Censored Whig Letters

This Fall’s Election is Not about Policies and Programs – It’s About Right and Wrong

By Robert Creamer

There is a tendency among people who spend their lives working to promote policy positions, Members of Congress, Congressional staffs, and even the media to discuss political issues in terms of public policy.

I don’t mean simply that they use wonky terms and acronyms – though that is often true and it is the surest way to make people’s eyes glaze. I mean that they focus on the potential “effectiveness” of a particular legislative or administrative initiative.

Now the effectiveness of a particular program or policy is enormously important – both to government and politics. But everyday voters mainly make decisions over whether a policy – or a political leader – is effective based on the objective circumstances of their day-to-day lives. If, for instance, President Obama’s policies are not ultimately effective dragging the economy out of the economic ditch into which it was driven by George Bush he will certainly have a very difficult time being re-elected.

But when it comes to the impact of political dialogue – of direct messaging – on the outcome of elections, discussions of the effectiveness of policy are not important determinants of outcomes. Often messaging focused on the effectiveness of a candidate – or a person – can in fact have a big impact on outcomes, but not the discussion of the effectiveness of a policy. The Democrats need an effective economic policy because that will ultimately impact the real circumstances of everyday people. Those real circumstances will have a huge impact on the outcome of elections. But it isn’t the “discussion” of those policies that will be determinative in the least.

Elections are decided by two groups: persuadable swing voters, and mobilizable voters who would cast their ballots for one of the two parties but are unlikely to vote unless they are mobilized.

Neither of these groups is comprised of policy wonks. In fact, both are less likely to be heavily engaged and focused on political and policy issues than more partisan voters. That doesn’t mean these voters are less intelligent than more partisan voters – just less interested.

They care about the things that normal people think about – not policy debates. They care first and foremost about the actual circumstances of their own families – about their job, their income, their kid’s school, their retirement, their hopes and aspirations.

But when it comes to what dialogue – or messaging –affect their political decisions, they don’t focus on the potential “effectiveness” of one policy or another. Instead they want to know whether something is right or wrong.

From the standpoint of most voters there are two inter-related but distinct components of this notion of right and wrong.

On the one hand there is the moral frame that is engaged by any particular political message. Normal voters think of political decisions as choices that are measured against values – not “policies.” This fall we need to make the election a choice between our very popular progressive values and their very unpopular values.

We have to provide a clear contrast to the Right’s belief in unbridled pursuit of individual interest with our commitment to the common good; selfishness versus commitment to others; division versus unity; fear versus hope; that we’re all in this together, not “all in this alone.”

On the other hand voters make political decisions by asking the closely related question of whether you are on “my side.” Whose side is a candidate on? Is he a good guy or a bad guy? Does he represent good guys or bad guys? Are his proposals right or wrong? And remember that right and wrong, and good guys and bad guys, are always defined from the standpoint of who you are and where you sit.

In other words — as George Lakoff argues — from the point of view of the voters, most political decisions are moral decisions.

This is not so because swing voters and mobilizable voters are somehow more “unsophisticated” than more engaged, partisan voters. In fact, you could argue that they are actually more focused on what really matters. Whether a particular policy will “work” is important, but it is a technical question. In fact, most people know instinctively that it’s not the principal driver of political decision-making in any society or group. Normal voters want to strip away the euphemism and policy talk and get to the real question: whose interest is being served and whose is not? What real choices are being made? Is it fair?

Political decisions involve competing self-interests. Normal people know it, and they want to know whose nest is being feathered and whose ox is being gored. First and foremost they want to know if a candidate is on their side.

For many years the Republicans and the far right did a much better job of speaking to that sense of right and wrong than Democrats and Progressives. That helps explain why for much of the last 40 years they were more successful politically. That changed in 2006 and especially in 2008. Barack Obama communicated moral language about hope and possibility – about justice – about standing up for everyday people not special interests.

To win this fall, Democrats need to revive that sense of moral fervor. We have to assure that the election is not about the “effectiveness” of Democratic policies – but whose side a candidate is on.

The debate in the next two months must focus on one central question: do you want to entrust our future once again to Republicans who wrecked the economy – not because they were incompetent or had “bad” policies – but because they were bought and paid for by huge special interests like the big Wall Street Banks, Big Oil and the insurance industry. That is a moral question – not a policy question.

Voters were not outraged by the bank bailout or the huge Wall Street bonuses because they thought they were “ineffective” policies. They are furious because they saw them as unjust.

Everyday people are perfectly willing to sacrifice for a cause that is important. In fact, they long to be called upon to commit their lives to a cause that is bigger than themselves — something to which they can make a significant personal contribution. One of the chief self-interests of every person is a desire for meaning in life and meaning comes from the commitments you make. Everyday voters want their leaders to call on them to make commitments to the greater good – to the future of their children.

But people are livid if they believe they are called upon to play by the rules and then one day get laid off from their job – for no fault of their own – because some Wall Street sharpie made horrible bets with someone else’s money and then walked off scott-free with millions of dollars when the bottom fell out. That’s wrong.

The right-wing arguments that stuck during the health care debate were not “policy” arguments. They were the myths about “death panels,” and Government controlling your life and depriving you of freedom. It was the myth that Health Care reform would cut the Medicare that you have paid into your entire working life. People view these questions in moral terms – in terms of right and wrong – not effectiveness or efficacy.

