Think Progress

Meet The Deniers: The Top Climate Races This November

Radical deniers of global warming science are measuring the drapes in the U.S. Capitol, planning to strip seats from supporters of President Obama’s efforts to stem greenhouse gas pollution. Exclusive analysis from the Wonk Room has identified the top Senate and House races that pit science versus snake oil this November. Meet the fossil-fueled deniers, who call science “crap” in order to defend their “Drill Baby Drill” philosophy:

“While I think the earth is warming, I don’t think that man-made causes are the primary factor.” — Ken Buck (CO-SEN) [KBDI-TV, 3/10]

“I think we ought to take a look at whatever the group is that measures all this, the IPCC, they don’t even believe the crap.” — Steve Pearce (NM-2) [Politico, 8/18/10]

“I don’t, however, buy into the whole … man-caused global warming, man-caused climate change mantra of the left. I believe that there’s not sound science to back that up.” — Sharron Angle (NV-SEN) [Climatewire, 5/26/10]

“Global warming is more a religion than a science.” — David Harmer (CA-11) [Halfway to Concord, 9/25/09]

“It’s far more likely that it’s just sunspot activity or just something in the geologic eons of time.” — Ron Johnson (WI-SEN) [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, 8/19/10]

Seven key climate races in the Senate (with the 538.com estimated likelihood of a Republican pickup):

(92%) PA: Joe Sestak v. Pat Toomey
(72%) CO: Michael Bennet v. Ken Buck
(52%) NV: Harry Reid v. Sharron Angle
(42%) CA: Barbara Boxer v. Carly Fiorina
(33%) WI: Russ Feingold v. Ron Johnson
(30%) WA: Patty Murray v. Dino Rossi
(20% Democratic pickup) NH: Paul Hodes v. Kelly Ayotte

Eight key climate races in the House:

(76%) NM-2: Harry Teague v Steve Pearce
(63%) IA-3: Leonard Boswell v Brad Zaun
(63%) IL-14: Bill Foster v Randy Hultgren
(62%) CA-11: Jerry McNerney v David Harmer
(58%) IN-9: Baron Hill v Todd Young
(43%) FL-22: Ron Klein v Allen West
(26%) NM-1: Martin Heinrich v Jon Barela
(26%) IL-17: Phil Hare v Bobby Schilling

Grassley Confused About His Own Hypocrisy In Supporting The Individual Mandate

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), like the rest of the Republican Party, opposes the individual health insurance mandate. He believes that the provision violates the 10th Amendment of the Constitution and argues that only states have the authority to require their citizens to purchase coverage.

But this wasn’t always the case. In 1993, Grassley proposed an alternative to President Bill Clinton’s health care initiative that required every American to purchase health insurance coverage. He also endorsed the mandate in 2007 when he co-sponsored the Wyden-Bennet health care plan and even backed the idea as recently as 2009.

Yesterday, during a campaign debate, Grassley’s Democratic challenger Roxanne Conlin confronted him on his hypocrisy. Grassley explained that his thinking on the mandate changed in April or May of 2009:

Grassley responded: “My name was on a bill in 1993, but there’s a lot about the constitution you learn over the period of the next 15 years and I’m not a lawyer, but I do read the constitution. I do read some of the laws and I came to the conclusion that it’s unconstitutional, just like the attorney generals of about 22 states.” [...]

After the program, Grassley told reporters it was in April or May of last year that he changed his mind about requiring Americans to buy health insurance just like drivers are required to buy insurance on their vehicles. “And then you have people raise the question, ‘Well, where is it in the constitution that you have to buy anything?’” Grassley said.

Grassley must be confusing his dates, because he expressed support for the policy as recently as August 2009. He was asked, “How does this bipartisan group that you’re a member of get to more health insurance coverage if you don’t mandate that employers provide coverage?” Grassley replied, “Through an individual mandate and that’s individual responsibility and even Republicans believe in individual responsibility.” Here he is expressing that very belief in June 2009 on Fox News Sunday:

Now, Grassley’s explanation mirrors the thinking of fellow Republican Orrin Hatch, who after years of supporting the policy also confessed that constitutional study (and apparently Obama’s election) changed his mind.

Cross-posted on the Wonk Room.

Crapo On Health Clinic Funded By Stimulus He Opposed: ‘One Of The Core Pieces Of The Solution’ America Needs

Wednesday afternoon, Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID) attended a ribbon-cutting event for the Health West clinic in Aberdeen, Idaho. Crapo praised the clinic, which will specialize in assisting low-income patients in rural areas, saying, “What is happening right here in Aberdeen today is one of the core pieces of the solution that we need in America today.” What Crapo did not mention in his praise for Health West is that most of its funding came from the stimulus package that he opposed:

During a brief speech at the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Sen. Crapo said the clinic is essential in providing efficient high-quality services in a rural community. He said the facility helps address two disturbing trends in U.S. health care — skyrocketing cost of services and limited access to quality care.

