BS: Keeping Democrats honest

Subject: RE: BS: Keeping Democrats honest
From: Leadfingers
Date: 12 Oct 07 - 09:23 AM

Quote " An HONEST politician is one who STAYS bought" --Al Capone !

And 100

Subject: RE: BS: Keeping Democrats honest
From: Leadfingers
Date: 12 Oct 07 - 09:24 AM

Damn ! It said 99 when I posted !! Ah Well !!

Subject: RE: BS: Keeping Democrats honest
From: artbrooks
Date: 12 Oct 07 - 01:15 PM

Hyperbole, LH, is always interesting, but seldom useful. It is very true that the health care system in the US needs a significant amount of reform, especially in terms of coverage for those with lower than average incomes (who are those who most often lack health insurance) and in the context of pharmaceutical costs. However, your example is misplaced. My dad died of cancer earlier this year, and he also required extensive (and expensive) treatment in his last months. His care was paid for entirely through our tax-supported medical insurance program and the family's out-of-pocket expenses were minimal.

Subject: RE: BS: Keeping Democrats honest
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Oct 07 - 01:35 PM

Well, I'm glad to hear that. I think, though, that it is those in lower income brackets in any society who most need to be protected by a universal health care system. That's the idea behind such a system. The idea is that no one will be unable to afford needed medical treatment nor will they have to purchase expensive insurance from a privately owned insurance company. What do you think of insurance companies in a general sense? Do you think they are good samaritans? I think they're in it strictly for the money. I think they'll do anything they can to weasel out of paying an insurance premium if they can find a way, because they're doing it to make money, not to help people.

Same deal goes for banks actually, but we need them because we cannot trust our fellow man enough to keep our money at home and feel remotely safe doing so...

It's a sad situation indeed. People should not have to fear these sorts of things in a properly functioning human community.

I would far rather pay a normal and predictable amount of yearly tax, along with everyone else, in a reasonably egalitarian manner, and have free medical coverage in return for a portion of it...than be suddenly confronted with a dire medical emergency that wipes me out financially. And so would anyone else with half a grain of sense.

Of course, if you think it's never going to happen to YOU....then that's a different matter, isn't it?

Maybe that's the attituded behind the whole neocon movement in the USA: "It's never gonna happen to me. I'm too special. Things like that just happen to poor people, foreigners, and losers, right? God protects his own, and that's why it won't happen to ME."

Subject: RE: BS: Keeping Democrats honest
From: artbrooks
Date: 12 Oct 07 - 02:52 PM

What do you think of insurance companies in a general sense? is really a difficult question to answer...rather like asking what does one think of grocers or automobile manufacturers. There are a great many insurance companies, all or which, in one way or another, seek to make some sort of return on the investments of their owners/stockholders. Some are certainly more rapacious than others; the worst are those who are like the sub-premium mortgage brokers, who draw their customers from the ranks of those who have no viable alternatives.

My own best guess (and I'm sure the numbers are out there, but I don't really feel like looking them up) is that the health insurance companies which cover the largest number of people do so through some kind of employer contract - for example, Blue Cross/Blue Shield or Kaiser. Employers and employees share the cost; the employer share is generally well above half. Because of their sheer volume, they are able to negotiate rates with doctors, hospitals and other medical providers that are much lower than what "private pay" people are charged. For example, a physician might charge $98 for an office visit, but their "reasonable and customary" rate is $32, and that's what they pay. By agreeing to be part of that company's provider network, the doctor agrees to accept that fee and not go after the patient for the balance. I rather doubt that this figure ever represents a loss for the provider! The difficulty comes when a patient lives outside a metropolitan area, where there are few providers who will accept an insurance company's payment as payment in full; then the patient gets stuck with the balance. My own experience with Blue Cross is that they rarely question a charged service...other people have had different experiences with other companies.

