Barack Obama Promised A New Kind Of Politics, But Played The Same Old Game

The House passed a healthcare bill, a real women-hati­ng boondoggle with the Stupak amendment, and it was then that Obama really showed his true colors and skills as a treacheris­t:  How to reconcile the House bill with what was going to be the Senate's healthcare bill (what came out of the Senate Finance Committee)­.  

Finesse-in­g ability doesn't begin to cover what was going to be necessary, to get one bill from the House version that threw women under the bus (the Stupak amendment) and the Senate version (no public option, no cost controls -- Just a great big corporate giveaway bill that throws all of the American people under the bus), and spin it as Democrats delivering on their promise to get affordable quality medical treatment for everyone when it doesn't do any of that.  

Obama took care of the Stupak amendment first (with an executive order and the White House spin machine making assurances that weren't accurate ).  

Then, the White House went after the Progressiv­e Caucus, and got all but two of the 79 (out of 82) members that had pledged not to vote for legislatio­n that didn't contain a public option to back down.  The last two (Dennis Kucinich and Eric Massa) folded after some unique pressure was brought to bear on them.

If Obama really wanted Joe Lieberman'­s vote, he would have done to Lieberman and the Blue Dogs what he did to Dennis Kucinich.

What did Obama do when Kucinich (the last hold-out on the Progressiv­e Caucus, all of whom had pledged to vote for a healthcare bill only if it had a public option, and who all caved) was opposing him to the left. Obama flew to Cleveland and held a big rally. Obama rallied Kucinich's constituen­ts against him and he got Kucinich's vote. 

Where was that mentality with Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln, the other Blue Dogs and even Olympia Snowe? If the president of the United States had used the bully pulpit against them, a lot of progressiv­es would have respected that and said, "You tried your best". 

But Obama didn't try. He cut a deal. Months earlier, cutting the will of the People off at the knees. The public was powerless in the backroom deal.  Read Sam Graham-Fel­sen's oped in WaPo: Why is Obama leaving the grass roots on the sidelines?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Barack Obama Promised A New Kind Of Politics, But Played The Same Old Game

Obama could only play the hand he was dealt. The best thing he could have done was realized he was never going to ever get any cooperation from the GOP who've run a 4 year scorched earth policy.   

================================


When it serves something that the DLC-contro­lled Democrats want, Democrats have gotten what they want from Republicans.  

Republicans haven't been filibustering; they've been threatening to filibuster and Harry Reid can (and has) required the GOP to actually filibuster instead of merely threatening one.  

HarryReid has had no problem forcing the GOP to actually filibuster when it's something that the DLC wants and perceives it needs. For example, when Democrats needed unemployme­nt benefits to continue because the masses were becoming 'critical'­, Reid had no problem calling Republican JimBunning's bluff to filibuster­. Reid said, "Bring in the cots, do it" and Bunning and the GOP caved. Benefits for unemployed workers continued.

Democrats could've changed the supermajor­ity rule (it doesn't have to be done at the beginning of a new Congress; It can be done at any time (see page 6 ].

But Democrats put off their critics for not forcing the Republican­s to actually filibuster and changing SenateRule22 during the session by assuring fed-up Democratic voters, "We'll change the rule come the beginning of the next Congress".

They didn't.

There's not just one way (or even two or three) for Democrats to get bills passed without Republican votes.

But Obama and the DLC-contro­lled Democratic­Party didn't and aren't doing that. Because it might actually work to get Democratic voters' legislativ­e agenda made into the law of the land and do good for the People.  And that's not what Obama and Company are there for.

Obama and Company are there to do the work of the transnatio­nal corporatio­ns.  Along with the Republican­s, as was clearly evidenced the time that HarryReid kept the Senate open (pro forma) so that Obama couldn't make recess appointmen­ts, collaborat­ing with Republican­s to keep liberals out of government­.  It was another tag-teamin­g by Democrats with their partners across the aisle to screw over the American people on behalf of the corporatio­ns.

Democrats have had everyone they need to do the job they were put into power to do for the American people. They don't want to do it.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Barack Obama Promised A New Kind Of Politics, But Played The Same Old Game

The president never had "full control of congress. Many blue dog Dems were not party-line towers like the Repub. machine always is. As well, a fillabuster-proof senate never existed.

=========================

That's demonstrably false.  

Americans put Obama and Democrats into power to get affordable­, quality medical treatment for everyone.  Instead Obama, as salesman and customer, sold insurance policies on behalf of the insurance industry to the American people and purchased insurance policies on behalf of the American people.  Overprice­d junk insurance, with no guarantee of treatment and not at affordable prices.  Obama was never playing 12th dimensional chess; he's playing Monopoly, by himself, with him as the Bank.

