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.

As Obama and Jeanne Shaheen campaign together, Bill Shaheen’s drug comments about Obama are long forgotten.

Bill Shaheen

Back in December, 2007, when it looked as if the Obama train was about to run over Hillary Clinton’s “sure thing” in New Hampshire, Bill Shaheen, Clinton’s NH chairman, did the unthinkable: he attacked Barack Obama.

Worse, it was a personal attack and it involved Obama’s past use of marijuana and cocaine. In an interview with the Washington Post, Shaheen commented:

“The Republicans are not going to give up without a fight … and one of the things they’re certainly going to jump on is his drug use,” said Shaheen, the husband of former N.H. governor Jeanne Shaheen, who is planning to run for the Senate next year. Billy Shaheen contrasted Obama’s openness about his past drug use — which Obama mentioned again at a recent campaign appearance in New Hampshire — with the approach taken by George W. Bush in 1999 and 2000, when he ruled out questions about his behavior when he was “young and irresponsible.”

Shaheen said Obama’s candor on the subject would “open the door” to further questions. “It’ll be, ‘When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?’” Shaheen said. “There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks. It’s hard to overcome.”

Thus far, Bill Shaheen has been proved wrong — the Republicans have not made an issue of Obama’s drug use, at least not yet. But until Shaheen spoke to the Post, the Democratic primaries had been a well-mannered, almost genteel affair. His comments were seen as out of line, somehow even racist in nature, and Shaheen was forced to resign as Hillary’s campaign chairman.

Strategically, perhaps, Shaheen did the right thing. As events have shown, Obama is personally vulnerable on a variety of issues, and as his opponents have brought them to the attention of voters, Obama has stumbled, lost ground in polls, even lost primaries.

But now Hillary is gone and Obama has returned to New Hampshire this week as his party’s nominee. This is a state he lost in the primaries. Joining him now on the stump is none other than Jeanne Shaheen, a popular former New Hampshire governor in the fight of her political life against John Sununu Jr., son of another former governor and Bush One’s Chief of Staff, John Sununu Sr. She is also the wife of the disgraced Bill Shaheen — disgraced only in the eyes of certain Obama supporters.

Whether or not Barack Obama bears any grudges against Shaheen for the drug snafu seems irrelevant at the moment: New Hampshire is up for grabs in the general election and both he and former governor Shaheen need each other.

For now, the incident is forgotten. Unless your name is Bill Shaheen.

Convicted felon managed Joe Biden’s New Hampshire presidential campaign.

According to local newspapers, James E. Ryan, 50, of 11 Crickett Way, Franklin, remains jailed after failing to pay the last $9,675 of the more than $35,000 in restitution he was ordered to pay in 1992 after pleading guilty to four counts of forgery and two counts of passing bad checks.

Franklin police arrested Ryan, who represents Franklin and Hill in the state House, last week on a warrant issued by Carroll County Superior Court for failure to pay restitution. Dennis Robinson, superintendent of the Carroll County Department of Corrections, confirmed that Ryan remained jailed as of Tuesday in lieu of $9,675 cash bail.

The Concord Monitor, which has been following Ryan’s case, indicated that Ryan was chairman of Joe Biden’s failed New Hampshire presidential campaign. As I reported elsewhere on A Rake’s Progress, Biden received 638 votes during the New Hampshire primary and approximately 9,000 out of some 40 million total votes cast.

According to the the Laconia Citizen and other local reports, Ryan has a lengthy criminal record that involves three states.

A review of court records shows that Ryan is no stranger to the criminal justice system and that his legal woes date back some 15 years. In a January 2001 motion filed by then-New Hampshire Attorney General Philip McLaughlin seeking to impose a suspended sentence against Ryan, the prosecution detailed that the defendant had passed the Connecticut bar. He practiced law in the city of Danbury, Conn., and served two terms on the City Council and one term on the Board of Education.

In 1986, he was convicted in Connecticut of one count of larceny and one count of issuing a bad check. In 1988, he was convicted of forgery.

Records indicate he surrendered his license to practice law and moved to Massachusetts. Between 1988 and 1993, Ryan was convicted of several crimes, including larceny, larceny by false pretenses, larceny by check and the unauthorized practice of law.

From the Monitor:

Ryan’s arrest Friday shocked those who knew him as a tireless Franklin booster, a policy wonk and a prominent member of the state’s Democratic Party. Ryan, 50 and serving his second term, chaired the House Transportation Committee and the recent New Hampshire presidential campaign of Sen. Joe Biden.

