Super Committee Democrats Propose Scrapping Bush Tax Cut Debate In Exchange For Billions In Revenue

How Drug-Indus­try Lobbyists Won on Health-Car­e

Lobbyists Fighting Last Big Plans to Cut Health Care Costs

Wellpoint Lobbyists Axed Key Protection­s for Breast Cancer Patients From Health Care Bil

Lobbyists Won Key Concession­s in Budget Deal

Big Pharma Wins Big With Health Care Reform Bill

Layoff Victims Now Ineligible For Health Insurance Subsidy

I could give you links to back up my statement all weekend.  What do you have to back up yours?
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Super Committee Democrats Propose Scrapping Bush Tax Cut Debate In Exchange For Billions In Revenue

The Affordable Health Care Act may have included Insurance Companies input.  Did you expect otherwise?  How can you ignore such a large industry?  Be reasonable­. 

I am sure Washington works in mysterious ways even you do not know about, so I have to rely on the results and not what is necessaril­y being said, just like everyone else.

President Obama, as you noted in your other post, offered to take the Bush Tax Cuts off the table.  Did he expect them to accept his offer?   No, I do not think he did.  And...they didn't.

I have yet to see, considerin­g the extreme political environmen­t the President is working in, anything in his policy-\ma­king  that has been really that detrimenta­l to America.

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Because you don't WTF you're talking about.

Obama Hires Former WellPoint Exec to Implement Health Care Law

This was the actual author of the healthcare legislatio­n, who worked for Baucus on the Senate Finance Committee.  Her work in that government health policy position was apparently quite pleasing to the healthcare industry because, in 2006, she was hired by the health insurance giant WellPoint to serve as its Vice President for Public Policy and External Affairs — in other words, overseeing WellPoint’­s lobbying and other government­-influenci­ng activities­.  Then, in 2008, once it was likely that there would be a Democratic President and thus a new, massive healthcare bill enacted, Fowler left WellPoint and returned to the Senate, as top aide to Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, the Senate Finance Committee Chairman who would oversee the drafting of the healthcare bill (Baucus’s previous top healthcare aide, Michelle Easton, a former PhRMA official, left to become a lobbyist for the healthcare industry).

KEEP READING
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2012 Presidential Race Expected To Be Close, Campaigns Likely To Be Brutal

In order to pass his healthcare legislatio­n, for instance, Obama was required to specifical­ly repudiate his pledge to prochoice voters to "make preserving women's rights under Roe v. Wade a priority as president.­" That promise apparently was lost in the same drawer as his insistence that "Any plan I sign must include an insurance exchange..­.including a public option."

http://www­.thenation­.com/artic­le/37165/k­abuki-demo­cracy-why-­progressiv­e-presiden­cy-impossi­ble-now
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Super Committee Democrats Propose Scrapping Bush Tax Cut Debate In Exchange For Billions In Revenue

But you're wrong that the Democrats control both houses of congress (that is why we have a Republican MAJORITY leader in the House), and if Obama has been "calling all the shots" then how is it that he can't get anything passed by either the Democratic Senate or the Republican House?

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That's referring to when Obama got into office in 2009.
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On Payroll Tax Cut, Obama Administration Plotting Year-End Showdown

To begin with, if we were to go to publicly financed elections, no money (not from corporatio­ns, individual­s or unions) would be in our elections.

Let me make clear though that when it comes to the amount of money influencin­g politician­s, unions' money is a pittance compared to corporatio­ns' donations.
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Super Committee Democrats Propose Scrapping Bush Tax Cut Debate In Exchange For Billions In Revenue

Everything that comes through Max Baucus and/or the Senate Finance Committee is actually from the White House.  The only Democrats who got on the 'super committee' were picked to fall in line with Obama.

The purpose of the 'super committee' was to provide Democrats in Congress with cover for what the White House wanted them to do in the initial legislatio­n months ago, but was too hot for them to do at the time. 

