Red State Rebels

Medi-scare or not?

With most attention focused on Bush's ill-conceived plan to reform Social Security, few in the media or public are paying much attention to the administration's plan to shift us all away from employer-based health insurance toward high-deductible catastrophic insurance policies and health savings accounts. You can read more about the issue here.

I am self employed and my husband's new job lacks insurance, so we are currently going the "catastrophic" route to keep costs manageable. (A regular policy would cost us about three times as much.) I have looked into HSAs and frankly feel that may be the way for us to go if our employment/benefits situation doesn't change. But it distresses me to see the Republicans eager to essentially dismantle employer-based health coverage, which - after all - is yet another strand of the web we've woven as Americans to be sure people's basic needs are met. It also seems that affordable health coverage ought to be part of the contract between employee and employer whenever possible.

The liberal agenda

The American Prospect is asking readers to come up with a 30-second "elevator speech" on why the Democratic way reflects real American values.

We all know the basic outline of conservatism's elevator pitch: "We believe in freedom and liberty, and we're for low taxes, less government, traditional values, and a strong national defense." But what is liberalism's? We at the Prospect have, among us, attended or sat on about eleventy hundred panels since the election at which someone invariably says something like the following: "We know what conservatives stand for. But what do we stand for?"

No one in Washington seems to know. So we turn to you. Give us liberalism's elevator pitch.

Read some of the ideas - and post your own suggestion - at its website here.

Where will it end?

Remember when, while they were trying to sell the looming war in Iraq to a highly suspicious American public in the fall and winter of 2002-2003, the Bushies said the war would basically pay for itself via oil revenues?

Yesterday, as word emerged that the administration plans to seek yet another $80 billion - mostly for Iraq, bringing to total cost of the war to $300 billion so far - the promise of two winters ago is now clearly seen as just another in the long series of lies the administration told to get its way. Americans, Iraqis, and others continue to pay the ultimate price for these lies. Where will it end?

Ouch

I'm in Eastern Idaho on business. Last night, driving from Pocatello to Idaho Falls, I listened to the Alternative Radio rebroadcast of a November 18 speech by journalist Seymour Hersh.

Hersh is the man who broke both the My Lai Massacre story in Vietnam and the Abu Ghraib story from Iraq. For the 45 minutes or so I listened, he literally spoke nearly non-stop, a torrent of words showing his concern for what is happening to our country, about why we can't "win" in Iraq, how Bush's foreign policy is destroying our economy, and why it may be up to Europe to set things right. You can hear it online here.

Iraq election watch

Ongoing violence in Iraq means its election will be the world's first major transitional vote in many years to take place without international election monitors, the Washington Post is reporting today.

"There will be no neutral outside group deployed across Iraq to determine whether voters are impeded, ballot boxes are stuffed, any party tries to interfere with the process or votes are counted fairly. No congressional delegation will monitor the polls, and the European Union announced last week that it had declined an invitation from Iraq to send observers. The Carter Center, which has monitored more than 50 elections overseas, also decided not to send observers," reporter Robin Wright wrote. Read the article here.

The New York Times published an op-ed on Wednesday making a compelling case for an Iraqi referendum - soon after the January 30 election - on whether foreign troops should stay or go. "Why not let the Iraqis themselves decide? Ask Iraqi voters in a referendum six weeks after the national elections if they think foreign soldiers should withdraw immediately. Let the Iraqis debate what the absence of American forces will mean for their families and nation. Tell them we'll hold the referendum every nine months until they vote us out or we determine it's time to leave." Bathsheba Crocker, one of the piece's authors, also advanced the possibility this morning on NPR's Weekend Edition.

It's not a bad idea, if we want to have any hope of avoiding another Vietnam. The Guardian in London has a story today on private negotiations taking place aimed at getting British and U.S. troops out as soon as possible. But others say under current conditions, it may take a decade or more before Iraqi forces are ready to fully manage their own security.

