Archive for August, 2009
Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) addressed an intimate gathering of Net Roots activists during a round table discussion at the annual Netroots Nation conference in Pittsburgh this weekend. He discussed his support of a single payer health care system and the risk his vote may have to holding down his congressional seat.
Say Good Bye Congressman.
Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) addressed an intimate group of Netroots activists during their annual Netroots Nation gathering in Pittsburgh this weekend. Mr. Massa reiterated his support for a single-payer health care bill. He discussed the risks he takes for wanting to support such a measure in his “right-wing Republican district.”
According to Swing State Project, Mr. Massa won his 2008 race by 2 percentage points. The district’s voting pattern index (PVI) is a Republican +5 seat. The National Republican Congressional Committee has the upstate New York congressman in their sights for 2010 along with 69 other House Democrats as reported by Politico.
Maybe Moulistas can get him a job when his ass is voted out of office in November 2010.
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Posted by Flap in Obamacare
Well, that trial baloon did not take long to be deflated.
An administration official said tonight that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius “misspoke” when she told CNN this morning that a government run health insurance option “is not an essential part” of reform. This official asked not to be identified in exchange for providing clarity about the intentions of the President. The official said that the White House did not intend to change its messaging and that Sebelius simply meant to echo the president, who has acknowledged that the public option is a tough sell in the Senate and is, at the same time, a must-pass for House Democrats, and is not, in the president’s view, the most important element of the reform package.
A second official, Linda Douglass, director of health reform communications for the administration, said that President Obama believed that a public option was the best way to reduce costs and promote competition among insurance companies, that he had not backed away from that belief, and that he still wanted to see a public option in the final bill.
“Nothing has changed.,” she said. “The President has always said that what is essential that health insurance reform lower costs, ensure that there are affordable options for all Americans and increase choice and competition in the health insurance market. He believes that the public option is the best way to achieve these goals.”
A fairly poor ploy, if I do say so.
It provided political cover for Congressional Democrats for about 6 hours or less.
Looks like the Obama Presidency is going to sink or swim with Obamacare.
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Posted by Flap in Day By Day
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The White House for the first time Sunday somewhat acknowledged that people across the country received unsolicited e-mails last week on health care from the administration, suggesting the problem on third-party groups it claimed placed the recipients' names on the distribution list
In a written statement released exclusively to FOX News, White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said the White House hopes those who received the e-mails without signing up for them were not "inconvenienced" by the messages.
"The White House e-mail list is made up of e-mail addresses obtained solely through the White House Web site. The White House doesn't purchase, upload or merge from any other list, again, all e-mails come from the White House Web site as we have no interest in e-mailing anyone who does not want to receive an e-mail," the statement said. "If an individual received the e-mail because someone else or a group signed them up or forwarded the e-mail, we hope they were not too inconvenienced."
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From the New York Times:
Retail sales fell unexpectedly in July, the government reported on Thursday, chilling hopes that consumers are ready to lead the American economy out of recession.
Consumers spent 2.4 percent more on motor vehicles and automotive parts last month compared with June as the government’s popular "cash for clunkers" car-purchase program got under way, but any money that flowed into the pockets of car dealers seemed to come at the expense of other businesses.
Retail spending excluding sales of cars and car parts fell 0.6 percent.
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A key Senate negotiator said Sunday that President Barack Obama should drop his push for a government-funded public health insurance option because the Senate will never pass it.
Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota said it was futile to continue to "chase that rabbit" due to the lack of 60 Senate votes needed to overcome a filibuster.
"The fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the United States Senate for a public option. There never have been," Conrad said on "FOX News Sunday."
Conrad is one of six Senate Finance Committee members — three Democrats and three Republicans — who are negotiating a compromise health-care bill that would be the only bipartisan proposal so far.
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North Dakota Democrat Senator Kent Conrad, July 26, 2009
Well, does anyone, particularly the RIGHT believe him?
A key Senate negotiator said Sunday that President Barack Obama should drop his push for a government-funded public health insurance option because the Senate will never pass it.
Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota said it was futile to continue to “chase that rabbit” due to the lack of 60 Senate votes needed to overcome a filibuster.
“The fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the United States Senate for a public option. There never have been,” Conrad said on “FOX News Sunday.”
Conrad is one of six Senate Finance Committee members — three Democrats and three Republicans — who are negotiating a compromise health-care bill that would be the only bipartisan proposal so far.
Three House bills and another Senate version have all been proposed by Democrats, and all contain provisions for a public health insurance option intended to compete against private insurers.
Republican opponents argue the public option is a step toward the government taking over the health care industry. Many Democrats argue that it would not have that effect.
Kent conrad is merely providing political cover for those Democrats, particularly in Red States who are taking a beating from Ameirican voters at Town Halls. Now, these Dems can say – well see, we don’t support the total demise of private medicine or private health insurance.
But, what will happen when the House rams through its bill in the Fall and the Senate punts on theirs?
Conference committee and the public left-wing option (socialized, government run health care) that is the hallmark of Obamacare will suddenly reappear.