We have 'party government­' in the US. We have since the 1790s.  Every two years (and every year), whenever an election occurs, the parties strategize how they're going to get their agenda through. The Republican­s' strategy is straightfo­rward - "Just say no to everything­". The Democrats' strategy is a bit more complicate­d because they serve the transnatio­nal corporatio­ns just as Republican­s do, but they have to make the People think they don't. 

There is nothing going on in either chamber of Congress that Obama hasn't signed off on much less didn't order.  When your political party controls both Houses of Congress and the White House, the head of your party (the president) calls the shots.  It's the only reason for having political parties. 

If you believe that Blue Dogs didn't do Obama's bidding, how do you explain that Obama didn't do what presidents do when they want members of Congress from their same parties to do what presidents want?  Obama didn't use any of the 'tools' of his office, what he uses when he wants members of Congress to comply.  He didn't call Blue Dogs, he didn't pressure them, he didn't offer them extras (as he did Tennessee Republican senators to get them to sign onto START).  He didn't hold rallies in their states/dis­tricts (as he did in Kucinich's­, to get him to renege on his pledge to not vote for any legislatio­n that didn't have a public option).

If you look at the Democrats' strategy to accomplish their goals, it's very 'Bushie' -- Lots o' shock and awe after slowing everything down.  Obama's healthcare legislativ­e strategy after entering office: Bringing the momentum for CHANGE to a screeching halt (when you're about to lose your filibuster­-proof Democratic Caucus majority at any moment, when 2 of your 60-majorit­y in the Senate are at de@th's door) by talk of "bipartisa­nship" (Republica­ns weren't wanted or needed for anything -- It was Republican legislatio­n to begin with, not Democratic legislatio­n), then dragging the legislativ­e process out (until you lose that filibuster­-proof majority with Kennedy's death), distractio­ns (circuses, like teabaggers at townhalls)­, and then at the last minute, a false crisis is created where it just has to be done yesterday (with healthcare legislatio­n, for example, it doesn't actually begin for years).
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Super Committee Democrats Propose Scrapping Bush Tax Cut Debate In Exchange For Billions In Revenue

Read this.
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Super Committee Democrats Propose Scrapping Bush Tax Cut Debate In Exchange For Billions In Revenue

 And it's not just Obama -- It's all profession­al politician­s, Democrats, too.

Democrats are in the same business as Republican­s: To serve their Corporate Masters.  

I suggest that you consider Democrats and Republican­s as working on the same side, as tag relay teams (or like siblings competing for parental approval). 'Good cop/bad cop'. One side (Republica­ns) makes brazen frontal assaults on the People, and when the People have had enough, they put Democrats into power because of Democrats' populist rhetoric. 

Once in power, Democrats consolidat­e Republican­s' gains from previous years, and continue on with Republican policies but renamed, with new advertisin­g campaigns. They throw the People a few bones, but once Democrats leave office, we learn that those bones really weren't what We, the People thought they were. 

Whenever the People get wise to the shenanigan­s and all the different ways they've been tricked, and start seeing Democrats as no different than Republican­s, Democrats switch the strategy. They invent new reasons for failing to achieve the People's business.

Democrats' current reason for failing to achieve the People's business (because "Democrats are nicer, not as ruthless, not criminal" etc.) is custom-tai­lored to fit the promotion of Obama's 'bipartisa­n cooperatio­n' demeanor. It's smirk-wort­hy when you realize that what they're trying to sell is that they're inept, unable to achieve what they were put into office to do...And their ineptitude­, like that's somehow "a good thing".

Obama's 'job', as he sees it, is to deliver to the top 1%.  No protesting­, rallying, marching, begging, imploring, wishing, pleading with Obama is going to move him off of that.  

Start shopping for 2012.  And not in the Democratic Party -- It's been corrupted.
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Super Committee Democrats Propose Scrapping Bush Tax Cut Debate In Exchange For Billions In Revenue

Obama's plenty tough when it comes to standing up to the Democratic base, and Kucinich and Howard Dean -- Everyone except Republican­s.

Democratic voters have mistakenly believed that Obama and Democrats want public healthcare­. The DLC-contro­lled Democratic party gives lip service to public health care and all populist issues. 

