Health Care Now

So, our new President, in order to appease Republicans and to pass his stimulus bill with wide-ranging support, made 40% of the bill tax cuts --much of which went to parts of the business community that really did not need it. This gesture was followed up by several visits with congressional Republicans to garner more support (support which, at least in the House, he doesn't need) and in return for his efforts he gained exactly 0 Republican votes.

Now, the question becomes, why water down the bill to suit Republican special interest groups if they're not going to give you a single vote in the first place? Writes Paul Krugman:

Research sponsored by the Commonwealth Fund shows that achieving universal coverage with a plan similar to Mr. Obama’s campaign proposals would add “only” about $104 billion to federal spending in 2010 — not a small sum, of course, but not large compared with, say, the tax cuts in the Obama stimulus plan.

Screw the Republicans on this one. This isn't about partisanship, it's about getting us out of a dire economic crisis in which Republican style tax cuts simply haven't worked.

Read more about Krugman's article on getting health care here.

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Colombia Trade Deal Back On the Table?

By David Sirota:

With the New York Times noting that Congress is questioning Attorney General nominee Eric Holder's defense of Chiquita's murderous behavior in Colombia, I can't say I would be totally surprised by news that Obama may start pushing the Colombia Free Trade Agreement - a pact that rewards the Colombian government that allowed Chiquita's and other corporations to crush workers. I would, however, be surprised that his push would come so soon considering the campaign pledges, and the potential for a serious political backlash that could endanger Obama's broader agenda.
Remember, this?

Obama Vows Opposition to Colombia Trade Deal

Sen. Barack Obama promised to stand firm in his opposition to the Colombia Free Trade Agreement on Wednesday-days after President Bush asked Congress to quickly pass the trade deal-in a speech to rally the union vote at the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO's annual convention.

The Illinois senator said he would oppose the Colombia Free Trade Agreement "because the violence against unions in Colombia would make a mockery of the very labor protections that we have insisted be included in these kinds of agreements."

Now we get this:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama wants to win approval of stalled free trade deals with Colombia, Panama and South Korea, but more work is needed on two of the pacts, Democratic lawmakers said on Wednesday.

"The president-elect wants to work with Republicans and Democrats to get those trade agreements moving," House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel said during an meeting to outline the panel's priorities for the year.

Rangel may not be 100 percent accurate, but he's also not just some uninformed speculator - he's the chairman of the committee the pact would move through, and so it's fair to assume he's had discussions with the administration and therefore that he is passing on some semblance of the truth about the administration's position.

If Obama does take up the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, Democrats would face a very difficult choice: Fulfill the clear campaign promises they made, recreate the successful coalition opposing this deal from the last Congress, and stop it in its tracks; Or, bow down to the Dear Leader and pass the deal "over the dead body" of an American public that knows these trade pacts are selling us out.

I'm still hopeful Obama doesn't move forward because if he can't see the policy reasons to oppose a reward to a murderous right-wing regime, then at least he must be able to see the political reasons beyond merely avoiding a flip-flop on a campaign pledge. As I wrote in an earlier newspaper column, Republicans would like nothing more than Obama pushing the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, because they know it would recreate the Democratic Party-weakening schism that Bill Clinton forged when he joined with Republicans early in his term to pass NAFTA over progressive congressional opposition.

With so many challenges in passing a robust economic stimulus package, universal health care and the Employee Free Choice Act (to name just a few), we don't need that kind of party-weakening triangulation right now.

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President Barack Hussein Obama

Yay for the world!

I've been super busy and have sucked about writing. Having said that, I have kept up with all the happenings and ranted about them internally, I just haven't taken the time to write. I promise to do better soon. Today we celebrate. Tomorrow we become the new president's number one critic. We have a lot of promises to hold him accountable to!

:)

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The Wild Wordsmith of Wasilla

In the below article Dick Cavett talks about how Palin has been on every TV show she can get on mangling the English language and speaking in non-comprehensible sentences.

It's a great article. Read it here.


But I found the below comment on the article that basically sums up exactly what I think of Palin. Especially after finding so many people that actually love her while I was stumping for Obama.

