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*****  Love this article.   It’s an amazing analysis by Les Leopold titled, Why Are We Afraid of Taxing the Super-Rich?   What a great take on the status of the American tax system and how it works in the “real world” economy (a favorite topic for us).  For the entire article, CHECK-IT-OUT.

*****  Here’s an update on the Senate Healthcare legislation as it applies to abortion insurance titled, Pro-life Group Urges Congress to Pass Senate Healthcare Bill, by Thomas C. Fox — an issue we tackled in an earlier post.              

           “Twenty-five pro-life Catholic theologians and Evangelical leaders yesterday sent letters to members of Congress urging them not to let misleading information about abortion provisions in the Senate health care bill block passage of sorely-needed reform.” 

           “Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, a Washington-based advocacy group, said that the Senate health bill upholds abortion funding restrictions and supports pregnant women.”  For the entire article, CHECK-IT-OUT.

*****  Here’s another great example of the infamous Republican hypocrisy.  According to the Republican Party (and their notorious troglodytes, the Tea Partiers) Obamacare is nothing less than a Democratic attempt to implement a socialist, government take-over of our health care system.  If this Democratic plan is a socialist big-government health care plan, then why — oh why, does it look so familiar? 

           Senator Lindsay Graham claimed, on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, that the Massachusetts health care reform plan — which was implemented under Republican Governor Mitt Romney — and voted for by newly elected Massachusetts Republican Senator, Scott Brown — is not similar at all to the Healthcare Reform being proposed for the nation by the Obama administration.  But, as stated at Think Progress:

           “In fact, the plan implemented by former Republican Gov. Mitt Romney in Massachusetts is very similar to the Democratic proposal.  Both plans require people to purchase coverage and both provide affordability credits to those who can’t afford insurance.  Both create insurance exchanges, both establish minimum creditable coverage standards for insurers, and both require employers to contribute towards reform. 

           “Even conservatives see the similarities between the two plans.  The public option has now vanished from the Obama plan.  Which means that the federal plan bears a closer family resemblance than ever to Romney’s idea,” according to former Bush speech writer, David Frum.

           “American Spectator’s Philip Klein said there “Ain’t” any substantial differences between the plans.  The key parts of the Democratic proposal are the same as those elements that formed the core of Romneycare, Klein adds.”  For the entire article, CHECK-IT-OUT.

We’ve taken a good hard look at the Ipsos/McClatchy Poll on healthcare reform, covering a six month period of time.  Polling started during the last week in August, followed by two polls in October (the first week and the last week), then again the last week in January and the last week in February.

The favorability vs. unfavorability of the current healthcare reform legislation is about the same at the end of February as it was in August of ’09 — with a 41% favorable to 47% unfavorable.  The unfavorability peaked in January with 51% unfavorable and favorable at 37%.  But the numbers seem to be returning to a more even level.  In other words, the winds appear to be shifting once again, this time in our favor.

The more interesting data is found after digging a little deeper into the numbers.  People who said they were opposed to the current healthcare plan were then asked the following question: 

“You said you are opposed to the healthcare reform overall.  Is that because:”

1. You favor healthcare reform overall, but think the current proposals don’t go far enough to reform healthcare — 37%
2. You oppose healthcare reform overall and think the current proposals go too far in reforming healthcare — 54%
3. Not sure — 10%

The interesting results here tell us that a whopping 37% of the peopled polled who said they are against this healthcare reform plan, oppose it because they feel it does not go far enough to reform the system.  This 37% (those who didn’t like the reform because it doesn’t go far enough) of the 47% (those generally against reform) adds over 17% to the number of people polled who want a strong healthcare reform bill passed.

The 41% of people who approve of this healthcare plan, plus 17% of people who actually want an even stronger reform plan brings the number to 58% of the American people who want our country to have universal healthcare and stronger regulations on the health insurance industry.

That doesn’t quite jibe with the current Republican talking point that the American people are against healthcare reform.  And, don’t forget this amazing number: 10% of those polled who are against healthcare reform, don’t know if they oppose it because it goes too far, or not far enough!

Okay, that last one is the Dem’s fault — our side has not explained what this plan for health reform is all about, and the Republicans are calling it socialism.  So that explains the 10% of the 47% that are just plain against this ‘rotten’ plan and they don’t have a clue as to why!

So, go-go-go White House.  And hello, Congress:  if you blow this one you surely do not deserve our support.  Get ‘er done, and we’ll have your backs.

