Should Iowa, Wyoming Determine Health Care Policy for 300 Million Americans?

From The Village Blog today, a great post asking why we should let those two small states — and their reactionary senators, Grassley and Enzi — have such a major role in health care reform.

Mike Enzi, Republican senator from Wyoming, Pop 510,000 (2005)

Charles Grassley, Republican senator from Iowa, Pop 3 million (2008)

It sounds as if the Obama Administration is finally coming to its senses and is ready to dump the anti-reform tag-team of Grassley and Enzi in favor of health care policies that actually help 300 million Americans, especially the 47+ million uninsured.

After so many years of listening to all the reasons why my home state of New Hampshire and that corn-field known as Iowa should not have the first primary and caucuses for president, it is astonishing that two Republican senators from states with a total population of about 3.5 million should be allowed to have such a major impact on health care policy for the rest of the country.

How David Axelrod and Company could have missed the major lesson of the Clinton reform effort is equally astonishing. It was not that Hillary held “secret meetings,” or that the reform plan was too complicated, or that it was “socialistic,” or that she did not include enough politicians in her deliberations (she did). It failed because the Republicans wanted it to fail. And they wanted it to fail because they do not believe that the poor deserve health care. In other words, like most Republicans, they were greedy and did not want to pay for someone else’s health insurance.

They still don’t. Nothing has changed folks. The GOP is still the party of the rich, the entitled, the haves. And they will do everything they can to keep their stash as safe as possible, the rest of the country be damned.

Grassley and Enzi?

Let ‘em go home and shuck corn and shovel cow shit. That’s where they belong.

Memo to President Obama: It’s the Pork, Stupid!

First thing this morning I read President Obama’s opinion piece in the Washington Post, defending his stimulus bill and attacking opponents as representing the same-old tax-cutting GOP economics of the past.

If that’s really what the President thinks, he is missing the point. It’s not tax cuts versus spending, it’s old-fashioned pork-barrel spending versus a targeted, non-wasteful economic stimulus package that contains both spending and responsible tax cuts.

Obama writes:

This plan is more than a prescription for short-term spending — it’s a strategy for America’s long-term growth and opportunity in areas such as renewable energy, health care and education. And it’s a strategy that will be implemented with unprecedented transparency and accountability, so Americans know where their tax dollars are going and how they are being spent.

What’s he’s saying is that his bill is more than a bill to stimulate the economy. It’s a Christmas wish list that includes every patronage toy that Democrats in Congress want to see under their trees. That is not the purpose of this bill — at least that was not its original purpose.

When Obama took office, my comment was that his success as president would be determined by his ability to control his own party’s worst instincts. So far he has shown no ability to control anything. He let Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic House write their own bill and put in it whatever they wanted, and now he refuses to cut the waste they threw into the package. What’s worse, they did so with an arrogance reminiscent of another over-reaching Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich. Pelosi, as we know, not only made sure that no Republican would vote for her bill, but rubbed their faces in the dirt as well: “We won!”

Of course, much was made of Obama’s trip to the Hill to talk to GOP leaders. He would have better spent his time in Pelosi’s office reading her the riot act and explaining that building bipartisan support for legislation does not include humiliating the opposition (she can check with Newt on that lesson, too).

So, now, instead of admitting more self-inflicted wounds, Obama is expanding his “strategy” in order to excuse billions in pork. Yeah, the GOP would like to see more tax cuts, but it’s the pork that’s choking this legislative baby.

If it doesn’t survive, Obama and Pelosi deserve the blame, not the GOP.

Here’s a heartening report from CNN that Senators are now going through the stimulus bill line by line. Maybe there’s hope!

If you want to see some of the spending items that fall into “pork” category, here the list from CNN:

• $2 billion earmark to re-start FutureGen, a near-zero emissions coal power plant in Illinois that the Department of Energy defunded last year because it said the project was inefficient.

• A $246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers to buy motion picture film.

• $650 million for the digital television converter box coupon program.

• $88 million for the Coast Guard to design a new polar icebreaker (arctic ship).

• $448 million for constructing the Department of Homeland Security headquarters.

• $248 million for furniture at the new Homeland Security headquarters.

