Motley Moose – Archive

This is the time for Democrats, and Obama in particular, to show the respect that Ted Kennedy deserved for his 42 years in the Senate by passing the one bill that was most important to his life. It seems to me that the final bill, which should also be named after Ted, should give us the real public option that the great majority of Americans want and that Kennedy had not yet managed to get us.

In yesterday’s NY Times, an article entitled  A Public Option That Works showed up on the Op-Ed page. It is worth reading because the

…San Francisco experiment has demonstrated that requiring a shared-responsibility model – in which employers pay to help achieve universal coverage – has not led to the kind of job losses many fear. The public option has also passed the market test, while not crowding out private options. The positive changes in San Francisco provide a glimpse of what the future might look like if Washington passes substantial health reform this year.

It is now the day after Senator Benjamin Cardin’s Town Hall meeting in Hagerstown, MD, and I have had plenty of time to see what the local papers and television news have covered on it… plus I spent some time looking into the web sites of organizations that pushed attendees to the meeting (like Resistnet.com) and the prearranged instructions they put out to make sure nothing was reasonably discussed.

And this is what amazes me the most: a couple of hundred people who are my age or older who came to protest the benefits which, for the most part, would serve them well and which they actually need. Thinking back to where this kind of behavior, in which ordinary citizens are convinced to work against themselves, started… the incoming of Ronald Reagan 40 years ago… I am as confused now as I was then.  How do middle-class and lower-middle-class individuals justify campaigning for the things that make their own lives worse?

… or at least that’s what an organization called The 60 Plus Association thinks. They supposedly represent older folks like me as we stand in the face of possible Health Care Reform. And, indeed, they are representing us older folks with a new television ad:

So, here I am sitting back in my big chair with my evening insulin shot and miscellany of pills, knowing that this organization is representing me and my age group against a government that wants to put me in front of a “death panel.”

It’s a good thing we have web sites like TPM to show us what’s going on when we’re competing for Health Care Reform during Congress’ August recess. Today they published the Teabaggers documentation that is being used to break up Town Hall meetings given by Democrats who support reform.

I get out of the gym at the Shepherd University Wellness Center and go downstairs to the Cafe where I get my post-exercise coffee and plop down in front of the lobby television. Today on C-Span 3 they were showing an all Republican Health Care panel, supposedly exposing all the things wrong with the countries that have single-payer (read “socialized medicine”) health plans.

And, of course, the Congress- men and – women were quoting and basing their arguments on stuff from the “highly non-partisan” Lewin Group.

Tomorrow is the 40th anniversary of the landing on the Moon in 1969. Neil Armstrong (“One small step for a man… one giant leap for mankind”) ad Buzz Aldrin planted the flag and put out a plaque marking the landing which, in under a decade, had been the result of spending $183 Billion Bucks and upping the confrontation with the Russians, who had achieved the original advance in space by putting up Sputnik and sending two different cosmonauts on full orbits around the Earth.

“Don’t bet against us. We are going to make this thing happen,” said Barack Obama to reporters yesterday when he announced that he expected a Senate Health Plan to come out of Max Baucus’ Finance Committee by the end of the week.

Obama is committed to having this plan out before Congress takes its August vacation (does it dawn on you that these guys take a lot of time off? I guess when you’re collecting from insurance companies and other lobbyists you have to make appearances at their summer gatherings…), and time is running out.

When you wake up in the morning and rub the sleep out of your eyes are you surprised to find a great shadowy figure in the room? We are past the Fourth and the “let’s celebrate America” holiday feeling only to find that the lobbyists continued to move forward while we were distracted by fireworks and speeches.

The Wapo points out this morning that a large number of former inner-office employees of Max Baucus and Charles Grassley and other active Congressional committee members are being snatched up by lobbying organizations:

Please go to http://cotocrew.wordpress.com and read the article by Caitlin McNulty of VenezuelanAnalysis.com.

The more articles I read like this, the more I realize how advanced countries are with single-payer systems and how the AMA and the Insurance Companies and the Pharmaceuticals Companies have been able to use MONEY to keep us pinned against the wall.

Make sure to pass this article on.

Under The LobsterScope