The Healthcare Timeout is Fine.

post from FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right on 23 July 2009 07:39:00 PM. © FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right

To hear the defeatism and paranoia on some liberal blogs this afternoon, the "timeout" that Harry Reid and the Senate called on health care today -- they won't vote on the measure before the August recess -- is just about the stupidest thing since Chris Webber, pictured at left, called a phantom timeout in the 1993 finals, costing his team a technical foul and the Michigan Wolverines the national championship.

It isn't. It is, first of all, inevitable, and second of all, about as likely to do the Democrats some good as some harm, although that may depend on certain exogenous factors that are relatively outside of their control.

Ten days ago, I wrote a piece entitled, "Why Democrats Have No Time to Waste", the thesis of which was basically that Obama's approval ratings were liable to decline over the near-to-medium term and so Democrats had better get busy on health care while they could.

But a couple of things have happened since then.

Firstly, the media environment has become very treacherous. There's been all sorts of piling on, for instance, about last night's satisfactory press conference -- this is almost certainly the most sustained stretch of bad coverage for Obama since back when Jeremiah Wright became a household name after the Ohio primary.

I don't think the media has a liberal bias or a conservative bias so much as it has a bias toward overreacting to short-term trends and a tendency toward groupthink. The fact is that there have been some pretty decent signals on health care. Yes, it has stalled in some committees, but it has advanced in others; yes, the Mayo Clinic expressed their skepticism but also the AMA -- surprisingly -- endorsed it; yes, the CBO's Doug Elmendorf got walked into a somewhat deceptive and undoubtedly damaging line of questioning about the measure's capacities on cost control, but also, the CBO's actual cost estimates have generally been lower than expected and also favorable to particular Democratic priorities like the public option. This all seems pretty par for the course, even if you wouldn't know it from reading Politico or Jake Tapper, who giddily report on each new poll telling us the exact same thing as though there's some sort of actual news value there.

The media likes to talk about "momentum". It usually talks about the momentum in the present tense -- as in, "health care has no momentum". But almost always, those observations are formulated based on events of the past and sloppily extrapolated to imply events of the future, often to embarrassing effect: see also, New Hampshire, the 15-day infatuation with Sarah Palin, the Straight Talk express being left for dead somewhere in the summer of 2007, the overreaction to "Bittergate" and the whole lot, and the naive assumption that Obama's high-60's approval ratings represented a paradigm shift and not a honeymoon period that new Presidents almost always experience.

I also believe that the media can, in the short term, amplify and sometimes even create waves of momentum. But almost always only in the short term. And that is reason #1 why it's not such a bad thing that the Democrats are getting a breather on health care. They're at, what I believe, may be something of a 'trough' or 'bottom' as far as this media-induced momentum goes. By some point in August, the media will at least have tired of the present storyline and may in fact be looking for excuses to declare a shift in momentum and report that some relatively ordinary moment is in fact the "game changer" that the Democrats needed. This is not to say that the real, underlying momentum on health care has especially good -- and the Democrats' selling of the measure certianly hasn't been. But it hasn't been especially poor either . As I've said before, the health care process has played out just about how an intelligent observer might have expected it to beforehand.

The second reason why the delay might be OK for the Democrats is because of the economy. Nobody much seems to have noticed, but the Dow is now over 9,000 and at its highest point of the Obama presidency; the S&P is nearing 1,000 and the NASDAQ has gained almost 55 percent since its bottom and has moved upward on 12 consecutive trading days. There are ample reasons to be skeptical about the rally -- it isn't supported by strong volumes, and it's almost entirely the result of surprisingly solid corporate earnings numbers rather than the sorts of figures that Main Street cares about. But, there are two big dates to watch out for. On July 31, an advance estimate of second quarter GDP growth will be released, and on August 7th, we'll get the monthly report on the unemployment situation. If either of those reports reflect the optimism elicited by the corporate earnings numbers -- in this context, a job loss number under ~250,000 or a 2Q GDP number somewhere close to zero -- there will be a lot of quite optimistic chatter about the end of the recession which might not penetrate to Main Street, but which will at least have some reverberations on Capitol Hill.

