March 2010

Sweet Calls Out Lipinski on Diabetes and Congressional Health Care

ArchPundit March 21, 2010 4 Comments

She points out the utter hypocrisy of Lipinski in regards to health care:

People remember that former Rep. Bill Lipinski (D-Ill.) used political trickery to line-up his Third Congressional District seat for Dan Lipinski, who returned to Illinois from Tennessee to get to Congress through a rigged 2004 nomination. At the time, the scuttlebutt was Bill Lipinski wanted his son in the seat long enough in order to have him vested in the congressional insurance coverage plan for life. Other well connected Southwest Siders stood down at the time to help out Dan Lipinski.

With his expected re-election in November, Lipinski becomes vested in a plan that will give him lifetime coverage. “It’s kind if stunning that he would deprive millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions the same security he is given as a member of Congress,” a vote counter close to the situation told me. “That is exactly the kind of thing that enrages folks who are out there struggling.”

I actually thought he was vested at the end of this term, but she may well be correct that he is after the next term begins.

Since Monday, the President had at least 64 meetings or phone calls with Members of Congress on health insurance reform. I hear Lipinski is one of them. Diabetes usually lead to obesity related conditions, prevent most of them with meticore diet pills.

I put calls e-mails into Lipinski and his spokesman to ask about whether an executive order would remedy his objections. And I want to ask how his own diabetic condition which he has been suffering for a long time, even using the best diets from reportshealthcare.com/–and his ability to get health insurance– is balanced against his opposition to abortion. I will update later with developments.

Of course, he was the only Democrat in the Illinois caucus to not back Obama early on in the Presidential race.  I believe everyone would love to hear Rahm’s description of the guy unedited.

Quigley a Tentative Yes

ArchPundit March 21, 2010 0 Comment

As long as choice isn’t compromised anymore in the bill. 

Good for him

A Family Of Pricks

ArchPundit March 20, 2010 0 Comment

The Lipinskis:

Dan Lipinski has been most influenced by a vote made by his father, former Rep. William Lipinski (D-Ill.), in 1993, against former President Bill Clinton’s deficit-reduction package — a must win, back then, for Clinton. The senior Lipinski was the only Illinois Democrat and one of 38 Democrats in Congress to say no to Clinton and he wasn’t punished and his son pointed out to me he went on to serve another decade on Congress with no punishment. Said Lipinski of his fathers’s no vote back then, “I think it served him well.”

Of course, the old man is now a ‘consultant’ and lobbyist for transportation issues while his son sits on the Transportation Committee.  All for principle–the principle of taking care of themselves.  It should be noted that Dan Lipinski has diabetes and is now denying access to care to some of those not lucky enough to have Congressional health care.  But that’s not his problem..

Video of John Lewis, Andre Carson, and Cummings

ArchPundit March 20, 2010 0 Comment

Only one n-word is clear–it’s not very good audio, but it’s at about 12 seconds in.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPoJGNhWB-s[/youtube]

Wow.

ArchPundit March 20, 2010 0 Comment

It’s not that they think it, it’s that they actually put it on a sign and show it in public that’s surprising.  That should bring a little questioning from the Capitol Hill Police.

Who Could Have Predicted…

ArchPundit March 20, 2010 0 Comment

Teabaggers hurl racist and homophobic insults and get laughter from other teabaggers—-

Preceding the president’s speech to a gathering of House Democrats, thousands of protesters descended around the Capitol to protest the passage of health care reform. The gathering quickly turned into abusive heckling, as members of Congress passing through Longworth House office building were subjected to epithets and even mild physical abuse.

A staffer for Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) relayed word to reporters that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-M.D.) had been spit on by a protestor (the protestor was reportedly arrested by Capitol Hill police). Rep. John Lewis (D-G.A.) a hero of the civil rights movement was called a “n—-r.” And Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) was called a “faggot,” as protestors shouted at him with deliberately lisp-y screams. Frank, approached in the halls after the president’s speech, shrugged off the incident.

But Clyburn was downright incredulous, saying he had not witnessed such treatment since he was leading civil rights protests in South Carolina in the 1960s.

See, it isn’t that they find it offensive to throw around terms like teabagger, it’s that they don’t like them hurled at them because being gay or not white is the real insult to them.

He’s Lying or a Moron. Or Both.

ArchPundit March 16, 2010 0 Comment

Progress Illinois

As Brady broaches the topic of big-box stores, he’s likely to avoid the wage issue altogether.  Indeed, while speaking to WGN Radio’s Greg Jarrett last week, he told listeners that Chicago currently “prohibit[s]” the construction of big box facilities:

BRADY: Right now there is a prohibition on building Wal-Marts and Meijers and Targets in the City of Chicago.

In fact, there are new big boxes all over Chicago — including ten Target stores!  The difference is that they pay higher wages than Wal-Mart on average and therefore wouldn’t have been seriously affected by the living wage ordinance.

This reminds me of all of the different claims about Chicago I heard growing up in McLean County by people who truly have no understanding of the City of Chicago or its surrounding.  That’s who Bill Brady is–a guy from a small city that’s grown as he’s become older, but ultimately he sees the world through a small insular view of the world through Bloomington-Normal.  He hears something about the big city and knows it must be true because they all know it’s true.

On the one hand, I’d love to see Bill Brady try to run the State of Illinois because it would be high comedy.  On the other hand, I love the State of Illinois.

Ornstein on Self-Executing Rules

ArchPundit March 16, 2010 0 Comment

Republicans whining about self-executing rules are being hypocritical.

