Republican Chain E-Mails: “ Obama Scares Me “

Anyone else tired of conservative chain e-mails yet?

by Shinobi Mystic  on Sat Mar 31, 2012

We all get them.  Those crappy, conservative chain emails that are paranoid rants full of healthy amounts of bullshit that help spread the conservative, bubble mentality.  I have, unfortunately, quite a number of friends and family members who feel compelled to send these to me at every opportunity and, for the most part, I just ignore and delete them (after reading them and letting my blood boil to unhealthy levels).  However, I recently received one from my mother (who feels compelled to send these to me every chance she gets in an effort to save me from my liberal brainwashing) and I could not resist responding to its amazingly ignorant points.  Stay with me below the orange mystical symbol for my point-by-point rebuttal.

If you haven't seen it yet, this email claims to be a letter by Lou Pritchett, the CEO of Proctor and Gamble that is basically a fear-driven rant about President Obama.  The subject line in the email marked it as "A chilling letter."  I snoped it (as I always do) and apparently it's correctly attributed.  He wrote this letter that was intended to be published as an op-ed piece in the New York Times, but, apparently, they refused to publish it. You can read the letter here.  So now it's been condemned to conservative-chain-email hell and will, no doubt, haunt us for years to come.  The following is my point-by-point rebuttal that I sent as a response to my mother's email.  Pritchett's email is in blockquotes with my responses after.

Dear President Obama:

You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike
Any of the others, you truly scare me.

He's scared of the president?  I'm not sure why.  President Obama has not passed any legislation that should scare anyone in any way.  And if he has, please name one.

You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you.

What's there to know?  It's not like he's lived some secret covert life.  This smells very much like he's implying the whole birth certificate issue which is a completely crackpot conspiracy theory that has been debunked numerous times by anyone with access to the internet and a half an hour of time on their hands.  How much has anyone known about any President?  I worked as a background investigator and know what's involved in conducting a national security background investigation.  Our presidents are subjected to the most stringent form of this investigation, so to implicate the president in any kind of coverup of his background is to also implicate the investigators and agencies who did all the hard work of investigating his background, which includes, by the way, confirming where they were born and whether they are a citizen or not.  Is the FBI, Dept. of Homeland Security, and OPM all involved in a vast conspiracy
of covering up the fact that the president is not qualified to hold that office?  Again, one has to hold to crackpot conspiracy theories to believe any such nonsense.

You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no
Visible signs of support.

There is absolutely nothing in Obama's background that shows that he has ever lived above his means.  It's not like he has 2-3 mansions in various places and lived some kind of extravagant lifestyle.  Both he and Michelle worked at the University of Chicago from 1992 to 2004 (he as a law professor and she as an associate dean), which means they would have had a combined income that would have placed them in an upper middle income bracket.  There is nothing unusual about the lifestyle that they lived.  Also, thousands of students graduate from Harvard every year from all sorts of backgrounds and presumably got their education the same way as President Obama, through a mix of grants, scholarships, and student loans.

You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth Growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

So apparently only Americans who followed a lifestyle/career track like Pritchett deserve to be called "true" Americans.  Thousands of Americans live overseas in a variety of cultures for a variety of reasons, many in the formative years of their life (children of military servicemembers, for example).  The idea that this somehow makes them less of an American is laughable to everyone except those who have never made any effort to interact with any other culture than their own.

You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.

Nor did Adams, nor Jefferson, nor Madison, nor Lincoln, nor Reagan.   George W. Bush ran an oil company in Odessa, Texas and his administration brought on the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression. More smokescreen that means absolutely nothing.

You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus Don't understand it at its core.

Again, nor did Adams, nor Jefferson, nor Madison (who led our country to victory in the War of 1812), nor Lincoln (who led the Union to victory in the Civil War), nor FDR (who led us to our victory in WWII).  Being in the military has never been a qualification for the office of the President, nor should it be.  Non-military presidents have been some of the country's strongest leaders and there is no correlation between military service and good presidents.   U.S. Grant, Jimmy Carter, and George Bush were all military veterans and their presidencies are considered by most historians as the worst in our country's history.  Besides that, Obama's leadership over the military has been exceptional.  Under his command, the military has demolished the Somalian pirate threat, killed Osama bin Laden, brought the Iraq War to an end, and killed numerous other high leaders in Al-Qaeda.  He has not shown any incompetency in leading our military thus far.

You scare me because you lack humility and 'class', always blaming others.

What evidence does he offer for this?  When has Obama ever blamed others for anything?  Everything he has ever gained in his life, he achieved by working hard to get it.  He takes responsibility for his actions as President.

You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned Yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to Publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.

People who point out problems in America's foreign policy are not "radicals."  They just don't wish to see us continue to perpetuate problems that can negatively affect our country.  Conservatives seem to think that America has never done anything wrong.  That's a dangerous attitude that can lead our country to destruction if we're not willing
to admit when we're on a path that can damage our country or our country's reputation among the world.

You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the 'blame America ' Crowd and deliver this message abroad.

See the previous point.  Again, conservatives don't seem to have the capability to see America's shortcomings, something which is necessary if we want to fix those shortcomings and make ourselves into a better nation.

You scare me because you want to change America to a European style Country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.

And most of Europe's socialized countries (England, Germany, France, Finland, Belgium, etc.)  run rings around us in quality of life statistics.  Higher average life expectancies,
lower infant mortality rates, lower drug use rates, lower crime rates, higher literacy and education rates, lower illegitimate birth rates, higher rates of citizens covered by healthcare, lower child poverty rates, lower overall poverty rates, (I could go on and on, but you get the picture).

You scare me because you want to replace our health care system With a government controlled one.

See the previous point.  Universal healthcare rates in both Canada and Europe raise overall quality of life statistics dramatically.  As opposed to our privatized healthcare system (at least before the Healthcare law) where we had an average of 122 citizens dying a day due to lack of healthcare coverage.  Not something to be proud of.

You scare me because you prefer 'wind mills' to responsibly
Capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.

Oil production in the U.S. under Obama is higher than it has been in almost 10 years.  Our oil production rates and oil exports to other countries have increased past the levels of the Bush administration.  Oil drilling rigs have quadrupled in number under Obama's presidency.  But even beyond that, why is it so bad that Obama is attempting to find newer alternative sources of energy?  Oil is not going to last forever, and if we're able to obtain other methods of producing energy it'll only help us in the long run.  However, it might hurt the oil companies who provide an awful lot of money to Republican campaigns, so obviously, Republicans aren't real happy with that.

You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose That lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of Living in the world.

This is complete horse puckey.  Statistically, our standard of living ranks way down on the scale compared to other countries in the world, as I've already shown in the above quality of life statistics.  When all of those statistics are compiled together, we rank on the scale at #13.  The countries that rank in the 12 slots above us are all of those socialist European countries that Pritchett doesn't want to be like.  If capitalist, trickle-down economics worked, then our country should have been the most prosperous that it's ever been under George W. Bush, who cut tax rates on the wealthy and deregulated corporations.  Instead, what happened is that in our country, under Bush, job growth fell, and the average wage for middle income workers dropped almost 5%, leaving our economy teetering on the brink.  There hasn't been a clearer rebuttal of conservative economics than Bush's presidency.  All of those facts are what led me to quit conservatism and the Republican party.

