Democrats united Saturday night to push the health care legislation past a key Senate hurdle over the opposition of Republicans eager to inflict a punishing defeat on President Barack Obama.

The Republican’s position does indeed appear to be a continuation of the campaign to defeat the president’s initiatives, rather than proposing anything constructive and helpful to the American people. The desire to “show him” seems stronger than the desire to actually achieve something that’s needed and at least in the long run – beneficial. That’s nothing new, of course. Just listen to the de-facto leader of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh, or any of the other conservative blabbermouths. There is no doubt that the interest of the country as a whole has been put on the back burner, in favor of hurting, or even destroying anything that Barack Obama is doing.

The 60-39 vote cleared the way for a full-scale debate beginning after Thanksgiving on the legislation, which is designed to extend coverage to roughly 31 million who do not have it, control insurance company practices that deny or dilute benefits and curtail the growth of spending on medical care.

Majority Leader Harry Reid accused Republicans of trying to prevent a historic debate that the nation needed.

“Imagine if, instead of debating whether to abolish slavery, instead of debating whether giving women and minorities the right to vote, those who disagreed had muted discussion and killed any vote,” he said.

The Republican leader, Senator Mitch McConnell said the vote was anything but procedural – describing it as a referendum on the bill itself, which he said would raise taxes, cut Medicare and create a “massive and unsustainable debt.”

The fate of the Saturday night showdown had been sealed hours earlier, when two final Democratic holdouts, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, announced they would join in clearing the way for a full debate.

We will be watching the upcoming debate, although we do not intend to waste our time in hearing the usual, vicious opinions of the conservative pundits.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs issued a statement saying the president was gratified by the vote, which he says “brings us one step closer to ending insurance company abuses, reining in spiraling health care costs, providing stability and security to those with health insurance, and extending quality health coverage to those who lack it.”

The legislation would require most Americans to carry insurance and provide subsidies to those who cannot afford it. Large companies could incur penalties if they do not provide coverage to their workforce. The insurance industry would come under significant new regulation under the bill, which would first ease and then ban the practice of denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions.

Congressional budget analysts put the legislation’s cost at $979 billion over a decade and said it would reduce deficits over the same period while extending coverage to 94 percent of the eligible population.

In relation to the health-care reform debate and to the Republican (and Joe Lieberman’s) opposition to it, it might be worthwhile to quote a letter by George Washington to his nephew supporting adoption of the Constitution, to which there was considerable opposition as well..

General Washington castigated critics of the Constitution and stated that they seek to “rouse the apprehensions of the ignorant & unthinking . . . [with] objections . . . better calculated to alarm the fears, than to convince the judgement of their readers.”

These comments seem equally applicable to those Republican senators opposed to health-care reform.

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And since the new mammography recommendations seem to have brought outrage from both sides of the aisle, we would like to present another incisive cartoon on the subject from Washington Post’s Tom Toles.

Technorati Tags: bill, Clears, democrats, Health care, Hurdle, insurance industry, reform, republicans, senate

Despite the outrage from the right and extreme right about the climate bill recently passed by the House of Representatives, the legislation is totally off-base and as its stands, it will barely help the environment at all. As a matter of fact conservatives have focused their fury on the handful of Republicans who voted in favor of the sweeping legislation and have been praising the Democrats who have voted against it.

What we basically have is that science – and you cannot really debate science politically – tells us that there is a climate problem and that unless we take immediate and sweeping steps immediately, the consequences for the ecosystem that our children and grandchildren will live in will be serious and severe.

There is a saying that “everyone is entitled to an opinion, but not to his own facts”. Climate change is one of those cases in which we have facts, despite what the naysayers might be saying. It is of course a global problem and the U.S., or Europe alone, without the cooperation of China and India and the rest of the world will not be able to accomplish much.

Frankly, we have to agree – at least in part with some of the conservatives, as the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill is not really the most efficient way of handling the problem. It will once again create a huge trading market for Wall Street; it will become another object of speculation. The permits to emit carbon, the speculation, and the derivatives will not only increase the overall cost of the program, but will also make our energy costs more volatile.

In short: there are better ways of addressing the climate change than a cap-and-trade system. One is the carbon tax in which you would collect the tax from the polluters and recycle the revenues towards more environmentally-friendly energy producing sectors. That would of course make the dirtier sources of energy more expensive, while making solar, wind and other “clean” energy sources relatively cheaper.

This would make businesses and individuals more interested in investing into these clean sources of energy and into a low-carbon economy in general. Wall Street would also have relatively little – if anything – to do with this process and that after all the mess that the Street shysters have caused for everyone seems encouraging in its own right.

A carbon tax would not only be considerably less complicated and not so prone to speculation as the cap-and-trade option, but it would actually encourage people and businesses to purchase and use less polluting vehicles and appliances and provide a real incentive to produce energy – electricity in particular – in a much more environmentally friendly manner.

The Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill will not really reduce emissions, or produce any environmental benefits for at least 10 years. It is also the kind of bill that makes the coal producers perfectly comfortable. Many pollution permits were given to utilities that use the coal. What the bill really amounted to was as it is often the case – another noble idea that was incredibly diluted under pressure from lobbyists and special interests to the point of becoming pretty much useless.