“What is happening right here in Aberdeen today is one of the core pieces of the solution that we need in America today,” Crapo said. [...] Stephen Weeg, executive director for Health West in Southeast Idaho, said the clinic hopes to partner with the larger medical hospitals to bring in specialists once a month. Green light for the clinic did not come until stimulus money was made available.

Weeg said stimulus money from the U.S. Department of Agriculture provided $500,000 of the $660,000 project. Additional money came from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. About $74,000 was raised locally, with about $35,000 left to raise.

At the time of the passage of the stimulus bill, Crapo called it “an avalanche of special funding, much of which is unrelated to stimulating our economy as a whole.” It now appears that the senator realizes, at least implicitly, that it has provided funding to important projects like the West Health center that he calls “one of the core pieces of the solution that we need in America today.”

GOP Congressional Candidate Says He Wants To ‘Choke Off’ Funding To Health Care Legislation

Since Congress passed its health care legislation expanding health insurance to tens of millions of Americans earlier this year, leading conservatives have debated about the best way to oppose it. Some have advocated for simply repealing the entire bill wholesale, while others have argued for a “repeal and replace” strategy that would replace the legislation with a yet-to-be-determined conservative plan for health care.

Scott Tipton, the Republican candidate for Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, is advocating for a third option: rather than repealing the legislation or replacing it with something else, he wants to “choke off funding” for the legislation, effectively stifling its effectiveness without doing anything to improve the U.S. health care system:

The Republican candidate for the 3rd Congressional District called for reductions in the size of the federal government and said he would vote to “choke off funding” for health-care legislation passed by the current Congress. Scott Tipton spoke to about 110 people, most of them supporters, Thursday night in a town-hall meeting in the Grand Junction City Council chambers. [...]

Health-care legislation will cost $2.2 trillion over the next 10 years, Tipton said, and the only way to bring those costs under control is to cut them in the House, which controls the nation’s purse strings.

Tipton’s desire to “defund” health reform has previously been floated by Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) and Newt Gingrich.

Purely on the facts, Tipton is wrong to imply that cutting off funding for the recently passed health care bill would rein in the deficit. The bill already serves to cut the deficit, and repealing certain provisions or denying them the funds to be utilized would only end up costing the country more in the long run.

Putting deficit concerns aside, a far greater cost to denying funding for the legislation would be borne by the 3rd District Coloradans that Tipton is running to represent. As of estimates made in 2009, a quarter of the people in the district lacked any sort of health care coverage whatsoever. Hospitals in the district who have to care for these uninsured residents without compensation have calculated that they’ve paid “$94 million in annual uncompensated care costs in recent years.” When a surgery center in the district offered free care to residents one day late last year, people were so desperate to be able to be one of the few the center was able to take care of that some of them slept in its parking lot (less than half were actually offered care).

Thanks to Congress’s recently passed bill, an additional 106,000 district residents will be able to get insured and hospitals will be able to reduce the funds they spend on uninsured residents by $84 million annually. That is, if the legislation is fully funded. If Tipton gets his way, more than a hundred thousand people in his district will be unable to get health insurance, and hospitals will continue to expend countless tens of millions of dollars on caring for the uninsured.

Minnesota Chamber Of Commerce Urges Pawlenty To Accept Affordable Care Act Funds

Earlier this week, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) issued an executive order directing “all state agencies not to participate in the federal health care overhaul,” specifically demanding they not seek any discretionary funding available through the Affordable Care Act. In issuing the order, Pawlenty vowed to do “anything that I can do to slow down, limit or negate Obamacare,” warning that it “threatens private sector economic growth.” Immediately, the move and its implicit attack on President Obama were seen as a means to position Pawlenty for a presidential bid in 2012. Indeed, his Political Action Committee promptly tried to raise money off of Pawlenty’s order.

But his claim about the law’s danger to businesses were quickly undercut. As the AP reported, the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce is calling on Pawlenty to accept the funds:

Chamber President David Olson sent a letter to the Republican governor this week encouraging him to specifically apply for a $1 million federal planning grant to study a potential health insurance exchange.

“This grant does not require the state to create an exchange,” Olson wrote. “Instead, it allows for an independent and comprehensive actuarial analysis of an exchange. The analysis will help us determine whether or not an exchange is a cost effective option for Minnesotans shopping for health care coverage.”

Olson also stressed that an exchange could possibly have a significant impact on Minnesota businesses.

The state Chamber is not alone here. The Minnesota Medical Association and the 20,000-member Minnesota Nurses Association both blasted Pawlenty for refusing the money, calling on him to immediately relent and accept the funds.

But in urging Pawlenty to take federal money available through the Affordable Care Act, the Minnesota Chamber seems to be breaking with with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has relentlessly attacked the health care plan since before it became law. Still, while many of the U.S. Chamber’s right-wing allies have signed onto an effort to completely repeal the Affordable Care Act, the Chamber has tellingly hedged, saying full repeal “is not a realistic option.” The Chamber has led efforts to repeal small portions of the Act, but perhaps they quietly realize — as it appears the Minnesota Chamber has — that the law can actually be very helpful to businesses.

