Yesterday, I posted about some questions Chris Bowers composed to nail down our senators' position on the public option. I e-mailed McCaskill and Bond, and while I've not yet received an official response, I'm told by a McCaskill staffer that they will get back to me.
The questions, again, are as follows:
Do you support a public healthcare option as part of healthcare reform?
If so, do you support a public healthcare option that is available on day one?
Do you support a public healthcare option that is national, available everywhere, and accountable to Congress?
Do you support a public healthcare option that can bargain for rates from providers and big drug companies?
Now, just because I sent my questions in, that doesn't let you off the hook. It's important that Sens. McCaskill and Bond hear from us and respond specifically to our questions. Please ask for specific responses. Don't assume that just because Obama is president and that he has thrown his support behind a public option that a viable public option will automatically come out of the process.
For example, just today Obama's first pick to head the health care reform effort and become Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Daschle, came out against a public option.
But we were concerned that the ongoing health reform debate is beginning to show signs of fracture on the public plan issue, so in order to advance the process of developing bipartisan legislation and to move it forward, it's time to find consensus here," Daschle said.
"We've come too far and gained too much momentum for our efforts to fail over disagreements on one single issue," he said.
This despite the fact that 76% of Americans believe that a choice of a public plan offered by the federal government is either extremely important or very important to health care reform. That's a result that surprised even the pollsters who conducted the survey. It looks like the only people insisting on the "consensus" that Daschle describes is the conservative Republicans he's teamed up with to offer a watered down compromise plan.
Still, politicians don't respond to generic polls. They respond to constituents and to people who contribute to their campaigns. The only way we are going to have more of an effect than the donors is if more of us constituents write in support of a public option.
Fortunately, Chris Bowers has teamed up with grassroots group Democracy for America and the Health Care for America Now! coalition to develop some tools and make it extraordinarily easy to ask our representatives these questions, and to collect their answers.
To write a letter, use DFA's Whip Count tool. It's got a sample e-mail you can edit, and it will automatically send the e-mail to the correct senator for you. http://www.standwithdrdean.com...
I really would like to know what Steelman means here:
Can you give us your thoughts on the current state of the Republican Party? "I think we need to take stock of where we are and look at how we got here. I think we need to be more principally
conservative, and reflect on just how we lost the House and Senate. The people do not trust us to be conservatives
because we were anything but conservative when we were in the majority. Jack Kemp knew how to do this, and we should learn from his example."
I don't think voters queueing up at the polls in November 2006 and again in November 2008 to vote Democrats in and Republicans out were checking their conservative checklist and found the incumbent Republicans wanting. They looked at an economy that was not working for them and a foreign policy that was not making them safer. They had eight years of tax cuts for the wealthy as the principal domestic policy instrument, and macho posturing and an Iraq misadventure abroad. Bonus points too for Steelman citing Jack Kemp as someone who knew how to be conservative in the majority. He was only part of the worst performing Republican ticket since Goldwater in 1964.
I'm curious. What specific policies would Steelman have changed if she were in the GOP majority from 1994-2006?
Also this:
Since you've been teaching a political science course at Missouri State University, we are going to
ask you to put on your political analyst cap and answer the question that several local Republicans have asked us, if two years ago a well-known and relatively well- liked Democrat faced off against a poor fund-raising, poor communicating, old white guy in a suit from Washington and get trounced by 20 points, why would this race be any different? "I am not sure that it will be, but I do think that the economy has changed since the last election. In two years, people may begin to see that President Obama's left wing policies are not the solutions America needs. A lot of what happens
in 2010 depends upon the economy.
Um, I don't know if the economy has changed wholesale since Obama took office so much as the economic crisis deepened in the months before Obama took office. He didn't cause the housing crisis, nor the willingness of banks to lend to anyone willing to take out a loan and sell the debt to investors who swarmed to make the silly bet that housing prices could never go down, nor could he do all that much to stop it as a lone senator.
A Georgetown source forwards over an email from that school's administration, reporting that Professor Marty Lederman's class will be canceled -- because he's joining the Obama administration.
Lederman, another former Clinton Office of Legal Counsel lawyer, is perhaps the most prominent of several high-profile opponents of the Bush Administration's executive power claims joining Obama, a mark that he intends not just to change but to aggressively reverse Bush's moves on subjects like torture. . . . Lederman has been . . . an early and vocal critic of torture, and has suggested Bush Administration officials have committed specific crimes in that regard.
...an Associate Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he teaches various courses in constitutional law, and seminars on separation of powers and executive branch lawyering. He regularly contributes to the weblogs SCOTUSblog and Balkinization, including on matters relating to Executive power, detention, interrogation, civil liberties, and torture. Lederman was an Attorney Advisor in the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel from 1994 to 2002
Marty Lederman blogs with Jack Balkin, at Balkinization.
