Anti-gay forces in Maine using same false ad from California's Prop 8

The same exact ad from the Yes on Prop. 8 campaign is now on the air in Maine, with some minor tweaks. It's based on lies about teaching gay marriage in public schools. But, the "star" isn't a public school teacher. She's a Christian private school teacher who is also the Maine leader of the virulently anti-gay Concerned Women of America. Class act. She's a teabagger, too. (Hat tip, Jeremy Hooper.) Read More......

Rural dwellers more like to kill themselves

Daily Yonder:

The study shows a sudden and sharp increase in the rural suicide rate beginning a generation ago. In the early 1970s, suicide rates of rural men exceeded the urban rate by just 4%. But by the late 1990s, the suicide rate for rural men exceeded the urban rate by 54%.

The urban suicide rate didn’t decline. The gap between rural and urban rates widened because of an increase in rural suicides.

It'd be interesting to throw party affiliation into this equation. Read More......

Democratic states lead US for best paying jobs

With the exception of Alaska and its oil money, the traditionally Democratic voting states dominate the list of where money is to be made in the US. I thought us northeasterners were a bunch of socialists who knew nothing about business. The GOP strongholds in the south seem to resemble the developing world in terms of income. CNNMoney.

Maryland is the nation's top-earning state for the third year in a row, with a median household income of $70,545 in 2008, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released Monday.

The states with highest median incomes are concentrated in the far West and in the Northeast, around the District of Columbia.

Most of the lowest-earning states are in the South. Mississippi had the lowest median income of just $37,790, while West Virginia ($37,989), Arkansas ($38,815), Kentucky ($41,538), and Alabama ($42,538), round out the bottom five.

Read More......

More on the President's backroom deal with Big Pharma

Apparently, President Obama's backroom deal with Big Pharma, a deal that will cost taxpayers and the federal government $80 billion - and put that money straight into the pocket of the pharmaceutical companies - was the topic of conversation at the Finance Committee markup yesterday. I hate to agree with Chuck Grassley, ever, but he is correct in this case. It was Obama's deal, and if Democrats have a problem with it, they should take it up with their president. And John Kerry is wrong to suggest that Obama wasn't in the room when the deal was cut, so he can't be blamed. I think the American people have had enough of absent, and absent-minded, presidents shirking responsibility for their staff's actions. Either Obama owns this windfall his staff gave Big Pharma, or he needs to disown it publicly and fire some staff. Read More......

DKos: White House Looking for Snowe Deal?

Some potentially disturbing updates on the health care reform debate from McJoan over at DKos. A lot of this is, however, reading of the tea leaves. (Wouldn't it be neat if we had our own guy in the White House and didn't have to look for secret clues as to whether they were selling their own promises and their own party out? A girl can dream...) Read More......

Big Pharma continues to be part of the problem

Now they're suing to block a generic drug from reaching the market. Apparently they only like the FDA when the FDA rules in their favor.

Drugmaker Wyeth on Wednesday sued the Food and Drug Administration to block the sale of a generic rival to its intravenous antibiotic Zosyn, claiming the generic is not an equivalent product and could harm critically ill patients.

Madison, N.J.-based Wyeth filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., seeking a temporary restraining order and a preliminary or permanent injunction.

And here I thought only those lefties were in favor of lawsuits. Read More......

BREAKING: AP source, Census worker hanged with word 'fed' scrawled on his body

UPDATE: This appears to be a profile, from last year, of the Census worker who died, and may have been killed. The AP story, below, has been updated and is quite lengthy now.

AP:

The FBI is investigating the hanging death of a U.S. Census worker near a Kentucky cemetery. A law enforcement official says the word "fed" was scrawled on his chest.

It's too early in the investigation to link this to the Republican demonization of the Census in particular (ACORN) and the US government in general (suggesting that the Obama administration was full of communists bent on destroying our country). Read More......

