Obama Trade Deal Secrecy Insulting, According To Key Democrat

Who and what Republicans are isn't news.

What is news is that Obama's 'most ardent supporters' never seem to learn.

In the summer of 2008, when Obama flip-flopped on FISA, Obama's most ardent fans said, "If he had kept his promise, Republicans would have accused him of being weak on security and he would lose the independent voters in the general election. You'll see, once he's in office, he'll be a reliable liberal."

The best predictor of Obama's and Democrats' future behavior is their past behavior.  Their record. Obama's flip-flopped as much if not more than Romney, and has given no indication of having "learned his lesson" when it comes to 'bipartisanship'. 

As a matter of fact, right before the 2010 midterms, Obama and Democrats made it clear that no matter what the outcome of the election, they would still work in a bipartisan manner, watering down legislation, making it Republican-like.  I don't hear Obama stating anything different should he win reelection.

Obama and the DLC worked their butts off to PREVENT more progressives/liberals from getting elected. Obama and the DLC have put the power of the WhiteHouse, the DNC, and the Democratic congressional committees behind BlueDogs, Republicans and Independents over progressives/liberals and real Democrats. Some, but not all, examples:

BlueDog BlancheLincoln over progressive Democrat Lt. Governor BillHalter.

Republican-turned-Independent ArlenSpecter over progressive Democrat JoeSestak.

Republican-turned-Independent LincolnChaffee over Democrat FrankCaprio (which, in turn, was an effective endorsement of the Republican JohnLoughlin over Democrat DavidCicilline for the congressional seat Democrat PatrickKennedy retired from, and all of the other seats up for grab in RhodeIsland).

Republican-turned-Independent CharlieCrist over liberal Democrat KendrickMeek.

Obama supports voting third parties, even when it risks Democratic turnout.

Blue Dogs took a beating (liberals lost only 3 seats) in the 2010 midterms and Obama took it as a mandate to move even farther to the right.

NObama 2012 

NO-incumbents 2012

YES to Independents 2012
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Obama Trade Deal Secrecy Insulting, According To Key Democrat

I'm not saying Obama is right I'm saying the Republicans need to be removed from office before we can restore America to the values we used to hold so dear.

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Between redistricting, and how seats have been gamed, and Citizens' United, what we got in 2008 was as Democratic as it's ever going to get in the lifetime of just about everyone alive today, and we saw what Obama did with it (p!ssed it away, intentionally).

People are, generally, satisfied with the job that their representatives are doing.  What people want is the other guy'selected representative to get the boot, but not their own.  That's not likely to change as redistricting has basically just affirmed or extended the status quo.  Some on the left and the right have been redistricted out of their seats.  Look at Dennis Kucinich.

Politics, with political parties, is a top-down proposition.  You do what the party tells you to do, and that goes for Democrats, progressives, too.  If the president is a blue dog (as Obama is), you do what he tells you to do.  The idea that Congress is like herding cats is ridiculous -- If you don't do what your party tells you to do, you get no help from them come reelection.  You don't get money for your district.  You don't get plum committee assignments.  You are dead in the water of politics.

But Obama isn't interested in doing that.  He only cuts off liberals and progressives.  He keeps them out of his administration and he uses the power of the White House and the Democratic Party to keep them out of office.

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Obama Trade Deal Secrecy Insulting, According To Key Democrat

In February 2010, when proponents of a public option were finally making some headway between the time that the House passed its version of healthcare reform and the time that the Senate passed its version (and it's important to remember that Obama never pressured Blue Dogs or Joe Lieberman, never used the power of the White House and never took to the buIIy puIpit to advocate for a public option), Obama held a 'make it or break it bipartisan summit' at the WhiteHouse which was gamed to prevent public option proponents from getting real reform, (affordabl­e quality medical care for everyone).  PO proponents were shut out of the negotiations.  Why wasn't Anthony Weiner or any proponents of public healthcare­, of a public option, of single payer, at this summit?

The summit was gamed to let insurance companies retain their lock on the path to getting healthcare­.  
Whether it's Republican­s saying no or Democrats saying yes, to attend this summit you must have accepted that the insurance industry's ability to make profits off of you be preserved and protected, despite it bankruptin­g the American people individual­ly and the nation at large.

And by the way, everybody, and I mean everybody (employers­, employees, unemployed­, etc.) wanted an end to employer-b­ased health insurance.  Everybody except the insurance industry.  