Here’s an article that helps explain the differences between the Senate Healthcare Reform abortion language, and the language in the House’s legislation.  Basically both versions of the healthcare bill prohibit federal funds from being used to pay for abortion, except in the cases of incest, rape or to save the life of the mother.  And, neither of these bills restricts abortion. 

Both pieces of legislation provide a path to purchase abortion insurance.  Here are the differences.

• The House version prohibits insurance companies from offering abortion services if they accept federal subsidies.  And, basically, all insurance companies would accept federal subsidies because that’s how we as a country are going to give access to healthcare to 30 million more Americans — and insurance companies want access to these new customers.  The House language, written by Congressman Bart Stupak, says that if a woman wants abortion insurance coverage she must buy a separate insurance policy just for that service.
• The Senate legislation, written by Nebraska’s Ben Nelson, says that insurance companies can offer abortion services even if they accept federal subsidies. BUT if a woman and her family want that separate insurance she has to pay for it with a separate check sent directly to the company in order to not co-mingle federal funds with individual citizens’ funds.

Whew.  According to Washington and Lee University law prof, Timothy Jost, the only difference between the two bills is an administrative technicality.  If a family wants abortion insurance,  “What Stupak says is you have to buy a separate policy, and what Nelson says is you have to write two checks,” said Jost.

“There’s no public funding of abortion.  And people who don’t want to pay for other people’s abortions wouldn’t be forced to do so,” Jost added. They could simply pick a plan that doesn’t cover it.

How dumb would it be if Healthcare Reform failed to pass over such a tiny technicality?  Shame on you, Bart Stupak, if you cause this legislation to go down.  And, if you do, be sure to know that you will be held accountable at election time — keep looking over your shoulder and thinking, “Blanche Lincoln, Blanche Lincoln, Blanche Lincoln.”

Vote Vets video ad makes the case for national green energy policy to stop American financial support of middle eastern oil countries that hate us.

This whole right-wing, “small-government” meme has been going on for a very long time — and the argument from the right never changes:  Government is bad, and we have to protect ourselves from government.  Everything else flows from this paranoid delusion.

Historically, Conservatives have railed against all kinds of government legislation.  They’ve objected to laws requiring bikers to wear helmets, mandating seat belts in cars, and establishing reasonable speed limits.  You see, any government requirement is an infringement on freedom.  You know — the freedom to have traumatic head injuries from not wearing biking helmets, or the freedom to risk the lives of our children in car accidents without seat-belt or car-seat requirements.   

In the 50’s and 60’s Conservatives were screaming about the “big-government plot to put fluoride in our drinking water.”  Ooooo, the government is forcing us to have fewer cavities!   At some point we really do need to grow-up and realize that government in our democracy is not them, it is us.  We are not out to get us.  Government is not bad;  it is inefficient at times, and sometimes bureaucratic — but not evil. 

This paranoia and suspicion from the right breeds anger, and the Conservative movement is dangerously close to being branded as a movement bordering on violence.  Political talk about seceding from the country, armed resistance, revolution, alongside demonization of the President as a danger to America — is playing with fire and should be seen as such.

It is no surprise that the Republican Party has just been outed with their Power Point plan to aggressively use F E A R to motivate donors and raise money for the November elections.  They’ve been doing that for years.  Remember when Dick Cheney told us that if we voted for John Kerry we would be attacked by terrorists?  Otherwise known as the “Vote for Democrats and you will die” Republican slogan.

One of the most extreme right-wing organizations, the John Birch Society (JBS), has been around for over 50 years, and has quite a history.  It was founded by Robert Welch, Jr. in Indianapolis in 1958.  Historically, the John Birch Society opposed:  the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960’s by saying that the movement was full of communists;  and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by asserting that this law overstepped the rights of each state to enact their own Civil Rights laws.  

Yeah, that would’ve worked out well:  segregation in some states and integration in others.  Hey, that sounds familiar — didn’t our country fight a Civil War over that notion?

The John Birch Society is also anti-immigration and against the United Nations.  In the early years they called President Eisenhower a “conscious, dedicated agent of the communist conspiracy” and said that the U.S. government was “under operational control of the Communist Party.”  JBS asserted that there were Communists throughout our government (in addition to President Eisenhower). They even opposed President Eisenhower’s meetings with the Soviet Union as showing weakness — at least the right is always consistent in their view that the USA doesn’t negotiate, we go to war!

The John Birch Society has been a joke for decades.  Just six years after JBS was founded in 1958 the Chad Mitchell Trio wrote and performed this song to millions of laughing Americans.  We need to see the John Birch Society for what it is:  an old, last century, still paranoid, and in a really pathetic sort of way, still kinda funny!

