Sources

¹ ‘The Originalist’ – California Lawyer, January 2011

² ‘Constitution of the United States, Amendments 11-27’ – National Archives of the United States Full text of the 14th Amendment, Article I:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

³ ‘Reed v.Reed’ By Linda Napikoski, About.com

⁴ ‘Scalia: Women Don’t Have Constitutional Protection Against Discrimination’ by Amanda Terkel, Huffington Post, 01/ 3/11

Greenberger added that under Scalia’s doctrine, women could be legally barred from juries, paid less by the government, receive fewer benefits in the armed forces, and be excluded from state-run schools — all things that have happened in the past, before their rights to equal protection were enforced.

⁵ ‘Women Aren’t People Under Scalia’s Constitution’ by Ann Woolner, Business Week, January 06, 2011

That women should have rights equal to men was a radical idea in 1868 when the Reconstruction Amendments passed. (Women didn’t get the federal right to vote for another 52 years.)

At the time, state laws prevented women from owning property, signing contracts, serving on juries. Unmarried women were freer than their married sisters due to notions dating back to English common law.

The “very being and legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage,” explained William Blackstone, the definitive British legal commentator of the 18th century.

It is “consolidated into that of her husband under whose wing and protection she performs everything,” he wrote.

⁶ ‘Justice Scalia’s ‘Originalist’ Hypocrisy’ By Robert Parry, January 5, 2011

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at TheParagraph.com

Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.¹

Though Keller did not argue for not voting, she did express the age-old lament of political progressives, some of whom have withheld their votes so to teach the Democrats (let’s call them TweedleDEE) a lesson. But, as Robert Parry points out, that strategy has not worked to forward progressive policy.² For example, in 1968, many anti-war voters stayed home or voted third-party, instead of voting for the liberal Democratic presidential candidate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who would not come out against the war in Vietnam. An argument that I remember floating around during that race was that it would be better for the hard-right Richard Nixon to win, so to more quickly bring about “the revolution.” With less than a one percent edge in the popular vote, Nixon won the presidency, and broadened the war. During his term, 20,000 U.S. soldiers and millions of Indochinese died. Again, in 1980, many progressive voters stayed home or voted for minor candidates, instead of voting for President Jimmy Carter, whom they viewed as too cautious and too centrist. The polls showed a tight race till close to election day, which would be the first anniversary of Americans being held hostage in Iran. Ronald Reagan pulled ahead and went on to win in a landslide. While the song, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” played on the radio, Reagan enacted policies that drove out manufacturing, damaged unions, turned the nation back to oil-guzzling, and boosted death squads that killed tens of thousands in Latin America. To pressure the Soviets in Afghanistan, Reagan funded Islamist radicals that later formed the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and allowed Pakistan to get the bomb. As a third example, in 2000, some progressives skipped over the centrist Democrat Al Gore to support their fellow progressive, Ralph Nader, running as a Green. These progressives bought into the story that the hard-line neoconservative George W. Bush was actually a moderate Republican — and Nader himself fanned this fable with his statement that “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference” between Bush and Gore. It turned out that votes for Nader in Florida made the race so close that Bush could claim victory and get five Republicans on the Supreme Court to stop the recount – in which Gore, going by the later news consortium recount, would have won.³ The Bush II regime brought damaging wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, secret wiretapping of citizens, cancelling of rights to a fair trial, torture, tax cuts for the rich, cuts in corporate regulation, a crashed economy, a shrunken and battered middle class, and eight years of inaction on global warming. Now, many progressives, once pumped up by the 2008 election, which brought a president that knows progressive policy, and which brought huge Democratic majorities to both houses of Congress, are dispirited by the back-pedaling and the scaled-back legislation enacted. Once again, some progressives talk of not voting or voting third-party in the coming election. But with Republicans more hard-line reactionary than ever, and in view of this history of damage done by not voting Democratic, the choice for progressives — as well as liberals, centrists and conservatives — seems clear: Vote for TweedleDEE!

Tweedledum ( R ) is angry that his rattle is broken, and blames Tweedledee (D), who hides under an umbrella, as Alice tries to sooth. But if the rattle represents the general welfare of the United States, then it would have been Tweedledum himself who had broken it.

