Palin and Kirk Always Running, Never Governing

I have no doubt that there is a lot more going on here than we now know about Palin's resignation as Alaska Governor. However, if you take her at her word, it's also pretty bad. Sarah Palin said was that she felt her staying on as Governor of Alaska would be a waste of time and money because she does not intend to seek reelection. It seems what she's saying is that the actual job of governing the state of Alaska is not worth anything in and of itself. It's the running that's important and not the governing. That has been my biggest complaint about politicians in general and republican politicians in particular. They never govern. They are always running. Every vote, every decision, every speech, every comment has absolutely nothing to do with serving the country or doing the job, but their election or re-election chances. That's what bugs me about Kirk and apparently what has his base up in arms. His votes are calculated to the next election and do not represent his district.

Land of the REDACTED and the Home of the REDACTED

Twelve documents relating to detainee torture at Guantanamo Bay and other overseas prisons were released by the Obama Administration. They were released because of the ACLU Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Much of the contents of these documents has been redacted. The 200 page CIA report that was due out weeks ago is now scheduled for release on August 31. Absent that, take a minute or two to read the report of Physicians for Human Rights that can be found here. Scroll down to the link named: Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by U.S. Personnel. I was in my car a few days ago listening to the Thom Hartmann show. Hartmann was reading a portion of this report:

He also recalled having been forced to wear soiled underwear, often for weeks or months at a time. “I had diarrhea and I was in handcuffs. I was making my toilet in my underwear and I was very dirty. That was very painful.” He reported being denied medical attention for any of his injuries. When he asked to see the doctor he was told that “we brought a medicine to you.’” Laith explains that, in fact, “They brought to me bottles [of] urine and [they] told me if you do not drink these now we will bring your mother and sisters. Because I was hearing the voices of women and children, I [believed him and] drank it. I was in handcuffs and they poured the urine [into my mouth] and sometimes I vomited from that but when I vomited they kept on pouring [the urine] on my head … I died at that time — after that I could not eat anything.” He said that he was forced to drink urine from the soldiers on eleven different occasions.

Just as Hartmann began to read, I was stopped at a light and a woman drove up next to me. Her car was full of stickers for Bush, Mark Kirk and McCain and she had a Jesus card dangling from her rear view mirror. Did she have any idea she voted for what I just heard?

I don't think we can really celebrate Independence Day until we come clean on torture and punish the decision makers who not only let it happen, but made it so to justify their war based on lies.

Let me know when we've prosecuted the National Security Principals Committee: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, Tenet, and Ashcroft. You can throw Bush in there too for heading the entire operation and Mark Kirk for defending it. That's when we'll be Independent again. Until then, happy July 4th, it's just a date.

NEW HELP Committee Bill

The Washington Post and AP are reporting that there is a new revision to the Senate HELP Committee health care reform bill. I'm still trying to get ahold of a copy of the revision, most sources are only giving a vague overview from a pre-July 4 holiday letter sent out by Kennedy and Dodd, and it's not posted on the HELP Committee site.

Cost is down to $611.4 billion over 10 years from over $1 trillion for the original bill. That makes me wonder if they abandoned the CLASS Act for disabled adults.

As of now it looks like mandates stay that there will be a $750 per full-time worker and a $375 per part-time worker annual fee on companies that do not cover their employees. Employers with fewer than 25 employees are exempt which strikes me as odd because those are the people who generally have the problems not getting employer based coverage. However, they say the new provisions, including an expansion of Medicaid, will cover 97% of Americans. That, however, may change as the Finance Committee scales back its proposed expansion of Medicaid. No word on the cost to individuals who cannot afford coverage.

Confrontational -- Yes!

Apparently, the Washington Post is selling nonconfrontational access to its journalists for $25K to $250K. You can have access to my blog for way less. It's just not guaranteed what exactly I'm going to say about you.

The Next Townhall You Get Invited To Might Be Industry Sponsored. If I Go Will I Get A Hug From Some PhRMA CEO?

UPDATE: My feeling exactly. The townhall was too tightly controlled, pre-packaged. That might account for the relative mildness of the question from Healthcare-Now. I expected more from them.

*********************************

The health insurance lobby plans to hold more than 75 town hall and other events around the country this week to rally their supporters on health care reform. I'm not exactly sure how you fill up a room full of insurance CEO's. They may have to force the clerical staff to attend as well.

There's going to be a lot more advertising too. Lobbyists are circling Capitol Hill.