Pawlenty To Accept Medicaid Match Because It ‘Doesn’t Further Some Stupid Policy Agenda’

As he issued an executive order preventing the state from applying for any of the grants available in the new health care law, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty signaled that he would accept $263 million in federal dollars to bolster the state’s Medicaid program — funds he previously described as a “bailout” of the states. “The federal government should not deficit spend to bail out states and special interest groups,” Pawlenty said earlier this month after the House reconvened for an emergency vote and passed a $26.1 billion bill providing aid to state governments. “Minnesota balanced its budget without raising taxes and without relying on more federal money. The federal government’s reckless spending spree must come to an end.”

Putting aside the fact that the $26.1 billion measure was fully paid for (and even reduced the deficit by $1.4 billion), Pawlenty searched for another explanation as to why he’s willing to accept a transfer of federal funds into the state Medicaid program but would not apply for grant dollars authorized by the health care law. The enhanced Medicaid payments are “not Obamacare” and won’t “further some stupid policy agenda,” he concluded:

“We’ll likely take that money,” Pawlenty said in an interview at the State Fair Tuesday. “It’s not Obamacare, it is something that we were going to be doing anyhow…”We’re going to take the money for those things that we were going to do anyhow and for the Medicaid (money), we were going to do that anyhow,” Pawlenty said. [...]

Further, the governor said, Minnesota is a net donor to the federal government — sending in more money than it gets back — so “where it’s appropriate and where it’s wise and doesn’t further some stupid policy agenda or otherwise concerns us or sign us up for something that is unsustainable or otherwise cause us a problem, we’re going to apply for those other pots of money.”

Earlier this year, Pawlenty rejected federal funds from the health care law to expand the state’s Medicaid program, a point he highlighted in yesterday’s executive order.

The Huffington Post notes that Pawlenty is requesting federal grants for abstinence-only education that are funded by the Affordable Care Act. Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) said yesterday that “members of the Pawlenty administration thank me” for voting in favor of health care reform.

Sebelius Brushes Off Pawlenty’s Political Moves To Thwart Health Reform In His State

Whereas the overwhelming majority of states and governors who oppose the federal health care law are accepting its grants, Minnesota Governor and GOP Presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty (R) is only interested in the abstinence-only portions of the law. Pawlenty has issued an executive order (EO) preventing the state from applying for any more federal funding, noting in campaign-like rhetoric that reform “represents a dramatic attempt to assert federal command and control over this country’s health care system” and “includes unprecedented federal intrusions into individual liberty”:

NOW, THEREFORE, I hereby order that:

All executive branch departments and agencies are directed that no application shall be submitted to the federal government in connection with requests for grant funding for programs and demonstration projects deriving from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“PPACA” or “the Act”) (Pub.L. 111-148) unless otherwise required by law, or approved by the office of the Governor.

The order puts Pawlenty out of sync with many cities, counties, and businesses in his state — 97 of which applied for the law’s reinsurance grants. But the sheer transparency of Pawlenty’s effort was not lost on HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today, who when asked about the governor’s EO, visibly snickered before noting that Minnesota residents are already benefiting from reform:

SEBELIUS: I’m afraid of citizens of Minnesota may be the victims of whatever it is that’s coming their way. I know we have companies from the great state of Minnesota who have applied to be part of this plan. … I know that we have seniors in Minnesota who have received $250 checks for prescription drug coverage because they have reached the prescription drug doughnut hole. … So I have no idea if those are the kinds of benefits he intends to eliminate for the citizens of Minnesota.

Watch Sebelius’ reaction at 0:28:

In the order, Pawlenty also notes that he has already determined that Minnesota will “not participate in the early expansion of the Medicaid entitlement program offered by the federal government as part of the legislation” or apply for federal grants that could help the state review unreasonable premium hikes.

Cross-posted from The Wonk Room.

New Mexico GOP Candidates Are Global Warming Deniers

NM GOP candidates (clockwise from top left): Susana Martinez, Jon Barela, Steve Pearce, and Tom Mullins

Even though New Mexico is facing a future of perpetual drought, killer heat waves, water scarcity, and wildfires, the crop of Republican candidates for major office in the state are in denial about the threat of global warming pollution. Gubernatorial nominee Susana Martinez and all three congressional candidates — former representative Steve Pearce, oil engineer Tom Mullins, and corporate lobbyist Jon Barela — believe scientists are engaged in a conspiracy to destroy our economy:

“[T]here is disagreement in the science community concerning the causes of global warming.” — Susana Martinez, GOP nominee for governor

“I don’t mean to be flippant about this, but only God knows where our climate is going.” — Jon Barela, GOP nominee for the first Congressional district

“I think we ought to take a look at whatever the group is that measures all this, the IPCC, they don’t even believe the crap.” — Steve Pearce, GOP nominee for the second Congressional district

“The science is not settled regarding climate change, temperature records have been falsified, and the assumptions used in computer models have large degrees of error.” — Tom Mullins, GOP nominee for the third Congressional district

The Wonk Room notes that New Mexico’s fragile frontier is already experiencing a wide range of debilitating climate change events, with extreme storms doubling and bark beetles killing tens of millions of trees in the now water-starved state.

