Bart Stupak is either lying or stupid (or both) when he said this:

Whether public funds should be used for abortion services is exactly the sort of issue we should be debating openly on the floor of the House of Representatives. My amendment to include Hyde language in H.R. 3200, America’s Affordable Health Choices Act, is not new or out of line with the current policies regarding federal funding for abortions. There is a strong precedent going back more than 30 years for adding Hyde language. The ban on federal funding for abortions is a long-standing American policy that has been in place since the 1970s and has been upheld by the Supreme Court.

This amendment is not about limiting choice when it comes to abortion services. There is nothing in the amendment that prevents those who choose to obtain abortion services from doing so. The Hyde language simply says taxpayer dollars should not be used to pay for those services. Just as the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) does not provide plans that cover abortion services, nor should the plans for individuals who enter into the public option or receive federal subsidies for healthcare cover abortions. They are free to purchase a supplemental plan or pay for these services with their own money should they so choose.

And this:

No. They’ve been fighting me since July on this. My reaction is that they are saying that no insurance policies will be able to sell abortion coverage, and that is not true. All the members have to do is look at their update that they got from the majority leader, Steny Hoyer [D-MD], that he sent to us about three minutes before 10 [o’clock Saturday night], before we voted on the amendments. Basically, he said, ‘Look, the Stupak amendment is the Hyde amendment. You can’t use federal funds to pay for abortions. However, you can get supplemental coverage, and it does not prevent private insurance companies from selling elective abortion coverage.’ I think the only surprise I have is how much they’ve mischaracterized the amendment, even after their own majority leader report that we all get before we vote clearly states the purpose of the amendment and shows it’s not greater than current law, so all this about taking away women’s rights, restricting it—it’s no different from the restrictions right now.

Because the facts in this case pretty clearly demonstrate that the Stupak amendment goes well beyond Hyde and is a radical piece of legislation:

The George Washington School of Public Health and Health Services has analyzed Stupak-Pitts, and concludes that “the Amendment would produce industry-wide effects, leading to the elimination of health plan coverage for nearly all medically indicated abortions.”

Additionally, “based on past experiences with claim administration decisions involving treatment exclusions,” the analysts conclude that insurers are likely to interpret the exclusion broadly, and exclude not just elective abortions, but also medically indicated abortion and “treatments for serious illnesses, injuries, and medical conditions that include an abortion undertaken for health reasons.” Insurance administrators, they find, are likely to err on the side of coverage denail in order to avoid sanctions.

So not only does Bart Stupak either not know what his amendment does, or he is lying about it, but he wants to blow up the entire health care bill if he doesn’t get his way in the Senate, a legislative body of which he is not even a member.

Who do we send money to to primary this guy? I left the GOP in large part because of the godbotherers.

Bart is at it again:

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) pledged on Tuesday morning to defeat healthcare reform legislation if his abortion amendment is taken out, saying 10 to 20 anti-abortion-rights Democrats would vote against a bill with weaker language.

“They’re not going to take it out,” Stupak said on “Fox and Friends,” referring to Senate Democrats. “If they do, healthcare will not move forward.”

He’s basically a political terrorist a kidnapper. He doesn’t have the votes in the Senate to get what he wants, so he’s threatening them- take this amendment out, and we kill your loved one. Steve Benen points out that it is all sound and fury, but should Stupak actually attempt to blow up health care reform because not everyone in the House and Senate is a pro-life extremist, the Democrats should kick him out of their caucus. That might seem harsh, but this is the most important (or so they say) piece of legislation the Democrats have pursued for decades, and anyone who intentionally sabotages it for his own little culture war BS should be forced to pay a price.

*** Update ***

Some of you hate the terrorist bit. Probably right and it is over the top. I apologize. But what really irritates me about this is that Stupak isn’t concerned about the actual health care bill- he’s concerned with advancing his religious agenda through a health care bill, and if he doesn’t get what he wants in the OTHER branch of Congress, he will work to blow up the whole bill. That is infuriating and wrong.

