Fly-Over Country

Blanche Lincoln is a centristy centrist

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) argues that health care reform shouldn't include a public plan, because that would drive out private competition:

“One of our biggest concerns is that it doesn’t need to be a government plan that usurps that ability to compete in the marketplace, which I’m concerned that a totally government-run option would do,” she said.

Here's digby on the competitive market Sen. Lincoln wishes to preserve in Arkansas:

The Justice Department considers an industry to be “highly concentrated” if one company has 42 percent of the market. In Arkansas — Senator Lincoln should take note — Blue Cross Blue Shield has 75 percent of the market. If you take government self-insurance plans out of the equation, it's higher. The state ranks as the ninth most concentrated in the country. Is it any wonder that insurance premiums have risen five times as fast as wages?

Here's Barack Obama at today's press conference, explaining that a public plan would eliminate private competition only if the insurance companies couldn't offer consumers a better deal:

Why would it drive private insurance out of business? If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care; if they tell us that they're offering a good deal, then why is it that the government -- which they say can't run anything -- suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That's not logical.

"Now, the -- I think that there's going to be some healthy debates in Congress about the shape that this takes. I think there can be some legitimate concerns on the part of private insurers that if any public plan is simply being subsidized by taxpayers endlessly that over time they can't compete with the government just printing money, so there are going to be some I think legitimate debates to be had about how this private plan takes shape.

"But just conceptually, the notion that all these insurance companies who say they're giving consumers the best possible deal, if they can't compete against a public plan as one option, with consumers making the decision what's the best deal, that defies logic, which is why I think you've seen in the polling data overwhelming support for a public plan.

I really do not get the stated opposition to the public plan.  According to the critics, it would be so popular that it would drive private insurers out of the market.  Every time I hear this I want to respond, "Wait a minute.  You oppose what you say would be an incredibly popular reform because it would be bad for insurance companies?  Really?  That's your argument?"  In his own polite way, that's what Obama said.  I hope someone in the establishment media is paying attention.  Because people like Blanche Lincoln should be asked to explain why they put insurance companies' interests ahead of the people's interest.

Wanted: Better Democrats

Okay, so you may have heard that Republican partisans are demagoguing Obama's decision to close Guantanamo, claiming this will mean terrorists living next door to you.  This is stupid, of course.  Our prisons already house some seriously dangerous people, including terrorists like the Unabomber, the shoe bomber, and the blind sheikh.  During WWII we housed over 400,000 German and Japanese POWs right here in the good old USA.  The fearmongering on this issue is ludicrous:

So this is it, then, is it?  They’re going to move Osama in next door to you.  Every last one of you, everywhere.  It’s very complicated, involving things like timeshares and wormholes and stem cells, but it’s happening, believe me.  And when it doesn’t happen, we’ll have thought up something even dumber to tell you rubes, believe me.  Maybe next time the Democrats will be grafting al Qaeda heads onto spider bodies and putting them in your baby’s crib.  A winning message for 2012.

Needless to say, though, it's not so ludicrous that Harry Reid isn't quivering in fear of it:

REID: I'm saying that the United States Senate, Democrats and Republicans, do not want terrorists to be released in the United States. That's very clear.

QUESTION: No one's talking about releasing them. We're talking about putting them in prison somewhere in the United States.

REID: Can't put them in prison unless you release them.

QUESTION: Sir, are you going to clarify that a little bit? ...

REID: I can't make it any more clear than the statement I have given to you. We will never allow terrorists to be released in the United States.

It would be easier to keep Republicans from demagoguing this issue if the Democratic Senate Majority Leader didn't repeat their dishonest talking points. But Reid apparently has troubles of his own back in Nevada.  (Hey, here's an idea -- let's have a Senate Majority Leader who doesn't have to tack right to keep his job.  Just a thought.)  In any event, panicked Democrats voted to deny Obama the funds he needs to close Guantanamo until he assures them that they won't have to bunk with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.  Not exactly profiles in courage.

When Obama disappoints me on issues like his detention policies, I need to remind myself that he's herding cats within his own party.  It doesn't make me feel better, but it is necessary to work within the range of the possible.  And with Democrats like Harry Reid (and Evan Bayh and Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman), that's not such a big range.

What is Arlen Specter's next move?

As Politico reports, Senate Democrats voted en masse to strip Arlen Specter of his seniority, leaving a dejected Specter to wonder what happened to the deal he claimed he had with Harry Reid.  I honestly don't know what Specter was thinking.  He switched sides admitting that he'd done so only because he couldn't win the 2010 Republican primary.  Then he proclaimed that he'd leapfrog all the real Democrats in seniority while acting and talking like a died-in-the-wool Republican.  Where did he think he was going with that?