Judge Suspends All Federal Funding of Embryoic Stem Cell Research

Earlier today, a federal trial judge in D.C. suspended all federal funding of embryonic stem cell (ESC) research during ongoing litigation, claiming that such funding is illegal. According to Chief Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, such funding violates the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, which prohibits the use of federal funds for “research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed”:

ESC research is clearly research in which an embryo is destroyed. To conduct ESC research, ESCs must be derived from an embryo. The process of deriving ESCs from an embryo results in the destruction of the embryo. Thus, ESC research necessarily depends upon the destruction of a human embryo.

Despite defendants’ attempt to separate the derivation of ESCs from research on the ESCs, the two cannot be separated. Derivation of ESCs from an embryo is an integral step in conducting ESC research. Indeed, it is just one of many steps in the “systematic investigation” of stem cell research. Simply because ESC research involves multiple steps does not mean that each step is a separate “piece of research” that may be federally funded, provided the step does not result in the destruction of an embryo.

Essentially, Judge Lamberth claims that all ESC research cannot be funded because it requires scientists to build upon previous research that involved the destruction of an embryo, but it’s difficult to square this decision with Supreme Court precedent. Under Chevron v. NRDC, judges are normally supposed to defer to an agency’s reading of a federal law unless the agency’s interpretation is entirely implausible, and the Obama administration quite plausibly read the Dickey-Wicker Amendment to only prohibit federal funding of the actual destruction of an embryo — not federal funding of subsequent ESC research.

Indeed, Lamberth’s decision moves the law to a worse position than it was during the Bush administration. President George W. Bush allowed federal funding for research on existing embryonic stem cell lines, but would not allow new lines to be created. Today’s opinion even forbids such entirely uncontroversial research.

Cuccinelli Authorizes Same Anti-Abortion Regulations He Failed To Enact As State Senator

As a state senator, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli consistently “supported bills that would have treated abortion clinics as ambulatory surgery centers and required them to meet hospital-type regulations with regard to equipment and space,” but none of these bills ever became law. Now that he is Attorney General, however, Cuccinelli has decided that he does not need such legislative authority to act. In an opinion issued late last week, Attorney General Cuccinelli determined that the state already has the power to do what State Senator Cuccinelli failed to accomplish in the legislature:

In addition to applying regulations governing medical facilities and health care providers in general, the relevant agencies are authorized to impose regulations particular to abortion services. … In this circuit, the parameters within which states may constitutionally regulate first trimester abortion services were articulated by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Greenville Women’s Clinic v. Bryant. The Court upheld South Carolina legislation and regulations that, in essence, extended the rules already imposed on facilities offering second trimester abortions to establishments in which five or more first trimester abortions were performed. The regulations at issue concerned licensing requirements; staffing rules; specified drug, equipment and laboratory availability; detailed record keeping and reporting duties; maintenance, safety and emergency policies; sterilization procedures; and design and construction standards.

At the very least, Cuccinelli’s opinion opens the door for Virginia to enact the very same kind of restrictive regulations that are already the law in South Carolina. Moreover, as Igor Volsky points out at the Wonk Room, Cuccinelli’s opinion could lead to even more aggressive use of the kind of “so-called TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) legislation that’s been passed in states across the country.” In a nutshell, TRAP laws attempt to cut off a woman’s constitutional right to choose an abortion by driving up the cost of the procedure through intentionally burdensome regulations.

Last week’s opinion is also only the latest example of Cuccinelli suddenly discovering that the law must agree with whatever his personal views are on an issue. When Congress enacted a health care law that Cuccinelli disagrees with, he immediately concluded — contrary to the Constitution and a wealth of legal precedent — that the law must be unconstitutional.  When the EPA began long-overdue steps to prevent global warming, Cuccinelli suddenly decided that EPA’s actions were illegal. When a UVA scientist conducted research contradicting Cuccinelli’s global warming denialism, Cuccinelli suddenly found that he has the legal authority to pursue a witchhunt against that professor. When a federal judge struck down Arizona’s unconstitutional anti-immigrant law, Cuccinelli responded two days later with an opinion authorizing Virginia to mimic Arizona’s failed law.  And, of course, it goes without saying that Cuccinelli forbids any kind of action which protects gay Virginians.

In other words, either the law magically bends to fit Ken Cuccinelli’s whims, or Cuccinelli doesn’t really care what the law says — he’ll just claim it does whatever he wants it to do.