The Medicare program in the US covers the elderly (65 and over) and a few special category people. It is basically the same as a group insurance program - there are premiums, Medicare negotiates a rate with providers, there are often "co-payments" that the patient must make (over and above what Medicare pays) and not all providers participate in the program - again, this issue is more acute outside of urban areas. Medicaid covers the poor, generally at no cost to them. The largest group that we need to "fix" is those whose income is too high to qualify for Medicaid, yet whose employers don't have a medical insurance program in which they can participate or one which they can afford.

Subject: RE: BS: Keeping Democrats honest
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Oct 07 - 03:43 PM

Well that's all fine, art. I think in a society that provides universal health coverage from public funding and also provides plenty of opportunity for private-owned health insurance companies...which is what we do in Canada...I think that provides the best of both worlds.

That way everyone has a choice of which way they want to go, right?

The biggest weakness in our public health insurance system in Canada is this: it does not cover dental care. It should. Dental care is very, very expensive, and I have known a good many people who simply could not afford it, and as a result their health was directly affected in a very serious way.

It's a hole in the Canadian system that should be fixed.

Subject: RE: BS: Keeping Democrats honest
From: artbrooks
Date: 12 Oct 07 - 03:46 PM

If Canadian taxpayers pay for their health care through taxes and also pay for private insurance, are they paying twice for the same coverage? Do the two separate programs overlap or complement each other?

Subject: RE: BS: Keeping Democrats honest
From: Peace
Date: 12 Oct 07 - 06:20 PM

I pay into both. There are some differences. Medicare does not cover drug costs or perhaps a private room in hospital. What's covered by Medicare are the basics. Extras have to be got at some other way. Hope that helps.

Subject: RE: BS: Keeping Democrats honest
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Oct 07 - 06:44 PM

No, I don't think they're paying for the same thing twice. In any case, I am happy to pay some taxes that help protect the general public against illness even if I NEVER get sick myself. It could be spent a whole lot worse than that, I figure.

Anyone who wants to opt for private insurance in addition to our publicly funded medicare, that's their privilege. Some people do get private dental insurance, precisely because it is not publicly covered. I've thought about it.

Subject: RE: BS: Keeping Democrats honest
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 Oct 07 - 01:54 PM

Washington Post:

Flower-Power Pork

By Robert D. Novak
Thursday, October 18, 2007; Page A25

Will the Democratic-controlled Senate approve a $1 million earmark to celebrate Woodstock-era baby boomers, carved out of a bill funding health care and education? It will, because it is sponsored by New York's influential Democratic senators, Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer. It will, because they are promoting the pet project of a big-time Democratic campaign contributor.

Nevertheless, as the Senate began consideration of the Labor/Health and Human Services/Education appropriations bill yesterday, Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma proposed an amendment to eliminate the earmark. The $1 million would go to the performing arts center of the Bethel Museum in Liberty, N.Y., at the site of the original 1969 Woodstock festival. Coburn argues that a "taxpayer-funded Woodstock flashback" would cut into the government's Education for Homeless Children and Youth Program grants.

That fits a new approach in Coburn's crusade against earmarks. He has told his colleagues that their addiction to pork wastes money that otherwise would build bridges, regulate mine safety and litigate civil rights cases. All to no avail so far. The lawmakers still embrace pork and reject Coburn by the same big margins by which they passed the infamous Alaskan "Bridge to Nowhere" in the previous Congress.

Even by congressional standards of shamelessness, the Bethel earmark is extraordinary. "What Cooperstown is to baseball," says the museum's Web site, quoting from a New York Times story, "Bethel could be to the baby boom." Earlier this year, Bethel advertised a "Hippiefest" as a "return to the flower-powered days of the 1960s."

Bethel typifies the earmark epidemic because political insiders are often found pushing pork. The museum is funded principally by billionaire Alan Gerry's foundation, which has annual investment income of $24 million. Federal Election Commission records show that Gerry has donated at least $229,000 to political campaigns, and his wife, Sandra, has contributed $90,000 over the past 10 years (including $26,000 in the last election cycle to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, headed by Schumer). On June 30, the Gerrys gave the maximum $9,200 to Clinton's presidential campaign, three days after the two New York senators put the Bethel earmark into the Labor-HHS bill.

