Heh, that’s me standing next to Sirota at his opening piece.

Sirota and Canfield?? Hot stuff.

Damn, ya gotta get more outta yer 15 minutes of fame. *g*

I agree. Sounds almost like a ticket doesn’t it? Sirota/Canfield 2012.

Too Bad the esteemed Senator Bennet wasn’t in his office. Maybe he was hiding in the back room.

wheeee!
cool.

I mean, he’s just lying. There’s no other word for it.

You could call it “supporting Obama.” How about that?

SEIU huh?

The unions are corrupt and must die. They are not the labor movement anymore.

Freaking awesome.
Thank you Kelly.

Kelly! Kelly! Kelly!

Yeah Kelly!

Thanks for being there, Kelly. It looks like a very cold, gloomy day. Brave souls to go out in that weather.

And the replacement is????

and to think we knew him when.

I mean, he’s just lying. There’s no other word for it.

Sounds like Bennet’s within one standard deviation of the mean in this congress.

i ordered my bees today,italian,of course

“SEIU huh?”

Gotta play the “I got mine screw you” card.

Really cool. Thank you for that video, feels good to see other people like us. Thank you people!

Hiya eCAHN

go team,and fab job Kelly

More and more the complaints are “lying”, “dishonest”, etc. Slowly, very slowly, some are coming to John Jay Chapman’s realization that “There are no issues in American politics save the one issue of common honesty.”

Sooo kewl. Hope you luv yours as much as I luv mine. I am sooo looking forward to their honey gifts.

Great, inspiring stuff. And nice to “see” you finally, friend.

Hiya preserve, protect. Hope all is well with you this evening!

i havent opened any other blogs since kristalnacht

*standing on chair clapping wildly for kelly and the other activists*

woohoo

This is why H.L. Mencken hated democracy. It’s the worst sort of tyranny of complete and utter boobs.

thinking for a name for QUEENIE

Hold his backtracking feet to the fire! I never expected for him to keep his word but I’ll bet he never expected to be called out on it. Good looking as usual flat!

Great work David, Kelly and all in CO!

Wish we had that going on here in CA . . .

The CO action is one we can live for vicariously!

hey Petrovanoviche! how goes it?

Hi all – back from dinner.

It was a hoot today!

Sounds like your pumped! As well you should be!

Obama lied about “coverage” for children with pre-existing conditions. Bennet apparently lied about presenting the Public Option for a vote.

OT: Is there any doubt that Obama was lying about voting against the AUMF (Iraq war) if only he’d had been a Senator at that time?

It was a great opportunity, let me tell you. I was surprised, but shouldn’t have been, that the “Don’t Derail” crowd was represented. I could kick myself in retrospect for not talking with them.

You raise bees, eCAHN? And yes, everything’s bloomin’ here in CA.

Congrats, Kelly — great work there in CO.

Hi, sadlyyes.

(I’m assuming that you’re addressing me.)

I notice that you used the same appellation (“Petrovanoviche”) when you greeted the venerable Petrocelli back in December. This is oddly flattering, since Petrocelli was (is?) a fine member of the FDL community.

But I’ll take new friends (especially from this crowd) anytime I can.

oopsie i goofed…but hello anywho

http://www.tampabay.com/news/health/article991061.ece

Yeah, the don’t derail crowd has a lot of D support.

One thing that made a major impression on me in the last week was a Noam Chomsky interview on democracynow last week (Thursday?) wherein Chomsky averred that the communist party worked tirelessly for the New Deal was very helpful in its passage. As there is no real left in the U.S. anymore, no wonder the U.S. doesn’t get any reform.

“SEIU and Progress Colorado showed up to demonstrate AGAINST the public option,”

HOW the hell did you come up with Veal Pen? You hit it outta the park.

OR, How the hell did someone not come up with it before … 1982 ;) ??

HELLO Union idiots (btw, I’m in the teachers union in WA.)

WHEN you fight against stuff good for all the working stiffs,
THEN the working stiffs really ain’t gonna give a fuck about you.

(see last 40++ years of union ‘success’)

rmm.

Hey, no worries. Actually glad for your attention – you’ve been around these parts a long time too, and it’s nice to engage.

Indeedy!