Howard Dean Launches Misguided Attack On Health Reform

Speaking on MSNBC this morning, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean (D) made the wildly incorrect claim that the provision in the Affordable Care Act requiring almost all Americans to carry insurance is not “essential to the plan”:

DEAN: [T]he truth is the mandate’s not essential to the plan anyway. It never was essential to the plan. They did it in Massachusetts and had a mandate, but we have universal health care for kids in my state without a mandate. … I made this prediction before and I’m going to make it again: by the time this thing goes into effect in 2014, I think the mandate will be gone either through the courts or because it’s unpopular. You don’t need it. There will be two or three percent of the people who cheat. That is not enough to bring the system to a halt and people don’t like to be told what to do.

Watch it:

Sadly, Dean — who has been a leading progressive champion for health reform — is simply wrong about the mandate. As MIT economist Jonathan Gruber explains, this provision is essential to any health reform package that forbids discrimination against persons with preexisting conditions:

Insurance companies are also prohibited from excluding coverage due to preexisting illnesses.  This is a highly popular reform, but it doesn’t work in a vacuum. If insurance companies must charge the same price to people whether they’re sick or healthy many healthy people will view this as a “bad deal” and not buy insurance. This results in higher prices that chase even more people out of the market. The result is a “death spiral” that leads only the sick to purchase insurance at very high prices. Several states tried such community rating reforms—offering health insurance policies within a given territory at the same price to all persons without medical underwriting—in their nongroup markets over the past two decades, and sharp rises in insurance prices ensued along with rapidly shrinking market size.

An amicus brief that I co-wrote on behalf of seventeen disease and health organizations goes into more detail. It explains that seven states attempted to ban preexisting conditions discrimination without also requiring everyone to carry a minimum level of coverage, and all of them saw their premiums skyrocket. According to a scholarly study of Vermont’s health plan, Vermont’s premiums shot up after it enacted a ban on preexisting conditions discrimination but no mandate in 1993. Between 1994 and 1996, most of the country only experienced single-digit increases in its insurance costs. In Vermont, however, average premiums increased by 16 percent during this same two year period.

In Massachusetts, the one state to enact a minimum coverage provision along with its ban on discrimination, the numbers are very different. There, individual premiums fell a massive 40 percent in the years after Massachusetts’ minimum coverage law went into effect, while the rest of the nation experienced a 14 percent increase.

Dean’s claim that the courts may strike down the Affordable Care Act’s minimum coverage provision is also misguided. No one questions that a ban on discrimination against persons with preexisting conditions is constitutional, and, as even ultraconservative Justice Antonin Scalia admits, when Congress passes a constitutional law “it possesses every power needed to make that regulation effective.”

Michigan Oil Spill Damages Wildlife, Forces Residents To Evacuate

On Monday, a disastrous leak in one of the world’s largest pipeline systems gushed over 1 million gallons of oil into the Kalamazoo River, located in southwest Michigan. Already, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm has declared the area a disaster zone, quickly activating State Emergency Operations Center (SEOC) to ensure all state resources are devoted to oil spill response. “From my perspective, the response has been anemic,” Granholm said. Spill workers and volunteers have been hard at work, cleaning the horrifyingly oily water:

This is not the first failure of Enbridge Inc., the Canadian energy company responsible for the spill. Michigan Messenger’s Todd Heywood reports that, “documents from the agency show that Enbridge Energy pipelines have leaked oil on 12 different occasions in Michigan since 2002.” Furthermore, documents obtained by the Detroit Free Press and other news outlets indicate Enbridge Inc. was “notified twice this year of potential problems involving old pipe prone to rupturing and an inadequate system for monitoring internal corrosion.” While this is one of the biggest threats to a pipeline, it is currently unclear whether Enbridge addressed the notices or if “the concerns played any role in the leak.”

Although Michigan’s spill represents only 32 percent of the amount of oil spilled per day in the ongoing BP oil disaster, the environmental implications of the leak are already clear. Not only has wildlife — including geese and muskrats — been coated in oil, but fears also remain high that the oil will contaminate local water supplies. The Calhoun County Health Department has advised residents around the area of the Kalamazoo River oil spill to evacuate, due to “‘higher than acceptable levels of benzene’ in air quality studies.” Benzene, notes the press release from the health department, is a “highly flammable” organic chemical that can lead to a series of symptoms from dizziness to tremors. The long-term effects of benzene exposure, however, are more dire and are linked to excessive bleeding and even cancer in human beings. Enbridge has agreed to reimburse affected families for the cost of hotel stays.

Yesterday, Enbridge spokeswoman Terri Larson said “no fresh oil is leaking from the leak site itself.” Moreover, as the Michigan Messenger reports, “Despite claims by Enbridge CEO Patrick Daniel that the company would reopen the leaking oil pipeline ‘in a matter of days,’ the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) has issued a Corrective Action Order directing the company not to reopen the pipeline until a comprehensive safety assessment can be completed.”

– Nina Bhattacharya

Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.