The same appropriations bill is packed with other funding earmarks that Coburn said could have helped children instead. Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa earmarked $900,000 for the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation. Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont put in $100,000 for the Lake Champlain Quadricentennial. The two Virginia senators, Republican John Warner and Democrat Jim Webb, inserted $150,000 for the Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center.

Coburn is after bigger game. He is trying to eliminate $3.7 million in grants to labor unions requested by Harkin and Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. Coburn also seeks to remove $1.7 million added to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention budget to fund a Hollywood liaison to advise doctor dramas and $5.1 million for "audio visual integration" in the CDC's new communications and visitors center named for Harkin.

In the previous money bill before the Senate, funding Commerce, Justice and science, Coburn tried on Oct. 4 to redirect $2.5 million in earmarks -- mainly for museums -- to fund the prosecution of unsolved civil rights cases. That failed 61 to 31. On Sept. 12, Coburn lost, 63 to 32, in seeking to eliminate six out of 600 earmarks in the Transportation and Housing and Urban Development appropriations. These included a new baseball stadium in Billings, Mont. He was beaten 82 to 14 when he attempted to defer all earmarks until defective bridges are repaired.

Democratic party-line voting belies claims of a new climate on Capitol Hill. On the 61-to-31 Commerce vote, for instance, only two Democrats -- Evan Bayh of Indiana and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin -- voted against earmarks. But Coburn also was opposed by 17 Republicans (including Mel Martinez of Florida, the party's general chairman, and the top GOP members of the Appropriations Committee).

After his customary overwhelming defeat on the Transportation-HUD bill, Coburn blamed the Minnesota bridge failure on Congress: "We failed to make good decisions. We failed to direct dollars where they were needed most because this body is obsessed with parochial pork-barrel politics." Other senators hate it when the plain-spoken obstetrician from Muskogee, Okla., talks that way, but they figure hardly anybody -- including the media -- is listening.

Subject: RE: BS: Keeping Democrats honest
From: Donuel
Date: 18 Oct 07 - 02:05 PM

First we freeze all their assets and bank accounts foreign and domestic.



and keep it that way.

Subject: RE: BS: Keeping Democrats honest
From: beardedbruce
Date: 22 Oct 07 - 02:58 PM

from the Washington Post:

Dishwashers for Clinton

Once again, a zeal for campaign cash trumps common sense.
Monday, October 22, 2007; Page A22


DONORS WHOSE addresses turn out to be tenements. Dishwashers and waiters who write $1,000 checks. Immigrants who ante up because they have been instructed to by powerful neighborhood associations, or, as one said, "They informed us to go, so I went." Others who say they never made the contributions listed in their names or who were not eligible to give because they are not legal residents of the United States. This is the disturbingly familiar picture of Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign presented last week in a report by the Los Angeles Times about questionable fundraising by the New York senator in New York City's Chinese community. Out of 150 donors examined, one-third "could not be found using property, telephone or business records," the Times reported. "Most have not registered to vote, according to public records."

This appears to be another instance in which a Clinton campaign's zeal for campaign cash overwhelms its judgment. After the fundraising scandals of President Bill Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign, the dangers of vacuuming cash from a politically inexperienced immigrant community should have been obvious. But Ms. Clinton's money machine seized on a new source of cash in Chinatown and environs. As the Times reported, a single Chinatown fundraiser in April brought in $380,000. By contrast, 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry raised $24,000 from Chinatown in the course of his entire campaign.

As with the warnings it dismissed about the mega-bundles being brought in by fundraiser Norman Hsu, the Clinton campaign saw the red flags here. After the April fundraiser, when some of the donors' stated occupations seemed out of line with the amounts they were giving, the Clinton campaign wrote to contributors asking them to confirm that the money was their own. In the case of seven $1,000 contributions, donors did not respond and their checks were returned, according to the campaign. The campaign says that the others, including one who told the Times that he did not give the money, reaffirmed the legitimacy of their contributions.

