http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucgg/americasinafunk

Yet, on the other hand, when I count down the changes the president and his team have made, they are close to remarkable in a real political world, not some shimmering Camelot.

Most agree he has avoided the major recession his big-talking predecessor left him, and the present team is ready to reinstate meaningful regulation. And as of this writing, it looks as though a health care reform bill will actually pass Congress, in itself an accomplishment of Rooseveltian proportions.

In one short year, Obama has changed the entire lexicon of political parlance in America. Who at the top talked seriously about global warming and environmental change before? And he has changed the vision of the world toward America. The Copenhagen climate conference, which certainly had its inevitable comical U.N. moments, was a real start in an area where there was nothing but stasis before.

Yet we, the American people, have been trained over the last 20 years by television and modern mercantilists to want, even demand, immediate gratification. Obama is smart and elegant and decent, but I fear to tell you, my fellow citizens, that he remains only a man. There -- it's out! The bunnies he can pull out of his top hat are no more consequent than any magician's, but the long-range change he is trying desperately to set in motion is very, very real.

His answer to the poll numbers is really interesting, and really, it puts me greatly at ease.

It reminds me of why I really, genuinely like this guy.

I also like what Michelle says about "reading about it, and being in it", because I think it's so easy for all of us to get stuck in "blogger-mode" and forget about what it's really like out there in the country for people on a day-to-day basis. And I think only watching the media or reading the blogs really skews your view and makes it harder to see the bigger picture and the reality of a situation. It's so easy to get stuck in our own heads.

The rest of the special is in parts on Youtube by different uploaders, if anyone wants to watch them.

I thought it would do me so good, personally, and those of you clearly sick and tired of my own recent foray into negative posts over the healthcare legislation, to ask all who would care to, to join me in voting for your favorite accomplishment of Obama's first year.

Indeed, there have been many!

So let me also start out by offering my sincere apology to you if I have overloaded your senses with my complaining, and then offer up my own vote for Obama's best accomplishment during his first year in office.

This one's a twofer. I give A+s to Obama & Clinton for pulling this off as a team: Reestablishing good relations and goodwill with so many of our friends and neighbors in the rest of the world!

Compared to the way things were going with our foreign affairs of just a year ago, the way we are making diplomatic progress now is as if we aren't even living in the same century, as if we all stepped out of the dark ages, as if, well, we actually have competent, thinking leaders at the helm.

Do you have a favorite Obama accomplishment of 2009? I was thinking if we got enough of them listed then we might even put them up to a poll and vote up a community favorite, if you're game! :)

Everytime there is major legislation that harms a specific industry there are major constitutional attacks on the legislation. Senator Hatch has been very vocal about the unconstitutional nature of the Senate bill. I decided to do some research about this legal arument and found this article in support of Senator Hatch's argument.

http://www.pointoflaw.com/columns/archives/2009/12/impermissible-ratemaking-in-he.php

I found this statment very confronting to me, a Democrat who supports a single payor system:

"In effect, the onerous obligations under the Reid Bill would convert private health insurance companies into virtual public utilities. This action is not only a source of real anxiety but also a decision of constitutional proportions, for it systematically strips the regulated health-insurance issuers of their constitutional entitlement to earn a reasonable rate of return on the massive amounts of capital that they have already invested in building out their businesses."

Don't be so down on a bill until you know what is in it.

h/t: Americablog

Huffingtonpost
Leadership, Obama Style, and the Looming Losses in 2010:
Pretty Speeches, Compromised Values, and the Quest for the Lowest Common Denominator

...Somehow the president has managed to turn a base of new and progressive voters he himself energized like no one else could in 2008 into the likely stay-at-home voters of 2010, souring an entire generation of young people to the political process. It isn't hard for them to see that the winners seem to be the same no matter who the voters select (Wall Street, big oil, big Pharma, the insurance industry). In fact, the president's leadership style, combined with the Democratic Congress's penchant for making its sausage in public and producing new and usually more tasteless recipes every day, has had a very high toll far from the left: smack in the center of the political spectrum.