"I find her and her popularity so unsettling… After a few discussions w/ some family members that happen to be Sarah fans, I came to the conclusion that so many people are so blatantly uninformed. I once thought highly of these relatives, and now after this election, I can’t help myself but look at them a tad differently. In the spirit of President-Elect Obama, I’m trying too embrace the fact that we should accept and respect those with differing views, I try, but I can’t. ANYONE who thinks that Sarah Palin is ever going to be qualified for National office is just plain stupid.

ps. Also, there, I tried to come up up with a betterer word for stupid, to make me sound smarter also, but “Stupid” was just too perfect there.
— Barbara King"

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No To Hillary As Secretary of State

The biggest difference between Hillary and Barack during the primaries was foreign policy, why on earth would we want her to lead in the position where her stances differ most strikingly from Barack's? Remember, she criticized MoveOn.org because she said that they had different foreign policy views from her. She differed from Barack on whether the U.S. should sell the devastatingly inaccurate weapons known as cluster bombs to other nations, she differed from him on the Iraq war, she differed from him on high-level negotiations with our adversaries, and she differed from him on the resolution that stated that it should be a vital national security interest to act against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

Make her head of Health and Human Services where her expertise in health care would serve as a great asset (though I'd love to see Howard Dean in this role as well). But Secretary of State? I say thanks, but no thanks.

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Good News on the Health Care Front

From the DailyKos:

Senator Max Baucus, finance committee chair and one of the lead players in the upcoming health care reform effort, is ready to introduce his plan:

Without waiting for President-elect Barack Obama, Senator Max Baucus, the chairman of the Finance Committee, will unveil a detailed blueprint on Wednesday to guarantee health insurance for all Americans by facilitating sales of private insurance, expanding Medicaid and Medicare, and requiring most employers to provide or pay for health benefits....

The plan proposed by Mr. Baucus, Democrat of Montana, would eventually require everyone to have health insurance coverage, with federal subsidies for those who could not otherwise afford it.

Other Democrats with deep experience in health care are also drafting proposals to expand coverage and slow the growth of health costs. These lawmakers include Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Representatives John D. Dingell of Michigan and Pete Stark of California.

The proposals are all broadly compatible with Mr. Obama’s campaign promises. But Mr. Baucus’s 35,000-word plan would go further than Mr. Obama’s in one respect, eventually requiring all people — not just children — to have coverage.

I'm with Krugman on this one:

But now Max Baucus — Max Baucus! — is leading the charge on a health care plan that, at least at first read, is more like Hillary Clinton’s than Barack Obama’s; that is, it looks like an attempt at full universality. (The word I hear, by the way, is that Obama’s opposition to mandates was tactical politics, not conviction — so he may well be prepared to do the right thing now that the election is won.)

So this looks very good for the reformers. There’s now a reasonable chance that universal health care will be enacted next year!

Krugman, and most health care experts and House Democrats working on health care reform, have pushed for mandated health coverage because it's about the only way to really ensure the cost-savings to the whole system that are necessary to provide universal coverage. Not having it leaves too many in the gap that's helped to create this crisis--they're not getting the preventive care that helps to keep costs down along the line. That Obama is signalling flexibility on this issue is key, and good news for the chances of reform.

That this is coming from cautious, conservative, DLCish Max Baucus does indeed mean, as Krugman says, that it's looking much more likely that we have universal health care enacted in the next year.

More discussion in TomP's and eugene's diaries.

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This is Why Lieberman Must Give Up His Chairmanship

Click here to see the list of people who are openly supporting him. And don't forget to make calls to your Democratic senators!

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Marriage is About Love - Why Be Against That?

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O's lobbying rules

From Jonathan Martin:

Announced this afternoon by transition chief John Podesta:

--Federal Lobbyists cannot contribute financially to the transition.
--Federal lobbyists are prohibited from any lobbying during their work with the transition.
--If someone has lobbied in the last 12 months, they are prohibited from working in the fields of policy on which they lobbied.
--If someone becomes a lobbyist after working on the Transition, they are prohibited from lobbying the Administration for 12 months on matters on which they worked.
--A gift ban that is aggressive in reducing the influence of special interests.

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Good News on Some Upcoming Change

1) Obama is making preparations to hold true on his promise to close Guantanmo Bay. This is good for America's image in the world and it is good for the rule of law. Detainees who have been held for years without a hearing will get real criminal trials (with sensitive national security one's held in private).

