Yeah. Health care NYT carries a report today Link on how big insurance is now hoping to pervert most policies into HMO networks. So much for “you can keep your own doctor”

That is so effed up. Just when I feel like I can drag myself to the pols again, somebody like this comes along and infuriates me all over again.

Well, I’m going to vote them out so I hope their happy with everything I do to them.

Strong words, coming from BT. I expect there’s a dandy publisher contract in Saletan’s future to write a hagiography of either Rahm or Obama or both, or some weird mutant hybrid of same.

Who these fascistic “experts” hanging out at “slate?” Sounds like it’s time for them to wipe the slate clean and start over. Obama ran the most dishonest political campaign in the history of Presidential Elections. He is now more corporate than bush, more imperialistic than bush and more of a Royalist Tyrant than bush. Heck of a con job, Barack.

Single payer universal health care for all? Obama had his lackeys arrest and remove single payer advocates from a public hearing. How is that for a taste of corporate fascism? What a traitor to the American people.

Ah, yes, saletan is absolutely correct. I know so little about politics that I need not vote for obamarahma in 2012. I am so happy with what obamarahma has accomplished, I will let that work stand on its own. Why, I think that it is absolutely brilliant that the bp $20Bn will be used for the clean up of their mess as well as paying any restitution to the small people. The small people should be happy that bp is willing to pay them anything at all for any reason. obamarahma has led us into a new day of transparent government: we can see that if you are not a big corp, you don’t count. We can also see how the promises of health care reform will be well handled, all you have to do at look at the official he has put in charge of seeing that health care is properly carried out.

Eight years of bush and now obama. It’s absolutely depressing.

Of course… Progressives…impassioned people involved and knowledgeable of American politics more than most other demographics don’t understand politics.

Makes sense to me in the backwardness that is our country…

But the demo loyalists who drag themselves to the polls to constantly vote for republican lite policies all the while chanting the “republicans are evil so you better vote for us” mantra are the really informed and enlightened..

You got your damn health care bill. What more do you want?

Insurers Push Plans Limiting Patient Choice of Doctors
By REED ABELSON

As the Obama administration begins to enact the new national health care law, the country’s biggest insurers are promoting affordable plans with reduced premiums that require participants to use a narrower selection of doctors or hospitals. …

The tradeoff, they say, is that more Americans will be asked to pay higher prices for the privilege of choosing or keeping their own doctors if they are outside the new networks. That could come as a surprise to many who remember the repeated assurances from President Obama and other officials that consumers would retain a variety of health-care choices.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/business/18choice.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

They can only fuck it up so badly before the whole house of cards falls in on them. Want to know a reason I am so livid on the drug war?

When my oldest daughter was 16, and super hot if you like skinny little 5’2″ blonde girls with very, very long hair, she was suffering from some very serious mental illness, including sleeping disorders, cutting herself and eating disorders to the point of just having suddenly lost 15 pounds and falling asleep in class daily, migraine headaches, etc.

What did the visiting pediatrician prescribe? Vicoden.

When I saw her regular physician I went into a tirade. It was obvious to me the point of prescribing her vicodan was to turn an obviously disturbed (but VERY sexy) 16 yo girl into a drug dependent whore.

I can smell a business deal a mile away and I saw a doctor in the process of making one.

Did that put my Tea kettle on boil?

Yes it did.

There was a story earlier this week about White House insiders (read Rahm or Axelrod) contemptuous of critical progressives and bloggers. I have also seen a couple of cable news personalities gushing about all that Obama has accomplished. So this would appear to be a Beltway meme that is being pushed. It is a kind of self-contradiction we have seen before. If our opinions mean so little why are they spending so much time and energy pushing back against them? Nor will these kinds of tactics bring back anyone already disaffected. Perhaps it is an incitement to the kneejerk Obamabots, to try to energize them.

As for the Democrats, it looks like their main battleplan is to run on the platform that they are not quite as shitty or crazy as the Republicans, and hope that suffices.

In the 2012 presidential election, I’ll vote for the Democratic nominee. But will I support that person – with time and money? If it’s President Blue Cross, I sure as fuck won’t. And I won’t be voting for him in my primary. Good luck, Rahm!

‘And everyone will say as he talks his Beltway way, ‘If this Saletan expresses himself in terms too deep for me, Why, what a very singularly deep young man this Saletan must be!’

;>)

This is just the first step to conversion to HMOs. Such a move was successfully rejected by most Medicare patients because Medicare is a government plan. No such luck with where Obamarahama has thrown the rest of the people.

