The Grand Casualty Act

That's what the Graham-Cassidy Act should be called.

Republican Senators Lindsey Graham (SC) and William Cassidy (LA) have this really dandy idea to replace the Affordable Care Act - give block grants to the states and let them decide how to allocate health care coverage to their residents.  Well, what could be so terrible about that?

The answer would take more paper than was used to write the Dead Sea Scrolls.  But here are the highlights - heavily Democratic states that signed up for Medicaid expansion would get stiffed, more money would be diverted to Republican states before it dried up completely by 2026 - a "sucker punch" as Democratic Senator Tim Kaine would call it - with each state seeing an average 17 percent cut in funding overall in the meantime, premiums would go up for everyone by 20 percent each year, there'd be no protection from higher  insurance costs due to previously existing conditions, and up to 32 million people would lose coverage.  

The Republican leadership in Washington - and Donald Trump - want this bill rammed through the Senate before September 30 so it can pass with only 50 votes plus Vice President Mike Pence's vote due to arcane rules requiring a three-fifths majority when the new fiscal year begins October 1.  (Don't ask me to explain it any further because I'm too angry to bother!)   Then the House would have to pass it as is, without amendments. Why?  Because Speaker Paul Ryan said so.

Right now, Rand Paul of Kentucky refuses to support this repeal of the Affordable Care Act - because it doesn't go far enough! -  and John McCain refuses to do so because it's being rushed without any meaningful debate.  If one more Republican votes no - count on Susan Collins of Maine to be that one more Republican - the bill won't go anywhere.  And then the effort to repeal and "replace" the Affordable Care Act - will be dead for good.

Ha ha!  You thought  I was serious just now, didn't you?  No, efforts to repeal this law are going to go on for as long as there is a Republican Party, and right now it's the Democrats who are in danger of disappearing due to their inability to reverse years of sucking and lameness and become a competently functioning political organization.  Health care repeal is the Hurricane Jose of legislation . . . it just . . . won't . . . go away!    

On the other hand, Hurricane Jose has probably adversely affected fewer people's lives than this bill would if it became law, and even that storm finally dissipated. :-O :-(  

Bet You Didn't See That Coming

The week gone by in review:

Republican Senators Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) couldn't bear to see any form of repeal of the Affordable Care Act passed, and they couldn't count on at least one Republican to join them in defeating the repeal bill in the Senate.  Then one courageous senator joined them - Arizona's John McCain, just back from brain surgery.  Bet you didn't see that coming.  

After a slew of numerous deaths of black Americans at the hands of trigger-happy police, Donald Trump suggested how police could do a better job of arresting criminal suspects - namely, rough them up and stop worrying about being so brutal with them.  Even for Trump this is beyond the pale.  Bet you didn't see that coming.

Despite having placed himself on the side of gays, lesbians and bisexuals in the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump tried to get transsexuals thrown out of the military, only to be met with resistance - real resistance - by the military and by Republican members of Congress as well as Democratic members of Congress.  Bet you didn't see that coming.

I used the word "transsexuals" instead of "transgender" because "gender" is a literary, not a anthropological, term.  Bet you didn't see that coming.

Anthony Scaramucci, the incoming White House communications director, used vulgar language while talking with Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker, and his comments got published because he failed to make clear - he failed to communicate -  to Lizza that his comments were off the record.  Bet you didn't see that coming.

After all the scuttlebutt about Trump possibly forcing Attorney General Jeff Sessions out of his job for failing to back Trump in the Russia investigation and for making it impossible to stop the investigation - and rumors of Trump possibly replacing Sessions with Chris Christie! - Reince Priebus found himself forced out as White House Chief of Staff and replaced by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly.  Bet you didn't see that coming.  

Trump said he would sign the Russia sanctions bill passed by Congress, mainly because it included tough sanctions on Iran.  Now Putin hates him.  Bet you didn't see that coming.

The only senator other than Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky to vote against the Russia sanctions bill was Vermont independent Bernie Sanders, but he did so because of the Iran sanctions that were included, saying that "following Trump's comments that he won't re-certify Iran’s compliance with the nuclear agreement I worry new sanctions could endanger it."  Bet you didn't see that coming.

Also . . . the U.S. men's soccer team won the 2017 Gold Cup, defeating Jamaica 2-1.

Bet you didn't see that coming.   

Trumpcare Mark Two

They . . . did it!

House Republicans voted to overturn the Obama health care law wth one vote more than necessary.  This revised bill proposes does everything the failed bill did -  causing 24 million Americans to lose their coverage, using the savings from the bill for a tax cut for the one percent, cutting Medicaid and defunding Planned Parenthood, and increasing premiums on older Americans.

