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An Absence of Class

For the better part of the last year, the Republican Party has used scare tactics, misinformation, and straight out lies to stop President Obama’s attempt at health care reform.  We have heard acrimony and bigotry from Republican Congressmen, tea party protesters, and right wing radio and television hosts.  The hatred, ignorance, and misinformation campaign of the right wing seems like it has reached unprecedented levels.  John Lewis, an African American Congressman, who had racial slurs shouted at him on Saturday, said that he hasn’t seen anything like this (referring to the racial slurs of the protesters) since the civil rights legislation in the 1960’s.

Columnist Bob Herbert wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times today titled, An Absence of Class, that does a magnificent job of summarizing what we have seen from the right wing.  The article was so good that I decided to re-post it here.  Enjoy.

An Absence of Class

By Bob Herbert

NY Times – March 22^nd, 2010

Some of the images from the run-up to Sunday’s landmark health care vote in the House of Representatives should be seared into the nation’s consciousness. We are so far, in so many ways, from being a class act.

A group of lowlifes at a Tea Party rally in Columbus, Ohio, last week taunted and humiliated a man who was sitting on the ground with a sign that said he had Parkinson’s disease. The disgusting behavior was captured on a widely circulated videotape. One of the Tea Party protesters leaned over the man and sneered: “If you’re looking for a handout, you’re in the wrong end of town.”

Another threw money at the man, first one bill and then another, and said contemptuously, “I’ll pay for this guy. Here you go. Start a pot.”

In Washington on Saturday, opponents of the health care legislation spit on a black congressman and shouted racial slurs at two others, including John Lewis, one of the great heroes of the civil rights movement. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, was taunted because he is gay.

At some point, we have to decide as a country that we just can’t have this: We can’t allow ourselves to remain silent as foaming-at-the-mouth protesters scream the vilest of epithets at members of Congress — epithets that The Times will not allow me to repeat here.

It is 2010, which means it is way past time for decent Americans to rise up against this kind of garbage, to fight it aggressively wherever it appears. And it is time for every American of good will to hold the Republican Party accountable for its role in tolerating, shielding and encouraging foul, mean-spirited and bigoted behavior in its ranks and among its strongest supporters.

For decades the G.O.P. has been the party of fear, ignorance and divisiveness. All you have to do is look around to see what it has done to the country. The greatest economic inequality since the Gilded Age was followed by a near-total collapse of the overall economy. As a country, we have a monumental mess on our hands and still the Republicans have nothing to offer in the way of a remedy except more tax cuts for the rich.

This is the party of trickle down and weapons of mass destruction, the party of birthers and death-panel lunatics. This is the party that genuflects at the altar of right-wing talk radio, with its insane, nauseating, nonstop commitment to hatred and bigotry.

Glenn Beck of Fox News has called President Obama a “racist” and asserted that he “has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”

Mike Huckabee, a former Republican presidential candidate, has said of Mr. Obama’s economic policies: “Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff.”

The G.O.P. poisons the political atmosphere and then has the gall to complain about an absence of bipartisanship.

The toxic clouds that are the inevitable result of the fear and the bitter conflicts so relentlessly stoked by the Republican Party — think blacks against whites, gays versus straights, and a whole range of folks against immigrants — tend to obscure the tremendous damage that the party’s policies have inflicted on the country. If people are arguing over immigrants or abortion or whether gays should be allowed to marry, they’re not calling the G.O.P. to account for (to take just one example) the horribly destructive policy of cutting taxes while the nation was fighting two wars.

If you’re all fired up about Republican-inspired tales of Democrats planning to send grandma to some death chamber, you’ll never get to the G.O.P.’s war against the right of ordinary workers to organize and negotiate in their own best interests — a war that has diminished living standards for working people for decades.

With a freer hand, the Republicans would have done more damage. George W. Bush tried to undermine Social Security. John McCain was willing to put Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the Oval Office and thought Phil Gramm would have made a crackerjack Treasury secretary. (For those who may not remember, Mr. Gramm was a deregulation zealot who told us during the presidential campaign that we were suffering from a “mental recession.”)