You scare me because you have begun to use 'extortion' tactics Against certain banks and corporations.

Why?  Because he wanted to make them responsible for all the damage they caused to our country and its economy.  I guess conservatives don't want banks or corporations to ever have to suffer any consequences for the problems they caused.  Considering that this is coming from the CEO of a major corporation, I would take it with a very large grain of salt.

You scare me because your own political party shrinks from Challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.

No.  They just don't feel the need to listen to the party who presided over the worst economic disaster in 70 years.

You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider Opposing points of view from intelligent people.

He appoints many intelligent people to the committees he creates to draft new legislation.  I'm assuming he's referring here to conservatives.  If that's the case then see the previous point.

You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both
Omnipotent and omniscient.

Based on what?  Obama has never implied this about himself in any way.

You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything You do.

The same media who did nothing to challenge Bush's baloney on why we should go to war with Iraq, a country that was not involved in 9/11 and did nothing to threaten us in any way?  If that's the case, then they're equal opportunity protectors of both Republican and Democrat administrations.  This is more of an indictment of our media's ability to investigate factual information.  As I've said before, all the cable news channels (CNN, MSNBC, FoxNews) are all crap, and if that's where you get all of your information then you are woefully uninformed about what's going on both in our country and the world.

You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaugh's, Hannitys, O'Reillys and Becks who offer opposing, Conservative points of view.

No, they offer BS opinions that have no basis in any statistical or fact-based evidence.  And what legislation has Obama passed that has silenced these people in any way?

You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.

Examples, please?   I'd like to know one way in which Obama has restricted any of his liberties or freedoms as an American citizen.

Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will Probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.

Yeah, because he might be shipped off on the trains to one of the many concentration camps that Obama has built and gassed in one of the many gas chambers that Obama is readying for his mass genocide on the American people.  Really, I don't understand how you can take anything like this seriously.  I would ask again, in what way has Obama curtailed any of Pritchett's freedoms or liberties.   There is nothing in this letter that has any merit in the world of facts and statistics.  It's a completely emotional, fear-based rant that is designed to get people to vote Republican out of pure fear.  And, of course, if we get another Republican administration, then he will get all of his corporate tax cuts and loopholes that will provide him with a much fatter income, so he's definitely got a dog in this hunt.   Just like the rest of the Republicans, he offers nothing in response to what he claims is horrendous and "scary" leadership by President Obama.  Republicans have no plan, no vision, no ideas, so all they have left to play is pure, irrational-based fear to get people to vote for them.  This letter is indeed "chilling" if only for the fact that it is not rooted in reality in any way.  If this letter is the best that Republicans have to offer in response to Obama, then I have no doubts at all that Obama will handily win a second term as president.

8:12 AM PT: Wow!  My first diary to make the rec list.  Thanks everyone!

1:17 PM PT: Correction Update:  As has been pointed out already in several of the comments, Lou Pritchett was not the CEO of Proctor and Gamble, although that's what the chain email asserted.  I should have been more diligent in checking that.  He actually worked as the Vice President there and is currently retired.

Technorati Tags: Conservatives,Republicans,E-Mails,Barack Obama,Current Events,Politics

BREAKING: Romney Names Running Mate

 From misterajc     on Sat Mar 31, 2012     Original

The Romney campaign today announced a surprise pick for Vice President – Exxon Mobil Corporation. “This is a game changing decision, that will really energize the true Republican base: Koch Industries, Haliburton, Walmart, Bechtel, Fox and Shell BP,” said a Romney spokesman. “It's also a breakthrough for minority rights, as it's the first time a Corporate American had appeared on the ballot. With subsidiaries in fifty eight countries and puppet regimes in six, Exxon Mobil brings to the ticket foreign policy experience focused on the only countries that matter – the ones with oil.”

When questioned by reporters about the vetting process, the spokesman said that it had been completed in a record forty eight hours by Exxon Mobil staff. Asked about the possible conflict of interest, the spokesman revealed that Exxon had been vetted by the same Exxon public servants who wrote the Cheney administration's energy policy, so they were ideally qualified for vetting a Vice Presidential candidate.

Exxon Mobil is expected to self finance the campaign. “We would have paid for it anyway,” said their CEO, “But now we get a place on the ticket, too. I know there are some racists out there who don't think that Corporate Americans are real Americans, or even real people, but this election will prove them wrong.”

A spokesman for the Obama campaign said they were not commenting on the constitutionality of this announcement until they had seen Exxon Mobil's birth certificate.

Technorati Tags: Mitt Romney,Barack Obama,ExxonMobile Corporation,2012 Elections,Vice President,Big Oil,Current Events,Snark,Humor

 

Obama A “ Government N—ga “ Says Santorum

Rick Santorum: Racist At Large

   Remember that this is indicative of the Republican Party in general.

Technorati Tags: Rick Santorum,Republican Party,Racist Party,Barack Obama,Politics,Current Events

Friday Funnies: WTF?

David Letterman: “Over the weekend they gave Dick Cheney a heart transplant. Finally all of those midnight trips to the graveyard with the hunchbacked assistant have paid off.”

“Dick Cheney was talking to a reporter right after the surgery and he said he wants to live long enough to make sure nobody else gets healthcare.”

Conan O'Brien: “Newt Gingrich's campaign is charging people $50 to pose for a picture with Newt. And for $100 you can get one without Newt.”

Technorati Tags: Republicans,Mitt Romney,Newt Gingrich,Rick Santorum,Late Night Talk,Current Events

Obama Outspending Republican Rivals

    It is reported that President Obama’s campaign has spent $135 million during the month of February which is about $3 million more than was spent by Romney, Santorum, and the remainder of the Republican contenders combined. That’s a lot of cash for just one month, folks.

    Obama’s team spent much of that cash for campaign offices, which are now placed in every state, while Romney and the rest of the Republican clown club has had to spent their individual piles of cash on advertisements, travel, rallies, and so forth.

   As is natural for the Republican Party, they take issue with a report that Obama has some 500 paid staff with quite a few of them in Chicago, that being Obama’s campaign headquarters.

With offices in nearly every state, the campaign also faces rising overhead. Through the first two months of the year, Obama spent approximately $1.1 million on computer equipment, $435,000 in rent and utilities, $305,000 on telephones, and $19,000 on office supplies, federal filings show.

"We're building the largest grass-roots campaign in history," campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said. "You can see it here, but it's really happening in the states."

The core of Obama's operation is packed into the sixth floor of Chicago's Prudential building, where 300 staffers sit side by side at long rows of tables, working from laptops and cellphones. Colorful college pennants hang from the ceiling and often represent key swing states: the University of North Carolina, Ohio State and the University of Michigan. Need a designer T-shirt or bumper sticker? A room managed by two staffers houses a swelling collection of campaign memorabilia for sale.