Sources

¹ ‘Helen Keller in Her Own Words’ — The Paragraph, February 12th, 2006

² ‘The ‘Teach-the-Dems-a-Lesson’ Myth’:By Robert Parry, Consortiumnews.com, October 15, 2010

³ ‘So Bush Did Steal the White House’ by Robert Parry, Consortiumnews.com, 2001-11-22

Tweedledum and Tweedledee from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll; illustrations by John Tenniel

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at TheParagraph.com

Definition

plutocracy: Government by the wealthy.

¹ ‘Boehner plays politics with plum committee assignments’ By RAY HENRY and DAVID A. LIEB, AP, 2010-10-22

² ‘Five Myths about the Bush Tax Cut’ by William G. Gale, The Washington Post, 2010-08-01

… According to the Congressional Budget Office and other authorities, extending all of the Bush tax cuts would have a small bang for the buck, the equivalent of a 10- to 40-cent increase in GDP for every dollar spent.

Why? As the CBO notes, most Bush tax cut dollars go to higher-income households, and these top earners don’t spend as much of their income as lower earners. In fact, of 11 potential stimulus policies the CBO recently examined, an extension of all of the Bush tax cuts ties for lowest bang for the buck. …

³ ‘Bush II Slowed SEC During Financial Fraud Fury’ — The Paragraph, 2009-06-18

⁴ ‘Median income rose as did poverty in 2007; 2000s have been extremely weak for living standards of most households’ by Jared Bernstein, Economic Policy Institute, August 26, 2008

… the median income of working-age households (those headed by someone less than 65) rose insignificantly in 2007, and was $2,010 below its 2000 level.

…

The poverty rate grew from 11.3% to 12.5%. During the seven-year cycle, the poverty rate declined significantly in only one year (2006). In contrast, poverty rates fell significantly in the 1990s.

The economy of course expanded in the 2000s, but that growth clearly failed to reach most households, a dynamic that implicates growing income inequality.

For example, output per hour, or productivity, grew strongly in the 2000s, up 2.5% per year from 2000 to 2007, compared to 2.0% in the 1990s. Economists consider productivity growth the key determinant of rising living standards. Yet the fact that these disappointing income, poverty, and earnings trends occurred in the context of strong productivity growth is a reminder that in today’s economy, productivity growth creates only the potential for higher living standards. As long as most workers lack the bargaining power to claim their share of the growth they have helped to generate, that potential will not be realized.

⁵ ‘An Inside Story of Wall Street Bank Crashes’ — The Paragraph, December 26th, 2008

⁶ ‘The Money Market Run’ by Matthew Yglesias, Think Progress, 2010-10-25

It would be silly to say that the policies adopted in response to this—TARP and the AIG bailout, primarily—were the only possible responses. But absent some kind of (nominally) costly and unpopular bailout we would have had a costly and unpopular sequence in which people’s “safe” money market accounts were wiped out, to say nothing of perfectly solvent firms being suddenly unable to meet payroll.

⁷ ‘Visiting Obama deserves credit for saving GM, Chrysler’ BY TOM WALSH, Detroit Free Press, 2010-07-30

While the revivals of GM and Chrysler are still works in progress, at least the automakers are still alive to launch the Chevrolet Volt and the new Jeep Grand Cherokee from the Detroit plants Obama will visit. And that’s about as big a triumph as the president can claim from his first 18 months on the job.

Yes, there are still partisan critics sniping about bailouts and “Government Motors.” But make no mistake about the Detroit rescue.
The fact that GM and Chrysler are not only alive but modestly profitable in a weak market, after years of losing billions of dollars when car and truck sales were 50% higher, looks like more than just a successful government intervention.

It looks like a flat-out miracle.

…

Most banks have paid back their bailout money. GM and Chrysler emerged from bankruptcies as leaner companies, repaid loans and stopped losing money. They are moving to shed their government ownership via stock offerings.

⁸ ‘Political party (ab)use of the filibuster in the U.S. Senate’ by thefourthbranch, Daily Kos, 2010-02-18 The numbers show the filibuster rate doubled (139 cloture motions) when Democrats took (the 110th) Congress in 2007. The next note shows the rate continued (123 cloture motions with 3 months to go) in the current, 111th Congress. — Q.H.