What's costing the president and courting danger for Democrats in 2010 isn't a question of left or right, because the president has accomplished the remarkable feat of both demoralizing the base and completely turning off voters in the center. If this were an ideological issue, that would not be the case. He would be holding either the middle or the left, not losing both.

What's costing the president are three things: a laissez faire style of leadership that appears weak and removed to everyday Americans, a failure to articulate and defend any coherent ideological position on virtually anything, and a widespread perception that he cares more about special interests like bank, credit card, oil and coal, and health and pharmaceutical companies than he does about the people they are shafting.

The problem is not that his record is being distorted. It's that all three have more than a grain of truth. And I say this not as one of those pesky "leftists." I say this as someone who has spent much of the last three years studying what moves voters in the middle, the Undecideds who will hear whichever side speaks to them with moral clarity...

I just listened to Howard Dean's appearance on MTP posted right before this post. I was very excited to see him open up the possibility of regulating the insurance companies as a public utility in place of the public option. If this can be pulled off in reconciliation, then the Democrats would have pulled off the best "Bait and Switch" I will have ever seen in politics. I can even see Senator Snow supporting this bill. Here is HOPE, HOPE, and more HOPE. Everyone cross their fingers.

I'm having trouble with the format with copy/pasting so here's the link instead..

http://community.livejournal.com/the_recession/552437.html

It gives a brief history of other controversial bills and how compromised they were upon initial passage - and to view the health care bill through that lense.

"It's unfair"

On one hand, I am appalled at this health care bill. It is no idealist's dream, that's for sure. There is plenty wrong with it.

On the other hand, I listened to politically savvy Chris Matthews. He was very specific as to why this bill is the way it is and why it's better to go with it than walk away.

And then I read this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/18/AR2009121803506.html

If Ted Kennedy's wife, who is super-smart politically and knows this was her husband's life work, says this is the best we can do...I'm not going to argue with it.

I knew when Obama was elected that there were going to be a lot of things I didn't agree with. He's an "art of the possible" man and I'm more of an idealist.

But my pragmatic soul says this is just a beginning and it's better than no beginning.

I am 61 years old and have been a lifelong Texas Democrat. I voted one time for a Republican. I got so upset with Carter that I bought into Regan's B.S. Texas went Republican that year and we have never gotten it back. I will never make that mistake again. I came back to the Democratic party immediately, but most Texas "Regan Democrats" haven't yet come back. I truly believe that if the party doesn't self-destruct that we can possibly elect a Democratic Governor in 2010 and maybe even capture Hutchinson's Senate seat.

I understand the anger and frustrations of a lot of people on this forum. I felt this same anger and frustration at all the liberals in Florida whose votes for Ralph Nader put George Bush in the Whitehouse. We in Texas had been fighting George Bush and Karl Rove's hate and slash politics for 6 years.

I only ask that everyone just relax and let the process on Health care work itself out. I do so wish we still had an LBJ in the Senate. He would have chewed up and spit out the likes of Joe Lieberman, but we don't.

Then it was Obama's turn. His eight-minutes of remarks signaled a global train wreck. Not hiding his anger and frustration, he said, "I think our ability to take collective action is in doubt." He maintained that his administration has started to mount an "ambitious" plan to cut emissions. And he contended that it is "in our mutual interest to achieve a global accord in which we agree to steps, and to hold each other accountable for certain commitments." According to his prepared text, Obama was next supposed to say, "I believe that the pieces of that accord are now clear." (Emphasis added.) Instead, he asserted, "I believe that the pieces of that accord should now be clear." That is, there was no consensus among the major global leaders regarding what a deal would look like--not even one that would paper over the deep differences that have plagued the Copenhagen summit from the start: what targets to set; how to include both developed and developing countries within the same framework; what financing would be available for international programs to help poorer nations contend with climate change.

Obama played it simple and hard. He maintained the United States was calling for three basic principles: mitigation, transparency, and financing. But he noted that it was absolutely necessary to verify the reductions commitments of the major emitters. (China is now Major Emitter Number One.) "Without such accountability, any agreement would be empty words on a page," Obama argued. And an international pact without such mechanisms, he remarked, "would be a hollow victory." He reminded the conference that the US pledge to contribute to a $100 billion international fund by 2020 was predicated on the establishment of a "broader accord" that contained effective reviews and covered all nations' reductions commitments.

