Republican Hypocrisy # 258

Maybe not 258. I lost count, but it's a lot of hypocrisy.

Here's the latest, reported by Greg Sargeant on his blog, The Plum Line:

Multiple Republican Leaders Voted In 2003 For Measure Similar To Current “Government Euthanasia” Bill

GOP officials John Boehner, Thaddeus McCotter, Johnny Isakson, and Chuck Grassley all voted in 2003 for a measure very similar to the one in the current House health care bill they now suggest in various ways could lead to government-encouraged euthanasia.

As Time’s Amy Sullivan reported late last night, Grassley voted for the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill, which — ready? — provided coverage for “counseling the beneficiary with respect to end-of-life issues and care options, and advising the beneficiary regarding advanced care planning.”

The only difference between the 2003 bill and the House Dem one that’s inspired the “euthanasia” talk, Sullivan reports, is that the earlier one “applied only to terminally ill patients.”

Let’s go back and check the roll call on that 2003 vote to see who else voted for it. Turns out Boehner, McCotter and Isakson all did, too.

Boehner and McCotter, as you know, have said that Medicare coverage of end of life consultations could lead to “government encouraged euthanasia.” While Isakson supports end of life counseling generally, he opposes the House bill because it allows “government to incentivize doctors by offering them money to conduct end-of-life counseling.” Grassley said people are “right to fear” that government could “decide when to pull the plug on grandma.”

Fun postscript: GOP Rep. John Mica of Florida voted for the 2003 bill — and last week he denounced the current House measure for creating Medicare-funded “death counselors.”

Sergeant gave an update: Boehner's office resonded that the comparison is "idiotic."

Please explain how it's idiotic, Sen. Boehner.

Ralph

Debunking the myths

Going back to Reagen's "welfare queens," opponents like to spotlight worst case abuses or failure of government plans they are trying to destroy. The 'death panel' hysteria is only the latest example. Well, here's a rebuttal, from blogger "Jane D." on TPM:

. . . The real mistake, far more ominous for its ignorance, are the mistaken assumptions flourishing in the media about "hell hole socialist countries" and "death panels."

I live in such a country (France) though I am American and I should probably go ahead and admit that I am also a citizen of the place.

I haven't blogged in here much lately because I was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and I've just (today even) gotten a letter from one of those "death" panels. Amazingly, I wasn't shaking when I got the letter. They are called Medical Councils here and they determine whether someone is eligible or not for 100 percent medical coverage provided by the state, due to a prolonged illness that is in no way the fault of the patient.

This "Council" provides an essential service that is desperately needed in the US. It makes a decision about a patient's health that does not depend upon considerations like age, income, pre-existing conditions or lifestyle. The council has only one question to answer: does the patient have an illness (or trauma) that requires long term treatment? If the answer to that question is yes, the person is immediately covered at 100 percent for the duration of the illness. The [British] NHS functions in the same way . . .

In every country, there is a percentage of the population that falls victim to these situations. Our consistent inability to provide sustained medical care to these people regardless of income is the main reason we are a country that spends the highest percentage of our GDP (16 %) on healthcare of any developed country while maintaining the highest unnecessary death rate among these countries.

Let's stop the hype and starting looking at the facts.

I just watched Michael Moore's "Sicko" again last night. Although it came out a couple of years ago, it is highly relevant to the current health care debate -- and just as trenchant.

Ralph

Krugman on Grassley

Uber-economist Paul Krugman is taking on the disloyal opposition to Obama's health care reform and the futility of his attempt at bipartisanship (NYT today):

Yet the smear [the 'death panel' lies] continues to spread. And as the example of Mr. Gingrich shows, it’s not a fringe phenomenon: Senior G.O.P. figures, including so-called moderates, have endorsed the lie.

Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, is one of these supposed moderates. I’m not sure where his centrist reputation comes from — he did, after all, compare critics of the Bush tax cuts to Hitler. But in any case, his role in the health care debate has been flat-out despicable.

Last week, Mr. Grassley claimed that his colleague Ted Kennedy’s brain tumor wouldn’t have been treated properly in other countries because they prefer to “spend money on people who can contribute more to the economy.” This week, he told an audience that “you have every right to fear,” that we “should not have a government-run plan to decide when to pull the plug on grandma.”

Again, that’s what a supposedly centrist Republican, a member of the Gang of Six trying to devise a bipartisan health plan, sounds like.

So much, then, for Mr. Obama’s dream of moving beyond divisive politics. The truth is that the factors that made politics so ugly in the Clinton years — the paranoia of a significant minority of Americans and the cynical willingness of leading Republicans to cater to that paranoia — are as strong as ever. In fact, the situation may be even worse than it was in the 1990s because the collapse of the Bush administration has left the G.O.P. with no real leaders other than Rush Limbaugh.