In a Balkanization post July 08, 2007, Lederman grouped all of his, Mark Graber's, Stephen Griffin's, Scott Horton's, Sandy Levinson's, David Luban's, Brian Tamanaha's, Jack Balkin's and a few others posts "on the complex of issues raised by torture, interrogation, detention, war powers, Executive authority, the Department of Justice, and the Office of Legal Counsel" together under the heading The Anti-Torture Memos: Balkinization Posts on Torture, Interrogation, Detention, War Powers, Executive Authority, DOJ and OLC
Here's Martin Luther King, Jr's famous "I Have A Dream" speech in full on YouTube:
When I was a child, my uncle asked me to find the full text of this speech and copy it for him, as he had recently joined the Toastmasters and wanted copies of famous speeches. I was only a kid without walkable access to the library, so I did what I could: I copied the excerpt that everybody is familiar with out of the "Martin Luther King, Jr." entry in the Encyclopedia Britannica (we had a six year old set at the time), and typed it up on the screen of our Commodore 64. Twenty five years later, I can watch the full speech any time I have access to a computer, which is 90% of my day.
Forty-six years after Martin Luther King, Jr made that historic address at the Lincoln Memorial, back when it was still legal to bar a white woman from marrying a black man and de facto legal to stop black people from voting, we've elected a black man to be our president, with unprecented popularity and support for a president-elect. At the same time, on the YouTube page of King's speech, comments had to be turned off because of all the hateful racist slurs directed against him, one of the most intelligent and gifted orators in our history. We still have a long way to go.
My hope is that the changes in my experience, from growing up without direct access to information to having it at my fingertips, will continue to help us along in the path toward King's dream. It might be hoping too much, but then again, even a year ago prominent voices told me that Obama could not be elected president because of his race. It's human to hope, and I'm not giving that up.
First let me say that we want Eric Holder confirmed as Attorney General. We want him confirmed because of statements like this...
Washington, D.C. -- Eric H. Holder Jr., Deputy Attorney General during the Clinton administration, asserted in a speech to the American Constitution Society (ACS) that the United States must reverse "the disastrous course" set by the Bush administration in the struggle against terrorism by closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, declaring without qualification that the U.S. does not torture people, ending the practice of transferring individuals involuntarily to countries that engage in torture and ceasing warrantless domestic surveillance.
"Our needlessly abusive and unlawful practices in the 'War on Terror' have diminished our standing in the world community and made us less, rather than more, safe," Holder told a packed room at the ACS 2008 Convention on Friday evening. "For the sake of our safety and security, and because it is the right thing to do, the next president must move immediately to reclaim America's standing in the world as a nation that cherishes and protects individual freedom and basic human rights."
We want the man who said those words to be our next Attorney General. Because in truth and in a logical world the best way, perhaps the only way, to "reclaim America's standing in the world as a nation that cherishes and protects individual freedom and basic human rights".....is to investigate and then prosecute those who have criminally destroyed that standing. They destroyed it by using torture.
The human and economic costs of doing nothing would be severe. From The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan [pdf] by Christina Romer (Chair - Nominee - Designate, Council of Economic Advisors) and Jared Bernstein (Office of the Vice President-elect):
...First, the likely scale of employment loss is extremely large. The U.S. economy has already lost nearly 2.6 million jobs since the business cycle peak in December 2007. In the absence of stimulus, the economy could lose another 3 to 4 million more. Thus, we are working to counter a potential total job loss of at least 5 million. As Figure 1 shows, even with the large prototypical package, the unemployment rate in 2010Q4 is predicted to be approximately 7.0%, which is well below the approximately 8.8% that would result in the absence of a plan...
The current economic downturn is bad enough. Does anyone want to volunteer to join that 1.8% (or more) by having the government do nothing? I didn't think so.
President-elect Barack Obama's weekly radio address for January 10, 2009:
Barack Obama outlined his economic recovery plan in today's weekly address:
The plan includes infrastructure investment - roads, bridges, schools, technology. And it will come with a few rules for states - "use it, or lose it". That's important. The stimulus won't work at creating jobs if states hold it and it's not spent.
WASHINGTON (CNN) - President-elect Barack Obama is planning to nominate at least three key members of his national security team at an event in Chicago, Illinois, on Monday, including Sen. Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, according to two Democratic officials...
Hillary Clinton at the Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa on September 16, 2007
...The New York Times reports on the lengthy negotiations between Team Obama and Bill Clinton and the 9 preconditions the former President had to meet...
Bill Clinton at Truman High School in Independence, Missouri on January 26, 2008
It's a small price to pay for competence and instant credibility in the eyes of the rest of the world. There's the extra added bonus of right wingnut heads exploding in apoplexy in pockets of America and on AM talk radio.
