Health care reform poll

A New York Times/CBS poll, conducted June 12-16, finds the American people way ahead of politicians in acceptance of real reform in health care.

When asked: "Would you favor or oppose the government's offering everyone a government administered health insurance plan like Medicare that would compete with private health insurance plans?"

Overall: 72% favor, 20% oppose
Republicans: 50% favor, 39% oppose
Democrats: 87% favor, 9% oppose
Independents: 73% favor, 22% oppose

That's pretty striking, given that it's seems such a difficult thing to accept in the halls of Congress. Of course, the insurance companies are not paying the people in the street, like they are those in the halls of Congress.

Question: "Would you be willing or not willing to pay higher taxes so that all Americans have health insruance that they can't lose no matter what?"

Overall: 57% willing, 37% not willing
Income > $50,000: 64% willing, 27% not willing
Income < $50,000: 52% willing, 44% not willing

Question: ""Which is a more serious problem right now: keeping health care costs down or providing health insurance for Americans who do not have any?"

All respondents: costs down 26%, provide insurance 65%
Republicans: costs down 52%, provide insurance 42%
Democrats: costs down 15%, provide insurance 78%
Independents: costs down 24%, provide insurance 64%

If our Congress listened to the people instead of the insurance industry, effective health care reform with a public option would be a slam-dunk.

Ralph

Daschle explains

Tom Daschle responded to a question from the Washington Post:

WP: You made headlines the other day for dismissing the need for a public plan. Want to talk a bit more on that?

TD: I don't know where that came from. We've been pushing back on that all day. I didn't say that. I have said emphatically I support a public plan. A Medicare-for-all public plan. Any federal plan. For all the reasons that have been made for years. It's important for cost, for choice, for competition, for popularity. I strongly support it.

What I did say is that I'm willing to compromise on most things to bring the package across the line. The plan we agreed to yesterday was that states could offer public plans with a federal fall back. That's not my first, second, or third choice. But given the concessions my colleagues made on universal coverage and an employer mandate and everything else, that's the essence of compromise.

I think the problem here is that the negotiating and compromising are being made before the plan is presented, so it looks like those we counted on (the Senate, Tom Daschle, maybe Obama) are giving away the key element without a fight.

Ralph

And now the House plan for health care

We've been hearing mostly from the Senate Democrats who say health care reform cannot pass with a public option plan.

Then today, House Democrats released a plan that is the joint work of their three committees involved. It not only has a robust public plan, but these Democratic chairmen are adamant and ready to fight for it. As reported by HuffingtonPost:

Where the Senate Finance Committee's outline of a bill didn't include a public health insurance option for people to buy into, the House version includes a robust public plan that would operate nationally and compete with private insurers on a level playing field to keep them honest.

The public plan would be self-sustaining and not subsidized by the federal government, although an upfront infusion of capital would be needed. It would initially be tied to Medicare reimbursement rates, to capitalize on the existing infrastructure, but would evolve into a separate plan that paid higher rates. Participation by doctors would be voluntary.

Rangel described the public plan as "the best of Medicaid, best of Medicare, then kick it up a notch." The chairmen estimated the plan would cover 95 percent of Americans.

While the Senate has cowered from the debate over a public option in the face of Republican and conservative Democratic opposition, Rangel said he relishes the battle.

"I'm anxious to take on those people who oppose a public option," he said. He'll have public opinion on his side. A recent poll showed 3 out of 4 people want a public plan as part of health care reform. "We've got the momentum."

Waxman told the Huffington Post after the press conference that the public plan is "essential," when asked if reform was possible without it. "I think it's essential to the reform as outlined by the president and as the three congressional committees have set forth. I'm not gonna say nothing's off the table, because we have a lot of ideas on the table that many of us don't agree with. But from my point of view, I think it makes the health care system work to have competition, which means public choice for those who are seeking health coverage."

At least we now have some champions of a public plan besides the lone Senate Socialist/Independent Bernie Sanders (VT) who has a single-payer plan.

Ralph

Day of dismay

Today, I'm feeling dismay on several fronts.

1. Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei's Friday prayer sermon indicates that, at least temporarily, the hard liners still have control and intend to crack down on the protest movement. He declared the election an "absolute victory" for Ahmadinejad, has denied a permit for Saturday's rally, which will lead to a bloody confrontation with paramilitary forces. It could be a massacre.

