Yay Rep. Speier!

Wish I could get excited about petition…But I think a dead corpse (Dem Party) can’t read. I’m afraid it’s over for us….as per Villagers.

thank you Congresswoman !

and her district (D+23)is nowhere near as safe as Diane Watson’s (PVI: D+35)

And just to rub it in the Insurance Lobbies will be donating $5,773,000 to her Republican opponent in the next election. Compete with that grass roots.

and the other choice is the zombie R party?

All the beltway villagers on both sides and in the so-called fourth estate are clueless in the extreme. Their pronouncements are as ephemeral as yesterday’s newspaper and worth as much.

Got a source for that figure?

That’s great news! I’m so worried progressive Democrats are just going to lay down to their corporatist peers and just pass this pile to help Obama.
http://forwantofanail.com

I see the MSM has polled Brown’s voters who want to have “Republican ideas” in legislation.

Brilliant.

Isn’t it sad when we want to throw a party for someone who just keeps their word?

Well it’s just wonderful that Speier will vote against the Senate bill but her $5,773 in donations is paltry compared to what the corporations can potentially muster when they decide to mount a challenger. The power of the grassroots to raise money to affect politicians is moot after the recent Supreme Court decision opening the floodgates of corporate money. Unless or until the “grassroots” is willing to march in the streets of DC to register its opposition and outrage to the status quo nothing will change. Only until hundreds of thousands of people were willing to protest the war in Viet Nam in DC and across the nation did LBJ get the message.

That’s merely propaganda.

yeppers.

mornin’

Hey, ya. Sitting here waiting for Sonny’s bus to show up. An hour late already. :( And, the kid is worried about getting to school late. Most would have just gone back to bed. Maybe.

In light of Ms. Speir’s survival ,against all odds, after being shot five times and left for dead on the tarmack in the Jonestown incident ,your reference to corpses is quite unseemly.

Idiotic. We’re not going to get a public option. That option is stone dead! What you’re gonna get is a scaled back reform bill that appeases Republicans, if we get anything at all. Sorry, but believe me when I say that the Senate Bill, with all its flaws, is infinitely better than what we’re likely to get now that people like Spiers have lost their backbone.

I was as supportive of a public option as anyone. In fact, I favor single payer. But that battle was lost the moment Brown got elected. You can take your chances with the 2010 election, but don’t expect to wind up better off. Democrats right now have nothing coming down the pike that will excite and motivate the electorate. Probably lose more seats in November. It’s not the time to let it ride on the ‘hope’ that we can win a public option. Better to take our winnings– the Senate Bill– and leave the table now.

New post up top…

It’s hilarious that you call standing to one’s principles, like Speier is doing, “los[ing] their backbone,” yet laying down to corporatist hijackers like Lieberman is, “tak[ing] our winnings.”

Are you high?

welp, that comment is gone?

You really have changed your opinion dramatically in the past month:

jackstraw December 24th, 2009 at 6:27 am

Read the bill. The so-called consumer protections are illusory.
Read the bill. Millions of people will not gain access to healthcare. They will just be required to buy junk insurance with deductibles so high they can’t afford to use the coverage.
READ THE BILL: The only way to control costs in this bill is to use the review committees to deny needed treatment to seriously ill people. Obama already tried to do this. See Hays v. Sebelius, in which a federal court blocked Obama’s efforts to deny critical treatment for a serious lung disease for a woman on Medicare. This bill enables the administration to do just that. (I always thought the right wing was nuts when they talked about ‘death panels’. Now I’m not so sure.)

My wife has cancer. I crave meaningful healthcare reform. This bill doesn’t provide it. This bill will kill my wife. Count me among the bitter majority.

I hope your wife is okay.

I have a question about what she meant by “will not vote for the Senate bill without changes.”

Does this mean that she will oppose any version of the Senate bill that does not include a public option?

Seems to me like that’s not necessarily the case, and we’ve already heard over the weekend that Pelosi and Reid are thinking about “fixes” to the Senate bill that are far too few and do not include a public option.

Rep. Michael Michaud’s office is saying no decision until a House bill is transcribed from the insurance companies.

kidding.

Actually Rep Michaud’s office yuppie got kinda’ quiet when I mentioned that the senate bill and the latest sc decision to allow corporations free reign over candidates in US elections is “fascist as hell”. Sorry guys, I broke ranks.

My sentiments exactly. Rep. Speier will be toast after the next election.

I’ve a few dollars put away in my underwear drawer for a bus ticket in case any brave soul would issue a call to arms, so to speak. There are plenty of us but lack a leader. If only MLK was still with us.

I will be attending a local event tomorrow barring any blizzard. According to the e-mail I received there are to be several around the country in support of a public option. This is pointless. We need to fill the national mall and then some.

That’s an important question, but the important thing in the immediate term is to shut down any attempt to pass the bill without changes. In that, Speier is way out in front of Watson.

Once we win that battle, reconciliation is the only option – we must continue to insist on including a public option in a reconciliation bill because it has support in majorities of both chambers.

GOP Idea?

From Digby:

Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer is defending his comment which compared government assistance programs to “feeding stray animals.”