Let's make it happen

The wonderful folks at MMOB have kicked off "Operation Blue" to help Howard Dean get selected as DNC chair. They're asking Deanocrats everywhere to write short letters to the editor and contact any DNC voting members you might know personally. (Enough with the cold calling and floods of mail, Dean says.) If you want to help, check out the MMOB here.

Lots of Dems from the wimpy wing of the party are grousing that we need to select someone other than a northeastern, true-blue progressive to lead the party if we are going to win in the red states. But many more realize that Dean's populism transcends his Vermont origins - that's why party leaders in such places as Florida, Utah, and Mississippi are lining up behind Dean. They know Dean stands for the brand of progressive social policies, fiscal restraint, and responsible foreign policy our nation needs.

There are hard-core Deanocrats who hope Dean doesn't make it because, if he does, he won't run for president again in 2008. But as much as I dig Dean, I realize there will be other candidates who can carry the Democratic banner. What we need now is a Dem chair who will take a 50-state approach to rebuilding the party from the grassroots up. Dean is the man.

Update 1/26/2005 - Martin Frost of Texas is one of Dean's main rivals for the job. Here's a good analysis of why, on balance, Frost should not be DNC chair.

Gone fishing ... for my country

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Mathis: Time to say 'whoa'

Columnist Deborah Mathis has a question for Red State residents who supported Bush: Was an arrogant and reckless foreign policy really what you wanted when you cast your votes?

Your answer is important because there aren't many checks left in our checks-and-balances system and, with a second term and a Republican-controlled Congress going for him, Bush could become a runaway train if you don't at least tap the brakes.

You've got the future of the country in your hands, dear Reddies. The rest of us - the nearly 50 million who voted for the other guy and probably some of those who didn't vote at all - don't seem to matter.

Read it all here.

Privatization: Let's not go there

With the Social Security debate heating up, U.S. lawmakers ought to look at what happened when Britain privatized its senior social insurance program 20 years ago during the Thatcher era. An article from the February issue of The American Prospect shows it's been "A Bloody Mess." Author Norma Cohen writes:

For all the fanfare that surrounds the Bush administration’s efforts to present a bold new idea on pension reform, the truth is that it is not new at all. In fact, the proposal looks suspiciously like the plan set in train during Thatcher’s first term in 1979 and which has since led Britain to the brink of a crisis. Since then, the nation’s basic pension, which is paid for out of tax receipts, has shrunk dramatically. The United Kingdom has the stingiest state pension program of any G8 nation, and there is growing consensus -- even among British conservatives -- that reform is needed. And ironically enough, considering that America is on the verge of copying Britain’s mistake, most experts seek reform in the direction of a more generous, and simpler, basic state pension -- one similar in design, in other words, to America’s Social Security program.

You can read the whole article here.

Social Security reform also was the topic on NPRs Talk of the Nation yesterday, a show dominated by Stephen Moore's shameless shilling for a wildly complicated and unfair plan he knows full well will bankrupt the system - which is, of course, exactly what the conservative extreme hopes will happen. "Ownership society," my ass. But for all Moore's misinformation, Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, did a good job explaining the simplicity and fairness of the current program.

Does Social Security need to be fixed? Undoubtedly - by wiser government (not personal) investment of any surplus funds, by further encouraging (though not mandating) later retirement in trade for higher benefits, and by raising the cap on wages taxed under the program to reflect current income levels. Let's encourage Congress to consider these reforms rather than the radical upheaval Bush is preparing to put forward.

MLK/Human Rights Day 2005

Here in Idaho, the holiday is officially known as Martin Luther King Jr.-Idaho Human Rights Day. A good-sized crowd turned out for a rally on the statehouse steps, featuring stirring speeches by Mayor Joe McNeal of Mountain Home, Idaho's first African American mayor; Nicole LeFavour, the state's first openly gay state legislator; and  several others. Afterward, many people walked together to Julia Davis Park to hear Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne and McNeal talk at the Idaho Black History Museum, which - although open for several years - just opened its first permanent exhibit on the 200 years of African-American history in Idaho.

"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." (Click here for the whole speech, always worth another read and/or listen.)