italian security lets through a man who flattens Prime Minister Berlusconi with a statuette, and now a woman attempts to hug the pontiff with such vigor that bones are broken. One wonders how much training their security officers get. 

      Silly humans.  People are strange, even on Christmas. 

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      I’m watching Santa on Norad’s Santa tracker.  Apparently at 10:00pm New York time, The big fat red bastard is currently flying over greenland.  Two minutes ago he was over Rio De Janeiro.  The man has some hella afterburners on that sleigh.  No wonder Norad follows him.  They wanna find out how he gets that sleigh flying that fast. 

    Maybe it’s all the blow those reindeer do.  Who knows? 

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    I’m done.  Later.

Today’s nuggets, from Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol”, Via wikiquote:  There are some upon this earth of yours,” returned the Spirit, “who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.

Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume themselves on being acquainted with a move or two, and being usually equal to the time-of-day, express the wide range of their capacity for adventure by observing that they are good for anything from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter; between which opposite extremes, no doubt, there lies a tolerably wide and comprehensive range of subjects

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!

Healthy Disrespect

    

    It looks, just by the words of by Sens. Nelson and Lieberman here from this morning on “Face the Nation” that  Health care reform, at least in it’s current form, is dead.  Nelson can’t abide a bill without strong abortion language, and Lieberman is a demanding lil S.O.B., and not only does he want the public option dead, he wants class act, a national insurance trust which would give a cash benefit for those who are “functionally disabled”, done away with, and he dislikes the medicare buy in. 

    Dammit, if this dumbass scuttles health care reform, he has to lose his job as head of the Senate homeland security committee, at the very least. THIS kind of thing would not happen if we only had a better handle on lobbyists and their money.  Lieberman, like is fairly well known, is in the tank for the pharmaceutical companies, he has, after all, taken millions of dollars from insurance companies and those who work with them.  Go to opensecrets.org and you’ll see who gives him the most money. Between lobbyists, health, and the insurance industry, he has gotten almost $16,000,000 in contributions over his career from these groups.

    Curiously, Sen Nelson, while not getting anything like the money that Sen. Lieberman has, has the same top 3 contributing sectors, who have given him over half of the money he has received over his career, over $5,000,000 in contributions.  They’ve been bought, regardless of how they vote, they’ve been bought.  Others have actually made money like Sen. Lieberman has and are on the other side of this debate, but all that means is that Joe is easily bought, more pliant for whatever reason.  And even if it isn’t true and his motives are entirely pure, the picture of impropriety that is created by the actions taken here makes a joke of everything we as a free people stand for.

    Judges have to recuse themselves when they have a vested interest in a case, when they have skin in the game, as the saying goes.  Where are the laws that put the same level of necessity of responsibility on our legislators that is necessary of our judges? Why has there been no outcry for that?  All we really want is accountability from our duly elected representatives, and without some kind of protection from monied interests, we will never truly have that.

     Barring that, we the people have no way to buy votes like these industries can do ourselves, so where does that leave us?  Stuck adrift on a sea of lobbyist money, drowning or floating at their behest.

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   Larry Summers says the recession is over.  Nice.  I think we should wait to see the numbers get better, for companies to start hiring again before we start to make statements like that.  There is a difference between only losing 11,000 jobs in a  month, and gaining thousands of jobs. 

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     A C-span viddy from Thursday with Elizabeth Warren.  I like Liz, she’s good people.  She needs to find a more prominent role in the Obama Administration.  Like maybe Larry Sanders job. 

   

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   That’s about it from here.  Later!

Today’s nuggets, By Peter Drucker, via Wikiquote:  what’s absolutely unforgivable is the financial benefit top management people get for laying off people. There is no excuse for it. No justification. This is morally and socially unforgivable, and we will pay a heavy price for it.

Political freedom is neither easy nor automatic, neither pleasant nor secure. It is the responsibility of the individual for the decisions of society as if they were his own decisions–as in moral truth and accountability they are.