Sirota told me today “Power concedes NOTHING without a demand.” It’s really that simple. The demand has to not only be heard, but felt in the form of pressure.

Hopefully the video of that will be ready soon. :)

There is one good union left-California Nurses Union. They lobby for state single payer. Have been for years.

Sounds like a modern day G. Stein-ism — there is no left left.

Except for boots on the ground — left… left….left…right…. left.

It just amazes me. I was hanging out with the SEIU crowd when the Teabaggers were protesting Pelosi here at the Stout Street Clinic back in August.

What a difference 6,7 months makes.

Wow, no kidding. Tempus fugit these days, man.

this is the beauty of the too clever by half “thinking” which the string pullers pull off.

I remember when we had to choose dukakis cuz he was “electable”.

15 years later in Seattle, all kinds of people would tell me how they loved howard dean, but, he wasn’t “electable” like Kerry, and they didn’t want to waste their vote, so they were gonna be smarter than me.

and so it goes.

rmm.

heh. was thinking about that. it was our introduction to you :D goodness, they aren’t going to become Rahm’s ‘goons’ are they ??

Sirota, Kelly, Jane Benz and all those other wonderful comitted people who showed up today . . . Thank You ! I know this isn’t about ‘feel good’ moments, but jesus, this is the cleanest I’ve felt in days. mad thanks

I still think most of the New Deal was a reaction to pre-empt the growth of communism in America during the Great Depression.

FDR knew that rebuilding the country’s infrastructure and productive capacity with a social conscience had the potential to restore the dispossessed to a middle class status, the eggs in every democratic omelet society.

Leaving the dispossessed in the gutter was a recipe for revolution.

I’m still surprised that only tea baggers are marching in the streets,

Kelly and all those firedogs…)

You looked like a bouncer in the very first shot. Hee hee.

Yeah, baby, I’m a thuggish firebagger! Look out!

firebaggers! even better than firegods.

What we have seen over and over again during the healthcare debate is that leadership confers not only prominence but responsibility. We have seen this over and over again, Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Hoyer, Baucus, Grijalva, Woolsey, Kucinich, Grayson, DeGette, and now Bennett.

They think they can grab the spotlight, then duck out on their commitments when it comes time to deliver. Glenn Greenwald has talked about how the Democrats rotate their villains so no one gets complete blame on anything, but we have to recognize that they also rotate their heroes. One month so-and-so is championing our ideas. We all go so-and-so for President. Hurrah for so-and-so, but then so-and-so caves and we all feel disappointed, even betrayed. But then the next month comes and someone else comes along to garner our support, maybe some money, and the cycle begins again. We have to get over the personalities, no matter how appealing they may be. We have to make any support given anyone conditional on performance. They don’t perform. We don’t support.

It’s a derisive term for Firedoglake commenters that they use over at the Great Orange.

I just wanted to tell you that you inspired me to make an e-edition of Practical Agitation. I haven’t figured out where or how to park it on the web yet. As a zip file it’s only 85k. I expect I could have made it even smaller but I prefer my etexts with good formatting.

Looks like Grayson’s month. *yawn moneybomb yawwwwn*, Weiner seems to have gone into hiding. Fuck, there will be a lot less of them to rotate after November, anyway. There was an article I read, some rich guy is running for senate in connecticut as a “Democrat Teabagger”. An interesting first. Most likely he’s looking to cash in on the Teabag Mania, but interesting nonetheless.

Let us know!

: )

The Senate Democrats have really gone ‘a con too far’ on this legislation… Power and ego are a potent combination when the ends start “justifying” the means, come hell or high water.

Senator Jim Webb (D-Marine Corps) just had the nerve, about twenty minutes ago, to try to get unanimous consent to get two bills (one passed by the House on Saturday, and one or both still in committee in the Senate) around regular order so that they could be discharged from committee and brought immediately to the floor and passed independent of the reconciliation fix bill the Senate has been working on all day and evening – on behalf of himself, Akaka, and every other Democratic Senator as co-sponsor – even though Senator Burr had the identical provisions in a pending amendment to the reconciliation fix waiting to be voted on.

The Webb-favored bill was to fix some problems in the health care legislation signed into law yesterday with regard to Tri-Care for Veterans (the Akaka bill was some similar fix).

