A bloc of African American House Democrats, angry and worried that not enough is being done about high unemployment by the administration, forced the postponement of a much-anticipated vote Thursday on comprehensive financial regulation reform.
The Financial Services Committee had finished hearing amendments around 3 p.m. and recessed, planning to return at 4 for a final vote on the package. But during the break, some of the Democrats on the committee buttonholed Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and told him they wouldn’t vote for the bill because of the deepening problem of unemployment in their districts.
The refusal to vote for the package, a key priority of the administration, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in particular, was portrayed as a direct rebuke of the White House’s “lack of response to the economic situation.”
“We will not be proceeding to passage today,” Frank began. “I have been meeting with members of the committee, particularly the members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who have informed me that they are troubled by what they believe is the lack of response to the economic situation that is confronting them on the part of the administration, and therefore do not feel that they could — in deference to the various constituencies that they represent — vote for passage.”
The CBC met earlier this week with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and expressed dissatisfaction with the administration’s response to the unemployment situation, an aide familiar with the meeting said.
Scientists in Norway have identified a mutated form of the swine flu virus that is raising concern because it was found in two patients who died of the flu and a third who was severely ill with the disease, officials announced Friday.
In a statement, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health said the mutation “could possibly make the virus more prone to infect deeper in the airways and thus cause more severe disease.”
Scientists have analyzed about 70 viruses from confirmed Norwegian swine flu cases and found the mutation in only those three patients, Geir Stene-Larsen, the institute’s director general, said in the statement.
“Based on what we know so far, it seems that the mutated virus does not circulate in the population, but might be a result of spontaneous changes which have occurred in these three patients,” the statement said.
The institute has been analyzing H1N1 virus from “a number of patients as part of the surveillance of the pandemic flu virus,” the statement said. “The viruses have many similarities, but some mutations have been observed.”
While the existence of mutations is normal, and most “will probably have little or no importance,” the statement said, “one mutation has caught special interest.”
The two patients who had the mutation and died were the first swine flu fatalities in Norway. The third patient found to have the mutated form of the virus also became severely ill.
First there was Medicare for all 300 million of us. But that was a non-starter because private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn’t hear of it, and Republicans and “centrists” thought it was too much like what they have up in Canada — which, by the way, cost Canadians only 10 percent of their GDP and covers every Canadian. (Our current system of private for-profit insurers costs 16 percent of GDP and leaves out 45 million people.)
So the compromise was to give all Americans the option of buying into a “Medicare-like plan” that competed with private insurers. Who could be against freedom of choice? Fully 70 percent of Americans polled supported the idea. Open to all Americans, such a plan would have the scale and authority to negotiate low prices with drug companies and other providers, and force private insurers to provide better service at lower costs. But private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn’t hear of it, and Republicans and “centrists” thought it would end up too much like what they have up in Canada.
So the compromise was to give the public option only to Americans who wouldn’t be covered either by their employers or by Medicaid. And give them coverage pegged to Medicare rates. But private insurers and … you know the rest.
So the compromise that ended up in the House bill is to have a mere public option, open only to the 6 million Americans not otherwise covered. The Congressional Budget Office warns this shrunken public option will have no real bargaining leverage and would attract mainly people who need lots of medical care to begin with. So it will actually cost more than it saves.
But even the House’s shrunken and costly little public option is too much private insurers, Big Pharma, Republicans, and “centrists” in the Senate. So Harry Reid has proposed an even tinier public option, which states can decide not to offer their citizens. According to the CBO, it would attract no more than 4 million Americans.
It’s a token public option, an ersatz public option, a fleeting gesture toward the idea of a public option, so small and desiccated as to be barely worth mentioning except for the fact that it still (gasp) contains the word “public.”
And yet Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson mumble darkly that they may not even vote to allow debate on the floor of the Senate about the bill if it contains this paltry public option. And Republicans predict a “holy war.”
But what more can possibly be compromised? Take away the word “public?” Make it available to only twelve people?
Our private, for-profit health insurance system, designed to fatten the profits of private health insurers and Big Pharma, is about to be turned over to … our private, for-profit health care system. Except that now private health insurers and Big Pharma will be getting some 30 million additional customers, paid for by the rest of us.
Upbeat policy wonks and political spinners who tend to see only portions of cups that are full will point out some good things: no pre-existing conditions, insurance exchanges, 30 million more Americans covered. But in reality, the cup is 90 percent empty. Most of us will remain stuck with little or no choice — dependent on private insurers who care only about the bottom line, who deny our claims, who charge us more and more for co-payments and deductibles, who bury us in forms, who don’t take our calls.