The better a man is, the more mistakes will he make–for the more new things he will try. I would never promote a man into a top level job who had not made mistakes, and big ones at that. Otherwise he is sure to be mediocre.

Minor error and single sentence re-write 12:30 pm 12/14/09.  Grammatical error fixed, 2:46pm, 12/18/09

Rep. McMahon’s Response

     Good Afternoon one and all(all 3 of you, lol) A month ago exactly the Health care bill passed the house of representatives by a relatively thin margin, 5 votes as I recall.  I wrote about it, live blogged it (sorta) and at the time I noted that My representative, Mike McMahon, a democrat voted against it.  This was how I spoke of it Nov. 9th:

And my representative, Rep. Mike McMahon (D) voted against. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I will wait until I hear why he voted against. If I find out he’s a blue dog, he will NOT get my vote come next election cycle. BLUE DOGS SUCK. I don’t want to find out that I actually voted for some half assed republican wannabe when I thought I was voting for a Democrat. THAT would piss me off. We’ll see. I’ll be contacting his office to find out what the hell is up with this vote, and will let you know what happens.

      and so I sent him an e-mail the contents of which are as follows:

Greetings, Rep. McMahon.

I have a few simple questions. Why did you vote against the Affordable Healthcare for America Act? Was there a specific portion of the bill that you didn’t like, or was it just wrong for America in your eyes? What turned you against it? Was there anything they could have done in congress but didn’t to get your vote on this bill? Are you a “blue dog” democrat?

I write a blog and told my readers I would ask you these questions. I would have written earlier, but i’ve been busy. Looking for work in this economy, after all, is in and of itself a full time job.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

         Well, guess what? Last Friday, he responded. Here is his response:

Dear Mr. Walsh,

Thank you for contacting me about health care reform.

Rep. John Dingell

On July 14, 2009, Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) introduced H.R. 3200, America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009. This bill was separately amended by the House Committees on Education and Labor, Energy and Commerce, and Ways and Means. On October 29, 2009, Rep. Dingell introduced a revised combination of these three different versions of H.R. 3200 as a new bill: H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act. H.R. 3962 passed the House on November 7, 2009 by a vote of 220-215. Similar health care reform legislation must now pass the Senate, the House and Senate bills must be reconciled, and then those changes must be approved by both chambers before a bill can be signed into law by the President.

As you may know, I recently voted against H.R. 3962. Although there are many important reforms included in H.R. 3962, I was unable to vote for this bill. This legislation contains many changes that I support. It allows individuals to keep coverage between jobs and allows young people to remain on their parents’ plans. It also bans insurance discrimination based on pre-existing conditions, and closes the Medicare “donut hole” that forces too many seniors to pay out of pocket for prescription drugs. However, I believe that the net negatives of this bill outweigh the positive effects for Staten Island and Brooklyn residents.

One thing is crystal clear: the need for health reform is urgent and indisputable. It is estimated that our country will be spending 1 out of every 5 dollars on health care by 2015. Americans are losing their health insurance at a rate of 14,000 people every day. Clearly the status quo is not a sustainable path. But our nation’s health care system impacts every single one of us, and accounts for almost one-sixth of our economy – so we need to get this right.

H.R. 3962 does not do enough to bring down costs for people who currently have health insurance. The rise of health care costs depresses wages and forces businesses to forego important investments. I also fear that the array of government programs created in H.R. 3962 may pave the way to increased taxes in the future.

The bill also would cut $170 billion from the Medicare Advantage program which serves approximately 40% of our district’s seniors, and could lead to significant monthly premium increases for Medicare beneficiaries. The hospitals in Staten Island are set to lose nearly $25 million in uncompensated care reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid. If such drastic cuts are made, the hospitals will struggle to survive, let alone be able to provide care to thousands of newly insured patients.

Please keep in mind that my vote on H.R. 3962 was not a vote against health care reform; it was a vote on one specific bill. I remain optimistic that with the House and Senate working together with the Obama Administration, we can achieve a bill that meets the goals of affordability, improved access and coverage, in a way that is also fiscally sustainable in the long-term.