Before his arrest, Ryan was also teaching public policy at New England College and political science at Keene State College. But a review of state and county court records yesterday stood at odds with the public face Ryan has put forward in New Hampshire.

According to the Monitor, Ryan admitted that he had entered a personal and professional relationship with Andrea J. Curtin, a real estate agent with an office in the town of Weare. The state charged that Ryan falsely represented himself to Curtin as a Bay State attorney specializing in taxation and offered to manage her business accounts and personal finances. On Sept. 12, 1991, Ryan issued checks in the amount of $1,166,50 and $2,670.08 from Curtin’s business account pursuant to her obligations arising from certain real estate closings. The checks were returned for insufficient funds because of the defendant’s “self-serving mismanagement of her accounts,” the state charged.

The Citizen adds that In 1986, he was convicted in Connecticut of one count of larceny and one count of issuing a bad check. In 1988, he was convicted of forgery. Records indicate he surrendered his license to practice law and moved to Massachusetts. Between 1988 and 1993, Ryan was convicted of several crimes, including larceny, larceny by false pretenses, larceny by check and the unauthorized practice of law.

He later moved to Freedom, a small town in Carroll County near the Maine border, and he subsequently was convicted in the Ossipee and Conway district courts on charges of issuing bad checks.

In arguing for the suspended sentence to be imposed, the state charged that Ryan has run a “clandestine” law office and posed as a lawyer while working as a clerk at a Manchester law firm. His parole officer also found a yellow page listing Ryan allegedly placed, advertising his legal services in Vermont.

In February 1994, one month after he was paroled from the New Hampshire State Prison, Ryan took a position as a paralegal and law clerk with the law offices of Jean-Claude Sakellarios and Associates. He was hired under the express conditions that he was not to represent himself to any of the firm’s clients as an attorney licensed to practice law in the state or anywhere else. His duties were expressly restricted to legal research and the drafting of forms and legal documents for review by the firm’s lawyers. After a long list of infractions involving the alleged misrepresentation to the firm’s clients and allegedly accepting funds from “clients” unknown to the firm, Attorney Sakellarios terminated Ryan’s employment in September 1994, the state charged.

The Associated Press also reports today that a New Hampshire state senator and a House colleague of jailed state Rep. Jim Ryan are calling on him to resign.

The Franklin, N.H., Democrat was arrested last week for violating a court order that he repay thousands of dollars from a fraud case. Court records also show he has a criminal record in three states dating back to the 1980s.

Senator Peter Burling of Cornish and Representative Leigh Webb of Franklin, both Democrats, say it is shocking to see the entirety of the legal trouble confronting Ryan and his family.

Burling and Webb say Ryan should step down so he can direct his energy to resolving his legal situation and caring for his family.

Governor John Lynch also has said Ryan should step down.

Ryan attended Fairfield University, a Jesuit college located in Fairfield, Connecticut, and received his law degree from St John’s University School of Law. In light of criticisms by Democrats about the background check Republicans performed before selecting Sarah Palin as their vice presidential candidate, the Ryan case calls into question Biden’s judgment and his due diligence in selecting someone with such a long criminal record to manage his New Hampshire campaign.

“Bad Boy Biden” Got 638 Votes in New Hampshire Primary.

With his inside-the-Beltway media friends singing his praises as a “heavyweight” pick for VP, you might guess that Joe Biden has a fantastic track-record as a vote-getting machine.

Once the fairy dust settles, it will become clear to Democrats that Obama could not have made a worse choice.

Let’s start with the plagiarism problem. It won’t go away no matter how hard Howard Fineman and other liberal reporters try to minimize it. Cheating says something about a candidate’s character — and Biden has a long, nefarious track record as someone who is willing to steal ideas and words, to exaggerate and lie about his background to get ahead. Expect the McCain team to hit hard on this one. People don’t like cheaters.

Second problem: Biden is on record as saying that Obama is not ready to be president! He didn’t suggest this, he came flat out and said it. “Obama is not qualified to be president.” So Obama picked him because. . . . More poor judgment from BO.

