Author Archives: xstryker

About xstryker

X Stryker is also the proprietor of the currently-dormant poll analysis blog Election Inspection.

Castle to Uninsured: Die Quickly (and forces women to buy abortion insurance separately)

  1. Mike Castle voted to prevent private insurers from covering abortions if they receive public subsidies. Under the Stupid Stupak Amendment, women would have to buy abortion “riders” from their insurers separately. Since many women are insured through their husband’s employer (especially those who choose to be stay-at-home mothers, and let’s not forget college students insured by their parents), this amounts to a stealth “spousal consent/parental consent” law. Mike Castle thinks women deserve the extra stress and scrutiny of buying extra abortion-specific insurance.
  2. Mike Castle voted for the Republican health care plan – the “Die Quickly” plan that does absolutely nothing for the uninsured and weakens regulations on health insurance companies (because gee, they’re so ethical and responsible!). I (and Rep. Grayson) call it the “Die Quickly” plan because if you don’t have insurance and you get a terminal disease/condition, you can’t afford to be kept on life support. You can either die quickly or bankrupt your entire family (it’s bad enough that they’re going to lose you, but now they lose everything they own, too). Oh, and keep in mind that Castle voted to restrict bankruptcy also, so he hopes you choose the “death” option. Mike Castle supports this system and wants to give insurers more freedom to drop people who might actually need expensive health care. (Supposedly, this will cause one of the most profitable industries in the world, which is exempt from anti-monopoly laws, to magnanimously lower their prices for people who are paying for coverages of services that they don’t need, and will be dropped if they ever do need them).
  3. Despite voting for the Stupak Amendment (which passed), Castle voted against the final health care bill. So Castle’s stance on health care is fuck you, nothing, go ahead and die. Unless you haven’t been born yet, then you need to pay extra to die.

What a jerk. How can anyone possibly think of allowing this asshole into the Senate? Isn’t Carper bad enough?

Understanding the Election

1. GOP picks up VA-Gov – Conservative Democrat loses to Conservative Republican. A Democrat cannot win Virginia by promising to block health care reform. A win for conservatives, but not much impact to progressives.
2. GOP picks up NJ-Gov – much more serious loss. It shows that the GOP can win in the Northeast by avoiding all mention of social issues and health care. This is good news for moderate Republicans, bad news for conservatives. Conservatives want to see this as a big win, but they gain nothing from this. In any case, being a former Goldman Sachs executive is kind of a political liability given the economic crises Corzine faced. Still, this is a loss for progressives.
3. Democrats pick up NY-23 – Conservative Democrat beats Conservative Teabagger. A big loss for conservatives that will hurt their ability to defeat Charlie Crist, Mark Kirk, and other moderate Republicans. For progressives, adding another Blue Dog to our party doesn’t help us much. It’s a win for Obama, though, who created this open seat and was able to take advantage of it.
4. John Garamendi replaces Ellen Tauscher in CA-10 – This is a win for progressives that balances out the more conservative Bill Owens of NY-23. Ellen Tauscher was a pro-business “New Democrat” (like Tom Carper). Garamendi is a progressive who will stand with us on Health Care.
5. Marriage Equality denied in Maine – This is, by far, the worst loss of the night. But remember – time is on our side. The bigots keep getting older and fewer. My generation supports marriage equality the way my parent’s generation supported interracial marriage. We will win this fight, and there will be no turning back the clock.
6. GOP regaining strength in the NYC suburbs – Long Island and Westchester, NY, are a bellwether for national trends, and I’m not saying that just because I grew up there.

Westchester County Executive Andy Spano (D) suffering a unexpected and crushing defeat against Republican Rob Astorino. Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi (D) barely hung on by about 200 votes against a largely unknown challenger, and a Republican narrowly defeated the Democratic incumbent for Nassau County Comptroller. Republicans won back the Nassau County Legislature (10 seats to 9) for the first time in a decade and picked up 2 seats in the Suffolk County Legislature. Republicans defeated Democratic incumbents for the mayor’s offices of Mamaroneck and Rye and the town supervisor positions in Yorktown and Lewisboro in Westchester. Republicans still hold the Town Supervisor positions in Hempstead, Oyster Bay, and Smithtown (“towns” in Nassau and Suffolk are the size of cities – the Town of Hempstead is about the size of San Francisco or Detroit and much larger than Buffalo, while the Town of Smithtown in Suffolk is larger than Wilmington).

This is potentially the most significant story of the night – the GOP is regaining strength in the suburbs. I knew the Democrats were on their way back to power in 2005 when we swept through upstate NY and the NYC suburbs racking up victories. We won congress in 2006 and 2008 because we won the suburbs. We need the Philly suburbs to win Pennsylvania; we need NoVa to win Virginia.