Obama essentially accused other leaders of preferring "posturing to action." He explained, "I'm sure many consider this an imperfect framework...No country will get everything it wants...There are those developing countries that want aid with no strings attached and no obligations of transparency. And there are those advanced nations who think that developing countries cannot absorb this assistance, and that the world's fastest-growing emitters [that is, China, India and other major developing countries] should bear a greater share of the burden."

Obama was clearly venting: "We know the fault lines because we've been imprisoned by them for years. These international discussions...have taken place for two decades. And we have very little to show for it except for a increase in the acceleration of the climate change phenomenon." If an accord is not reached at this summit, he remarked, "we will be back having the same stale arguments month after month, year after year, perhaps decade after decade--all while the danger of climate change grows until it is irreversible."

This was not a speech of persuasion; it was one of positioning. After the morning meeting, Obama and his aides had obviously calculated that a deal was far off--perhaps not even possible--and that there was not much Obama could say in this speech to grease the way to a meaningful agreement. So the US president forcefully presented his stance, maintaining he was willing to compromise, and chastised others for failing to rise above their own interests.

full article here

Frak...that sounds frustrating as hell...

The White House will play an active role in moving health care legislation closer to the House's version once a bill passes the Senate and goes to conference committee between the two chambers, administration officials said on Thursday. But while much of the progressive community is hoping for a renewed push to expand the government's role in providing insurance, the president will likely focus on other priorities.

White House health care czar Nancy-Ann DeParle told a conference call of progressive bloggers that there "are some things I'd like to improve" in the Senate's health care bill once legislators merge it with the House's legislation. The primary objective for the administration is to adopt the House's language on making insurance more affordable (which is more generous than the Senate's), she explained.

"I'd like to make some more changes there and move a little bit more towards the House bill," DeParle said. "So we'll see, I don't know what we'll be able to do there. But I know we talk daily to our friends and colleagues in the House who are just as anxious to get this done."

The White House also has its eyes on legislative language in the Senate bill that -- in the near term -- limits the amount of money private insurance companies can pay on medical coverage annually.

"Where we are right now is, we are still working with CBO to see if we can do something before the [state health care] exchanges starts," DeParle said. "But if not, it is going to be just no annual limits after the exchange starts which is where the House is."

The specificity of DeParle's remarks suggests that the administration will indeed amplify the role it's playing in the health care debate as lawmakers enter the final stage for revisions. After the Senate passes health care legislation, the two congressional chambers will send negotiators to a conference committee, where their respective bills will be fused together and sent back for a vote.

rest

"If a mandate was the solution we could try that to solve homelessness by mandating that everybody buy a house..."


By the way, in case anyone has missed it, the current bill as written further whittles down a woman's right to choose. If you're under 40 you may not have a particular appreciation for the implications of this, and that's what politicians such as Senator Nelson are counting on. Here's a pretty good explanation: 

Senators Introduce Anti-Abortion Amendment For Health Care Reform Bill

Posted by: Jessica Wakeman Filed in: news 4:45PM, Monday December 7th 2009

The House of Representatives’ version of the health care reform bill contained the Stupak-Pitts Amendment (explained in full here) to make sure health insurance doesn’t cover abortion.

Today, the Senate began their own campaign for a similar amendment, when Senators [Ben] Nelson (D-NE), Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and others introduced an amendment to its version of the health care reform bill. Just like Stupak-Pitts, the Nelson-Hatch amendment will restrict federal subsidies for health insurance from being used for private health insurance plans that cover abortion.

Let me try to explain this as simply as possible: Basically, if private health insurance companies want money from people who are getting their insurance because they’ve received government funding, then they can’t cover abortions at all. That, in turn, would mean every woman on that plan—regardless if she paid for it entirely herself—wouldn’t get health insurance coverage for her abortion.