The question: does Obama have the fire in the belly to fight this? The time for calm reason has passed; this hysteria from the right cannot be reasoned away. A passionate counter-argument that keeps the focus on the real issues, in simple terms, is what's needed.

He can do it -- and Bill Clinton can help, as he did yesterday speaking to a convention of progressives. But he's got to give up on his idea of making nice with the nasties.

Ralph

"Bipartisan" farce

I think Obama has given bipartisanship a good try, and it didn't work. So it's time to cut the losses and the losers (Sen. Grassley, I mean you) and get on with passing a decent health care reform bill without the Republicans.

Arianna Huffinton got it right, I think, when she appeared on MSNBC's Countdown:

She argued that President Obama needs to give up his delusion that both parties and industry interests can all come together to achieve real health care reform. She said the president needs to realize that "there is a whole industry here working against reform and the president needs to stop acting as though everybody's interests are aligned." Arianna added that to accomplish meaningful reform with a public option and the ability to negotiate for lower drug prices, Obama should be saying: "If you are with us, come on board. If you are not, get out of the way."

I think he should also come out swinging and insist on his public health plan. It's the only way any significant savings are going to happen, and in fact even that is a small, pale imitation of what we should be working for: a single pay system.

The people would accept it, if you believe the polls. Sure there's opposition from the industries that would be affected. What's new about that?

We have to get over the idea that our first responsibility is to commerce and that the business of health care is more important than health care.

Go for single payer and phase it in over a long enough period of time for the insurance indurstry to adapt. It's not like there's no precedent for industry having to adapt to innovations. Do you see any typewriter manufacturers being propped up by governmental subsidies? They learned how to make computers or ATM machines or whatever. They adapted. So can Cigna and the Blues.

Ralph

Unveiling Cheney

Perhaps the most secretive, as well as the most powerful, vice president in history, Dick Cheney is now allowing the veil to lift a bit, seemingly motivated to set the historical record straight (from his point of view), as well as to continue to push for what he believes is necessary to save this country.

I was struck by these passages in an article in the Washington Post, "Cheney Uncloaks his Frustration with Bush," by Barton Gellman.

Cheney's disappointment with the former president surfaced recently in one of the informal conversations he is holding to discuss the book with authors, diplomats, policy experts and past colleagues. By habit, he listens more than he talks, but Cheney broke form when asked about his regrets.

"In the second term, he felt Bush was moving away from him," said a participant in the recent gathering, describing Cheney's reply. "He said Bush was shackled by the public reaction and the criticism he took. Bush was more malleable to that. The implication was that Bush had gone soft on him, or rather Bush had hardened against Cheney's advice. He'd showed an independence that Cheney didn't see coming. It was clear that Cheney's doctrine was cast-iron strength at all times -- never apologize, never explain -- and Bush moved toward the conciliatory."

Listen to the implications here: "Bush moved away from him. . . . an independence that Cheney didn't see coming." It seems clear that Cheney considered his own position to be the center of the administration, that he once had Bush enmeshed within that center, and that he then lost that hold on him. Early jokes about ventriloquists and dummys were too simplistic -- but not wrong. Cheney didn't just pull strings: he exerted the powerful influence of his conviction and manipulated the information that went to the president, and always managed to be the last one in the room when Bush made decisions. He was too subtle to be easily dismissed as a puppeteer, but no less powerful.

I do not believe that Cheney was corrupt in the sense of egregious personal gain. But I do believe that his arrogant certitude of the rightness of his way and his utter determination to increase the singular power of the "unitary presidency" against all encroachments by Congress or the Courts, bordered on fascism. If you only consider the ways in which he managed to ignore and manipulate the Constitution's separation of powers, there would arguably be reason for impeachment.

Here's more from Gellman's article:

"If he goes out and writes a memoir that spills beans about what took place behind closed doors, that would be out of character," said Ari Fleischer, who served as White House spokesman during Bush's first term.

Yet that appears to be precisely Cheney's intent. Robert Barnett, who negotiated Cheney's book contract, passed word to potential publishers that the memoir would be packed with news, and Cheney himself has said, without explanation, that "the statute of limitations has expired" on many of his secrets. "When the president made decisions that I didn't agree with, I still supported him and didn't go out and undercut him," Cheney said, according to Stephen Hayes, his authorized biographer. "Now we're talking about after we've left office. I have strong feelings about what happened. . . . And I don't have any reason not to forthrightly express those views."

If this isn't just book hype -- and that isn't like Cheney -- then we may get some interesting revelations. I personally believe that Cheney is a zealot of the highest determination, and that having lost the power of the presidency (once removed) he will use this book to proclaim what must be done and how his efforts to achieve that during his eight years as VP were thwarted by a callow president who became less malleable and ultimately "moved away from" him.