⁹ ‘Cloture Motions – 111th Congress’ — U.S. Senate

From January 3, 2009 through September 30, 2010, 123 cloture motions have been filed.

¹⁰ ‘Provisions of the Affordable Care Act, By Year’ — HealthCare.gov

¹¹ ‘Student Loan Overhaul Approved by Congress’ By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and TAMAR LEWIN, New York Times, March 25, 2010

Ending one of the fiercest lobbying fights in Washington, Congress voted Thursday to force commercial banks out of the federal student loan market, cutting off billions of dollars in profits in a sweeping restructuring of financial-aid programs and redirecting most of the money to new education initiatives.

The revamping of student-loan programs was included in — if overshadowed by — the final health care package. The vote was 56 to 43 in the Senate and 220 to 207 in the House, with Republicans unanimously opposed in both chambers.

Since the bank-based loan program began in 1965, commercial banks like Sallie Mae and Nelnet have received guaranteed federal subsidies to lend money to students, with the government assuming nearly all the risk. Democrats have long denounced the program, saying it fattened the bottom line for banks at the expense of students and taxpayers.

“Why are we paying people to lend the government’s money and then the government guarantees the loan and the government takes back the loan?” said Representative George Miller, Democrat of California and chairman of the Education and Labor Committee.

Democrats celebrated the legislation, a centerpiece of President Obama’s education agenda, as a far-reaching overhaul of federal financial aid, providing a huge infusion of money to the Pell grant program and offering new help to lower-income graduates in getting out from under crushing student debt. …

¹² ‘Financial Reform Passes, But What Does That Mean?’ by John Nichols, The Nation, July 16, 2010

Here’s Oregon’s Jeff Merkley, one of the best players in the chamber on regulatory issues:

…

“I am pleased that the final bill includes the Merkley-Levin amendment that will ban high-risk trading inside the banks and put an end to conflicts of interest, where giants like Goldman Sachs bet against the very securities they were selling to their customers.  This provision will encourage banks to return to the days where their main focus was lending.  I can’t thank Senator Carl Levin enough for his tireless work to ensure that our banks won’t engage in high-risk trading and put our entire financial system at risk.

“In addition, I’m pleased that the bill includes provisions I championed to end some of the most egregious mortgage practices that led to the housing crisis and cost millions of families their homes.  The bill will ban steering payments, liar loans, and prepayment penalties and give Americans the transparency they deserve when purchasing their own home.   It will also create a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau dedicated to protecting consumers from financial tricks and traps, such as unfair overdraft fees and exploding interest rates.  

“Now, this bill will not solve every problem in our financial system, and from my perspective, could be stronger in significant ways.  Regulators have been given an enormous amount of responsibility to implement the bill as intended.  In order to ensure that they hold up their end of the bargain, Congress needs to conduct vigorous oversight of government regulators and our financial markets.

¹³ ‘Recovery Act Has Bolstered Clean Energy’ By Kevin Bullis, Technology Review (MIT), Friday, May 7, 2010

Over a year after the Recovery Act of 2009 was signed into law, the U.S. Department of Energy says that $32.5 billion of the $36.7 billion it was authorized to spend is “spoken for,” and nearly 5,000 projects have been funded. The department has selected all but 1 percent of the proposals that will receive grants and contracts. So far, however, only $3.5 billion has actually been spent, and the money has only directly created 22,841 jobs.

This week, the DOE’s senior advisor for Recovery Act implementation, Matt Rogers, provided an update on the department’s progress in identifying projects that will receive funding. While much of the Recovery Act focused on funding for near-term recession relief, including tax relief for individuals and support for local and state governments, the funding allocated to the DOE was mainly for projects with longer term payoffs, including building infrastructure such as wind farms and battery factories and conducting research.

¹⁴ ‘Estimated Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on Employment and Economic Output From April 2010 Through June 2010’ – Congressional Budget Office

CBO estimates that ARRA’s policies had the following effects in the second quarter of calendar year 2010:

• They raised real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) by between 1.7 percent and 4.5 percent,
• Lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 percentage points and 1.8 percentage points,
• Increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million, and
• Increased the number of full-time-equivalent jobs by 2.0 million to 4.8 million compared with what would have occurred otherwise (see Table 1). (Increases in FTE jobs include shifts from part-time to full-time work or overtime and are thus generally larger than increases in the number of employed workers).