So what's the difference between this bill and the one that failed in March?  This one creates a pool of eight billion dollars to help people with pre-existing conditions, a tweak inserted by Republican Representative Tom MacArthur of New Jersey, which has no chance of actually working.

In other words, it doesn't help anyone with pre-existing conditions.  It only pretends to.

"Insurers will take the money and still charge sick people much higher premiums," says former Labor Secretary Robert Reich in explaining MacArthur's tweak. "Or avoid sick people altogether."

I'm furious at a certain party right now.  I mean the Democrats.  They spent Obama's two terms losing one election after another, they refused to even comment on the health care law in their campaigns, they rigged the 2016 primaries and caucuses to nominate the most beatable Democratic candidate for President since Walter Mondale, and they couldn't even pick up a Senate seat in Louisiana or a House seat in Kansas in special elections that were held after Trump won.  They didn't even stop the first Trumpcare bill (public outcry did).

House Democrats started singing the chorus of the sixties classic rock song "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" to Republicans, suggesting that the Republicans would be out the door in the next election, but it's the wussy Democrats who should be shown the door - preferably the door to an empty ten-story elevator shaft.  They are completely useless as a party of the people - they're too busy hanging out at Metropolitan Museum of Art galas or hobnobbing with celebrities who regularly attend them - and the party's national committee has even insisted, responding to a class-action lawsuit brought by Bernie Sanders supporters accusing the Democratic National Committee of fraud in the presidential nomination contest, that it has the right to tip the scales to get the presidential nominee it wants over the choice of the people.    

Time for the Democrats to go the way of the Whigs.

The bright side of the Trumpcare bill?  It's not likely to survive in the Senate. 

Resist The Democratic Establishment

Okay, I was wrong.

I'd given up on activism and thought that resistance to Trump was futile.  I was pretty much expecting his atrocious health care bill to pass, that there was nothing the people could do about it, that phone calls and town halls weren't going to help, and there was nothing the Democrats could or would do about it.

That last point was the only thing that turned out to be true.

The people stopped this bill cold dead, and congressional Democrats simply stayed on the sidelines and watched the show.  Apparently, the only member of Congress who had anything to do with helping to organize voters was Bernie Sanders, and he's only an independent who caucuses with the Senate's Democrats. 

Sanders, who has been helping the Democrats with "outreach" efforts, may have inadvertently proved that the people can form a new party if they so choose.  They certainly have the energy.  Sanders is now the most popular politician in the country right now, and his efforts at organizing people to help the Democrats may very well end up hurting them.  There are calls for a convention to start a new party; the resistance against Trump may lead to just that, meaning that the people are going to have to resist the Democratic Party as well.

So where does that leave Martin O'Malley (you knew  I was going to bring him up eventually)?

It's quite simple, really.  With Sanders clearly too old to run for President in 2020, O'Malley should tap into the progressive movement and be ready to jump ship and join whatever new party may emerge if necessary.  In the meantime, he should keep doing what he's been doing - connect with grass-roots activists, help progressives get elected to local office, and show up at every demonstration for which he's available.  He should also keep tabs on the issues, go over policy with aides and advisers, and formulate an agenda to serve as a counterpoint to Trump's - and come up with a strategy to sell it.  He already has an idea to reform the Affordable Care Act - an all-payer system, the system used in his home state of Maryland and explained in greater detail in this New Republic article from David Dayen.    

No one is paying attention to O'Malley right now, which may be a good thing.  He can spend a lot of time under the radar building a strong foundation for another presidential run.  And don't be surprised if he does end up running in 2020 . . . and as something other than a Democrat.     

How To Precede?

President Obama is losing his battle with the Supreme Court before it's even ruled on his landmark health care legislation, and he started off on the wrong foot in his mouth this past Monday when he suggested that a declaration of the law as unconstitutional would be breaking precedent. "I would just remind conservative commentators that for years what we've heard is the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint, that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law," he said. Well, this is a good example."

During his speech Tuesday to the convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, after it became apparent that Obama had somehow forgotten about the landmark 1803 Marbury v. Madison case that invalidated a law affecting the judiciary that was passed by a democratically elected Congress, setting such a precedent of declaring laws unconstitutional, the President attempted to clarify his remarks. He did so in a statement full of long pauses, suggesting that Solicitor General Donald Verrilli isn't the only one in Washington who has trouble making a verbally coherent legal case:

"The point I was making is that the Supreme Court is the final say on our Constitution and our laws, and all of us have to respect it. But it's precisely because of that extraordinary power that the court has traditionally exercised significant restraint and deference to our duly-elected legislature, our Congress. And so the burden is on those who would overturn a law like this."