I shot close to fifty, but it was a late rally and the quality wasn't very good on most of them - oh well. Digital cameras don't waste film - and when Obama kicks off his reelection campaign, I'll buy a better camera than my vintage model. But that's in the future...here is what we have today!
I have a feeling that this young lady will be first in line Tuesday morning!
Wow. A first since 1908 - the Joplin Globe endorses a Democrat.
Obama's ability to transcend generational, racial and partisan divisions, his thoughtful approach to weighty issues and message of bipartisanship resonate with many Americans. There are some who see him as simply a gifted speaker, but his words inspire. We believe that Obama can make those words a reality - making "change" more than just a campaign slogan, but a launching point for a brighter future for all Americans.
Obama's making automated phone calls in Missouri decrying the type of nasty robocalls McCain has been using. In the call, a Republican woman announces she used to support John McCain, but switched to Obama after she saw that McCain supported Bush's policies and used Rovian tactics.
The sun shines down over the Arch onto the crowd of 100,000 watching Barack Obama's speech in St. Louis today.
For me, the most amazing thing about Barack's speech in Saint Louis wasn't or anything he said in particular, although it was a fine speech. It was the amazing crowd that had assembled to hear him speak. I've never seen Saint Louisans celebrate together so joyously, except maybe after a Cardinals World Series victory.
Even then, there was a sense of purpose and a spirit of unity than no sporting event could provide. The event was focused on the people in the crowd, and we knew it. Congressman Lacy Clay, Mayor Francis Slay, gubernatorial candidate Attorney General Jay Nixon, and finally Senator McCaskill spoke before Barack, but didn't introduce him. Instead, that honor went to one of us, a high school math teacher, who talked about what was going on for him, his family, and his students, and why that lead him to support Barack Obama. When Barack spoke of job cuts and the need to bring jobs back to Missouri, a woman near me muttered "Bush cut my job and I wanted it back." When Barack told the story of his mother fighting cancer and the insurance company at the same time, another woman near me yelled "That's me right now!"
As for the speech itself, it was fairly boilerplate as far as policy details go, but he did have some good personal stories, including one about pie. What I liked best about the speech was his knack for weaving a sense of optimism about the future throughout the speech. When he talked about making college affordable, he repeated John McCain's attack on him for "caving in to an interest group." "Our youth are not an interest group - they are the future of our country!" he cried. And Obama wrapped up his speech with a passionate evocation of why we should not despair, why we should not get too bogged down in what is to the neglect of what ought to be:
We can do this. Americans have done this before. Some of us had grandparents or parents who said maybe I can't go to college but my child can; maybe I can't have my own business but my child can. I may have to rent, but maybe my children will have a home they can call their own. I may not have a lot of money but maybe my child will run for Senate. I might not be able to vote now but maybe someday my grandson can be president of the United States of America.
The sun shines down over the Arch onto the crowd of 100,000 watching Barack Obama's speech in St. Louis today.
For me, the most amazing thing about Barack's speech in Saint Louis wasn't or anything he said in particular, although it was a fine speech. It was the amazing crowd that had assembled to hear him speak. I've never seen Saint Louisans celebrate together so joyously, except maybe after a Cardinals World Series victory.
Even then, there was a sense of purpose and a spirit of unity than no sporting event could provide. The event was focused on the people in the crowd, and we knew it. Congressman Lacy Clay, Mayor Francis Slay, gubernatorial candidate Attorney General Jay Nixon, and finally Senator McCaskill spoke before Barack, but didn't introduce him. Instead, that honor went to one of us, a high school math teacher, who talked about what was going on for him, his family, and his students, and why that lead him to support Barack Obama. When Barack spoke of job cuts and the need to bring jobs back to Missouri, a woman near me muttered "Bush cut my job and I wanted it back." When Barack told the story of his mother fighting cancer and the insurance company at the same time, another woman near me yelled "That's me right now!"
As for the speech itself, it was fairly boilerplate as far as policy details go, but he did have some good personal stories, including one about pie. What I liked best about the speech was his knack for weaving a sense of optimism about the future throughout the speech. When he talked about making college affordable, he repeated John McCain's attack on him for "caving in to an interest group." "Our youth are not an interest group - they are the future of our country!" he cried. And Obama wrapped up his speech with a passionate evocation of why we should not despair, why we should not get too bogged down in what is to the neglect of what ought to be:
We can do this. Americans have done this before. Some of us had grandparents or parents who said maybe I can't go to college but my child can; maybe I can't have my own business but my child can. I may have to rent, but maybe my children will have a home they can call their own. I may not have a lot of money but maybe my child will run for Senate. I might not be able to vote now but maybe someday my grandson can be president of the United States of America.
