Calling A Duck A Duck

God bless Anita Dunn for calling FoxNews out for what they are and not allowing Howard Kurtz's cowardly water carrying ass to distort the truth in her message. FoxNews has called themselves the loyal opposition, its time to stop pretending they are anything but.

Rachel Maddow Shines Sunlight On The Opposition

If Rachel Maddow can find all this information why can't the rest of the bums in the mainstream media? We are being failed over and over in this fight and it is sickening. At least one person is taking on the responsibility of providing transparency on those who are opposing health care reform.

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Keep In Mind What This Is Really All About

With all of the din around health care reform I think its important we remember why corporate interests are against it. Greg Sargent has a post up about the Chamber of Commerce purchasing ad buys in key states to oppose the Democratic plans for health care reform.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is perhaps the most powerful and well-funded foe of much of President Obama’s governing agenda, just announced that it’s running a “multi-million-dollar” national ad campaign attacking the Dems’ health care reform proposals as “expanded government control of health care”.

I’ve obtained a detailed state-by-state breakdown of the first round of the Chamber’s ad spending from an ad buyer for labor unions, and it provides an interesting glimpse into this well-armed business group’s view of the health care battleground:

Indiana $429,105
Maine $156,345
Tennessee $89,985
Colorado $494,630
Arkansas $218,390
Kentucky $127,220
South Carolina $55,495
North Carolina $745,215
Ohio $20,000

Total:$2,336,385

We spend so much time on soundbites about health care reform that sometimes we may lose focus on what is at stake here. Or at least what the opponents envision as what is at stake. But its important to keep what they are thinking in mind to understand their opposition. Many people will ponder why the Chamber of Commerce would be so against health care reform. After all, if done right, wouldn't reform reduce the burden on most business in terms of health care costs?

Of course it would.

But that isn't what the Chamber of Commerce is worried about right now. They are looking big picture and in their world health care reform is little picture. So what exactly is their concern? Well lets go back to the now infamous memo penned by Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard.

Here is the relevant passage.

"Health care will prove to be an enormously healthy project for Clinton... and for the Democratic Party." So predicts Stanley Greenberg, the president's strategist and pollster. If a Clinton health care plan succeeds without principled Republican opposition, Mr. Greenberg will be right. Because the initiative's inevitably destructive effect on American medical services will not be practically apparent for several years--no Carter-like gas lines, in other words--its passage in the short run will do nothing to hurt (and everything to help) Democratic electoral prospects in 1996. But the long-term political effects of a successful Clinton health care bill will be even worse--much worse. It will relegitimize middle-class dependence for "security" on government spending and regulation. It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class by restraining government.

When you set aside the bullshit free market rhetoric, this memo gets at the heart of why big business is, for the most part, opposed to Democratic health care reform. Notice that I keep injecting "Democratic" in there. Its because should a Republican ever offer up health care reform, its likely they wouldn't be opposed by big business. I mean does anybody remember any ads being run against President Bush's Medicare prescription drug "reform" boondoggle that ended up being a big give away to the drug companies? Of course not. Its because the reform isn't what scares them. Its the prospect of the benefits the Democratic Party would get from such reform that makes them lose sleep at night.

Don't get me wrong here, I am a Democrat but the truth is our party has its share of problems too. Our leaders aren't immune from corruption and personal failings. But historically Democrats are the party that makes sure big business is regulated. On the one hand it is great for regular citizens because most regulations help to protect the consumers, on the other hand its not so great for big businesses that would rather take more risks with other people's money and lives to increase their profit margins. That is why it shouldn't be a surprise at all that groups like the Chamber of Commerce are so staunchly opposed to health care reform. They simply do not want to see Democrats in power for an extended period of time and they know that health care reform may actually usher that in.

Now what can we do with this knowledge? The truth is not a hell of a lot. As true as it is that big business is motivated by the politics of the situation at least as much if not more than the practical implications, its a hard sell to explain that to someone who is already skeptical. Even writing this I know that right wingers would explain this away as paranoia. But all you have to do is go back and read that Kristol memo in full or try googling information on the health care fight from 1993 and you will see that even though our world and our country has changed tremendously since then, the arguments against health care haven't. Still, its going to be next to impossible to convince a person who is railing against "government run health care" while several of their family members are benefiting greatly from MediCare, that this is the true motivation of big business.