What the fuck? Despite how disturbing I find it that you refer to your own underage daughter as “hot” and “sexy” I have idea what the fuck you are talking about.

I am a pediatrician and child psychiatrist. I left practice earlier than planned. The pressures to corruption by the private for money interests were escalating. I have no notion of why we still have as many dedicated and competent medical care providers and that stories like your’s are not more prevalent.

btw psychiatry was the first specialty to experience the early attempts at managed care. Now it is left to pill pushing. Real comprehensive therapy is virtually a thing of the past.

I was pleased to see her regular pediatrician was then promoted to running the hospital. I always wonder if my story gave him the dirt on something or someone(s) that got him promoted. You never know.

Obama/Biden ’12 – STILL BETTER THAN LIVING IN KANDAHAR!

*facepalm*

I don’t worry about you or anyone else not knowing what the fuck I am talking about.

Seven years ago I figured out a way to end the drug war and all war. I have been blogging ever since and have told many, many stories of the wild and crazy things that happen to me. I know someday someone will write a book and then they will be glad it is all preserved in computer data bases.

If you want to start on the project now, ask AlterNet for access. Also, I started on Delphi, told the Girl Scouts what I was doing and posted for a long time on the drugwar at mindvox list, probably where the writers of Rolling Stone got to know me.

It is a long and interesting story, someday someone will write about it. I plan on writing a book, but not until after I end War, a little political action project I put together as a girl scout leader.

I hope you’ll drag yourself to the polls no matter how infuriating these assholes can be.

I won’t reward the behaviour of this Democratic Congress with my vote like so many others will, and wish I could convince others of the same, but mostly I hope NO ONE stays home.

There are, at least in my state and I’ve been told most others too, almost always important local stuff on the ballot. Changes to the state constitution, bond issues, local referendums, etc. etc. etc.

IMO your reasoned voice should be heard on all of those local issues.

We are all LGBT now.

Join me, won’t you, in line at the closed gAyTM?

It’s not a Beltway meme as much as spin, our opinions and actions matter. They are rightly scared to death that they are getting voted out (and they are.)

We don’t matter at all, except when we are skewing the entire debate, poisoning the Democratic base. Unless we are irrelevant.

It’s very hard to keep up with their view of us.

A large percentage of self describe progressives are loyal Dems and will vote for the party no matter how often they get pissed on.

HOWEVER, it was independent voters gave Obama his large margin of victory and they will NOT support Dems after being used and abused for the past two years.

I’ve heard some discussion recently by the Beltway idiots of disgruntled independent voters, however the presumption is always that independents have fallen out with the party because Obama and other Dems have been too liberal… WRONG (as usual). I am a liberal independent voter and while I expected Dems to be more conservative than me I am still outraged by their shameless, fraudulent, pro-corporate, anti working Americans behavior.

And the fear card (would you rather have a Republican?) ploy will not suffice. The Democratic Party has to earn my support and I consider the chances of that happening extremely remote.

… WITH SARAH PALIN AS PRESIDENT!

(gotta keep the Dem base frightened, don’tcha know….)

Fear is all they have to offer to us, the lowly (non-corporate) citizenry.

Good on ya.

Such a simple concept. You represent me, I’ll support you with my vote. You don’t, I won’t.

Yet these assholes just can’t grasp this concept. And we’re the ones that are idiots. HA!

What an asshole Saletan is. Goddammit vote for MY party just cause I say so!!! I know better than you who represents your interests!

Sound familiar??? And silly ‘ole me thought it was the R party that was authoritarian. My bad.

Fear seems to be the card played by both parties now.

War, corporate policies, cut spending on little guys while reducing taxes on the rich, etc. etc. etc. etc.

EVERYTHING seems to be played by both parties now.

If only we had a second party.

And cue the spouters of “YOU IDIOTS, would you rather have McPalin as Prez” in 3…. 2… 1….

The fact is, as Commander-in-Chief, Obama doesn’t have to compromise on foreign policy and civil liberties.

Obama’s role of CinC of the military has nothing to do with his executive role in regard to foreign and domestic affairs. Obama, in other words, is not the new Decider. I hope.

The lesser evil tactic worked better back when Dems occasionally threw us a bone. Now, not so much…

The suggestion out of the WH this past week that we should cut food stamps to fund education was particularly appalling. Everything is on the chopping block except the hundreds of billions we piss away every year on unnecessary war.