There are three additional reasons why political messaging that involves moral frames is so resonant:

. Moral questions engage the emotions, not just conscious thought. Emotion is much more likely to break through – to get people’s attention. It is especially effective at mobilizing people to vote. With mobilizable voters, the problem is not convincing them that we are right. Mobilizable voters – by definition — are voters who would vote Democratic, but need to be mobilized to assure they will go to the polls. In 1994 we did not lose because most Americans disagreed with Democratic policies, but because Democrats stayed home and Republicans went to the polls. Mobilization is not about persuasion, it’s about motivation – motivating them to act. That is much more about emotion than thought.

· Moral questions engage value frames that are deeply embedded in each of our unconscious minds. As Lakoff points out, we often have several contradictory value frames. Our view of a subject or candidate is heavily influenced by the frame that is being activated at the particular time. If Democrats do not communicate in moral terms and the other side does, they will be much more apt to activate a clear value frame and win the day.

· A final reason we are much more likely to gain attention of the voters when we use moral language involves narrative. Everyday voters are much more likely to become engaged with our campaigns and candidates if we engaged them with a narrative – or story – about the race. Narratives always involve a protagonist and antagonist. They always involve conflict. At some level, every good story is about right and wrong. Good stories engage us because we empathize with some character and end up rooting for their success. The same is true of election campaigns.

In this election a moral frame is particularly important because it allows Democrats to play offense. We will not win a debate over whether we have been “effective” enough at digging out of the economic hole that Bush and the Republicans left. People are too unhappy with the status quo. Virtually every economist agrees that the stimulus bill did a great deal to stave off true economic disaster, but that doesn’t ring true to someone whose brother-in-law is out of work. In this election the winning ground for Democrats is the question of who’s on your side, and whether we want to hand over the country to the Republicans who will once again do the will of elite special interests.

Discussing questions in moral terms requires that we always address the question of motive. In fact, the motive is often more important than any other aspect of our message. What is important is not just that the Republicans wrecked the economy – but that they wrecked the economy at the bidding of the Big Wall Street banks. They didn’t wreck the economy because they were incompetent or stupid, but because they were – and remain – a wholly-owned subsidiary of the biggest special interests in the country.

And let’s remember that while on the one hand, this is by far the most compelling way to frame the issues in the Mid-terms; it is also without any question the most accurate description of reality.

If Democrats are to persuade and mobilize this fall, every debate must be cast in moral terms:

· Republicans want to cut guaranteed benefits and privatize Social Security for two reasons: because Wall Street wants to get its hands on the Social Security Trust Fund – and so that they allow the wealthiest people in America to keep the huge Bush tax breaks. They would much rather “balance the budget” on the backs of Social Security recipients than demand that the wealthy pay the same tax rates they did during the prosperous Bill Clinton years. It turns out, by the way, that over the next 25 years the “shortfall” in Social Security is about the same amount as the revenue lost if Congress continues the Bush tax cuts for the top 2%.

· Republicans want to replace Medicare with vouchers for private insurance from the same companies that raised their rates three times faster than wages and are now engorged with profit.

· Republicans opposed the Democratic stimulus bill, extensions of unemployment and more federal money for teachers, firemen and police because they wanted the recovery to stall for their narrow political purposes.

· Republicans oppose tough regulation of drilling by oil companies because they have been bought and paid for by Big Oil.

· Republicans want to repeal the new law reining in the recklessness of the Big Wall Street banks that cost eight million Americans their jobs, because they are owned by Wall Street.

· Republicans want to take away provisions in the new Health Care law that prevent insurance companies from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions because the insurance companies dump millions of dollars into their campaigns.

· Republicans side with big business contributors when they consistently oppose measures to discourage the outsourcing of American jobs abroad.

Everything has to be about who is on your side. Everything has to be about motive — about right and wrong.

Democrats face a tough political environment in November because the economic catastrophe that the Republicans created two years ago was so fundamental. It would be outrageous if they were allowed to reclaim control of Congress as their reward for causing that catastrophe and then doing everything they can to stall economic recovery. Now that would be wrong.

Over the next two months we have to passionately make the moral case. We must make the election a choice between those who side with everyday Americans and those who stand shoulder to shoulder with the economic elites whose greed and recklessness unleashed a flood of misery that has yet to fully recede from the Main Streets of America.

Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the recent book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com.

The Tea Party “Catch 22”

The Tea Party movement has started to come unglued over a series of internal contradictions that amount to an identity crisis. The Tea Party is caught in a “Catch 22” position that has largely been ignored by the corporate mainstream media.

Just this morning I watched a local PBS show where a Republican operative claimed that the Tea Party movement was not “Republican, Right Wing or racist.” The comment appears to be the Republican Right Wing official spin on all things “Tea Party” in nature. Unfortunately, the claim really lacks credibility because it conflicts with the facts on the ground all over the nation.

Anyone who really watched the development of the Tea Party movement, as part of the anti-healthcare reform effort, understands that it was a creation of Fox News and corporate funded Right Wing Republican operatives. Despite many claims to the contrary, it brought very few new faces into the political process.