Hell, I’d even understand it if pro-choice advocates had tried to advance the ball in the pro-choice direction, and Stupak said “If they do that, I am voting against it.” But he isn’t doing that, and what he is doing is much more extreme. He is going well beyond the Hyde amendment, and then threatening to blow up the bill if people don’t follow through with his religious beliefs. He’d let tens of millions of people go without health insurance just because he couldn’t for private insurance companies to no longer cover abortion. That makes him pretty despicable in my book. And the fact that the more conservative Senate Democrats aren’t even going to give him the time of day tells you everything you need to know, if the Fox news appearances didn’t already.

I’m surprised the hypocrites on the right aren’t making a bigger deal out of this:

The Obama administration has, yet again, asserted the broadest and most radical version of the “state secrets” privilege—which previously caused so much controversy and turmoil among loyal Democrats (when used by Bush/Cheney)—to attempt to block courts from ruling on the legality of the government’s domestic surveillance activities. Obama did so again this past Friday—just six weeks after the DOJ announced voluntary new internal guidelines which, it insisted, would prevent abuses of the state secrets privilege. Instead—as predicted—the DOJ continues to embrace the very same “state secrets” theories of the Bush administration—which Democrats generally and Barack Obama specifically once vehemently condemned—and is doing so in order literally to shield the President from judicial review or accountability when he is accused of breaking the law.

Regardless, this is a definite failure on the part of Obama. After the FIRE crew, I would say the #2 threat to this nation are the “You can’t handle the truth” goons in the security apparatus.

The last time I wrote about the health care bill my post took for granted that any Public Option measure would include provisions to block private insurers from dumping sick and old clients. The reason is simple. If insurers can drop expensive clients for essentially any reason then the existence of a public option will encourage them to commit any skullduggery to keep nobody but the healthiest clients (until they get sick, of course. then they’re screwed) and leave the government to manage everyone else. Caring for the neediest would drive public plan premiums through the roof, it would force public plan managers to make all of the most unpopular decisions and it would probably force public plan managers (and not the cream-skimming private plans) to hit up Congress again and again for cash.

If a bill like that reaches the Senate floor then we might as well spike it. I am not kidding about this. Both the politics and the policy will suck hard for Democrats. A “public plan” with no dumping protection could function worse in practice than if we did nothing at all. A public plan flameout will delegitimize the Democrats and probably kill off any future support progressive health care reform.

Once again we can thank Democratic moderates for crippling a good bill (remember state aid in the stimulus?) for no reason except to put some daylight between themselves and the dirty fucking hippies. It concerns me that nobody in America seems to take policy seriously other than the Democratic left.

***Update***

My rant only makes sense insofar as the final health care bill effectively controls dumping. In the link in this post Ezra suggests that risk sharing will not be as effective as I assumed it would be. If I’m wrong then everything is fine. If I am right then we’re screwed. I guess we will wait to see the reconciled bill.

I guess it makes sense that Evan Bayh is vociferously opposed to the public option:

His wife, Susan Bayh, sits on the board of WellPoint(WLP Quote) in her hometown of Indianapolis. Over the last six years, Susan Bayh has received at least $2 million in compensation from WellPoint alone for serving on its board.

Evan Bayh, bought and paid for in full for the price of two million bucks. What a country.

Thanks to the emailer who sent this in.

This:

An amendment that would prevent the government from working with contractors who denied victims of assault the right to bring their case to court is in danger of being watered down or stripped entirely from a larger defense appropriations bill.

Multiple sources have told the Huffington Post that Sen. Dan Inouye, a longtime Democrat from Hawaii, is considering removing or altering the provision, which was offered by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and passed by the Senate several weeks ago.

Inouye’s office, sources say, has been lobbied by defense contractors adamant that the language of the Franken amendment would leave them overly exposed to lawsuits and at constant risk of having contracts dry up. The Senate is considering taking out a provision known as the Title VII claim, which (if removed) would allow victims of assault or rape to bring suit against the individual perpetrator but not the contractor who employed him or her.

“The defense contractors have been storming his office,” said a source with knowledge of the situation. “Inouye either will get the amendment taken out altogether, or water it down significantly. If they water it down, they will take out the Title VII claims. This means that in discrimination cases, they will still force you into a secret forced arbitration on KBR’s (or other contractors’) own terms—with your chances of prevailing practically zero. The House seems to be very supportive of the original Franken amendment and all in line, but their hands are tied since it originated in the Senate. And since Inouye runs the show on this bill, he can easily take it out to get Republicans and the defense contractors off his back, which looks increasingly likely.”