Third problem: Biden is Kerry lite. Biden has spent decades in the Senate and has accomplished nothing except to get old and become a senior ”force” within the senate itself. Like John Kerry, over the years he has developed a senator’s sense of entitlement. He is lazy and self-indulgent. The reason he is so outspoken is that he feels invulnerable. It’s an affliction suffered by many long-serving senators. Assuming they have a lifetime appointment, they feel they can say whatever is on their little minds without consequence. And they do — sometimes with fatal consequences.

Fourth problem: Biden is a strategic nightmare for Obama. The “president of change” has selected the ultimate insider as his VP? Leading up to this announcement it was become clear even to the most dedicated Obama supporter than their man was drifting away from his core values (as nebulous as they were). Now he picks someone who says the Great One is not ready for the White House, someone who is more about the “politics of the past” than Obama’s favorite ex-foe, Hillary Clinton. What is Obama thinking? This is now a great opportunity for McCain to show voters who is the real president of change. And he can thank Obama for giving him this opening. . . .

Fifth problem: Biden is an uninspiring, uninspired candidate. In the New Hampshire primary, he got a pathetic 638 votes. Obama, Clinton, Edwards, Richardson, even Dennis the Menace did better than Biden. No one want to see this guy, listen to him, vote for him.

Biden is day-old newspaper delivered late, day after day after day. Put it in the cat box. Wrap your fish with it. But no way are you going to read it or vote for it! I promise that after three weeks on the campaign trail, Americans will be zapping Biden whenever he appears on their TV screens. . .and that means fewer adoring eyes for Obama.

Nice work, Barack.

Groceries or Joe Biden? Easy Choice!

Editor’s Note: Now that Barack Obama has officially taken on Joe Biden as his running mate, it’s appropriate to remember how uninspiring and ineffective Biden was as a presidential candidate. After numerous trips to the Granite State, Joe Biden got a total of 638 votes on primary day. Here’s my reflections on a trip Biden made to New Hampshire during primary season.

Courtesy of New Hampshire’s Belknap County Democrats, presidential candidate Joe Biden paid a visit to Laconia’s Weirs Beach yesterday afternoon.

I could have gone — it was just a 10 minute drive up the road. I thought I might ask a question about health care reform but I knew that everyone there, including Biden, had only one thing are their minds — Iraq, Iraq, and Iraq. (Technically, I guess that’s three things.)

Then, I thought, hell, I could say hello to Lynn Chong and her husband, Rob. I know they would love to meet me. Lynn is chair of the Belknap County Democratic Committee. She is euphemistically known as a “progressive Democrat.” I know she is a nice woman because she is not a Republican and is a friend of a friend of a friend.

Lynn and I see the Iraq war and the solution Democrats should offer from quite different perspectives. Those of us who think Hillary Clinton might be a worthy nominee were a little annoyed that Lynn publicly dismissed the Senator (because of Iraq, of course) even before Hillary had visited New Hampshire as a candidate. But we’re all grown ups here — we’ll let bygones be bygones, right?

But the most important factor that weighed on my decision to go — or not to go — was Joe Biden himself. 

Biden has been around Washington D.C. longer than the Jefferson Memorial. There’s a lot of Biden history there. The problem is that most of it is remarkably forgettable. I’ve seen him dozens of times on Meet the Press and other political shows and newscasts. I can’t remember a single important or interesting thing that he has said.

All I remember about Biden is that Mike Dukakis fatally kicked him in the groin during the 1988 Democratic presidential campaign for plagiarizing parts of a speech. The media then woke up and found numerous other cases of Biden “lifting” someone else’s work. According to the Washington Post, these included “a serious plagiarism incident involving Biden during his law school years; the senator’s boastful exaggerations of his academic record at a New Hampshire campaign event; and the discovery of other quotations in Biden’s speeches pilfered from past Democratic politicians.”

(If it is any consolation to the half-dozen Biden supporters out there, pick anyone out of the US Senate and you have a 88% chance of getting someone with a dubious past and a historically-challenged political track record.)

Although I knew that Senator Biden was coming to town, I knew that a nasty spring snowstorm was coming to town, too. (It is here as I write, creating panic among the chickadees and juncos and making my plow guy the richest man in the neighborhood.) Instinctively, I looked into my refrigerator and saw that it was nearly empty. I had visions of being stranded on this snowy hill without food until Memorial Day. I had a choice to make: groceries or Biden. Get food or get bored.

So I got the groceries.

This morning I checked the Laconia Citizen to see what history-making pronouncements Joe Biden made at his Weirs Beach campaign event. Totally surprising no one, he said, “This war must end.”