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Obama's Healthcare Public Option Is On a Respirator--Or Dead Already
Tweet Share on Facebook September 14, 2009 Comment (17)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
If the weekend TV talk shows are the crystal balls of national politics, then the so-called public option in the Obama healthcare reform effort is on the respirator if not already dead. About the most Democrat-friendly Republican in the U.S. Senate (particularly on healthcare reform) Olympia Snowe of Maine, told CBS this weekend the public option is,
"universally opposed by all Republicans in the Senate" and "therefore, there's no way to pass a plan that includes the public option."
The president's address to Congress last week may have swayed some apolitical Americans, or served as fodder to those who believe healthcare is a "right," not a service for which we all must pay. But his talk does not seem to have done much to change the minds of key Senators who will decide whether government-sponsored health insurance lives or dies.
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Obama and the Democrats Will Pay Later if They Don’t Hit Reset on Healthcare Now
Tweet Share on Facebook September 11, 2009 Comment (23)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
In his speech to a joint session of Congress Wednesday President Barack Obama doubled down in his support for nationalized healthcare. Hardly a game changer, as Democrats have claimed, Obama reiterated his support for the so-called public option while proposing little that would actually improve the quality of healthcare in the United States.
It's not likely it is going to make much of a difference. CNBC's Larry Kudlow, in an op-ed that appeared Friday, remarked that Wall Street is now betting heavily against the president.
In a strong stock market on Thursday ... health-insurer shares advanced significantly. Cigna increased 5 percent; Health Net almost 5 percent; Humana 3.5 percent; and UnitedHealth Group 1.5 percent. Hospital shares like Community Health Systems and Tenet Healthcare also rallied smartly, climbing about 5 percent each. Drug company Pfizer rose more than 1 percent.
These healthcare stocks would not have rallied the day after the speech if investors believed Obama would get his way on public option. Moreover, any of the plans being presented by the Democrats, even conceptually, will add to the deficit, increase taxes and force many Americans to give up the private insurance they currently have.
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Coast Guard Fires on Suspicious Boat on the Potomac? Not So Much
Tweet Share on Facebook September 11, 2009 Comment (16)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
My brush with nothing at all this morning: I drove over Washington's 14th Street Bridge at the same time that it reportedly wasn't in danger.
To catch everyone up: The reports that the Coast Guard fired "10 shots" (wonderful specificity there) at a mysterious boat on the Potomac River? Wrong. There is—according to the latest reports, so "facts" may change by the time I finish typing this blog post—no terrorist boat on the Potomac. And no shots were fired.
It turns out that the Coast Guard was conducting an exercise on the Potomac. Or maybe they weren't. MSNBC is reporting that there was not an exercise in the sense of people and boats actually doing things but was simply an over-the-radio drill that involved the phrase "shots fired."
Two things come to mind: An exercise of any sort on the Potomac on the morning of 9/11 while the president is driving by? It's so mind-numbingly dumb that it must be true.
Second this should spur a new round of media navel-gazing and, hopefully, a bit of self-flagellation. We all remember the tragedy and the bravery of that clear, crisp, awful morning eight years ago. Less well remembered are the reports—breathlessly related by the "news" networks—of a fire on the national mall, a car bomb at the State Department and so on. Hey—at least they got the information out there quickly. There's plenty of time for fact-checking later on.
In the mean time, stay glued to your television: The 24-hour "news" channels are continuing to follow this developing story. (Or is that devolving non-story?)
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Obama Speech to Students Illustrates the Rise of Partisanship
Tweet Share on Facebook September 9, 2009 Comment (12)By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
On the first day of school, the president went to a high school to address students about the state of America's schools. Here's what he said:
... We haven't taken the time to read to our kids, to talk with them, to teach them the art of communication, how to think, how to write, how to speak clearly.
What happens at home really matters. And when our kids come home from school, do they pick up a book or do they sit glued to the tube watching music videos? Parents: Don't make the mistake of thinking your kids only learn from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. You are, and always will be, their first teachers.
That wasn't Barack Obama speaking in the library at Wakefield High School in Virginia this week. It was George H.W. Bush, speaking in the gym at Lewiston Comprehensive High School in Maine in the fall of 1991, 18 years ago.
Both presidents gave great speeches to high school kids. (Newt Gingrich made a point of saying that every student in America should read or watch President Obama's remarks on the White House Web site. I agree.) But that's where the similarity ends.
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Charlie Sheen Joins the 'Truther' 9/11 Conspiracy Theory Fringe
Tweet Share on Facebook September 9, 2009 Comment (407)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
"Truthers" are the people who believe the 9/11 terror attacks were an inside job. That the Bush administration had advance knowledge of them and let them occur. In the more extreme version of an already extremist theory, truthers believe the U.S. government itself carried out the attacks as an excuse to take the nation to war.
At the very least the truthers question the official version of events and want the government to reopen the investigation. In a way, they have a lot in common with those who to this day refuse to believe that Lee Harvey Oswald fired the fatal shot in Dallas.