A supermajority voted for the amendment, as it passed 68-30, but big business can come in and grease the palms of one Senator and the will of the people is thwarted. And politicians wonder why people have no faith in government or think the government isn’t looking out for the little guy.

Who needs Republicans with folks like this?

Way to be, Max:

Fewer middle-income families would qualify for tax credits to purchase health insurance, under a little-noticed change to the Senate Finance Committee health bill made just before the markup began in late September.

Under the bill, eligible individuals and families with annual incomes of between 100 and 400 percent of the federal poverty line would receive tax credits to cover the cost of insurance purchased through state exchanges. As part of a package of managers’ modifications, Finance Chairman Max Baucus changed the definition of income from “modified adjusted gross income,” or AGI plus investment interest, to simply “modified gross income.”

That is a departure from the way all other federal tax credits are calculated, and it means when determining eligibility for the credit, the IRS would have to disregard a household’s usual above-the-line deductions, such as for individual retirement account contributions and college tuition.

It really is awesome how these guys think- make everything more complicated, save very little, and screw the folks who need the help while mandating they buy insurance. About the only thing missing is mandating they give up their first born. Well played, President Baucus!

There seriously are days I think half the Democrats in the Senate are Republican moles.

I doubt it, but hopefully this will stop the insanity:

“That sentiment does not reflect White House thinking at all, we’ve held easily a dozen calls with the progressive online community because we believe the online communities can often keep the focus on how policy will affect the American people rather than just the political back-and-forth.”

You’re good enough, you’re smart enough, and doggone it, people like you. Now that we have our daily affirmations out of the way, can we stop lobbing grenades at each other? Hug it out, bitches.

I may not have all the facts, but from where I am sitting, things are starting to stink:

Most recently, Rangel restated his legally required personal financial disclosure, showing an asset range that jumped from roughly $500,000 to $1.3 million to $1 million to $2.5 million.

That was the latest in a string of incidents that have shined the spotlight on the Rangel’s personal and political conduct. He has admitted to failing to report income from a Dominican vacation home, and he has been accused of breaking New York City rules by maintaining multiple rent-controlled apartments, including a campaign office.

He also has come under fire for allegations that he used official letterhead to solicit private funding for a City College of New York Center created by an earmark and named for him and that he helped retain a tax break for a donor to the center. The New York Post reported Wednesday morning that Rangel secured a $3 million earmark in the House’s Defense Appropriations bill for another arm of CCNY.

These are the kinds of things that make really good election year commercials all over the country. Culture of corruption, anyone?

This really irritates me:

The state Senate passed a bill this afternoon that would allow Governor Deval Patrick to name an interim successor to Edward M. Kennedy, potentially paving the way for appointment of a new US senator later this week.

The Senate approved the measure by a 24-16 vote, leaving one final procedural hurdle in both chambers before the bill heads to Patrick’s desk. The House and Senate are expected to enact the bill on Wednesday, a formality unlikely to derail the effort.

***

When the roll call had been tallied, it appeared that many state senators had switched their votes from the last time the issue came up. In 2004, the Democrat-dominated Legislature rejected a measure that would have allowed Republican Governor Mitt Romney to appoint an interim successor if Senator John F. Kerry had won the presidency. The state Senate killed the measure with a voice vote, so it is difficult to pinpoint who changed votes.

Last week, the House voted 95-to-58 to approve the successor bill. In 2004, the chamber overwhelmingly rejected the same measure.

There is no excuse for this kind of nonsense. I fully understand there are times for partisanship, but not when dealing with the law. This kind of gamesmanship, jiggering the law to put ideological allies in office, destroys confidence in the system, pisses away the moral high ground, and gives people the right to make arguments about “the Democrats are no better,” because in this case, they aren’t. If you can explain how this is any different from the Republicans and the right-wing blogosphere, after eight years of Bush, suddenly discovering the importance of oversight and minority party rights, I’m all ears.

Way to go, Mike Ross:

Arkansas Rep. Mike Ross — a Blue Dog Democrat playing a key role in the health care debate — sold a piece of commercial property in 2007 for substantially more than a county assessment and an independent appraisal say it was worth.

The buyer: an Arkansas-based pharmacy chain with a keen interest in how the debate plays out.