He seemed to suggest that the Court should always hold back every time Congress passes a law that's constitutionally dubious, and some took his ongoing remarks as an attempt to intimidate the justices into upholding the law. White House press secretary Jay Carney had to clarify the clarification.

"It's the reverse of intimidation," Carney insisted. "He's simply making an observation about precedent and the fact that he expects the court to adhere to that precedent." But as Carla Johnson of the Associated Press pointed out, an overturning of the health are law, while it would be unusual, would "not be unprecedented, even under the very narrow terms Obama and [Carney] later attached to his comments."

In short, the White House hasn't explained anything about the standard of judicial precedent after three attempts in as many days.

If President Obama - a constitutional law professor - can't articulate an understanding of the role of precedent at the Supreme Court, how does he expect the rest of us to understand it? 

Know Your (Lack of) Rights

In staging a U.S. House hearing on the need to preserve religious freedom by giving employers the right to deny contraception and birth control coverage, and having an all-male panel of witnesses, the Republicans appear to have shot themselves in the feet. They appear to be wrecking their changes of electoral success in November, right?

Not so fast. The GOP may be driving moderates and most female voters away with their assault on women's rights, but they're energizing more Christian conservatives into showing up at the polls this fall and possibly making the difference in close congressional elections, as well as in the presidential election . . . where a few thousand or even a few hundred popular votes can swing a state's electoral college votes toward the Republicans. The strategy already seems to be working in the U.S. Senate campaign in Massachusetts, which has a large working-class Catholic population; woman of the people Elizabeth Warren seems to be in trouble in her bid to unseat incumbent Cosmo boy Scott Brown.

Oh yeah, the singling out of this particular aspect of the Affordable Care Act could attract independent and establishment Republican voters who don't care about contraceptive coverage but detest the health care law to come out and vote, because the law includes a government mandate for everyone to buy medical insurance. Such voters may see the contraceptive coverage requirement as a reminder of the idea of government intrusion into health care, not necessarily as a way to keep women down. They may vote Republican simply to get the law repealed.

Meanwhile, the Fat Man In the State House, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, vetoed a bill allowing gay marriage in the Garden State after both houses of the New Jersey legislature approved it with solid majorities. They just don't have enough votes to override it. This will help Christie shore up his bona fides with the national right-wing movement - look for lots of out-of-state money to pour into his campaign for re-election next year - and position him for a presidential run in 2016 or 2020.

Despite ample evidence that the majority of voters always reject by popular vote the extension of rights to others - in New Jersey itself, the all-male electorate voted down a referendum to grant women the vote in the state in 1915 - Christie prefers to have the gay marriage issue voted on by referendum. How many states have placed a referendum on gay marriage before the voters? 31. How many of these referenda have passed? Zero. Christie says he respects the intelligence and integrity of the voters to make the right decision on the issue. Why would they - they voted for him, didn't they?

The only people who should vote on civil rights are legislators. The Democrats in New Jersey have made it clear that they won't stand for a referendum on this issue, which would likely fail. They also plan to garner enough votes to override Christie's veto before the current legislative session ends in January 2014. Personally, I think gay marriage has a better chance of passing by referendum. :-(

Obama Turnaound?

If and when Barack Obama's Presidency turns around, we'll only know the moment that it did from hindsight, but I have a sneaky suspicion that it may be coming soon or may have already happened. On his listening tour of key Midwestern states, the President defended his health care reform plan and even tried to turn the phrase "Obamacare" from a pejorative to a badge of honor, saying that it means that he cares about people's health coverage and that his opponents obviously don't. But that's not the moment that will possibly be seen as his turnaround moment.

On the issue of jobs, Obama, says he plans to announce a sweeping jobs program (including, I assume, infrastructure repair) and dare the Republicans to oppose it, as many in the Democratic party base and the media have urged him to do. But he won't offer it until September, even though Chris Matthews seems to think that it would be wise for Obama to call Congress in session now. But Obama may be wise to wait. Who follows politics in August anyway? I mean, apart from Matthews? Right after Labor Day - a day honoring workers - would be a perfect time to galvanize his base and get people's attention, when everyone's settling into their regular routines. As for passing a jobs bill now, that's not going to employ the jobless any faster than passing it in September would. But that doesn't matter, as Republicans seem hell-bent on taking the dare and blocking it. And what better time to make them take the dare to oppose a jobs bill than when people are just beginning to focus on Washington again?

