Interesting story in the L.A. Times about Joe Sestak's campaign to win the Democratic nomination for Senate in Pennsylvania. Looks like the campaign is inoculating themselves about the single biggest negative about Sestak - the nagging rumor that he's impossible to work for:

Sestak is, at times to the chagrin of his staff, unfailingly accommodating -- to the media, to lobbyists and to constituents. He boasts that his aides handled 10,000 constituent cases in his first two years in office.

Not everyone he hires can stand it. Sestak lost staff at a staggering rate during his first two years in office. He went through nearly half a dozen press secretaries alone in the first year. Chiefs of staff came and went almost as fast.

He asks aides to work six days a week, 12-plus hours a day. Staff salaries are among the lowest on Capitol Hill, according to congressional records. No one in Pennsylvania's 19-member congressional delegation had a smaller payroll than Sestak in the 18-month period that ended June 30, records show, while only two members had larger staffs.

Chief of Staff Bibiana Boerio, who took over in February 2008, said that the office likes to hire recent college graduates in part because of the energy they bring to the job. She said they are paid in line with their experience.

Job applicants are given six reading and research assignments before their interviews. Among them is a review of a book by entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki, who espouses the belief that success comes in 80-hour work weeks.

"I try to let them know what the expectations are," Sestak said. "We don't try to measure ourselves by other offices."

The money Sestak saves on staff salaries is in part devoted to constituent mailings and brochures highlighting his positions on issues. Sestak last year spent more on mail than anyone in the delegation.

His reputation as a demanding boss predates his time in Congress. He was relieved as a deputy chief of naval operations in 2005 for what Navy sources called "poor command climate," an assessment Sestak disputes. He retired six months later. He said his departure had to do with Pentagon politics. His job at the end of his career involved providing an "alternative analysis" about the Navy's infrastructure, and he'd recommended a leaner operation, which he said had upset others at the top.

Those who stick around Sestak's congressional and district offices quickly learn that he likes employees who embrace his work ethic, immersing themselves completely in their jobs, mastering the details of legislation and following up with everyone who writes or calls the office or meets with the lawmaker. The reward is a quicker-than-usual path up the organizational ladder.

"He wanted us to dig deep in the substance of the issues," recalled Clarence Tong, 27, who spent 19 months in Sestak's office before leaving to get his master's degree in public policy. "While he expects a lot, he gave me every opportunity to learn."

Continue reading »

Apparently the Catholic Church, just like the other Beltway lobbyists, now writes our legislation.

The drama had built for months, pitting a group of Democrats against the Catholic Church. Priests and bishops were calling members to lobby for stricter language to limit abortion coverage, members and aides said last week.

But the final decision played out over a few furious hours Friday night as the fate of the broader bill still hung in the balance and stirred up long-dormant tensions within the Democratic Party over reproductive rights.

The beneficiary of this impasse was Stupak, an outspoken abortion-rights opponent whom the leadership had tried to circumvent, in order to pick up the votes he claimed to represent. After months of stalemate, the speaker was forced to accept language Stupak first drafted over the summer that would bar any insurance company that participates in the exchange — including the government option — from offering insurance plans that would cover abortions.

“Normally, at the end of the day, you’re arguing over fine-tuning,” said an aide whose boss was involved in the negotiations. “But this is a sizable change to current policy. So everyone was kind of stunned.”

For more than a decade, the Hyde amendment has prohibited the federal government from paying for abortions through any existing government program. The law needs to be reauthorized each year as part of the appropriations process, but the two sides had come to something of a détente.

The health care fight, however, disrupted that balance, and a big bloc of anti-abortion Democrats were threatening to derail the entire bill unless party leaders agreed to stronger restrictions the church could accept. Since mid-September, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer had been working closely with Rep. Brad Ellsworth (D-Ind.) to craft language that would thread what proved to be an impossible needle.