The only thing that seems to make Americans change their wasteful habits is cost. When the price of gasoline exceeded $4 per gallon, everyone rushed to buy a fuel-efficient vehicle and the huge SUVs were almost impossible to sell. Most automakers – particularly those who relied on pickups and other large vehicles felt the pinch the most. Now that gasoline costs considerably less than $3 per gallon, people are not so worried anymore and that believe it, or not is not very good news at all. That’s why we need to have an incentive such as a carbon tax. It would make people and companies see that being greener, less wasteful and less polluting basically costs less in the long run, besides protecting the environment.

In a way cap-and-trade would do that also, to a degree, providing we have a real cap, so we are actually reducing emissions. In that manner the price of energy would go up, based on its carbon content. The cap-and-trade option is a supremely complicated way of achieving anything, as you would have to go through many steps to actually achieve any results. And at each of those steps different interests could intervene. The carbon tax solution would be much simpler, most likely cheaper overall, more efficient and less prone to speculation.

The European cap-and-trade system, known as the Emission Trading System (ETS),  is the world’s largest pollution market, and it offers important lessons for the U.S.  The main lesson is that cap-and-trade, by itself, won’t make much of a dent.

Despite what the naysayers, special interests and conservatives in general might say, we can only hope that the U.S. Senate will not go along with the cap-and-trade model and that it will show some leadership, common sense and backbone and will actually approve a carbon tax climate bill – one that is not diluted by special interests and lobbyists, but the kind of legislation that will actually do both the environment and all of us some real good.

Technorati Tags: Basically, bill, Cap and Trade, carbon tax, Climate, congress, Environment, inadequate, Wrong

Not that long ago, New York Senator Hillary Clinton acted as if she was a virtual shoe-in for the Oval Office.

Her defeat in the Iowa caucuses, her victory in New Hampshire and Nevada and the meaningless one in Michigan, didn’t change the fact that she was soundly and decisively beaten in the South Carolina democratic primary. Fifty five to 27 can certainly be considered a whipping.

Was it her arrogance, or her hubby’s, or maybe the combination of both?

A whole series of below the belt attacks on Senator Barack Obama, including the pre-Iowa remarks about him wanting to be president as early as in kindergarten, about his supposed involvement with a slum lord, questions whether Obama was “black enough” and calling him a “pothead” must have finally made people realize who the Clintons really are, I suppose.

Trying to bring everyone to THEIR level could not possibly be called a sound campaign strategy and quite honestly cannot be considered as anything besides tactics of people, who are not only insanely desperate for wielding power again, but also quite obviously devoid of class.

Bill Clinton last week criticized Obama’s statements over the years about Iraq, arguing that the senator has not been consistent.

Obama has said his positions are consistent and that he has always staunchly opposed the war. “She started her campaign saying she wanted to make history and has been spending a lot of time rewriting it”, he said.

The Clintons have long enjoyed support in the black community, but Hillary’s comments, which were perceived as minimizing the role that Martin Luther King played in the 1960s civil rights movement, really brought up the red flags in the black community.

Let’s not forget Hillary Clinton’s support of Bush’s disastrous foreign policy and her close ties with the defense contractors. And yes, let’s not forget her arrogance, an arrogance, which she has been so studiously “softening” in the past few weeks.

Technorati Tags: arrogance, bill, campaign, clinton, hillary, obama

Hillary Clinton’s once commanding lead in the polls has faded, and with Oprah Winfrey campaigning for Barack Obama, she’s been relying more and more often on the “star power” of husband Bill. But his frequent presence on the campaign trail brings up a question: What will Hillary do with Bill if she is elected?

Good question. She has responded to it a number of times, when asked by reporters. One of the ideas was to name Bill as “ambassador to the world.” But the federal government’s anti-nepotism law would likely preclude her naming her husband to her cabinet.

New York’s Governor Eliot Spitzer might name him to serve the remainder of Hillary Clinton’s U.S. Senate term. That idea, according to some who know him, probably wouldn’t satisfy his endless power craving.

Let’s not forget that fairly soon there will be at least one vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court. How about having Justice William Jefferson Clinton then? Former president William Howard Taft did land a Supreme Court job and apparently loved it. Of course, Taft never had his law license suspended and although Bill Clinton’s suspension officially ended in 2006, it is still a bit of a stain on his record. Wouldn’t you say?

But a Supreme Court appointment would help to solve Hillary’s dilemma of what to do with her husband if she becomes president. It would keep Bill formally out of the White House and structurally out of the executive branch.

Even though a judicial – even of the highest caliber – appointment probably would not truly satisfy Bill’s ego, he is on record as saying that:” I will serve in whatever capacity she deems most appropriate”?

Considering the vagaries of the campaigns and of the entire electoral process it is of course far from certain that Hillary Clinton will ever face that dilemma. I am sure that she is perfectly willing to confront it, but there are a few little obstacles along the way and they even have names: Barack, Rudy, Ron, Mitt, John, Mike…

Technorati Tags: bill, clinton, hillary, what, will bill do