I’m still not giving up. I want every Senator who’s not in the pocket of the private insurers or Big Pharma to introduce and vote for a “Ted Kennedy Medicare for All” amendment to whatever bill Reid takes to the floor. And if this fails, a “Ted Kennedy Real Public Option for All” amendment. Let every Senate Democratic who doesn’t have the guts to vote for either of them be known and counted.
I got a fresh turkey today at Trader Joe’s, and I don’t know whether to keep it in the fridge or freeze it. (The sell-by date on the label is Nov. 30th.)
Gene Lyons in Salon on the myriad forces that insist we can’t afford health care, but just as strongly assure us that $6.73 trillion for the war in Afghanistan is perfectly doable. (That’s $1 million per soldier, per year.) Go read the whole thing:
For all its brutality, the Taliban rebellion is mainly a localized, nationalist effort to expel foreigners — one reason Gen. McChrystal hopes to be able to pacify them, as his mentor Gen. David Petraeus bought off Iraqi insurgents. With winter approaching, Taliban fighters will soon be forced into semi-hibernation. Any U.S. buildup will take at least a year to complete.
The big rush, in other words, has less to do with military necessity than with Washington political theater: specifically, the war lobby’s ability to force President Obama’s hand. Actually, “war industry” might be more apt. It’s both more concise than the “military-industrial complex” President Eisenhower warned against and it takes into account the “privatization” of military jobs once done by soldiers — such as driving supply convoys (Halliburton), guarding embassies and other U.S. facilities (Blackwater) and training Afghan soldiers (DynCorp International).
[...] Following upon David Barstow’s 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times exposé about blatant conflicts of interest among Pentagon-coached retired generals posing as disinterested “military analysts” on every TV news network you can think of, Americans can no longer afford to be blasé about the war industry.
They’re selling us endless war the way they sell cellphones and Viagra.
The question is: How much is President Obama buying?
I dunno. Even if we got him canned, do you think they’d hire anyone much different to replace him?
A Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) member said there’s “growing consensus” among liberals that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner should step down.
Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said Wednesday that he and other liberal House members are becoming increasingly tired of Obama administration economic policies that they say are too focused on maintaining the stability of Wall Street firms and largely ignore “Main Street.”
“A growing consensus in the caucus ,” DeFazio said on MSNBC this evening, adding that some lawmakers are “considering questions regarding him and other economic advisers.”
DeFazio said that lawmakers have not yet drafted a plan to remove Geithner. The lawmaker also took aim at top Obama economic adviser Larry Summers for furthering many of the same policies favored by Geithner.
Let’s see: No new jobs, benefit extensions screwed up and Christmas is coming. (But hey, at least Wall St. had its best year evah!)
You’d think the administration and Congress would be doing something about this, but you’d probably have better luck asking Underdog:
Nov. 19 (Bloomberg) — The number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits held at a 10-month low last week, a sign firings are letting up as the economy recovers.
Initial jobless claims were unchanged at 505,000 in the week ended Nov. 14, in line with the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The number of people collecting unemployment insurance dropped in the prior week, while those getting extended payments jumped.
The loss of 7.3 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007, the biggest drop of any postwar economic slump, makes an acceleration in firings less likely as consumers begin to spend. A rebound in hiring may take longer to develop as companies have ample room to boost hours for current employees before taking on additional staff.
“The labor market is improving, but at a glacial pace,” said Tom Porcelli, a senior economist at RBC Capital Markets in New York, who had forecast claims would fall to 503,000. “People are having a hard time finding a job as companies remain wary of the economic recovery. We expect it will be a jobless recovery.”
A computer glitch is causing “widespread” flight delays , the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
The Federal Aviation Administration says the problem is connected to processing flight plan information. The paper said delays are being reported at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, one the nation’s busiest airports.
An FAA spokeswoman says the problem is “widespread,” but did not immediately know how many airports were affected.
AirTran tells Atlanta’s WXIA that the airline has canceled six flights out of Atlanta and delayed 30.
Update at 8:41 a.m. ET: “We are having a problem processing flight plan information,” FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen says in a statement. “We are investigating the cause of the problem,” she says. “We are processing flight plans manually and expect some delays.”