More than anything else what we should do is keep this in the back of our mind as we press for reform. These people are highly motivated to kill health care reform and for them its not about people recieving substandard care, its not about people going bankrupt trying to pay their medical bills, and its definitely not about trying to reduce our deficit either. Their arguments are not in good faith, and as long as we realize then that can govern how we push back. We will never be able to convince them to get on board for health care reform as long as Democrats are in charge. So we recognize them as irreconcilables and keep it moving.

It is what it is.

About Neil Wolin

Greg Sargent points out the fact that there is a lot of pushback on liberal and progressive blogs on Neil Wolin's nomination to be Tim Geitner's #2 at Treasury. Most of it stems from a biography, or to be more precise an excerpt of a biograpy, of Wolin on Sargent's blog. Here is the offense in question.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLB) passed in 1999, and it repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 that banned banks from merging with insurance companies and brokerage firms. GLB made it legal for a bank to merge with other financial institutions, but the newly-formed company would have to submit to more oversight by the Federal Reserve. While the new law didn’t directly lead to the mortgage defaults and credit failure that crippled the banking industry in 2008, it did allow for the birth of giant financial companies like Citigroup. Citibank pushed the issue of repealing the Glass-Steagall Act in 1998, when Citibank and the insurance company Travelers announced a merger. (Congress’ passage of GLB ratified the Citibank and Travelers merger.(6) Citigroup has since spun-off Travelers.)

Many large, diverse financial institutions were deemed too big to fail when the credit market disintegrated in 2008.

As Treasury general counsel in 1999, Wolin oversaw the team of lawyers that helped draft the GLB bill that became law that year. Wolin "provided the technical and legal drafting," said Stuart Eizenstat, the deputy Treasury secretary in 1999 when the GLB bill was created.

Now somehow this has morphed from him providing the technical and legal advise on drafting the legislation to somehow him advocating or pushing for the legislation. Perhaps he did back then, but to date I have seen nothing to suggest he did and I am pretty sure neither have those who are pushing back against him. Its the old guilty by association game and now evidently Wolin is toxic. But the problem is there's more to Wolin in the profile that evidently those people haven't read.

Wolin went to Yale University where he earned a bachelor’s in history, graduating summa cum laude. Wolin then went to Oxford University as a Charles and Julia Henry Fellow, earning a master’s of science in development economics before getting a law degree at Yale.

After law school, Wolin worked at the venerable Washington, D.C. law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering before joining the federal government as a special assistant to the director of the CIA. He worked under three directors at the nation’s top intelligence agency: William H. Webster, Robert M. Gates and R. James Woolsey. In 1993, Wolin moved to the NSA as a legal adviser. He would stay until 1995, when he left to work as a deputy general counsel at the Treasury under Secretary Robert Rubin.

Wolin stayed at the Treasury for six years, becoming general counsel to Secretary Lawrence H. Summers in 1999. In January 2001, Summers gave Wolin the Alexander Hamilton Award, the highest honor awarded to a Treasury official.(3)

Sounds like a pretty solid and diverse background right?

In June 2008, Wolin testified in front of the House Financial Services subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance and Government Sponsored Enterprises, in which he backed the creation of the federal Office of Insurance Information (OII) within the Treasury. “It would thereby create an insurance expert who serves as the principal federal advisor on domestic and international policy issues for all lines of insurance but health,” said Wolin. “In one stroke, we would answer the call for a single national voice on these important matters.”(8)

The creation of the OII was controversial because many felt it would create an oversight organization to which states’ insurance commissioners would have to answer.(9) The measure got through the subcommittee, and is still under consideration in the full Financial Services panel.

Now I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound like an advocate of deregulation to me. Hell he was working in the insurance industry and ASKING for more oversight. Hopefully those who are opposing him based on just the GLB Act will look a little bit deeper instead of just reflexively reacting negatively to the nomination.

Preach

Bob Herbert puts the Republican opposition to President Obama's stimulus plan into clear perspective today in his column in the New York Times. Its a good read and he doesn't mince words. Here was the best part of the column IMHO:

Maybe the Republicans don’t think there is an emergency. After all, it was Phil Gramm, John McCain’s economic guru, who told us last summer that the pain was all in our heads, that this was a “mental recession.”

The truth, of course, is that the country is hemorrhaging jobs and Americans are heading to the poorhouse by the millions. The stock markets and the value of the family home have collapsed, and there is virtual across-the-board agreement that the country is caught up in the worst economic disaster since at least World War II.

The Republican answer to this turmoil?

Tax cuts.

They need to go into rehab.

And the church folks say AMEN!