A few hours ago, I asked our readers what they expected Barack Obama's Gallup approval rating to be on August 31st, when the Senate's recess will be just about over and the health care sausage-making will begin again. The average guess was 55 percent, which is exactly where it is today (a new low for Obama, we should mention). I should caution that our readers lean probably 2:1 or 3:1 liberal, and so there might be some optimism bias in this unscientific sample. But that strikes me as about the right assessment. Obama's numbers don't have much more room to fall before they hit the 53 percent threshold that actually elected him last November. And I don't think they're liable to go too much below that mark unless something actually and tangibly bad happens -- a bad unemployment report (or a sharp reversal of the market rally), the actual collapse of health care, some bona fide major gaffe, etc. Any of those things, indeed, could happen. But just as likely Obama will benefit from some good economic numbers or simply some reversion to the mean as the media firing squad picks up and plays golf for a month.

The Democrats could find themselves in a better position after the August recess or they could find themselves in a worse one -- how's that for a bold prediction! But liberals' doom-and-gloom, conservatives' glee, and the media's nearsighted reporting are all equally uncalled for.

Read The Full Article:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/07/healthcare-timeout-is-fine.html

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BC/BS sued in New Jersey

post from AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth on 23 July 2009 07:35:00 PM. © AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth

They seemed like such nice people.

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Americablog/~3/kt6mPg2zTzo/bcbs-sued-in-new-jersey
.html

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The Republicans Have A Plan ... Or Not

post from Daily Kos on 23 July 2009 07:28:04 PM. © Daily Kos

It was less than six months ago that House Republican Leader John Boehner proudly announced:

Health care costs are too high, access is too limited, and American families and small businesses are looking to their leaders in Washington for free-market solutions, not a government-dominated health care bureaucracy," said Boehner. "House Republicans will not be content to be ‘the party of no.’ Instead, we will be the party of better solutions, and few issues demand more positive solutions than our nation’s health care crisis. Roy Blunt is uniquely qualified to chair this Task Force, which will help shape innovative House Republican health care solutions at a time when the American people need them most.

And since then, they've kept us up-to-date on all of the progress the task force has been making:

June 17th, Boehner said:

I want to congratulate Roy Blunt and all of the members of the health care solutions working group that are here with us today. They have worked for months on making sure that -- that we have a plan that will accomplish the goal that the president and Democrats all agree on.

June 25th, Blunt said:

Republicans have reached out to Democrats and the administration to create bipartisan health care reform legislation. We’ll continue that outreach while drafting our own legislation aimed at helping small businesses and families.

July 10th, Blunt said:

Our plan is actually much more detailed than their plan has been. I think, finally, as the majority, they’ve finally put a piece of legislation together after six months talking about how they were the only ones that had a plan. Our plan’s been more detailed. I think we’re more prepared to debate our plan than they are.

And today, the Blunt-led Republican brain trust had an announcement:

Republicans who had promised last month to offer a healthcare reform alternative are now suggesting no such bill will be introduced.

Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said, "Our bill is never going to get to the floor, so why confuse the focus? We clearly have principles; we could have language, but why start diverting attention from this really bad piece of work they’ve got to whatever we’re offering right now?"

Blunt later decided to "clarify" and claimed that:

Our reform plan to lower costs, increase access, and improve quality was released weeks ago and it is well-known. There’s a variety of tactics that could be employed during the debate on the House floor and the leadership won’t make a final decision next week until the Democrats announce how they will proceed.

In other words, the Republicans have a plan, apparently in an undisclosed location, to be unveiled only after they know what those tricky Democrats are going to do. Or more accurately, after six months of broken promises to deliver a better solution, House Republicans are content to be the Party of No.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/HMQ3XyNel0M/-The-Republicans-Have-
A-Plan-...-Or-Not

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Art Show at Gallery Saratoga in August

post from Everyday Citizen on 23 July 2009 07:21:43 PM. © Everyday Citizen

I apologize for the plug. I'm having an art show this August at Gallery Saratoga with Stephanie[...]