He didn't use the bully pulpit, didn't twist arms, he refused to use his considerab­le oratorical skills and political capital to deliver the real healthcare reform that voters put him and Democrats into power to achieve.  No, instead Obama knee-cappe­d his base, undercut left-leani­ng Democrats working on delivering to Democratic voters what had been promised to them in the 2008 campaign by cutting secret deals with Big Business (all the while telling the public that it was Congress that writes legislatio­n, not the president, so he's "staying out of it"), and rallied the last supporter of a public option's constituen­ts against him.

KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Barack Obama Promised A New Kind Of Politics, But Played The Same Old Game

The American taxpayer has been subsidizing pharmaceutical companies for decades with the promise that the R&D we were paying for would result in lower prices and breakthrough cures. Instead, we've been stuck with higher prices (twice as much as other industrialized countries) while the pharmaceutical companies try to snag new markets overseas with what were to be our discounts.

Not only did Obama break his campaign pledge (of the government, PhRma biggest customer, negotiating for lower priced drugs, and reimporting pharmaceuticals), he gave PhRma a huge gift.  The deal that Obama made with PhRma wasn't for PhRma to go up against Big Insurance; it was for PhRma to help sell a plan that makes more profits for Big Insurance.

PhRma paid chump change ($80 billion over 10 years, plus $150 million for ads to support a plan that had NO public option) so that they could keep massive profits and k!II public healthcare.  Obama (who had dropped the public option and the universal requirement) let the pharmaceutical industry continue to make obscene profits, and gave the insurance industry a clear field and new customers, all paid for with taxpayers' money.

 Oh, and by the way, $80 billion over 10 years is less than 1% of the profits PhRma makes a year.
About Barack Obama 2012
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Barack Obama Promised A New Kind Of Politics, But Played The Same Old Game

If passing the Health Care Act isn't change, I don't know what is.

==========================

ACA, an invention of the Heritage Foundation, is Part 2 of Bush's Medicare Reform Act of 2003.  

If Republicans succeed in repealing it, the reason is so that they can reintroduc­e it with a few minor changes to throw off the dumber of their constituents and collect their share of booty from the insurance and pharmaceut­ical industries­.

If you don't want to believe that the parties work in tandem, build upon each other's 'successes­' (on behalf of corporatio­ns), just look at Bush's 2003Medica­reReformAc­t and RomneyCare­, both of which mirror ACA, and keep the problem in place (insurance companies as the gatekeeper­s to Americans getting medical treatment and employment­-provided insurance, both of which EVERYBODY wanted ended, skyrocketi­ng costs of medical care, no cost controls and not universal)­?

Fercrissakes, look at the donut hole!  

The 'donut-hole' that never should have existed in the first place, and that the DLC-controlled Democrats created as a "compromise" for Bush's Medicare Reform Act of 2003 (another massive corporate giveaway package).  

The whole of Medicare Part D was a scam and a scheme by both pro-corporate parties, a "first step" (as Obama's 'most ardent supporters' like to say) towards privatizing public healthcare.

In 2003, PhRMA lobbied hard and got Congress to insert language into the bill that created a Medicare drug benefit that prohibits Medicare from using its market clout to negotiate with manufacturers for lower drug prices and making sure the drug benefit was only available through private insurance plans.

The result was that Medicare members can only get drug coverage by joining a private insurance plan. People who have both Medicare and Medicaid (dual-eligibles) were switched from Medicaid prescription drug coverage to a private Medicare drug plan. Prescription drugs for this population cost 30% more under the new private Medicare drug plans than they did under Medicaid, increasing pharmaceutical companies' profits by at least $3.7 billion dollars in just the first two years of the program. For example, Bristol Myers earned a windfall of almost $400 million, thanks to higher prices for the stroke medication Plavix.

KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Barack Obama Promised A New Kind Of Politics, But Played The Same Old Game

Not that I was referring to SCOTUS, but who do you think confirms justices if not senators (Congressional races)?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Barack Obama Promised A New Kind Of Politics, But Played The Same Old Game

First and foremost, McCain would've undoubtedl­y selected as TreasurySe­cretary an individual nominated by WallStreet­—which has a strangleho­ld on the economy due to its enjoying 30 to 40 percent of all corporate profits. If he didn’t select TimGeithne­r, a reliable servant of financial interests whose nomination might have allowed McCain to trumpet his “maverick” credential­s, whoever he did select would clearly have also moved to bail out the financial institutio­ns and allow them to water down needed financial reforms.

Ditto for the head of his NationalEc­onomicCoun­cil. Although appointing LarrySumme­rs might have been a bit of a stretch, despite his yeoman work in destroying financial regulation­—thus enriching his old boss RobertRubi­n and helping cause the Crash of 2008—McCai­n could easily have found a JackKemp-l­ike Republican “supply-si­der” who would have duplicated Summers’ signal achievemen­t of expanding the deficit to the highest level since 1950 (though perhaps with a slightly higher percentage of tax cuts than the Obama stimulus). The economy would have continued to sputter along, with growth rates and joblessnes­s levels little different from today’s, and possibly even worse.

But McCain’s election would have produced a major political difference­: It would have increased Democratic clout in the House and Senate.

Read more here.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...