By Lauren Reichelt. Crossposted from Tikkun Daily.
The delightfully wacky HCR (Health Care Reform) circus caravan rolls on.
As of March 11, 41 Senators had either signed or issued statements of support for a letter to Harry Reid initiated by Alan Grayson and the PCCC urging passage of the Public Option through reconciliation. For the first time, the Public Option is looking like a very real possibility.
Only three Dems have come out absolutely opposed (not including Liebermenace who, perhaps as a ploy to reinvigorate his flagging attentometrics, is playing coy). The Dems can lose up to six fence-nesters and still pass the Public Option. “And how,” you might be tempted to ask, “has Alan (The-GOP-healthcare-plan-is-die-soon) Grayson, an outspoken House Freshman, managed to get 41 Senators to support his letter despite White House efforts to back-burner the entire endeavor?”
Simple! The PCCC conducted a series of statewide polls demonstrating tremendous support for “socialized Medicine” among Democratic and Indie voters!
Gotta luv that guy! Maybe Rahm should try to twist his arm in the shower. Or at least poke him in the chest.
The most amusing healthcare antics this week were performed by the trained Navy Seals in the House. Arf! Arf! Arf!
First, Eric Massa (D-NY) suddenly resigned his House seat claiming he’d been forced out by Obama for opposing HCR in favor of Single Payer. Glenn Beck scheduled an hour long live interview with Massa, apparently believing the ex-Rep was going to spill some beans about being intimidated in a shower stall by a naked Rahm Emanuel. Instead, we were treated to 60 minutes of Massa confessing he’d fondled his male staffers and tickled them until they turned blue. (So that’s how we won our House majority!) Beck, who thought he’d gotten the goods on Emanuel, looked uncharacteristically blue himself.
Massa then produced a photo, presumably of a bunch of naked Navy personnel tickling one another to celebrate the crossing of the equator. Nobody really knows what they were doing since Beck did not share the photo with his adoring public, although Massa helpfullly informed us it looked like a “Caligula orgy.”
Just in case you have actually managed to avoid this particular episode of beckerpecking, the entire hour is available through the Washington Post. I especially love Beck’s opening line, where he picks up a phone, winks, and (in his sexiest voice, eerily reminiscent of the racist ads the GOP ran against Ford in Tennessee), invites Rahm to call him.
Just out of curiosity, I checked with my husband, an ex-Navy officer, to see if he tickled his naked subordinates until they couldn’t breathe every time they crossed the equator. He said he had not but he knew a guy who crushed beer cans on his forehead.
Massa’s performance seems to have the Navy scrambling to wipe the egg off its face. Stories of his starboard gropings are surfacing like periscopes all over the web.
Next, a brawl broke out between Congressman Kucinich and blogger extraordinaire, Markos Moulitsas. Kucinich announced he would vote against HCR even if it meant sending the bill down in flames, and Moulitsas appeared on Countdown calling him names. A flame war broke out between bloggers at Markos’ site, the Daily Kos. (I personally agree with Seneca Doane’s assessment: by staking out his ground Kucinich is now in a position to bargain for inclusion of either the Public Option or a Medicare expansion in the HCR sidecar fixer-upper bill. But what do I know? I’m a perennial optimist.
The various forces of health care darkness threatened by dawning reform have joined together for a final bury-their-coffins-in-Transylvania ad campaign. AHIP (America’s Health Insurance Plans) announced an aggressive million-dollar-plus cable TV ad campaign at a recent press conference. Who knows what the aging Harry and Louise will be telling us now, assuming they are not homeless because they’ve lost their insurance and have no coverage for long term care.
Finally, a breath of fresh air: Rush Limbaugh promised progressives that if HCR passes and is eventually implemented, he will emigrate to Costa Rica. Perhaps his experience with Hawaii’s government-run health care system, which he deemed “the best in the world,” convinced him that socialized medicine is the way to go. Costa Rica, which enjoys national health care, currently ranks 36, just above #37, the United States.
