Politics: September 2009 Archives

"I voted bipartisanly! LOL"

Earlier this morning, the Senate Finance Committee, headed by Sen. Max "Bipartisanship Over Public Good" Baucus (D-MT), voted down Sen. Jay Rockefeller's (D-WV) relatively robust public option amendment to their version of the health care bill. No Republicans voted for it, and neither did Baucus himself. The Congressional Budget Office caluculated that Rockefeller's public option would have cut $50 billion off the bill's cost over ten years.

And just this afternoon, the committee voted down Sen. Chuck Schumer's (D-NY) more modest public option amendment. From TPMDC:

The Senate Finance Committee can't even endorse a modest public option like Chuck Schumer's. Citing his belief that a public option can't pass on the Senate floor "at this time," Finance chairman Max Baucus joined two Democrats and all Republicans in voting down the amendment, which failed 10 to 13.

Joining Baucus on the Democrats' side of the dais were Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) and, by proxy, Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) who wasn't present for the vote.

There will be no public option in the Finance Committee's health care bill.

There's a couple of chances for the public option -- some public option -- to make an appearance still, either in committee with the Senate HELP version of the bill, or in committee with the House's bill. But this is a serious blow, make no mistake.

And by the way, the guy in the photo at the top? That's Max Baucus. He's the guy, the Democrat, who believed the Republicans when they said they wanted to negotiate in good faith on health care, even though they voted against it, as a unified group, at every single turn. I'll let you decide whom to hold accountable for the public option's sinking: the rats, or the captain who let the rats take a turn steering?

(Photo by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images North America)

Last Week, about 150 leaders in Salvadoran communities across the United States met at the the First Salvadoran American Leadership Summit in Washington.

The group planned to lobby Congress about a path towards citizenship for those in the community without papers and talk about clear issues they could all agree to work on together.

Salvador Sanabria of Salvadorans in the World told the Washington Post:

"We're not here to look for unity, because unity is a romantic dream that is hard to reach. We're here to come to this round table without hierarchy to find a consensus about the actions we can take to help our community."

One issue they all could agree to work on was getting full citizenship for about 200,000 Salvadoran immigrants who were given temporary legal status after the 2001 earthquake. They agreed this should be a top priority in any immigration reforms. Overall, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, 47 percent of Salvadorans are undocumented.

Read the rest of the Washington Post story here.

Pictured above from left to right: Víctor Ramírez, Walter Tejada and Ana Sol Gutiérrez with other Salvadoran politicians. Photo taken by Alfredo Duarte Pereira for El Tiempo Latino.

As if there weren't enough to ridicule already about New York politics, Governor David Paterson and President Obama are reportedly caught in a standoff over Paterson's potential candidacy in the 2010 governor's race.

Since Paterson was catapulted into the seat following his predecessor Eliot Spitzer's sex scandal, he has struggled with low popularity, frazzled by fiscal crisis and embarrassing partisan paralysis in Albany. And while his status as New York's first Black governor invites comparisons to the President, unlike Obama, Paterson has been (awkwardly) outspoken about how race impacts his political image. When he suggested that the media's condescending portrayal of him reflected racism—he was criticized for being impolitic or “making excuses” for his lackluster performance.

The media has circulating a haunting figure in recent days:45,000 deaths due to lack of health insurance—a grim marker of the depth of the country's health care crisis.

The statistic, from a new study by Harvard School of Medicine researchers, reflects projections based on government data on more than 9,000 individuals tracked over a number of years. Basically, we live in a country where about 46 million people don't have health coverage, and drawing from government medical and census data, researchers calculate that this trend was tied to “approximately 44789 deaths among Americans aged 18 to 64 years in 2005.” The link between insurance and death held steady even after controlling for various socioeconomic, racial and health factors.” (A handy chart tells you how many of those dead folks are from your home state.)

But when you factor those other characteristics in, a different sort of picture emerges. In the study sample, the Black uninsured rate, 23 percent, was nearly double that of whites. Nearly half of Mexican Americans were uninsured. Interestingly, the death rate for Blacks was significantly higher compared to Whites, but not for Mexican Americans.

Tuesday was Joe “You Lie” Wilson's day of reckoning. Following his temper tantrum during Obama's address on healthcare reform, the House, by a 240-179 vote, issued this stinging rebuke:

Whereas on September 9, 2009, during the joint session of Congress convened pursuant to House Concurrent Resolution 179, the President of the United States, speaking at the invitation of the House and Senate, had his remarks interrupted by the Representative from South Carolina, Mr. Wilson; and

Whereas the conduct of the Representative from South Carolina was a breach of decorum and degraded the proceedings of the joint session, to the discredit of the House: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives disapproves of the behavior of the Representative from South Carolina, Mr. Wilson, during the joint session of Congress held on September 9, 2009.

EDIT: Initial reports indicated that Sergant was asked to resign from the NEA. Update from the Huffington Post page quoted below: "The NEA has updated their statement to emphasize that Yosi Sargent remains with the agency, but in a different position: 'As regards Yosi Sergant, he has not left the National Endowment for the Arts. He remains with the agency, although not as director of communications.'

Sources familiar with the situation say that the move represents a significant step down and was the result of the controversy. Discussion about his new duties is still ongoing."

Jeff Chang at Can't Stop Won't Stop:

Beck is not just trying to make progressives who are young and/or of color absolutely dispensable to the establishment. He is trying to take away their platform as well. To Beck, this is a fight not just over the individuals, but to block the ways change is actually made.

Van Jones did not just have great ideas, he used culture to make them viable. He brought inner-city youths to anti-prisons and environmental justice agendas using hip-hop. He also found a way to speak to wealthy environmentalists through speeches and books. Culture created openings to forge new alliances between inner-city youths and wealthy environmentalists.

Yosi Sergant worked at what the Obama campaign thought were the margins: to use the creative power of artists to ignite the imagination of the people. When he got started, all of the money was raised through creative communities. And when the artists got rolling by the end of the summer, they didn’t need the campaign to do their thing. But they were arguably as important to shifting the public tide towards Obama’s victory as all the pollsters and precinct organizers on the campaign payroll.

Glenn Beck, like other conservatives, is deathly afraid of the colorized world we now live in. In the continuing battle between the ideas–monoculturalism vs. polyculturalism, domination vs. justice, repression vs. change, fear vs. hope–there is no doubt what side he is on.

But better than any other conservative, Beck understands the new role culture is playing in how change is made. When all avenues for change are blocked, organizers and artists find the holes to slip through and connect with their communities.

This is why he is using his own media perch to attack those who are young, idealistic, progressive, and have a strong understanding of the ways culture builds diversity, and diversity builds strength and longevity.

Put bluntly, this is the shape of the new culture war.

Glenn Beck has announced that Cass Sunstein, Mark Lloyd, and Carol Browner are his next targets and asked his followers to dig up all the dirt they can on them.

Cass Sunstein heads the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. He's a legal scholar, particularly in the fields of constitutional law, administrative law, environmental law, and law and behavioral economics.

Mark Lloyd is the associate general counsel and Chief Diversity Officer at the Federal Communications Commission. Previously, he served as Vice President for Strategic Initiatives at the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

Carol Browner is Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change in the Obama Administration. Browner previously served as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton Administration in the United States.