Florida Judge Throws Out Anti-Health Care Reform Ballot Measure Because Of ‘Manifestly Misleading’ Language

Last month, The Hill reported that Republicans in a number of states across the country were putting anti-health care reform measures on the ballot for the mid-term elections this year in order to bolster conservative voter turnout. “What we’re trying to do is give voters an added reason to show up to the polls,” said one South Carolina GOP official.

The GOP-led legislature in Florida put forward a measure to be included on this year’s ballot that would “prohibit the state from participating in any health insurance exchange that compels people to buy insurance.” But yesterday, Circuit Court Judge James Shelfer (who was appointed to a lower court by GOP Gov. Jeb Bush and elevated by current Gov. Charlie Crist) ordered that the proposed constitutional amendment be removed from the November ballot, calling the wording of the measure “manifestly misleading”:

State law requires ballot summaries to be clear and accurate. Circuit Court Judge James Shelfer said a proposed ballot summary for the amendment contains several phrases that are political and list issues that are not addressed in the proposal.

The first sentence of the summary says the amendment would “ensure access to health care services without waiting lists, protect the doctor-patient relationship, (and) guard against mandates that don’t work.”

Shelfer said the amendment does not guarantee any of those things.

“Someone voting on the amendment, reading those introductory statements would have a false understanding of what they were voting on,” he said in a ruling from the bench.

The plaintiffs in the case argued that the summary language referred to issues not addressed in the bill, including that the amendment “will ensure access to health care services without waiting lists,” and “protect the doctor-patient relationship” as well as “guard against mandates that don’t work.”

Meanwhile, next Tuesday, Missouri voters will vote on a similar measure challenging the health insurance mandate Congress passed with the reform bill last year. The proposal “would prohibit governments from requiring people to have health insurance or from penalizing them for paying health bills entirely with their own money.”

While the Missouri measure has a good chance of passing, health care opponents are increasingly facing an uphill battle. Critics and even supporters note that the ballot measures likely would not affect the national health care law because of the Constitution’s “Supremacy Clause” allowing federal law to trump state law. Moreover, recent public polling suggests Americans are increasingly supporting the health care overhaul.

Gibbs Defends Berwick Appointment: We Won’t ‘Have The Viewpoints Of A Few Hold Up The Law Of The Land’

Last week, President Obama announced that he would be recess appointing Harvard physician Donald Berwick to be the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Conservatives — who have fear-mongered about Berwick’s praise for the British health care system — quickly attacked Obama for the move, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) claiming that the president has attempted to “arrogantly circumvent the American people.”

Today, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs defended Berwick’s recess appointment during the White House press briefing. When asked about the propriety of using recess appointments, Gibbs pointed out that, in the first year of the Bush administration, there weren’t any nominees stopped because the Senate failed to reach unanimous consent, but that under the Obama administration, that has happened 21 times.

Using the example of the GSA administrator, Gibbs noted that it took 10 months just to get a vote on the nominee; Republicans were preventing votes on nominees is simply about them “playing politics…just to stop things from happening”:

Q: You just talked about the badly broken process. Is using recess appointments to circumvent the Senate an example of that process?

GIBBS: It’s a result of that broken process, yes.

Q: Does the President believe that recess appointments should be used sparingly?

GIBBS: The President believes that we have to have people to run government effectively and efficiently. … The process should entitle one to quick disposition. That’s clearly not happening. … I used the example of the GSA nominee. In the first year of the Bush administration, no nominee had to go through the process of invoking cloture because somebody wouldn’t agree to unanimous consent. Basically, one person can stop this whole process. That’s happened 21 times in the Obama administration. … If it takes 10 months to get a unanimous vote, what is one left to believe the 10 months was about? Playing the kind of politics that people are tired of in order just to stop things from happening. [...]

There are aspects of the health care law that have to be implemented on a timeline that I’m sure many who oppose Dr. Berwick for political reasons did not want to see implemented. We are not going to have the viewpoints of a few hold up the law of the land.

Watch it:

Indeed, conservative obstruction of the federal appointments process has been at historically high levels. In the area of judicial nominees alone, Obama has only been able to have 36 percent of his nominees approved, while 91 percent of Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter’s nominees were approved during the same time period. Meanwhile, Republicans have set a new historical record for use of the filibuster.

Florida Encourages Saltwater Fishing As Oil Looms Off Panama City

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission continues to keep state waters open to fishing despite contamination by the BP oil disaster, the Wonk Room has learned. On June 16, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) extended the federal fisheries closure to the federal waters seven miles off Panama City Beach. Meanwhile, the state encouraged fishing with the announcement that “all Florida residents and visitors are invited to fish statewide for saltwater species without a license during the upcoming Father’s Day weekend, June 19-20.” On June 19, tarballs began washing up on Panama City Beach. On June 20, the visible oil slick spread to one mile of the Panama City coast, well within the seven-mile state boundary, but the state did not put the waters off limits to fishing:

Satellite image of oil slick one mile off Panama City, FL, June 20, 2010, from University of Miami.