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http://www.everydaycitizen.com/2009/07/art_show_at_gallery_saratoga_i.html

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G. Gordon Liddy says Obama is an ‘illegal
alien’ born in a ‘hospital in Mombasa.’

post from Think Progress on 23 July 2009 07:05:00 PM. © Think Progress

G. Gordon Liddy, the man behind the first Watergate break-in and founding father of the “whacko wing” of the Republican party is now claiming that President Obama is an “undocumented illegal alien.” This afternoon, an oddly “catatonoic” Liddy told Chris Matthews that he has a written deposition from President Obama’s step-grandmother where she says that Obama was born in a hospital in Mombasa:

MATTHEWS: He [Obama] wasn’t born here and he’s never gone through a naturalization that you know of, right?
LIDDY: Not that I know of.
MATTHEWS: Therefore he’s here illegally. You’re saying he’s an undocumented alien.
LIDDY: Illegal alien.
MATTHEWS: You’ve said he was born in the Kenyan slums. That means he’s an illegal alien. That means he’s not only illegally president, he’s illegal in the US and he ought to be picked up…by your account he’s illegally in the country…how would you claim he was born in the Kenyan slums? You say that as if it were a fact…Do we have any evidence it ever happened?…
LIDDY: Yeah, I’ve got the deposition of the step-grandmother who said she witnessed it.

Watch it:

video details and more

Liddy is the promoter of several anti-immigrant conspiracy theories. Last year, he claimed that immigrants come from Mexico because “they want to reconquer America.” When discussing the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor earlier this year, Liddy criticized her membership in the Latino civil rights group, National Council of La Raza. He said La Raza, in ?illegal alien,” [Spanish] means “race.”

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/23/gordan-liddy-birther/

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G. Gordan Liddy says Obama is an ‘illegal
alien’ born in a ‘hospital in Mombasa.’

post from Think Progress on 23 July 2009 07:05:00 PM. © Think Progress

MATTHEWS: He [Obama] wasn’t born here and he’s never gone through a naturalization that you know of, right?
LIDDY: Not that I know of.
MATTHEWS: Therefore he’s here illegally. You’re saying he’s an undocumented alien.
LIDDY: Illegal alien.
MATTHEWS: You’ve said he was born in the Kenyan slums. That means he’s an illegal alien. That means he’s not only illegally president, he’s illegal in the US and he ought to be picked up…by your account he’s illegally in the country…how would you claim he was born in the Kenyan slums? You say that as if it were a fact…Do we have any evidence it ever happened?…
LIDDY: Yeah, I’ve got the deposition of the step-grandmother who said she witnessed it.

Watch it:

video details and more

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/23/gordan-liddy-birther/

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GoOPer: We're Not Going To Cry "Emergency" Every
Time There's An Emergency!

post from Crooks and Liars on 23 July 2009 07:00:28 PM. © Crooks and Liars

Marsha Blackburn (Oblivious-TN) probably could have chosen a better example:

BLACKBURN: Let?s agree that we?re going to have PAYGO enforcement. That we?re not going to cry ?emergency? every time we have a Katrina, every time we have a Tsunami, every time we have a need for extra spending, that we don?t go call for a special appropriation that allows us to circumvent the PAYGO rules.

Well, I'm sure Blackburn will hold herself to that. I'm sure that any time a disaster threatens her state of Tennessee, she won't cry emergency and bother to get federal funding to help people in need. I'm sure that-

The President today declared a major disaster exists in the State of Tennessee and ordered Federal aid to supplement State and local recovery efforts in the area struck by severe storms, tornadoes, and flooding on April 10, 2009.
Federal funding is available to State and eligible local governments and certain private nonprofit organizations on a cost-sharing basis for emergency work and the repair or replacement of facilities damaged by the severe storms, tornadoes, and flooding in Benton, McMinn, Rutherford, and Sequatchie Counties.