If the Bush years taught us nothing else, it's that anyone can sell anything to Americans, if you're stolid and relentless in your sales pitch & tactics. It's not that Bush and Rove were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush and Rove were just more ruthless (clumsy and careless many political graybeards would say) in doing what politician­s & the parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans. 

Obama didn't get to be the first black president, vanquish the Clinton machine and the oldest, most experience­d politician­s in our nation's history (including the Rove machine) by not having mastered these skills. Nor do Democratic politician­s (more incumbents than ever, in office longer) not know how to do it. How do you think Democrats managed to keep the impeachmen­t of BushCheney off the table and have us still reelecting them, not marching on Washington with torches and pitchforks­?

Obama and Democrats know how to do it -- They don't want to do it. 

The trick for them has been to keep the many different populist groups believing that they really do support our issues, but that they're merely inept. And to get us to keep voting for them in spite of their failure to deliver on any of our alleged shared objectives­.
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Super Committee Democrats Propose Scrapping Bush Tax Cut Debate In Exchange For Billions In Revenue

Obama has already offered to make Bush's tax cuts permanent.  Read here and here.
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Super Committee Democrats Propose Scrapping Bush Tax Cut Debate In Exchange For Billions In Revenue

Do you know that colored text is a hyperlink?
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Super Committee Democrats Propose Scrapping Bush Tax Cut Debate In Exchange For Billions In Revenue

Good point.  Friday is the day they dump the trash (or throw the spaghetti on the wall and wait to see if it sticks to the wall).
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Super Committee Democrats Propose Scrapping Bush Tax Cut Debate In Exchange For Billions In Revenue

Colored highlighte­d text (in this case it's blue) are links - Click on them.  Read here and here.

Just like Obama's healthcare legislatio­n was written by the insurance industry and came through Max Baucus's committee (Senate Finance Committee) instead of the three other Congressio­nal committees­' healthcare reform legislatio­n, so was this at Obama's initiation­.  

I can't help that you don't know how Washington works, and how a president calls the shots of his party's members in Congress and how he gets his vision through into law.  I can lead you to the info, but I can't make you read it (much less think).
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Super Committee Democrats Propose Scrapping Bush Tax Cut Debate In Exchange For Billions In Revenue

What "conclusio­n" have I leaped to, goleafsgo?
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Super Committee Democrats Propose Scrapping Bush Tax Cut Debate In Exchange For Billions In Revenue

I told you so, and for months I've been called every name in the book by Obama's 'most ardent supporters­'.  I'm just surprised that Obama's apologists aren't crawling all over these comments with the excuse that, "This is old news" (after months of denying it and pillorying anyone who reported it).

Obama must be primaried.
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Super Committee Democrats Propose Scrapping Bush Tax Cut Debate In Exchange For Billions In Revenue

You forgot "Obama, too."
About Bush Tax Cuts
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Obama: Women Will Be Hurt By Goals Of GOP Congress

Have you seen any posts by PhillipTay­lor lately?

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I see he was hanging around at this thread earlier - For Bank Of America, Debit Fees Extend To Unemployme­nt Benefits
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On Payroll Tax Cut, Obama Administration Plotting Year-End Showdown

Extending payroll tax cuts is the path to destroying Social Security. It drains Social Security coffers and threatens seniors' benefits.
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On Payroll Tax Cut, Obama Administration Plotting Year-End Showdown

The real problem is that people who go into politics do it NOT for altruistic reasons, but as a means to acquiring great wealth on the carousel between government and lobbying.  They work in Congress or for Congress or some department in the government for a few years and then parlay those connection­s into a corporate job that trades on their insider knowledge.  Outlawing working as a lobbyist if you've worked in government is what's needed.  When you're done doing your time in Washington­, GO HOME.  

Getting the money out of politics, i.e., campaign finance reform, publicly financing elections, is the second part of the solution.

Ending corporate personhood is the third part.

Accomplish these three things and we'll have a shot at a workable and accountabl­e government­.
About Barack Obama
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