It's certainly true, as campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson says, that "Asian-Americans in Chinatown and Flushing have the same right to contribute as every other American." The campaign argues that it did what it could to ensure that contributions were legal. The alternative, the campaign says, would be to prevent those with foreign-sounding names from participating in the political process. But there's another alternative: to strengthen a vetting process that seems geared more toward justifying the acceptance of checks than toward uncovering problems.

Subject: RE: BS: Keeping Democrats honest
From: GUEST,Started the thread
Date: 09 Dec 07 - 01:39 AM

A Democrat dreamed it up, the Democratic congress is passing it. The Democrats are trying to make anti-government thought illegal:

On October 23rd of this year, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 passed 404 to 6 in the House. This bill is proposing an expansion of Homeland Security with the objective of spying on citizens whose political or religious beliefs might lead them to commit violent acts. And we are not referring to the attack of Megan Williams or the numerous police murders of non threatening civilians. No this is solely about spying on political dissidents whose politics were shaped through a critical analysis of US Foreign or Domestic policies.

The stated purpose of this bill is to first assemble a National Commission on the Prevention of Violent Radicalization and Ideologically Based Violence. Secondly, they will create a university-based Center of Excellence to study radicalization and homegrown terrorism.

Their definition of what defines radical and terrorism are very vague, and can be manipulated to serve several purposes. In the bill itself, it says homegrown terrorism means "the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence" by a native citizen of the United States. It is this definition that is leaves so much of this bills purpose, open to interpretation....

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=43&ItemID=14396

Excellent timeline at:

http://www.kickthemallout.com/article.php/Story-Bill_of_Rights_Attack_Timeline

Subject: RE: BS: Keeping Democrats honest
From: GUEST,Started the thread
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 01:15 PM

...The real venom in Pelosi's comments was reported by Washington Post Capitol Hill columnist Dana Milbank, one of those in attendance at the press interview. While Pelosi invariably maintains a publicly smiling posture, he wrote, "her spirits soured instantly when somebody asked about the anger of the Democratic 'base' over her failure to end the war in Iraq."

"Look," she said, "I had, for five months, people sitting outside my home, going into my garden in San Francisco, angering neighbors, hanging their clothes from trees, building all kinds of things—Buddhas? I don't know what they were—couches, sofas, chairs, permanent living facilities on my front sidewalk."

Pelosi continued: "If they were poor and they were sleeping on my sidewalk, they would be arrested for loitering, but because they have 'Impeach Bush' across their chest, it's the First Amendment."

Pelosi is married to a multimillionaire investor, and her comments were charged with social resentment as well as political hostility. The antiwar protesters are not only unwelcome because they expose her hypocritical pretense to opposing the Iraq bloodbath—they are dirty, ragged and disreputable, and irritate the neighbors.

Pelosi's remark—imagine that riffraff "sleeping on my sidewalk"—is reveals the enormous social distance between the masses of working people, housewives, students who oppose the war, and the privileged ruling elite. And her disparaging reference to the First Amendment demonstrates the hostility of a big business politician towards the democratic rights of the working class....

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/oct2007/pelo-o15.shtml

Subject: RE: BS: Keeping Democrats honest
From: Stringsinger
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 04:38 PM

"Emanuel's aides said he was willing to talk to Sheehan and her cohorts, but he and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) and incoming Rules Committee Chairman Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) headed inside the Cannon Caucus room when it appeared the shouting would not stop...."

First of all, Emanuel and Hoyer had plenty of opportunity to talk to and with Cindy Sheehan but made their position quite clear that they were opposed to her. There was nothing left to do but protest their ignoring of her. The Democratic Party headed by the DLC have no intention of honoring the dissent by many of the Democratic base as being valid. They have stated that the progressives will just have to go along with their decisions about how the Party should be run because they have no alternative.

No, the alternative is not to support the Party regulars like Emanuel and Hoyer. If the base abandons the Party, it will be because the DLC with Emanuel and Hoyer no longer reflect the values of the Democratic Party. The DLC'ers are looking more like Republicans every day. There's not much difference between the stated views of Hillary and Bush.

Frank Hamilton