• $600 million to buy hybrid vehicles for federal employees.

• $400 million for the Centers for Disease Control to screen and prevent STD’s.

• $1.4 billion for rural waste disposal programs.

• $125 million for the Washington sewer system.

• $150 million for Smithsonian museum facilities.

• $1 billion for the 2010 Census, which has a projected cost overrun of $3 billion.

• $75 million for “smoking cessation activities.”

• $200 million for public computer centers at community colleges.

• $75 million for salaries of employees at the FBI.

• $25 million for tribal alcohol and substance abuse reduction.

• $500 million for flood reduction projects on the Mississippi River.

• $10 million to inspect canals in urban areas.

• $6 billion to turn federal buildings into “green” buildings.

• $500 million for state and local fire stations.

• $650 million for wildland fire management on forest service lands.

• $1.2 billion for “youth activities,” including youth summer job programs.

• $88 million for renovating the headquarters of the Public Health Service.

• $412 million for CDC buildings and property.

• $500 million for building and repairing National Institutes of Health facilities in Bethesda, Maryland.

• $160 million for “paid volunteers” at the Corporation for National and Community Service.

• $5.5 million for “energy efficiency initiatives” at the Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration.

• $850 million for Amtrak.

• $100 million for reducing the hazard of lead-based paint.

• $75 million to construct a “security training” facility for State Department Security officers when they can be trained at existing facilities of other agencies.

• $110 million to the Farm Service Agency to upgrade computer systems.

• $200 million in funding for the lease of alternative energy vehicles for use on military installations.

Hillary Clinton’s Next “Excellent Adventure.”

Despite the best efforts of the Daily Kos, the Huffington Post, Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich, and the entire staff at the Washington Post, MSNBC, and other anti-Clinton media outlets, Barack Obama has nominated Hillary Clinton to be our country’s next Secretary of State.

(Note: Now that Hillary will be part of the Obama Administration, the evil crew at Kos are already sucking up and pretending they liked the former First Lady all along! When you tried to destroy her, you were only kidding, right?) 

My sincere and heartfelt congratulations to Hillary. After following her career over so many years now, I am confident – as is the President-elect – that she will make an outstanding Secretary of State and serve our country well in a time of great tumult and challenge.

Plow & Hearth Continues Discrimination Against African American Models.

With great anticipation, yesterday I carefully worked my way through the newest catalog from Plow & Hearth, the mail order retailer out of Madison, Virginia. The title of the catalog is “Welcome Home for the Holidays!” and it features all sorts of holiday goodies such as wreaths, candles, fireplace paraphernalia, and winter garb for men and women.

The only problem with the “Welcome Home for the Holidays” theme is that, apparently, only white people are welcome, at least at the homes targeted by Plow & Hearth.

After twice contacting them about the absence of African Americans and other minority models in their catalogs, we were hoping that they had finally seen the light and would present a more realistic and diverse view of American homes. Not in this catalog. We meticulously counted pictures of 24 models. Not a single one had the faintest resemblance to any African Americans we know, including our half-white President-elect, Barack Obama. In fact, there were no Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, or anyone who did not look like they were direct descendants of Mayflower Pilgrims.

They all pretty much looked like this lady pictured here. . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I checked some of my other mail order catalogs – LL Bean and Lands’ End, for example. Somehow those companies managed to find models with minority backgrounds. Other circulars that I get — Sears, Wal-Mart, Target, Kohl’s, also prominently feature minority models.

What’s sad about Plow & Hearth is that their discrimination appears to be deliberate. They were told that their marketing practices were not acceptable. Once, a few years back, it seemed they had learned their lesson, but now it appears they have returned to their “whites only”  policy.

To give you a sense of the history of this controversy, below is an excerpt from a prior post about racial discrimination at Plow & Hearth. It was written by my co-editor at HCQ, Frank Marafiote. At this stage, I am not sure what the solution is. While they now seem interested in saving trees — they are supporting a campaign to “reforest America” — they seem to have little interest in ending discrimination in this country.

Perhaps the reforestation campaign is really a subconscious desire on their part to return America to the “good old days” when blacks and Indians were slaves and white colonialists from Europe ruled with impunity.