This liberal does not plan to STFU. I did NOT get my goddamn healthcare like I was promised and will not STFU about it.

In addition to the things Blue Texan listed, I’m still wsiting on passage of EFCA, the renegotiation of NAFTA, tax hikes on those making over two hundred grand, an end to mountaintop mining, green fucking jobs, or any fucking jobs, transparency, repair of infrastructure, ending the outsourcing of jobs, and all the rest of the goddamn lies he told. It will be a cold in that place believers call hell before I vote for any lying damn democrat again. Living in Indiana, that won’t be a problem.

Yeah, I forgot that one. I guess it was too recent for this old brain to commit to memory.

What a proud goddamn moment, a democrat in the White House proposes to cut food stamps when 1 in 5 children are hungry. Some days I miss Richard Nixon.

That.. that.. that.. *wipes tears of pride away* was beautiful!

Saletan tends to be one of the ones who believes that conservative white males are supposed to run the world, because the rest of us don’t have the right parts (or the right skin color) to Know What to Do.

He’s as big an idjit as Rahm. And less honest.

I’ll vote for some of them.
Just not the ones that seem to forget their promises and the contents of the party platform at the end of election day.

Just got around to clicking on that last link under “What more do you want?” BT.

HAHAHA!

Great comic. I hadn’t seen that. Thanks for linking to that. Made my day!

Nixon would fall well left of Obama in the modern political spectrum.

It is disgusting.

So would Reagan.

The most recent installment was also spot on.

Once you’ve declared the right to kill American citizens at your whim, you’re pretty much to the right of everybody.

We got a patient killing for profit bill several months ago. Not health care reform.

as Commander-in-Chief, Obama doesn’t have to compromise on foreign policy and civil liberties

Hmm, just trying to think of how, if I were in Obama’s place but, y’know as a good guy, I’d use my control over civil liberties to get votes out of the Senate. Maybe for every vote for the stimulus bill, five CIA people would not be indicted for war crimes or for every day the Senators made me wait, another five CIA people would be rounded up and put on trial. Natcherly, you’d have to just let people guess about what you were doing, you couldn’t be explicit about it.

I humbly thank you for your appreciation.

Book Salon a couple of flights upstairs with Heather Rogers’ Green Gone Wrong: How Our Economy Is Undermining the Environmental Revolution hosted by Josh Nelson

I’m happy with some things Democrats have done and not happy with others. I understand that there is not a majority of progressives in control of Congress, so anything passed will not be too progressive. I pretty much now just break down the two groups, Republican and Democratic, into two groups. Both are right-wing, but Democrats at least believe that we should have a government that can solve problems and should regulate the capitalist system. The alternative, the Republicans, are too dangerous to have any power until the party morphs into one that actually believes in governing and solving problems. That’s a bad spot for progressives, but I just deal with the world around me and then I have fun to help me forget about the bad stuff.

The “some of them” you speak of are extinct in Indiana and on the Endangered Species List in nearly every part of the country. Good luck on finding one.

In the 2012 presidential election, I’ll vote for the Democratic nominee.

If you do that they have no incentive to listen to us. Somemone wrote a while back that in order to succeed in a negotiation you must be willing to walk away, and I think that is true. In 2010 I will only be voting Socialist Party of Florida, and if they do not run a candidate in my district I will be writing in “someone not corporatist”. I hope Suzanne Kosmas and all of the other corporatist dems (essentially all of them) are wiped out in the fall.

And extinct in the Senate.

Every. Single. Democratic. Senator. Voted. FOR. Health Care Reform The Health Insurance Profit Guarantee Act of 2010.

I have also seen a couple of cable news personalities gushing about all that Obama has accomplished.

This is meant for “centralist” consumption. They are going to push the win hard and hope people are not very well informed.

Progressives and bloggers?
You got no ware else to go, so there is no need to worry about them.

Make war payments not house payments.

“War In Afghanistan Now Costs U.S. Taxpayers $17 Billion Monthly”
“More Than 1 Million American Households Are Likely To Lose Their Homes To Foreclosure This Year”

“You can keep your own doctor” was exposed by opponents of the HCR bill early in the debate. Also debunked was the notion that the individual mandate was NOT a tax. Now, defending the HCR bill in court the administrations case is built entirely around the admission that the mandate is in deed, a tax.