In the early 60’s the founder/editor of the right-wing magazine National Review, William F. Buckley, dismissed the John Birch Society from the Conservative movement declaring that JBS was “idiotic and paranoid” and by stating that the paranoid ranting from the John Birch Society had no place in the conservative movement, or the Republican Party. 

And yet the John Birch Society is welcomed back into the fold now, as a 2010 co-sponsor of the Conservative movement’s annual conference —  CPAC in Washington, D.C.  The Conservative movement, and much of the Republican Party itself, has gone so far to the right that they more closely resemble the haters in the Tea Party and the John Birch Society than their own heroes like William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan.

With this new embrace of the John Birch Society, clarity is really achieved on where the political right stands today:   Conservatives have moved so far right that they no longer hold any solutions for our nation.  Maybe the answers are on the left, or in the center — but we know the answers are not with this Conservative/Republican movement of fear and anger.

Boy, have we been fooled. 

This one has been irritating me for a long time:  Trickle-down Economics, the conservative Republicans instructed us, would result in a booming economy.  “If you give big tax cuts to the wealthy we will use that money to create jobs.”  A Grand Bargain. 

There is, however, a glitch to this compact between the wealthy and our workers.  While jobs were created, those jobs are — wait for it — OVERSEAS.  So, how did the American workers benefit from making this compact with the wealthy?  

They didn’t.  The jobs are gone;  we have a disappearing middle class; the corporations and well-to-do are pocketing lots more money;  and our nation is no longer thriving the way it did when the marginal tax rates were much higher.

After 30 years of Reganomics this fairy-tale theory of economics has become so embedded in our thinking that it is now “common wisdom.”  Many, if not a majority of our citizens, still believe (despite the evidence to the contrary) that we need “broad-based tax cuts” — which mostly benefit the wealthy — in order to create jobs.

The result of this 30 year compact is that American workers got fewer, lower-paying jobs;  the wealthy and corporations got richer.  And our nation has been cheated out of the tax revenues we could have used to, oh let’s say — pay down the deficit;  rebuild our infrastructure, etc.

So, now what?  Geez, I don’t know.  The damage is done, but maybe we could at least begin to try re-thinking our automatic reflexive chant, “We need broad-based tax cuts to create jobs!”  How’d that work out for us during the last administration when W. jammed multiple, massive tax cuts through Congress?  (Using by the way, that demonized process, Senate Reconciliation.)

President Bush:  WHERE are the jobs that your tax cuts to the wealthy were supposed to create?  He has no honest answer. 

So, let’s figure this out logically.  President Bill Clinton raised the top marginal tax rate to 39.6%, and despite the dire predictions of all Republicans, the economy boomed (and we even had a budget surplus).  W. cut top marginal tax rates from 39.6% to 35% and the job creation was anemic, the economy tanked and he doubled the national debt in only eight years. 

How could that be true when it’s “common wisdom” that tax cuts on the top income level creates jobs, and that tax hikes depress job creation in the country?  Gosh, could W.’s Dad, President Bush 41, have had it right all along when he called Trickle-down Economics “Voo-Doo Economics?”

Let’s all get behind letting these Bush tax cuts expire and use the revenues to build our country a brighter future.  Let us leave old, stale ideas in the past and like our founding Fathers (and Mothers) let’s look for new and dynamic ideas to build our nation.

The American people do not like the Supreme Court’s recent Citizens United ruling that opens the floodgates to corporate spending on political campaigns.  In recent polling large majorities of Americans from across the political spectrum want Congress to pass new laws limiting corporate spending on our elections. 

Senator Sherrod Brown, of Ohio, has put forward a bill that if passed would force corporations to FULLY DISCLOSE when they spend corporation money to influence elections;  REQUIRE CONSENT from the corporate shareholders  in a majority vote before they spend company money trying to defeat or support candidates;  PROTECT OUR ELECTIONS by preventing foreign-owned corporations from spending freely on American politics.   

The underlying political issue to remember is that a conservative Supreme Court will make right-leaning, conservative rulings.  And, with W.’s eight years in the White House the Courts have taken a hard-right swing.  President Obama may have an opportunity to alter the makeup of the Supreme Court and bring it back into balance. 

If you don’t like this recent decision you certainly will not want to “send a message to Washington” by electing Republicans.  There are consequences  to elections.   

A recent Washing Post/ABC News poll gleaned the data shown below.  Pollsters asked: 

• Do you support or oppose the recent ruling by the Supreme Court that says corporations and unions can spend as much money as they want to help political candidates win elections?

