Sen. Ted Kennedy, The Liberal Lion, Dies At 77
NYT obituary: "Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a son of one of the most storied families in American politics, a man who knew triumph and tragedy in near-equal measure and who will be remembered as one of the most effective lawmakers in the history of the Senate, died late Tuesday night. He was 77. ... While Mr. Kennedy was physically absent from the capital in recent months, his presence was deeply felt as Congress weighed the most sweeping revisions to America’s health care system in decades, an effort Mr. Kennedy called 'the cause of my life.'"
Robert Borosage on HuffPost: "the great cause of his career -- health care for all -- will pass the Congress as his final triumph."
Baucus Caucus Member Raises Prospect of Health Care Bill Without GOP
TPMDC's Brian Buetler reports Sen. Bingaman OK with using Senate budget rules to pass health care on simple majority vote: "[Bingaman] says that if bipartisan negotiations go nowhere, he'd support an effort to circumvent a filibuster and pass legislation without any Republicans. 'If we are unable to do it any other way, that is an option. It is a very difficult option,' Bingaman told a crowd of about 200 at a town hall event in Albuquerque yesterday. He was referring to the possibility that Democrats will pass health care reform through the so-called budget reconciliation process."
Buetler also tries to figure out Sen. Grassley's comments: "Are the Senate Finance Committee's bipartisan health care negotiations getting anywhere? According to the panel's lead Republican, Chuck Grassley, the answer is no. And yes! ... What we may be witnessing, more than any problem with the White House, is Grassley's tendency to say one thing to people in Washington and another to people back home."
The Hill reports from several town halls. In VA with Howard Dean and Rep. Jim Moran: "Though the crowd was overwhelmingly supportive of the [public option] plan, Moran used a loud amplifier to speak over near-constant heckling from opponents, generally ignoring them." With Rep. Donna Edwards in MD: "...attracted only a single protester outside a D.C.-area recreation center on Tuesday night -- and fairly minimal opposition inside." With Rep. Gerry Connolly in VA: "In general, Connolly received a warm reaction to his argument that a healthcare reform bill is necessary to keep healthcare spending down and to keep Medicare afloat."
Media Matters dares cable nets to air clip of participant from Dean town hall: "the press really doesn't seem to want to cover policy. You know, they want to cover gossip, and I'm very disappointed, and I would like all of you press to start covering the policy."
US News reports on Organizing for America bus tour for health care: "...kicks off [today] in Phoenix. The 'Health Insurance Reform Now' bus will make 11 stops between tomorrow and when members of Congress return to Washington, hitting up Albuquerque, N.M., Denver, Raleigh, N.C., and Pittsburgh ... [today's AZ stop is] conveniently scheduled around the same time and down the street from Sen. John McCain's healthcare town hall meeting."
The Treatment's Harold Pollack rips right-wing fundraising email claiming reform will kill women with breast cancer: "IWF’s materials are outstanding in their deep foray into the territory of the untrue ... Women in other industrial democracies do not go bankrupt because they have breast cancer. That’s an everyday occurrence across America--among both insured and uninsured citizens. Democratic health reform bills ... would provide every woman the opportunity to buy affordable and decent insurance that covers diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer."
TPMDC reports insurance lobby angry at Sen. Rockefeller for looking at insurance company books: "Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) has a proposition: If the government is going to mandate that Americans buy health insurance from private companies, they should know how much of that money actually goes to paying health insurance costs. And insurers aren't happy about it."
The Health Care Blog's Matthew Holt on new evidence debunking drug lobby's claims: "[Health Affairs' Donald] Light shows that the added R&D spent in the US compared to Europe doesn’t give much bang for the buck, and that not many breakthrough drugs have been created anyway—something that PhRMA knows all to well as it looks at its shrinking pipelines."
New Deficit Projections Put In Context
Robert Reich says "relax" in Salon: "Today, as expected, the White House announced that the deficit projections are worse than it had thought. And as expected, the same old group of deficit hysterics went ballistic. ... Can we please relax? First, ten-year projections are notoriously irrelevant ... Second, deficits and debts mean just about nothing anyway -- at least out of context. In 1945, the federal debt was 120 percent of the entire U.S. economy. Yeegads! Yet only a few years later, the debt as a proportion of GDP had been tamed -- and not primarily because of cuts in government spending ... The only item worth looking at is the part of the report that predicts the government will have nearly a $1.6 trillion deficit in the fiscal year that ends this Sept. 30 -- but not because that number is alarmingly large. It strikes me as alarmingly small."
Dean Baker rebuts Boehner spin of new OMB and CBO deficit projections: "...John Boehner, the leader of of the House Republicans [said] 'the Democrats’ out-of-control spending binge is burying our children and grandchildren under a mountain of unsustainable debt.' If we look at the latest projections from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), they show that the interest burden of the debt in 2019, the last year for their projections, will be $722 billion. That comes to 3.4 percent of projected GDP. If our children will be buried under this burden, then their parents must have been comparable strangled by the debt burden created in the Reagan-Bush presidencies. The interest burden from the debt run up in these years peaked at 3.3 percent of GDP in 1991."
Bernanke Hearings Won't Be Coronation
WSJ reports Senators planning tough questions: "Committee Chairman Chris Dodd of Connecticut promised 'a thorough and comprehensive confirmation hearing' ... Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the committee’s top Republican, said lawmakers 'should carefully examine the impact of the Fed’s failures as a bank regulator, how such failures contributed to the financial crisis, and whether Chairman Bernanke’s performance as the chief regulator merits his reconfirmation.' ... Sen. Bernie Sanders, the sometime irascible independent from Vermont, essentially said its time for a change."
The Nation's William Greider derides "The Deification of Gentle Ben": "The media mobilization in behalf of Bernanke created the presumption that President Obama would be foolish not to reappoint him as chairman for four more years. A supposed 'poll' of financial experts, reported by the Wall Street Journal, made it clear that Wall Street wants him. The implicit threat to Obama was that if he chose someone else, the financial markets would tank and the president would be blamed. To avoid the risk, Obama folded early--four months early--and interrupted his vacation to announce Bernanke's reappointment. The deification is at best premature. Bernanke was right to act aggressively, flooding the streets with money to avoid the full catastrophe of deflation (the grave error the Fed committed after the stock market crash of 1929). He is wrongly criticized for his excess, but Bernanke also hasn't yet won this struggle. The big boys of Wall Street are revived or on government life support, but regional and smaller banks are still failing at an alarming rate. Prices, wages and production are still falling in various markets around the world. If financial markets break again in coming months, Bernanke may be nominated as goat, not hero."
Bloomberg speculates on Bernanke's reform agenda: "Ben S. Bernanke’s renomination allows him to redefine the Federal Reserve’s mission as he expands its power over financial markets and pulls back on a credit surge the central bank used to keep the economy from collapse, economists say ... Bernanke is already preparing to play a larger part in oversight, no matter how Congress rewrites the rules. Fed bank examiners are putting more emphasis on comparing the risks inside one large bank with those faced by other big lenders."
Top UN Climate Scientist Calls For Ambitious 350-ppm Goal
AFP quotes IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri on needed target for atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations: "'As chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, I cannot take a position because we do not make recommendations. But as a human being I am fully supportive of that goal. What is happening, and what is likely to happen, convinces me that the world must be really ambitious and very determined at moving toward a 350 target' ... Even at current CO2 levels of 385-to-390 ppm, severe impacts from climate change—rising sea levels, drought, violent storms—have started and are likely to get worse, experts say."
EnviroKnow posts clips of renewed Glenn Beck attack on on White House green jobs adviser Van Jones.
Today's title comes from Dispassionate Liberal.