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Members of Congress Don't Have to Read the Healthcare Bill--They Can Listen to It
Tweet Share on Facebook September 8, 2009 Comment (7)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Having gone home with the expectation that they would use the recess period to lobby their constituents in support of Obamacare, members of Congress instead got an earful from the people they represent. And, wonder of wonders, at town hall meeting after town hall meeting, it seemed that the folks who had come to express an opinion about healthcare reform knew more about what was in the bill than the congressman holding the meeting.
It's no wonder. The bill currently under consideration in the U.S. House of Representatives, the one produced by Nancy Pelosi, Henry Waxman, Charlie Rangel, and others runs to more than 1,000 pages. No one, apparently, wants to read the darn thing. And, thanks to the group of public-spirited thespians who created the www.hearthebill.org Web site, they don't have to. They can listen to it online.
The more than 80 voice-over actors involved in the project turned the House bill, H.R. 3200, into an audio book so that anyone, especially members of Congress, would not have to spend precious time reading it. Fully downloadable and with an index, they can put it on their MP3 players and listen to it during the long plane ride back to Washington, during committee meetings, when their colleagues are making speeches on the floor and at any other time when, in their minds anyway, they really don't have anything better to do.
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"Read the Bill" Isn't Realistic
Tweet Share on Facebook September 8, 2009 Comment (55)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
While Peter may be a strong advocate of and a principal conceiver behind the "read the bill" movement, Politico has a good piece today reminding us all why members of Congress often don't read the bill in the first place. It's not (for the most part) laziness or legislative malfeasance:
But reading actual legislative text is often the least productive way to learn what’s actually in a bill.
Consider the House health care bill (or bills, as it were). The 1,017-page text is a tangle of references to other clauses, sections and subsections of the bill as well as numerous other statutes — some passed ages ago, all a pain to locate and search, even online: “Section 1179 of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1320d-8) is amended” by striking this and inserting that, or “the tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as a tax imposed by this chapter for the purposes of determining the amount of any credit under this chapter or for the purposes of section 55.”
There is certainly something to be said for not rushing legislation through before someone can read it. And legislators should certainly be responsible for ascertaining and digesting a bill's contents. But having a member of Congress read every page of every bill before voting on it would be an absurdly inefficient use of their time.
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For the Democrats' Sake, Charles Rangel Must Go
Tweet Share on Facebook September 8, 2009 Comment (24)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The emergence of U.S. Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., as the poster child for congressional corruption could not have come at a worse time for the Democrats or for President Obama. One of the powers behind Nancy Pelosi's drive to become speaker, Rangel is chairman of the powerful House Committee on Ways and Means, giving him a special role in the oversight of the federal Internal Revenue Service as well making him lord over the U.S. tax code.
An ongoing investigation into Rangel's finances reveals, however, that he has not been exactly candid with the IRS or, for the matter, his congressional colleagues about his real estate holding, sales of stock and his reportable income. The revelations have gotten so embarrassing that the liberal editorial writers at The Washington Post are once again demanding he step aside and surrender his chairman's gavel. They wrote Friday:
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Barack Obama's Speech to Students Revs Up the Wingnuts
Tweet Share on Facebook September 4, 2009 Comment (106)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
There's an outbreak sweeping parts of the country, threatening to become a pandemic. H1N1? No, it's Political Derangement Syndrome (PDS). Its main symptom is believing everything the leader of the opposing party does is part of a nefarious, calculated, insidious, far-reaching conspiracy.
So take this story, from the front page of today's New York Times:
President Obama’s plan to deliver a speech to public school students on Tuesday has set off a revolt among conservative parents, who have accused the president of trying to indoctrinate their children with socialist ideas and are asking school officials to excuse the children from listening.
The President of the United States wants to give a "don't do drugs ... stay in school"-type address to the nation's school kids. ("This isn't a policy speech," an Education Department spokeswoman told the Times.) But of course in the world of the politically deranged, there are no innocent speeches and that is doubly true when the most innocent among us are involved.
So of course it must be part of a larger plot to inculcate socialist ideas into our students, because ... 2 + 2 = crazy. (Pity the poor parents who will be helpless to explain to their children the virtues of the free market system after they've been exposed to the silver-tongued POTUS.)
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Obama Should Boost Troops in Afghanistan
Tweet Share on Facebook September 4, 2009 Comment (26)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
President Obama, though he launched his campaign by opposing the Iraq War, should support what looks like a military recommendation to boost the troop presence in Afghanistan. From the New York Times:
The emerging debate follows the delivery Monday of a new strategic assessment by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who took over all American and NATO forces in Afghanistan in June. Mr. Gates has now forwarded the general's report of about 25 pages to Mr. Obama.
His administration is divided, with foreign policy expert Vice President Joe Biden opposing a build-up in Afghanistan. Biden believes instead the United States should deploy scarce resources to help stabilize Pakistan.
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