2) SCHIP, the health insurance program for low-income families that was vetoed by George Bush and voted 'no' on by John McCain will be one of the immediate legislative items Obama plans to sign into law.

3) Obama is considering overturning hundreds of Bush's executive orders, including revoking the ban on federally funded stem-cell research. About time!

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Time For Joe Lieberman To Give Up His Chairmanship

Time to call your Senators to strip Lieberman of his Chairmanship of the Committee on Homeland Security. Markos has a great write-up on this at the DailyKos. Basically he argues, we can even consider giving Lieberman some form of chairmanship so as long as it is not related to foreign policy and/or National Security. That's because those are the most salient points of disagreement between him and real Democrats (though certainly not the only, afterall he did stand at rally after rally and clap as Obama was called a socialist by McCain and Palin). I mean him having chairmanship of those committees allows for him to show up in wacko videos like the one below (thanks to TPM for the picture):


UPDATE: And it's reported that Obama wants Lieberman to stay a Democrat--fine, let him stay one--but nowhere have we heard him say he wants him to keep his chairmanship. Obama doesn't want to appear vindictive, that's understandable. But we also don't want our National Security in the hands of one of George Bush's biggest cheerleaders.

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Emmanuel Falling in Line with Obama?

[X.'s Note: Colombia, in case some of you don't know, is notorious for having some of the worst labor laws of anywhere in the world. ]

By David Sirota:

More like this please, Rahm:

Emanuel rejected the idea of tying a pending economic stimulus plan to a proposed free-trade agreement with Colombia in order to win President George W. Bush's support during a post-election lame duck session of Congress.

"You don't link those essential needs to some other trade deal," he said. "The lame duck is for immediate things - that's what should be the focus right now."

Emanuel's past record on trade policy is, ahem, sketchy to say the least. As a Clinton staffer, he was the chief proponent of NAFTA and as an investment banker, he penned a 2000 Wall Street Journal op-ed demanding congressional Democrats drop their opposition to the China trade deal on the eve of the vote on that pact.

But this statement suggests that Emanuel's own personal politics will, indeed, be subverted to Obama's more progressive record and campaign promises on issues like trade. It's not that Emanuel won't have input, but it is to say what I wrote late last week: Namely, we cannot judge Obama only by his personnel decisions, and we cannot judge those personnel only by their past records. Both certainly are important - but times have changed, and we must be (however cautiously) open to the possibility that people have changed, too.

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The Contact Gap: Proof of the Importance of the Ground Game?

[X.'s note: This is mostly as a shout out to my fellow Drive for Changers who volunteered from California in Nevada! Nicely done! Oh, one scary thing to note though is that we actually didn't have much of an increased ground game turnout relative to 2004. Though Nate Silver does seem to suggest it was likely better organized, it's still disconcerting that even with all this energy we barely beat Bush's ground game from 2004 (which if they would've shown up could've made the election landscape look different). We had 26% voter contact Bush had 24% (McCain 18%). Next time let's make sure that even with a less favorable landscape that we readily beat the Republican ground game. ]

By Nate Silver:

One of the more interesting questions posed on this year's exit polls was whether the voter had been contacted by the Obama and McCain campaigns personally about getting out to vote. Unfortunately, the exit poll consortium did not ask this question in all states, but it did in a dozen or so competitive states; these figures are summarized below:

% of Voters Reporting Direct Contact from Campaigns

State  Obama   McCain   Gap

NV     50%     29%      21%
CO     51%     34%      17%
IN     37%     22%      15%
VA     50%     38%      12%
PA     50%     39%      11%
IA     41%     30%      11%
FL     29%     20%       9%
NC     34%     26%       8%
MO     44%     37%       7%
OH     43%     36%       7%
WI     42%     39%       3%
WV     29%     31%      -2%

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Rahm Emmanuel- Obama's First Pick is Crappy

1) Supports NAFTA and other free trade agreements with little interest as to if they ensure worker's rights and/or environmental protections.

2) Has a hawkish stance on foreign policy, and is a hardliner in his refusal to criticize Israel. [In July 2006, Emanuel was one of several members who called for the cancellation of a speech to Congress by visiting Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki because al-Maliki had criticized Israel's bombing of Lebanon.]