What the Tea Party public relations campaign did was simply “re-brand” the various largely discredited, Right Wing fringe elements in the Republican Party under a new name. It did con the mainstream corporate media very effectively into calling blatant corporatist, economic elitist policies “populist.” It was a bad joke that the media completely missed or just ignored.

Like the fake ACORN pimp and voter registration scandals, the storyline falls apart completely when the details are examined in any detail. The spin relies on manufactured “facts” that are really outrageous lies being told over and over again. In time, the storyline falls apart but often the damage has been done. It appears the mainstream corporate media has learned absolutely nothing from their Iraq War-Weapons of Mass Deception experience.

The reality is that there is probably not much of a Tea Party movement outside of Republican Right Wing corporate control. When it comes to economic populism, the Tea Party has either been completely missing in action or in outright opposition to every proposal that is populist in nature.

Our middle class has been under constant attack by corporate forces for decades. The Reagan-Bush Republicans have been pushing changes in government policy that benefit only the most elite of economic elitists for 30 years. American workers are being driven out of the middle class by government policy and market power. The Republican Right has successfully placed many of the levers of power in government in the hands of the corporatist economic elite. Some Democrats assisted parts of this corporate take-over of government but it was overwhelmingly Republican effort.

The government is not the enemy if it is controlled by the majority of middle class Americans. It is a check on excessive corporate power under those circumstances.

The genius behind the Tea Party campaign is that it is a corporate created public relations/political campaign designed to promote pro-corporate economic policies via government while calling the movement “anti-corporate and anti-government.” The racism angle is a just a way to hook “poor and middle class whites” into an effort designed to economically benefit the wealthiest of the wealthy at the expense of “the poor and middle class of all colors.”

Racism has long been used to divide working Americans up along color lines so they do not demand a better deal from the economic and political elite. Racism serves an economic purpose and always has served an economic purpose. Racism is a sucker bet for working Americans. It has been a key element in building the Tea Party movement and the Republican Party since Richard Nixon. Republican Right wing economic policies are a disaster for 90% of Americans and social wedge issues including race have been the key to Republican victories for more than a generation.

If the Tea Party was really a new creature, it would be fielding third party candidates everywhere under the Tea Party name. Republican and Right Wing operatives claim it is independent of the Republican Party but at the same time strongly oppose real independence. The Republican Party is the Tea Party. The Tea Party is just the most extreme elements of the Republican Party devoted to driving any remaining moderates out of the Republican Party.

You cannot support Pat Toomey-Club for Growth economic policies and still claim to be a populist movement. You have to support economic policies that increase the wages of American workers, support government measures to help the unemployed, curtail the ability of corporations to move jobs outside the United States and sell untaxed imports in our country, shift the tax burden back in the direction of corporations and the Super Wealthy instead of putting it on the middle classes and seek to regulate corporate market power to be an economic populist.

Economic populists do not make excuses for BP like Rand Paul or Sharon Angle. Economic populists do not oppose government deficits during a severe economic downturn nor support government deficits in good economic times, like the Republicans are doing. Opposing better access to affordable healthcare is not a populist position. Giving massive tax cuts to wealthy people while our government is running massive deficits and local governments are firing teachers, firefighters and police is simply stupid economics and has nothing to do with economic populism.

If the Tea Party is” populist” in nature, as they claim, then the policies they support should demonstrate that populism. If the Tea Party is independent of the Republican Party, then they should field independent candidates in the November general elections to prove their independence. If the Tea Party is not racist, then they should condemn the expression of racism from within their movement every time they occur. If the Tea Party is not an expression of extreme Right Wing sentiments, then they should stop supporting the political agenda of the Far Right.

American voters will learn in coming months just how fake and flakey the Tea Party con job is by watching the Tea Party Republicans seeking office in November. You will learn nothing about this from Fox News but the mainstream media should not drop the ball on this story in 2010. The voters deserve a real discussion about the unreality of the Tea Party reality.

Written by Stephen Crockett (Host of Democratic Talk Radio http://www.DemocraticTalkRadio.com ). Mail: 698 Old Baltimore Pike, Newark, Delaware 19702. Phone: 443-907-2367. Email: demlabor@aol.com.

Feel free to publish without prior approval.

Unionists, Environmentalists, Progressives Need to Take Over Democratic Party

It is time to purge the corporatists from the Democratic power structure. The real work of the Democratic Party is done by grassroots activists. These activists are the Democratic Party. They should run it at every level.

This conclusion has become clear in the aftermath of tainted Blanche Lincoln primary victory in Arkansas. It took massive voter disenfranchisement and the intervention of both former President Bill Clinton and President Barack Obama for Lincoln to squeak out a victory.

Obama still has not learned that the Obama Movement that put him in the White House was not really about Obama. It was about a set of progressive policies that constituted “change we can believe in.”

Former President Clinton started the process of going Republican-lite and selling out parts of the Democratic base around specific policy issues. Union members and American workers were shafted by the false promises surrounding “so-called free trade deals.” Poor Americans really suffered from some aspects of his welfare reform ideas. Deregulation helped create media consolidation that gave the corporations excessive control of public policy discussions and American politics.

Hilary Clinton was the driving force behind the most progressive policy goal of the Clinton Presidency which was the failed attempt at healthcare reform. America would have been a much better place if she had been President instead of Bill Clinton. One note of caution in her background was her position at one point on the Wal-Mart Board but her overall political history is solidly progressive.