Again, thank you for taking the time to contact me regarding this important issue. Please feel free to get in touch with my office in the future if I can be of any assistance to you on this or any other matter of concern. I hope you will find my website – www.mcmahon.house.gov – a useful resource for keeping up with events in Washington and the 13th District of New York.
Sincerely,

Michael E. McMahon
Representative for the 13th District of New York

     Mighty nice of him, seriously.  I wrote a senator once, not gonna name names, I didn’t even get a form letter back from the guy.  I respect the fact that he even took the time to have his office send out what looks like a letter put together by a himself (I’m being an optimist) or a staffer and given a signature after the fact.   But i also want to talk just for a sec about some stuff he addresses here. 

    I don’t know enough about the bill to know about the medicare reimbursements in detail, and the particular part about Medicare Advantage I am somewhat uncertain of.  What I can do is link to the legislation itself, go through a bit of it, and write about a few things, let’s start with one word.

Rep. Mike McMahon

    COULD.  It COULD lead to significant monthly premium increases. From what I can grasp about this legislation there is going to be every effort to make sure that the same quality care that Medicare Advantage now provides will continue, and will (section 1161 (o) in fact increase payments into the blended benchmark for qualifying plans by 1.5% in 2011, 3% in 2012, and 5% every year thereafter.

   Section 1181 (a)(7)(A) will increase initial coverage limits by $500.  There are decreases in out of pocket thresholds, there is an extension to the medicare senior housing plan, there is a Medicare part D(section 1182(g)(3)) discount of 50% on “qualifying drugs”

    Does that speak to the $170,000,000,000 cut in Medicare advantage? I believe it, to some extent does. 

   Now, am I the be all end all knower of all things medicare? No, not by a long shot, and I’m sure that bears out in some of what I’ve written, but I went through the bill, as thoroughly as I am able, and I saw nothing about  ”uncompensated care reimbursements” anywhere in the actual language of the bill. 

     Representative McMahon has his stated reasons for opposing the bill.  It is in fact good to see that he doesn’t dislike the concept of health care reform, and that he hopes that it can come out and benefit Staten Islanders and everyone else alike.  He says that it doesn’t do enough to address health care costs.  Fair enough, but that can be dealt with later, can it not? The bill can be amended after passage, this bill after all itself amends the Social security act, and since no legislation is perfect, it can be worked out at a later date, either in conference or in other legislation further on down the road. The one bit that gets me is this word that he tossed in the last sentence of the 4th paragraph of his letter.

   Fear.

   He FEARS tax increases may come about due to the array of government programs created by this legislation…

    He  fears taxes,  fights quality legislation meant to help the average person claiming it hurts them when it looks for all the world like it doesn’t, he likes many parts of the legislation but can’t vote for it… It saves billions, but not enough…   Damn it!  Ya know, as much as he has his head in the right place, I think he might be a blue dog! 

       Damn it!

Republicrat

       …and it was such a good idea too.    A viddy from earlier today, before the news on Health Care reform came out.

    

      It seems that Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada has finally gotten what he wants, something that resembles a consensus on Health Care legislation.  At the cost of the public option.  The liberals gave in to their more conservative counterparts,  saying that so long as other coverage options were available, and their were tighter restrictions on insurance companies, they could live with the result.

     Unfortunately that doesn’t guarantee that the bill will get the 60 votes necessary.  Ben Nelson, Republicrat from Nebraska has threatened to join a GOP filibuster if stronger Abortion language wasn’t placed in the bill.  Ben had an amendment of his that would do just that voted out of the bill today 54-45.

    So what does that mean? If Ben stays true to his word, that means that the public option has been abandoned essentially for nothing.  It means that all the hard work by Harry Reid, all the behind the scenes finagling between Mark Pryor and Chuck Schumer  and Sen. Rockefeller on this bill will have come to naught, all because of the bass ackward mindset of Ben Nelson, Republicrat. 