I talked to a health care expert who says the individual mandate is bogus without the public option

I just spoke with a health care expert who filled me on the "individual mandate" - the requirement in the Baucus bill that everyone get insurance. He informed me that this provision, which the GOP is now attacking, isn't even something we wanted. It's something the insurance industry wanted, and we agreed, only provided that they make the system affordable via the public option. Here's what my expert told me:

A mandate to carry health insurance is something the insurance industry wants. They agreed to "guaranteed issue" - no more denials for pre-existing conditions - in exchange for the mandate back in November. And it is something that makes sense only if we also get two things:

- A public health insurance option to lower costs and hold the industry accountable; and
- Affordability, so it won't be a burden on the middle class if they have to carry insurance.

That deal makes sense: We are handing the insurance industry a captive market of at least 50 million new customers (the number of uninsured in this country today who will be required to carry insurance). In exchange, the industry should get competition and the people should get affordability.

Without a public option or affordability - neither of which are in Max Baucus's bill - a mandate puts a huge burden on families and gives the industry a captive market for nothing.

What's more, a recent poll showed that the mandate is only popular with the public if there is a public option to go along with it. If the insurance companies want a mandate - want us to hand them 50 million new customers - then they should have to accept competition and affordability. They've accepted neither, yet Senator Baucus (and seemingly President Obama, who has anointed Baucus as his point man) has still given them the entire farm. Then again, they do own Baucus via their huge donations to him over the years. It's still a wonder why the Obama administration would hand responsibility for their signature policy initiative to someone owned by lobbyists. That isn't chage we can believe in. Read More......

Olympia Snowe just tried to kill health care reform

McJoan has the details. But in a nutshell, Snowe just voted for a cute little trick that would have effectively killed putting the bill on Reconciliation. Meaning, the bill would then have to pass with 60 votes to break a GOP filibuster, and since no GOP Senators are supporting the bill, unless we get Kennedy's replacement any time soon, and get all Dems voting together (that will be the day), the bill would be dead.

As Joan points out, Olympia Snowe is not a good faith partner. She may be a moderate in her soul, but her soul never has the courage to vote the right way. Read More......

Does Sarah Palin realize how bizarre her statements were in Hong Kong?

Sarah Palin is always good for a laugh, especially when she has no idea how silly she sounds. (Her being out of any office of significance when she says things like this is much funnier than if she was in power.) Talking about "liberalism" may play well in Alaska or the south but it doesn't necessarily have the same meaning abroad. In France or other countries, for example, being in favor of liberalism means you support conservative business practices as opposed to being a leftist. The previous PM of Australia, John Howard, was the Liberal Party leader and few would confuse Howard with a leftist. Many in the crowd must have been nodding their heads in agreement that yes, she's pretty much as stupid as advertised.

And then there's the good old health care debate. Sure, China is ranked lower than the US by the WHO for its health care but the company that hosted the event, CLSA, have offices throughout the region including Japan, Australia and Singapore, all of which have healthcare systems ranked above the US market. Again, her attacks on the system play well to fellow bumpkins but she was speaking to an educated crowd where demonizing national health care does not register.

On the subject of China, it could have been much worse. Warning about China to those working in a region that relies heavily on doing business with China is a bit amusing. Even the Australian economy hitched onto that wagon a while back, and it has served their economy well even with the strange actions related to Rio Tinto.

The winner of the day though has to be her remark about government interference causing the global recession. Huh? Regardless of how much the bankers may have swindled everyone else, it's a stretch to believe that anyone in the financial sector honestly believes that government interference triggered the collapse. What in the world is she even talking about? Palin's speech was standard for her normal Teabagging crowd but she sounded like a clueless bumpkin overseas. Is that what she thought would create international credibility? Then again, her supporters are clueless enough to fall for most anything, and that's all that matters for her. Read More......

Soviets, I mean Russians, try to blackmail US diplomat with faked sex tape

This really is troubling. It's very Soviet. (Then again, the Republican party has gotten very Soviet of late as well.) But Russia really is slipping back if they're trying this kind of heavy-handed tactic. From ABC:

American officials say the Russian intelligence agency that replaced the KGB, the Federal Security Service (FSB), produced the video in an attempt to either recruit or discredit the diplomat, Brendan Kyle Hatcher, a 34-year-old married State Department employee who serves as a liaison with religious and human rights groups in Russia.