A party that promotes ignorance (“Just say no to global warming”) and provides a safe house for bigotry cannot serve the best interests of our country. Back in the 1960s, John Lewis risked his life and endured savage beatings to secure fundamental rights for black Americans while right-wing Republicans like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan were lining up with segregationist Democrats to oppose landmark civil rights legislation.

Since then, the right-wingers have taken over the G.O.P. and Mr. Lewis, now a congressman, must still endure the garbage they have wrought.

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Health Care Reform Now

The United States of America is the only advanced country in the world that does not offer some sort of universal health care coverage to its nations citizens.  Every other industrial nation in the world offers universal coverage, regardless of a person’s medical history.  It is time for the United States to take a step, small as that step may be, in the right direction.

On Thursday, Nancy Pelosi released a package of amendments to the Senate bill that was passed on Christmas Eve.  The amendments were put in place in order to improve on the original bill.  Hopefully on Sunday, the House of Representatives will pass the Senate bill, with passage of the amendments to the bill coming next week.  According to figures released by the Congressional Budget Office, the bill, along with the amendments, would cut deficits by 138 billion over the first decade and 0.5% of gross domestic product over the second decade, which amounts to about $1.7 trillion dollars.  The bill would mandate everyone to carry insurance, as well as offer subsidies to help low and middle-income Americans afford coverage.  According to a New York Times editorial, “To make up from a loss of revenue from the excise tax and help cover the enhanced benefits, the reconciliation package would extend the Medicare payroll tax for high-income Americans to include investment income, putting the burden on people who can clearly afford it.”

Let me first point out that I think this bill is extremely weak, and I’m disappointed that a more progressive bill couldn’t get passed.  With that being said, this is the best bill that I think this Congress can pass at this time.  There are definitely some good things in the bill.  Insurance companies will no longer be able to deny coverage to people because of pre-existing conditions.  There is no Medicare buy in for people under 65 years of age, and no public option.  Regardless of what the idiots on the right say, this bill is in no way a government takeover of the medical industry (although I wish it were).  There is no federal funding for abortions (although there should be).  Just like the civil rights legislation, this bill is a small step that will hopefully lead to more comprehensive reform in the future.  The mandate to buy insurance coverage sucks, but it is a necessary evil.  As Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman put it, “To make insurance affordable, you have to keep currently healthy people in the risk pool, which means requiring that everyone or almost everyone buy insurance.  You can’t do that without financial aid to lower-income Americans so that they can pay the premiums.  So you end up with a tripartite policy: elimination of medical discrimination, mandated coverage, and premium subsidies.

The Tea Party and Fox News commentators are, as always, disingenuous.  They complain about the deficit and government spending, then they scream, yell, and protest a bill that will actually lower the deficit and help to control ballooning medical costs.  This bill is nowhere near what this country needs, but it is better than nothing.  The right wing says that they want health care reform as well.  But in eight years under George W. Bush, they did absolutely nothing to improve our failing health care system, inflated medical costs, and rising premiums.  And when President Obama added the amendments that the Republicans wanted in the bill, they still protested it and claimed that the American people don’t want it.  The fact of the matter is, when people are informed about what provisions are actually in the bill, they are overwhelmingly in favor of it.  The problem is, that people have been manipulated and misinformed by Fox News, right wing pundits, and Republican congressmen.  Let’s hope that Congress can pull together this weekend, and pass a bill that may actually do some good.

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I Didn’t Go Far Enough

I posted yesterday’s video to my blog in haste.  I was so irritated and outraged about it, that I just wanted to get it up so people could see what kind of scum we are dealing with.  Someone left a comment on yesterday’s video which said that I was going too far and getting too worked up about it.  I am going to readdress this video again today, and make the argument that I didn’t go far enough in condemning these asshole protesters.

The video posted below, shows a group of Tea Party protesters at a rally against health care reform in Ohio.  At one point, a man with a sign indicating that he has Parkinson’s disease, sat down in front of the health care opponents.  One of the protesters then shouted, “If you’re looking for a handout, you’re in the wrong place.  Nothing for free over here, you have to work for everything you get.”  Then another protester walked over to the man with Parkinson’s disease and said, “Here you go, I’ll pay for this guy” and proceeded to throw dollar bills at the disease inflicted man sitting on the ground, while calling him a Communist.