Now, with Joe Sestak chomping at the bit to challenge Specter in the Democratic primary, comes word that Tom Ridge won't challenge Pat Toomey.  It may never have made any sense that Ridge would run.  He lives in Maryland, fer cryin' out loud, and why would Pennsylvania Republicans toss out one moderate only to replace him with another?  But unlike Toomey, Ridge had a real shot in the general election.  Now it looks like the Democratic nominee will be the presumptive favorite.

In these circumstances, why would Democrats conceivably settle for a guy who can't remember what team he's on?  With the field wide open for a real Democrat, why would Democrats settle for an opportunistic Republican cast-off?  And why would they do so in an increasingly blue state like Pennsylvania?  Democrats are entirely capable of screwing this up -- and that's particularly true of Senate Democrats -- but I don't see how this ends well for Specter.

The newest Democrat needs a primary opponent

Speculation that Arlen Specter would veer left now that he's a Democrat has thus far not proven out.  Specter voted No on Obama's budget. He voted against the Democratic bankruptcy reform on mortgage cram downs.  He says he still opposes Dawn Johnsen, Obama's nominee to head up the Office of Legal Counsel.  Like Ben Nelson, he says he opposes Obama's public health care option.  He says he's sticking with his opposition to the the Employee Free Choice Act -- a position he switched to  when he thought he'd have to run in a Republican primary.  And remember: This guy was too liberal to win the Pennsylvania Republican primary.

Unless Specter changes direction sharply, he deeply deserves a challenger in the 2010 Democratic primary.  Rep. Sestak?  Paging Joe Sestak.

More misty water color memories

Courtesy of Boing Boing, here's the New York Times' November 15, 1999 report on the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act:

Congress approved landmark legislation today that opens the door for a new era on Wall Street in which commercial banks, securities houses and insurers will find it easier and cheaper to enter one another's businesses.

. . . ''Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century,'' Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said. ''This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy.''

The decision to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 provoked dire warnings from a handful of dissenters that the deregulation of Wall Street would someday wreak havoc on the nation's financial system. The original idea behind Glass-Steagall was that separation between bankers and brokers would reduce the potential conflicts of interest that were thought to have contributed to the speculative stock frenzy before the Depression.

. . . ''The world changes, and we have to change with it,'' said Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, who wrote the law that will bear his name along with the two other main Republican sponsors, Representative Jim Leach of Iowa and Representative Thomas J. Bliley Jr. of Virginia. ''We have a new century coming, and we have an opportunity to dominate that century the same way we dominated this century. Glass-Steagall, in the midst of the Great Depression, came at a time when the thinking was that the government was the answer. In this era of economic prosperity, we have decided that freedom is the answer.''

In the House debate, Mr. Leach said, ''This is a historic day. The landscape for delivery of financial services will now surely shift.''

. . . The opponents of the measure gloomily predicted that by unshackling banks and enabling them to move more freely into new kinds of financial activities, the new law could lead to an economic crisis down the road when the marketplace is no longer growing briskly.

''I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930's is true in 2010,'' said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota. ''I wasn't around during the 1930's or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980's when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness.''

Senator Paul Wellstone, Democrat of Minnesota, said that Congress had ''seemed determined to unlearn the lessons from our past mistakes.''

''Scores of banks failed in the Great Depression as a result of unsound banking practices, and their failure only deepened the crisis,'' Mr. Wellstone said. ''Glass-Steagall was intended to protect our financial system by insulating commercial banking from other forms of risk. It was one of several stabilizers designed to keep a similar tragedy from recurring. Now Congress is about to repeal that economic stabilizer without putting any comparable safeguard in its place.''

Supporters of the legislation rejected those arguments. They responded that historians and economists have concluded that the Glass-Steagall Act was not the correct response to the banking crisis because it was the failure of the Federal Reserve in carrying out monetary policy, not speculation in the stock market, that caused the collapse of 11,000 banks. If anything, the supporters said, the new law will give financial companies the ability to diversify and therefore reduce their risks. The new law, they said, will also give regulators new tools to supervise shaky institutions.

''The concerns that we will have a meltdown like 1929 are dramatically overblown,'' said Senator Bob Kerrey, Democrat of Nebraska.

Oops.

"Reconciliation"

Team Obama is reportedly suggesting to Democratic Senators that the administration's new budget bill ought to be adopted under "reconciliation" rules that don't allow filibusters.  Needless to say, this has provoked howls of outrage from Senate Republicans.  For example:

"That would be the Chicago approach to governing: Strong-arm it through," said Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), who briefly considered joining the Obama administration as commerce secretary. "You're talking about the exact opposite of bipartisan. You're talking about running over the minority, putting them in cement and throwing them in the Chicago River."

Let's review the reasons why this is hypocritical and stupid.  First, Republicans have routinely resorted to reconciliation to force through their agenda:

There is plenty of historical precedent of using it by both parties, including Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, who used it force through big tax cuts.