Conrad and the Dems REALLY are not fooling anyone with this misdirection.
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Day By Day by Chris Muir
Chris, grass roots conservatives will have to wait a long time for the Republican Party. The GOP is a large conglomerate of competing interests on the center-right and will move slowly.
Look how slow the GOP was to root out corruption among their elected Congressional members when they had the majority.
But, what will accelerate the movement of success for the electoral GOP will be the far left policy initiatives of the Democrats, like PORKULUS and Obamacare.
How fast? Whether it be 2010 or 2012 or beyond is worth watching.
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The Day By Day Archive
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The Los Angeles Unified School District plans to sharply raise the property taxes of hundreds of thousands of L.A. homeowners because the recession has pushed down tax revenues needed to repay school bonds. The economic downturn has also caused a potential cash-flow crisis for the nation's largest school-construction program.
The district is allowed to raise taxes under little-known legal protections for bond holders. In essence, if revenues from property taxes can't cover installment payments for bond debt, L.A. Unified can raise tax rates, even if they rise above past projections.
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Ana Maria Garcia, who works for Orange County, has health insurance that covers her husband and 3 ½-year-old daughter, but her dental deductibles are too high for them all to get care, she said.
Ms. Garcia’s husband, Jorge, who was laid off from his custodial job last October, arrived from their home — a 90-minute drive away — at 4 p.m. on Tuesday to get the family’s spot in line.
But the Garcias’ number never came up, so they slept in their car for a few hours and lined up again early Wednesday morning, awaiting a chance to get root canals and cleanings that Ms. Garcia figured were worth thousands of dollars. They made a friend in the bleachers outside, who gave the family some coffee and hot biscuits for breakfast.
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Thirty-five percent (35%) of American voters say passage of the bill currently working its way through Congress would be better than not passing any health care reform legislation this year. However, a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that most voters (54%) say no health care reform passed by Congress this year would be the better option.
This does not mean that most voters are opposed to health care reform. But it does highlight the level of concern about the specific proposals that Congressional Democrats have approved in a series of Committees. To this point, there has been no Republican support for the legislative effort although the Senate Finance Committee is still attempting to seek a bi-partisan solution.
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Barack Obama promised on the campaign trail to change Washington if elected president, and he rode a wave of support based partly on that pledge all the way to the White House.
But change doesn't come cheap, and securing health care reform may wind up costing him much of that support — known in Washington as political capital.
There already are signs that Obama's support is waning — notably in his approval rating — as he and Democratic leaders push to pass an overhaul of the nation's heath care system. And many of the people attending legislators' town hall events this month are voicing outrage and skepticism.
"That's really a big problem for a president that's persuasive but suddenly half the country says I just don't trust you," Stuart Rothenberg, a political analyst, told FOX News.
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Progressive online activists prefer Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) over Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) by a landslide margin, according to results of a Netroots Nation straw poll released Saturday. The poll also showed significant resistance to passing a health
reform plan without a public option.
The online poll of 252 attendees, which took place Thursday and Friday at the annual gathering of progressive bloggers and activists, found that 48 percent supported Sestak for the Pennsylvania Democratic Senate nomination, compared to just 10 percent who backed Specter.
Exactly one-third said they didn’t know which candidate they supported and seven percent said neither.
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A bill to overhaul the nation's ailing health-care system may not pass until January or later, Democratic Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania said Friday.
His comment to CNN affiliate WJPA differed from President Barack Obama's repeated insistence that Congress will pass a health care bill by the end of 2009.
Speaking in Bentleyville, Pennsylvania, Murtha said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wanted a health-care bill passed before the current August recess.
"She said we're going to have it before we left," Murtha said. "We said, 'No, no, we want some time to think about this.' We're taking some time to make sure it's done right. I don't know that we'll get something done before January, and even then we may not get it done. We're going to do it right when it's finally done."
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Remember how Bush was supposed to be the idiot who went into Iraq without a plan, while Obama was supposed to be the cool methodical one? But Reich is admitting that despite all the Administration hoopla, there’s still no plan. Or, possibly, that the White House has a plan, but won’t tell us what it is. And yet the people who don’t want to see a bill — some bill, doing who-knows-what — rammed through in the dead of night are somehow the ones who are ignorant and being manipulated. Right.
UPDATE: Reader John Copella writes: “What’s especially hilarious is this delusion taking root among the left that these things are ‘astroturfed’. Have you ever seen a clear case of projection in your life?â€
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More than a dozen campaign volunteers, precinct captains and team leaders from all corners of Iowa, who dedicated a large share of their time in 2007 and 2008 to Mr. Obama, said in interviews this week that they supported the president completely but were taking a break from politics and were not active members of Organizing for America.
Some said they were reluctant to talk to their neighbors about something personal and complicated like health care. And others expressed frustration at the genteel approach, asking why Democrats were not filling the town-hall-style meetings of Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee negotiating health care legislation, or Representative Leonard L. Boswell, a member of the moderate Blue Dog Democratic group.
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