     Now I understand the need to be an independent player in politics.  I understand the need to bend to the will of the people.  And abortion IS an important subject, which needs to be addressed in any health care legislation.  But I think what Sen. Nelson here is doing is nothing short of hijacking the entire party, the entire nation, both parties, playing both ends against the middle for his own personal political gain. 

    Your amendment was defeated. You were given a chance, but simply didn’t have enough backing for your idea for it to get through.  Some days you can’t win, Ben, we understand.  Do what the rest of us do, Senator.  If you can’t win, lose.  

    Maybe the Democrats think they can get Sen. Snowe, Democlican from Maine, to vote for the bill and bypass Ben.  And maybe they think they can get ben to sign on without the his abortion amendment.  Would not surprise me if they threw Ben a bone($$$$$) in the legislation. 

   Either way this bring me to another point…

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   Republicrat.  Democlican.  Blue Dog Democrat.  Moderate Republican.  The parties are so similar to each other at times they seem indistinguishable from one another, because they’ve all been bought.  Yes yes, they play their roles well.  Republicans all for big business and the Democrats all for the protection of the Constitution, or if you are from the other side of the political spectrum, Democrats all for spending all of your money, and the Republicans all for fighting for your rights.  They are interchangeable. 

  

    That doesn’t mean there aren’t good people in the legislature.  There are.  But as time goes on, it seems as though that number gets smaller and smaller.  What it does look like is that with lobbying and moneyed interests still infesting Washington, that both sides of the aisle are lining up to get their slice of the pie. 

    Of the Money, for the Money, by the Money.  Capital M Money.  Not the few bucks you and I have in our pockets, but the MEGABUCKS that Goldman Sachs and McKesson and Exxon bring.  Lobbyists buying the votes, just like they have for years by putting money in the coffers of senators and representatives who may legislate bills that would directly impact their industries.  It makes a mockery of politics in America, and a pauper of the people.  It pisses on the Constitution, shits on the Bill of Rights and wipes its ass with the Declaration of Independence.

     We the people need to find a way to rid Washington of their corrupting influence.  THIS is perhaps the biggest blunder of the Obama Presidency, allowing this to continue, when he ran for President on a platform of change in Washington, of getting rid of the influence of lobbyists in Washington.  He KINDA got rid of the influence in the White House proper, passing a rule saying that no one who has lobbied for the last 3 years in a particular industry may do work for the White house relating to that industry….then almost immediately made exceptions. He has however done nothing to stem the tide of lobbyists buying our democracy, pulling the rug right out from under our feet.

    Sometimes, capitalism is evil.

    There oughta be a law…. you’ve heard that stock line a thousand times from a million people.  Never from me.  For a reason, I don’t believe there ought to be a law for everything.  That way lies madness.  But here I will deviate from my normal path and say it.

     There ought to be a law, prohibiting lawmakers from getting cash or favors, directly or indirectly, from lobbyists of any industry whatsoever.  We need untouchability on the part of our lawmakers, not transparency, a word you hear much from beltway insiders.  Transparency isn’t the key here, transparency only shows us that you have been bought and by who.  It doesn’t fix the problem.  What we need is a wall between corporate America and the Congress to keep our lawmakers honest, not a clear view of who has been bought.

    Pie in the sky bullshit, I know, not something you usually get from me.  But it would be nice though, wouldn’t it?  One can hope.

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That’s it from here.  Later!

Today’s Nuggets, Via wikiquote:  Talking to politicians is fine, but with a little money they hear you better.  Justin Dart

History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance.  James Madison

The main mark of modern governments is that we do not know who governs, de facto any more than de jure. We see the politician and not his backer; still less the backer of the backer; or, what is most important of all, the banker of the backer.  J.R.R. Tolkein

Do you really want to go there?