Meanwhile the Democratic Party, with the silent acceptance of Sanders and Feingold and Merkley, and everyone else in the caucus, has been happily deploying the Senate nuclear option of tabling to avoid even casting a vote on each Republican amendment in turn (as opposed to on the motions to table) – even when the Democrats completely support the policy in the amendment, as with the Burr amendment (Senator Gregg also offered a paid-for three-year “doc fix” amendment) – apparently all because they want to deliver to Obama only what Obama ordered the Senate to deliver (and who are they to disagree…).

And then Democrats like Webb have the gall to play politics and take umbrage that Republicans somehow aren’t grateful for the Democratic Party’s appalling abuse of power and open disdain and deliberate shut-down of democratic, legislative process in the Senate for no good purpose except to protect people like Michael Bennet from the consequences of their own deceit and cowardice.

Lack of “gratitude” that Tom Coburn immediately, and rightly, displayed – by “objecting” to Webb’s unanimous consent request, after pointing out that the Republicans received the Webb/Akaka bills for review literally two minutes earlier, and that apparently all Webb and the Democrats had to do was to support the pending Burr amendment to get those same changes made (and thus – horror of horrors – wait for the House to quickly rubberstamp the Senate reconciliation changes). Whereupon Daniel Akaka then immediately moved to table (kill, without an up or down vote on the amendment itself) Senator Burr’s reconciliation amendment containing the very changes Webb/Akaka want made in the underlying bill, out of spite and because of the brazen, shameless refusal of the Democrats to do their duty as representatives of the American people on this health reform policy, because a President told them not to do that duty.

Dear Michael Bennet, Tom Harkin and fellow Democratic “Senators” and “Representatives”: You don’t “support” a public option if you in fact not only refuse to fight for it, but work to defeat it just because the President won’t support it or told you not to. So stop pretending or claiming to independently “support” policies, unless and until the President has informed you that you do actually support them. Since that’s obviously now the true, if unspoken, unauthorized, unConstitutional, grossly-irresponsible and despicable, current function of the Democratic-majority “Congress.”

I like it. Koslings are dipshits.

This was precisely my point when Kelly expressed a desire for me to run for Congress.

Kelly Canfield:
Run, Nathan, Run! I still have that donation promise!

Nathan Aschbacher:
The temptation gets stronger each passing day, but understand that you’re pinning your hopes on either the belief in my benevolence & altruism or that the vindictiveness of my convictions happens to align with yours.

The better path is to remove the contradiction of representation from the process, or at least construct a means to by-pass it when necessary.

One of the more useful quotes to characterize the designed failure of representative democracy comes in Federalist #63

The people can never willfully betray their own interests: But they may possibly be betrayed by the representatives of the people; and the danger will be evidently greater where the whole legislative trust is lodged in the hands of one body of men, than where the concurrence of separate and dissimilar bodies is required in every public act.

It’s almost ironic that it’s attributed to Madison, though it’s obvious that he was naive enough to think that the establishment of a bicameral legislature satisfied the “separate and dissimilar.” Ignoring that two representative bodies doesn’t improve upon what he rightfully notes as a fundamental flaw in the entire concept of representation.

Ever worked in a restaurant?

It’s already available online.
Practical Agitation by John Jay Chapman via Google Books

You could buy a respectably appropriate domain name, and embed the Google iframe in a container of your styling. I could help you if you like.

Nope, I was a bike mechanic for four years during high school, then worked as a manufacturing engineering consultant during summers in college, and then went to work as a software engineer, and now have my own IT and Business strategy firm specializing in preparing small and mid-sized businesses to move up into the enterprise tier.

I miss being a bike mechanic :-)

I’m way too ADHD (proudly unmedicated) to be effective in food service, I once cocktailed for an event thrown at the non-profit I was President of, and I made bank in tips (which I donated of course), but I’m pretty sure that had to do with the quality of my behind, not my service.

I tip big though, because I have tremendous respect for the people who are good at that job, it’s thankless dealing with the public all the time.

Cripes, good job, Nathan. I had missed that you could download it before.

I have reluctantly been watching most of the day.
The only thing more apparent than US Senator’s over-developed sense of dignity is the depth of their stoop.

