Democrats
mikethemadbiologist | August 30, 2009Hunter has a succinct summary of the Romneycare the proposed healthcare legislation coming out of the more conservative committees (italics original):
But a trade of mandated purchase of a for-profit, private product in exchange for a meager promise to not abuse customers is -- let's all say it together, for good measure -- goddamned asinine. The government of the United States should not have to bargain to get an abusive industry to be slightly less abusive. What a fucking insulting thought. Especially when (1) the industry in question has a historical pattern of rampant customer abuse, and…
mikethemadbiologist | August 27, 2009I came across an email that made me realize that I'll never get another quite like it:
Dear [Mad Biologist]
Thank you for your letter on S. 549 the Preservation of Antibiotics for Human Treatment Act. I share your concern on this critical health issue.
In recent years, we have done too little to prevent the emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria and other germs, too many of our most powerful drugs are no longer effective. The World Health Organization estimates that 14,000 Americans die every year from, today, one American dies every 38 minutes from a resistant infection every…
mikethemadbiologist | August 27, 2009
R.J. Matson, St. Louis Post Dispatch
Ezra Klein nails it:
There is an impulse to honor the dead by erasing the sharp edges of their life. To ensure they belong to all of us, and in doing, deprive them of the dignity conferred by their actual choices, their lonely stands, and their long work. But Ted Kennedy didn't belong to all of us. He didn't even belong to all Democrats. He was not of the party that voted for more than a trillion in unfunded tax cuts but cannot bring itself to pay for health-care reform. He was not of the party that fears the next election more than the next failure to…
mikethemadbiologist | August 26, 2009Senator Kennedy died late last night. From his family:
"We've lost the irreplaceable center of our family and joyous light in our lives, but the inspiration of his faith, optimism, and perseverance will live on in our hearts forever.
"We thank everyone who gave him care and support over this last year, and everyone who stood with him for so many years in his tireless march for progress toward justice, fairness and opportunity for all.
"He loved this country and devoted his life to serving it.
"He always believed that our best days were still ahead, but it's hard to imagine any of them…
mikethemadbiologist | August 24, 2009As readers might guess, I get a lot of junk mail from Democrats asking me to save America by giving them money (although some are worth giving to). The newest sales pitch is to raise the specter of Republicans being able to filibuster. For instance, Senate candidate and current congressman Paul Hodes of New Hampshire (who isn't such a bad Dem--he's not a Blue Dog) writes in a flyer, "1 seat is all the Republicans need to seize filibuster power. If they succeed, the change Americans voted for last year could be doomed."
While mentioning this to a couple of longtime readers, I noted that the…
mikethemadbiologist | August 22, 2009For a bunch of guys who are supposed to be politically smart, Obama's team sure is stupid. You're probably wondering what the hell the agricultural bill (the bill that gives farmers lots of subsidies) has to do with healthcare. Once upon a time, people always used to joke that Senator Bob Dole could be rolled if you were willing to screw with the ag bill.
Which brings us to healthcare.
One of the obstacles to meaningful healthcare reform in North Dakota senator Kent Conrad who is an ideological deficit hawk. Most of the time (italics mine):
While Conrad hasn't given up his deficit…
mikethemadbiologist | August 21, 2009
One of the frustrating things about health insurance reform is that those opposing meaningful reform are completely beholden to insurance companies. Well, there is something you can do: reward the behavior of the House Democrats who are holding the line on the public option.
Since Tuesday, ActBlue has raised over $100,000 a day in support of the pro-public option House Democrats. If you can afford it, ante up and kick in. We need to castigate those politicians who don't support the 77% of Americans who want a public option, but we also need to help those who do.
mikethemadbiologist | August 20, 2009In the ongoing Democratic Party effort to alienate rank-and-file Democrats, along with those non-aligned voters who supported Democrats, an weasel-dick cowardanonymous White House official expressed surprised at the support for the public option (italics mine):
"I don't understand why the left of the left has decided that this is their Waterloo," said a senior White House adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "We've gotten to this point where health care on the left is determined by the breadth of the public option. I don't understand how that has become the measure of whether…
mikethemadbiologist | August 19, 2009Of course, it's not bad policy either. Anyway, Paul Krugman is exactly right on target:
If progressives had real trust in Obama's commitment to doing the right thing, the administration would have broad leeway to do deals. But the president doesn't command that kind of trust....
So progressives have their backs up over one provision in health care reform that's easy to monitor. The public option has become not so much a symbol as a signal, a test of whether Obama is really the progressive activists thought they were backing.
And the bizarre thing is that the administration doesn't seem to…
mikethemadbiologist | July 26, 2009Katrina vanden Heuvel makes a good point about some bad framing in the healthcare debate--the 'centrists' aren't in the center at all:
Even a good regional paper like Louisville's Courier-Journal-- in rightly blasting the Blue Dogs as "deplorable" for being "unable to muster the spine to pay for health care reform with even so innocuous a measure as higher taxes on the richest 1 percent of Americans"--calls them "centrist".
