In his State of the Union address last night, President Obama showed his disapproval of SCOTUS’s recent decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. However, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, sitting in front of the President, showed visible disagreement over the President’s remarks.
On the Net:
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Obviously, former President Bill Clinton is a good communicator, and the former President believes that we’ll have health care reform this time:
Whether you have insurance or not, our current health care system is an appalling or nightmarish quagmire for many folks. It’s baffling that our access to healthcare is so strongly tied to employment and private corporations. These private corporations make huge profits from managing our health, and their policies haven’t reflected what’s in the best interest of the public. For example, according to Physicians for a National Health Program:
PacifiCare denied 40 percent of all California claims in the first six months of 2009. Cigna, which gained notoriety two years ago for denying a liver transplant to 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan of Northridge, Calif. and then reversing itself, tragically too late to save her life, was still rejecting one-third of all claims for the first half of 2009.
The profitable practice of rescission:
Some of the known salaries are pretty big. Last year, the head of Cigna (CI, Fortune 500) made $11 million and the head of United Health Group (UNH, Fortune 500) made $9.4 million, according to the Corporate Library.
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Yesterday, former President Jimmy Carter said what many of us have already observed and what many individuals don’t want to admit: “There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president.”
I agree with former President Jimmy Carter, because being from the South, I’ve witnessed plenty of virulent and willful racism in addition to unintentional racism and blatant ignorance there. From The New York Times quoting former President Jimmy Carter:
The former president first weighed in on Tuesday during a question-and-answer session at the Carter Center in Atlanta. Mr. Carter responded to a question about Mr. Wilson’s eruption by saying that he did believe it was laced with racism. Coupling the Wilson remark with the images in recent weeks of angry demonstrators wielding signs depicting Mr. Obama as a Nazi or as Adolf Hitler, Mr. Carter said: “There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president.”
He lamented the tone of disrespect toward the current president, adding: “Those kind of things are not just casual outcomes of a sincere debate on whether we should have a national program on health care. It’s deeper than that.”
On “Hardball” today, Chris Matthews compared 2008 exit poll data to illustrate geographical differences amongst white voters that voted for President Obama. From Equal Justice Initiative:
Analysis of votes cast for president on November 4, 2008, shows that the percentage of white Alabama voters who supported President-Elect Barack Obama was the lowest in the country, at only 10%.
While in most states, President-Elect Obama obtained at least a third of the white vote, in the Deep South states of Alabama (10%), Mississippi (11%), and Louisiana (14%), there was an unprecedented lack of support among white voters for the Democratic presidential candidate.
White voters in Alabama provided only half the support for Barack Obama that was given to 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry, who received 19% of the white vote.
The Color Line provides some national data (more exit poll results from CNN can be found here):
Obama only received 41% of the White male vote (vs. 57% for McCain) and 46% of the White female vote (vs. 53% for McCain).
Furthermore, the belief that President Obama wasn’t born in the United States is largely a Southern belief. From The Virginian-Pilot:
But a new robocall survey by Public Policy Polling shows that only 53 percent of all Virginians believe the president was born in the United States. Among Virginia Republicans, the number is 32 percent. A full 41 percent of Virginia Republicans believe Obama was born elsewhere.
According to a similar survey by DailyKos/Research2000, 77 percent of all Americans believe the president was born in America. In the South, though, that number is a mere 47 percent. Among Republicans nationwide, believers in the president’s Hawaiian birth amount to just 42 percent.
Despite the empirical data, not everyone agrees with former President Jimmy Carter—including the Obama Administration:
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The hypocrisy and double standards perpetuated by some Republicans are staggering. Most recently, the Right’s hullabaloo over Van Jones’s “past affiliation with the 9/11 conspiracy ‘truthers’ and for calling Republicans ‘a**holes’ in a video before he was appointed to the Obama administration” resulted in Van Jones’s resignation as President Obama’s “green jobs czar.”
More on Van Jones’s associations from the New York Times:
Mr. Jones’s involvement in the 1990s with a group called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement had prompted recent accusations by conservative critics that he associated with communists. The group, according to a post-mortem written by some of its founders, was an anti-capitalist, antiwar organization committed to achieving “solidarity among all oppressed peoples” with “direct militant action.”
