Any Democrat who thinks that voting for a health care bill with mandates, fines and no public option is a good idea might want to take a look at what happened at the AFL-CIO convention yesterday:
Delegates at the AFL-CIO’s convention in Pittsburgh chanted “bullshit” in response to the plan from the Senate Finance Committee’s chairman. They were led in the chant by Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. He said the labor federation’s members should lobby against the proposal because it doesn’t mandate that employers provide health insurance and “taxes our health plans.”
Richard Trumka, who was elected President of the AFL-CIO at the convention, was here on FDL recently for a chat. He has threatened to withhold support from Democrats who oppose a public plan, and said "it’s up to us to make all of them do what is right for working people and the country even if they resent us for doing it."
Outgoing President John Sweeny released a statement saying the Baucus bill, saying it "is little more than a throwback to the failed policies of the last three decades that advantaged corporations over taxpayers."
If anyone has statements from other unions in response to the Baucus bill, please leave them in the comments. Also, if anyone has video of the chant, please contact me.
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A friend of mine is out there right now, and I’m proud of him. The corporatists have the money and the media, but we have a pretty powerful coalition too.
Can anyone tell me, is the $3800 fine for not having health care on yourself still being considered?
This reflects the fact that union members and retirees are more likely to be paying the Max Tax than other workers and that there are much more of them than there are corporate CEOs.
The Max Tax has the consequence (hopefully unintended) of being a tax on union benefits.
Yeah, I’m sure the Mandates with insufficient subsidies is going to go over REAL well with Jane Q Public. You can either be forced by law to buy a $750 per month health plan, or pay a $250 a month fine and get absolutely nothing for it – but it’s still cheaper than the private health plan.
Nice.
AND THE KILLIN’ GOES ON AND ON AND…
Citizen Hamsher and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:
If you don’t stop grinnin’ Sister Jane, your face is gunna cramp up and fall off!!! What a wonderful day this is turnin’ out to be…is it possible that we are gunna test the theory that “money equals votes” on the issue of health care? In the past, issues like this could be settled in the privacy of the oval office or in a bar in Georgetown but today it looks like people’s pain is much more intimidating to politicians than a bunch of mercenary thugs out teabaggin’ each other in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
I think the dam has broken, everything from now on is gunna hafta be done under the bright lights and there isn’t enough money in the insurance industry to buy enough congress critters to go out and get beat in the next election.
KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, THE STRUGGLE NEVER ENDS!!
Sacrificing the good and the bad for the gawd awful.
Jane,
Jason’s diary needs to be front paged. What an outrage.
Please folks. Spread the word on Jason’s diary as well as Mary & Ron’s diary.
Wow, this post made me smile.
Couldn’t have said it better.
Although it’s a safe bet that Grassley, DeMint, and the rest of the economic illiterates currying favor with Wall Street by way of HealthCos would prefer that we all quake in fear and bleat, “big government, big government -eeeek!” and then run like a pack of rabbits for the nearest cover.
This is absolutely about corporate stranglehold over Americans for creaming the profits from a ’sickness model’: it covers us for sitting in traffic, sitting in cubicles, sitting in traffic again, and then sitting in front of a teevee or screen half the night. Actually, it covers us only as long as we **don’t actually get sick.**
It does nothing to help people play tennis, dance, walk, or eat the occasional veggie.
This whole system is sick, and it’s creepy.
Good on the unions!
Optimism out of Norske?!? This is shaping up to be a good day.
I agree with you that Jason’s diary needs to be front paged
I’m as distrustful as anyone of “big government” but when you have powerful megacorporations, only a strong federal government has the power to provide a counterbalance and protection against sociopathic corporations. In a functioning democracy, big government will always be the lesser evil.
Thanks to all the union folks who are willing to stand with us. They know the truth.
Seeeesh, if this crap isn’t over soon maybe we should declare Halloween ‘National Burn Baucus Day’ ala Guy Fawkes.
Just out of curiousity,does anyone know how much WalMart/Sam’s Club stock Baucus owns,if any?
When ,if any, it was purchased?
Remember, remember the fifth of November…
It would be a good night for a bonfire, I’m sure. Why let the lunatic fringe have all the fun of political theater?
works for me. i was jest look’n fer an excuse fora camp fire :D
oh! I was originally think glenn beck (is he still around?) but the thread topic was baucus ;)
The Baucus Insurance Industry Revenue Enhancement and Protection Act sucks.
Could we get Max Baucus masks instead of the cool Guy Fawkes ones they had in the movie, V for Vendetta?
I’m with you.
The corporations are totally out of control.
I might bitch about government, but as far as I can tell no one in government made $25,839,777 ‘compensation’ in 2007.
However, the CEO of United Health, which refused to pay on contracted insurance services for an elderly relative of mine, made that much in 2007 — the very year that I was having to spend endless hours tracking down problems caused by United Health’s refusal to pay the medical services stipulated in their contract.
The only thing the union members would have yelled to delight me more would have been: “What’s next healthCo’s? You’re going to tell us you are Too Big To Fail?”
If we don’t reform health care, that’s what the healthCos will be telling us. (No doubt Goldman Sachs and BofA would find a way to get a cut of that action. /s)
iireapac
why not?
[link to PDF] lol
Jane, I put a Boston.com article link to the equipment manufacturers’ lobbying effort on Kerry on the preceding thread
My 2012 Democratic ticket:
Dean / Trumka
hehe. a unionist running on a Dean ticket. I cannot even imagine what the wingnuts will say. Can we please find an African-American unionist while we’re at though? That should be enough to set Beck to armed revolt. Or just spontaneous combustion.