When Hatcher rejected the Russian blackmail approach, officials said, the tape was posted last month on a supposed Russian internet news site that has no known reporters and that many Russian journalists believe is closely tied to the FSB.

Read More......

Senator Sherrod Brown answered our questions on health insurance reform

On Monday afternoon, we solicited your questions on health insurance reform for Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH). Yesterday, he answered a couple of our questions on video. As you'll see, Senator Brown thinks we will get a strong reform bill with a strong public option.

We hope to do more of these Q & As over the next couple months. And, thanks to Senator Brown. I think he actually got to two of the issues of most concern. His website is here. Read More......

Please welcome our newest blogger, Professor Steven Kyle of Cornell University

NOTE FROM JOHN: Today I want to introduce a new writer on our blog, Steven Kyle, a professor of Economics at Cornell who is going to be writing for us about economic issues, including how they relate to health care reform. Here's a quick paragraph bio I had Steve write up for you guys:

Steve is a professor of Applied Economics at Cornell University and divides his time between teaching and doing research about macroeconomic policy, advising various governments on macroeconomic issues, and trying to predict what the US economy will do in the future. After growing up in different parts of the Northeast US, Central and South America, he got his PhD in Economics from Harvard in 1985 and worked for a while as a bond trader at the World Bank before firing the Bank and going to Cornell. A long time reader of political and economic blogs, he is especially interested in the connections between politics and economics.

I really like the way Steve writes (and thinks). He's very good at explaining economics to people who are intelligent, but not necessarily up on the details of economics (i.e., smart college students, among others). Here is his first post - hope you enjoy.
---------------

Health reform economics and political pain

Even an economist can sometimes forget the basic economic problems health reform is intended to solve. Politicians and the media watching them tend to focus only on whether or not a particular bill can pass, not whether it will actually solve the problems ANY national health insurance system has to deal with, or even whether the population at large will actually like it once it happens. “Liking it” is often viewed through the lens of “what will it cost,” but even then an incomplete and needlessly complicated picture is often conveyed, with commentators many times simply declaring that “these issues are too complicated to explain easily.” Well, they shouldn’t be. So here is a brief primer on an economist’s view of one of the basic problems in health reform – how to get everyone covered and keep the cost of doing so low.

For those of us who need health insurance, there is a basic problem with public health systems - we don’t want to pay for it until we are sick. This directly conflicts with the goal of spreading costs as widely as possible in order to keep the tab low for each person. Basically, in a country as large as the US with 300 million people in it, it is very easy to predict how many of each kind of sickness will happen each year. There will be so many broken arms, so many breast cancers, so many cases of pneumonia, etc. We know pretty well what it ought to cost to deal with each of these problems too. If we add up all of these costs and then divide by 300 million people we have a rough estimate of what it ought to cost to insure each person in the country.

That is the logic of single payer systems. There is no “mandate” requiring everyone to buy health insurance because everyone is in the system by virtue of being a tax paying citizen. The cost is just another one of those indecipherable codes on your pay stub, and the political pain is pretty much concentrated at the point in time you put the system in place. Europeans and Canadians did it back when health care costs were much smaller than they are now so it wasn’t too painful. Here in the USA it would be quite a bit bigger hit, but again, once the tax is passed I defy most people to easily ID what tax goes to what purpose when it is withheld from your pay. Nor do we much care how the tax bite is divided up – we all hate it being bigger, but don’t really focus on what all those different taxes really go to.

Interestingly, one huge potential bonus for us citizens is routinely ignored in the debate – If we go to a public insurance system we will of course have to pay for it in the form of taxes. But at the same time, we WONT have to pay the hundreds of dollars a month we now pay for our crappy private insurance policies. Not only that, but other costs would likely go down as well. For example, my local school district spends more than a third of its budget (and climbing) for insurance for its employees. With a public plan that cost would be gone, and with any luck some of that would be passed on in the form of lower property taxes or better schools. Corporations too would benefit from having a huge cost taken off their balance sheets, putting them in a far better competitive position vis a vis trading partners who don’t have this burden. Unfortunately, both politicians and media talk as if there are only costs to such a plan and no benefits at all.