¹⁵ ‘Justices, 5-4, Reject Corporate Spending Limit’ By ADAM LIPTAK, The New York Times, January 21, 2010

¹⁶ ‘Outside Spending’ — OpenSecrets.org Chart “Total Liberal vs. Conservative Outside Spending, Excluding Party Committees” includes both corporate and union money, and shows, as of 2010-10-30, $89M going through liberal groups vs. $189M going through conservative groups. — Q.H.

¹⁷ ‘House Republicans Unveil ‘Pledge to America,’ Call for Tax and Spending Cuts’ — Fox News, 2010-09-23

House Republicans on Thursday rolled out their “Pledge to America,” a sweeping conservative agenda that calls for reining in federal spending, permanently extending all of the Bush tax cuts, and repealing President Obama’s signature health care law.

¹⁸ ‘Business Income Tax Break In House Republican Pledge Skews Benefits To Large Companies, Wealthy Owners’ by Pat Garofalo, Think Progress, 2010-09-27

¹⁹ ‘Republican Agenda: Can You Figure It Out?’, _Buzzflash.com, 2010-10-30

[T]hese are the Republican’s own talking points, an agenda they’ve clearly said they will set in motion (see sources below):

1. Shut down government in order to repeal Obamacare, and force a battle to privatize Social Security.
2. Scale back financial reforms meant to prevent a repeat of the 2008 economic meltdown
3. Oppose preferential tax cuts for small businesses and middle class families, push for an end to the IRS, and in its place, establish a nationwide 25 percent sales tax on all purchases
4. End unemployment benefits (many Republican candidates call them unconstitutional)
5. End Medicare (also called unconstitutional by many high-profile Republicans running this year)
6. Issue “subpoena after subpoena” investigating all things Obama, from his citizenship, birthplace, supposed connections to ACCORN and some nonsense that he’s part of a new Black Panther party.
7. Reverse all global warming legislation. Every major Republican candidate this year has claimed that global warming is a myth made up by liberals.
8. Kill Food Stamps. Again, most high-profile Republican candidates regard Food Stamps as… you guessed it…unconstitutional.
9. Continue holding up Obama’s executive appointments. These are staff positions the President needs to fill in order to run federal agencies, everything from Parks and Forest services to regulatory agencies, Veterans’ services, Medicare and Social Security services as well. The Republicans have used a legislative trick called a “secret hold” 146 times to thwart bill passage, legislative appointments and emergency legislative. During the Bush years, Democrats used the hold 16 times.

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at TheParagraph.com

We can’t let the people who’ve been hit hardest by this recession and who we need to create the jobs that will get us out of it foot the bill for the Democrats’ two-year adventure in expanded government

Before addressing the “hit hardest” claim, let’s touch on McConnell’s claims about job creation and “adventure in expanded government.” Here are a few of the relevant facts:

• Of small business owners, only 3% are in the affected quarter-million-plus tax brackets.³
• Historically, the jobless rate has been lower when taxes on the rich have been higher.⁴
• The Great Recession and the Bush Crash threw millions out of work — and there would have been three-and-a-half million more out of work were it not for the Democrats’ recovery act (stimulus).⁵
• The Democrats’ health care act cuts the deficit,⁶ and helps people and businesses.⁷+⁸

Now, let’s consider McConnell’s notion that someone making a quarter-million-plus would be among those “hit hardest by this recession”. Surely there would be no room left in that category, once one had considered the millions thrown out of work – and out of house and home.⁹+¹⁰ So it seems McConnell’s words just show where his sympathy lies – and one way the GOP earns the title: “Party of the Rich.”¹¹

Sources

¹ ‘Five Myths about the Bush Tax Cut’ by William G. Gale, The Washington Post, 2010-08-01

² ‘Sen. McConnell Defends Tax Cuts For The Rich To Protect The People ‘Hit Hardest By This Recession’‘, PoliticalCorrection.org, September 13, 2010

³ ‘Tax Increase Would Hit Few Small Businesses’ by By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI, The New York Times, September 17, 2010

Despite that emotional appeal, Internal Revenue Service statistics indicate that only 3 percent of small businesses would be subject to the higher tax, and many studies of previous tax increases suggest that it would have minimal impact on hiring.
According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, 97 percent of all businesses owners do not earn enough to be subject to the higher rates, which would be levied on income of over $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for families.