By the same token, though, there is no reason to despair – while the GOP made some important gains, they merely climbed their way back to competitive status. They did not beat Suozzi, they failed to defeat the Democratic town supervisors of North Hempstead, Babylon, Huntington, and Brookhaven (a GOP bastion until 2005), and they failed to defeat Nassau’s Democratic District Attorney. Compared to some of the landslide upsets seen in 2005, this election merely suggests we’ll have a tougher go at it in 2010.

We need to pass strong public health care NOW. We can’t wait for the GOP to acquire more filibustering senators. Public option health care is popular, and will be remembered as a Democratic achievement for decades (like Social Security and Medicare). If we can strengthen the spine of Harry Reid – and prevent Tom Carper from watering things down – we will beat back the GOP and hold our ground in 2010.

Carper Sells Out To Drug Companies

From a Booman Tribune post entitled, “For Shame, Tom Carper”, comes this gem (bold text added by me):

In any case, there are people who qualify for Medicaid because they have a low income. And there are people who qualify for Medicare because they are 65 years-old. Then there are people who qualify for both, and they are called ‘Dual Eligible Individuals.’ Prior to the adoption of the Medicare Part D prescription drug program, people on Medicaid were able to purchase drugs at a low cost because of bulk purchasing by the government. This is still true…except for the people on Medicaid who are also eligible for Medicare Part D. Those individuals, like everyone else in Part D, do not benefit from bulk purchasing and have to pay a higher rate. How much higher? Well, just reversing this change would save the government over $85 billion dollars. That’s almost enough money to fight for two more years in Iraq.

The Nelson-Rockefeller amendment eliminates this problem by restoring the previous situation where all members of Medicaid get Medicaid pricing on pharmaceuticals. It also phases out the infamous donut hole, where seniors are forced to pay 100% out of pocket costs on drugs between roughly $2700-$5000 despite having to pay premiums for coverage.

I hope that isn’t too complicated to understand. These changes would save the government over $85 billion dollars in subsidies and payouts to the drug companies. Seniors would no longer get hosed in the donut hole. And everyone else would get a break on paying for other people’s subsidies.

It makes a lot of sense unless you are a drug company, a Republican, or Democrat Tom Carper of Delaware. Sen. Carper is upset by this amendment because the Senate entered into a deal with PhRMA five years ago to give them this sweet multi-billion dollar giveaway. And despite the fact that it was the Bush administration and the Republicans who cut this farce of a deal (with basically no Democratic input or consent), Sen. Carper thinks it is wrong to renege on a deal.

I wish we could send an edited tape of the relevant parts of this hearing to every senior citizen of Delaware so that they could understand just how shamelessly in the hip pocket of Big Pharma their senior senator is.

Senator Jay Rockefeller was absolutely incredulous at the arguments Tom Carper made. If there is a capacity for shame in the soul of Mr. Carper, he is filled with it tonight. But I hope we can immortalize that shame. Let the video masters find the tape and do some editing. Let’s send it far and wide to seniors in Delaware. And then let’s primary this guy. His shit can’t stand the light of day.

I hope Booman will forgive me for the copy & paste job, but this is a message that needs to reach as wide an audience here in Delaware as possible. Eliminating the subsidy to the drug companies would save low-income seniors money, and save the government $85 billion dollars, but Tom Carper thinks it’s more important to hand taxpayer money to companies making record profits. Who will have the guts to stand up against this man? Will you tell your friends and neighbors?

I guarantee you the News Journal will not print this story, but sending a letter to the editor won’t hurt.

Eagles Open Thread

Post your predictions, thoughts, and reactions. Will Kevin Kolb make Jason Scott miss “No heart chump” McNabb? Will we see Jeff Garcia on the field? Will the brutal Eagles defence be able to contain Drew Brees, the best QB in football last year who threw 6 touchdowns last week?

Glenn Beck’s biggest remaining adventiser: “Male Enhancement”

Glenn Beck’s special brand of frothing, crying, apocalyptic, “Obama is a racist!” hysteria has driven all of Beck’s larger advertisers away, thanks to an awareness campaign from ColorOfChange.org. So who’s left?

Glenn Beck's audience needs this.

The jokes write themselves. Now we know why Beck viewers feel the need to brag about their powerful handguns.

The rest of the list? Well, there’s the Egg Genie. No doubt conservatives everywhere will be giving their somewhat less-loved ones many of these this Christmas. There’s a portable oxygen concentrator – not sure whether the private health insurers that Beck loves so much would actually cover them. There’s one of those “free” (meaning not free) credit score websites, how reputable. There’s also Rosetta Stone language products (please, conservatives, show your love for Beck and learn a goddamned foreign language). It’s all generally stuff that you call a 1-800 number for and pay shipping and handling charges, then see later in the store for less money under the label “As Seen On TV”.