3) Is most famous for being the leading force behind poll-based triangulation in his leadership of legislation for the House Democratic caucus.

4) He ridiculed Howard Dean's 50-State strategy, showing a short-sighted preference of immediate electoral victory over long-term movement building.

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Yet another reason why a Democratic majority is important....

A Reminder as to the Benefits of Victory from the 2006 elections

So, finally the Democrats win the Senate and all the committee chairs are changed to represent the majority party. One nice result? A hearing on global warming. And the best part? When the former chair of the committee Senator Inhofe tries to cut Al Gore off, Barbara Boxer--environmental champion, and the new chair--jumps in and sets him straight. (Thanks to mydd.com for the video).


Yes, Todd is right. Elections do have consequences.

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Remember this from the primaries?

Remember when we talked of a Reaganesque landslide back in January? We did alright, no? Now, granted our's wasn't nearly as big, but hey I think you could say it was a landslide nonetheless. At least certainly in the electoral college, and certainly compared to anything Bush ever got. Since it looks like we're going to take North Carolina and McCain Missouri, we're left with a 364 to 173 win! And Nate Silver predicts that once the final ballots are all tallied our popular vote win will sit at 6.3%.

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My Mistake: It's not Yes We Did, It's still Yes We Can!

I don't know about you guys, but I had a blast last night. It was mixture of a sense of excitement, hope, achievement, and pride all heightened with a little bit of (meaning a whole lot of) alcohol! There were about 20 people at my apartment and afterwards we took to the streets of Berkeley where people were honking, climbing up lamp posts, hugging each other and giving each other high fives.

But this is by no means mission accomplished. Yes, we did win the election, and yes there are millions of people now interested in politics that weren't before, but that doesn't do much in and of itself if it ends there. A President can only do so much in one term. And what determines how much he can do is determined in large part by the political climate that allows him to take on risky positions. That's where we come in. Presidents work within the parameters of what the larger public accepts as reasonable. Sure, the good one's are the one's who are willing to risk their political prospects for a principled stance on an issue, but reality (and pragmatism) tells us that those risks are only likely to happen so many times.

So, where does that leave us? We need to use our political capital. We need to hold Barack accountable when we see him wavering. He's already been on the wrong side of several progressive causes, including having gone back on his word on FISA, having resisted calls for a ceasefire in Lebanon a few years ago, being against gay marriage, and supporting (albeit limited) drilling and the myth of clean coal. We need to keep pressuring him and not hold him above the threshold of criticism. What it also means is that we need to keep staying informed. We need to keep donating money to push progressive causes. We need to keep talking to our friends, writing letters to newspapers, funding and fighting and working for good congressional members, and so on.

We need to make activism--political and otherwise--a regular part of our lives. Volunteer at our local homeless shelters, schools, and libraries. Become an expert on an issue and hold parties in support of that cause with our friends. They'll admire our passion and it will rub off on them. It could be something like global warming, or poverty, or maybe some foreign policy issue that we care about.

The motto was we are the change we have been waiting. That didn't mean change enough to volunteer for one campaign and then disappear into the woodwork. It was changing the apathetic, passive people we were into active and passionate world citizens. Obama noted that we'd save more on energy costs if we just inflated our tires than we would by drilling for offshore oil. He was laughed at, but the point behind his message was that little steps taken together can truly produce drastic results. Yes We Can was the motto of the campaign. And Yes We Can is precisely what it should remain. The world is inherently an unfair place. There are hundreds of millions of people who no matter how smart or gifted do not have the opportunities we do. There will always be room for more that we can do. But there will also always be that massive potential for change that rests in the power of millions. This election was but one example of that power. One small step proving that, yes, in fact, we can.

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Yes We Did!

Courtesy of the Daily Kos:

Want more? See Zain's Diary.

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Ballot Filled - Fired Up, Ready To Go!

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Time to Vote!!!!!!!

I have now donated money, made calls (including from Iran during the primaries), held a fundraiser, published articles, volunteered (in California and Nevada), attended rallies, blogged, and written to newspapers, congressmen, military officers and friends. Desperation will not sum up my feelings nor that of millions around the world like me if we lose tomorrow. Please vote. Contact every friend of your’s in a swing state and make sure they vote too. And let’s make this election the election where the young generation finally woke up. Go Obama! Go Landslide!

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