⁴ ‘TAX CUTS: THEOLOGY, FACTS & TOTALLY F**KED’ by Larry Beinhart, Huffington Post, November 17, 2008

The brute facts are these:

• Large income tax cuts are followed by a bubble and then a crash.
• High income taxes correlate with economic growth.
• Income tax increases are followed by economic growth.
• Moderate income tax cuts are followed by a flat economy.

All this is especially true as applied to the top tax rates, the amount paid on income that exceeds the highest bracket.

⁵ ‘Estimated Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on Employment and Economic Output From April 2010 Through June 2010’ – Congressional Budget Office

CBO estimates that ARRA’s policies had the following effects in the second quarter of calendar year 2010:

• They raised real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) by between 1.7 percent and 4.5 percent,
• Lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 percentage points and 1.8 percentage points,
• Increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million, and
• Increased the number of full-time-equivalent jobs by 2.0 million to 4.8 million compared with what would have occurred otherwise (see Table 1). (Increases in FTE jobs include shifts from part-time to full-time work or overtime and are thus generally larger than increases in the number of employed workers).

⁶ ‘How Health Care Reform Reduces the Deficit in 5 Not-So-Easy Steps’ – _Newsweek, 2010-03-21

… “Washington may live and die by the pronouncements of the Congressional Budget Office,” wrote the pollsters Doug Schoen and Scott Rasmussen in the Wall Street Journal, “but 81 percent of voters say it’s likely [health care reform] will end up costing more than projected.”

That’s left Democrats in a worst-of-both-worlds situation: They’ve built a bill that Washington’s toughest scorekeeper says will cut the deficit by more than a trillion dollars over 20 years. They’re getting attacked for the taxes and Medicare reforms that save all that money. But the country doesn’t believe the savings are real.

One of the problems Democrats have had is that it’s very easy to understand the one thing the bill does to spend money—purchase insurance for people who can’t afford it—and considerably harder to explain the many things it does to save money. Another is that a lot of the savings have to do with changing how medicine is practiced, which people are less familiar with than how insurance is purchased.

But the fact that the cost controls are complicated and numerous doesn’t mean they’re absent, or that they won’t work. Here’s a guide to a few of the bill’s best ideas, and how they work: …

⁷ ‘About the Law’ – HealthCare.gov

⁸ ‘Health Care Reform Benefits: Truth vs. Pure Politics’ By Rep. Jim McDermott, AlterNet, September 23, 2010

⁹ ‘Unemployment rate falls, but recession’s toll is worst since the ‘30s’ By Laurent Belsie, The Christian Science Monitor, February 5, 2010

You can capitalize it now: It’s the Great Recession. And it has cost the United States more jobs than any downturn since the Great Depression.

The job losses were already big before the Labor Department revised its figures Friday. Now, they’re staggering: 8.4 million jobs have disappeared since the recession’s start in December 2007.

¹⁰ ‘Study: 1.2 million households lost to recession ‘ By John W. Schoen, MSNBC, 4/8/2010

Brown represents one of the more than 1.2 million households lost to the recession, according to a report issued this week by the Mortgage Bankers Association that looked at data between 2005 and 2008. That number doesn’t include information from 2009, when job losses and foreclosures continued to rise.

So it’s likely that the full impact of the 8.4 million jobs lost and nearly three million homes foreclosed on since the recession began has taken an even bigger toll on the number of American households.

¹¹ ‘Sen. Snowe: GOP is ‘the party of Big Business and Big Oil and the rich.’’ ThinkProgress.org, 2009-05-07

[Sen.] Snowe recalls that when she proposed fiscally conservative “triggers” to limit Bush’s tax cuts in case of deficits, she was attacked by fellow Republicans. “I don’t know when willy-nilly tax cuts became the essence of who we are,” she says. “To the average American who’s struggling, we’re in some other stratosphere. We’re the party of Big Business and Big Oil and the rich.”