I've seen several commercials from PhRma. Oh, they want to give $80M over 10 years to pay 1/2 of the donut hole. That's about $8 million per year, $.66 million per month, chump change for those companies who pay their CEOs in the tens of millions every year. We could just end the donut hole by law, but then we wouldn't be enriching the rich, the new American patriotism.

I'd say they're going with the old medical adage, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." They just don't believe in that for us.

Live Blog: Obama's Health Care Townhall

I'm watching Obama's health care reform town hall on C-Span. The White House and Facebook sites had very choppy audio. So far it looks like an HCANned rally or an OFA house party, heavy on health care horror stories, light on explanations of the reform bills that are on the table. The only difference is that if you told your horror story here, you got a hug from Obama together with his promise of immediate help, not a small difference to the one person, but not all that helpful to the rest of us. According to the American Cancer Society, in 2006 there were 559,888 cancer deaths. According to Cancer.org, there were an estimated 1,372,910 new cancer cases in 2005. Lots of these people are uninsured or underinsured. As sweet a guy as he is, Barack cannot hug and help all of these people. Health care cannot be looked at in this piecemeal, throw a charity bake sale way we tend to look at it in this country.

Single payer? He says it's too disruptive. Yawn. Thats been his latest buzzphrase. It's misleading because changing the payer does not change the provider. What changes ones provider? It's the currently disruptive concept of plan networks. Insurance plans have networks of providers and the networks are a moving target, providers move in and out of them. Every single time I go to my doctor, there is a new note on the wall saying that such and such plan is no longer accepted. Plan networks are undisturbed by any of the legislation on the table, but no longer exist under a single payer system.

Also, President Obama forgets to explain how the US implemented Medicare long before the technology revolution. That worked out pretty well without any longterm aches from disruption. What could be disruptive under the currently proposed legislation? Providers refusing to accept those covered by the public option. There's nothing in currently proposed legislation to stop that from happening.

Why exchanges? I'm not really sure what he's saying. Help people find plans, increase buyer's leverage. That's what they said about mortgage brokers and we've seen how well that worked out. Why doesn't the industry pay for the exchanges if they want a better way to sell their products.

Healthcare-Now just missed a good opportunity to ask a question going back to single payer. Their question was too vague about costs and it basically left President Obama answering republican and industry claims, not answering the real cost question why not save the money that single payer would save?

Taxation of health benefits. Obama opposed during the campaign. The current proposal calls for a cap on the exclusion so high priced health care only get a deduction up to a certain point. The question is does it lower costs by creating only sensible plans. Obama prefers to cap itemized deductions, ensure those with health care do not see costs go up as other people's costs go down. His bottom line is to prevent costs from going up.

A Texas doctor is saying that defensive medicine is what increases costs. It's a tort reform argument, but before we even get to that let's examine his statement that they know what works in Texas. Isn't the most expensive health care town a town in Texas? Yes it is, McAllen, Texas. Obama is talking about real medical mistakes and the very severe damage that can be caused, he wants to cover people medical costs and pain and suffering. He wants to reduce costs when they actually perform effectively. He'll work with the AMA on that, but didn't we learn that only about 20% of the AMA is made up of practicing doctors. Ahhh, Obama mentioned McAllen! Good for him. Better than what they do to cap lawsuits in Texas would be what they do at Mayo, develop a team at the outset of a case and coordinating care.

It's looking like the crowd is filled with advocates and not average Americans. Now, he's talking to an SEIU member, previously there was someone from Healthcare-Now.

So, what does he want these advocates to do. Stop the old arguments that this is a government takeover of health care. Wants to make sure that we get our money's worth, doesn't want to provide $x in subsidies (but that's what the bills actually do). He wants a private plan to compete. They argue against it but if their plans are giving such a great deal, why are they worried about competing with the public plan. Not rationing, being sensible.

Obama wants people to pay attention to the argument and not let people scare you into keeping a system that is not working.

Now he's explaining that the process Congress goes through is to keep stability, but this is one of the times we need to build the will to make a change.

Blasting band music, now it really looks like an HCAN rally.