In fact, from the tone of this, it sounds like Cheney might be ready to give up his loyalty to the office of president, now that he's out of office; and we could see the biggest expose of the Bush presidency yet. It would not be tell-all for the sake of gossip, but to advance Cheney's own messiantic worldview -- and to explain how Bush thwarted his grand plans.

Ralph

For shame, Senator Grassley

I'm sorry, but there just are not enough hours in the day to counteract all the lies and distortions that are being fanned into populist rage by Republican elected officials. The latest is Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) who, astoundingly, is telling people they ought to be scared by this "end of life counseling" in the House bill.

Sen. Grassley is none other than the ranking minority member on the Senate Finance Committee that has been dragging its feet in putting out it's health care bill -- because Chairman Max Baucus is trying to get bipartisan support, with his chief negotiator on the committee being Sen. Grassley.

This is absolutely shameful behavior. The Senate Finance Committee should immediately cease going through the charade of trying to water down its bill to get a few Republican votes -- if this is the way they're going to play the game. Just like they did on the stimulus bill.

Sen. Grassley said this at a rally back home, even after Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA) gave an interview to the Washington Post to clarify that he had introduced the amendment to include the funding for end of life counseling in the reform bill from the Health Committee. And he explained that this was only about voluntary planning for living wills and medical powers of attorney for people who are receiving Medicare. It's similar to a bill he had introduced previously.

Isakson went further and told the Washington Post that this did not mean he supported the overall health care reform bill but that "the provision has nothing to do with “death panels” or euthanasia. . . . How someone could take an end of life directive or a living will as that is nuts," he said. “You’re putting the authority in the individual rather than the government. I don’t know how that got so mixed up.”

I'm beginning to think we should stop just blaming all this populist rage on troublemakers and insurance company agitation and wonder: where is all this rage coming from? It's bigger than the health care debate. The bad guys are tapping into something, not just creating it.

Ralph

Silly season has turned into mad dog days

OK, a few weeks back I was referring to the Republicans in Congress as silly clowns, and it was as much amusing as it was maddening.

But now the silly season has turned into the mad-dog days of August.

A man came to President Obama's town hall meeting on health care reform in New Hampshire today with a loaded gun strapped to his leg. Not a concealed weapon; he apparently has a permit to carry a gun. Ostensibly exercising his 2nd amendment rights, yes. But he was also carrying a sign that quoted Thomas Jefferson: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time . . . " And the rest of that quote is " . . . with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

Now does anyone else find this ultra frightening? With all the anger out that ginned up by the right wing and the special interests in killing health care, and the paranoia that's coming out of the woodwork and being aimed at Obama -- I find it horrifying.

Chris Matthews took this man to task but could not get anything out of him except that he was there in a totally non-violent capacity; and, as he said, no one was hurt.

The man did not go into the meeting itself, but was on private property in an adjacent parking lot, and made no attempt to go where Obama was. The Secret Service was on the job. They left the man alone, but not for a second did they take their eyes off him. And I'm sure they were poised to act if he so much as reached for it.

I knew there would be opposition to health care reform, but I did not expect the craziness that has nothing to do with discussing the issues and everything to do with politicians distorting the truth, telling outright lies, and then exploiting the resulting anger.

Won't the summer please hurry and be gone. Maybe cooler weather will help.

Ralph

Repubs use shotgun approach to kill health reform

Taking a page from Dick Cheney's hunting book -- shooting friends in the face with a shotgun on a bird hunt -- the Republicans can't seem to figure out who are their friends and who are the birds they're trying to shoot.

One of their loudest rants is the wild fantasy of a "Death Panel." Last week, Sarah Palin cited this, calling it "downright evil" that someday her Downs baby might have to go before "Obama's Death Panel," to decide whether his level of productivity makes him worthy of health care.

That can only be a psychotic paranoid reaction or a willful distortion. Probably it's a willful distortion designed to play into the paranoia of the fringe-right.

What this section of the bill actually does is provide for funds to be used for consultation about medical advanced care planning -- the kind that all hospitals already urge patients to have. It's called a living will, and it gives the patient the right to say whether he wants to be resuscitated if there's no chance for recovery, or about when to stop treatment in a terminally ill patient that is only artificially being kept alive.

But this is completely voluntary. It has nothing to do with euthanasia or rationing of treatment. The very purpose is to give the patient the right to say for himself -- in advance -- rather than having family or doctors who don't know what they patient would have wanted. And it would have prevented the debacle of Terry Shiavo, which the Republicans didn't handle very well.

And here's the irony that just was made known today:

This section of the bill was authored by a Republican,
Right to Life Senator from Georgia,

Johnny Isakson.

Medical advance planning has been an interest of his for years; he has co-sponsored two bills previously on the subject.

Isn't it about time for him to step up to the plate and set his fellow Republicans straight? His would be the most effective voice to counter the wild distortions?