"Pretty much every major piece of budget legislation going back to April 1981, April '82, April 1990, April 1993, the 1990 act, the 2001 tax legislation, they were all done through reconciliation. Yet somehow this is being presented as an unusual thing," Orszag said.

"The historical norm as opposed to the exception is for a major piece of budget legislation to move through reconciliation."

Second, Senators like the outraged Gregg supported reconciliation rules when their guy was in charge:

Republican leaders indicated Tuesday that they plan to press the issue of drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as part of a so-called budget reconciliation process, which cannot be subject to a Democratic filibuster--a tactic that has blocked the refuge's development in the past. ...

Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, R-N.H. said it was reasonable to assume ANWR, as the refuge is commonly called, would be part of the budget measure.

"The president asked for it, and we're trying to do what the president asked for," Gregg said Tuesday after meeting privately with Republicans on his panel. 

Third, what's up with the goofy claims that majority rule is antidemocratic?

From Sen. Judd Gregg (R–NH), on the possibility of using the budget reconciliation process to pass healthcare and cap-and-trade bills in the Senate:

"That would be the Chicago approach to governing: Strong-arm it through.  You're talking about the exact opposite of bipartisan. You're talking about running over the minority, putting them in cement and throwing them in the Chicago River."

Hell yes.  This is supposed to be a democracy.  Why, allowing legislation to pass based on nothing more than a simple majority vote would be just this side of mob rule.

Fourth, since Congressional Republicans reflexively oppose everything the Democratic majority proposes, it's unclear how resort to reconciliation could make things worse:

[I]t’s not at all clear how “irrevocably damage[d] relations” would differ from the status quo. This is one reason, perhaps, why it’s not customary for a defeated minority to immediately move to a posture of relentless obstruction. By adopting such a posture, you give away a bargaining chip.

Finally, since Republican complaints are baseless and hypocritical, centristy centrist Evan Bayh is organizing bad Democrats to take their side against the Democratic President who's trying to pass health care reform.  I say this as a long-suffering constituent of the clueless Sen. Bayh: I'd call him a $100 haircut on a $10 head, but his haircut sucks too.

Leon Panetta

Okay, well, I can't say that Leon Panetta is a great choice to head CIA, because I don't know CIA.  But I can say that everything I've heard about the pick makes me happy.

First, Panetta is widely agreed to be smart, capable, and respected across the aisle.  As Bill Clinton's former chief of staff he understands what Presidents need from CIA, and he's universally agreed to be an effective manager, even though he has no experience within the intelligence community.

Second, Panetta is on record vigorously opposing the lawless policies of the Bush administration, and Obama picked him knowing that.  Along with his nomination of Dawn Johnson to OLC, Obama is clearly signaling that, not only will he abandon these policies, but he intends to publicly repudiate them.  That's why his administration can't include anyone inside the blast radius.  Very, very good.

Third, the appointment pissed off both Diane Feinstein and Jay Rockefeller.  I hope that Scott Horton is absolutely right about why Feinstein and Rockefeller were excluded:

"So why would the Obama team, which has been so careful and thoughtful in approaching the nominations process, have failed even to consult the two Democratic senators who have the most to say about intelligence? I don’t think this was accidental. I read something else into it. The bottom line is that Jay Rockefeller was an abject failure when it came to intelligence oversight. His term as ranking member and then chair of the Senate intelligence committee was one in which Congress generally, and the Senate in particular, failed to live up to their Constitutional mandate. The intelligence community was steered by the Bush Administration into a series of criminal escapades. Effective congressional oversight would have exposed these failings and brought them to heel. But the Rockefeller-Feinstein record was little short of disastrous. I’m delighted that the Obama team didn’t consult them."

Reportedly Obama and Biden have done what's necessary to assuage Feinstein, and she is said to favor legislation returning all agencies of the federal government to the rule of law.  If only she and Rockefeller had acted like vertebrates over the last eight years I'd be impressed, but since I know they've signed off on everything, they're exactly the people that I want to be pissed off.  Frankly, if they actually know what I think they know about the Bush administration's lawless policies, then they ought to be in very deep trouble.  Instead of pissed off they ought to be very, very worried about how the disclosures will go -- and therefore very, very obsequious about what disclosures Pres. Obama might make.  But being Democrats, however,  Feinstein and Rockfeller have selected the election of one of their own as their motivation to finally bitch about something.  Way to go, guys.  Ugh.

Finally, it might actually be a good idea.  Maybe the salty retired Admiral Dennis Blair will hold down the tough military professional role at DNI, and Panetta will be the intelligence community's capable CEO/COO.  Taken together these appointments are better than they'd be apart.The real bottom line here, though, is that Obama is consistently appointing people who are on record as both condemning the Bush administration's lawless behavior and advocating the need to expose and repudiate it.  That is change I can believe in.