Dr Seuss-style take on events at Copenhagen

Hat tip: Andrew Revkin at Dot Earth, in his column on Views on China's Role in the Greenhouse.

Health care reform links

Links to the point-counterpoint posts flying back and forth between FDL progressives and health care policy wonks:

1. Jane Hamsher, “10 Reasons To Kill the Senate Bill“
2. Jonathan Cohn, “Don’t Kill the Bill, Cont’d“
3. Igor Volsky, “Reasons Not To Kill the Senate Bill“
4. Ezra Klein, “Jane Hamsher’s 10 Reasons To Kill the Bill“

I'm on Team Wonk, which includes Krugman and others as well. (not that there aren't wonks at FDL and I don't appreciate their passion.)

Jon Stewart on the Tea Party Crowd...

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Highway to Health - Last Tea Party Protest of the Year
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Smacking the Hack Attack--pass it on...

Palin 2012

the stimulus package shows that it may be "messy" but it's also "working."

Interesting post at Political Animal today, regarding a NYT piece:

Republican critics of the economic recovery efforts, when they're not taking credit for the money that's benefiting their state/district, take it as a given that the stimulus "failed." For the right, it's a foregone conclusion, hardly worth discussing anymore.

The New York Times reminds us today that "dispassionate analysts" agree that a fair look at the stimulus package shows that it may be "messy" but it's also "working."

The legislation, a variety of economists say, is helping an economy in free fall a year ago to grow again and shed fewer jobs than it otherwise would. Mr. Obama's promise to "save or create" about 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010 is roughly on track, though far more jobs are being saved than created, especially among states and cities using their money to avoid cutting teachers, police officers and other workers.

"It was worth doing -- it's made a difference," said Nigel Gault, chief economist at IHS Global Insight, a financial forecasting and analysis group based in Lexington, Mass.

Mr. Gault added: "I don't think it's right to look at it by saying, 'Well, the economy is still doing extremely badly, therefore the stimulus didn't work.' I'm afraid the answer is, yes, we did badly but we would have done even worse without the stimulus."

In interviews, a broad range of economists said the White House and Congress were right to structure the package as a mix of tax cuts and spending, rather than just tax cuts as Republicans prefer or just spending as many Democrats do. And it is fortuitous, many say, that the money gets doled out over two years -- longer for major construction -- considering the probable length of the "jobless recovery" under way as wary employers hold off on new hiring.

Obviously, a bigger investment would have meant a bigger return. The $787 billion package would have been more ambitious if the Senate operated on majority rule, and even White House economists have conceded that the stimulus bill should have been larger to accommodate the size of the hole in the economy. That aid to states had to be curtailed to bring on GOP votes continues to undermine the effectiveness of the strategy.

But on the whole, we're talking about a recovery package that saved us from a wholesale economic collapse. Conservative Republicans -- who've been wrong about every major economic challenge of the last generation -- who whine bitterly about the stimulus are, as is usually the case, misguided.

Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Economy.com and an occasional adviser to lawmakers from both parties, added, "[T]he stimulus is doing what it was supposed to do -- it is contributing to ending the recession." Zandi added that without the recovery bill, the "G.D.P. would still be negative and unemployment would be firmly over 11 percent. And there are a little over 1.1 million more jobs out there as of October than would have been out there without the stimulus."

Left unsaid is what the economic consequences would have been if we'd listened to congressional Republicans -- 95% of whom voted for a truly insane five-year spending freeze at the height of the downturn.

What's going on: Health Care Reform

Last Saturday night, after a marathon all-day debate, the U.S. House of Representatives made history by passing its landmark health care reform bill, garnering 219 Democrat votes and 1 Republican vote. The sole Republican to vote for the bill was Rep. Joseph Cao of Louisiana. On Sunday, he said that his decision to back the bill was driven by his conscience and the needs of his district rather than any back-room dealing with the White House or Democrats.

On CNN, Cao explained that he cast his vote in favor of reform after an amendment greatly restricting the coverage of abortions was allowed to come to a vote. Once that hurdle was clear, Cao said, "I called the White House and said I could possibly support the bill."

The Stupak amendment, which restricted the coverage of abortions, created quite a bit of controversy as abortion, with its moral, emotional and political complexities, is always a highly electric issue.

Per NARAL

Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, called House passage of a stunning last-minute anti-choice amendment to health reform an outrageous blow to women's freedom and privacy — and she vowed to fight to remove this provision as the process goes to the Senate.

The amendment, offered by anti-choice Reps. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) and Joe Pitts (R-Penn.), was adopted late tonight by a margin of 240-194.

The Stupak-Pitts amendment makes it virtually impossible for private insurance companies that participate in the new system to offer abortion coverage to women. This would have the effect of denying women the right to use their own personal private funds to purchase an insurance plan with abortion coverage in the new health system — a radical departure from the status quo. Presently, more than 85 percent of private-insurance plans cover abortion services.