In non-health care news, Democrats suddenly appear to be stampeding toward non-capitulation on multiple fronts. Angered by Dodd’s (D-CT) willingness to defang the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency in the name of bipartisanship, making it a division of the Federal Corporate Reserve, Barney Frank has proposed that conference committee negotiations be televised on C-SPAN. Harry Reid ripped into “those characters” on the Supreme Court for their Citizens United v. FEC decision and then announced his newfound but passionate support for filibuster reform.
In Washington, huevos are growing on trees while the chickens roost at home.
This post first appeared on Food Politics.
Corporations go to a lot of trouble to neutralize potential critics. Recent examples: two co-optations (McDonald’s alliance with Weight Watchers and PepsiCo’s with the Yale School of Medicine) and one aggression (Disney’s forced expulsion of the Center for Commercial-Free Childhood from Harvard).
Co-optation is the winning over or neutralization of opponents by bringing them into the fold. It works well.
Let’s start with the new partnership between Weight Watchers and McDonald’s. OK. This is happening in New Zealand, not here, but it is still a good example. McDonald’s New Zealand makes three meals that meet criteria for 6 Weight Watchers’ points. Will Weight Watchers New Zealand suggest that its members cut down on fast food? Not likely.
Next, Yale. Yale Medical School proudly announces that PepsiCo has agreed to fund a new fellowship. This fellowship, which creates a new position in the MD-PhD program, is for doctoral work in nutrition science.
Dr. Robert Alpern, dean and the Ensign Professor at Yale School of Medicine, says of this gift:
PepsiCo’s commitment to improving health through proper nutrition is of great importance to the well-being of people in this country and throughout the world. We are delighted that they are expanding their research in this area and that they have chosen Yale as a partner for this endeavor.
You can’t satirize something like this, but why am I guessing that recipients of this fellowship are unlikely to study the effects of food marketing on obesity or the effects of fructose on metabolism or to advise their overweight patients to cut down on soft drinks? (Thanks to Michele Simon who commented on it on her newly restored blog, Sunday, March 7).
And then there is yesterday’s ugly story in the New York Times about Disney’s retaliation against the Center for Commercial-Free Childhood which had successfully gotten the company to back off on its advertising for Baby Einstein videos. By all reports, Disney pressured the Harvard unit that housed the Center to evict the Center under truly shameful circumstances.
The moral: if you want to do something to prevent childhood and adult obesity, you are working against the economic interests of corporations that profit from kids eating too much food or watching too much television. And you must take great care to hold on to your independence.
The first of the President’s three meetings today on immigration is in the books, and this one was a little unexpected. This afternoon at the White House, a group of pro-reform immigrant advocates were slated to meet with senior White House staff regarding the need for immigration reform, but the President showed up to chair the meeting himself.
The President is scheduled to meet with Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) about the bipartisan immigration bill they have been crafting and are expected to introduce shortly. President Obama also has a meeting with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus on his schedule this evening to discuss immigration and health care.
The advocates were expecting perhaps a courtesy drop-by from the President and were prepared to push back on any niceties or the President’s famous charm. Earlier in the week, religious, union, ethnic, and immigrant advocates got the White House’s attention with a sharply worded press conference at the National Press Club highlighting how the lack of immigration reform – and the continued enforcement of the old, bad system – is devastating immigrant communities and hurting the economy.
The advocates – many of whom are helping to organizing the March For America on the National Mall on March 21 – want the President’s personal commitment to push hard for immigration reform. By this they mean more than just talk. They want to see him rolling up his sleeves and expending political capital to sell it to Democrats, Republicans, and the American people.
Ali Noorani, Executive Director of the National Immigration Forum and one of the key leaders of the Reform Immigration for America campaign that is sponsoring the March For America, issued a statement after the meeting:
We had a lively and straightforward meeting with the President and his staff. We made clear that we expect him to keep his promise to overhaul our broken immigration system. We need a system that is fair, just, humane, and that serves our nation’s interests.
The President indicated that his administration is committed to driving a bill forward in the spring of 2010. Based on our conversation, we are optimistic and expecting aggressive and urgent action from the White House on comprehensive immigration reform before March 21st.