It's a critical point, and it looks like the work of Rafsanjani behind the scenes was not successful. So it's either have the protest fizzle out or be squashed by a violent confrontation with government forces.

2. Obama's caution and waffling on gay rights issues is beyond what seems necessary to avoid having it be a distraction from his necessary other key issues of the economy and health care reform. His slight expansion of partner benefits for federal employees is just too little to make up for foot-dragging on DOMA and DODT, to say nothing of egregious defense of DOMA in a court case. My head tells me that he's being the practical politician; my heart feels like he has betrayed his promises to the gay community.

3. The battle for effective health care reform seems about to be lost. Tom Daschle and his pals at the Bipartisan Policy Center are advising Obama to drop the public option. And the Senate Finance Committee's proposal doesn't even mention public option. And this is in spite of 70% support from the American people for some form of public plan.

Without the public option plan, real change is not going to happen. It was predictable when single-payer wasn't even on the agenda; the strategy should have been demand single-payer and compromise for public option plan. Instead, there was half-hearted support for public option, which lost out in the compromise.

They're hiding behind the spectre of excessive cost. The Congressional Budget Office has given a price tag far higher than Obama had estimated. So now all those who've been collecting big bucks from the insurance companies are saying we can't afford it (big surprise).

Well, we could afford the Iraq war; we could afford to bail out the banks and the auto industry; we can afford all the new fighter planes congressmen want; we can build roads to nowhere in Alaska. But there's no money left for effective health care reform. So we'll get a watered-down version, which will give a few more people health insurance, but it won't save money, and will eventually be declared unworkable. "See," the Repubs say, "we told you so."

Bah, humbug.

Ralph

Tom Daschle - conflict of interest?

Obama's first choice for Health and Human Services and White House Task Force on Health Care Reform was former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle. His nomination was withdrawn when it conflicted with Obama's "no lobbyists" in the WH administration policy and some questionable tax problems.

And a good thing too. Now he's saying that Obama's plan for a public option policy will not pass Congress and he should abandon it.

This comes as a report from the Bipartisan Policy Center, which was formed by former Senate majority leaders Tom Daschle, Bob Dole, and Howard Baker. Although the specific health care plan they put forth was funded entirely by the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, a non-profit, respected organization that funds educational and health care projects, it is also true that both Daschle and Dole are members of the Alston + Bird law firm that is heavily into lobbying on health care issues for the health care industry itself.

Sam Stein, writing at HuffingtonPost, says:

Neither Dole nor Daschle lobbied on these or any matters. The two former majority leaders have steered away from the lobbying title, with Daschle holding the post of "Special Policy Adviser," and Dole going by "Special Counsel." But the two -- Daschle in particular -- are reportedly used by the firm in a way that resembles lobbying: drawing in clients and helping them chart ways to get their legislative priorities achieved.

As I've said before, Daschle used to seem like an ideal candidate for HHS, but not any more. It's a good thing his appointment was stopped before he had the power of the administration behind his efforts.

Something seems to happen to former politicians when they go into the private sector and make a lot of money. In Daschle's case, I think his obvious change began with the designer red glasses.

Ralph

Thursday in Iran

Reza Aslan on Rachel Madow's tv news show:
Thursday is gearing up to be a hugely significant day for the Green Uprising. Reza Aslan appeared on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show tonight, and laid out the importance of what is going to happen:

What's really fascinating about what's happening right now in 2009 is that it looks a lot like what was happening in 1979. And there's a very simple reason for that. The same people are in charge -- I mean, Mousavi, Rafsanjani, Khatami, Medhi Karroubi, the other reformist candidate -- these were all the original revolutionaries who brought down the Shah to begin with, so they know how to do this right.

And so what you're going to see tomorrow is something that was pulled exactly out of the playbook of 1979, which is that you have these massive mourning rallies, where you mourn the deaths of those who were martyred in the cause of freedom. And these things tend to get a little bit out of control, they often result in even more violence by the security forces and even more deaths, which then requires another mourning rally which is even larger, which then requires more violence from the government, and this just becomes an ongoing snowball that can't be stopped.