The dialogue is still at a high level with few specifics about the pending bills being discussed. While they did discuss the exchanges a bit--for the first time I've ever heard any discussion about the exchanges, he never really explained why that is a cost for the government and not the industry. He also didn't explain how they lower costs. The basic idea of an exchange (or gateway under the Senate bill) is to put out all the information on the Internet to help individuals and small employers shop for plans. They use an exchange in Massachusetts and costs have not gone down there. Another problem in Mass. is that the lower priced plans on the connector board are deceptive in that low premiums mask lots of other out-of-pocket costs such as copays, deductibles and co-insurance. The bottom line is the old line, you get what you pay for. We need to lower total costs, not just play with premiums to sell a product and why the taxpayers should fund a misleading marketplace like that is beyond me.

To me, the best value of the exchange would be some of the other reasons listed by the Kaiser Family Foundation, increase portability and move people off employer plans. However, that only benefits people if we take the next step and create a single payer. Without that, you have the shopping mechanism, but no one to pay the bill or control costs. Portability, but everyone's on an individual plan, more ownership society as in you're on your own.

Kirk Forces Looking Elsewhere for Support

My mom just called me. This afternoon, she got a call from Mark Kirk's office of all places. They want her, my mom, my Democratic blogging against Kirk mom, a woman well know to be my mom, who doesn't have an R primary ballot in her entire voting history, who would leave a blank spot on her ballot rather than ever vote for Mark Kirk, to march in July 4th parades for him. I imagine she'll think about it if they let her wear her Obama t-shirt and maybe a Dan Seals button for old times sake and if he'd stick around while she gave him a piece of her mind about his votes against people and lies about war.

Mom said the Kirk volunteer sounded dejected, couldn't get any marchers. That's too bad.

Congrats to Senator Franken

About time.

Here's the long awaited decision. It was a 5-0 non-split. The ruling says nothing about any problems with voting dead goldfish.

The order only says Franken is entitled to the certificate of election. It doesn't actually order Pawlenty to sign it. That could become interesting, but if Pawlenty doesn't certify him now, it's going to look really bad and high time for Minnesotans to take to the streets in green t-shirts.

The lesson here is that any Democrat who thinks he or she really won should pursue all good evidence. Franken could have easily backed down early when the media was calling the race for Coleman. State law gave him an automatic recount, but there was a lot of pressure on him to back down. He didn't. Good for him.

Imagine what Harry Reid can do with 60 seats, maybe some real health care reform instead of that nonsensical public option wrapped up in a blanket of corporate welfare for insurance companies. I'm imagining what he'll throw away.

For your summer reading enjoyment.... Mark Kirk learns what his base is all about, the hard way.

Summer is the time for beach reading, chick lit, science fiction, juicy murder mysteries and the like, nothing too heavy or serious. You can delve into the Shopoholic series or try an Anthony Bourdain chef/mystery book. But, if you're in the mood for some real entertainment, you can stick to the Internet and Google (or Bing) Mark Kirk.

Here's a new site from his senate primary opponent from the right. The best part of that site discusses the rumors about Kirk's divorce, but neglects to mention it's actually the source of the rumors. Good for a laugh.

Democrats really don't care that Kirk got a divorce or why Kirk got a divorce. We don't belong to the Arthur Dimmesdale crowd like the other hypocritical followers of Mark Sanford. However, we do care that Kirk's against re-regulating financial institutions, the deregulation of which brought us the real estate crash, the banking crash, the insurance crash, Enron and guys like Bernie Madoff. We also care that he's against regulating agriculture and pharma the current state of which bring us recall after recall of bad food and dangerous and expensive medicines. He's against health care for the uninsured and underinsured and, of course, he's proudly against economic stimulus. Many of us are also reluctant to forget that he lied to get us into a war and supported the Bush administration in conducting and hiding illegal torture.

After imagining what's in that divorce record along with Andy Martin, you can take a click over to Capitor Fax where they've posted some choice comments from Kirk's former fan club. I have to agree with them on one point: this is just about the funniest video I've ever seen out of Kirk's office (although not nearly as funny as this one). I wonder if Kirk would take a test to prove he's read ACES, all 1092 (or so) pages of it.

Twittering Kirk is another facinating past time. Just go to your Twitter account and put his name into search. There you'll find this interesting site claiming that Mark Kirk kills jobs. He would if he could, but not for the reasons they cite. He wanted to stop stimulus and that would have done it. Good thing his vote doesn't count for too much with the Democratic majority.

It appears that playing the procedural votes and voting for the doomed republican alternative to ACES along with his ACES yes vote might not work for him this time. Funny, Kirk's supporters never cared before that he's made an 8 year career out of playing the procedural votes.