Well, OK, fine, but that's the President, I'm sure Marsha Blackburn HERSELF never requested emergency funding for her state of Tennessee--

Members of Tennessee Delegation Urge Disaster Declaration for Five Counties Affected by Flooding
WASHINGTON, D.C. U.S. Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and U.S. Representatives Lincoln Davis (D-Tenn. 4), Bart Gordon (D-Tenn. 6), and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn. 7) have joined Governor Phil Bredesen in requesting that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack issue a federal disaster declaration for five counties in Tennessee "to help farmers who have suffered crop losses and damage to farm equipment and structures as a result of excessive rain and extensive flooding that occurred in May." The five counties are Bedford, Hickman, Lewis, Moore and Perry.
According to their letter to Secretary Vilsack, a declaration would allow qualifying farmers "to apply for a variety of federal farm disaster programs - including supplemental farm revenue payments, livestock assistance and low-interest emergency loans - through their local U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Farm Service Agency office."

OK, one time, fine, but there's no history of this---

Title: Letter to The Honorable Mike Johanns, Secretary, U.S. Department of Agriculture
Date: 07/12/2007
Alexander, Corker Join Tenn. Delegation In Requesting Disaster Declaration For Drought
from the Office of Senator Bob Corker
U.S. Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker joined other members of the Tennessee Congressional Delegation Tuesday in asking U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns to issue an agricultural disaster declaration for all 95 Tennessee counties due to the results of the ongoing drought.
Marsha Blackburn
Member of congress

What's your point? That Marsha Blackburn is a rank hypocrite whose statements don't match her actions?

Oh, that is your point?

Well, OK, I agree with you, then.

Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/dday/gooper-were-not-going-cry-emergency-every-tim

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Torturers Still Getting Away With it

Saving real healthcare reform and forcing Congress to get it done before they go on vacation is still the top priority, of course. But we can't let equally critical issues fall by the wayside.

Like the Obama DOJ pretending it's going to prosecute those actually responsible for torture and other war crimes.

Glenn Greenwald explains:

Amazingly, reports that Eric Holder is considering commencing an investigation into Bush-era torture crimes has created extreme consternation in multiple Beltway circles despite how narrow and limited those investigations would be. As I wrote last week, numerous reports indicate that Holder wants to replicate the Abu Ghraib travesty by investigating only low-level interrogators who exceeded the torture limits approved by John Yoo and George Bush, and not investigate the high-level policy makers who instituted the criminal torture regime or the DOJ lawyers who authorized it.
Since then, the Newsweek reporter who first printed what DOJ officials told him about Holder's intentions, Daniel Klaidman, confirmed in an interview on The Young Turks that Holder intends to confine any investigations only to "rogue" interrogators who exceeded John Yoo's torture permission slips while shielding high-level Bush officials who acted in accordance with Yoo's decrees.
SNIP
If low-level CIA interrogators -- and only them -- end up as the targets of investigations because they used more water than John Yoo allowed, or turned the thermostat lower than the hypothermic levels which the DOJ permitted, or waterboarded with more frequency than Jay Bybee approved, I wouldn't blame the CIA for being furious. It was the regime itself, implemented at the highest levels of our government, that was criminal. Prosecuting only low-level interrogators who followed the torturing spirit of those policies but transgressed some bureaucratic guidelines would be a travesty on par with what happened with the Abu Ghraib "investigations." Though there is the potential benefit that a prosecutor could follow the trail to high-level officials notwithstanding Holder's attempts to limit the investigation (a result I think is quite unlikely), there is a strong argument to make -- as I made here -- that prosecuting only low-level "rogue" interrogators would be worse than no prosecutions at all, as that would only serve to further bolster our two-tiered system of justice.
SNIP
UPDATE: In comments, LBoogie makes an important point about the purported Holder approach of only investigating those who exceeded what John Yoo permitted:
The huge problem here is precedent. In specifically directing an investigation of those who exceeded Bush's torture authorization, our Justice Department is actually giving legal credence to Yoo, Bybee, and the Bush gang who sought to legalize these clearly illegal methods. Investigating only those who went beyond Yoo's memos affirms, as legal basis, Bush's detention and torture policies as the backdrop to be measured against; in effect establishing those practices listed in the memo as the legal standard.
It is less damaging to investigate no one at all than to use the Bush standard to measure those few who exceeded even those most grotesque of practices against. All we'll end up with is a few more Charles Graners in prison, everyone above middle management getting away without so much as public acknowledgment of having done something wrong, and a de facto Justice Department affirmation that not only will Bush's team not be investigated for having done something wrong, but that they never did anything wrong at all as those same standards become accepted baseline to measure future prosecutions against.
This is far worse than Obama's previous "look forward, not backward" stance. This is looking backward and establishing crimes and indignities against humanity as solid legal footing.
Exactly. It's one thing for a prosecutor to decide, as a matter of standard prosecutorial discretion, that those memos would make it too difficult to obtain a conviction, but to declare ahead of time that they constitute immunity as a matter of DOJ policy is another thing entirely. An investigation grounded in this premise would be to institutionalize the incomparably dangerous notion that anything the President does is legal provided he finds some low-level DOJ functionary to write a memo saying it is. The torture tactics Bush ordered are criminal no matter how many memos John Yoo wrote saying they weren't.