That's how the Shah was removed from power, was these mourning ceremonies. And so Mousavi very smartly calling for an official -- not a rally -- but an official day of mourning tomorrow. I think we're going to see crowds that we haven't even begun to see yet, and then follow that, on Friday, which is sort of the Muslim sabbath, the day of prayer, which is a traditionally a day of gathering anyway. This is just beginning, Rachel, this is just the beginning.

The thuggish police raid and murder of students in their dorms at the university follows this pattern. It led to massive resignations by faculty. Then at the hospital where the injured students were taken, the medical staff staged a strike for 2 hours, just standing silently outside the hospital in their white uniforms.

And Nico Pitney, speaking on Charlie Rose's show said that, among other things, massive numbers of Iranians spend from 10 to 12 each night on their rooftops shouting, so that there is this wave of human noise across the city.

This seems too big to be contained.

Ralph

"Is Revolution Brewing in Iran?"

Nathan Gonzalez, author of "Engaging Iran" and fellow at the Truman National Security Project, has this comment on HuffingtonPost:

The supreme leader of Iran has two clear choices: Save the fragile legitimacy of the Islamic Republic by calling for new elections, or move toward a system that increasingly looks like a dictatorship, in which all pretensions of popular will are thrown by the wayside. Either choice may be a losing proposition for the Islamic ruling elite in the long run. But what is certain is that a massive confrontation with the people of Iran very seldom benefits those in power, something Khamenei and his fellow revolutionaries from the class of 1979 know all too well.

That sounds like a reasonable assessment of the situation.

Ralph

The times, they are a-changing

There was a time, only a few years ago, when support for gay rights would have been considered a risky stance to take; many politicians might privately support them but would not publicly say so.

Now in the state of Washington, there is a petition circulating for Referendum 71, seeking to overturn a new state law that grants same-sex domestic partners many of the rights married couples enjoy.

Opponents of the referendum have put up a web site with the intention of posting the names of all those who sign the petition. It's apparently legal since state law says that a name on a petition is public information.

The point here is: public opinion has shifted to the point that, in just a few years, opposition to gay rights is seen as a political liability, rather than the opposite -- at least in some areas.

Now, if we can just get Obama to have the courage of his convictions and move on dismantling Don't Ask/Don't Tell. And he has some explaining to do about his DoJ's court brief that defended the Defense of Marriage Act, using language that you'd expect from Pat Robertson. Someone slipped up badly there. Claiming they are required to defend existing law is not sufficient -- that is not actually required and certainly not in language that goes even beyond the law itself.

Wake up, Barack. I know you're busy, but it would take only one small executive order for you to end military discharges of gay service people: it's called a stop-loss order, and it's been used for other purposes to keep needed soldiers from being discharged.

The times, they are a-changing -- and faster than you realize.

Ralph

Fast-breaking news from Iran

CNN's Iranian expert Reza Aslan reported this:

There are very interesting things that are taking place right now. Some of my sources in Iran have told me that Ayatollah Rafsanjani, who is the head of the Assembly of Experts -- the eighty-six member clerical body that decides who will be the next Supreme Leader, and is, by the way, the only group that is empowered to remove the Supreme Leader from power -- that they have issued an emergency meeting in Qom.

Now, Anderson, I have to tell you, there's only one reason for the Assembly of Experts to meet at this point, and that is to actually talk about what to do about Khamenei. So, this is what I'm saying, is that we're talking about the very legitimacy, the very foundation of the Islamic Republic is up in the air right now. It's hard to say where this is going to go.

Another source suggested that they may not replace Khamenei but could force him to drop his support for Ahmadinejad.

And then Nico Pitney, who has been keeping a running blog on this crisis through his twitter contacts with people in Iran, says only a few people know whether the election was actually a fraud; but he offers these two important points:

But what we have is evidence of two key problems: 1) highly improbable outcomes in the alleged vote count, and 2) allegations of fraud from people in the position to know the truth. Let me briefly address both.

1) As a smart Iranian-American reader pointed out, the best evidence of potential fraud is that the alleged results indicate that Mousavi did not even win his hometown. Now, Mousavi comes from a minority background in Iran, and in his hometown, virtually everyone is from the same minority. As the reader noted, "it's almost like having Obama getting only 20-30% of the African American vote." It's not direct evidence of fraud -- just highly improbable.