In one corner, more than a dozen workers field questions from journalists scattered across the country. Elsewhere, others coordinate media appearances for Obama's high-profile supporters. Other staffers focus on fundraising, voter identification, social media and campaign-finance reporting.

   It must be nice to throw around millions of dollars for a $400,000 per year job. All of those perks that you and I do not hear about after a president leaves office must be worth the expense or no one in their right mind would want the job.

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama,President,2012 Elections,Elections,Republicans,Campaign Finance,Current Events

 

Paul Ryan’s Medicare Plan…

   …. Is not getting the support that Ryan and the rest of the Republican Party had hoping for.  Maybe the American citizens have wised up a little more since Ryan and the GOP tried this same plan back in 2010?

   A new United Technologies/National Journal poll:

Asked what Medicare should look like in the future, just 26 percent said it “should be changed to a system where the government provides seniors with a fixed sum of money they could use either to purchase private health insurance or to pay the cost of remaining in the current Medicare program.” Fully 64 percent said “Medicare should continue as it is today, with the government … paying doctors and hospitals directly for the services they provide to seniors.”

    Better luck next time, Mr. Ed Ryan.

Technorati Tags: Medicare,Paul Ryan,Republicans,U.S. Budget,Politics,Current Events

Anti-Injunction Act - A Simple Explanation Of The Issues Argued Today With Oral Argument Update

Originally posted to September 17, 1787 on Mon Mar 26, 2012      By  Gary Norton

The front page has a very long and detailed article about the Anti-Injunction Act issues being discussed in the Supreme Court today. Since it may be a little dense for many people here is a simpler and shorter explanation of the issues.

For over one hundred and fifty years there has been a law that says a person cannot challenge a tax law until the tax has actually been assessed and they pay the tax or challenge an IRS collection action. That law is the Anti-Injunction Act. If the law applies to a suit then, almost uniformly, courts have ruled that they cannot even hear the case. It must be thrown out because the court lacks jurisdiction.

Today the Court is hearing arguments on whether the Anti-Injunction Act applies to the suits challenging the Affordable Care Act.

The two main issues are whether the ACA provision that requires people to pay a penalty if they don't have insurance constitutes a tax, and whether a suit challenging the mandate is really a suit challenging that tax.

(There are some minor issues which are excluded here but explained in the linked article.)

One case challenging the ACA was dismissed on this ground but it is not before the court today. In another suit that is before the Court today, there is a dissenting opinion by a Judge Kavanagh in which he says that the case should be dismissed because of the Anti-Injunction Act.

The hearing today on the Anti-Injunction Act is a fairly rare event. The government is not arguing for it and of course the plaintiffs don't think it applies. However the Supreme Court itself decided that it wanted to hear arguments on the issue. To get the issue presented the Court appointed an outside lawyer to argue the Anti-Injunction Act issue before the court.

What is the significance of this issue? If the court finds that the penalty is a tax, and that the challenge to the mandate is really a challenge to that tax, then the Court will dismiss these ACA challenges on the Anti-Injunction Act grounds.

Some people think that such a ruling would merely be punting the issue down the road. I don't share that view for the following reasons. Substantively, if the penalty is a tax then it will almost certainly be upheld in any later suit. Keep in mind that if it is a tax it can only be challenged based on Congress' taxing authority, not the Commerce Clause or the other things being used to challenge the law now. Congress' taxing authority is very broad and I don't think there has been a case since the thirties that has overturned a tax.

Secondly, if it is a tax, no suits can be filed until 2015. It would be until 2017 before they make it to the Supreme Court. By then the entire landscape will have changed. Obama will not be President. Since the idea of a mandate was invented by Republicans one doesn't have to be cynical to conclude that the challenges to the ACA are merely challenges to Obama. Once the law is implemented it will be clear to all that the  hysteria about "socialized medicine" is nonsense.

Additionally, the ACA has budgetary savings provisions that even the Republicans like. Those savings and the additional revenues will be built into future budgets. All the hue and cry will be tamped down in light of that reality.

Lastly, the state exchanges will be facts on the ground, The insurance companies will have adjusted and will be participants. People will see all the benefits in their own lives. There will be little appetite to go back to 2009.

Do not be surprised if this case is dismissed on AIA grounds. For Justices like Scalia who have written very expansive opinions on the Commerce clause it would be a really convenient way to avoid eating his past words, which he would have to if he ruled against the ACA, or disappointing his base if he ruled in favor of the ACA.

Update Just finished reading the transcript of the oral argument. It is wise to never draw any conclusions from an oral argument. Having said that the one thing that came across pretty clear is that Scalia does not think the AIA applies. The Justices who said things that could lead to the opposite conclusion were Breyer, Kagan and Sotomayor though their questions seemed more probative than signaling.

Of the two core issues the main problem the Justices were having was with calling the penalty a tax for purposes of the AIA. On the second question, whether the mandate is tied to the penalty/tax, even Roberts said he did not see how they could be separated.

One thing that surprised me was how long they discussed one aspect of the AIA that I didn't get into: whether it deprives a court of jurisdiction. That question seemed pretty well settled for the past fifty years but they wanted to talk about it.

Technorati Tags: ACA,Affordable Care Act,Supreme Court,Republicans,Anti-Injunction Act,Barack Obama,Current Events,Politics

American Government: “ Backroom Power Politics “

Backroom Power Politics
By Marek Dutschke         24 March 2012
The American political system is designed so that white, well-to-do landowners call the shots.
Translated By Ron Argentati

Edited by Casey J. Skeens

Germany - Handelsblatt - Original Article (German)
Corruption runs rampant through U.S. state governments. At the federal level, at least insider trading by representatives is now set to be banned. A long overdue step.
The American political system is designed so that white, well-to-do landowners call the shots. George Washington made his fortune through land speculation and by disenfranchising the native population. The same is true of his first electoral victory in 1759, as a representative to the colonial parliament of Virginia (House of Burgesses). Because of his profitable real estate transactions, he was wealthy enough to devote all his time to politics. In order to ensure he got enough votes, Washington would treat eligible voters to a proper night on the town before he deposited them, still drunk, at the polling place. In a way, that fusion of politics and business interests survives even to this day.
A study by the Center for Public Integrity released last Monday had little good to say about state politics in America. Most state governments are rife with corruption: budgetary decisions are hidden from public view, rules are not enforced, money from lobbyists goes unreported and the influence of private business is given a prominent place in governmental matters.
Between 2007 and 2008 in the state of Georgia, more than 600 gifts were given to government officials by businesses seeking to do business with the state. Despite the fact that such bribery is strictly against existing laws, no one was punished for giving or accepting the gifts. In Maine, a state senator simply “forgot” to mention that in addition to his government job he was also CEO of a corporation that had been given $98 million in contracts by the state.
In North Carolina, a member of the state legislature introduced a law that would make it easier to put up gigantic advertising billboards. It was soon discovered that the member happened to also own a billboard company. Despite the matter being investigated by an ethics commission, no hint of any conflict of interest was uncovered since competing billboard companies would also be given the opportunity to bid on those contracts as well. Representatives in Montana are regularly treated to dinner by lobbyists and are exempt from reporting such largesse as long as the restaurant tab stays below $2,400. The list of offenses goes on and on.
In the Hands of Corrupt Officials
Despite the fact that the existence of this swamp of corruption is widely known, Mitt Romney nevertheless wants to take control of social assistance programs away from the federal government and give it to the individual states. The most vulnerable in society are to be dependent on corrupt state officials in order to get their help. As a concession to remedy this miserable state of affairs, federal officials are now promoting improvements.
On Thursday, the Senate decided to forbid insider trading for its members. That law goes into effect after Obama has signed it, something he has not yet done. So right now, it's still completely legal for members of Congress to buy and sell investments while they have access to inside information. For example, a senator serving on the Senate Intelligence Committee might see a confidential memo concerning a planned terrorist attack on a particular airline. A quick telephone call to his broker would enable him to dump his shares in that airline.
The rationale for the business-as-usual procedure up to now is a complete mystery and the new law is sorely needed. It appears, however, that the new law didn't arise out of political conviction but rather because of electoral considerations: Congressional approval ratings have sunk to an all-time low of 10 percent, and politicians hope to lift that figure up before November.
The question now is whether these latest political developments in America are merely a continuation of George Washington's practice of paying for the pre-election booze parties or whether they're making him roll over in his grave.