Ellsworth, in consultation with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, was trying to amend legislation passed out of the Energy and Commerce Committee to make sure insurance companies that receive federal funds under the programs created by the bill don’t use any of that money to pay for abortions.

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1178)

PLAYS: (1018)

After defending the profits of the health care industry when a previous caller asked him if he thought health care should be a human right, Rep. Issa is then asked who his biggest individual campaign contributor is.

Issa: Ah, boy that's a good question. Ah...I guess I am. I put several million dollars of my own money over the years into my campaigns for the Senate, the House and recalling the Governor, so I'm probably at $11 or $12 million of my own money. After that there's probably somebody that's given me $20,000 or $30,000 over ten elections.

Here are some of Darrell Issa's recent top campaign contributors from from OpenSecrets.org.

2009-2010

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1008)

PLAYS: (3526)

From Bill Moyers Journal:

BILL MOYERS: You know from the news that early next week the Senate Finance Committee is expected to vote on its version of health care reform. And therein lies another story of money and politics.

Polls show the overwhelming majority of Americans favor a non-profit alternative -- like Medicare -- that would give the private health insurance industry some competition. But if so many Americans and the President himself want that public option, how come we're not getting one?

Because, the medicine has been poisoned from day one, in part because of that same revolving door that Congresswoman Kaptur and Simon Johnson were just talking about. Movers and shakers rotate between government and the lucrative private sector at a speed so dizzying they forget who they're working for.

SEN. MAX BAUCUS: Our plan does not include a public option.

BILL MOYERS: Take a close look at that woman sitting behind Montana Senator Max Baucus. He's the Democrat who's the Chairman of the Finance Committee. Liz Fowler is her name. And now get this. She used to work for WellPoint, the largest health insurer in the country. She was Vice President of Public Policy. And now she's working for the very committee with the most power to give her old company and the entire industry exactly what they want: higher profits, and no competition from alternative non-profit coverage that could lower costs and premiums.

I'm not making this up. Here's another little eye-opener. The woman who was Baucus' top health advisor before he hired Liz Fowler? Her name is Michelle Easton. Why did she leave the Committee? To go to work -- where else? -- at a firm representing the same company Liz Fowler worked for WellPoint. As a lobbyist.

It's the old Washington shell game. Lobbyist out, lobbyist in. And it's why they always win.

Continue reading »

It's pretty clear that any health care "reform" bill will be a sorry compromise between what the New York Times on Sunday so delicately calls "organized interests."

This is important, because as you may have figured out, we're the only non-organized interest. No one is inviting us to the table to have a reasonable discussion (and no, allowing us to leave comments on the White House website is not a "discussion.") That means the proposals that are most likely to cut costs and improve efficiency are least likely to remain, and the ones most likely to remain are the ones that stick it to us.

For now, that seems inevitable. Although Congress does have its inspirational members, the legislative body is still a wholly-owned subsidiary of the banking and insurance industries. We're more likely to see progress in legislative tweaks after the bill is finally passed:

WASHINGTON — As the health care debate moves to the floor of Congress, most of the serious proposals to fulfill President Obama’s original vow to curb costs have fallen victim to organized interests and parochial politics.

Peter R. Orszag, the White House budget director, says containing costs will be a priority as health care legislation advances.

And now the last two initiatives with real bite that are still in contention — a scaled-back “Cadillac tax” on high-cost health plans and a nonpartisan Medicare budget-cutting commission — are under furious assault.

Most economists’ favorite idea for slowing the growth of health care spending was ending the income tax exemption for employer-paid health insurance to make lower-cost plans more attractive. But that would hurt workers with big benefit plans, and a labor-union lobbying blitz helped kill that idea by the Fourth of July.

Lobbying by doctors, hospitals and other health care providers, meanwhile, dimmed the prospects of various proposals to cut into their incomes, including allowing government negotiation of Medicare drug prices and creating a government insurer with the muscle to lower fee payments.