Plow & Hearth Sells Racist Sterotypes
by Frank Marafiote, Co-Editor
The Hillary Clinton Quarterly
October, 2005

I don’t normally go counting the number of black or Asian people in the catalogs I receive. But as a customer of Plow & Hearth I began to notice that not a single person of color appeared in the catalogs they were sending me. I counted up the photos and the number of whites versus anything else. The score was 100 whites to one African-American child. So I wrote a gentle, questioning letter to Peter and Peggy Rice, owners of the company. (See copy below). I received a phone call soon thereafter from a kind woman in their marketing department, who admitted that there were some problems with diversity in the catalog, but that the Rice’s were certainly not racists and that the catalogs would soon show greater diversity in the models it used.

A year later, I am still getting their catalogs and, in fact, the situation has gotten worse, not better. The recent Holiday 2006 catalog hasn’t a single person of color. If anything, the models appear whiter and blonder than ever. It’s a marketing production the Klu Klux Klan would be proud of!

So I called the company. I ended up speaking with a telemarketing supervisor named Kyle. He took great offense at my accusations, especially given his background as an “Hispanic and Native American.” While I thought it noble that the Rice’s employed “black folk” and other ethnic groups to work behind the high walls of their direct marketing empire, the “face” they present to the outside world is still one of pure-white Americana. Kyle, I suggested to him, was no better than the black sharecroppers who worked the Master’s fields while all around him society continued on in its racist ways. Kyle was not impressed with my analogy and hung up — not the most professional way for a customer service supervisor to handle an unhappy customer.

So, what is to be done? I have looked through several other recent holiday catalogs and the story is quite similar: very blonde, very white WASPS and nary a black, Asian, Hispanic, or Native American in sight. For me there is only one solution: DON’T BUY FROM RACISTS! Maybe when they understand that not only minorities, but white people as well, are offended with their Nazi ploy to get us to part with our cash will they call up a few modeling agencies that represent beautiful people who happen to come from places other than England, Germany, Denmark, or Sweden!

If you care to write to the Rice’s, their address is listed below.

– Frank 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

October 25, 2005

Peter and Peggy Rice

Plow & Hearth

PO Box 6000

Madison , VA 22727

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Rice:

 

I have been a customer of yours for a few years. I’ve bought some lighting, a bookcase, and some other items. Your products and my house are a perfect match. I like to keep a traditional, country-looking home.

 

Being traditional, however, does not mean being bigoted or racist. As I went through your Holiday 2005 catalog, I started to notice that all of your models were white. I decided to take a count. Out of 101 images of people or parts of people (hands, ankles, etc.), everyone appeared to be white with the exception of one child in the back of the catalog. (I have conceded that an argument can be made that Santa Claus is traditionally white.) A ratio of 100 to 1 is not exactly the ratio of African-Americans in this country, not in New Hampshire , and certainly not in Virginia .

 

I would guess that where you are and in the city that produces your catalog, it is possible to find African-Americans or Hispanic models. Why don’t you use them? Unless you are deliberately excluding them and are indeed bigoted or racist, I don’t see why you wouldn’t. I would bet that it would not hurt sales and might even open up demographic markets you have not considered. At the very least, it will allow people like me (a white, over-educated son of third-generation European immigrants), to believe I am buying from a progressive, self-aware organization.

 

I hope you will consider making some changes to your catalogs.

 

Sincerely,

Frank Marafiote

 

Obama Backs Down on Promise to Ban Lobbyists from White House.

Obama made 96 promises during his campaign. One has already been broken.

In an announcement today, Obama announced relaxed rules for lobbyists working as part of the transition team.

During the campaign, Obama pledged the following:

“I have done more to take on lobbyists than any other candidate in this race,” Obama said in speech last November in Spartanburg, S.C. “I don’t take a dime of their money, and when I am president, they won’t find a job in my White House.”

In fact, they will find a job in the Obama White House. Aides to Obama said that “lobbyists could serve in his transition so long as their activities do not involve areas of policy they have tried to influence in the past year.”

The bottomline is that if a lobbyist worked on one set of policies, he or she is free to shuffle down the hall and work on another area.

Big deal. Promise broken.

How many more, Barack?