In stimulating the controversy over Jones, Fox News snake oil salesman Glenn Beck “seized upon Mr. Jones’s statements and associations.” Consequently, outrage ensued that triggered Jones’s resignation. However, considering Van Jones’s statements and associations, numerous Republican politicians subscribe to equally ridiculous and spurious causes. For example, the tea parties from earlier this year oozed hypocrisy, and the inaneness of the birther movement was nothing more but a continuation of the tea party movement, which then morphed into a bogus grass roots movement to thwart healthcare reform. Currently, the Right’s outrage over Van Jones, like the preceding shenanigans, is merely a frank Republican strategy to regain power in Washington D.C. In reality, and considering their own statements and associations, most Republican politicians probably don’t care about Van Jones’s past statements or associations—they’re simply using his statements as an opportunity to regain political dominance. Basically, Van Jones is a casualty of a political war that only one side seems to be waging—and it’s waging it very aggressively.
Where’s the outrage from the right over their own party’s shenanigans? For example, Glenn Beck routinely spews contempt for the federal government, in addition to conspiracy theories, on his show. Despite this, his show continues to draw record numbers. Consequently, too many Americans allow and condone worse statements and associations from our politicians and political pundits than Van Jones’s. From the Los Angeles Times:
An advertising boycott against Fox News host Glenn Beck has succeeded in keeping most major sponsors from running commercials on his show even as the controversial commentator’s viewership has grown.
Beck attracted 2.81 million viewers Monday, his third-largest audience since his show launched on Fox News in January, according to Nielsen Media Research data provided by the network. On Tuesday, nearly 2.7 million viewers tuned in, his fifth-largest viewership to date. And the conservative host got a plug from former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who urged people to watch his program in a post on her Facebook page.
“FOX News’ Glenn Beck is doing an extraordinary job this week walking America behind the scenes of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and outlining who is actually running the White House,” she wrote Wednesday to her 800,000-plus supporters.
Additionally, there’s Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin—they routinely spew kooky statements about Democrats and the federal government. However, where’s the outrage from the right and their resignations (well, Sarah Palin did resign but not from politics)? No doubt Jones’s statements and associations compromised his credibility and raised eyebrows, but there’s undoubtedly a problem with—or lack of—equity in today’s politics. Consequently, considering Van Jones’s qualifications, were his past statements and associations worth his resignation? Has his resignation resulted in a slippery slope towards a new style of political maneuvering?
More on Van Jones from The New Yorker:
Jones published a book titled “The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems.” In it, he argues that the best way to fight both global warming and urban poverty is by creating millions of “green jobs”—weatherizing buildings, installing solar panels, and constructing mass-transit systems. A percentage of these jobs—Jones is purposefully vague about how many—should go to the disadvantaged and the chronically unemployed. “The green economy should not be just about reclaiming thrown-away stuff,” he writes. “It should be about reclaiming thrown-away communities.” Jones’s book was slated to appear in 2009, but during the Presidential campaign, when several of the candidates began talking about “green jobs,” he decided to advance the publication. The jacket of “The Green Collar Economy” features endorsements from, among others, the talk-show host Tavis Smiley; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; the journalist Thomas L. Friedman; and former Vice-President Al Gore.
“I love Van Jones,” Gore told me. “I love his work. I love his heart and his commitment and his intellect. I love his mission. He has wisely picked a part of this set of interwoven challenges that should have been addressed much more forcefully by me and others long ago.”
“Van is a visionary,” Smiley said. “My grandmother had an old saying, ‘It’s just too much like right.’ What Van is saying is just too much like right. It just makes too much sense for us not to do it.”
“I think Van Jones is a big part of the future of environmentalism,” Gus Speth, the dean of Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and a co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council, told me. “He, more than anyone else, is bringing together a concern about the environment and a concern about social justice. And, if I had just one thing to say, it is that we in the environmental movement cannot fail Van Jones.”
As Republicans continue to stifle change, the country’s biggest problems—energy, climate change, and health care reform—continue to grow. If the Republicans do take over Washington D.C. again, they’ll fail as they did under the Bush II Administration, because their shortsighted, inadequate, and lazy remedies will fail to solve some of our country’s greatest problems. These so-called remedies peddled by Republicans include (1) the belief that cutting taxes is healthy for society, although it’s not healthy for state and federal government coffers; (2) the theory that the free market will cure serious issues such as our dependency on oil; (3) or that deregulation costs corporations too much, so voluntary regulation is a much better option; (4) or that the federal government should be small or nonexistent; (5) or that the so-called “trickle down” economic theory is best for the middle class, though corporations concentrate our wealth for themselves.