Better yet, a Hispanic woman unionist! They’ll stop calling Obama the anti-christ in a hurry.
No kiddin, I bout fell out! Love ya Flame!
Now there’s an image I don’t need flitting around my imagination.
Rahm is furious about this. He’s flying out there right now to tell the unions to go to hell, like he did when NAFTA got passed 15 years ago.
We all know how well that turned out.
“Leavin on a Jet Plane”. . .
Eewwwww! ;(
Heh. I guess this year I’ll dress up as a one woman torch and pitchfork mob.
RIP Mary Travers
Blue Texan’s would like you all to join him for his regularly scheduled post which was postponed until just a minute or two ago: “Mitt Romney: Scrapping Totally Pointless, Costly and Unnecessarily Provoctive Bush Missile Shield is “Dangerous””
klynn, i am having trouble reading the seminal: for some reason, my computer at work can’t access that portion of the site.
could you send me the text of rosenbaum’s article to bfstemp AT yahoo DOT com?
thanks a bunch!
Is it everything at The Seminal?? And only the The Seminal???
All other sites load fine, but clicking on anything at The Seminal brings up an HTTP501/505 error???
Please tell me I’m not the only one. That way if you figure it out, you can tell me too.
Works fine for me.
Oh yeah, I’m well aware it’s my problem. The techies and I played email tag and figured that out a couple of weeks ago. I’m just not geek enough, or any geek I guess, to figure it out.
Started about a month ago, worked fine until one day, and then ever since then I can’t load anything from The Seminal. Thought if he was having the same problem, I might learn from him since chances are he’s way, way, smarter than I when it comes this damned thing.
Bout the time I was getting to be a little comfortable with MS-DOS, Windows ME was being released. I can’t keep up. No hope.
Maybe the mod can help us out here. The link I posted works fine and I am able to access Seminal on my end. I am not a techie so anyone able to help?
See, now Jane HAS to front page Jason’s diary!
Baucus is bogus and should not be anywhere around a healthcare bill. He is there to stop any real reform from happening. So they can keep doing what their doing to get more of what they got. We should not let Obama accept anything without a “public plan”
Under my plan “testicle transplants” are covered, Obama should contact his physician for an appointment ASAP.
John F. Kennedy said, “ Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, guarantees a violent one”
There may be an issue for folks who have uploaded a windows upgrade. Try rebooting your computer or using a different browser – hope this helps.
MAC!
Clear your cookies. It could be the combination of a corrupted cookie and slightly buggy site software. I’m a software developer for a web firm and often clearing cookies (and sometimes “cached content” too) clears up 501’s that only happen for one or two people (technical reason; the cookies are corrupted in a particular way that causes the web software to burp, which produces a 50x error — this is why you see the error and others don’t).
Just a thought, it’s not a guaranteed fix :)
Yeah, thanks. That was one of the things the tech guy emailed me said to do. And I did.
Frustrating thing is I’d bet dollars to donuts that someone like you sitting in this same chair would figure it out in 5 minutes. I likely won’t 5 years from now.
But that is my fault. Should’ve taken some classes or something. Maybe tried that thing Bush didn’t believe in. READING.
Anyways, thanks to all. Didn’t mean to get this going, it’s just when I saw someone else possibly having the exact same problem, I thought I might piggy back off his solution if he found it.
Anyways, thanks again to all. If I fire up my laptop, I can access The Seminal. I just don’t fire that up much anymore.
DOS to ME?! Man, that’s a leap. Holy shit.
I’m going to suggest this at a meeting this evening.
Suggest you stop by your local library. They tend to have staff who can answer these questions and can actually show you with a real computer. If they can’t help you, chances are one of the patrons can. Also, check to see if they offer one-on-one help. These are usually for 15 or 30 minutes time frames. Sometimes it is just easier to see it done.
Having said that, my husband had to waste time on his yesterday, because of a new Vista update, so it probably isn’t you.
BULL SHIT BULL SHIT BULL SHIT
That’s great!!
Labor is a movement and we are together. Some Dems better wake up, because if they f..k labor and the American people on health care, they will pay a heavy cost.
That means McCaskill, Nelson and Baucus
Snowe, Nelson, McCaskill, and Lieberman “Commend” Baucus for Health Care Bill
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo…..e-bill.php
McCaskill better learn fast of she will pay a big cost in 2012.
That’s the fine for families, for individuals it’s $950. But I’ve heard some people say “okay, I’ll pay it. Cheaper than the health care”. But I don’t think they realize that like auto insurance the fine is separate from the mandatory insurance. If you want to get on the road, you still have to get insurance. To me, this indicates you would still not be covered after the fine, and still be expected to carry health insurance. It’s mandatory.
So that means they would assign a plan to the recalcitrant. And you’d have to pay for that, too. It sounds like they could dun your paycheck, or perhaps withdraw the money from your bank accounts to cover this.
Oh…get this. “Tax credits”…pay the insurance company until your accounts are empty…but don’t worry, You might get money back (or reduced taxes) at tax-time.
Furthermore…if you are 45-64 you might have to pay 7 times what some late teen boy pays…despite their insane driving, likelihood of getting in fights, or sports-related accidents and unprotected sexual activity. But then magically, at 65 you go onto Medicare. Working and 64 BADDDDD! Retired and 65…GOOOODDDDD!
Originally written by John Denver (and some credit French-Algerienne Eddy Marnay as co-writer).