For Kirk's party, he's always been happy to take advantage of people whipped up into a fear frenzy based on lies. I wonder how he's going to like being on the receiving end of that. It would be nice if it at least it made him think that, just maybe, scaring people for votes isn't real leadership after all.

So, how is Kirk going to win his senate seat or keep his house seat? His usual standing for nothing but his own election might be a winner if he can keep his base too afraid to vote for his primary opponent, but that might be a problem in 2010 as his supporters grow increasingly frustrated in a country that generally wants to trust President Obama and hopes he succeeds while they want him and it to fail. Kirk's old supporters are saying they want to give him to the Democrats, but we don't want him. Democrats aren't done trying to fix what Reagan and two Bushes did to our country. Kirk's way too steeped in the destruction for any of us to be interested in him on the reconstruction side.

So, will Kirk try to eak it out from where he is on the voting spectrum or is he going to be pushed even further toward the edge of right wing insanity? It will probably depend on which way the wind blows. In any event, it's going to be a summer of entertainment for we here in the normal, thinking crowd.

As Obama and Congress Passed ACES, They Propped Up Coal and Left Lots of Coal-Related Problems

While still on the Waxman-Markey climate change bill (aka "ACES") voting fence last week, Mark Kirk told some news outlets that he feared the climate change bill because his district was coal dependent. From a district full of residential homes, malls, strip malls, big box discount stores, many small technology and service companies and a couple of pharmas, that statement is nonsense. However, I doubt Kirk misspoke. I think he intended the comment just as he said it in an effort to promote his statewide senate campaign while still looking like he cares about his own district.

Kirk isn't wrong about coal in Illinois. There is a significant amount of coal mining in Illinois, although Illinois coal jobs have been dwindling for quite a while now. There are also several coal burning power plants in Illinois like the one near the Little Village neighborhood that is causing some air quality problems for its neighbors..

What Kirk missed is that the climate change bill actually throws tons of money at trying to produce something called "clean coal" that most experts do not believe exists. The bill also allows construction of new coal plants.

What Kirk will never get because he simply does not care, is that coal leaves a huge environmental footprint both in mining for it and in its use as an energy source. One aspect of coal mining that is particularly disturbing is mountain top removal coal mining. This past February, I did some research about this mining technique as part of a legal research project on recent environmental case law. I found that mountain top removal coal mining is destroying the beautiful mountain ranges in Appalachia and pollutes the rivers and streams in the surrounding valleys, waters that are used by the people living in the nearby towns and cities. I also found that the practice is destroying local economies because rather than creating or even preserving coal mining jobs, it is used to replace coal miners. It left me wondering why none of the long-winded republican tirades on the house floor about lost jobs from the climate change bill included a tirade about lost jobs due to mountain top removal coal mining.

Mountain top removal coal mining began in Appalachia in the 1970s as a cheaper, less labor intensive and higher yielding version of conventional strip-mining. The practice has several steps. First, the mountain top forests are clear-cut and the topsoil is removed. Then, explosives are used to blast away from 800 to 1000 feet of mountaintop. Waste dirt and rock called “spoil” is hauled and dumped into nearby valleys. Then, a machine called a dragline digs into the rock and exposes the coal and other machines are used to scoop out the coal.

This isn't the sort of mining that is generally done in Illinois because we don't have topography. However, Illinois tolerates some closely related strip mining and contemplates mountain top removal where appropriate in its mining regulations.

A group called the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition was working to stop mountain top mining in Appalachia by preventing the EPA from issuing the permits for the spoil dumping. Sadly, the Fourth Circuit Court decided a case this past February that allowed further mining without issuance of EPA valley fill permits. To make its ruling, the appellate panel determined that stream segments and sediment ponds were not waters of the United States that require EPA permits, but unitary waste treatment systems excepted from Clean Water Act permit requirements. The mining was allowed to go forward because the ruling left permitting decision making to the Army Corps of Engineers that interpreted its own rules to leave permitting decisions to the states. Basically, these were classified as non-federal projects.

Despite the Fourth Circuit's lack of concern, mountain top removal is very harmful to US waters. The Sierra Club reports that it has destroyed approximately 2,000 miles of streams.