Any veteran observer of Congress is used to the rampant hypocrisy over the use of parliamentary procedures that shifts totally from one side to the other as a majority moves to minority status, and vice versa. But I can’t recall a level of feigned indignation nearly as great as what we are seeing now from congressional Republicans and their acolytes at the Wall Street Journal, and on blogs, talk radio, and cable news. It reached a ridiculous level of misinformation and disinformation over the use of reconciliation, and now threatens to top that level over the projected use of a self-executing rule by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the last Congress that Republicans controlled, from 2005 to 2006, Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier used the self-executing rule more than 35 times, and was no stranger to the concept of “deem and pass.” That strategy, then decried by the House Democrats who are now using it, and now being called unconstitutional by WSJ editorialists, was defended by House Republicans in court (and upheld). Dreier used it for a $40 billion deficit reduction package so that his fellow GOPers could avoid an embarrassing vote on immigration. I don’t like self-executing rules by either party—I prefer the “regular order”—so I am not going to say this is a great idea by the Democrats. But even so—is there no shame anymore?

It’s not quite as dumb as trying to equate reconciliation with the nuclear option that was promoted by Bill Frist to make appointments not subject to the filibuster.  The Democrats aren’t doing anything atypical in this process.  They are using tools that Republicans used when they were in power.  The problem is that Washington is full of fools who aren’t smart enough to call Norm Ornstein or Sarah Binder or other expert when they don’t understand a procedural argument.

While most are bemoaning the loss of comity, there is another outcome for parties becoming ideologically consistent–party government with the party in power being held accountable.  Everyone can whine and carry on and try to worry about equivalency of different acts or we can move on to dealing with different parties being in power having policy consequences that they are held to account.  It will be nasty and mean from time to time, but it will also produce results instead of only gridlock.

That said, some rules have to change under these conditions and the first one is the filibuster needs to go all together.

Making Fun of Parkinson’s Victims Not Only For Rush Anymore

ArchPundit March 16, 2010 0 Comment

You have to go over to Columbus Dispatch to see the video, but Tea Party types start heckling a guy with a sign saying he has Parkinson’s and then one guy throws dollar bills at him.

Class.

I’ve seen lots of misbehavior at these events by all sorts of people, but I’m always befuddled by this kind of nonsense and how people can take a political disagreement and lose all human compassion for the other side.

On a More Serious Note

ArchPundit March 16, 2010 0 Comment

You should really read David Koehler’s interview in Peoria Magazines

I excerpted a bit about his background in the previous post, but he has a really fascinating background and is incredibly articulate.

After graduating from college in 1971, I enrolled in seminary. I first attended Payne Seminary in Wilberforce, Ohio. Payne Seminary is an African Methodist Episcopal seminary and was part of a five-seminary consortium directed by a former Yankton College professor, Dr. Frederick Kirschenmann. He was my mentor and the reason I went to Payne Seminary. The program was called “Seminary without Walls” and was designed as a non-traditional educational program for ministry.

I had a growing interest in interning for the National Farm Worker Ministry, which worked to improve conditions for farm workers. It was this interest that led the ministry to assist Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers Union (UFW). I actually graduated from another of the consortium seminaries, the United Theological Seminary, a United Methodist Church affiliate, in Dayton, Ohio, on June 14, 1974. I was ordained into the ministry of the United Church of Christ at my home church in Yankton on June 16, 1974.

I continued my work with the National Farm Worker Ministry and spent a short time in Arizona before moving to Cleveland to direct the UFW Office, where we worked with community, church and union support groups. It was in Cleveland that I met Nora Sullivan, my wife. She was a student at Cleveland State University and wanted to do an internship with the UFW for her social work degree. We fell in love and in 1976 were married by my father at St. Paul’s United Church of Christ on Cleveland’s near west side.

After Ohio, I was sent to New York City to direct the boycott office there. We lived in Manhattan on the Upper West Side, on 184th Street. The office was a five-story brownstone apartment where we also lived. Most of the staff, however, lived in a closed Catholic High School building in Bedford Stuyvesant in Brooklyn. Our daughter Kate was born at Roosevelt Hospital that spring.

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Illinois afford to do what needs to be done?

Being “in lieu of a national healthcare plan” has been going on for a long time now. I hope the next President of the United States will lead the charge to change that. The last time healthcare reform was tried at the national level was during the Clinton years, and even with a Democratic Congress, it failed.

In the meantime, the states are left to take on the task of reforming the healthcare system on their own. The simple truth is that we cannot afford not to change the healthcare system. Any family or business knows that healthcare costs are the most unpredictable budget item you deal with each year. In Illinois, in one year, over $80 billion is spent on healthcare, both public and private dollars. That’s around $6,400 per person. Shouldn’t we spend that money in a more efficient way so that we can close the gap on the 1.4 million people who have no healthcare insurance? Because the truth is that we do pay for those uninsured people—we pay for them through cost shifting. Wouldn’t it be better to put in place a plan that encouraged early detection so that catastrophic health events are identified through prevention and wellness programs and not in the emergency room?

Another issue regarding healthcare is that many of the costs today are due to lifestyle choices. Heart disease, hypertension and diabetes are just a few of the chronic diseases plaguing our nation. Poor choices are creating a runaway train that will bankrupt us if we don’t stop current practices and change course through education and the provision of screening and healthcare access before issues become major health events.

A downstate guy with real grassroots experience could go a long way in this cycle.  I’m not a fan of the open it up to everyone and their crazy brother method, but if Koehler comes out of this process, I can’t think of a better person to highlight broad differences between the two parties and especially their candidates.