But here in the USA, it is seemingly impossible to enact such a system because the representatives who have to vote on it are very very interested in that short term pain. It might be better for us to do it that way, but it may well not be better for them. That means we are going to have to try to accomplish the goal of insuring everyone by requiring them to buy private insurance. Sure, we can do that, but then the political pain is felt every month, and every year, forever more when each of us has to pay the insurance company for health care and whatever enforcement mechanism is enacted starts to bite. The political winners and losers are pretty clearly those who were for and against the system in the first place.

Add to that the problem of those insurance companies doing whatever they possibly can to avoid covering anyone who is sick or might get that way (i.e. behaving the way they always have), and there is a huge potential for massive political resentment. But solving the problems on the insurance company side of the equation is another issue entirely, and will be the topic of a future post. Read More......

Lux: Snowe's public option "trigger" will trigger "a civil war inside the Democratic Party"

Update from Joe: This is an important development. I've known Mike for over ten years now. He's worked with people across the spectrum of Democratic politics. In fact, Mike was hired by the Obama transition team to serve as a liaison to the progressive community. Team Obama brought him in. They know him. He knows them. So, Mike's perspective on what the White House is up to carries weight and his warning should be taken seriously.
_________________________

Mike Lux says that the White House's infatuation with bipartisanship, in the name of Olympia Snowe and her false "public option trigger," will finally push the core of the Democratic party too far.

Some senior White House staffers are now beginning to try to sell this trigger to progressive groups as the compromise version of a public option, saying the White House doesn't want to have a floor fight in the Senate, and that they can always fix it in conference committee. That way they can pick up Snowe, satisfy that desperate urge for being officially bipartisan (even though Snowe can't bring a single other Republican with her), and not have to worry about procedural hassles in the Senate. But by finally winning Snowe over, the White House is risking something far more politically dangerous: an ugly fight within the Democratic Party, further erosion of Obama's standing with his base, the specter of more primary fights.

The AFL-CIO, Howard Dean and Democracy for America, bloggers, MoveOn.org, progressive media figures, and the tens of thousands of people coming to Obama rallies and cheering wildly for a public option will figure out quickly that this trigger proposal is a farce specifically written to kill any chance of a public option. The Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus already are angry at having legal immigrants thrown under the bus by Baucus, all will explode.

As someone who spends every single day working hard to build and strengthen the bridge between the progressive community and the White House, I feel like the White House is triggering a bomb to blow the bridge up from under me (pun fully intended).

This trigger will never trigger a public option, but I can tell you what it will trigger: a civil war inside the Democratic Party just when you most need unity to pass health care reform. I am convinced that there are deals that can be struck that will bring progressive and moderate Democrats, House and Senate Democrats together on a good strong health care bill that will pass. But a trigger designed to never trigger isn't even close to being one of them.

Unfortunately, I'm not terribly sure what short of a civil war would get the White House's, and the President's, attention. Read More......

Cat fight brewing between administration and insurers

It seems the insurers are lobbying Medicare beneficiaries to reject the Obama/Baucus plan. Which is interesting, since the insurance industry was already bought off by the individual mandate, which some estimates say could send another $1 trillion their way. Apparently the insurance companies don't play fair. No one could have predicted that one. Read More......

Democrats to end anti-trust exemptions for insurance industry

This is exactly what we need to see from Democrats. Let the GOP defend their friends in the insurance business and see what the public thinks about it. (h/t Cat)

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Courts and Competition Policy, Representative Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), and Energy and Commerce Committee Vice-Chair Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) today introduced the Health Insurance Industry Antitrust Enforcement Act, legislation to end the broad antitrust exemption enjoyed by health insurance companies.

Both the House and Senate today have introduced identical language to reduce insurance prices for consumers. This legislation would extend antitrust enforcement over health insurers and medical malpractice insurance issuers, which currently enjoy broad antitrust immunity under the McCarran-Ferguson Act. This immunity can serve as a shield for activities that might otherwise violate federal law.