Ultimately, it seems that unless the Democrats sink to the depths where Republicans frolic, they’ll never beat the Republican disinformation machine, because too many Americans seem too willing to believe these lies and worry about issues that don’t really matter.
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It’s clear that the dissenters of health care reform aren’t happy about how our elected officials are driving policy in Washington D.C. However, I’m not happy with how these dissenters have passively and wantonly been a catalyst for disinformation on health care reform.
Furthermore, it’s obvious, by listening to their criticisms of current efforts to reform health care, that these anti-health care reform protesters haven’t done their homework. How can you criticize a politician, a policy, a reform bill, politics, or anything else that’s related to our government or the public affairs of our country if you haven’t considered the facts or taken the time to understand the challenges facing our country?
To me, these protestors appear xenophobic and ignorant when they exclaim hogwash like, “I don’t want this country turning into Russia, turning into a socialized country.” As a criticism against the Obama Administration, these town hall protestors are using words like fascism, Marxist, Nazism, or socialism very loosely or incorrectly.
Furthermore, given that “the total US tax burden is less than that in most industrialized countries” and as state budgets are running in the red, these town hall protestors seem selfish to me when they complain about not wanting to pay more taxes. Basically, these protestors are driving the type of policy that has resulted in our country’s current woes. Maybe most Americans aren’t ready for change, or perhaps most Americans are perfectly content with the status quo, but I’m certainly not. From Katy Abram at Senator Arlen Specter’s town hall meeting:
I don’t believe this is just about health care. It’s not about TARP. It’s not about left and right. This is about the systematic dismantling of this country. I’m only thirty-five years old, and I have never been interested in politics. You have awakened a sleeping giant. . . . I don’t want this country turning into Russia, turning into a socialized country. . . . What are you going to do to restore this country back to what our founders created, according to the Constitution?
Lawrence O’Donnell, while filling in for Chris Matthews’s “Hardball”, exposes Katy Abram’s ignorance of the issues surrounding the health care debate:
Katy Abram on “Hardball” says she’s upset about having to fund government programs as a taxpayer, but the federal government has a responsibility to drive policy. As a taxpayer we have a responsibility to pay for these programs—there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Furthermore, Abram mentions she has a $5,000 deductible! Consequently, I imagine it’s hard to meet a $5,000 deductible while also paying the exorbitant costs of private health insurance. Additionally, when her parents retire, they’ll participate in a single payer health care system—Medicare. Clearly these dissenters of health care reform are relying on sources that have purposely spread disinformation, because the health care industry doesn’t want the status quo to change, since they’re making so much money! From the NYTimes.com:
Ms. Abram described herself as a stay-at-home mother from Lebanon, and in many ways she was representative of the almost entirely white and irritable crowd, most of whom were from the area. Based on interviews with several dozen people who attended, it appeared that about 80 percent of those who showed up opposed the planned changes to the health care system.
Many said they heard about the meeting from e-mail alerts sent by conservative and antitax groups like the Constitutional Organization of Liberty and the Berks County Tea Party, along with Mr. Specter’s own mailings. Some voiced sentiments that were heard recently on conservative radio shows, though those interviewed said they resented being characterized as mobs or puppets of lobbyists, emphasizing that they represented only themselves. “I demand my voice!” read one sign outside. “You work for me,” was a refrain yelled inside the auditorium.
At the same time, those who favor a health care overhaul, urged to attend by unions and liberal groups like the Service Employees International Union and Health Care for America Now, said they were motivated by concern that the government might not go far enough. Only the government, they say, can take on a problem as big as health care.
Here’s another great Lawrence O’Donnell interview:
Some facts that illustrate the need for health care reform:
Canada spends more than a third less per capita on health than the United States and still covers everyone, whereas the U.S. system leaves 46 million people without insurance.
If I’m spending twice as much, I’d expect to have the better outcomes.
The U.S. health system spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product than any other country but ranks 37 out of 191 countries according to its performance, the report finds. The United Kingdom, which spends just six percent of GDP on health services, ranks 18 th . Several small countries – San Marino, Andorra, Malta and Singapore are rated close behind second- placed Italy.
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