Have at it.

Tom Carper’s Office: Public Option is a Fall Back?

So what is Tom Carper’s position on Public Option Health Care? A friend of mine just called up Senator Carper’s office, and inquired whether Carper (who claims that he “doesn’t oppose” the public option, a weaselly double-negative) would support a public option plan that was “available on day one”. Why is this important? In the time it takes you to read this post, another American will go bankrupt due to health care costs – one every 30 seconds.

Surprisingly, he got an actual answer: No.

According to Carper’s office, our senator views a potential public option plan as a “fall back” plan if a Senate (presumably “bipartisan”) bill fails to reduce health insurance costs via other means (like what, paying them off?). So no, no public option on day one, we’re going to give those swell folks in the health-care-rationing, claims-denial business ample time to pump money into more tea parties before we make a serious effort at covering 50 million uninsured Americans. This is the same as Olympia Snowe’s position:

“Throughout the entire health care debate, Senator Snowe has emphasized that we must first, reform health insurance, and if plans then fail to offer affordable coverage, a public plan should then be offered from day one,”

Notice the inherent contradiction between “first-if-then” and “day one”? I’ll give Carper this – at least his staff didn’t have the gall to use the phrase “day one” to mean the opposite of what was being asked about.

But as LeVar Burton would say, don’t take MY word for it – call the Senator’s offices and confirm this for yourself! Acknowledge that Carper is on the record as “not opposing” a public option (depending on the nature of the bill), and ask if our Senator would support or oppose a public option plan “available on day one with no trigger”.

DC Office: (202) 224-2441
Wilmington: (302) 573-6291
Dover: (302) 674-3308
Georgetown: (302) 856-7690

For a better understanding of the “trigger” issue, check out this post:

Now we come to “the fallback plan” or trigger option. An idea being floated by Sen. Olympia Snow and flat-out embarrassingly supported by Sen. Ron Wyden (who has publicly said he’s open to a public plan) would create a “trigger.” Health care would happen this year, but the public plan would not. As Pear explains, “the public plan would be created only if private insurance companies had not made meaningful, affordable coverage available to all Americans within several years.” All of these terms – “meaningful,” “affordable” and “several years” – are as vague as can be. The trigger may be set up so, in effect, it never happens, similar to the Medicare Part D trigger that would have created a public prescription drug plan – but never did. The threshold would be low enough that it could be easily, and superficially, met. Throughout those “several years,” the insurance plans would receive all of the uninsured who enroll through a National Health Exchange, pocketing what we can hope are generous government subsidies, with very few changes to their behavior.

Swine flu’s a-comin’ – do you want your co-workers trying to shrug off “a little cold” so they can save money on doctor’s bills? Do you want another massive giveaway of your tax dollars to corporate health insurance fat cats (who already make record profits)?

CALL. RIGHT. NOW.

Virginia Gov. race update – McDonnell too conservative for George Allen

A few more highlights from WaPo’s article on Bob McDonnell – apparently McDonnell is too much of a theocon for racist former Governor and Senator George “Macaca” Allen:

Republican friends who support McDonnell’s campaign for governor acknowledge parting ways with some of his more conservative views. Former governor and U.S. senator George Allen said he doesn’t share McDonnell’s opposition to abortion in cases of rape or incest. “There should always be an exception,” he said. And state Sen. Kenneth W. Stolle (Virginia Beach), a close friend first elected to the legislature the same year as McDonnell, described covenant marriage as “the state overstepping its bounds.”

Covenant marriage is what now?

He also sponsored bills on four occasions to establish covenant marriage in Virginia. All four were unsuccessful. Under McDonnell’s proposals, couples choosing to enter covenant marriage would have been required to obtain premarital counseling and sign a declaration of intent acknowledging that marriage is a lifelong commitment. In addition, the time of separation necessary for couples with children to obtain a no-fault divorce would have been extended from one to two years.

Apparently “traditional marriage” isn’t good enough, so count on a theocon to redefine it. It’s just good ol’ fashioned small-government conservativism, right?

“Leaders must correct the conventional folklore about the separation of church and state,” he wrote.

The constitution is just “folklore” huh?

He advocated character education programs in public schools to teach “traditional Judeo-Christian values” and other principles that he thought many youths were not learning in their homes. He called for less government encroachment on parental authority, for example, redefining child abuse to “exclude parental spanking.”

This makes my head spin. How is “less government encroachment on parental authority” compatible with forcing schools to teach religious principles that students “were not learning in their homes”? Obviously McDonnell has no opinion about big or small government whatsoever, he just wants whatever shoves the maximum amount of evangelical theology up our backsides.

He went on to say feminism is among the “real enemies of the traditional family.”