“The lobbyists are winning,” said Representative Jim Cooper, a conservative Tennessee Democrat who teaches health policy.

Total health care costs in the last 20 years have doubled to about 16 percent of the economy, with no signs of tapering. Along with universal coverage, Mr. Obama has made controlling those costs a central pillar of his health care overhaul, calling the current course “unsustainable.” The effort is a pivotal test of his campaign promise to break the stranglehold of special interests.

In his weekly radio address on Saturday, Mr. Obama applauded the bill set for a vote next week in the Senate Finance Committee. “By attacking waste and fraud within the system,” he said, “it will slow the growth in health care costs, without adding a dime to our deficits.”

In an interview, Peter R. Orszag, the White House budget director and the official most associated with the drive to cut costs, singled out the proposed Medicare commission and the “Cadillac tax” as evidence of progress. “A key priority now,” Mr. Orszag said, “is to make sure cost containment holds up as we move through the legislative process."

Neither element appears in any of the other four health care bills on Capitol Hill, and both face dug-in resistance in the House.

Although the bills contain other measures aimed at medical costs, most of the surviving ones do not antagonize any organized interest. Among them are voluntary efficiency measures like encouraging the coordination of medical records, disseminating information comparing the effectiveness of treatments and various pilot projects.

White House officials argue that in any case it is prudent to start with such tests, and that many could be expanded to more comprehensive programs. But their real impact is hard to gauge, and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office assigns them little weight. (The budget office credited the Finance Committee bill with reducing the federal deficit, but how much it will slow the growth of total public and private health spending is another question.)

The tax on gold-plated insurance plans is the last vestige of most economists’ favorite idea, eliminating the tax exemption for employer plans. The finance bill would impose a 40 percent excise tax on insurance plans that cost more than $8,000 a year for an individual or $21,000 for a family.

The bill has aroused the frantic opposition of labor and business lobbyists who appear to have found friends in the Capitol. On Wednesday, 157 House Democrats — a majority of the party — signed a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi opposing the tax.

“It has no legs in the House,” said Representative Pete Stark, the California Democrat who is chairman of the health subcommittee of the tax-writing panel.

The proposed Medicare commission, aimed at providers instead of consumers, is becoming a case study in the political difficulty of reducing medical payments.

The commission was intended to side-step the interest-group pressure that often stymies Congress. Modeled after the nonpartisan commission for military base closings, it would present a roster of Medicare cuts that Congress could block only with legislation.

But along the way, the White House and the Senate Finance Committee have cut deals for political support with lobbyists that may circumscribe the cost cuts, potentially including the recommendations of the commission.

The Big Picture: Want to know why financial reform has been dead in the water so far? "The banks run the place."

Southern Beale: No wonder Republicans didn’t bother to fix healthcare all those years they were in power. There’s too much money to be made by keeping it broken.

Truthdig: The chief justice of the California Supreme Court has a choice word for the state’s method of operation: dysfunctional

PERRspectives: The Nobel Prizes for Conservatives

Fafblog!: Our Threatiest Threat

HOLY CRAP: Clueless Christian...Biblical figures return to cleanse Conservapedia...Christian baseball?...Bill Tyndale's Bible...Jesus is their Health Care...Pray for me...Murder is caused by legalized abortion?...The First Question...Mr. Deity...Your friend & brother in Christ...Polygamous Marriages endorsed

OurFuture: "Anything Goes" capitalism destroys companies and workers' lives

Capital Eye: Aides, lobbyists and contributors among those left in the wake of John Ensign's ethics scandal

Lean Left: Don't know much about history, biology, science books, the French I took...or art. But I do know that I'm a right wing moron.

Where’s the Outrage?: Dr. Errington Thompson says..."Keith, thanks for letting America see the world I work in every day."