Read the whole thing.

Yes, President Obama has a lot on his plate, but that means we have even more on ours. He can kick the torture can down the road with Holder's head-fake, so it's up to us to call him on it and demand real prosecutions of the real war criminals, because anything less continues to shred the Constitution and turn this country into a rogue nation.

Keep the pressure on. Here's a quick way to get to the contact information for your elected officials. (Scroll down to box on the right labelled "My Elected Officials" and enter your zip code.)

Alternatively, Max at Firedoglake explains how to put recalcitrant congress critters up against the wall - the Facebook wall.

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheyGaveUsARepublic-FrontPage/~3/iyxE3vGAxXg/tortu
rers-still-getting-away-with-it

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Defying Expectations

Gordon Liddy’s performance on “Hardball” today, which I taped (because I don’t watch this show much anymore), was stunning. You simply have to watch Liddy to believe it. According to him, Obama’s great-great grandmother gave[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://www.taylormarsh.com/2009/07/23/defying-expectations/

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UnitedHealth Group's Healthy Profits

Earlier today, Jed pointed out that the GOP keeps pushing "research" done by the Lewin Group, an organization that is owned by UnitedHealth Group.

To Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House Republican whip, it is "the nonpartisan Lewin Group." To Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee, it is an "independent research firm." To Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the second-ranking Republican on the pivotal Finance Committee, it is "well known as one of the most nonpartisan groups in the country."

Generally left unsaid amid all the citations is that the Lewin Group is wholly owned by UnitedHealth Group, one of the nation's largest insurers.

Here's a little bit more about UnitedHealth Group, and just how much skin they have in the game when it comes to healthcare reform, and particularly a strong public option.

INDIANAPOLIS — UnitedHealth Group Inc. reported a second-quarter profit that more than doubled to beat Wall Street expectations, but the health insurer continued to lose commercial enrollment due to the tough economy.

Minnetonka, Minn.-based UnitedHealth also said Tuesday it raised the low end of its full-year earnings forecast.

UnitedHealth earned $859 million, or 73 cents per share, for the quarter that ended June 30. That's up from $337 million, or 27 cents per share, a year earlier.

Last year's second-quarter results included settlements in two class action lawsuits related to UnitedHealth's former stock option granting practices. They resulted in a pretax charge of $922 million, or 47 cents per share, for the quarter.

Here's a little bit from the WaPo story cited by Jed explaining about one of those lawsuits:

More specifically, the Lewin Group is part of Ingenix, a UnitedHealth subsidiary that was accused by the New York attorney general and the American Medical Association, a physician's group, of helping insurers shift medical expenses to consumers by distributing skewed data. Ingenix supplied its parent company and other insurers with data that allegedly understated the "usual and customary" doctor fees that insurers use to determine how much they will reimburse consumers for out-of-network care.

In January, UnitedHealth agreed to a $50 million settlement with the New York attorney general and a $350 million settlement with the AMA, covering conduct going back as far as 1994.

So despite settlements in two lawsuits, and despite a loss in commercial enrollments, and despite the tough economy, UnitedHealth doubled its earnings from last year. I wonder how much of those earnings were plowed in to the Lewin Group and its research.