In this case, I’m willing to believe life experience might have taught him otherwise. His daughter served in the Army in Iraq. I wonder how she feels about this:

In 2001, he voted against a resolution in support of ending wage discrimination between men and women.

My favorite part is this:

What he wrote in the thesis on women in the workplace, he said, “was simply an academic exercise and clearly does not reflect my views.”

I have a feeling all of McDonnell’s campaign promises are also “simply an academic exercise”.

GOP Gov nominee in Virginia opposed contraception

AG Bob McDonnell, the GOP’s nominee for the ’09 Governor’s race in Virginia, is currently enjoying a modest lead in the polls; but what are Virginia voters going to make of this?

At age 34, two years before his first election and two decades before he would run for governor of Virginia, Robert F. McDonnell submitted a master’s thesis to the evangelical school he was attending in Virginia Beach in which he described working women and feminists as “detrimental” to the family. He said government policy should favor married couples over “cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators.” He described as “illogical” a 1972 Supreme Court decision legalizing the use of contraception by unmarried couples.

The school? Pat Robertson’s Regent University, best known for producing Bush Administration hacks like Monica Goodling. Of course, McDonnell now claims his thesis “was simply an academic exercise and clearly does not reflect my views.” But WaPo notes:

During his 14 years in the General Assembly, McDonnell pursued at least 10 of the policy goals he laid out in that research paper, including abortion restrictions, covenant marriage, school vouchers and tax policies to favor his view of the traditional family. In 2001, he voted against a resolution in support of ending wage discrimination between men and women.

Virginia is a Purple State, with a term-limited Democratic governor and two Democratic senators, narrowly going for Obama after supporting GOP presidential candidates for decades. These ultraconservative associations could cost him big time in NoVA (northern Virginia), the state’s fastest growing area and most vital swing region.

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Update: He finally had the good sense to shut down the “Recent Comments” feed. No word yet on whether he asked his doctor if Levitra was right for him.

The lie, and the liars

The lie: That any proposal currently before congress contains funding for “death panels” that kill patients against their will.
The truth: Your doctor can be reimbursed for helping you make a living will – in which you can declare “I insist that no one ever pull the plug on me for any reason whatsoever until I am dead.” Meanwhile, the private insurance you’re currently paying for, like Blue Cross or Cigna or United Health Care, really do have panels that refuse to pay for life-saving surgeries, forcing you or your grandma to choose between bankruptcy or death.

The liars – This lie has been told by the following liars:
Sarah Palin, who might have been thinking of the worst-in-the-nation status of Alaska’s elder-care programs – “227 adults already getting services died while waiting for a nurse to reassess their needs.”
Newt Gingrich
Betsy McCaughey
Rep. John Boehner
Rep. Thad McCotter
Senator Chuck Grassley
Glenn Beck
Andrew Napolitano (FOX)
Brian Kilmeade (FOX)

They are liars. None of them have retracted their claims, which are easily proven false. Therefore, the lying must be intentional.

This is intended as a helpful guide for Republicans who want to know which of their mouthpieces needs to heed Palin’s call that “ya quit makin’ things up!”

The GOP plot to kill senior citizens

How do you know what the wingnuts are plotting? Easy – anything they accuse others of doing. Remember when Jonah Goldberg, after years of “you’re either with us or you’re a terrorist sympathizer”, started talking about “Liberal Fascism”? Remember how the party that tried to force an extremist religious viewpoint on America started talking about how liberals were going to impose sharia law in the US? Remember how these  conservatives decried government spending while creating the record-setting Bush deficit? I could cite a dozen more examples. The same Republicans who demanded that Congress should overrule the diagnosis of Terry Shiavo’s doctors are claiming that Democrats want to come between you and your doctor – which is exactly what the HMO’s are doing now. And Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck are accusing the president of racism – ha!

So now they’re claiming that Democratic health care reform is really a secret plot to kill old people. Our health insurance system kills thousands of Americans every year. Cancer survivors tend to be older than the average American – and they tend to be dropped by their health insurers, forcing them to ration out trips to the doctor lest they go bankrupt. Fear of medical bankruptcy (the number one cause of bankruptcy) leads to people staying home sick, hoping that they will get better without a doctor’s visit. That leads to death. And I remind you, the elderly face the greatest health risks.

The GOP already wiped out most of the retirement savings of America by castrating our financial regulatory agencies. Thosands of senior citizens now can’t afford to retire – can they afford health insurance?

Now, I don’t think the GOP wants to kill senior citizens – that’s just collateral damage in their quest for big money lobbying gigs. That’s all that’s at stake – lobbying jobs vs. your health. And that goes for the Blue Dogs, too.

PS – anyone who complains that public option health care being “bureaucratic” has never had a  claim denied by their HMO.