TAPPED: Congress' torture coverup

Welcome Back to Pottersville: Assclowns of the Week: Nattering nabobs of negativism edition

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1061)

PLAYS: (2557)

From The Rachel Maddow Show Oct. 7, 2009. Yet another shoe drops on Sen. John Ensign. We just had the news on Tom Coburn apparently negotiating bribes for Sen. Ensign, and now this.

MADDOW: We begin with a follow up to Sen. John Ensign’s failed attempt to avoid the media at all costs. You know that Sen. Ensign revealed back in June that he had had an affair with a campaign staffer. A campaign staffer who was married to a man named Doug Hampton. Doug Hampton worked in Sen. Ensign’s senate office. Here was the failed media avoidance indecent.

[…]

“I never talked to Doug Hampton about any of that stuff.” The question was Sen. Ensign did you ever meet with Doug Hampton after you got him a lobbying job. “No, I never met with Doug Hampton about any of that stuff.”

What you just saw was CNN’s Dana Bash and her producer confronting John Ensign outside his office in Washington D.C. yesterday. They’re trying to ask the senator this. What was your involvement with Doug Hampton after you convinced companies to hire him as a lobbyist? It’s an important question because former staffers are required by law to wait a year before lobbying their old bosses.

And the answer that Ensign gave in this interview was zilch, nada, none. He said he had no contact with Doug Hampton on any lobbying matters.

[…]

“I never met with him on any of that lobbying stuff.” Well the New York Times today looked into the veracity of this statement and they found an uh-oh.

Interviews and documents, however, show that Mr. Ensign had lunch in the Senate dining room in March with Mr. Hampton and executives from Allegiant Air to discuss aviation issues. That lunch took place on the same day that the airline executives, in a meeting arranged by Mr. Ensign, spoke with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood about a dispute with a foreign carrier and other issues.

Allegiant Air being one of Mr. Hampton’s clients on whose behalf he lobbied.

BASH: Is there anything else that you... are you considering resigning?

ENSIGN: I am focused on doing my work. I'm going to continue to focus on doing my work.

MADDOW: And so too will everyone else senator-- We will all be focusing on your work. Particularly the work we now think you did with your mistress’ husband/former staffer/illegal lobbyist.

From The Colbert Report:

Republicans and Democrats should march in pride parades and proudly announce their relationship with lobbyists.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1490)

PLAYS: (4697)

Rachel Maddow breaks down who is behind the smears against ACORN and why, and how dishonest the reporting has been by the right wing media on the topic.

MADDOW: It may seem like the only thing happening in Congress these days is the never-ending fight over and of health reform. But if you happen to be watching the House floor at 3:00 this afternoon, this is what you would have seen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. STEVE KING ®, IOWA: Who has consistently called for the clean-

up of the corrupt ACORN, the criminal enterprise ACORN and all of their affiliates? It‘s been people on the Republican side of the aisle that have done that. This is the star of ACORN. He is—he is the lead chief organizer. He is the—he is the person who told the people at ACORN, “I will invite you into the—and we will be setting the agenda for America,” even before he is inaugurated as president of the United States. This is the man who worked for ACORN.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: This is the star of ACORN!

That was paranoid Republican Congressman Steve King of Iowa, today, railing against the community organizing group ACORN, and falsely accusing President Obama of being ACORN‘s lead chief organizer. This sort of animus toward ACORN is something that‘s been percolating on the right for a really long time, but it‘s broken open recently as even Democrats in Congress have decided to go along with efforts to defund and demonize ACORN, and some Republican governors have even enthusiastically defunded ACORN as well, despite the fact that those governors didn‘t fund them in the first place.

Continue reading »

Dr. Dean overcomes his natural shyness to share his thoughts on the Baucus bill and lobbies for using reconciliation to pass it:

Howard Dean, former Democratic National Committee chairman, minced no words about Sen. Max Baucus's health-care proposal, unveiled to the public this morning. "The Baucus bill is the worst piece of healthcare legislation I've seen in 30 years," Dean said last night at a healthcare town hall and book signing in Washington. "In fact, it's a $60 billion giveaway to the health insurance industry every year," he said. "It was written by healthcare lobbyists, so that's not a surprise. It's an outrage."