Technorati Tags: U.S. Government,Republicans,Democrats,State Government,Corruption,Politics,Current Events

American Dream? Not Anymore

   Let us venture down south and into Mexico for a quick look at what some of the citizen's of the country think about the American election season.

Watching America   :   » American Dream No More

American Dream No More

By Emilio Zebadua

Why bother replacing Obama when he has done everything in his power to maintain the political status quo, which at the moment assures attractive bonds and rates of return on Wall Street, even though the rest of the country hasn’t yet emerged from the economic recession? It’s no wonder the elections aren’t generating much enthusiasm.

Translated By Lisa Steward

21 March 2012

Edited by Gillian Palmer

Mexico - El Universalmas - Original Article (Spanish)


Yesterday in the state of Illinois, near the middle of the U.S., they voted to elect the GOP candidate to the White House. But in reality the presidential race was resolved months ago, outside the electoral process. The November election will be won by the incumbent President Barack Obama, without a Democratic challenger and most likely against the indefinable Republican candidate, Mitt Romney.



Until now the electoral process has centered around the Republican Party’s internal contest. The frontrunner has always been Romney, a multimillionaire entrepreneur with links to corporate banking, mergers and acquisitions. During his time as governor of Massachusetts, he ruled alongside and on behalf of the business sector; as it happens, he occupies a moderate position in the U.S. political spectrum. And for Romney, this fact is precisely the problem. The “center” which he represents is too far to the left of the highly organized neoconservative Republican Party base, one made up of victims of the mortgage crisis, people behind in their payments, those without access to medical care, members of evangelical church support groups, workers with reduced or flat salaries and considerable unemployment risks or small business owners in danger of bankruptcy.



The conservative base is collectively sponsored by special interest industries such as arms manufacturers, retail and consumer sectors, insurance companies as well as what is left of the protectionist factions (with the exception of the automotive industry and including independent oil companies), among others.



For these right-wing entrepreneurs, Romney’s link to Wall Street puts a damper on his aspirations. That’s why they have sought out a candidate to the right of him — anyone will do, really: from Sarah Palin, charismatic enough to carry the most radical camp but deemed unable to deliver by her financial backers, to Rick Perry, who as Texas governor possessed the natural base from which to garner support from inside the Republican establishment. Since the George W. Bush presidency, diverse business interests have put forth candidates (Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Michelle Bachmann), all of whom have generated a scant amount of supporters and votes and certainly not enough to lessen the flow of funds from the financial wing of the GOP, who all the while have never stopped backing Romney.



The latest challenger to emerge from the most reactionary of the radical right wing has been Rick Santorum, who began to weave his web of support among the religious right, an interest group that has been actively funding candidates for the past decade. He was even prepared to lose his 2006 reelection as senator of Pennsylvania in exchange for the backing of these groups. In depressed economies like those in states like Illinois, parts of the middle class, small businesses and impoverished workers have cast their votes for Santorum in order to prevent the banks from dominating the entire Republican Party. These groups don’t have the money to win, but they can prevent Romney’s victory from being a landslide.



The nomination is not at stake, just Romney’s popularity. That’s why he doesn’t pose a definitive threat to the White House. He lacks the support from the extreme right — although he doesn’t actually need it as long as he consolidates the center or those to the right of the national spectrum, where his approval has been partial or insufficient at best. Obama is solidly entrenched in the center, yet he has not stopped inching to the right since he began his presidency.



Romney intends to replace Obama without changing the current government’s policies. This is what will assure his defeat, rendering him not only unattractive, but too costly, for the coalition of business interests, bankers and industrialists who support the present fiscal policy, the withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan and the remainder of the bank bailouts. Why bother replacing Obama when he has done everything in his power to maintain the political status quo, which at the moment assures attractive bonds and rates of return on Wall Street, even though the rest of the country hasn’t yet emerged from the economic recession? It’s no wonder the elections aren’t generating much enthusiasm.



The author has a doctorate in law.

CLICK HERE FOR
ORIGINAL VERSION

HUGE! Federal judge orders FDA to cut antibiotics from animal feed/Updated!

By  beach babe in fl for Meatless Advocates Meetup

Fri Mar 23, 2012

Wow!  The FDA has been taking too long to implement what it knows are best practices for a healthy food system so a federal judge has to make them own up to their responsibilities to maintain a food system that does not harm public health.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered U.S. regulators to start proceedings to withdraw approval for the use of common antibiotics in animal feed, citing concerns that overuse is endangering human health by creating antibiotic-resistant "superbugs".

Can you believe that we have known about the dangers of overuse of antibiotics in animal feed since the 70's but nothing has been done.  Shows the power and money of the corporate meat industry.

The FDA had started such proceedings in 1977, prompted by its concerns the widespread use in livestock feed of certain antibiotics - particularly tetracyclines and penicillin, the most common. But the proceedings were never completed and the approval remained in place. [...]"In the intervening years, the scientific evidence of the risks to human health from the widespread use of antibiotics in livestock has grown, and there is no evidence that the FDA has changed its position that such uses are not shown to be safe," .

Thanks for filing the lawsuit is due to environmental and public-health groups including The Natural Resources Defense Council, Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Union of Concerned Scientists in the Manhattan federal court in May.

The plaintiffs argued that using common antibiotics in livestock feed has contributed to the rapid growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in both animals and humans.

We know that the reason the meat industry uses antibiotics in animal feed is because their industrial meat operations are so damaging to animals health that they must be given prophylactic doses of antibiotics just to keep them alive.  Of course our immense market for meat has contributed to these unhealthy operations. 

The push back that we have made against CAFO's (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) is showing promise.  This is a major blow to their continuance.  Huzzah!