The consequences of mountain top mining can be see in the following videos available on You Tube:
From ilovemountains.org
From a rally in Frankfort

While coal still gets government accolades and dollars, a group led by NASA climate scientist and Columbia University professor, Dr. James Hansen, still works in West Virginia to stop mountain top mining and eventually eliminate the use of coal in the country. Hansen has been frustrated at the minor improvements in Administration's mountain top removal position as Obama compromised to get the votes for the Waxman-Markey bill and was recently arrested with 30 other protesters for stopping traffic while protesting the coal friendly aspects of the climate change bill. Obama had promised to end mountain top removal, but ended up only authorizing more permit scrutiny from the EPA. Then, his EPA approved more permits. I'm wondering how further EPA scrutiny will happen in any event given the Fourth Circuit's recent ruling.

Mark Kirk and the Climate Change Bill

He was against it before he was for it. As per his usual voting pattern, Kirk voted against the bill on the procedural votes. He voted against ordering the previous question on H. RES. 587, the bill to consider H.R. 2454 and voted against agreeing to the resolution of H.Res. 587. He also voted in favor of Forbes substitute amendment. That bill was basically a series of contests to see who can come up with the most energy efficient "thing" for lack of a better word to describe it. There were prizes! Waxman called it a "grant program" and wondered why they didn't give out any prizes during the past 8 years.

Kirk emailed around the district to explain his vote. Interestingly, in it he admitted his work for the Competitive Enterprise Institute to convince people that global warming did not exist (not in so many words, but he said:

In 1998 and 1999, I served as part of the U.S. delegation to both the Kyoto and Buenos Aires UN Climate Change conferences. In those years, there was a significant debate about the amount and effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide. I was a skeptic and spent hundreds of hours on the subject of climate science. In the Congress, our job is to learn as much as possible from the latest peer-reviewed non-partisan scientists and then plot the best course for our nation.)

Actually, they did not call themselves "skeptics". They called themselves "contrarians", a better word fit. I think he wants to talk about this more to gain conservative creds for his senate run while voting to not completely offend his very environmental district.

Kirk called Forbes grand prize sweepstakes the "idea" solution in his email. He also gave ex-President Bush credit for recognizing the relationship between carbon dioxide levels and temperature, basically recognizing global warming. That's sort of misleading. Bush's EPA ultimately reluctantly admitted global warming, but Bush scoffed at the report and did nothing about it. Basically, Kirk would rather be in the Bush years on global warming which means that if you are an environmentalist, you probably want Kirk to be with Bush, in retirement.

We haven't had a good cat video in a long time.

Never get in between a cat and her food.

BREAKING: Climate Change Passes In A Squeaker

219 Y

212 N

3 no vote

Passed

Kirk voted yes.

Democrats who voted no--from the looks of the names, there were different reasons, some thought it didn't go far enough:
Altmire
Arcuri
Barrow
Berry
Boren
Bright
Carney
Childers
Costa
Costello
Dahlkemper
Davis (AL)
Davis (TN)
DeFazio
Donnelly (IN)
Edwards (TX)
Ellsworth
Foster--This is bad.
Griffith
Herseth Sandlin
Holden
Kirkpatrick (AZ)
Kissell
Kucinich
Marshall
Massa
Matheson
McIntyre
Melancon
Minnick
Mitchell
Mollohan
Nye
Ortiz
Pomeroy
Rahall
Rodriguez
Salazar
Stark
Tanner
Taylor
Visclosky
Wilson (OH)

Rahm Put In His Place

Good for Sasha. From the Center for American Progress:

The White House held its annual congressional picnic yesterday, and the star of the show was Sasha Obama for sinking chief of staff Rahm Emanuel in the
dunking booth.

Mark Kirk's feelings are hurt

Nancy only talks to him when she needs something.

Now, perhaps Kirk knows what his consitutents feel like. He only talks to us when he needs our votes or is trying out some new theory to use for future elections.

I didn't know our district was "coal-dependent". Do you have a coal-burning furnace in your house? Do the malls and strip malls run on coal? I'm trying to think of a big coal burning factory in the IL-10. Can you tell me? This might have a lot more to do with Kirk eyeing the senate than representing his district which is steeped in people seeking high tech green jobs and Sierra Club members.

The real question is whether Kirk is willing to lose his green creds for his upcoming senate run jut to protect some coal burning furnace he's imagined in the Northbrook Court Macy's or the Waukegan Home Depot? Maybe he's still working with the Competitive Enterprise Institute to deny global warming exists. UCS was hoping we've gotten past that Bush era non-science.

Reminder: Climate Bill Vote Today

Details later.

In the meantime, take a look at this anthology from the Union of Concerned Scientists. Thoreau's Legacy: American Stories About Global Warming.