THE WHITE HOUSE BLOG

Health Reform: Help for Families in 2010

Congress is on the verge of an historic achievement for which the American people have been waiting for decades: The passage of real health insurance reform that will bring stability and security to Americans with insurance and provide affordable options to those who don’t. It will protect individuals and families from unfair and arbitrary insurance practices and will at last shift the power away from insurance companies and into the hands of consumers.

Enactment of these historic reforms will be a monumental accomplishment and will be a victory for the interests of consumers against ferocious opposition from the insurance industry and others invested in the status quo. And while there are parts of reform that will take some time to get up and running, there are a great many benefits that will kick in during the very first year to help families and small businesses get control over their health and their health insurance costs.

If you or somebody in your family has a pre-existing condition, you’ll get help in 2010: Both the Senate and House bills will make it illegal for insurance companies to drop coverage for Americans who get sick. Insurance companies will also be barred from limiting the total benefits Americans can use over the course of a year or over their lifetimes. Affordable insurance coverage options will also be made immediately available through a high-risk pool for Americans who have been uninsured and have been denied coverage because they have a pre-existing condition. These options will serve as a bridge until the new health insurance marketplaces, or exchanges, are up and running.

If you or your family has insurance, you'll get help in 2010: The scales will no longer be tipped against you in your relationship with your insurance company. More of your money will start going towards your care instead of excessive insurance company profits or TV ads. Between 2010 and 2013, insurance companies will be required to report the proportion of premium dollars that are spent in areas other than medical care – including profits. If a company isn’t spending enough of its premium dollars providing benefits, it will be required to issue rebate checks to its customers to make up the difference. Insurance companies will also immediately have to begin creating effective appeals processes for customers who have been denied claims ---including independent reviews---and the legislation provides grants for states to create ombudsmen to act as consumer watchdogs on health insurance coverage.

If you want to keep your family from getting sick in the first place, you’ll get help in 2010: All insurance plans will have to begin covering preventive services. That means all Americans who purchase insurance on their own will receive preventive care from their doctor without paying a co-pay.

rest

I'm as disappointed as the next person with the Senate health care bill, but there are quite a few points on this list that would directly help me. I'm interested to see just how this bill would technically help reduce costs, and obviously that hasn't been documented in this blurb. I think it would be helpful for anyone in the know to post in this comm just what is being debated or established in the bill just so we're all on the same page.

Washingtonpost.com

By Howard Dean

Thursday, December 17, 2009

  If I were a senator, I would not vote for the current health-care bill. Any measure that expands private insurers' monopoly over health care and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real health-care reform. Real reform would insert competition into insurance markets, force insurers to cut unnecessary administrative expenses and spend health-care dollars caring for people. Real reform would significantly lower costs, improve the delivery of health care and give all Americans a meaningful choice of coverage. The current Senate bill accomplishes none of these.

Real health-care reform is supposed to eliminate discrimination based on preexisting conditions. But the legislation allows insurance companies to charge older Americans up to three times as much as younger Americans, pricing them out of coverage. The bill was supposed to give Americans choices about what kind of system they wanted to enroll in. Instead, it fines Americans if they do not sign up with an insurance company, which may take up to 30 percent of your premium dollars and spend it on CEO salaries -- in the range of $20 million a year -- and on return on equity for the company's shareholders. Few Americans will see any benefit until 2014, by which time premiums are likely to have doubled. In short, the winners in this bill are insurance companies; the American taxpayer is about to be fleeced with a bailout in a situation that dwarfs even what happened at AIG.

From the very beginning of this debate, progressives have argued that a public option or a Medicare buy-in would restore competition and hold the private health insurance industry accountable. Progressives understood that a public plan would give Americans real choices about what kind of system they wanted to be in and how they wanted to spend their money. Yet Washington has decided, once again, that the American people cannot be trusted to choose for themselves. Your money goes to insurers, whether or not you want it to. Read More...

And sadly, I am in complete agreement with Keith:

President Obama gives himself B+ on Oprah Interview. What grade would you give him?
I think a B+ is pretty good, though I would like to see more on the LGBT and Healthcare front


President talking about the grade he would give himself