Update with additional study:  This new action comes not a moment to soon as a new study out of Poland has found evidence of high levels of  antibiotic-proof pathogens in the natural environment(soil) as well. And yet again, animal antibiotics seem to be the culprit.  The pathogens seem to come from soil which has been treated with manure feed.
http://www.asm.org/...  (PDF)

Houston, we have a huge problem when antibiotic-resistant microbes show up in fruits and vegetables

Technorati Tags: Antibiotics,FDA,Meat Products,Public Health,Current Events,An American Gothic

Friday Funnies: Rick Sanitarium Edition

 

Conan O'Brien: Today is Ann and Mitt Romney's 43rd wedding anniversary. This means t

hat 43 years ago Mitt proposed to his wife and due to a weak field of candidates, she said yes."

“A photo of a shirtless Rick Santorum lounging in a pool is circulating on the Internet. Ironically, the photo has proven to be a very effective form of birth control.”

David Letterman: "Rick Santorum wants to ban pornography. That's one of the few thriving industries America has left."

Jimmy Fallon: "This weekend President Obama will visit the border that separates North and South Korea. Not to be outdone, Newt Gingrich will visit the border that separates the KFC from the Taco Bell."

"President Obama is calling on Iran to give its citizens better access to the Internet. Right now they only have one social networking site: 'Cover-Your-Face Book.'"

"Last week a tourist in Puerto Rico took a picture of Rick Santorum shirtless on the beach. I don’t want to say he looked chubby, but his new Secret Service code name is 'Newt Gingrich.'"

Bill Maher: “You know who hates March Madness? Rick Santorum. It combines the two things he hates most, college and putting something in a hole.

“Rick Santorum said this week that his 12-year-old could out-reason me about God. Look, I am not about to debate a home-schooled twelve-year-old. I have enough trouble with Sarah Palin.”

Technorati Tags: Friday,Rick Santorum,Late Night Talk,David Letterman,Conan O'Brian,Political Humor,Bill Maher,Current Events,An American Gothic

Republican Congressman Tells Woman To Donate To Democrats

 

by Kaili Joy Gray  on Thursday, March 22, 2012

Words I never thought I'd say, but this Republican member of Congress speaks for me:

As the only Republican Congressman at a rally for the Equal Rights Amendment on Thursday, Rep. Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.) gave women an unexpected piece of advice: Give your money to Democrats.

"I think these are very precarious times for women, it seems. So many of your rights are under assault," he told the crowd of mostly women. "I'll tell you this: Contribute your money to people who speak out on your behalf, because the other side -- my side -- has a lot of it. And you need to send your own message. You need to remind people that you vote, you matter, and that they can't succeed without your help." [...]

"This is a dogfight, it's a fistfight, and you have all the cards," he said. "I can only tell you to get out there and use them. Tell the other women, the other 51 percent of the population, to kick in a few of their bucks. Make it matter, get out there, get on TV, advertise, talk about this. The fact that you want [the ERA] is evidence that you deserve it and you need it."

Related articles, courtesy of Zemanta:

• Equal Rights Legislation
• BPW and 75 Years of Fighting for the Equal Rights Amendment

Mitt Romney As Dream Candidate

by Hunter for Daily Kos  on Wed Mar 21, 2012

Charles Pierce in Esquire, On Mitt Romney's dull-and-possibly-robotic repetitions of the old conservative "Obama was a community organizer!" talking point:

Let us consider, then, the community in which the president once organized. This is what I found out about it when I went and looked at it in 2008:

Obama also worked in the Altgeld Gardens, a housing development built in 1945 atop an ecological hellspout where two thousand families lived on an old landfill and hard by fifty-three different sites that had been designated as "toxic" by one study of the area.

Altgeld Gardens was built on the bones of old steel mills and factories, and atop the waste dumps and landfills that serviced them. And, when they built the projects there, they filled them full of asbestos. That poisoned neighborhood was a perfect product of the "freedom" that Romney talks about when he talks about an unregulated economy. Barack Obama went there to organize the people who were living on that deadly ground because The Market couldn't have cared less about them, and the various governments allowed The Market not to care and, so, did not care either. The kids with the asthma, they weren't free. The kids who developed the renal disease, they weren't free. The people in all the cancer clusters, they weren't free. If I were as much of a demagogue as Willard Romney is, I would point out that, in the 1980's, when the president was working for peanuts trying to get some sort of justice for the people that The Market had chosen to poison, Willard Romney was making millions with Bain Capital. But I'm not, so I won't.

Today's Etch-A-Sketch mockeries took off because they perfectly fit what people already believe about Mitt Romney: that he is, at heart, substanceless, merely a blank slate on which the usual Republican powerbrokers can write whatever the hell the latest talking points are, and have them repeat those talking points verbatim. Not well, maybe, but at least verbatim. I do think it a bit unfair, though. Clearly, Romney does have core beliefs, but I wonder if they are not foreign enough to Most Normal People that they are unrecognizable. Mitt Romney is, primarily, a corporation. If he is a person, it is only via the transitive property foisted upon us by the Supreme Court. His functions appear to be seeking profit, building firewalls around profit, and verbally defending profit—it is all the rest of the stuff that renders him tongue-tied.

Like the near-entirety of the Republican Party, the thing most earnestly pursued are vague plans about how allowing the wealthy and the corporate to further shirk their financial obligations to their country will, in some unspecified fashion, lead to an economic golden age. Whether or not children get asthma from inhaling fully unregulated profits is not a concern. What the rest of the budget looks like is not a concern (see: Paul Ryan and his ridiculous, comical, and utterly execrable plan proposing to cut the entire federal budget to a number below what his surrounding Republicans demand we spend on defense alone.) What the religious nuts that Rick Santorum courts want is most definitely not a concern, and Mitt can't even make a decent stab at pretending such a thing. Will the War on Women help the magical and wondrous free market? Eh, fine, then he's for it. Or against it. Whatever the thing is that means less regulation on companies, and who gives a damn about the rest.

Today Mitt Romney praised George W. Bush for avoiding a Great Depression and instead causing a mere catastrophic recession. (The phrase "I shit you not" is used a lot, these days, but ...) I don't think that line was just lip service. I think Mitt really is, in some ways, the continuation of what the Republican powerbrokers sought in George W. Bush. They wanted someone who would be as pliant as possible on regulation and oversight; they got it. They want someone who would either overturn anti-corporate law outright or at least prevent government from aggressively acting on it; they got that, too. They wanted the tax cuts, the massively deficit-causing tax cuts whose primary goal was to accrue just a tiny bit more money at the very top of the income spectrum; they got it. Deficits? They "didn't matter." Social issues? Well, George W. Bush was a mighty prick, on social issues, but he didn't go nearly as far as even the supposedly "moderate" Republicans lurched just a few years later. No, Dubya Bush was the perfect blank slate, the Iraq with which  conservatives could experiment with all their little pipe dreams, not worrying about the pitiful moron having any deep thoughts of his own on the subject. It was paradise, for them, until each and every one of those pipe dreams started going to hell in a handbasket. Oops!

