Green Union Pressure Politics

This strikes me as the straightforward solution to the dilly-dallying of conservative Arkansas senators Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor on issues affecting working Americans. Arkansas has a  uniquely strong Green Party, bred as a byproduct of the Republican and Democratic Party machines divvying up political districts to avoid competitive elections. While there may not be a deep bench for labor to look to in Arkansas to primary Lincoln or Pryor, there is the Green Party.

Blanche Lincoln is up for reelection in 2010 and has been one of the most problematic senators in the Democratic caucus when it comes to the Employee Free Choice Act. To say that she is owned, in part or in full, by Wal-Mart would begin to get at the problems that arise when working Americans and Arkansans lobby her to support Free Choice. However there is little avenue for pressuring Senate Democrats, other than at the ballot box. While labor is having an easy time of exerting leftward pressure on Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania because of the deep pro-labor, liberal Democratic bench, there isn’t a similarly large bench in Arkansas. As a result, if labor is going to try to move Blanche Lincoln back to the side of working Americans by exerting political pressure, it will have to be by threatening to — and if necessary carrying out the threat to — put major resources by a Green Party candidate to run for Senate in the general election against Blanche Lincoln.

Lincoln is the archetype of how the labor movement has been undercut by Senate Democrats this year. If pols like Lincoln know that they will not face any consequences when they stab working Americans in the back, they will never change their behavior. Since Dems like Lincoln only understand threats to their tenure in office, the natural course for pressure for unions to pursue is a political challenge. In the case of Arkansas, it seems that the Green Party would offer the best possible opportunity to run a meaningful challenge to Lincoln on behalf of working Americans.

Aravosis on Health Care

John Aravosis of AmericaBLOG has what strikes me as one of the encapsulations of the health care reality that I’ve read. Aravosis writes:

Our health care system is being run by thieves. These people don’t care if you stay healthy or get better, they’re the nasty chairman of the board on House a few seasons back who was simply interested in making money, nothing more.

Democrats need to keep reminding themselves that the problem isn’t just costs. The problem isn’t just the uninsured. The problem is that all of us are bought into a system that doesn’t work. And even those of us who make a good salary for a living (well, in other years) will be in serious trouble if we ever come down with any serious illness that requires $2000 a month in prescriptions (such as MS or HIV).

We need a fix that doesn’t just add more people into a bad system. We need more people in a better system. And the better system needs to benefit everyone, not just the poor, not just the middle class.

This really resonates with my views on health care and the need for reform. It’s not just about covering more people, but giving all Americans coverage that works, that meshes with the reality of treating acute illnesses or chronic diseases. Unless and until we can have a health care system that addresses Aravosis raises in this passage, we will not have an adequate health care system in America. What’s unfortunate is that the volume of opposition to any reform is so strong that anything is likely to win out over the right things when it comes to what is actually done.

The metric for success that the administration and stakeholders should be using when assessing the adequacy of any reforms that are considered should not be how many more people get coverage who don’t currently have it, but if we’ll need to pass another round of reform in the foreseeable future to fix what was not achieved in this round of legislation.

Game Changer

Paul Krugman’s take on the health care industry’s (aka “medical-industrial complex”) announcement that they will find ways to cut $2 trillion from their costs over the next 10 years is informative. Krugman is, in my view, the best liberal bellwether at assessing the administration’s economic and health care policy decisions. While Krugman identifies a number of area of concerns in the announcement from the medical-industrail complex, he’s overall positive and optimistic. When Krugman says the announcement is “some of the best policy news I’ve heard in a long time,” it’s certainly heartening.

What concerns me is what the medical-industrial complex believes these concessions will enable them to push for with the administration. Do they expect the media and the administration to believe this move has necessitated they get a seat at the bargaining table? Will they use the good will they’ve earned to fight against a public health care option in the reform package? Would they embrace any form oversight into whether or not they’re succeeding in cutting their promised 1.5% over the next 10 years? While this isn’t something the administration is saying they’ll do, you have to imagine that at some point a voluntary course of action will not be sufficient to ensure the kinds of cost controls necessary to allow adequate reduction in delivery costs for true health care reform.

I’m not a health care policy expert, but I hope that Krugman’s analysis holds. From a political standpoint – and a long-term policy standpoint – it worries me that any concession from the medical-industrial complex will be met by an imperative for Democrats and reformers to diminish the scope of their goals for change.

Update:

Jonathan Cohn of TNR, who is probably the most knowledgeable liberal health care reporter, has a similar take to Krugman.

Dodd vs CT GOP

Chris Dodd takes to the op-ed page of the Hartford Courant to defend his wife, Jackie Clegg Dodd, from insane smears and accusations coming from Chris Healy of the CT Republican Party.

Of course anyone who’s paid the slightest bit of attention to the CT GOP and the NRSC’s attacks on Dodd knows that they don’t give a rats ass about the content of the smears they levy, only the political value that is reaped for them. Jay Howser, Dodd’s campaign manager, debated CT GOP chair Chris Healy this morning. In the segment, Howser succeeds in getting Healy to admit what this is all about: getting a Republican Senator who will stand in the way of Obama administration’s agenda — which is overwhelmingly supported by people in Connecticut and Americans around the country.

The GOP is going to keep throwing mud at Dodd and his family, but at least we now know unequivocally why they are doing it. Hopefully Healy et alia stay honest with Connecticut voters and reminds them that their beef is not with Chris Dodd’s distinguished service to the country, but with the possibility of a successful Obama administration during a time of war and economic crisis.

Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III

Brian Beutler at TPM DC has uncovered great news footage from the rejection of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III as a federal district court judge by the Republican-controlled Judiciary Committee. At the time, Sessions was viewed as too controversial because of documented instances of racism and insensitivity towards blacks.

“Jeff” Sessions is now the ranking Republican member of the Judiciary Committee, in charge of the GOP’s opposition to President Obama’s court nominees.

Disgraceful

I’ve been involved in politics professionally or as a blogger or as a dedicated follower for most of my life. I had a strong interest in middle school and high school, when I read the New York Times cover to cover every day. I even remember being a depressed six year-old after Michael Dukakis lost to George HW Bush. But in all my time following politics as a professional and as an amateur, this is probably the most craven and despicable thing I’ve ever seen. Senator Arlen Specter has set up a campaign fundraising site hiding as a cancer research fund.

The story was first flagged by Senate Guru and is now being covered by Brian Beutler at Talking Points Memo. Beutler writes:

He’s touting–and raising money from–a website called specterforthecure.com, which he describes as “a bold new initiative to reform our government’s medical research efforts, cut red tape and unstrangle the hope for accelerated cures.”

But the money he’s raising isn’t funding research grants, or advocacy, or treatment for patients who can’t afford it. It’s funding the Senate re-election campaign of one Arlen Specter.

Looking at the site, there’s no question its intent is to have visitors think they are going to contribute to a charitable fund that will help further cancer research.  Only on the donation page does it become clear, albeit buried in five paragraphs of introductory text, that the contribution isn’t for researching cancer, but prolonging Arlen Specter’s political career.

This is the craven act of a monster. It’s abusive, disrespectful, and dishonest. It’s self-indulgent, self-centered, and presumptuous. I may not like Specter’s politics nor feel inclined to welcome him with open arms into the Democratic Party, but this makes me despise him as a person in a way that I’ve previously reserved for only our country’s worst war-mongers and chickenhawks. Simply disgusting.

The Dalai Lama Visits the NYS Senate

Via my friend Noel Hidalgo, His Holiness the Dalai Lama visited the New York State Senate yesterday. The video above shows HHDL as both the visionary leader and philosopher that he is, as well as a man with a world-class sense of humor.

Incidentally, Noel is just one of the recent new additions to the New York State Senate’s staff. They’ve added a great online communications and traditional communications team, including some of the best young minds in New York when it comes to politics and the online space. In addition to Noel, my friends Phillip Anderson, Brian Keeler and Nathan Freitas are doing work the the NYS Senate. That work is reaching a new benchmark for openness and transparency in government, as evidenced by the the redesigned and relaunched state senate website: http://www.nysenate.gov/

Blind Squirrel / Nut

Depending on the day, I think Gail Collins’ opinion columns are either a step above or a step below Maureen Dowd’s level of vapidity. For some reason Collins made the decision that rather than writing serious columns befitting her former role as an editorial writer, she thinks trying to out-Dowd Maureen is a worthy use of her column inches. As a result, I almost never read Collins’ columns and consider them a waste of space. Why should I spend 5 minutes reading Collins or Dowd when I could read Christy Hardin Smith or Digby and actually learn something valuable.

With that in mind, I will say that a column on Bristol Palin’s re-emergence as a main advocate for abstinence sex education piqued my interest and I actually clicked through to read Collins’ column. Buried within a predictable column are these lines, which had me laughing out loud at their poignant accuracy and humor:

“It’s not going to work,” said her ex-boyfriend, Levi Johnston, in a dueling early-morning interview.

If you have ever watched Levi Johnston on TV for two minutes you will appreciate how terrifying it is when he has the most reasonable analysis of a social issue.

Yep, that’s about right. And a solid reminder that someone who got pregnant while in high school because she and her boyfriend didn’t practice safe sex and use condoms is not exactly a role model for abstinence-only education. In fact, Palin is an example of what is so dangerous about abstinence-only sex education. Maybe doing this work will keep Bristol Palin in her the media spotlight and let her mother point to her charitable work for a Christian cause, but it will likely result in the prolonging of abstinence-only education as a respected alternative to comprehensive sex education, thus leading to more unwanted teen pregnancies.

Educating on Employee Free Choice, Part 29

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is running an op-ed today making the persuasive case that workers should have just as much right as Senator Arlen Specter when it comes to choosing their affiliations. William George and Jack Shea, two Pennsylvania labor leaders, write:

Last week we witnessed an amazing example of American democracy in action. Simply by exercising his freedom of association, Sen. Arlen Specter changed his political party affiliation and joined the Democratic Party. Mr. Specter took advantage of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. And, in a classic moment of pure irony, in the same speech announcing his decision to switch parties, he reiterated his opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act.

The Employee Free Choice Act guarantees workers the right to join a union simply by indicating that they want to be part of one, the same way Mr. Specter joined the Democratic Party. This is America. It should not take a new law to guarantee workers the right to freely associate in a labor union, but too often workers are denied the basic rights most Americans take for granted.

…

Mr. Specter has demonstrated time and time again he is capable of bold action. When he withdrew his support from the Employee Free Choice Act in March, he left the door open to supporting labor law reform. We invite him to boldly walk back through that door and join like-minded senators in his new political party and take part in fixing America’s broken labor laws.

This is a powerful argument and one that I expect workers in Pennsylvania to continue to use to move Specter back to supporting the Employee Free Choice Act (a bill he’s previously voted in favor of).