That was yet another facet of the perfect storm for reform that came together in 2008 - The general agreement that the insurance industry's control over people's access to affordable quality medical treatment had to end.   Because insurance adds NOTHING to the medical model.

The insurance industry is the 'Don Fanucci' (Godfather­, Part II) of medical care; the insurance industry is "wetting its beak", letting you get medical care (maybe, if you can afford the deductible­s, the co-pays, and if your illness is covered by your policy, but) only if you pay them a gratuity up front.
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Obama Trade Deal Secrecy Insulting, According To Key Democrat

Extending Bush's tax cuts was an absolutely wretched deal, but standard for Obama, who has  a long record of negotiating lousy deals.  If Obama was in private practice and 'Lawyer Obama' had negotiated a deal like that for a client, he would be sued, successfully, for malpractice.

Obama campaigned on reregulati­ng businesses and banks. He campaigned on ending tax breaks and subsidies to companies moving their factories and jobs overseas. Once in the White House, President Obama has consistently wound up diametrically opposed to Candidate Obama.  And how he has failed to achieve what he and Democrats were put into power to do tells the story of what the real intent has been all along.

Obama makes concessions before negotiations even begin.  He cuts deals with Republicans and then, when he has no leverage, he makes demands of Republicans which, of course, they're going to refuse.  You get the regulation­s first and THEN you give them the money (TARP).  You put a whole healthcare program together BEFORE you get money for healthcare IT that, heaven only knows how it can comply with HIPAA.  You keep your entire shopping list of needs and wants ON THE TABLE (single payer universal health care) BEFORE you concede it away.  Anyone who has ever written a contract, negotiated a deal of any kind, knows this. 

Obama has done everything backwa­rds.  What he does only makes sense if he's NOT a populist, NOT a liberal (we knew he wasn't, but Obama's most ardent supporters implored people to believe that "once he gets into the Oval Office, you'll see!").  Everything that Obama has done has been a continuati­on of the same failed policies of the transnatio­nal corporatio­ns that have destroyed the middle class. 

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Obama Trade Deal Secrecy Insulting, According To Key Democrat

Obama took single payer (Medicare For All) off the table, because if the goal is to get affordable quality medical care for all then everything else pales in comparison­.  What Obama did was preserve an anachronis­tic and failed insurance industry and employer-p­rovided system for medical care that everyone except the insurance industry wanted to end. It's government sanctioned racketeeri­ng.

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Obama Trade Deal Secrecy Insulting, According To Key Democrat

Posters said back then that President Obama never listened to or let Republicans participate in the bill making process. Which is also an untruth. The Democrats tried too hard to accommodate the Republicans in order to pass an Affordable Care Act. I hope that you realize that just passing one, even a flawed one, was an accomplishment.

I have seen the evidence posted by many Americans on this web site: there are many either cold or mislead Americans who would not tolerate a single payer plan.

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When tea-partiers yell, "Get government out of healthcare" and in the same breath, "Don't touch my Medicare!", then education is the solution.  

There's rarely a majority in Congress to pass anything until a campaign's been mounted to sell it, but this wasn't a hard sell -- Americans, with few exceptions, love Medicare.  

Ten million more people voted for Obama, a black man in America, than for any other presidential candidate ever in the history of the US. They did it because of his ability to persuade.  He persuaded them that he was going to change the system, end the corporatocracy, lobbyism in government -- He was going to be the People's president, not a corporate tool. 

When a president and his political party are swept into power to deliver affordable­, quality medical treatment for all as Obama and Democrats were in 2008, and the one method that can accomplish it (and also happens to solve other unique problems facing us at the time, i.e., a crashing economy, joblessnes­s, etc.) that president not only doesn't use his bully pulpit to sell, but unilateral­ly takes off the table, removes from even discussing­, then the fix is in and that president is corrupt to the core. 

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Obama Trade Deal Secrecy Insulting, According To Key Democrat

What Dr. Margaret Flowers seems to be saying is that there was no real debate about having a single-payer plan. That those legislators who proposed such a plan were rebuffed and unable to bring their plan to the table for serious discussion. I was so disappointed that the public option was not passed.

The emphasis was on making a law that could pass the House and Senate. So many compromises were made. Dr. Flowers would say that the single payer plan was shut out from consideration.
 