"This legislation would specifically prohibit price fixing, bid rigging, and market allocation in the health insurance industry," said Conyers. "These pernicious practices are detrimental to competition and result in higher prices for consumers. Conduct that is unlawful throughout the country should not be allowed for insurance companies under antitrust exemption. The House Judiciary Committee held extensive hearings on the effects of the insurance industry’s antitrust exemption throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. It became clear then that policyholders and the economy in general would benefit from eliminating this exemption.

Read More......

Republicans out-tweet Democrats

While Democratic blogs have far out-powered and out-maneuvered GOP blogs over the past several years, the Democratic party has always been reticent about, and towards, its virtual echo chamber. Heck, just two days ago we learned that President Obama publicly criticized the liberal blogosphere, and equated us with the conservative blogs.

And now it seems, that reticence is carrying over into the use of Twitter.

Nearly twice as many Republicans as Democrats have accounts on the social networking platform Twitter (101 compared with 57), and the GOP dominates Twitter usage by an even wider margin, according to a report released this week by the Congressional Research Service that analyzed two weeklong periods in July and August. During those spans, congressional Republicans posted 932 messages — or tweets — compared with 255 for Democrats, CRS analysts found.

Twitter allows users to text short messages of 140 characters or fewer from their phones, BlackBerrys or computers to their profile pages and their followers’ phones and computers. And though some experts question the effectiveness of Twitter as a political communication tool and more than a few lawmakers have already experienced the downside of the unfiltered communication it offers, Republican communications staffers have actively encouraged their lawmakers to tweet away. And so they have.

We had, still have, a great thing going. We created our own FOX News. And Democrats seem all too willing to let it all slip away. Read More......

The GOP is the new Parti Quebecois

Andrew Sullivan notes that the GOP is viewed favorably only in the South. In the rest of the country, it's favorability ratings are terrible. A reader of his suggested that the GOP is the new Parti Quebecois:

He said he believed that the GOP was morphing into the American equivalent of the Parti Quebecois. It is essentially a regional party now - representing the South in the national discourse. And its rhetoric seems divorced from any desire to actually hold responsible public office. So Republicans, like the Quebecers, tend to use politics as a means for disruption or protest or threat or veto.

And that's the danger. In many European countries, if you're in the minority, it's a bit like living in the House of Representative under GOP rule - you have zero power. But in the US, it's different, especially in the Senate under Democratic rule. The minority can effectively throw bombs all day long. And when they have their own TV network and talk radio to back them up, while Democrats distance themselves from their own left-wing echo chamber (the Netroots), it's no wonder the GOP is so effective in tearing Democrats down. (It also helps that Democrats neither have the known-how, nor the guts, to fight back.)

What's truly remarkable is how badly the Democrats are doing on policy this year, considering they have these numbers backing them up. Read More......

New feature: "Speakers' Corner," a permanent open thread

A number of the readers have told me that they like "open threads," and that we should have more of them. That's why today we're implementing "Speakers' Corner" - named after London's famous Speakers' Corner" - a permanent open thread that will sit forever at the top of the site (see the link at the upper right hand corner of the page). I may, or may not, regularly delete the comments in Speakers' Corner in order to give folks a clean start.

For those who aren't familiar, an "open thread" is a blog post that usually doesn't say much of anything, but simply gives the readers a chance to join in the comments and talk about whatever they want. Some of you might say, don't people do that anyway? A lot of people worry that they're going to be accused of being "OT," or "off topic," if they don't comment about the topic of the current blog post. Speakers Corner will hopefully fix that problem by letting you join in whenever you want, and talk about whatever you want: politics or baking or boys :-) Hope you enjoy, and thanks as always. JOHN Read More......

Wednesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

The President is speaking to the General Assembly of the United Nations today. And, he's got bilateral meetings with the leaders of Japan and Russia. So, another day of foreign policy in NYC.

In DC, there's a hearing on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) before the House Education and Labor Committee. We'll be monitoring that hearing at AMERICAblog Gay.

On the Senate side, the Finance Committee is continuing its mark-up of the Baucus bill. There are some Democrats who are still trying to turn that bill into something workable. It's a heavy lift, but there are some Senators who are trying. The Wonk Room is tracking the hearing.