2) As to serious allegations of fraud, I present you with this excerpt from NYT executive editor Bill Keller's first piece from Iran:

One employee of the Interior Ministry, which carried out the vote count, said the government had been preparing its fraud for weeks, purging anyone of doubtful loyalty and importing pliable staff members from around the country.

"They didn't rig the vote," claimed the man, who showed his ministry identification card but pleaded not to be named. "They didn't even look at the vote. They just wrote the name and put the number in front of it."

So, there you have it, as of 2:00am.

Ralph

Good news

McClatchy Newspapers reports that Iran's most senior cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri had denounced the election results:

"No one in their right mind can believe" the official results from Friday's contest, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri said of the landslide victory claimed by Ahmadinejad. Montazeri accused the regime of handling Mousavi's charges of fraud and the massive protests of his backers "in the worst way possible."

"A government not respecting people's vote has no religious or political legitimacy," he declared in comments on his official Web site. "I ask the police and army personals (personnel) not to 'sell their religion,' and beware that receiving orders will not excuse them before God."

I don't know how much power Ayatollah Montazeri has, but in a virtual Islamic theocracy, being the senior cleric must count for a lot.

Ralph

Obama vs McCain

On the Today show, Sen. John McCain said that President Obama should make a forceful declaration about the election in Iran. "He should speak out that this is a corrupt, fraud, sham of an election. The Iranian people have been deprived of their rights."

President Obama said this:
". . . the easiest way for reactionary forces inside Iran to crush reformers is to say it's the US that is encouraging those reformers. So what I've said is, `Look, it's up to the Iranian people to make a decision. We are not meddling.' And, you know, ultimately the question that the leadership in Iran has to answer is their own credibility in the eyes of the Iranian people."

How short a time it has been since both Hillary Clinton and John McCain were claiming that Barack Obama was too inexperienced to handle complex foreign affairs and to be commander in chief.

So, who looks unpresidential now? Even right-wingers and neo-cons are praising Obama's handling of the Iran crisis. Bot Pat Buchannan and Bill Crystal have said so.

Ralph

Iran again

It's not clear what it will lead to, but the big news coming out of Iran is that the Guardian Council, which I gather is a sort of wise overseer of the government, has agreed to a recount of the votes.

It could, of course, mean that this too will be a sham designed to legitimate the fraud; but I sense that it may be an honest move.

Meanwhile, despite criticism from politically motivated clowns on the right who say he should be declaring outrage, Obama has taken just the right stance: saying that we have no way of knowing whether the election results are valid, since we had no monitors in the country, but that Iranians need to feel their ballots matter, and he urged a recount. He also deplored the violence and the crackdown on peaceful demonstrations. He also said he didn't want to say anything that would inject the U.S. into Iranian internal divisions. It would be a mistake to make it seem that the protests were a U.S. backed uprising.

He also spoke directly to the Iranian youth: "And particularly to the youth of Iran, I want them to know that we in the United States do not want to make any decisions for the Iranians, but we do believe that the Iranian people and their voices should be heard and respected."

Just the right touch of restraint, respect for the people, but holding to the values of self-determination and the right to peaceful protest.

Ralph

Iran investigation?

After appearing to completely accept the (probably) fraudulent re-election of Ahmadenijad, the Supreme Islamic Leader Khamenei met with reform candidate Mousavi and then announced an investigation of his claims of election fraud.

The question is: does this mean anything? Here's Nico Pitney's take on it (HuffingtonPost):

Understanding Khamenei's voter fraud shift. It's still unclear why Khamenei decided to announce a probe of possible election fraud, or what that investigation might look like. (It was strange enough that he came out on Sunday and re-blessed Ahmadinejad's victory.)

Justifiably skeptical readers note that, at the very least, this announcement can buy the Supreme Leader time and relieve some of the urgency felt by pro-Mousavi Iranians.

Another emailer, Reza, is even more pessimistic: "Please put the Supreme Leader's request to probe the election results in perspective for your readers. The body that will be probing election is appointed by the Supreme Leader and all its members are hardliners and backers of Ahmadinejad and his policies. This is nothing but a sham in an attempt to extinguish the fever for change that's taking hold in the country."