Ralph

Spreading the truth about health care reform

Give the Obama administration an A for use of technology. They just established a web site to counter the distortions and spread the truth.

WhiteHouse.gov/RealityCheck — to help you separate fact from fiction and share the truth about health insurance reform. Here's a few of the reality check videos you can find on the site:

• CEA Chair Christina Romer details how health insurance reform will impact small businesses.
• Domestic Policy Council Director Melody Barnes tackles a nasty rumor about euthanasia and clearly describes how reform helps families.
• Matt Flavin, the White House's Director of Veterans and Wounded Warrior Policy, clears the air about Veteran's benefits.
• Kavita Patel, M.D., a doctor serving in the White House's Office of Public Engagement, explains that health care rationing is happening right now and how reform gives control back to patients and doctors.
• Bob Kocher, M.D., a doctor serving on the National Economic Council, debunks the myth that health insurance reform will be financed by cutting Medicare benefits.

It's worth looking at if you are confused or need information. Unfortunately, those spreading scare rumors are not interested in the truth; they want to spread lies, because all they want is for Obama's plan to fail. But maybe the scared people will check it out.

Ralph

Krugman praises government's role in recovery

Paul Krugman has been a critic of the economic recovery efforts, his main point being that the stimulus spending was not big enough. Now, with the latest economic indicators pointing in a positive direction, he still says he would have made it bigger; but he's also praising the government for what it did do.

And in doing so, he's taking a swipe at the Republicans who claim that it did too much.

In a New York Times column today, "Averting the Worst," he says:

So it seems that we aren’t going to have a second Great Depression after all. What saved us? The answer, basically, is Big Government.

Just to be clear: the economic situation remains terrible, indeed worse than almost anyone thought possible not long ago. . . . And the job market still hasn’t turned around . . . for now, all we have to celebrate are indications that things are getting worse more slowly.

For all that, however, the latest flurry of economic reports suggests that the economy has backed up several paces from the edge of the abyss.

----------------

So what saved us from a full replay of the Great Depression? The answer, almost surely, lies in the very different role played by government.

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The point is that this time, unlike in the 1930s, the government didn’t take a hands-off attitude while much of the banking system collapsed. And that’s another reason we’re not living through Great Depression II. . . .

From the beginning, I argued that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a k a the Obama stimulus plan, was too small. Nonetheless, reasonable estimates suggest that around a million more Americans are working now than would have been employed without that plan — a number that will grow over time — and that the stimulus has played a significant role in pulling the economy out of its free fall.

All in all, then, the government has played a crucial stabilizing role in this economic crisis.

Ronald Reagan was wrong: sometimes the private sector is the problem, and government is the solution.

And aren’t you glad that right now the government is being run by people who don’t hate government?

Yes, indeed.

Ralph

God plus oil?

What a combination !!

Dick Cheney's quest for oil and George Bush's quest to carry out God's will. That's what led us to invade Iraq. Protecting us from terrorists had little to do with it. That's just how they sold it to a frightened, gullible Congress and the American people.

Cheney and the NeoCon roadmap to secure Mideast oil has been well documented by fellow blogger Mickey Nardo and others.

Now, I just stumbled upon this article on the website of the Council for Secular Humanism, written by James Haught, editor of the Charleston (WV) Gazette. Some excerpts:

A French Revelation, or The Burning Bush
by James A. Haught

Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.

Honest. This isn’t a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.

Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”

This bizarre episode occurred while the White House was assembling its “coalition of the willing” to unleash the Iraq invasion. Chirac says he was boggled by Bush’s call and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs.”

After the 2003 call, the puzzled French leader didn’t comply with Bush’s request.
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Subsequently, ex-President Chirac confirmed the nutty event in a long interview with French journalist Jean-Claude Maurice, who tells the tale in his new book, Si Vous le Répétez, Je Démentirai (If You Repeat it, I Will Deny), released in March by the publisher Plon.
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The French revelation jibes with other known aspects of Bush’s renowned evangelical certitude. For example, a few months after his phone call to Chirac, Bush attended a 2003 summit in Egypt. The Palestinian foreign minister later said the American president told him he was “on a mission from God” to defeat Iraq. At that time, the White House called this claim “absurd.”

http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=haught_29_5

Well, I'm not sure what to say about this. Like so many things, it could be exaggerated, distorted, taken out of context -- but I doubt it's totally made up. And it doesn't really tell us anything new. But it certainly does fill in a gap. Bush himself, of course, was also an "oil man" and maybe needed no further motive. But he was also a "God man" -- or at least posed as one -- and it would not surprise me if he really did see this as a mission from God.

What a combination !! Cheney's Oil and Bush's God.

And what a result !! More than 4,300 Americans dead, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead, an international reputation in shreds, a country desolated, a population displaced, and $1,000,000,000,000 of our treasury down the drain.

Ralph