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at TheParagraph.com

Rep. Roskam (R-IL) shakes his Etch-A-Sketch as Pres. Obama looks on. from C-SPAN

1. Good, Constant Coverage: I want a plan with good, reasonable coverage that is always in effect — even when I’m in between jobs.

2. Insurance Standards: I want coverage without insurance company tricks and loopholes: no caps, no denial for preexisting conditions, no cancellation when needing an pricey treatment.

3. Quick Treatment: I want to be able see my doctor, or go to a walk-in clinic and get treatment, without waiting days for an appointment.

4. No Paperwork: I want to be able to show my health care card and get treatment — no interview, no forms.

5. Doctor’s Best Judgment: I want my doctor to act from one’s own best judgment, and not from the need to ring the cash register.

6. No Premiums: I want to pay for this out of our taxes. But if I have to pay a premium, it should be affordable, and I should be able to pay it into a public, non-profit plan.

7. Everyone In: I want these things for everyone in America. A healthier nation is a stronger and freer nation.

Which of these features do you want in a health care bill? Please check ALL the ones you want, then click “Vote”:

(2010-05-01: Poll closed.)

While Congress’s bills would address some of these features in some measure, I think that the best and least costly way to get them would be to improve and extend Medicare to all.³⁶ While Congress has not moved on that, several states are now moving towards a single-payer system.³⁷

Sources

³⁰ ‘Health care summit: Transcripts from every speaker’ – Washington Post, 2010-02-25

³¹ ‘Sen. Mitch McConnell suggests the President starts over on reform at White House health summit’ – CQ Transcriptions, 2010-02-25

³² ‘Rep. Peter Roskam makes remarks at White House health summit’ – CQ Transcriptions, 2010-02-25

³³ ‘White House Health Care Summit, Part 2’ C-SPAN, 2010-02-25 – video Etch-A-Sketch routine at 134:40

³⁴ ‘Vice President Joe Biden makes remarks on cost at White House health summit’ – CQ Transcriptions, 2010-02-25

³⁵ ‘Poll: Americans Want Dem Health Care Reforms, Not Dem Bills’ by Evan McMorris-Santoro, Talking Points Memo, February 24, 2010

³⁶ ‘Comparing the House and the Senate Health Care Proposals’ New York Times, 2010-02-23

³⁷ ‘Single-Payer Healthcare Coming to Minnesota and Maryland’ by David Swanson, 2010-03-03

California keeps passing bills for state single-payer healthcare, but Ahhhnold won’t sign em, and Jerry Brown who wants to be governor doesn’t seem to want it badly enough to make a commitment on healthcare. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania is encouraged that their current governor has said he probably will sign a single-payer healthcare bill, and the legislature just might pass one. But Minnesota has an angle neither of these other states can claim: a serious candidate for governor who is the state’s leading advocate for single-payer.

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at TheParagraph.com

Cartoon Credit: John Jonik

See Also

‘Public v. Corps in National Health Care Debate’ The Paragraph, 2009-05-17

‘John Kerry Swats Insurance Company Bargaining Chip’ The Paragraph, 2009-05-23

‘119 Million Americans Must Be Wrong’ By Robert Parry, Consortiumnews.com, June 5, 2009

Sources

³⁰ ‘Weiner Amendment Vote Moved to Wednesday’ – PDA, 2009-07-21

The silence in the House of Representatives around single-payer healthcare and H.R. 676 will end this Wednesday. Rep. Anthony Weiner, (D-NY09) … will move to amend the current bill. His proposal is essentially to replace H.R. 3200 with H.R. 676—single payer Medicare for All.