Gov. Charlie Crist’s (I-FL) office warned residents on June 21 that “the Florida Panhandle will continue to be threatened by shoreline contacts as far east as Panama City through Monday,” but the State Fish & Wildlife Commission kept the waters open, just off the impacted shore. Other than the “partial fishing closure in Escambia County” the commission belatedly imposed, the agency’s official position is that “the rest of Florida’s recreational and commercial fisheries have not been directly affected by the oil spill.”

Cross-posted on the Wonk Room.

Rand Paul Says He Opposes Medicare And Medicaid Cuts Because It Would Penalize The Poor And Elderly

U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul (R-KY) has made opposition to the “heavy hand” of the federal government one of the hallmarks of his political ideology. Yet, despite his anti-government rhetoric, the Kentucky opthamologist has gone on record opposing cuts to the Medicare program, saying that “physicians should be allowed to make a comfortable living.” He has received at least $130,000 from Medicaid patients since 2005.

Now, Paul has a new justification for his inconsistency. His campaign manager Jesse Benton told the Associated Press yesterday that the reason Paul opposes cuts in the government-run Medicare and Medicaid programs is because shunning people who are on those programs would “penalize his older patients or his poor patients”:

Paul campaign manager Jesse Benton defended Paul’s acceptance of Medicare and Medicaid payments, saying that to shun the two health care programs would “penalize his older patients or his poor patients.” Paul said he sees patients who rely on the government programs, private insurance or who pay for their own care.

“I don’t discriminate in my practice, and though I’d prefer to have less government intervention in … medicine, I put my patients first in this matter,” the Republican said. “My medical practice has never been about any ideology or running for office.”

One of the major features of the new health care law is of course an expansion of Medicaid, extending coverage to nearly 16 million more Americans by 2019. Nonetheless, repealing Congress’s recently passed health care legislation is one of the major features of Paul’s campaign. It would be interesting to see how the non-board-certified opthamologist thinks that taking away health care from the millions of Americans does not amount to penalizing poor patients.

Merkley: It’d Be Jindal’s ‘Last Term In Office’ If He Were A West Coast Governor Calling For More Drilling Now

Despite the serious unanswered questions about the safety of offshore drilling the BP spill has highlighted, a number of prominent conservative leaders have doubled down on their calls for an immediate expansion of drilling, even before the investigation of the Deepwater Horizon disaster is complete. One such leader is Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R). His state has been hit the hardest by the Gulf spill, yet Jindal wrote a letter to President Obama earlier this month “criticizing his decision to implement a temporary moratorium of deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico” and calling for more drilling now.

In an interview with ThinkProgress this morning, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) said Jindal’s call for more dilling in the wake of the disaster would make this his “last term in office,” if he was a West Coast governor:

TP: So I’m curious about your response is to Republicans, conservatives, such as Governor Jindal whose state is clearly being ravaged by the Deepwater Horizon spill, but is still calling for more drilling tomorrow. [...]

MERKLEY: Well I can tell you, if he were governor on the West Coast, it’d be his last term in office. Becasue the senators all came together on the West Coast unanimously — all six, California, Oregon, and Washington — and said that drilling is not in the best interests of our states. … So we don’t want drilling at 30 miles, we don’t want it at 50 miles, we don’t want it at 100 miles, because that oil may end up both foul our commercial fisheries, our ecosystems, and our coastlines, and it’s not a risk worth taking.

Watch it:

Merkley and the five other senators representing the West Coast came together last month to propose legislation that would permanently ban new drilling in the Pacific. They want to restore a moratorium on new leases for offshore drilling in federal waters that was in place from 1981 to 2008. The West Coast has experienced the dangers of massive oil spills first hand. In one of the biggest spills in American history, 200,000 gallons of oil gushed from a well off of Santa Barbara, California for 11 days in 1969. This “environmental nightmare” prompted the congressional moratorium that Merkley and the other senators are trying to reinstate.

ThinkProgress spoke with Merkley before an event at the Center for American Progress on the need to reduce our dependence on oil.

Gingrich: ‘Of Course’ Gov. Barbour Should Encourage Tourists To Visit Oil Contaminated Gulf Beaches

Weeks after the massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Newt Gingrich still continued his “Drill Here, Drill Now” mantra, writing that “human progress is not without risk” and that “[o]ffshore drilling is no exception.” But given the fact that the oil leak at BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig continues unabated, pouring more than 200,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf every day and is “already far larger” than the Exxon Valdez crash, Gingrich is holding firm.

At the NRA’s annual conference in Charlotte, NC, yesterday, ThinkProgress asked Gingrich if he still accepts this level of risk to continue offshore drilling:

TP: So given the scale of the oil spill in the gulf, do you still think that it represents an acceptable risk to continue offshore drilling?

GINGRICH: Yes. … One oil spill since 1969 with 4,000 wells. If the Coast Guard had a reasonable research program, we’d be much further down the road to solving this kind of thing.