In conservative savior candidates, the Republicans have been looking for the same thing. Christie, Rubio and the others are lusted after because of their pro-business predilictions, not because of their social conservative stances. Paul Ryan is the closest thing George W. Bush has to a younger, dumber clone, but he's looked at as the Republican's economic messiah. (Apparently, not being able to do basic math is the conservative equivalent of turning water into wine.) Rick Perry? Good Lord, Rick Perry was George W. Bush on acid. He had all of the good qualities of Bush, but since his name wasn't Bush he still had a shred of credibility to his name. Then he opened his own mouth, and all was lost.

No, I think Mitt Romney is exactly what the Republicans are after this election cycle. The social conservatives might not like it, and the base may put up a mighty fight, but the true money is behind the pliable, generic-sounding guy with a dollar sign where his heart should be. The Republican Party is, more than anything else, pissed off at the damn kids with asthma and the damn seniors demanding medical care and the damn government demanding the same damn taxes that everyone used to pay a mere twenty or thirty years ago, all of whom are pitted against the true Masters of the Universe, i.e. the people with all the money and most of the power, and they are out for blood. And they don't care how many stones they have to squeeze for that blood, either. Etch-A-Sketch Mitt would be so, so much preferable over someone who once was caught giving a damn about the poor.

Technorati Tags: 2012 Elections,Mitt Romney,Republicans,Barack Obama,Current Events,Politics

Hey! Guess who still gets mega tax breaks under the GOP budget plan? BIG OIL

by Eclectablog     Tue Mar 20,2012

It's good to be the king

 Not only is Paul Ryan's "Path to Poverty" budget going to give rich people tax breaks and cut benefits to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security while maintaining current levels of military spending, it does something else, too. The GOP budget preserves massive subsidies to Big Oil companies while cutting investments in renewable energy.

 

[I]t appears that House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) proposed FY 2013 budget resolution would retain a decade’s worth of oil tax breaks worth $40 billion. And his budget would cut billions of dollars from investments to develop alternative fuels and clean energy technologies that would serve as substitutes for oil and help protect middle-class families from volatile energy prices as well as create jobs. In short, the Ryan budget compounds the cost of high oil and gasoline prices on the middle class.

That's today's GOP, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Big Oil.

Bought. And. Paid. For.

Violence Against Women Act Gets 60th Cosponsor Needed To Beat Filibuster

 

The newly politicized fight to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act for the third time may have reached a tipping point. With the cosponsorship of Nevada Republican Sen. Dean Heller, there are now 60 cosponsors, enough to overcome a filibuster if they all actually vote for the bill.

Heller joins Idaho's Mike Crapo, an author of the bill, Maine's Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, Alaska's Lisa Murkowski, Massachusetts' Scott Brown, and Illinois' Mark Kirk as a Republican supporting reauthorization. Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, the bill's other author, notes that "Fewer than a dozen bills introduced in the United States Senate this Congress have amassed 60 or more cosponsors."

Republicans—with the above-named exceptions—are trying to block reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act because of, as Adam Serwer explains, gays, immigrants and Native Americans:

Republicans' biggest qualms are about provisions that make federal grants to domestic violence organizations contingent on nondiscrimination against gay, lesbian, and transgender victims; rules extending the authority of tribal courts over domestic violence matters; and a section that would provide more visas for abused undocumented women who agree to cooperate with law enforcement.

Dean Heller and Scott Brown are both facing strong challenges from women, Nevada Rep. Shelley Berkley and, of course, Elizabeth Warren. If that helps get their votes on this critical piece of legislation, excellent. But let's not forget that if Shelley Berkley and Elizabeth Warren were in the Senate, we wouldn't have to wonder about these votes.

Sign the petition telling Senate Republicans to reauthorize The Violence Against Women Act.

 

Originally posted to Laura Clawson on Tue Mar 20, 2012

 

Software Test

  I am trying to migrate from Windows to Linux. I have been using both systems for some time but I keep Windows only because I like their blogging software. Live Writer cannot be beat by anything that the Linux community has.

  So now i'm trying out ScribeFire, which is an add-on to Firefox. We'll see how this goes, and if I like it, then it is goodby Microsoft!

Related articles, courtesy of Zemanta:

• Why More Bloggers Don't Write About Linux
• Testing ScribeFire
• Using Zemanta with any blogging platform

Tampa’s Domestic Partnership Registry…

…  received the City Council’s initial approval on Thursday, March 15, 2012 in a 5-0 vote, giving both heterosexual and same-sex couples a few more rights as far as being able to plan for their loved ones medical care in an emergency situation and even their funeral, if needed.

    A final vote is set for April 5, and that vote is expected to pass also.

Tampa Bay Times

The ordinance creating the registry says that nothing about it "shall be construed as recognizing or treating a domestic partnership as a marriage," and its City Council sponsor said it's not meant as a step toward legalizing gay marriage.

Rather, Yvonne Yolie Capin said, the registry is designed to help ensure that couples can visit each other in the hospital, make medical decisions and funeral arrangements for their loved ones and be informed when a partner has been in an accident.

    This topic caught my eye because I have recently had to endure the bullshit that a partner has to put up with when their other half has a major trauma and you aren’t considered a “ family member “ by hospital personnel, or by certain family members. 

Technorati Tags: Domestic Partnership Registry,Tampa,Florida,Current Events,An American Gothic

Mitt Romney’s Problem? Sarah Palin

by brooklynbadboy for Daily Kos    Sun Mar 18, 2012

When Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, AKA "Joe the Plumber," won a Republican nomination for Congress, Sarah Palin's transformation of the Republican electoral base was complete. What has happened to the GOP, much to the consternation of the elite party establishment, is that it has become a party of paranoid conspiracy freaks, religious kooks, bigots, the marginally insane, and amateur grifters like Joe the Plumber. If Palin were running in the primary election for president, there is no doubt that she would be winning it, probably handily. This, in a nutshell, is why Mitt Romney, the only plausibly qualified candidate running for president in the GOP, is having such a hard time winning what should be a cakewalk primary. This party is no longer the party of the country club or even of Ronald Reagan. This is a party unhinged from reality. This is the party of Palin.

After Sarah Palin was first elevated to from obscure governor of less than 1 percent of the population, her influence over the party became abundantly clear. Other than Obama, nobody pulled larger crowds than her. She became the top small donor fundraiser in the Republican Party. She commanded the biggest speaking fees, sold the most books, and even won herself a top paid spot at Fox News. Her endorsement during the 2010 election cycle was the most coveted in the country. The media proclaimed her ability to "connect" with the most base desires of the GOP as unrivaled. Until Palin's infamous "blood libel" video permanently damaged her as a national candidate, she represented everything the GOP base wants in an American leader: White, not too smart, against modernity, an ability to ignore inconsistency, a devotion to megachurchdom, hostility to metropolitan areas, and hateful of anyone not like themselves. The fact that she was woefully unprepared to take on the responsibilities of being president was irrelevant. The Republican right doesn't want a president. They want a televangelist.