The Baucus bill leaves out some of the president's goals for healthcare reform, such as the controversial public option. While more palatable to Senate moderates, the Baucus proposal also drew criticism from Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat from West Virginia, who said yesterday he would not vote for it in its current form.

"I'm glad Senator Rockefeller is not going to vote for it. I wouldn't vote for it at all under any circumstances," Dean added.

Instead, Dean said Senate Democrats should and would end up using the reconciliation process to pass a plan with the public option. "It can be done, and that's how it will be done," Dean said, pointing out that a majority of Senate Democrats still support a more robust bill.

David E’s Fablog: Race Riot, sponsored by corporate lobbyists

Glenn Greenwald: There's nothing new about right wing insanity...or stupidity

distributorcap NY: All American Children Left Behind

Scott Horton: Two Marine Generals take Cheney to the woodshed

$Blind In Texas$: I'm a Ninther

AMERICAblog News: One year after the fall of Lehman, few changes

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1016)

PLAYS: (1433)

The David Gregory and Andrea Mitchells of the world have decided to declare the public option dead and of course all of those silly liberals who think that the bill would be a giveaway to the insurance industries without it need to just shut up and get in line. Mitchell says "I just don't get the lack of discipline here". Hey Andrea, there are three co-equal branches of government, or have you forgotten that? And it is not going to destroy Obama's Presidency if he actually listens to the majority that elected him and does what they would like.

As my C&L cohort Nicole pointed out, this article does a good job of explaining just what we're watching right now. From Mike Lux at Open Left- The News Big Media Won't Report:

Every morning I still read my old fashioned paper copy of the morning Washington Post on the subway on my way to the office, and then I sit down to review all the information I am getting from field events and town halls around the country, lobbyists' reports from those meeting with Senate and House members and staff, updates from organizations working in the field. I have to say that the two sets of information could not be further apart, and it makes me wonder again what the disconnect is.

[....]

As I've written before, between some combination of their own pre-conceived conventional wisdom talking points and their love of covering a train wreck, traditional media does not want to report the good news about health care reform. I can't remember ever seeing in any traditional media story, for example, the fact that (as Chris Bowers reported) there is now a majority in both the House and the Senate that are on the public record in support of a public option.

The future of health care reform hangs in the balance. We are in the fight of our lives- but if you listen to the traditional media, you would think it is all over.

Lots more there so be sure to check out the whole article, but he's right. The media has decided to tell everyone that the fight is over and so go sit down and shut up if you don't like it. I would hope that is the last thing anyone that wants to see some real reform is doing.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1431)

PLAYS: (4360)

For anyone that didn't watch it, check out Bill Moyers show from this past weekend featuring the documentary Money-Driven Medicine. Here's how Bill wrapped up his show.

BILL MOYERS: MONEY-DRIVEN MEDICINE, a film produced by Alex Gibney, Peter Bull and Chris Matonti; directed by Andy Fredericks; and based on Maggie Mahar's book of the same name.

Log on to pbs.org and click on BILL MOYERS JOURNAL - Maggie Mahar will be there to answer your questions online. We'll link you to the Money-Driven Medicine website where there's more info about the book and the film. We'll also link you to some analysis of what advocates of reform are up against in taking on the health insurance industry, the drug lobby, and the Wall Street equity firms.

Take a look at this recent cover of BUSINESS WEEK. Reporters Chad Terhune and Keith Epstein write that the CEO's of the giant insurance companies should be smiling - their lobbyists have already won. Quote: "no matter what specifics emerge in the voluminous bill Congress may send to President Obama this fall, the insurance industry will emerge more profitable."

And remember that television ad Barack Obama made as a candidate for president?