As one person who was in today’s meeting characterized it, it was a good, lengthy, and substantive exchange. The President made some opening remarks but did not deliver a speech. Rather he engaged in a dialogue.
More than 387,000 people were deported from the United States in 2009, the advocates said, and if anything, immigration enforcement has gotten worse for immigrant communities since President Bush left office. The Obama administration has tried to reorder priorities so that enforcement resources are targeted towards deporting violent criminals and others who pose a threat to society — not just average workers and family members who are in the country illegally.
Regardless of the administration’s intentions, the reality is that the fear of deportation persists and the uncertainty that that creates in families is palpable, advocates said.
Clarissa Martinez de Castro, Director of Immigration and National Campaigns for the Latino civil rights group NCLR, said she is waiting to see what happens in the President’s later meetings with the Senators and Representatives and what the President does in the coming days, before pronouncing the meeting a success or failure.
“We want the President to be specific, we want him to be passionate, and we want him to be persistent in his pursuit of reform this year. Our communities are suffering, the American people want progress, and the economy needs all the help it can get and immigration reform is part of that,” she said.
In a statement before the meeting, Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America’s Voice, a pro-reform advocacy group, said,
Our broken immigration system is not serving the interests of Americans, yet we have within our grasp the ability to solve this problem in a way that reduces illegal immigration dramatically, while creating millions of new taxpayers that will generate billions in new revenue.
If the President hopes to make a public commitment to immigration reform before the March for America on March 21, he doesn’t have much time. He is leaving the country next week for Indonesia and Australia.
This post was originally published on Open Left.
In just two days, Alan Grayson has piled up 50 co-sponsors to his Medicare buy-in bill, which is designed as a stand-alone bill rather than as an amendment to the health reform bill. Here is the complete list of 50 co-sponsors:
Last week, Glenn Beck introduced his listeners to a previously overlooked menace: nazi, communist Christians. You know, the ones who’ve forsaken all the worthwhile parts of religion, like sexual shaming, violence and prejudice, and embraced its most pernicious aspect: helping the needy.
“I beg you, look for the words ’social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church website. If you find it, run as fast as you can! ” said Beck on his radio show.
My man Bernie Sanders, the “Socialist” from Vermont, has committed himself to doing what no other senator on the Hill will do.
Sanders confirmed today that he will introduce a public option amendment during the health care bill reconciliation debate. READ FULL POST
Originally posted on RaceWire
By Jamilah King
As the immigration reform debate heats up on Capitol Hill, right wing opponents are uping the ante with sensationalist and factually inaccurate claims. The latest? Immigration increases the country’s ecological footprint.
This latest claim came as part of a new report released by Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR), an alleged front group for uber conservative Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR):
Mass immigration is increasing America’s Ecological Footprint (EF), pushing our country deeper into ecological deficit. Approaching 310 million, U.S. population currently exceeds the carrying capacity of our land and resource base. Nevertheless, high immigration levels exacerbate these trends by pushing our population to ever more precarious heights, preventing U.S. population stabilization, forcing annual growth rates to more than three million net new residents, and driving our numbers to a projected 440 million by 2050.
They’re wrong, of course. As Walter Ewing points out, there’s no one-to-one relationship between population size and pollution. In fact, newly arrived immigrants are probably among the most ecologically friendly folks around. They’re more likely to use public transportation and less likely to waste food.
But consider this the latest round in green xenophobia.
By Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, CEO, Green For All
Originally published on TheRoot.com
Today the Senate Energy Committee will begin debating a weatherization bill known as Home Star that aims to make American homes more energy efficient, while creating thousands of American jobs in the process. Home Star has the potential to significantly reduce residential energy consumption, saving consumers almost $10 billion over the next ten years, while cutting greenhouse gas emissions by an amount equivalent to the removal of more than 600,000 cars from American highways.
Even more importantly given the state of our economy, the legislation is projected to create 168,000 local jobs in communities all across the country. That, more than anything else, is what Americans urgent want, particularly the people who have been hardest hit by the tough economic times – poor people and people of color.