      

     I watched this viddy just to see what it was, then watched as Dacher Keltner began to talk about Charles Darwin and the concept of antithesis in nature.  I was hit with an almost immediate parallel.  A simple one, and perhaps not the best one, and it isn’t much of a stretch, but I’m tired, so you’ll forgive me.  There is a political variant to the Darwinian concept of antithesis, and it is playing in front of the entire nation every day. 

    And the stress reaction that Mr. Keltner speaks of, caused by the losses in the 2006 and 2008 election cycles has been playing off in front of the entire nation since that first series of losses of house and senate seats, as it did tonight in the talk of the Republican senators who spoke prior to the cloture vote to allow discussion of the $898,000,000,000 Health care bill.

    Read the CBO report on the bill here.

    The Republicans haven’t a leg to stand on, they have no legitimate arguments, so they use illegitimate arguments and attempt to pass them off as legitimate.  Examples include saying that medicare will be cut to the bone.  Untrue. Wasteful spending is trimmed, not ALL medicare spending.  If you have medicare, you are not in danger of having all your coverage cut and being set adrift by this legislation. But if you listened to the Republicans talk, anyone over 65 is in mortal danger… but that “danger” comes from government cutting wasteful spending in government programs….wait.  Weren’t Republicans for that idea at one point? 

     They talk of the great tax burden the bill creates…despite the fact that the taxes on the wealthiest The President gets away on a technicality here.  He said no family making less than $250,00 a year will see a tax increase of any kind, and in this bill their is a  tax added in the form of a hospital tax that will be paid by any individual making over $200,000 a year, or family over $250,000 a year.  The size of this tax increase?

    0.5%

    Sucks, but that .5% tax raises, from next year to 2019, over $53,000,000,000 in new tax revenue to help pay for the bill.  And if you republicans who are reading this winced when you saw that and said “How can he talk so cavalierly about raising taxes?”  Well, party of Reagan disciples, what party was it that made the AMT tax the onerous burden that it is today? Do you know what party he came from? Do you remember his name?

      It was Republican Ronald Reagan. 

     Ouch. 

     A .5% hospital tax on individuals who make $200,000 won’t turn into the ugly beast that the AMT is, thanks to Reagan being entirely too dead, and the Repubs too far out of power to be overly involved in fleecing the people.

   …

    I was better at capturing the concept of Darwinian Antithesis in republican thought than I thought I’d be.  Nice.  The Health care bill is now open for debate, by the way, the voted passed 60-39.  All dems voting for, all Republicans voting against, except George Voinovich, who missed the vote. 

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     If you remember at the very end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009, there was a fairly major engagement between Israel and the Izzadin Kassam, Hamas’ army.  Well, rockets were fired into Israel from Gaza yesterday, none were killed or wounded by the strikes,thought it was enough for the Israelis to decide to carry out several air strikes against Hamas, focusing on two weapons plants and an arms smuggling tunnel, said a spokesman for the IAF.  None are reported killed, and five people were wounded.  

    Luckily for everyone involved, this doesn’t look as bad as the heavy fighting that went on earlier this year and late last year.  Hamas has claimed that they have struck a deal with other forces in Gaza to not fire missiles into Israel. The Israelis, not surprisingly, reacted with little enthusiasm.  But the fact that Hamas sounds like they are trying to avoid a confrontation tells me they aren’t strong enough in their own eyes to handle the Israelis right now, and that means this may end up (fingers crossed) an isolated clash between these two mortal enemies. 

    More on this later, if necessary.

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   That’s it for news.  I gave you a classical music viddy yesterday, and it was so nice I have to do it twice.  John Williams playing Bach BWV 1006, enjoy.

   

    Later!

Today’s nuggets, from John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” via Wikiquote:   For who can yet believe, though after loss, that all these puissant legions, whose exile Hath emptied Heaven, shall fail to re-ascend, self-raised, and repossess their native seat?

Freely we serve, Because we freely love, as in our will to love or not; in this we stand or fall.

I fled, and cry’d out, DEATH! Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sigh’d From all her caves, and back resounded, DEATH!

Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou liv’st live well; how long or short permit to Heaven.