The mandates seek to regulate individual behavior in an area where the federal government has no jurisdiction and punish those who don’t exhibit favored choices, in this case buying comprehensive health insurance regardless of whether it makes sense for anyone.

In the 1920s, when Congress wanted to prohibit activity that was then deemed to be solely within the police power of states, it tried to penalize the activity using its tax power. In Bailey v. Drexel Furniture (1922) the Supreme Court struck down such a penalty saying, “there comes a time in the extension of the penalizing features of the so-called tax when it loses its character as such and becomes a mere penalty with the characteristics of regulation and punishment.”

How likely is our Supreme Court to see the individual mandate to buy health insurance in the same light?

So where is the ‘activist’ base? Where is the collective outrage that brought protesters to the airwaves and streets during the Bush administration?

As I have asserted before, the ‘progressives’ long ago submitted to the will of the ‘ruling class’ and have completely, willingly handed over their political power and freedom to the entrenched, corrupt, political establishment that is our modern federal government.

As Republicans and certainly Mr. Saletan know, “enough” doesn’t exist in the politics of today’s Washington. Look what’s happened to every pre-compromise the conflict- and risk-averse Mr. Obama has put forward: Republicans gutted it, doubled down by demanding far more than they would have sought had they been in power, then failed to support it when the president gave them what they so rudely demanded.

For purported liberals or progressives to suggest that Mr. Obama “has done enough” would be bad tactics and bad politics, even if he had. It is painfully obvious that he hasn’t. Which makes Saletan’s argument Brooksian pablum for the White House, milk for the veal pen, and an outright “fuck you” to those who think this president ought to work a little harder to compete with his opponents rather than his supporters.

Exactly. Progressives are completely dependent upon the established political ‘ruling class’ and are powerless to effect meaningful reform or change. From the wars, gitmo, torture, HCR, the disaster in the Gulf ‘progressive’ power and influence is non-existent and the minimal push back against the ‘neo-liberal corporatists’ is inconsequential.

Republican and Democratic office holders and their retinues show a similar presumption to dominate and fewer differences in tastes, habits, opinions, and sources of income among one another than between both and the rest of the country. They think, look, and act as a class.

To blame the GOP for the inability of Obama and the Dems to enact truly ‘progressive’ policies is to be willfully blind to the fact that America is governed by a political class that has its own agenda, involving its own enrichment as well as the endless expansion of its own power, and that this political class is contemptuous of the opinions of ordinary Americans and is determined to impose its will regardless of how Americans vote.

There have been several occasions when the American people have voted for smaller government; most notably in 1972, 1980 and 1994. But it really doesn’t matter. You can vote for limited government, but you can’t get it; the political class won’t let you. This is not to assert the silly proposition that there is no major difference between Democrats and Republicans. The fiscal disaster that we have witnessed since the Democrats took control of Congress in 2007 proves the contrary. But still: experience shows that voting for Republicans hasn’t been enough to offset the power of the political class.

Well said. They condescend to independents, treating them like centrists. Democrats and Republicans need each other desperately.

You make and emphasize a different point than I did. My critique was of Mr. Saletan. The Democratic leadersheep you also criticize is equally risible as the Republicans with whom Mr. Obama insists he can reach compromise, if only he can bend the rest of us far enough over the GOP barrel.

Nor is it the size of government that is as important as what it chooses to do. If as many resources were devoted to improving health, education and job prospects as are spent inventing and fighting our enemies (and giving tax and legal subsidies to the already wealthy), we would have far fewer enemies and a much healthier economy and society with which to compete with them in a world of limited attention and resources.

We don’t; we spend the money on guns and then listen to the MOTU in DC and NY complain about too much better being lavished on the masses, while they gorge on double and clotted cream. On that we agree.

ALWAYS vote – it is a nice big F.U. when …

I was at a rah rah for Maria Cant-Sell-Us Out fast enough in 2006. Russ was the attraction – Russ discussed how he won in 2004 with a couple 100 thousand votes, and cuz of his 200k or whatever surplus, Kerry was able to take the state with (appx.) 10,000. Maybe if Kerry hadn’t run a dishrag campaign we wouldn’t have squeaked by with 10K?

(anyone who wants to attack my argument over the appx. numbers can kiss it – you’re REALLY missing the point.)

ALWAYS vote – it is a nice big F.U. to the establishment when … in some jurisdiction, 60% who voted selected the fire breathing Democrat, and 48% selected the DINO sell out. ummmmmmmmmm… what does that say to the inside the beltway corrupt sell out scum?

rmm.