President Clinton was not a bad on corporate issues as Reagan or both of the Bushes but he was pretty bad for a Democrat. He was not as bad as Senator Blanche Lincoln. Lincoln received more campaign money from Big Oil than any other Senator regardless of political party. She was the leading force in blocking the public option in healthcare reform.

Blanche Lincoln stopped the Employee Free Choice Act from even getting debated on the floor of the US Senate. She has a terrible record on trade policy, environmental protections, tax policy and deregulation. Blanche Lincoln has proven herself the most “corporatist” Senator in the relatively small “corporatist” wing of the Democratic Party.

Union activists, progressives and environmentalists are the majority of foot soldiers that go to battle for Democratic candidates at every level in every community of the nation. Along with civil rights leaders, civil libertarians, peace activists and the progressive Internet community, these activists give more money to elect Democrats than every corporation combined.

The corporations make the big donations and control the mainstream media but their values are really more Republican than Democratic. They value money over people. They value money over traditional American values. They value money over American patriotism. They value money over ethics, honesty and decency. Their values are directly at odds with the core values of the Democratic base.

We need to return to the values of FDR and the New Deal. We need to capture every Democratic Party office and drive out the corporatists. The Democratic Party is a much better institution because we drove out the Southern racist faction (and the northern one) and we need to do the same with the corporatists.

Obama needs to decide if he is going to the leader of this effort or an obstacle. If he elects to be an obstacle, he will not get a second term. If he joins in this populist effort, he might go down in history as an equal to our greatest American President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

With or without Obama, we need to take over every local Democratic Committee, every Democratic club and elect our “real Democrats” to public office. Government is not our enemy as long as it has not been captured by corporations. The US Constitution says we “the people” are the government. Corporations are not people despite the radical Right Wing Supreme Court rulings.

The Tea Party crowd has been captured and in some cases created by corporate forces. They cannot be the populist engine for “change you can believe in” but you and your friends can be that populist engine. Get angry, get active and fight corporatism regardless of political party.

Written by Stephen Crockett (host of Democratic Talk Radio http://www.DemocraticTalkRadio.com and Editor of Mid-Atlantic Labor.com http://www.midatlanticlabor.com) . Mail: 698 Old Baltimore Pike, Newark, Delaware 19702. Email: demlabor@aol.com. Phone: 443-907-2367.

Feel free to publish without prior approval.

The Great Divide

by LORENZO A. CANIZARES FOR BUZZFLASH

http://blog.buzzflash.com/contributors/3194

Several weeks ago, Paul Krugman, in an article entitled “Senator Bunning’s Universe,” said that “Democrats and Republicans live in different universes, both intellectually and morally.” I wholeheartedly agree with him. This statement, on the face of it, should shape how we view our future as a nation.

In this article, Krugman states that Republicans are unable to feel the pain of those that are suffering economically. It has been my opinion, from the time of the Bush/Cheney campaign in 2000, that the combinations of greed and racism have been intertwined by the Republicans into a political view that have received the veneer of mainstream acceptance. This magic combo has provided Republicans the ideological cover for all the pain that they have inflicted on the middle/working class. That the majority of the recipients of this economic pain are white people is of no consequence for these Republicans. They have been able to create a mantra of themselves as protectors of white peoples’ interests in defense against the inordinate attacks to their livelihood by systemic demands coming from entitlement programs directed to keep lazy minorities happy. They also call their posture fighting encroaching socialism in their attempt to eliminate any possible empathy. They rationalize their anti-worker stand, which, again, affects mostly white people, by posing to be concerned with negative behavior from those they claim are amongst the unemployed and lack incentive to find jobs — the welfare queen syndrome. Republican Party leaders no longer seem to be inclined to take racism seriously, unless they can twist it around as “reverse racism.”

The legend says, “A wounded beast is the fiercest.” Now, those ideologically guided by Greed and Racism have received a big blow with the victory of Obama and Pelosi in the Healthcare Reform Bill. In spite of the fact that the Bill has glaring weaknesses, the national perception is that the forces of fairness and inclusion has won a major battle; that the social movement that is behind Obama and Pelosi is very much alive and well and empowered to tackle other major reforms that are needed to sustain our democratic system. Republican plans for a cake-walk electoral victory in November are turning sour. Consequently, gun shops are selling weapons and ammunition briskly. A recent Harris poll shows that as many as one in four Republicans believe that Barack Obama is the anti-Christ!

Charles M. Blow in a NYT op-ed article “A Mighty Pale Tea” (4/17/10) does a survey of Tea Party members, and as the title of the article reveals, what he saw at a Tea Party rally in Dallas conforms to a NYT/CBS News poll released on 4/14/10, that Tea-Party affiliation is 1% Afro-American and 1% Hispanic. Unless your level of gullibility has risen to become a risk to your daily living, you will agree that the Tea Party is the militant street component of the Republican Party (I recognize that there are many Republicans still left in the Party that do not share these views, but in the main, the party has been taken by those of the Cheney/Rove ilk). Also, it is important to point out that the extreme views of the Tea Party members are not shared by the majority of whites, including many white Republicans. The Tea Party has been crafted to give it semblances of populism to fool regular, common folks about where their allegiances lie. Let’s not forget the Nazis real name was National Socialist Party.