I used to ride and wrench a lot, eventually I got fed up with all the little screws. Steel is real.

: )

Pfffft… Titanium is where it’s at (he says as he gets ready to ride his lugged steel 1964 Cinelli home, and lock it up to his scarcely ridden early-model titanium Voodoo).

More importantly, why do you ask?

Lol. I’ll take unbutted cromoly with epoxy spraypaint and the derailleurs off. Tends to stay in my possession that way.

; )

Splendid and well done, David, Kelly and all modeling for us all how it’s done! Good on you!!

Sorry to grill you, just popped into my head when you were talking about running. Restaurant people are real people. However, Bernanke worked in one so it’s not conclusive.

Ha! :-) My experience with restaurant people is that they’re practically nymphomaniacs within their workplace circles, but I suspect that’s not conclusive either. ;-)

Yes, I know of the Google versions. The plain text version does not appear readily downloadable. Nor do I know if it has been corrected. The digitalized photocopy is 2.2Mb and comes as a pdf. There is also an Epub file but you need an Epub reader for it.

For a digital photocopy I prefer the version here:

http://www.archive.org/details/practicalagitati00chapuoft

This also has a text version (many formatting problems) which I downloaded, corrected, reformatted, and made into an HTML document. That is what I meant by making an e-edition. I created a text version of the book.

People fuck with great avidity.

Lmao.

Very good of you to do all that, Hugh, readability is a big plus. Thank you! I look forward to reading it.

There was an article I read, some rich guy is running for senate in connecticut as a “Democrat Teabagger”.

That would be Warren Mosler, sharp as a whip and a nice guy. If you check out his site, you can download his book “The 7 Deadly Innocent Frauds”.
http://moslereconomics.com/

If you’re not familiar with Modern Monetary Theory economics, he’ll blow your mind. His slogan is “don’t vote for anyone who wants to balance the federal budget”. Here’s a clip from CNBC where poor Warren looks like the Professor trying to teach Gilligan, the Skipper and Mrs. Howell the basics of thermodynamics. :o)
http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1410610592

Ah gotcha. Well the offer to help still stands, even if it’s just deploying it as a standalone site.

It’s almost ironic that it’s attributed to Madison, though it’s obvious that he was naive enough to think that the establishment of a bicameral legislature satisfied the “separate and dissimilar.” Ignoring that two representative bodies doesn’t improve upon what he rightfully notes as a fundamental flaw in the entire concept of representation.

To be fair to Madison, it wasn’t until early in the 20th Century that the Constitution was amended to provide for popular election of Senators, before then they were chosen by their respective state legislatures. I can’t say that was necessarily an improvement.

Thank you beowulf. I had run across his writings before here on FDL, I hadn’t realized it was the same guy. I have to say I’m pretty sceptical of his theories, but I’ll read more about them.

The interesting thing about Mosler’s work is that he comes at it from the fundamental understanding that the “economy” is nothing more than a universally agreed upon fiction constructed of aggregate individual behaviors and accepted constraints, and that the boundaries of that fiction are malleable and permeable when gamed appropriately.

It’s one of the things that bothers me about a lot of work in economics, the treatment is typically that there are somewhere (yet entirely unknown) physical laws that dictate the boundaries of the economy, and whatever the accepted paradigm is at the time in history dictates how scholars approach it. The problem is that over time the paradigm fundamentally changes, it’d be like observing that gravity in 1520 was distinctly different than gravity in 2010. It isn’t. Economics, on the other hand, does exhibit massively different characteristics depending on the universally accepted fiction of the time.

True, but it still does nothing to address his more salient point, which is; representation is a terrible means to service the public trust.

Well ok, I just watched the video. He’s talking about Bernanke’s Helicopter. How will we pay for oil?