Ross sold Holly’s Health Mart in Prescott, Ark., to USA Drug for $420,000 — an eye-popping price for real estate in a tiny train and lumber town about 100 miles southwest of Little Rock.

***

In June the National Association of Chain Drug Stores issued a news release thanking Ross for introducing legislation authorizing payments to pharmacists to train patients in how to manage their medications.

Health-related interests have donated $342,475 to Ross since 2007, according to federal campaign data maintained by the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics. No other business sector has given Ross as much.

Sure didn’t take long for the corrupt Dems to start bubbling up, did it?

(via the Great Orange Satan)

Lovely:

Former Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards talked a campaign aide into claiming he fathered a child born to Edwards’ onetime mistress, sources familiar with the issue said Monday.
Andrew Young, former aide to Sen. John Edwards, claims Edwards knew all along his mistress was carrying his child.

Edwards admitted to his affair with Rielle Hunter in August 2008 after months of denials, but said he could not have been the father of Hunter’s daughter, who was born the previous February. Former Edwards staffer Andrew Young has said he was the girl’s father—but has recanted and says he made it because he believed in Edwards, lawyers and others familiar with the matter told CNN.

Young was married with children when he claimed to have fathered Hunter’s child. He never signed any affidavits or legal papers, however, and reversed his claim after Edwards, as one of the sources put it, dropped Young “like a hot potato.”

What married man would admit to an affair and a child to cover someone else’s ass? This is crazy. At least I can say I thought Edwards was a phony and a fraud from day one.

We got your bipartisanship right here. Everyone hates the Baucus plan, which appears to be little more than an opportunity to revitalize the Republican party in the eyes of younger voters and the middle class. Basically, your options in American politics right now are evil and stupid® or spineless and stupid (D).

You’re doing a heckuva job, Brownie Baucus.

On the upside, Humana, Wellpoint, and United Health group are getting a nice little boost in their stock price today. No one could have predicted...

Call your Senator to thank him for giving Republicans a critical bonus month to whip up lies and hate over health care. Make sure to mention how you appreciate his crippled compromise bill that netted the same zero Republican votes that single payer would have done.

If you do not live in Montana (i.e., a constituent) or run a health insurance firm (i.e., a supervisor) then Baucus does not care what you think. Call your own Senator and yell at him or her about something else.

This is a few days old, but it’s well-worth reading if you haven’t seen it yet: Andy Worthington’s blunt and wide-ranging interview with Larry Wilkerson (Colin Powell’s former chief-of-staff). Some highlights of what Wilkerson said.

I wouldn’t have said that a couple of years ago, but now I’ve come to the conclusion that the man (Cheney) truly is — whether he was that way when I knew him before, when he was Secretary of Defense, I don’t know, that’s not at issue with me any more — the man now is just crazy.

and

It’s our media. Our media loves to keep it going. They love to throw him (Cheney) out there and, you know, stoke the fires. I asked a couple of people fairly high up in our media world, “Why in the world do you continue to give him and Limbaugh an audience? Why? Why do you even put them on the same plane as the president of the United States? Why do you have these dueling speeches? You guys made them dueling speeches, not the two principals.” Well, you know, they’re running out of business. People are canceling their newspaper subscriptions every day. They want news.

and

Well, to keep it brief, I think the problem is that this is a national security issue, and there are so many more challenging issues — as one official put it to me the other day — on which the President has already shown some ankle, whether it’s about talking to Iran or whether it’s his rather pronounced silence vis-à-vis North Korea, or whether it’s something as minuscule as lifting some travel restrictions on Cuban Americans for Cuba. They don’t believe they can show another square centimeter of ankle on national security, because the Republicans will eat their lunch, and every time I’m told this I die laughing. I say, your guys are captured by the Sith Lord, Dick Cheney, you’re captured by Rush Limbaugh, whose real radio audience is about 2.2 million, and whose employer, Clear Channel, lost $3.7 billion in the second quarter of this year. I said, when are you gonna wake up? These are kooks. And Cheney is the kook leader. But [Nancy] Pelosi and [Harry] Reid are such feckless leaders they haven’t got any spine. We have no leadership in the legislative branch on either side of the aisle.

I really recommend the whole thing. Hardly anyone is willing to put it as bluntly as Wilkerson does.