When the Tea Party movement talks about the threat of socialism, and call for “a new revolution,” and vow to “take our country back” or cheer loudly when Sarah Palin says “reload,” it is time for regular, common folks to be concerned. After all, what we have seen of the Tea Party Movement membership is that they are capable of taking all those slogans literally. The good thing in all this is that we have seen the Democrats have been able to muster the courage to fight back. Kudos to Obama and Pelosi for steering the Party away from the perfect storm! Obama’s strategy of relying in Congressional leadership has been vindicated. Progressive Democrats that had supported Obama enjoyed a victory that could give strength to other necessary changes in the nation as we are beginning to see with the Financial Reform Bill. Of course, it remains to be seen how long this entente will last. Let’s not forget House Minority leader John Boehner’s rhetoric after the passage of the healthcare bill referring to its passage as “Armageddon.” And the picture of Nancy Pelosi in a fundraising appeal by the Republican National Committee surrounded by flames with the Committee’s chairman comment that it was time to put Pelosi on the firing line. They hide behind the first amendment to mouth all their poison, but we can never allow again their thugs to walk away from criminal behavior without severe penalty for their actions. Liberals tend to be nice people, but the biggest mistake that can be made with thugs is being perceived as weak.

Nonetheless, the healthcare victory and student financial-aid victory has provided Obama the opportunity to start seriously working on creating jobs. This past week it was announced that 290,000 jobs were created. But we need millions more! The Obama Administration needs to force those banks that have received public monies to behave responsibly and start lending their government-backed loan monies, especially to small businesses. President Obama, put on the call, and the American people will make sure that they comply!

Gene Lyons reports in an article in the 4/7/10 edition of Liberal Opinion that Bruce Bartlett, a conservative thinker, cites a survey of Tea Partiers at a recent Washington demonstration that shows most know nothing about the policies they so noisily abhor. Bartlett cites as an example that almost none of the Tea Partiers realize that Obama job stimulus plan gave “90 percent of all taxpayers…a tax cut last year and almost 100 percent to those in the $50,000 income range.” Our great divide is being defined as a war against the racism-fueled ignorance masterminded by Unbridled Greed’s Greed Machine. We can win, but we can’t let our guard down, and least of all believe for a second that these people are of the same ilk as we are.

LORENZO A. CANIZARES FOR BUZZFLASH

Why Republicans should support health care reform

by Ray LaHood

http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/ct-perspec-0314-lahood-20100314,0,3364029.story

I’ve been a Republican all my life, when I served in the Illinois legislature, when I worked for members of Congress and when I served in Congress. During the 2008 presidential election, I supported Republican Sen. John McCain. I have always been — and still am — a fiscal conservative, an advocate for a smart, but restrained, government.

For those reasons and others, most people wouldn’t expect me to be an advocate for comprehensive health care reform. But the truth is, I believe there is no bigger issue to solve and no better chance to solve it than now.

If I were still a member of Congress, I would proudly vote for the bill that President Barack Obama is championing and I would urge my colleagues to do the same, not because I don’t believe in fiscal discipline, but because I do.

We do not need to look that far down the road to see the pain that failure to pass health care reform will cause. Americans of every background, class, race and political persuasion are suffering. We have the best health care system in the world, yet more than 40 million Americans lack access to it, a reality that is morally reprehensible. Health care is an essential, as important as food, water and shelter. Those who don’t have it are left without the tools to survive.

In the coming days, Congress has a chance to change that. The bill that will be voted on will reduce the deficit by about $1 trillion over the next two decades, and will reduce waste, fraud and abuse in the health care system. It will slow the rate of growth in health care costs and put America back on the path toward fiscal sustainability.

The bill will give families and small business owners greater control over their own health care. It will expand coverage to more than 31 million Americans and will include tax credits to individuals, families and small businesses, giving them the same choices that members of Congress have to purchase private coverage. It will create state-based exchanges that will bring competition and transparency to insurance markets. And it will put in place common-sense rules of the road to hold insurance companies accountable and end some of the most outrageous practices of the insurance industry.

Never again will people be denied coverage because they have a pre-existing condition. Never again will insurance companies be able to raise rates unfairly — like the 60 percent hikes expected in Illinois.

While the ultimate vote on health care may not be bipartisan, the ultimate bill certainly is.

There are several Republican ideas in the bill. It allows Americans to buy health insurance across state lines. It increases the bargaining power of small businesses by allowing them to pool together — much like large corporations or labor unions — to bargain for a better insurance rate. It gives states the flexibility to come up with an alternate health care plan, and it gives them resources to reform our tort system by developing new ways to deal with medical malpractice.

I also feel compelled to remind my former colleagues that contrary to what many people have been saying, the bill explicitly prevents federal dollars from being used to fund abortion. It ensures not only that those seeking abortion coverage will be required to pay for it with their own money, but also that their personal money will never be commingled with federal funds. As a former congressman with a 100 percent pro-life voting record, I’m comfortable supporting this bill.

There isn’t one member of Congress who represents a district that is without a health care crisis. There are good, hardworking men and women in every part of this country who work for a living, but not at a business that offers the opportunity to purchase health insurance. On their own, the cost of insurance is just plain out of reach.