ThinkProgess also asked the former GOP House Speaker if he agrees with Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour’s (R) recent campaign to encourage tourists to visit gulf beaches despite oil and dead sea animals washing ashore. While Gingrich hesitated for a moment, he replied, “Of course.” Watch the interview:

While it’s unclear which “4,000 wells” Gingrich was referring to, his claim that there has only been one spill since 1969 is not accurate, as the Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson has noted:

Between 1992 and 1998 there were 319 failures of blowout preventers found in US offshore drilling, an average of 45 a year. [MMS, 1999] Between 1992 and 2006 there were at least 39 blowouts off the US coastline, 38 of them in the Gulf of Mexico. [MMS, 7/07] From 2007 to 2009 there were 19 blowouts, all in the Gulf of Mexico. [MMS]

Moreover, the largest accidental oil spill in history was a Gulf of Mexico exploratory rig blowout in 1979 and other major offshore spills have occurred elsewhere around the world. In “one of Australia’s worst oil disasters,” a PTTEP oil rig blew out in the Montara deepwater oil field on August 21, 2009.

As Tar Balls Wash Up On Gulf Coast, Support For Drilling Plummets In North Carolina

As BP attempts to once again plug the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, balls of tar have begun washing up on the “prized white sands” of the Louisiana and Alabama coasts, alongside dead dolphins, sea turtles and 600 dead catfish. The Coast Guard released these photos yesterday of tar on Raccoon Island in Louisiana, “a protected bird breeding sanctuary with a variety of breeds“:

As ThinkProgress has noted, a number former pro-drilling advocates from affected states have reconsidered their support in the wake of the disaster. In Florida, which could face major economic fallout from the spill, Gov. Charlie Crist (I) said the disaster convinced him that offshore drilling “certainly isn’t safe enough,” and today called for a constitutional amendment to ban drilling off his state’s coast. A majority of voters in Florida now oppose drilling, in “stark contrast” to a poll from last year which showed majority support.

A new PPP poll shows that even in North Carolina, which is not likely to be directly affected by the spill, support for drilling has fallen off precipitously:

In April 61% of voters said they supported it with only 26% opposed. Now in the wake of the spill in the Gulf support has declined to 47% with 38% of voters against it. This is the first time PPP has ever found less than majority support for drilling in the state.

It’s unusual to see that big a change in how North Carolinians feels about a particular issue in such a short period of time, but it’s clear the spill has given many voters in the state second thoughts. 50% said it made them less supportive of allowing drilling off the state’s coast, compared to 28% who said it made no difference, and 22% who said the spill actually made them more supportive of drilling here.

PPP notes that the tumble in support for drilling has “come across party lines,” with a 17 point drop among independents, a 16 point drop among Democrats, and an 11 point drop among Republicans. A recent Rasmussen poll found that support for oil drilling nationally has “fallen dramatically” since the spill.

BREAKING: BP Effort To Use Dome To Contain Oil Disaster Fails

The Wonk Room has completed its live blogging from the Gulf Coast.

Efforts to contain the Deepwater Horizon oil gusher with a 100-ton, four-story concrete-and-steel box have failed, BP officials announced. The giant box, known as a cofferdam, was lowered onto the leaking wellhead yesterday, with the intent of pumping the leaking oil up a pipe to the sea surface a mile above. However, BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles announced in a press briefing this afternoon that the dome effort failed. After the cofferdam was lowered onto the leak site, a slurry of methane crystals formed on the inside of the dome’s surface, making it bouyant and clogging the outtake at the dome’s roof.

The giant box has been moved 200 meters from the disaster site, and is sitting on the sea bed. BP had anticipated that methane hydrates could form within the pipework from the dome to the surface, but not within the dome itself, especially at such a rapid rate.

Suttles, clearly chastened by this setback, had a much less confident tone about containing the leak than he had at previous press conferences, such as the one attended on Tuesday by the Wonk Room when he announced the cofferdam was being shipped out to the disaster site. “It’s very difficult to say whether solutions will work,” he admitted.

The methane hydrates — natural gas that under the extreme pressure and low temperatures of the ocean floor is in a semi-frozen state — have also been implicated in the oil rig explosion, according to rig worker testimony acquired by the Associated Press. The liberal blog FireDogLake was the first media source to discuss the role of hydrates, noting a presentation from November, 2009 by Halliburton, who was responsible for cementing the Deepwater Horizon well, that warned of blowouts caused by hydrate destabilization:

Destabilization of hydrates during cementing and production in deepwater environments is a challenge to the safety and economics.

Suttles also admitted that David Rainey, BP’s VP for Gulf of Mexico exploration, was on the rig celebrating its safety record when it blew up. Although 11 workers were killed, Rainey and the other BP employees on the rig safely escaped the inferno.

Also during the briefing, Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry was unusually optimistic about the preparations being made for the oil that is just now reaching the shores of Louisiana, but looms closer to the entire Gulf Coast as each day passes: “We’re ready for it.”

Cross-posted on the Wonk Room.