While many of us incorrectly predicted a Palin run for the presidency, her imprint on the primary has been obvious. At every turn, Republican primary voters have spoken loud and clear: they want someone who can beat Barack Obama, but they want that person to be as unqualified to be president as possible. While the establishment has decided that Mitt Romney offers their best shot at accomplishing that goal, even they have taken note of just how far right their base has gone. In any other era, the current version of Mitt Romney would have been considered a far right ideologue far outside the American mainstream. The current version of Romney is considered a moderate not simply because of his previous positions, but because the party base has moved far beyond Reagan conservatism and turned into a radical hate group writ large. If it wasn't for Palin's imprint on the party base, this election would look far more favorable for any Republican challenger.

Each of the now defunct presidential candidates has tried to take her place this year. Each of them failed. Michele Bachmann tried to fill her space with her own brand of crazy, but she literally didn't hunt. Perhaps she needed to air advertisements of herself firing a fully automatic rifle. Then Rick Perry moved in to take up the Palin banner, but he didn't hate brown people sufficiently. Then Herman Cain, who prominently endorsed Joe the Plumber, flew the Palin banner high. But he too had a problem: being a Black man sexually interested in White women, which is how we got Obama in the first place. (Sex scandals don't usually bother Republicans. Ask David Vitter. It is only a crime when Democrats do it.) Finally there was Newt, who seemed perfect at first look. Here was a guy who was a noted liar, an accomplished grifter, and a moral disgrace. While Newt could have certainly represent the values of the Palin Party, he has one tiny flaw: Newt is the most disliked human being in America. Even Palin's endorsement can't overcome that. So what's left is Santorum. Literally. A political nincompoop who can't even get basic things done like getting on the ballot.

Rush Limbaugh, the intellectual leader of the party since William F. Buckley's death, has openly proclaimed Palin the leader of the Republican Party. She knows nothing, hates everyone, and is in politics purely for financial gain just like himself. The Palin Party does not want Mitt Romney. For while Palin and Romney are both ambitious to a fault, Romney's ambition is of a different variety. Romney couldn't care less about minorities, gays, women, city and suburb dwellers, immigrants, or any of the other "others" that the Palin Party despises. Mitt Romney couldn't care less about religion, including his own. That's why he doesn't like talking about it honestly in public. Mitt Romney cares about one thing and one thing only: that the top one percent stay on top and become even more top. That's a problem for the Palin Party because they believe they should be on top by virtue of being better than everyone else ... by being "real Americans" rather than rich Americans. No matter what Mitt Romney does, the most he can hope for is that the Palin Party will tolerate him because they hate the alternative more. After all, as bad as Mitt Romney is, he's still a white man. In the Palin Party, that counts for a lot. But his Palin problem will still be there.

In the end, Palin's legacy will fade away as quickly as it came about. Her party is an aging, shrinking, dying demographic of rural White men. Many of the Republican party's luminaries understand this. Likely sooner than later, the GOP establishment will come to grips with the idea that if they are to survive as a political institution they will have to jettison the nutcase fringe. The reckoning will come, as the American political system tends to correct anomalies over time. But first, they'll have to blow an election that should have been easy as apple pie. For that, Mitt Romney can thank Sarah Palin.

Technorati Tags: Sarah Palin,Tea Party,Mitt Romney,2012 Elections,The Republican Party,Current Events,An American Gothic

Women Legislators Turn The Tables And Introduce Bills Regulating Men's Reproductive Health

Originally posted to Meteor Blades on Mon Mar 12, 2012

Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner (D) isn't happy with bills that seek to control women's access to contraception and abortion. She has joined a trend across the nation by introducing a bill that would require men seeking a prescription for erectile dysfunction drugs to see a sex therapist, receive a cardiac stress test and "get a notarized affidavit signed by a sexual partner affirming impotency." Sex therapists would be required to present the option of "celibacy as a viable lifestyle choice.”

"The men in our lives, including members of the General Assembly, generously devote time to fundamental female reproductive issues—the least we can do is return the favor," Senator Turner said. "It is crucial that we take the appropriate steps to shelter vulnerable men from the potential side effects of these drugs.

"When a man makes a crucial decision about his health and his body, he should be fully aware of the alternative options and the lifetime repercussions of that decision," Senator Turner said today. Men will be more easily guided through the process of obtaining treatment for impotence so they can better understand and more effectively address their condition.

Sen. Turner isn't the only legislator to introduce a "Viagra bill" or amendments in response to what mostly male legislators have been proposing around the nation.

In Illinois, for instance, state Rep. Kelly Cassidy (D) introduced an amendment to a bill requiring ultrasounds before a woman can get an abortion that would require men to watch an explicit video about the side-effects of erectile dysfunction drugs. And, Missouri state Rep. Stacey Newman (D) introduced a bill that would allow a man to obtain a vasectomy only when not doing so could cause him serious injury or death.

Some people may take these proposals as jokes. But the problem they spotlight, the war on women's reproductive rights and privacy, isn't funny at all.

Technorati Tags: Womens Rights,Reproductive Rights,Birth Control,Abortion,Current Events,An American Gothic,Republican Party

Newt Gingrich's Accidental Humblebrag

Originally posted to The Jed Report on Fri Mar 16, 2012

Newt Gingrich keeps on digging (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

Newt Gingrich says Ronald Reagan is his only intellectual equal in the Republican Party:

"Other than Ronald Reagan, I know of no Republican in my lifetime who's been able to talk like this," Mr. Gingrich told a banquet crowd here, referring to his own policy ideas on energy, brain science and other matters. "That's why I'm still running, because the gap is so huge."

I know Newt was boasting, but when you're trying to offer yourself up as an intellectual giant, you might want to avoid comparing yourself to a guy who falsely claimed trees were a major source of pollution, who falsely claimed there was no Russian word for freedom, and who falsely denied funding death squads with illegal arms sales to Iranians.

Technorati Tags: Newt Gingrich,Ronald Reagan,2012 Elections,Current Events,An American Gothic

Saturday Satire: Romney, Santorum, Gingrich

Copyright © 2012 Creators Syndicate

CartoonArts International

Copyright © 2012 Universal Press Syndicate

 

 

 

 

 

Technorati Tags: GOP,Republican Party,Mitt Romney,Rick Santorum,Newt Gingrich,2012 Elections,Politics,Humor,Current Events,An American Gothic,Barack Obama

Texas Loses Medicaid Funding In Effort To Spite Planned Parenthood

   You have to love those dumb-assed Republicans in the Texas government, because no one else does. At least not the 130,000 women who are affected by this GOP bullshit.

by Joan McCarter on Thu Mar 15, 2012

Last Friday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that they would be informing the State of Texas that the state would lose basic health and family planning services funding from Medicaid because it is in violation of federal law. The state wrote Planned Parenthood out of the state's Women's Health Program, a Medicaid-waiver program.

As of today, Texas has been officially informed that the funding is lost, via this letter from HHS official Cindy Mann, director of the Center for Medicaid and State Operations (CMSO). Here's the key part:

Texas has elected to move forward with a State rule that restricts freedom of choice of health care providers for women enrolled in WHP effective March 14, 2012 Consistent with longstanding statutory provisions that assure free choice of family planning providers, the Demonstration does not provide the State the authority to impose such a limitation, and we advised the State in our December 12, 2011 letter that we had concluded that such authority would not be granted. We very much regret the State's decision to implement this rule, which will prevent women enrolled in the program from receiving services from the trusted health care providers they have chosen and relied upon for their care. Last year, nearly half of all the services under WHP were provided by clinics that are likely to be excluded from the program under the new rule.