This may very well be true. On the other hand, Khamenei is most certainly feeling pressure from various quarters -- popular unrest, the more ideologically-moderate camp of former President Rafsanjani, a host of Ayatollahs, and so on -- to address the election allegations. And it's unclear at this point how Khamenei addresses any of those pressures by having a sham probe give a seal of approval to the results.

So, we wait. Khamenei is in a delicate balance: he wants to retain the power of the clerics, yet if he crushes the reform movement in an obvious way -- as in this clumsily stolen elections and the reaction to the protests up to now -- then his international standing is seriously jeopardized, just when Iran is making a bid for acceptance.

The European Union was too quick to recognize Ahmanedijad's "victory." The Obama administration is taking the better stance of waiting.

Ralph

The amazing Obama

Blogger Tom Engelhardt of TomGram writes about Obama's amazing political skills.

And the president himself, well, if you didn't watch his speech in Cairo, you should have. The guy's impressive. Truly. He can speak to multiple audiences -- Arabs, Jews, Muslims, Christians, as well as a staggering range of Americans -- and somehow just about everyone comes away hearing something they like, feeling he's somehow on their side.

And it doesn't even feel like pandering. It feels like thoughtfulness. It feels like intelligence.

If, in a Star-Trekkian mode . . . you could transport yourself back to early 2003 and tell just about any American what's coming, you might have found yourself institutionalized. If you had said that the new norm would be a black president with Reagan-like popularity, Kennedy-like charisma, and Roosevelt-like skills in the political arena, leading a majority Democratic Congress in search of universal health care, solutions to global warming, energy conservation, and bullet trains, your listener might, at best, have responded with his or her own joke: "A priest, a rabbi, and a penguin walk into a bar..."

But it's true, and he is for real.

Ralph

Senator Whitehouse

Remember the name: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (RI). A lot of us regreted when Senator Lincoln Chafee -- the lone liberal Republican senator -- lost his bid for re-election in 2006.

But no more. The man who defeated him, Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehous is proving himself to be a formidable member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who is conducting an investigation into the bush administration's torture policy. In his position, he has read all the classified reports concerning the interrogations, particularly of Zubaydah, who was famously waterboarded. This led Whitehouse to make this astounding statement in a speech on the Senate floor last week:

I want my colleagues and the American public to know that, measured against the information I’ve been able to gain access to, the story-line that we have been led to believe, the story-line about waterboarding that we have been sold, is false in every one of its dimensions, and I ask that my colleagues be patient and be prepared to listen to the evidence when all is said and done before they wrap themselves in that story-line.

This is the clearest refutation yet of dick cheney's claims in his effort to write his version of history into the books before the real evidence is released.

I've watched Whitehouse in committee hearings. He is impressive. More than anyone I know, he impresses me as future presidential material. But could a man with the name of Whitehouse really be elected to live and preside in the White House? I suppose so, but if you were writing a novel, your editor would say "no way; you've got to change his name."

Ralph

Iran blows up

Juan Cole has a good analysis of what probably happened in the Iranian election.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/06/13/iran/

His conclusion is that the election was a "last-minute and clumsy fraud," by a central government that was caught by surprise but was determined not to let reformist candidate Moussavi win.

It's the pattern of supposed voting that makes no sense. Ahmadinejad reportly won by a 63% majority that was spread rather uniformly across the country, in cities as well as countryside. It makes no sense that Ahmadinejad would have run equally strongly in areas where he was popular as in areas where his challenger had aroused the most enthusiasm.

Urban youth and women were especially strong supporters of Moussavi, and they turned out in huge numbers to vote -- and yet the official results show that their support for the reform candidate was less than their vote for the reform candidate in 1997 and 2001.

Cole points out that a carefully planned theft of the election would at least have conceded his home region of Tabriz to Moussavi. But official results have Ahmadinejad winning Tabriz by 57%.

Will it have much pracical significance? Some say not, since the president does not have much power; the government is run by the theocrat, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

What does seem evident at this point is that the obvious fraud has galvanized the resistance; there is even some talk among correspondents of a possible overthrow of Khamenei -- or at least a loss of power possibly leading to replacing him, if not the government.

What remains to be seen is how far the violent resistance will go. As of this moment it seems to be escalating. This, combined with the crackdown on the international media and the blacking out of all email communciation, suggest a very serious problem and certainly a black eye on the Iranian government's attempt for acceptance on the world stage.

Ralph