During my time in Congress, I was known for reaching across the aisle. I did it not for the sake of bipartisanship alone, but in order to get important things done.

Now, my former colleagues have the opportunity to change the lives of their friends and neighbors for the better by voting for health care reform.

Ray LaHood, a former Republican congressman from Illinois, is secretary of transportation in the Obama administration.

The Cadillac Crunch

by David Corn

http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/02/cadillac-tax-health-care-reform

After over a year of partisan and policy combat, the epic battle for health care reform may come down to an internal Democrat party tussle: whether or not House Democrats yield to President Barack Obama and accept a tax on high-end insurance plans.

After the Democrats in the House and the Senate passed different versions of health care legislation, several critical matters had to be worked out, including how to finance the reform. The House bill called for a surtax on the wealthiest Americans, The Senate measure included a tax on so-called Cadillac plans. This led to a contentious intra-party squabble. A few weeks ago, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told several columnists (including me) that this excise tax has “no support” among House Democrats and that “the easiest thing is just to get rid of the whole excise tax.”

Yet on Monday, the president released—finally—his own health care proposal, which essentially is based on the Senate measure, with a few changes. And on the excise tax, he sided with the Senate. But he wants it tweaked so that it kicks in 2018, not 2013, and hits fewer plans. His proposal calls for raising the threshold for this tax from $23,000 in premiums for a family to $27,500.

Obama’s reforms address some of the complaints from House Dems—but not their fundamental gripe: the tax is bad policy and bad politics. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, (D-NY), who has led the charge against the excise tax, contends that a tax imposed on high-cost plans would likely not cause insurers to become more efficient and reduce costs (the supposed intent) but to cut back on benefits—and employees will end up with higher deductibles and co-payments as a result. Such a development, Nadler adds, will “violate Obama’s promise that if you like your plan, you can keep it.” Nadler also fears an excise tax is “political poison” because it will hit blue-collar workers (unionized or not) who have managed to obtain high-end health plans. “We lost the Reagan Democrats in the 1970s and 1980s,” he says, “because they came to believe that liberals wanted to benefit other people—the blacks, the Latinos—at their expense. We’ve just gotten them back. And now we’re saying to working people, we have to insure other people at your expense. This will destroy the Democratic Party and progressive politics for 30 years.”

At that meeting with columnists a few weeks ago, Pelosi estimated that at most there were 20 Democrats in her caucus who might support an excise tax. The White House appears to be banking on a wholesale conversion of House Dems. But it’s unclear whether Obama’s alterations to the tax—which also include not counting dental and vision benefits as taxable and easing the tax for firms with higher health-care costs due to the age or gender of their employees—will win over Democrats on the House side. According to White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, the White House did not brief the House Democrats regarding its intentions on the excise tax until after the plan was devised. And during a White House conference call about the overall proposal, economic aide Jason Furman was asked if the administration had attempted to work out an excise tax deal with the House Democrats before releasing the plan. He replied that “everyone would appreciate it” if the Obama proposal led to lower premiums. In other words, no.

The immediate reaction from House Democrats on Monday was mixed. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) says, “”I still don’t like the excise tax but I think again the President listened to critics and tried to respond. He significantly increased the threshold—both the individual and family threshold—and he pushed out to 2018 when it would kick in. Those are very substantial concessions to those of us who are uncomfortable with the approach and I think we need to give him a fair shake at looking at that and seeing if that would work.” Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), the co-chair of the House progressive caucus, was non-committal. “It appears that the President has reached 80 percent towards the House,” she notes, but adds “there’s absolutely no detail.”

It appears that the White House may be quasi-sticking it to the House Democrats. On other fronts, Obama’s proposal did more to render the Senate bill more to their liking—by boosting provisions that will make insurance more affordable for families and individuals, by strengthening insurance protections for consumers, by dumping the Nebraska sweetener, and by setting up a new federal authority that will help states regulate insurance premiums. (The Obama proposal says nothing about the difference between the House and Senate bills concerning how far to go in restricting funding for plans that could include coverage of abortions.) But the White House is saying the House Ds will have to swallow the excise tax in some form.

That could bring the Democratic Party to a dramatic Tarantino-like stand-off. Can the House Dems accept the modified excise tax as the price of passing health care reform? Will they balk and force the White House and the Senate Dems to yield? Or will the Cadillac crash into a ditch and explode? For health care reform to become law, someone in the Democratic Party is going to have to blink.

Additional reporting by Nick Baumann.

David Corn is Mother Jones’ Washington bureau chief.

Toward A Progressive Tea Party Movement

Most progressives have little respect for the Fox News generated “Tea Party” movement. However, it has tapped into a very real populist anger with the direction the country is headed in at this point in our history.

Progressives should see a real opportunity in the emergence of the “Tea Party” movement to educate the public and re-direct the anger to the real villains whose actions and policies created the many problems faced by the citizens of the United States of America. Our government has failed the American public by serving corporate interests and private profit instead of the public good.

The Republican Right has been somewhat successful in twisting this legitimate anger and aiming it against those who have been fighting this corporate takeover and corruption instead of themselves. They do this by lying to the public and twisting reality.