³¹ H.R. 3200 – ‘America’s Affordable Health Choices Act’ Summary, 2007-07-15 – pdf

³² ‘Canadian Straw Man’ Factcheck.org, July 17, 2009

³³ CBO Report to House Ways and Means Committee, 2009-07-14 – pdf

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

[T]he time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history …”

But when a child clings to childish ways, an adult should be firm. In a news conference last week, Obama addressed some of the childish arguments he heard during debate on his jobs bill.x⁵¹ For instance, he addressed Republican rewriting of the history of the New Deal:

Now, you have some people, very sincere, who philosophically just think the government has no business interfering in the marketplace. And, in fact, there are several who’ve suggested that FDR was wrong to interfere back in the New Deal. They’re fighting battles that I thought were resolved a pretty long time ago. Most economists, almost unanimously, recognize that, … when you have the kind of problem we have right now, … that government is an important element of introducing some additional demand into the economy.

Obama also addressed Republican stubbornness in sticking with trickle-down economics, and opposition to oversight of corporations:

I’m happy to get good ideas from across the political spectrum, from Democrats and Republicans. What I won’t do is return to the failed theories of the last eight years that got us into this fix in the first place, because those theories have been tested, and they have failed.

And he addressed Republican cries of “pork!”:

What I’ve been concerned about is some of the language that’s been used suggesting that this is full of pork and this is wasteful government spending, so on and so forth.

First of all, when I hear that from folks who presided over a doubling of the national debt, then, you know, I just want them to not engage in some revisionist history. I inherited the deficit that we have right now and the economic crisis that we have right now.

…

But when they start characterizing this as pork, without acknowledging that there are no earmarks in this package — something, again, that was pretty rare over the last eight years — then you get a feeling that maybe we’re playing politics instead of actually trying to solve problems for the American people.

An adult should also be patient, and give a child the leeway for and example of good behavior. Obama wrapped-up the news conference by saying:

But I am the eternal optimist. I think that, over time, people respond to civility and — and rational argument. I think that’s what … the people around America are looking for. And … that’s the kind of leadership I’m going to try to provide.

Still, when a child given such leeway gets destructive, an adult should reel that child in. Right from the start, Obama put a big chunk of tax cuts favored by Republicans into his jobs bill, and hoped to get more than 20 Republican votes for the bill in the Senate.x⁵² Instead, only three Republicans voted for the bill, and only after they threatened to filibuster (an action meant for extraordinary circumstance only), and got some items they didn’t like removed.x⁵³ So the jobs bill passed without school construction funding and the 400,000 jobs it would have brought, and without federal employee whistleblower protection and the guard against money being wasted that it would have brought.x⁵⁴x⁵⁵ When asked how he would get Republican cooperation in the future, Obama answered:

I suppose what I could have done is started off with no tax cuts, knowing that I was going to want some, and then let them take credit for all of them, and maybe that’s the lesson I learned. But there was consultation [with Republicans]; there will continue to be consultation.

Sources

⁵⁰ Obama’s inaugural speech

⁵¹ Obama’s press conference of 2009-02-09

⁵² ‘The Destructive Center’ by Paul Krugman, The New York Times, 2009-02-08

⁵³ ‘TIME TO REFORM THE FILIBUSTER’ by Steven Benen and featuring Hilzoy, The Washington Monthly, 2009-02-15

⁵⁴ ‘Senate Weakens Stimulus by Cutting School Construction Funding’ – The American Institute of Architects, 2009-02-10

⁵⁵ ‘Contractor-Whistleblowers Win Big – Federal Employees Still Denied Coverage’ – National Whistleblowers Center, 2009-02-13

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

In that statement we find six goals, with each relying on others:

• Union: A society of persons striving together towards the other five goals.

• Justice: Equal application of law and equal access to the commonwealth, regardless of one’s office or monetary wealth.

• Tranquility: Peace, which follows justice and welfare.

• Defense: Standing guard against forces that would harm the Constitution and the pursuit of the other five goals.

• Welfare: The people’s well-being, which is advanced by the commonwealth: the land (national parks, environmental protection, …), infrastructure (highways, railways, water lines, postal service, airwaves, communications satellites, Internet, …), public education, libraries, Medicare, the social safety net (minimum wage, Social Security, …), …

• Liberty: Freedom to do what one will without treading on another’s. That freedom needs the space given by tranquility (freedom from strife) and welfare (freedom from want of basic needs).

Now, as the first five goals all lead to the last, and as the present generation leads to next, we might venture an ultimate answer to our question: The purpose of the United States is to secure the blessings of liberty to its children.

Sources

The U.S. Constitution

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com