BARACK OBAMA: The pharmaceutical industry wrote into the prescription drug plan that Medicare could not negotiate with drug companies. And you know what, the chairman of the committee who pushed the law through went to work for the pharmaceutical industry making $2 million a year. Imagine that. That's an example of the same old game-playing in Washington. I don't want to learn how to play the game better. I want to put an end to the game-playing.

BILL MOYERS: Now look at this recent story in the LOS ANGELES TIMES. Lo and behold, since the election, the pharmaceutical industry's $2 million dollars a year superstar lobbyist Billy Tauzin has morphed into President Obama's pal. Tauzin says the President has promised not to pressure the drug companies to negotiate with the government for lower drug prices and has agreed not to allow cheaper drugs to be imported from Canada or Europe - contrary to the position taken by candidate Obama…

Each of these stories illuminates the scarlet thread that runs through Maggie Mahar's book - the story of how today's market-driven medical system gives Wall Street investors life and death control over our health care, turning medicine into a profit machine instead of a social service to meet human need. That's the conflict at the heart of next month's showdown in Washington.

I'm Bill Moyers. See you next time.

I am so thoroughly disgusted by what I'm watching now and the deals that are being cut on this sorry excuse for what is supposed to be health care reform that I am past the point of being fed up. Howard Dean had it right.

Howard Dean: You Don't Have Reform Without the Public Option:

My advocacy would be for this. If you're not going to have a public option, then don't call it health reform. Strip all the money out of the bill and just do something we did here in Vermont about fifteen years ago, guaranteed issue and community rating. Require insurance companies to insure everybody. Stop them from kicking people off and don't let them charge huge amounts of money for sicker patients.

That's not health reform. It's insurance reform. You won't do much for the uninsured but you will make the health insurance market work better for the people it does work for. And you know, that's an incremental step and I wouldn't want to throw that out, but I'd strip the money out of the bill because this is going to be and expensive bill and if you're not going to get reform then you shouldn't bother with the expense.

Amen Howard.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (129)

PLAYS: (397)

Rachel Maddow examines how one former disgraced Bush official, Thomas Scully is influencing the health care debate.

MADDOW: During the Bush years, there were quite a few administration officials who were forced to leave their jobs under dark clouds. There was Claude Allen, for example, President Bush's domestic policy adviser who left after shoplifting a whole bunch of stuff from Target.

There was Bush's aides czar, Randall Tobias, famous for telling foreign countries they couldn't get any American money to fight AIDS unless they cracked down on hookers. Mr. Tobias resigned, of course, after his name turned up on the client list of the D.C. madame.

There was David Safivian, the head of procurement at the White House, who was busted in the Jack Abramoff scandal. There was Steven Griles, number two guy at Interior Department who was also busted in the Jack Abramoff scandal.

Actually, if I keep listing how many Bush administration officials were busted in the Abramoff scandal, we're going to be here a long time. But suffice to say, there were a lot of dark clouds over a lot of Bush administration resignations. One of them was President Bush's administrator of Medicare, a man named Thomas Scully.

Mr. Scully's career in government took a turn for the infamous after he ordered another government official to withhold information from Congress. That information was: how much President Bush's Medicare prescription drug benefit would cost. Publicly, the Bush administration was saying it would cost no more than $400 billion. Privately, they knew it was more like $600 billion. But Thomas Scully made sure that Congress never knew that.

A Bush administration investigation found that Mr. Scully threatened to fire the actuary who came up with the real cost figures if that actuary gave those real cost numbers to Congress. And while he was doing that, Mr. Scully was also busy getting himself a special waiver that would allow him to get a job as a health industry lobbyist as soon as he left government.

So, think about this for a second. He helped that prescription bill get passed by hiding its true costs, then he immediately went to work for companies who stood to make a mint from the fact that he got that bill passed. It's nice work, if you can get it, right?

Continue reading »