Progressive blog agrees healthcare bill is bad legislation

Really, I didn't think I'd live long enough for a progressive blogger to agree with my opinion of Obamacare (alternatively known as HR 3200, HR 3590 and HR 4872).

But a column at Firedoglake had an opinion similar to my oft-repeated rants. Here's an excerpt from The Truth About the Healthcare Bill. Comparing that bill to an earlier bill, the writer points out that once the current legislation passes, people will pay 8 percent of their annual income to private insurance companies or face a penalty of up to 2 percent, "which the IRS would collect."

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Constituent tries to lobby congressman on healthcare, ends up with capitol police

You accept things like this might happen in China or maybe Iran. But in the United States, a constituent attempting to lobby his own representative in Congress doesn't normally end up in an encounter with Capitol Police.

At the Big Government website, a poster at the site's Capitol Confidential offered a first person account of his attempts to explain his feelings about Obamacare to Rep. John Garamendi (CA-10),  a Democrat who plans to vote for the latest bill his party has advanced.

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On matters like HR 3590 and other healthcare bills, Eisenhower gave good advice

Most political junkies know about President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warnings about the “military-industrial complex.” But the Republican president’s farewell speech in 1961 was quite visionary. The speech was broader in scope than is popularly realized.

The federal government is mortgaging the future not only for these recent graduates, but also for their children. [Photo by Kay B. Day]Lesser known passages from Eisenhower’s speech speak directly to what we are confronting today. Though he could not know it, his statements go to the core of all that is wrong about HR 3590, the Senate healthcare bill and its spawn, and for that matter, the House healthcare product HR 3200 or for another matter, HR 4872. Not a single bill is framed in a proper perspective and neither bill rests on a vision of what 10 years down the fiscal road will really bring.

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Old media vs. new in Drudge-bashing by NBC’s Chuck Todd

Criticizing established media brands like The New York Times and The Washington Post, as well as long-time TV networks, is in full swing these days. So turnabout is fair play.  Chuck Todd, head White House correspondent for NBC News, had a few things to say about new media, with particular emphasis on Matt Drudge’s go-to website where many of us pop in throughout the day to see what’s interesting in the world around us.

Matt Drudge has carved a place for himself in media history whether old branded media likes it or not.In an interview with Tommy Christopher at Mediaite, Todd bemoaned ‘Drudge-driven’ journalism. He criticized stories based on “an opinion article allegation, not even a factually based story, that suddenly draws a question because Drudge linked to it.”

Drudge will certainly do the trick when a story runs around frantically looking for legs. For Todd, that is not a good thing. He said, “There’s no worse crime in journalism these days than simply deciding something’s a story because Drudge linked to it.”

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Party of Woe pushes government healthcare, misses opportunity for reform

Commentary by Kay B. Day

On Thursday despite the phone that wouldn’t shut up and skill saws screaming just outside my office, I tracked the first half of the Health Care Summit. By intermission, I felt as though the world were composed of people wearing dead people’s teeth and wannabe entrepreneurs whose only barrier was the current state of American healthcare.

It is, by the way, impossible to render HR 3200 friendly to small businesses.

Listening to various Democrats justify the most expansive government takeover of a major sector of our economy in my lifetime, I realized there is a singular difference between conservatives and those who call themselves progressives. Woe. Democrats rely on it, instilling the idea of despair in order to deliver hope and thereby garner votes. The Democrats today are indisputably the Party of Woe.

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Distrust of health plan rooted in lack of trust for Congress and ‘snuck in’ provisions

Commentary by Kay B. Day

President Barack Obama’s plan for expanding health insurance to include all Americans is titled ‘The Obama Plan: Stability and Security for all Americans.’ On Thursday, Republicans will meet with Democrats, purportedly in an effort to salvage one of Obama’s greatest hopes. Or the meeting may just be, as some Republicans have charged, ‘a photo op.’  And only time will tell what we end up with between the House and Senate bills that form the basis for retooling healthcare. Neither the House bill nor the Senate bill was handled with the transparency the president promised when he campaigned. And we must admit to ourselves House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) do not inspire trust. Why do I say that?

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Obama to visit Florida, few details known except for Miami fundraiser

Commentary by Kay B. Day

View of downtown Jacksonville from the Friendship Fountain. Photo by Kay B. Day.President Barack Obama will head to Florida on Monday, but only general information is available according to the Associated Press and The Florida Times Union. The T-U said the president will visit Jacksonville and Tampa, and he’ll also attend a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraiser in Miami. On the DCCC website, there’s a fundraising solicitation promising dinner with the charismatic president for one ‘lucky’ winner.

There’s a downside for that ‘lucky’ contributor—Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will also be at the dinner. The unpopular Speaker of the House currently has a 34 percent approval rating according to The Hill. The DCCC solicitation is in the form of a letter from Pelosi.

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