The danger is that promoting the view that these conservative Democrats are somehow at the center of our politics plays into the hands of those who would like to…
mikethemadbiologist | July 25, 2009There are times I agree with this post by Ian Welsh:
My biggest weakness this year in doing analysis has been hope. I have let hope that the Obama administration and a Democratic Congress will do the right thing, and that they aren't corrupt and incompetent, get in the way of clear thinking. Enough. Hope isn't a plan, and hope isn't policy. Hope without good policy is a con-job.
There hasn't been a good, major, bill come out of this Congress this year. They have all been fatally compromised, from the stimulus bill (larded up with useless tax cuts and without necessary State relief) to…
mikethemadbiologist | July 15, 2009In light of the policy mediocrity that is the Obama administration, it's refreshing to read that the Obama administration is supporting the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA). Of course, it's early days yet, so it would be par for the courseis quite possible that Obama's support for this legislation will crumble.
I've discussed the bill in greater detail elsewhere, but here's why this bill would greatly improve our antibiotic use policy:
It covers all classes of antibiotics; there are no exempt classes of drugs.
The definition of "non-therapeutic use" is very…
mikethemadbiologist | July 13, 2009Monday's NY Times, in a story about the remote possibility of torture investigations by the Justice Department, describes the Obama administration's concerns:
A series of investigations could exacerbate partisan divisions in Congress, just as the Obama administration is trying to push through the president's ambitious domestic plans and needs all the support it can muster.
"He wants to dominate the discussion, and he wants the discussion to be about his domestic agenda -- health care, energy and education," said Martha Joynt Kumar, a professor of political science at Towson University who…
mikethemadbiologist | July 3, 2009see more Lolcats and funny pictures
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a letter (and I encourage others to do the same) calling for a strong public option in whatever healthcare legislation is passed. In the letter, I described the frustration that many rank-and-file Democrats have towards their elected leaders (and yes, it's not the 'base'; >80% of Democrats is nearly the whole damn party--and some of the dissenters oppose the public option because they feel it's too weak):
When you ran for office, you talked about "change." When it comes to our nation's health, now is the time for change.…
mikethemadbiologist | June 30, 2009It's simple--as long as one doesn't criticize the press corps from the left (doing it from the right is ok and accepted--you get to be the house liberal. Bob Somerby:
For starters: We of course have no way of knowing why the Post has dumped Dan Froomkin. Let's repeat that: We simply don't know.
But if we were going to write a novel, as Rosen did--if we wanted to pretend that we knew--our novel would look like this:
Dan Froomkin criticizes the press corps. In the press corps, if you're a liberal, that just isn't done.
Duh. We've explained this bone-simple point for years. If there's one…
mikethemadbiologist | June 23, 2009I'm wary of criticizing Paul Krugman. I'm a firm believer in the DeLong Rules of Krugman, which can be paraphrased very simply:
Don't disagree with Paul Krugman.
Re-read rule #1, you fucking moron.
Nonetheless, I think Krugman, in an otherwise excellent column, misstates the motivations behind the 'centrist' Democrats opposition to the public option for healthcare:
Yes, some of the balking senators receive large campaign contributions from the medical-industrial complex -- but who in politics doesn't? If I had to guess, I'd say that what's really going on is that relatively conservative…
mikethemadbiologist | June 21, 2009What's so frustrating about the healthcare debate is that even though 76% of Americans want a public option, this is somehow deemed politically unviable. Never mind that the Republicans were crushed at every level electorally and that President Obama has a 63% approval rating. Even this tepid option--and it is tepid compared to what most other Western nations have--probably won't pass.
With that, I bring you Charles Pierce, who describes this as what it is, a complete failure of our political system:
But we no longer are a viable self-governing political commonwealth, and our…
mikethemadbiologist | June 17, 2009Sadly, I think it's the latter. As many others have remarked on a variety of issues, one of the most pernicious effects of the right wing has been to mainstream crazy and hateful positions. In terms of gay rights, as has been the case with many other issues, this has reduced the debate to two positions:
Either you believe that gay marriage will lead to man-on-box turtle sex, or you are part of the Coalition of the Sane.
Of course, it is lunacy, not to mention bigotry and hatred, to think that gay marriage would lead to bestiality. But that doesn't mean that everyone in the Coalition of…
mikethemadbiologist | May 10, 2009While I disagree with his implications of what it means for the Left (or what passes for it), Aaron Swartz makes a very good observation about the monetizers of the conservative movement:
What's striking about the rise of modern conservatism is that it was not, in large part, the creation of big business. Big business, all things considered, was pretty happy with the liberal consensus. They weren't exactly itching to drown the government in the bathtub, especially when it did so much for them....
But the real conservative movement was funded instead by wealthy extremists on the fringes of the…
mikethemadbiologist | April 4, 2009...I'm sure this will work out just fine:
The Obama administration is engineering its new bailout initiatives in a way that it believes will allow firms benefiting from the programs to avoid restrictions imposed by Congress, including limits on lavish executive pay, according to government officials.
Administration officials have concluded that this approach is vital for persuading firms to participate in programs funded by the $700 billion financial rescue package.
The administration believes it can sidestep the rules because, in many cases, it has decided not to provide federal aid directly…