"This vote is a reminder to America's pro-choice majority that, despite our gains in the last two election cycles, anti-choice members of Congress still outnumber our pro-choice allies," Keenan said. "It is unconscionable that anti-choice lawmakers would use health reform to attack women's health and privacy, but that's exactly what happened on the House floor tonight. Even though the bill already included a ban on federal funding for abortion and a requirement that only women's personal funds could pay for abortion care, Reps. Stupak and Pitts took their obsession with attacking a woman's right to choose to a whole new level. We will hold those lawmakers who sided with the extreme Stupak-Pitts amendment accountable for abandoning women and capitulating to the most extreme fringe of the anti-choice movement. In short, the fight is not over. That's why we will continue to mobilize our activists and work with our allies in Congress to remove this dangerous provision from the health-care bill and stop additional attacks as the process moves to the Senate."

Keenan said anti-choice members of Congress and their allies distorted key elements of the Stupak-Pitts amendment to make the proposal appear less extreme. Here are rebuttals to these distortions, including the myth of an abortion "rider" that they say women could purchase in addition to their insurance plan:

• The Stupak-Pitts amendment forbids any plan offering abortion coverage in the new system from accepting even one subsidized customer. Since more than 80 percent of the participants in the exchange will be subsidized, it seems certain that all health plans will seek and accept these individuals. In other words, the Stupak-Pitts amendment forces plans in the exchange to make a difficult choice: either offer their product to 80 percent of consumers in the marketplace or offer abortion services in their benefits package. It seems clear which choice they will make.
  
• Stupak-Pitts supporters claim that women who require subsidies to help pay for their insurance plan will have abortion access through the option of purchasing a "rider," but this is a false promise. According to the respected National Women's Law Center, the five states that require a separate rider for abortion coverage, there is no evidence that plans offer these riders. In fact, in North Dakota, which has this policy, the private plan that holds the state's overwhelming share of the health-insurance market (91 percent) does not offer such a rider. Furthermore, the state insurance department has no record of abortion riders from any of the five leading individual insurance plans from at least the past decade. Nothing in this amendment would ensure that rider policies are available or affordable to the more than 80 percent of individuals who will receive federal subsidies in order to help purchase coverage in the new exchange.

I confess I didn't realize how extreme the amendment is. Plus I think I'm so concerned about reform being derailed that I just wanted the House to pass a bill so the process could move forward. I was-- and still am-- very reluctant to agree with lawmakers who claimed Pelosi turned her back on a decades-long campaign by female Democratic members in support of abortion rights (see Politico). The truth is there are more anti-abortion than pro-choice votes in the House. As Politico puts it:

the speaker’s decision — like so many others she made during the drafting of this bill — showed Pelosi, a Roman Catholic and committed supporter of reproductive rights, to be more ruthlessly practical than her frequent caricature as an activist, upper-crust liberal from San Francisco would suggest.

It wasn’t just that she was disappointing some members over a last-minute change they disagreed with. She had to take on her closest and senior-most lieutenants on an issue that for many of them is like an article of faith, a defining tenet of what makes them a Democrat. And when she needed the votes, that’s what she did.

Ultimately, she focused on the end game, which is what Dems have to do. Or she focused on the end game up to that point. We're not done yet, and the issue won't go away. As the Plum Line notes, in a letter to Speaker Pelosi, 41 Dems pledged to vote against the bill when it comes back if it contains an anti-abortion amendment:

As Members of Congress we believe that women should have access to a full range of reproductive health care. Health care reform must not be misused as an opportunity to restrict women’s access to reproductive health services.

The Stupak-Pitts amendment to H.R. 3962, The Affordable Healthcare for America Act, represents an unprecedented and unacceptable restriction on women’s ability to access the full range of reproductive health services to which they are lawfully entitled. We will not vote for a conference report that contains language that restricts women’s right to choose any further than current law.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz threw down the gauntlet, saying that she and others are doing all they can to kill the provision.

In an interview with ABC News's Jake Tapper, President Obama indicated that he doesn't support any change in current abortion laws through the health care bill:

TAPPER: Here's a question a lot of Senate Democrats want to know. You said, when you gave your joint address to Congress, that under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions. This amendment passed Saturday night which not only prohibits abortion coverage in the public option, but also prohibits women who receive subsidies from taking out plans that -- that provide abortion coverage. Does that meet the promise that you set out or does it over reach, does it go too far?

OBAMA: You know, I laid out a very simple principle, which is this is a health care bill, not an abortion bill. And we're not looking to change what is the principle that has been in place for a very long time, which is federal dollars are not used to subsidize abortions. And I want to make sure that the provision that emerges meets that test -- that we are not in some way sneaking in funding for abortions, but, on the other hand, that we're not restricting women's insurance choices, because one of the pledges I made in that same speech was to say that if you're happy and satisfied with the insurance that you have, that it's not going to change. So, you know, this is going to be a complex set of negotiations. I'm confident that we can actually arrive at this place where neither side feels that it's being betrayed. But it's going to take some time.