• Would you support or oppose an effort by Congress to reinstate limits on corporate and union spending on election campaigns?

Watched all 7 hours of Blair House Health Care Reform Summit.  While the media appears to fall into the “Republicans succeeded today” camp, I have to say that in the end as we look back at today over the next few months, we will see that Obama actually prevailed.

He was reasonable, gracious, intelligent, and commanding.  Health Care Reform will pass the Congress in the next few months, and Dems will benefit with the electorate in years to come.

GOOD LUCK TODAY, MR. PRESIDENT!

Today’s the day.  President Obama has extended an invitation to Congressional leaders, both Republicans and Democrats, to meet with him in a six-hour televised Health Care Reform summit at Blair House across the street from the White House.  This is an opportunity for Republicans and Democrats to shine a light on their respective ideas for how to solve a serious problem for our nation.

Democrats cannot let Health Care Reform fail once again.  This is not just a Democratic Party issue any more, it has now become an issue for national survival.

With the rapid rate escalation in health insurance costs, soon only the wealthy will be able to afford health care.  And if the Republicans take over Washington again anytime soon, Medicare will be privatized and access to Medicaid will be limited.  We cannot lose this fight to insure millions of Americans and bend the curve downward in the ever-escalating costs of health care.

WE’RE COUNTING ON YOU, MR. PRESIDENT!

Science takes us closer and closer to understanding our world, and ourselves.  We were inspired by Nicholas Kristof’s recent article  in the New York Times about the differences between how Conservative and Liberal brains work.  We did a bit of Internet searching and found some fascinating articles about the new science of physiology and political beliefs.  Now we’re wondering if we can ever be really mad at the far-right again.  After all, “it is all in their heads!”

Is it possible to look at the differences between how Conservatives and Progressives govern and correlate these differences with physiology?   We can look at the different ways that each side reacted to 9/11, and maybe we can also consider the differences in how Progressives and Conservatives legislate to see if there is a correlation with how our brains work.

The research is fascinating:  It indicates that there are physical differences in how our brains operate, and that those differences are measurable and predictive of our political orientation.  Scientific experiments, using electrodes to measure the “startle blink reflex,” recorded the differing political orientation among subjects who have a strong reaction to being startled to those who have a less strong reaction.

Those who were more easily startled, (had a stronger startle-reaction) were more likely to perceive threat and danger when startled, and were more likely to be conservative in their politics.  Kristof points out that this evidence “makes intuitive sense:  If you are more acutely sensitive to risks and more fearful of attack, you may be more aggressive in arming yourself and more wary of foreigners.” 

In these experiments a strong startle-reaction was also predictive of a perception of the world in black-and-white terms.  Examples of this kind of black-and-white thinking would be:  “with us or against us”;  “good or evil “;  “us or them.”   

Other research informs us that there appears to be strong link between being Liberal and “openness” which is defined as:   having an ability to accept new ideas;  having a high level of tolerance for ambiguity;  and an appreciation of different cultures.  Although Liberal leaning subjects reacted to being startled — by the “flash of noise (that) was unexpectedly broadcast into the research subjects’ earphones…,” — they were not particularly threatened.

So we have some who may be born into this world primed to startle easily and be fearful, and others who are not.  That may explain a lot about the different way each side actually saw 9/11 and the new threats to the country.  Bush and Cheney immediately kicked into the black-and-white-thinking of “us and them” and seemed to almost fall into a state of fear, panic and over-reaction. 

The black-and-white approach to life also comes into play when observing how decisions get made in Washington.  The Republicans see everything in terms of “right and wrong.”  Democrats tend to see decision-making in terms of “let’s negotiate.” 

This new research may also help answer the Liberals’ lament:  “Why is it that we always compromise and the other side never does?”

The science of physiology and political beliefs may hold the answer.  If Republicans see governing as “We will do the right thing, and we’re always right” and Democrats see governing as “Let’s sit down and negotiate and I’ll give in a little, and you give in a little” then one side always goes into discussions having already indicated that they’re willing to give.  And so Democrats do give, because their brains are hard-wired with a willingness to be open to other ideas and to see nuance — whereas the Republicans are hard-wired to “stick by their black-and-white principles and do the ‘right’ thing.”

We see them as mean, and they see us as weak.  It might help to understand that Conservatives are wired to be wary, and perhaps we could look for opportunities to present our ideas in ways they can appreciate.  And, maybe it’s time that one side (why not us?) use this new understanding to try to bridge the communications divide with the American people, and not just focus on being the “winners.”  Let them stay in that “we win — you lose” mentality while we proceed with persuading and governing.