I’m still trying to find out if I’m eligible for this extension, because if I’m not, I’m screwed. I was on hold for two hours today and I still don’t know.
MADDOW: “And then there’s this, a Biblical quote making the rounds in anti-Obama circles, as reported this week in The Christian Science Monitor: Pray For President Obama – Psalm 109 Verse 8. What’s Psalm 109:8? Well, it reads ‘Let His Days Be Few, And Let Another Take His Office.’ Let his days be few. Uh, it’s followed immediately by another verse: ‘Let His Children Be Fatherless, And His Wife A Widow.’
And don’t forget, that sentiment is now being merchandized on bumper stickers, on mouse pads, on teddy bears, on aprons, framed tiles – those are nice – keepsake boxes, T-shirts. Let his days be few, ha, ha, on a teddy bear. Is anybody else creeped out by this?
Joining us now is Frank Schaeffer, whose father Francis Schaeffer helped shape the evangelical movement in the United States. Mr. Schaeffer grew up in the religious far-right. He’s the author of ‘Patience With God: Faith For People Who Don’t Like Religion Or Atheism.” Mr. Schaeffer, thanks very much for coming back on the show.”
SCHAEFFER: “Thanks for having me on.”
MADDOW: “‘Let his days be few and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.’ This is such strong language in secular terms about President Obama. Can you tell me if this means something less threatening to people hearing this in a Biblical context?”
SCHAEFFER: “No, actually it means something more threatening.
I think that the situation that I find genuinely frightening right now is that you have a ramping up of biblical language, language from the anti-abortion movement, for instance, death panels, and this sort of thing, and what it’s coalescing into is branding Obama as Hitler, as they have already called him, as something foreign to our shores -we’re reminded of that, he was ‘born in Kenya’ – as Brown, as Black, above all, as not us. He is Sarah Palin’s ‘not a real American.’
But now, it turns out, that he joins the ranks of the unjust kings of ancient Israel, unjust rulers, to which all these Biblical allusions are directed, who should be slaughtered, if not by God, then by just men.
So there’s a direct parallel here with Timothy McVeigh’s T-shirt on the day of the Oklahoma City bombing, in which he said that the ‘tree of liberty had to be watered occasionally by the blood of tyrants,’ and that quote we saw again at a meeting at which Obama was present being carried on a placard by someone carrying a loaded weapon.
What we’re looking at right now is two things going on. We see the evangelical groups that I talk about in my new book, ‘Patience With God,’ enthralled by an apocalyptic vision that I go into in some detail in there. They represent the millions of people who have turned the ‘Left Behind’ series into best-sellers. Most of them are not crazy, they’re just deluded. But there is a crazy fringe to whom all these little messages that have been pouring out of Fox News, now on a bumper sticker, talking about doing away with Obama, asking God to kill him…
Really, this is trawling for assassins. And this is serious business. It’s un-American, it’s unpatriotic, and it goes to show that the religious right, the Republican far-right, have coalesced into a group that truly wants American revolution, and if it turns out to be blood in the streets and death, so be it. This is not funny stuff any more. They cannot be dismissed as just crazies on the fringe. It only takes one.”
- snip -
MADDOW: “And, to be clear, I mean, over-the-top political criticism is as American as apple pie, and incredibly intense criticism has been leveled at George W. Bush and against every President that’s gone before him in modern times, but you’re saying that there is essentially a religious inflection in the most extreme of the commentary against Obama that’s operating on a religious level, that’s a signal to a religiously-minded audience.”
SCHAEFFER: “Absolutely. Look. This is the American version of the Taliban. The Taliban quotes the Qu’ran, and al Qaeda quotes certain verses in the Qu’ran, in or out of context, calling for jihad, and bloody war, and the curse of Allah on infidels. This is the Old Testament, Biblical equivalent of calling for holy war. Now, most Americans’ll just see the bumper sticker and smile and think that it’s facetious. Unfortunately, there are 22 million Americans or so who call themselves super-conservative evangelicals. Of this, a small minority might be violent. But, the general atmosphere here is really getting heated.
And what surprises me is that responsible, if you can put it that way, Republican leadership and the editors of some of these Christian magazines, etc. etc., do not stand up in holy horror and denounce this. You know, they’re always asking ‘Where is the Islamic leadership denouncing terrorism? Why aren’t the moderates speaking out?’ Well, I challenge the folks who I used to work with… I would just say to them: ‘Where the hell are you? This is not funny anymore. And be it on your head if something happens to our President…”