TAPPER: Do you think that amendment is status quo or does it lean a little bit in one direction or the other?

OBAMA: I think that there are strong feelings on both sides. And what that tells me is that there needs to be some more work before we get to the point where we're not changing the status quo. And that's the goal. The goal here is to make sure that people who have health insurance have greater stability and security, people who don't have health insurance get the ability to buy it affordably and that we're driving down costs.

And, you know, I think everybody understands that there's going to be work to be done on the Senate side. It's not going to match up perfectly with the House side. But obviously, it was a historic night for the House. We've never been this far. And I'm very confident that my colleagues in the Senate are going to say to themselves that we've got to get this done.

As Jake Tapper notes at his blog, Political Punch, on 11/11--

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, senior advisor Valerie Jarrett and Domestic Policy Council director Melody Barnes, health care reform czar Nancy-ann DeParle and other White House officials met with a dozen officials from liberal women's and abortion rights groups this afternoon where they had a "frank exchange," in the words of one attendee.

...Women's groups have reacted strongly to the amendment, with Terry O'Neill, the president of the National Organization for Women, telling ABC News that the president should not “achieve that goal [of passing health care reform] by pushing women back into the back alleys to die.”

Attendees included representatives from NOW, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, NARAL Pro-Choice America, EMILY's List, the Feminist Majority, the National Women’s Law Center, the Guttmacher Institute, the Black Women’s Health Imperative, the National Latina Reproductive Health Institute, the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, the National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association, and the National Partnership for Women and Families.

Congresswoman Diana DeGette Talks About Her Letter & Blocking The Stupak Amendment at Open Left.

Meanwhile, Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) is warning fellow Democrats not to mess with his restrictive anti-abortion amendment.

Interestingly, Think Progress noted this week that the RNC employee health plan covers abortion. Hmmmm--

Last week, 176 House Republicans joined with 64 Democrats in voting for the so-called Stupak amendment, which could “could effectively stop many employer-provided health insurance plans from covering abortions for tens of millions of Americans” and restrict any private plan in the insurance exchange from offering abortion coverage. However, Politico reports today that the RNC’s own employee health care plan covers elective abortion — “a procedure the party’s own platform calls ‘a fundamental assault on innocent human life.’”

...Recently it was also revealed that the health insurance plan used by the right-wing, anti-choice organization Focus on the Family also covered “abortion services.”

Right wing hypocrisy? How, ahem, atypical.

Yes, I'm kidding.

In an update, Think Progress also notes:

The RNC has announced that it will no longer offer employees an insurance plan that covers abortion. "Money from our loyal donors should not be used for this purpose," Chairman Michael Steele said in a statement. "I don't know why this policy existed in the past, but it will not exist under my administration. Consider this issue settled."

Okey doke. We'll see...

Another hot button issue following the House's historic achievement appeared to be the "jail time" issue. I've seen this twisted by right wingers. Jake Tapper asked President Obama about it, and the blog post on the topic received over 1700 comments, mostly from tea party and Hot Air types.

Sigh.

The other canard: is the individual mandate constitutional? Yes. See Ezra Klein's post on this.

Related links:

CBO Senate Health Care Score Now Expected Early Next Week

CREDO To Send Coat Hangers To Pro-Choice Dems Who Voted For Abortion Restriction Amendment

Clever, unconstitutional way to curb abortions

How Stupak's amendment could change the whole insurance market

GOP weekly address picks on health strategy

Falling Far Short of Reform

Jon Stewart & Sean Hannity

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Must read of the day

Here's the link, and here's a taste:

He didn't introduce himself. He didn't have to.

President Obama simply stuck out his hand and asked for my name as he stepped toward me amid a bone-chilling drizzle in the Gardens of Stone.

This was Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery. I wasn't there as a reporter, but to visit some friends and family buried there when Obama made an unscheduled stop - a rare presidential walk among what Lincoln called America's "honored dead" - after laying a Veterans Day wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns.

What I got was an unexpected look into the eyes of a man who intertwined his roles as commander in chief and consoler in chief on a solemn day filled with remembrance and respect for sacrifices made - and sacrifices yet to be made.

I'm sure the cynics will assume this was just another Obama photo-op.

If they'd been standing in my boots looking him in the eye, they would have surely choked on their bile.

His presence in Section 60 convinced me that he now carries the heavy burden of command.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2009/11/12/2009-11-12_my_solemn_surprise_meeting_with_the_president_at_my_friends_resting_place.html#ixzz0WhhvTkKF

Health care!

HC bill passed in House
Yay Nay
Dems 219 | 39
Reps 1 | 176

Ttl 220 | 215

It's not perfect, but I'll take it and even throw up the same celebratory video that was posted at Balloon Juice because it's fun and I feel like dancin'.