READ FULL POST
We’ve got a lot of problems when it comes to our food system, but one of them was clearly articulated with a simple graphic. How do food subsidies affect what we’re eating? Check this out:.
This graphic was recently published by the Consumerist, with the few words, “This is why you’re fat.”
The New York Times had a little bit more to say about the graphic, which by the way was put together by Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. The Times says:
Thanks to lobbying, Congress chooses to subsidize foods that we’re supposed to eat less of.
Of course, there are surely other reasons why burgers are cheaper than salads. These might include production costs, since harvesting apples is probably more naturally seasonal than slaughtering cows (even though both are in demand year-round). Transportation and storage costs might also play a role, as it’s probably easier to keep ground beef fresh and edible for extended periods of time, by freezing it, than cucumbers.
Interesting analysis, but it’s missing the heart of the matter, which PCRM lays out on their own website — the legislation which governs all these subsidies is the controversial farm bill. “The bill provides billions of dollars in subsidies, much of which goes to huge agribusinesses producing feed crops, such as corn and soy, which are then fed to animals,” PCRM writes. “By funding these crops, the government supports the production of meat and dairy products–the same products that contribute to our growing rates of obesity and chronic disease. Fruit and vegetable farmers, on the other hand, receive less than 1 percent of government subsidies.”
What would our society look like if fruit and vegetable products received more of the cut? I’m reminded of the scene from the Oscar-nominated film Food Inc., where a lower-income family grapples with the issue of spending what little money they have on fast food burgers because it is cheaper and more filling than buying fresh vegetables but knowing that they’ll end up likely spending even more down the line in health costs. That’s a decision that no family should have to make.
Clearly our prices for food are skewed. Interestingly, the Times has another graphic about how food prices have changed over the last 30 years, and shockingly it’s fresh fruits and veggies that seem to be getting much more expensive, while most everything else seems to be going down or holding relatively steady.
David Leonhardt, who put together the chart on food pricing says most unhealthy foods have gotten cheaper. Since 1978, soda has gotten 33 percent cheaper but fruits and veggies are over 40 percent more expensive. As an example he says:
The price of oranges, to take one extreme example (not shown in the chart), has more than doubled, relative to everything else. So if in 1978, a bag of oranges cost the same as one big bottle of soda, today that bag costs the same as three big bottles of soda.
And how have these pricing difference played out in terms of human health? Well, obesity may be one place. Leonhardt writes:
In my column this morning, I mention that the average 18-year-old today is 15 pounds heavier than the average 18 year-old in the late 1970s. Adults have put on even more weight during that period. The average woman in her 60s is 20 pounds heavier than the average 60-something woman in the late 1970s. The average man in his 60s is 25 pounds heavier. When you look at the chart, you start to understand why.
Of course there are many factors to obesity, but surely tipping the scales in favor of some of the less healthy ones, doesn’t help. This same scenario is playing out in our schools across the country, too. In a recent story Jill Richardson did for AlterNet about the dismal state of our school lunch program, she writes that we’re basically giving kids the very things we say they shouldn’t be eating:
USDA commodities provided for school lunches turn the USDA’s own food pyramid on its head. Whereas the food pyramid recommends a diet rich in whole grains, fruits and vegetables, the USDA usually provides schools with meat and dairy products often high in saturated fat. Only 13 percent of commodities provided are fruits and vegetables (including fruit juice and legumes) — and about half of the vegetables provided are potatoes.
We’re already facing an diabetes epidemic where one in three people born after 1980 will get early-onset diabetes and one in two from minority communities. We need changes to our food system, big time, and right away. One of the best places to start is by flipping this food pyramid of subsidies on its head.
This post was originally published on the Washington Monthly.
Of all the issues for Republicans to seize on, ethics in Congress may be the most tone-deaf of them all.
In the wake of a handful of Democratic scandals, Republicans are piling on, hoping to associate Democrats with the same stink that brought down the Republican majority: corruption. The GOP has tarred Democrats who accepted campaign money from Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY), and continue to attack the Democratic leadership for what they call hypocrisy on ethics and transparency.