Meanwhile, Republican attempts to have two Democratic state senators in Wisconsin recalled failed, as both Democrats fended off GOP challenges yesterday in the second round of recall elections there. So, despite coming up one seat short of taking over the state Senate, Wisconsin Democrats have won four out of five recall elections and may have one Republican senator, the aforementioned Dale Schultz, on their side in opposing Governor Scott Walker's most extreme reforms. And they have more of an impetus to get Walker to face a recall election in 2012. So if this is a victory for the reactionaries (don't call them "conservatives," it's a misleading label suggesting that the American right shows restraint), I'd love to hear how.

And I'd love to hear from Mitch McConnell how the idea of the U.S. becoming more like European countries - and getting public medical insurance, paid family leave, paid child care, low homicide rates, quality public transportation, superior public education, and the opportunity to buy a Volkswagen Polo - is a bad thing.

Senate Sickness

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid vowed never to bring a health care repeal vote to the Senate. So Mitch McConnell - the leader of the Republican Senate minority - found a way to do it for him. Thanks to a parliamentary trick, health care repeal is being considered by the Senate as an amendment to an airport construction bill.

What does one have to so with the other? Absolutely nothing - but it does put the 52 Democrats and independent Bernard Sanders of Vermont on record of defending a law twice invalidated by Republican judges and also blocked from implementation by Republican governors, including Florida governor and noted Medicare bilker Rick Scott. This gambit is a foolhardy play by the Republicans, who are talking about health care at a time when the voters want the government to do more about the economy. This is why the Democrats lost the House in 2010 and why Democrats in both houses are talking about the economy today. And the GOP wants to repeal the health care law just as more people are learning of its benefits and as the law becomes more popular.

The amendment will likely be defeated. And we'll still get better airports. But with right-wing activists having successfully blocked many of President Obama's initiatives so far, and with many of his other proposals concerning education and infrastructure looking more like pipe dreams every day, the prospect of making America a more civilized place - or, at least, a civilized place in the first instance - seems a whole lot dimmer than this time two years ago. :-(

Republicans Make Me Sick

The worst of the storm affecting the country hasn't come to pass in the Northeast yet, so I'm still here as of this writing (obviously). And while I am, I'd like to pick apart the Republicans who are working tirelessly to end health care reform.

While Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell pushes for a repeal vote in that chamber, a federal judge in Pensacola, Florida has decided that the health care law as passed by Congress - not just the individual mandate, but the entire legislation (including the part that bars denal of coverage for pre-existing conditions) - is a violation of the interstate commerce clause in the Constitution. Then-Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum - one of the prosecutors in the impeachment and trial of President Bill Clinton - filed suit against the new health care law last year and saw to it that it was tried in Florida's most right-wing city. Two judges in the federal court system have upheld the law, but two others - including the Pensacola judge, Roger Vinson - have ruled against it, and so now it is being appealed by both sides.

Does the law stand a chance of staying on the books? It now depends on the Supreme Court. Which is my way of answering, "No."

I'm giving up on the idea that this country can make any meaningful strides toward progressive reform. It's not that Americans don't care; it's that the right is too daunting an enemy to fight. They have the courts on their side (especially the highest court in the land), and they're bankrolled by wealthy business leaders who like the status quo - a status quo in which workers and middle-class Americans keep getting held back or keep being forced to run in place. Their support for the status quo isn't a conservative position; it's a reactionary position.

I could suggest that when the Supreme Court does hear this case, the justices will strike down only part of the law (the mandate, say), but of course that's not a plausible scenario. If you disagree, go to last year's Citizens United decision, which struck down campaign finance laws dating back to the presidency of Roosevelt - Theodore Roosevelt - and opened the floodgates for corporate campaign money with no realistic chance of closing them. Citizens United was suing on a free speech question of a smaller scope - the proposed broadcasting of an anti-Hillary Clinton film that could be called a "documercial." In any event, this country is ruled by people who would stand to lose a lot of power and influence if the health care law is allowed to kick in. If the law gets kicked out, the losers will by the fifty million Americans who can't get health insurance otherwise. And don't expect Barack Obama to do something about it in Washington. He's only the President down there.

I'm hoping Ed Schultz comments on this revolting development sometime the week. I only hope that, when he does, I'll have the cable and/or electrical service to see it. In the meantime, I saw his show last night and he's lost little if any of his fire due to the change of format and time slot. And - telephone and text message surveys are back! "Psycho Talk" is gone, but at least there's the daily survey.