So, lots going on... Read More......

Unemployment benefits extended

It doesn't cover all 50 states but still an important development for many. One of the painful problems of economic recoveries in the modern world is that it takes time for jobs to return. The GOP is trying to spin it as a failure of the stimulus but as always, they're wrong.

Jobless workers in imminent danger of losing their unemployment benefits would get a 13-week reprieve under legislation approved by the House on Tuesday.

The House bill, which applies to 27 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico with unemployment rates of 8.5 percent or higher, would add to the already-record levels of benefits that have been available to the jobless as the country struggles to recover from its prolonged economic malaise.

Read More......

Did the FBI have files on Walter Cronkite?

They're not sure. Which is rather troubling in and of itself. Read More......

China to join climate change fight

For any real progress, China has to be involved in the process. Bush provided them with too many excuses for ignoring the problem with his own reluctance to participate in a serious way. China has been making considerable effort recently to invest in new technologies for energy so there's good reason to believe they are serious.

The proposals, delivered by Hu ­Jintao, the Chinese president, on the first day of the UN general assembly meeting, included the promise of a "notable" decrease in the carbon intensity of China's economy, the amount of emissions for each unit of economic output, by 2020.

"At stake in the fight against climate change are the common interests of the entire world," Hu said. "Out of a sense of responsibility to its own people and people across the world, China fully appreciates the importance and urgency of addressing climate change."

Read More......

Slow recovery, lower standard of living for UK

Just how real was the standard of living during the credit bubble years? People were living well above their means and now they're going to have to live within reality, plus pay a price for the excesses that were never there anyway. The UK is not the only country that will be facing such a problem. The Independent:

While the employers' organisation seems confident that the UK has emerged, technically, from recession in the past few months, it stressed that 2010 would be a "tough" year economically, with falling living standards and growth that would actually fall back slightly in the new year, fuelling fears that the UK could experience the much-feared "double dip" or "W-shaped" recession.

"We do worry that it is going to be weak," said the CBI's chief economist, Ian McCafferty. "As the stimulus is withdrawn it leaves the economy at risk of a further slowdown."

Next year is going to be interesting to watch for the world economy. Avoiding the double dip is not going to be easy for any country. Read More......

Hezbollah's Madoff

It may not have been $65 billion like Madoff, but southern Lebanon also is hardly Manhattan in terms of how far the dollar stretches. Reuters:

Those who know wealthy Lebanese Shi'ite financier Salah Ezz el-Din say he is a deeply pious, humble man whose close links to Hezbollah made his credentials impeccable as he allegedly embezzled their savings.

Many Shi'ite Lebanese investors find it hard to believe the philanthropist could have defrauded them to the tune of at least $500 million -- small change compared with the $65 billion in the U.S. fraudster Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme, but made more painful by the connection with Hezbollah, which its followers regard as incorruptible.

Read More......

Axles of Evil

It seems terrorists are quite dumb when it comes to their pick-up trucks:

We're lucky that criminals are such boneheads.

But there's something weird about the relationship terrorists have with rental trucks.

Some of the thugs seem to have a mental timeout when it comes to dealing with their chosen vehicles of mass destruction....

Then there was the first World Trade Center bombing, in 1993.

The feds cracked the case after one of the conspirators actually went back to pester the truck rental agency for a refund after the van they used was destroyed in the attack.

Read More......

Sheila Bair is on the right track

I'm liking her more and more each day. On the subject of the FDIC avoiding Geithner's Treasury and going instead to the banks for a loan to refill the coffers, she had some rather interesting remarks. NY Times:

Under the law, the F.D.I.C. would not need permission from the Treasury to tap into a credit line of up to $100 billion. But such a step is said to be unpalatable to Sheila C. Bair, the agency chairwoman whose relations with the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, have been strained.

“Sheila Bair would take bamboo shoots under her nails before going to Tim Geithner and the Treasury for help,” said Camden R. Fine, president of the Independent Community Bankers. “She’d do just about anything before going there.”

So I guess I'm not the only person who is not enthralled with Geithner. The only problem is that if he went, Obama would probably move Larry Summers into that role. Read More......