Of course, Fox News has been the leading force in this evil propaganda campaign. However, a few corporatist Democrats like Senator Ben Nelson, independents like Joe Lieberman and almost every elected Republican in the nation have helped advance the corporatist agenda by deceiving the reformist elements in the Tea Party movement.

Tea Party activists should realize that Fox News was formed by corporatists to advance the corporatist agenda. The corporatists have captured the “conservative” movement. They are playing their followers for suckers. A few Tea Party leaders know they are being used as a tool of the Republican Right and corporatists but most do not.

The American government is not the enemy if it is actually controlled by the American public instead of by the rich and powerful elite who make up the corporatists power structure. The American government needs to provide a check and balance against corporate power. We must recapture our government from corporate interests. This will never be done by Republicans. It will never be done by the small corporatist faction of the Democratic Party. It can be done with an alliance of progressives, real Tea Party reformers, economic populists and grassroots Democrats.

The Scott Browns and Sarah Palins of the nation only play at being populists. They act in support of the corporatist agenda while talking like reformers. Scott Brown was financed by corporatist forces. He was heavily financed by the debt collection industry, banking interests, health insurance companies and the like just like Sarah Palin. Brown opposes Wall Street reforms and regulation. He wants corporate power to go unchecked. These ideas are clearly enemies of the American public and real functional democracy. Folksy talk is just more hot air. It is actions that count.

Fox News seems designed to act as a financial and political backer of Republican Right corporatist politicians. They spin everything to defeat real reforms and undermine real reformers.

Labor unions act as a check and balance on corporate power. Fox News and the Republican Right corporatists demonize them at every opportunity. Union leaders are always elected by the membership. They are the only truly democratically-elected populist element in our economic system. The Fox News crowd calls these elected leaders “union bosses.” You do not get to elect your “boss.” Try suggesting free elections for all the management positions at your place of employment and you will probably be joining the ranks of the unemployed. Corporations are basically organized in a top down dictatorial manner. It is their nature and mindset to be dictatorial with very, very few exceptions.

Suing corporations act as a check and balance to corporate power. Fox News and the Republican Right corporatists are trying to eliminate the effectiveness of this check and balance under the disguise of “tort reform.”

Campaign finance laws slightly reduced the ability of corporations to buy elections, smear reformers and defeat reforms. While in power, the Republican Right corporatists packed all our federal courts with corporatists. This is why the Republican Right corporatists on the Supreme Court have recently overturned over 60 years of established law to give corporations unlimited power to spend shareholders’ money to advance their corporatist political goals.

Most corporations are not loyal American citizens like the recent Supreme Court ruling implies. Almost all the large corporations operating in America are international in nature. International corporations should not be controlling the American economy, the American political system or the American government. American citizens should be. No matter what the Supreme Court says, international corporations are neither people nor American citizens.

The percentage of the American economy going toward debt is growing rapidly. Why? The answer is corporate power and corporatist government policy. So-called “free trade” has failed the American public while enriching the corporatists. Tax revenue has gone in the toilet because we do not tax imports and tens of millions of former taxpayers have lost their jobs. Without good-paying jobs, these workers/taxpayers are not paying nearly as much in taxes.

Tax cuts for over 30 years have been focused on enriching the corporatists and screwing the middle classes. The Fox News and the Republican Right corporatists want you to place the blame on the poor for government debt. This is pure nonsense. Unfair tax cuts are the real villains along with corporatist “free trade” policies. Additionally, the corporatists start unnecessary wars financed by public debt that enrich the international corporations while killing and maiming American soldiers.

So-called “free trade” is undermining our national security by crushing our industrial manufacturing base and crippling our national finances.

Government spending as a percentage of our economy is excessively large mostly because our economy has not really grown the way it should because of so-called “free trade.” Free trade has not been free for American citizens. Our public and personal debts have exploded. Our wages have not grown as quickly as our cost of living. Our jobs are disappearing or have already disappeared.

Government debt to enrich international corporations instead of improving the lives of American citizens is nearly criminal. Why does Medicare money get paid to drug companies without bargaining down the price of drugs? Corporate power is the only answer.

Why do Americans pay twice as much for medical care than any industrialized nation but have worse results? Why are medical costs exploding here at the same time as millions of citizens are being kicked out of their health insurance plans? Why are our companies paying the cost of health insurance while all our foreign competitors get subsidized by government payment of healthcare costs? The answers are corporate power.

The real reformers of the Tea Party movement need to look at corporate power instead of government as the villains threatening the future of America. The Republican Right, corporatists and Fox News are threatening your civil liberties and Constitutional Right not the ACLU, Obama or the Democratic Party. Republican Right, corporatists and Fox News are those who support the “national security state”, torture, jailing citizens without trial, wiretapping without court orders, etc.

International corporate interests have much more control over the lives of the average American citizen than our government does. When the government gets captured by these corporations, like it did under George W. Bush and his allies who are still in office, the American public gets hammered!

You are not ignorant or out of touch with reality just because you watch Fox News or listen to right wing talk radio but prolonged exposure will eventually get you there. Watching only Fox News will likely stop reform supporters of the Tea Party movement from realizing that they have much more in common with progressives than they ever realized. The real reformers in the Tea Party movement and progressives should unite in a Progressive Tea Party movement. Fox News and the Republican Right corporatists should not control or define the Tea Party. Both progressives and the real reform elements in Tea Party movement should reach out to each other and make common cause on many issues.