I wonder how these protesters felt while they were degrading another human being with a terminal illness.  This man is probably at this demonstration because he is unable to afford the medical care that he needs to treat his illness.  These Tea Party douche bags are basically saying that in the game of life, if you get some terminal illness, well then, it’s just too bad for you.  Do not expect this country to help you in any way.  I don’t believe in religion, but I do believe in karma.  Someday, a family member of one of these protesters is going to get sick, and they are not going to be able to pay for their medical care.  They are going to look back at this video and see how irrational and inhumane they are.

The logic on the right is so fundamentally flawed.  Their argument is that this guy with Parkinson’s can walk into any hospital in the country, and receive access to, “the best medical care in the world” therefore passing the cost of his care to this idiot who was throwing the dollar bills at him.  This perfectly demonstrates the flawed logic of these people.  I hope that the man with Parkinson’s goes to the most expensive hospital in Ohio and gets the care, this way these moronic protesters have to pay for it.

This video is exactly why the Democrats have to pass health care reform (as weak as the bill is) right now and not worry about getting bipartisanship.  This video exposes the Tea Partiers for who they really are.  No matter how much President Obama tries to compromise with them, it doesn’t matter.  Look at what you are dealing with.  A person who acts and thinks like these protesters will never see the rationale behind health care reform.  These people are not rational.  They will never come to the other side of the debate.  It is impossible to reason with someone that stupid and inhumane.  They would rather throw this man who is inflicted with this disease out with the trash, than cough up a few extra tax dollars to cover everyone with quality medical treatment (which by the way this bill doesn’t even do).  Stop with the bullshit and the pass the damn reform bill already.

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Health Care and Hypocrisy

As I was driving in my car today, I flipped on Todd Schnitt to hear what the Republican talking points for the day were.  For those who don’t know who Mr. Schnitt is, he is sort of a Rush Limbaugh mini me, just as annoying but not quite as crazy.  Mr. Schnitt’s program, The Schnitt Show, can be heard in the afternoon here in South Florida on a Fox News affiliate radio station.  Mr. Schnitt was repeating a talking point that has been echoing throughout the Republican ranks lately.  The point being that the Democrats cannot compare the proposed health care bill that will be put through reconciliation to previous bills that the Republicans have passed through the same process, and that the health care bill being proposed is “nowhere near the degree and size of the bills that Republicans have passed.”  Mr. Schnitt went on to say that the health care bill (referred to as Obamacare) is “life altering” and will “change the fundamentals of the country.”

Mr. Schnitt is not the only one on the right pushing this talking point.  Reconciliation, Sen. John Kyle (R-AZ) is quoted as saying, “was never designed for a large comprehensive piece of legislation such as health care.”  Sen. Orinn Hatch (R-UT) said, “The use of expedited reconciliation process to push through more dramatic changes to a health care bill of such size, scope and magnitude is unprecedented.” What Mr. Schnitt and other Republican blow-hards fail to mention is that virtually all health reform bills that have been passed over the last 30 years were passed through the reconciliation process.

The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985, also known as COBRA, was passed through reconciliation during the Reagan years.  COBRA was a much larger bill with numerous provisions, such as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, which required hospitals that accept Medicaid and Medicare to at least screen patients, regardless of whether or not they could afford to pay.  In 1980, also during the Reagan era, the health care bill that allowed children living at less than half of the poverty level to receive a Medicaid card, passed through reconciliation.  The Children’s Health Insurance program, known as CHIP, was also passed through the “controversial” process known as reconciliation.  Sara Rosenbaum, who chairs the Department of Health Policy at George Washington University said, “Literally, we’ve changed everything about insurance coverage for children and families, and we've changed access to health care all across the United States all as a result of reconciliation.” Let’s also not forget that the Bush tax cuts, which according to the Congressional Budget Office increased the budget deficits by $60 billion in 2003 and $340 billion by 2008, were also passed through reconciliation.

The point here is, since reconciliation has come into existence, there have been numerous bills and provisions both large and small that have been passed through reconciliation by both Republicans and Democrats.  The Republicans are once again showing us that their hypocrisy knows no bounds.  So when Todd Schnitt, Orinn Hatch, John Kyle, and every other Republican hypocrite tells us that bills of this magnitude have never been passed through reconciliation or that reconciliation has only ever been used for budget legislation, you can tell them to go to hell.

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