That would be Warren Mosler, sharp as a whip and a nice guy.

also got a mention in galbraith’s latest (one of his best imo), In Defense of Deficits:

With government, the risk of nonpayment does not exist. Government spends money (and pays interest) simply by typing numbers into a computer. Unlike private debtors, government does not need to have cash on hand. As the inspired amateur economist Warren Mosler likes to say, the person who writes Social Security checks at the Treasury does not have the phone number of the tax collector at the IRS. If you choose to pay taxes in cash, the government will give you a receipt–and shred the bills. Since it is the source of money, government can’t run out.

i second your recomendation of mosler’s The 7 Deadly Innocent Frauds. imo we all need to be familiar with MMT (Modern Monetary Theory economics), and besides the fun of blowing your mind mosler’s short book (really more of a long essay) is a fun read with true stories and appearances by larry summers and al gore. and it’s a great place to start getting a grasp of the MMT paradigm.

transparait, i highly highly recommend MMT to you. it’s a different paradigm, so it may seem like nonsense at first, but it’s really imo worth your time. i wish more people were open to considering it, and slowly i think the word is getting out thanks to some dedicated heterodox economists — for example, marshall auerback and rob parenteau have been doing heavy lifting at naked capitalism to break through closed minds in the comments threads (i think they are succeeding and i expect/hope someday soon the paradigm will shift and people will be all ho-hum we knew that, it’s obvious and boring).

Economics, on the other hand, does exhibit massively different characteristics depending on the universally accepted fiction of the time.

that’s an excellent way of describing it, that i hadn’t thought of. thanks.

p.s. i am SO glad you are taking a look at this!

excellent question – and, i think, depends at least in part on the current role of the us dollar as main global reserve currency (or, in this case, petro dollars). the reserve currency issue both complicates and, i think, provides us with opportunities, for ourselves and others, if only we would take advantage of them. also, imo, grave risks if we don’t.

Will be glad to see it.

Take a look at this also: http://www.archive.org/details/practicalagitati00chapuoft

Causes and Consequences is also worth reading, as well as William Lloyd Garrison. The speech on “Coatesville” is a recognized classic.

Warning: Chapman wrote some offensive books.

Chapman was also a splendid writer on literature and education. For a sampling, read the collection edited by Richard Stone, Unbought Spirit: A John Jay Chapman Reader (1998).

Sirota must feel pretty lonely over at Openleft these days, with the defeatism and cheerleading going on. Maybe Jane should invite him over to FDL?

Looking through the comments, I see you’ve already found the archive. Good for you.

Chapman is a writer one dismisses as unpractical until experience teaches that what one thought was practical isn’t. Some will be put off by his references to religion, but his notion of religion is very wide and would include atheists and agnostics who strive “to make men more unselfish.” In any case, his aim is not to get us to think as he does, but to think. “The love of truth is the same passion as the veneration for the individual.” – Causes and Consequences. Which is why people who read Chapman also read Albert Jay Nock and Finley Peter Dunne.

Go FDL. Let’s all KEEP PUSHING. Phone calls, emails, visits to Bennet’s and other Reps offices. Let’s keep the pressure on.

The interesting thing about Mosler’s work is that he comes at it from the fundamental understanding that the “economy” is nothing more than a universally agreed upon fiction constructed of aggregate individual behaviors and accepted constraints, and that the boundaries of that fiction are malleable and permeable when gamed appropriately.

Thats probably the most important point anyone can make about economics. Its more ideology than science. Thats not to say that it doesnt work sometimes. But it tells us that there are ways of accomplishing things beyond what mainstream economics at the moment would allow.

Warren Mosler seem to be saying more or less the same things that keynesian economist has been saying all along: Gobernment deficits should be seen as investements, not debts. Stimulate aggregate demand and you stimulate economic growth. Right?

i most definitely see mosler in the post-keynesians.

here’s a bit from wikipedia:

Post-Keynesian economics[1] is a school of economic thought with its origins in The General Theory of John Maynard Keynes, although its subsequent development was influenced to a large degree by Michał Kalecki, Joan Robinson, Nicholas Kaldor and Paul Davidson. Keynes’ biographer Lord Skidelsky writes that the post-Keynesian school has remained closest to the spirit of Keynes’ work, particularly in his monetary theory and in rejecting the neutrality of money.[2][3]