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Either your memory is faulty or you weren't paying attention at the time and weren't aware of the ins and outs of what was going on.

Before work on ACA even began, Obama announced that, "It's Congress's job," he was "staying out of it".  Then he negotiated secretly with Big PhRma, Big Insurance, Hospitals and the AMA and have insurance lobbyists write the legislation through the Senate Finance Committee.  

Obama made sure that there would be no affordable quality medical care for everyone, no public option, no single payer universal healthcare, no means for Americans to choose a public healthcare system, no means for containing healthcare costs.  Obama took single payer off the table and blocked all efforts to get a public option in the final legislation due to the secret deal he made (and then lied about, and then had to own up to when the memo was leaked).

There really never was any debate.  Publicly, Obama was saying, "Everything's (single payer) is on the table", but practically he through Max Baucus had proponents of single payer excluded from the Senate Finance comittee's panels and arrested.  Then Obama started talking about "a public option", and we came to find out that he was undermining Congressio­nal committees working on legislatio­n by cutting secret deals with PhRma, Hospitals and the AMA to let them keep making obscene profits at the expense of the health of Americans.   Then he L!ED about doing it - It took Billy Tauzin and smoking gun memos to prove Obama lied.

The hurdle that Obama had to overcome was the public option (he was never for it), and he took care of that by taking single payer off the table before negotiations ever began.  Had single payer remained on the table, a public option would have been the obvious compromise position to end up at.  

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Obama Campaign Admits Fundraising Defeat In May

Why would they when they've had Democrats so eager to work with them to pass Republican legislation these past 30 years?  

On everything from wars to tax cuts for the rich, Republicans had Democratic support.  Republicans couldn't have gotten any of it through without Democrats.  
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Obama Campaign Admits Fundraising Defeat In May

Democrats enjoyed a greater majority in both houses of Congress than either party has had in decades.  Even without 60 (but the Democratic Caucus in the Senate had 60). But one example is that Obama didn't need 60 to pass real healthcare reform.  All Democrats needed was 50 plus Biden (reconcili­ation), which is what they did in the end anyway.  But Democrats did it, reconcilia­tion, for a corporate-­pork-laden bill with no cost constraint­s that doesn't provide affordable quality medical treatment for anyone, much less everyone (what they were put into office to get).  
Democrats also have refused to exercise the discretion that Senate Rule 22 allows: Making Republican­s actually filibuster­, instead of just threatenin­g to do it.   

Rule 22 gives the SenateMajo­rityLeader the discretion to actually make the call. Filibuster­ing is hard on those soft, pampered bodies. HarryReid has refused to make them do it, letting them merely threaten.  Reid should.  Americans love reality TV.  'Survivor-­Washington­, DC'.  

The few times Reid has forced Republican­s to actually filibuster­, when Democrats have really needed whatever the issue was (like when Jim Bunning threatened to filibuster over extending unemployme­nt benefits), Republican­s caved. 

Reid lets them merely threaten.  Still.  All that talk about changing filibuster rules, and nothing has come of it.  Senate rules can be changed at any time, and not just at the start of a new Congress - It can be done at any time (see page 6 - http://fpc­.state.gov­/documents­/organizat­ion/45448.­pdf ).

Nor is there just one way (or even two or three or more ways) for Democrats to get bills passed despite Republican­s' obstructio­nistic tactics.  But first they have to want to do it, with the fierce urgency of now (don't click on that link, don't watch it, if you aren't prepared and can't bear to have your cherished illusions about Obama destroyed).
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Steny Hoyer's Daughter Comes Out As Lesbian

Strange how that link went bad, Benno; I tested it when my reply went live and was originally published and it worked just fine.  But things like that sometimes happens here at HP since they've been tinkering with comment programming.

I'll repost it, as a link again here, and give you the direct URL (should the link go hinkey again) - http://www.gao.gov/archive/1997/og97016.pdf

I'll also provide you with one more link, an updated GAO report (2004), where the Government Accounting Office listed an increase since the earlier assessment of benefits, rights and privileges that marrieds enjoy (for a total of 1138 benefits).  Here is the direct URL for that one - http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04353r.pdf

FYI: Anytime that happens, try googling some of the keywords and see what links come up.  In this case, googling GAO report gay marriage rights would have gotten you to that last link.
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