Bauer made the comparison during a town hall meeting Friday in Fountain Inn. He was saying poor parents of students who eat free or reduced-price meals in school cafeterias should be required to attend parent-teacher conferences, or the students should go without.

“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed,” Bauer said, according to the Greenville News. “You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better.”

The gubernatorial candidate said the government can’t afford to keep giving money away without requiring something in return. He said poor people should lose their benefits if they don’t pass drug tests, and parents should be required to be more active in their children’s education.

That is what they believe. They just usually couch it in abstract talk about how they don’t believe in government and taxes. (Listen to Rush talk about Haiti, for instance.) They just know that normal people find their belief heartless and disgusting so they don’t usually say it out loud. But I’ve certainly heard it often enough among wingnuts when they thought they could get away with it.

Without Obama LEADING there will be no Medicare buy in or Medicaid expansion or public option or real regulation in any budget recon bill.

The pass Senate bill now folks are correct if Obama is really 100% corporate – zero percent real Democrat. I and it appears most at FDL assume there is some progressive liberal in him that will get him to lead so that Reid will stop saying no to meaningful budget recon – but Reids attitude on the combo guarantee of Senate bill plus fixes in budget recon leaves little hope for all health care via budget recon – unless Obama leads.

So we come to the question – was Hillary correct – that Obama did not have experience that showed he knew how to lead and that he could learn how to lead – and that her success with Teddy and Oren in getting SCHIP health care for kids -and her success with Foster care and adoption bills – showed she could get things done. Of course Hillary would have gotten this done is a debate not worth discussing at this point – maybe in the future – but her point on Obama leadership ability – was she right?

I don’t think that’s the issue – if we can narrow the options, he’ll have no better choice. We’ll lead him to it.

I replied in the posting following this. To summarize: I am as bitter as anyone about what has happened. But I don’t see any other way forward on healthcare reform than to pass the Senate Bill and then try to fix it (reform the reform) during the budget process in the fall. Going into the 2010 elections without having made any progress on healthcare reform is a bad idea. Discouraged people don’t vote, and its only votes at election time that really count. And you cannot seriously think you’re gonna get anything better if Democrats have to negotiate with Republicans for that 60th vote. Better chance of negotiating fixes after the bill is law, and with the budget process as an instrument of persuasion (you support our changes or no funding for your pet project).

Otherwise healthcare reform is years and years away. Probably not in my lifetime.

Give Jackie a call to thank her for standing strong-
202-225-3531
Don’t delay, do it today!

31Romney, Clinton health care plans similar-experts
Fri Oct 5, 2007 Jason Szep

BOSTON, Oct 5 (Reuters) – When it comes to health care, Republican Mitt Romney loves to take swipes at Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton
Romney is quick to remind supporters of the U.S. senator from New York’s dramatic 1993 failure to reform U.S. health care, which many Americans felt overstepped the role of first lady.

Despite all that, experts say Clinton’s plan borrows heavily from one Romney signed into law when he was governor of Massachusetts, which made the liberal state the first in the United States with near-universal health insurance.

Like Clinton’s plan, the law Romney signed in April 2006 is underpinned by an “individual mandate” compelling people to buy health insurance. Both plans entail subsidies and government regulations. For those in Massachusetts earning less than the federal poverty level of $9,800, free coverage is provided.

But health policy experts and independent political analysts say Massachusetts’ health care costs rose after the law was introduced.
”The plan is much more expensive than it was originally expected. If you have a lot of government mandates, it pushes up the cost,” said Sally Pipes, president Pacific Research Institute, a think tank that promotes free-market policies.State government spending on health care from 2001 to 2007 rose 25 percent in real terms, according to a June report by the New England Healthcare Institute.

——————————————————————–

Romney, Clinton health care plans similar-experts | ReutersBOSTON, Oct 5 (Reuters) – When it comes to health care, Republican Mitt Romney loves to take swipes at Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN17331819 – Cached

NOTE: Jonathan Gruber is the economist whose proprietary model was contracted out to the present administartion to craft healthcare for the entire country.

Gruber worked in the Clinton White House in 1997-1998.

Gruber was appointed a Board Member of the Massachusetts Connect Care in 2006,upon the Romney Care(universal healthcare)being signed into law that same year.

Independent voter here who votes for what I believe is right! The Democrats failed! Incumbents who failed us have to be voted out. No 1 Harry Reid has to go…he is a failure as a leader and a Democrat. All blue dogs to be primaried, especially Nelson, Baucus, and all the other conservative Dems. I am conservative as hell on some issues especially fiscal, but we have a lot of corrupt people who have to be punished…

Rep. Speier will be toast after the next election.

Jackie Speier is about as safe as any politician can be. She’s been representing her peeps for 30 years, more if you count her public service before running for office, and she walks ALL over any competition daring to show up. Statewide, she nearly took the party nomination for lieutenant guv from John Garamendi (he who took CA-10 last November running as a liberal in a semi-conservative district), a far more experienced pol with state-level service/name recognition.

Anyone who thinks Sarah Palin has a compelling story has never heard Jackie’s. Would love to see her take DiFi’s senate seat.