Post-Keynesian economists maintain that Keynes’s theory was seriously misrepresented by the two other principle Keynesian schools: neo-Keynesian economics which was orthodox in the 1950s and 60s – and by New Keynesian economics, which together with various strands of neoclassical economics has been dominant in mainstream macroeconomics since the 1980s. Post-Keynesian economics can be seen as an attempt to rebuild economic theory in the light of Keynes’s ideas and insights. However even in the early years in the late 1940s post-Keynesians such as Joan Robinson sought to distance themselves from Keynes himself, as well as from the then emergent neo-Keynesianism. Some post-Keynesians took an even more progressive view than Keynes with greater emphases on worker friendly policies and re-distribution. Robinson, Paul Davidson and Hyman Minsky were notable for emphasising the effects on the economy of the practical differences between different types of investments in contrast to Keynes more abstract treatment.[4]

A feature of post-Keynesian economics is the principle of effective demand, that demand matters in the long as well as the short run, so that a competitive market economy has no natural or automatic tendency towards full employment.[5] Contrary to a view often expressed, the theoretical basis of this market failure is not rigid or sticky prices or wages (as in New Keynesian economics, which is best regarded as a modified form of neoclassical economics). Many post-Keynesians reject the IS/LM model of John Hicks, which was very influential in neo-Keynesian economics.

The positive contribution of post-Keynesian economics[6] has extended beyond the theory of aggregate employment to theories of income distribution, growth, trade and development in which demand plays a key role, whereas in neoclassical economics these are determined by the supply side alone. In the field of monetary theory, post-Keynesian economists were among the first to emphasise that the money supply responds to the demand for bank credit,[7] so that the central bank can choose either the quantity of money or the interest rate but not both at the same time. This view has largely been incorporated into monetary policy, which now targets the interest rate as an instrument, rather than the quantity of money. In the field of finance, Hyman Minsky put forward a theory of financial crisis based on financial fragility, which has recently received renewed attention.[8]

In U.S. history labor unions have been the only vehicle that has forced fat cats to share the profits that the working class produce. The only vehicle that has spread the wealth. As labor unions were crushed as the fat cats moved manufacturing over seas (no tariffs when they shipped goods back to the states, tax cuts etc) they busted the unions and fair pay for the working class.

Union organizing, union demands for better pay is the only way forward that is fair and just. The fat cats only share when they are forced to share the profits. But are more than willing to socialize their losses

i was just glancing through the link, and this bit stood out and especially resonated for me:

It is never hopeless. Absolute honesty is always the way. But an age of corruption destroys faith. This is the essential injury. This is the disease

Suprise! The Reconciliation Bill Will Need To Go Back To The House; Jon Walker
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/03/25/suprise-the-reconciliation-bill-will-need-to-go-back-to-the-house/

Now that the reconciliation bill must go back to the House, there is no reason for Senate Democrats to not offer amendments that could make health care reform better.

Thanks selise, hadnt heard of post-keynesianism before, sounds interesting!

The pertinent transcript, from yesterday’s Congressional Record:

The PRESIDING OFFICER. There will now be 2 minutes, equally divided, prior to a vote in relation to the amendment No. 3652, offered by the Senator from North Carolina, Mr. Burr.

Who yields time?

Mr. BURR. Mr. President, my amendment is quite simple. In the rush to finish this bill, there were some errors. One of the errors was clarifying the status of some veterans programs, specifically the TRICARE program, the VA spina bifida program–that is the children of Agent Orange exposure from Vietnam–and the last one is the CHAMPVA program.

What this amendment simply does is set the minimum essential coverage as met on these programs, so the veterans’ families, the children of veterans, are not at risk of determining that their insurance does not meet the minimum essential coverage, therefore, exposing them to fines.

Some might suggest it does not need to be fixed. The House went back very quickly and fixed TRICARE but not CHAMPVA or spina bifida. It is my belief we should act on that on the appropriate mechanism, which is this fix-it bill.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.

Mr. WEBB. Mr. President, I would suggest to my colleague from North Carolina and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that if we want to fix this problem, we can fix it right now and we should fix it right now.

We should not allow things to be tied up in the separate melodrama of the moment. I introduced a bill on Monday which passed the House unanimously on Saturday to fix the TRICARE part of this. The chairman of the Veterans’ Committee introduced a bill today to fix the spina bifida problem.

I ask unanimous consent that the Finance Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 3148, a bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code to provide for the treatment of Department of Defense health coverage as minimal essential coverage, sponsored by myself; further, that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration en bloc, along with the bill introduced earlier today by Senator Akaka, S. 3162, a bill to clarify the health care provided by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs that constitutes minimum essential coverage; that all Democratic Senators be added as cosponsors to this measure; that the bills be read a third time and passed en bloc, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table en bloc, with no intervening action or debate.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? The Senator from Oklahoma.