I’m new here. I used to follow DailyKos, then I realized they weren’t progressive. They’re Democrats, a world of difference in the two.

Being a Democrat’s not so bad.

Being a blind follower of anything someone with a D after their name says or does on the other hand…. well not so good.

Welcome to the Lake.

I see this thread has drawn the bashers out. They got the second best Republican-lite president of the last couple decades and it’s not enough.

Hey…welcome to the only hard left blog on the internet!

:-)

Indie – you bring a smile tomy face even when there are so many reasons to be down – thanks! :-)

But this one is too easy – you quote a child labor law case where the Supreme Court felt child welfare in factories was no business of the Federal gov (see the photo’s of the 6 year olds at the weaving machines in Massachusetts for context).

You forgot to note that the Court later abandoned the ideas upon which the Bailey case ruling was based (public disgust with a Court owned by the rich and corporate changes things albeit infrequently) – see United States v. Kahriger, 345 U.S. 22 (1953), overruled on other grounds, Marchetti v. United States, 390 U.S. 39 (1968) and Lochner v. New York.

Based on the above there is near zero reason to believe the power to tax and the power to regulate interstate commerce will not get the HCR individual mandate past the court – the state DA’s will get the media attention they want – but that is about it.

I really think Obama’s going to put Hillary in as VP in 2012.

Often I tend to agree with you – and this is one of those occasions re class being a common point as to Dems and the GOP elected being in the same class.

But some folks realize the luck involved in getting into that class – and the fact others with more merit do not make it – and they try to make things better – we call those folks liberals or progressives or both.

As to smaller government – the Clinton years were the only shrinking of the size of government in the last 40 years – tax cuts do not shrink gov – they just pass the cost onto the grandkids and move the percentage paid by the rich relative to disposable income downward – a GOP specialty. But in the 8 Clinton years the gov cost as a percentage of GDP actually dropped – the cutting of gov was real and not the Bush43 con job of replacing gov workers with higher cost private contractor outsourcing. Bush kept the head count down while blowing up the cost of gov from the Clinton years – not exactly shrinking gov. And yes a growing economy – 22 million new jobs over 8 years under Clinton versus 1 million new jobs over 8 years under Bush and his tax cuts for the rich – does reduce the percentage shown for gov cost as a percentage of GDP – but check out Reagan’s results with his expanding economy.

I won’t reward the behaviour of this Democratic Congress with my vote like so many others will, and wish I could convince others of the same, but mostly I hope NO ONE stays home.

I concur, OFG, not just on the matter of local issues, but because I think every one of us ought to register a vote, even at the top of the ticket.

Perhaps by November there will be a consensus “protest vote” [e.g., "write in Jane Hamsher"], or perhaps we’ll vote socialist or green or whatever. But I think it’s important for the vote totals to reflect a big hunk of votes that the Dems could have had if only they’d “wooed” us with decent policies.

The DNC still hasn’t “gotten” — or isn’t ready to admit — the huge numbers of folks who stayed home in the Martha Coakley – Scott Brown election. The votes need to be there, on the page, in the totals, just in another column.

Look at how the Tea Party folks have the Repubs bending over backwards to slant their policies & win votes from crazy people. The Dems should be as anxious to get OUR votes. No more of this “lesser of two evils” or “where are you going to go” or “OMG, what would happen if Republicans get elected.”

I’m not going to vote for Republicans, but if Dems can’t get enough people to vote for them to get elected, well tough shit. Change your tactics next time.

Yeah, that was bizarre.

The Supreme Court isn’t going to key on the regulatory use of the tax (though that is a valid argument), rather that the bill structured as a direct tax that doesn’t benefit from the 16th Amendment authorization of income taxes.
I just saw a Tax Notes article about this:

Willis and Chung demonstrate how I.R.C. § 5000A – the HEALTH CARE ACT penalty – is an unapportioned Capitation Tax, violative of U.S. CONSTITUTION ARTICLE I, Section 9. As they demonstrate, the “penalty” is – at least on its face – a tax. To be a Constitutional tax, it must be an Excise Tax, an Income Tax, or a proportional Capitation Tax. Through the process of elimination, they demonstrate the penalty is none of these.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1589190

Oh sure, as Satan points out, we got Obama’s Heathcare “bill”.

We don’t have jobs to pay this “bill” but hey, we can’t pay our other bills either so what’s the difference!

Is “Make them buy cake” somehow better than “Let them eat cake”?