In light of Texas' actions, CMS is not in a position to extend or renew the current Demonstration, except for purpose of phasing out this Demonstration.

An HHS official told reporters today:

“Medicaid law is very clear; a state may not restrict patients’ choice of providers of services like mammograms and other cancer screenings, if those providers are qualified to deliver care covered by Medicaid. Patients, not state government officials, should be able to choose the doctors and other health care providers that are best for them and their families. In 2005, Texas requested this same authority to restrict patients’ choices, and the Bush Administration did not grant it to them either.”

The war on women's health just resulted in 130,000 casualties in Texas.

Technorati Tags: Department of Health and Human Services,Medicaid,Planned Parenthood,Rick Perry,Womens Rights,Current Events,An American Gothic

Another "End of Medicare as we know it" scare from the right

by gravlax    Wed Mar 14, 2012        Original

Remember when all you heard from the right was that government in healthcare was bad? Maybe the left won a framing battle over the right to medical coverage in the form of Medicare. Of course, the right is still attacking medical coverage while, at the same time, claiming to want to preserve it. Same old conservative double-speak.

Hollywood Tea Partier Pat Boone, recipient of the 2011 CPAC "Lifetime Achievement Award", is the "star" of a new ad by the 60 Plus Association, the conservative alternative to AARP.

          Pat Boone told a whopper

The ad is part of a $3.5 million campaign asking Democratic Senators Jon Tester (D-MT), Ben Nelson (D-FL), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI to eliminate part of what is known as "Obamacare".

See this article in The Washington Post's Fact Checker, "More ‘Mediscare’ hooey, GOP version". Glenn Kessler gives the Mediscare claims 3 Pinochios, for "Significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions".

I give it four capers, for "complete b.s.".

Pat Boone at 2011 CPAC (photo by Gage Skidmore)

The ad concerns the Independent Payment Advisory Board, set up by sections 3403 and 10320 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

While the GOP has yet to come up with the equivalent of "Death Panels" for the IPAB, this ad is part of an ongoing effort to convince voters that this board can ration care and deny certain Medicare payments, as well as cut up to $500 million from Medicare.

The 60 Plus ad ...
Attacking the IPAB is another front in the "War on 'Obamacare'".

I, for one have not seen this particular attack before, but according to the WaPo article, this is nothing new.

Perhaps it is because I don't live in a highly contested area or that I am not watching the right channels on the teevee or visiting the right sites on the intertoobs.

Either way, this is new to me. So I will try to wade through the issue with the help of Glenn Kessler and the help of teh google.

(also, see this article from TPMDC about the efforts to repeal the IPAB and positions taken by both Democrats and Republicans re: its repeal)

follow below the Orange Squigglies of Mediscare for more ...

“President Obama’s health care law cuts $500 billion from Medicare.”

from Kessler,
"This is another oldie but goodie.
Under Obama’s health-care law, Medicare spending continues to go up year after year.
...
Moreover, the savings actually are wrung from health-care providers, not Medicare beneficiaries."

So, that part seems to be WRONG. I believe that Kessler uses the term "oldie but goodie" as a euphemism for total malarky. He is much too evenhanded for such a term so I will use it in his stead.

The $500 billion figure comes from an accounting method in which one takes the anticipated spending on Medicare, known as the baseline, and compares it with anticipated savings from the ACA. See slide 15 of this tutorial from the Kaiser Family Foundation for a chart of year-by-year savings.

In 2015, the new healthcare law is expected to save $50 billion, a baseline of $725 billion and projected spending after the bill of $675 billon. In 2019, the new law is projected to save nearly $100 billion, a baseline of $943 billion and and projected spending of $845 billion.

That is a significant saving but it is still nowhere near the $500 billion claim that comes from the right. Either that is some really fuzzy math, or just plain old making up numbers. I lean towards the latter.

"It's like a Medicare IRS"

from Kessler,
"In effect, the IPAB appears designed to mimic the Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission, which was designed in the late 1980s by then Rep. Dick Armey (R-Tex.) with the backing of the Reagan administration."

The 15 members of the IPAB will be appointed by the President and subject to Senate confirmation. The board's purpose is to make recommendations for reducing costs should the rate of growth exceed a certain target, beginning in 2015.

Beginning in 2018, should spending still exceed the target, the board would then submit a cost-cutting plan to the White House and Congress. The Senate would be able to pass a different set of cuts or reject the IPAB proposal by a three-fifths vote.

The IRS, on the other hand, is tasked with estimating the amount of taxes owed and recording payments made, with the odd audit thrown in. The audit rate for 2010 was 6.5 audits per 1,000 taxpayers.

Granted, the IRS is an easy target for anyone trying to create populist outrage. I know that I don't enjoy paying taxes but I do acknowledge their need and celebrate all the groovy things that those taxes pay for. Also, I should note, all of the things that I wish my taxes weren't spent on like rising incarceration, the War on Drugs, and war in general.

Unlike many on the right, and pretty much anybody at a Tea Party rally, I believe in taxes AND single-payer healthcare. So, I take this claim to be a cheap ploy to drum up anti-government sentiment on the right.

“This IPAB board can ration care and deny certain Medicare treatments”

from Kessler,
"The health-care law, by the way, explicitly says that the recommendations cannot lead to rationing of health care. (See page 428 of the law.)"

Again, WRONG. I am having a hard time trying to find a better way to say this than Kessler. But here's a shot.

Lying-pants on fire-malingering-no good-rotten-dirty-lying-liar!

"Your choices could be limited and you may not be able to keep your own doctor"

from Kessler,
"The law also limits recommendations that would change benefits, modify eligibility or increase Medicare beneficiary cost-sharing, such as deductibles, coinsurance and co-payments."

The only way this could be true would be the case of a doctor not choosing to accept Medicare payments. I have run across many physicians who have made this choice for various reasons. The most common is the complaint that the rules for submitting payments are onerous.

But, any medial insurance system might result in a patient not being able to keep their own doctor. Fee for Service programs might see doctors raising prices, which could result in a patient no longer being able to afford that particular doctor. HMO's restrict patients to in-network providers. PPO's allow you to see out of network physicians but at a higher co-pay.

So this is more pandering and fear-mongering from 60 plus. Everyone wants to have a relationship with their doctor. Everyone wants that continuity of care. Also, everyone wants the ability to find a doctor that they feel comfortable with. While I am not a professional, my reading of the ACA does not say anything about keeping patients from their doctors.

Certain Republican legislation regarding abortion and contraception, on the other hand, certainly does seem to be a way to get between a patient and their doctor or at least to get into the room with them.

Technorati Tags: Affordable Care Act,Hollywood Tea Party,IPAB,Pat Boone,Medicare,ACA,Current EventsEvents,Republicans,An American Gothic