Mr. COBURN. Reserving the right to object.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.

Mr. COBURN. We got this 1 1/2 minutes ago to see the language. You have an amendment on the floor [Burr's SA 3652] that actually accomplishes everything you want to do. Why are we doing this? Because you do not want to mess up a [reconciliation] package that is clean [or, at least, was mistakenly thought to be "clean" late last night...]. It has every application, the Burr amendment, to this.

With that, and the fact that this is exactly the kind of shenanigans the American people do not want, I object.

Mr. WEBB. Let the American people understand, the Republicans objected to a matter that could have been fixed by law tomorrow.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.

The Senator from Hawaii.

Mr. AKAKA. Mr. President, I move that we table the Burr amendment, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There appears to be a sufficient second.

The question is on agreeing to the motion.

The clerk will call the roll.

The legislative clerk called the roll.

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from West Virginia (Mr. BYRD) is necessarily absent.

Mr. KYL. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Georgia (Mr. ISAKSON).

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber desiring to vote?

The result was announced–yeas 54, nays 44, as follows: [...] [Democrats Hagan, Lincoln, Pryor and Nelson of Nebraska voted No.]

http://thomas.loc.gov/r111/r111.html

Read not only Warren, but also billyblog, and this blog where Randy Wray, Marshall Auerback, Bill Black, and a lot of the other MMT people write. The more you read, and the more you see the exchanges on these sites and on Warren’s the more you’ll see the sense in what they’re saying. Other places in which you can find the MMT point of view expressed include:

http://www.newdeal20.org/

http://www.cfeps.org/

http://www.levy.org/

http://e1.newcastle.edu.au/coffee/

Naked Capitalism. Follow links to Parenteau.

Great work holding legislators accountable. But I don’t see mention above that the public option didn’t have the votes in the House (anymore). So if the po amendment passed in the Senate reconciliation bill, got sent to the House, and failed, we’d be left with just the Senate bill. The Senate bill has a lot of problems, mostly affordability problems that the reconciliation bill would fix.

Activists should read my above statement and say – “well that’s why we then go an hold our House members accountable!” This is true – but then we’re talking about months more of health care reform, and even the strongest advocate for reform has to realize that delay only hurts the strength of the bill. And besides, there are other things that Congress should be focusing on, like jobs, immigration, financial reform etc.

Kudos to Sirota and his crew for not giving up hope, kudos for the 51 Senators including Bennett that signed the Brown letter some weeks back supporting the PO. Shame on House members for not supporting their efforts, and Shame on the entire Democratic caucus, including Obama, for letting the HCR fight drag on so long, and making so many compromises in the name of bi-partisanship that we all knew was never possible.

The right decision now is what the Senate is doing, avoiding delay, passing the reconciliation bill as is (or close enough to it to pass back through the House today), and get on with making this bill a reality.

Advocates never thought that this would be the end of fighting for health care. We progressives should stop squabbling amongst eachother about the perfect and the good because we’re going to need a united front to fight off the forces of the right who will be tearing apart this bill for years to come.

We can’t have a united front when progressives insist on pre-compromising on what we need. The bill is a travesty. As it stands now, it ought to be killed.

I for one will be voting against the party that passed this bill.

Isn’t compromise what our democracy is all about? It doesn’t mean we stop fighting for what we believe is right, but I think it does mean that we claim victory where we can – this bill is a win for the progressive movement. It’s not what I would have written, but it does offer significant protections from the insurance industry: no more denials or rescissions, rate increases must be reviewed, significant subsidies for low-income families (eventually), and most importantly for me, the implicit assertion that health care is a right. That’s progressive.

There are a lot of people out there that are currently being screwed over by their insurance company – for them, the status quo is fatal. And we know how politics works, this was our chance, and for the first time since Medicare we’ve won! Killing this bill is a return to the status quo – which was killing over 40,000 people a year.

I think people should vote with their hearts, but I think it’s a mistake to feed the right wing attack dogs with divisions on the left.

I like dogs.