It is time for a Progressive Tea Party movement.

Written by Stephen Crockett (Host of Democratic Talk Radio http://www.DemocraticTalkRadio.com and Editor of Mid-Atlantic Labor.com http://www.midatlanticlabor.com).

Unions bash Democrats, warn of political fallout

By JAMES HOHMANN

Labor groups are furious with the Democrats they helped put in office — and are threatening to stay home this fall when Democratic incumbents will need their help fending off Republican challengers.

The Senate’s failure to confirm labor lawyer Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board was just the latest blow, but the frustrations have been building for months.

“Here’s labor getting thrown under the bus again,” said John Gage, the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 600,000 workers. “It’s really frustrating for labor, and a lot of union people are thinking: We put out big time in money and volunteers and support. And it seems like the little things that could have been aren’t being done.”

The 52-33 vote on Becker — who needed 60 to be confirmed — really set labor unions on edge, but the list of setbacks is growing.

The so-called “card check” bill that would make it easier to unionize employees has gone nowhere. A pro-union Transportation Security Administration nominee quit before he even got a confirmation vote. And even though unions got a sweetheart deal to keep their health plans tax-free under the Senate health care bill, that bill has collapsed, leaving unions exposed again.

Union leaders warn that the Democrats’ lackluster performance in power is sapping the morale of activists going into the midterm elections.

“Right now if we don’t get positive changes to the agenda, we’re going to have a hard time getting members out to work,” said United Steelworkers International President Leo W. Gerard, in an interview.

“There’s no use pretending any longer.”

The biggest threat, of course, is apathy from a Democratic constituency that has a history of mobilizing for elections.

“You’re just not going to be able to go to our membership in the November elections and say, ‘Come on, let’s do it again. Look at what the Democratic administration has done for us!’” Gage said. “People are going to say, ‘Huh? What have the Democrats done for us?’”

Kim Freeman Brown, the executive director of a D.C.-based nonprofit called American Rights at Work, acknowledged “frustration” with the lack of movement.

“I implore Congress to listen to the voice of their constituents who want change, and so far we haven’t delivered good enough on that promise,” she said. “To the degree that we don’t address these real bread-and-butter issues, we will have failed America’s workers.”

Gage warned that Democrats will struggle to energize blue-collar voters if they don’t score a few victories soon. Union leaders say they will closely watch as a new “jobs bill” emerges to see if it includes more labor-friendly provisions or tax cuts for small businesses.

When you talk to labor officials these days, much of their animus is directed at Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who helped filibuster Becker’s confirmation.

“Ben Nelson has got principles until you buy him off,” Gerard said. …….

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/32781.html#ixzz0fFAlz6FN

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/32781.html#ixzz0fFAm1qx9

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/01/25/mass-health-care/

Poll Confirms Massachusetts Election Was Not A Rejection Of Health Care Reform

Following the surprise victory of Sen.-elect Scott Brown (R-MA) in last week’s special election, conservatives have attempted to paint the election as a rejection of healthcare reform and progressive policies more generally.

Appearing on ABC’s This Week yesterday, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) said, “what happened in Massachusetts” shows that “people are alarmed and angry about the spending, the debt, the government takeovers [including health care].” Conservative Washington Post columnist George Will said on This Week that Massachusetts “really was a health care election.” “This was a referendum on a particular piece of legislation that is the signature legislation of the administration, and the people of Massachusetts and the country are hotly angered over its substance,” Will said.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), on Meet the Press yesterday, said, “the message in Massachusetts was absolutely clear. The exit polls that I looked at said 48 percent of the people in Massachusetts said they voted for the new senator over health care.” McConnell added: “The people are telling us, ‘Please don’t pass this bill.’”

This “referendum” on health reform meme has become near-conventional wisom, with the media and even some Democrats echoing it. But a new Washington Post/Kaiser/Harvard poll undermines this assertion. The poll suggests that while the election was a “protest of the Washington process,” it was not a rejection of progressive policy. Only 11 percent of voters, including 19 percent of Brown voters, want Brown to “stop the Democratic agenda:”

- 70 percent of voters think Brown should work with Democrats on health care reform, including 48 percent of Brown voters.

- 52 percent of voters were enthusiastic/satisfied with Obama administration policies.

- 44 percent of voters believe “the country as a whole” would be better off with health care reform, but 23 percent believe Massachusetts would be better off.

- 68 percent of voters, including 51 percent of Brown voters approve of Massachusetts’ health care reform.

- 58 percent of all voters, including 37 percent of Brown voters, felt “dissatisfied/angry” with “the policies offered by the Republicans in Congress.”

A different poll, from Rasmussen Reports, cast doubt on the notion that Brown voters were primarily motivated by opposition to health care reform. The poll found that 52 percent of Brown voters said health care was their top issue, while an even greater percentage of people who voted for state Attorney General Martha Coakley (D) — 63 percent — placed it first.

And as the Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky noted, Brown “doesn’t make a very convincing messenger for opposing the policy behind health reform,” considering he voted for his state’s health reform legislation in 2006. “He promised to be the 41st vote against reform because Massachusetts had already passed its own health reform bill, arguing that the state shouldn’t pay for the national effort,” Volsky added.

More at the WonkRoom