EDITOR’S NOTE: Over the past month, ThinkProgress has traveled to town hall events across the country to report what we’re seeing on the ground. This is our fifth eyewitness report.
This past Tuesday, Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and John McCain (R-AZ) took their nationwide health care road show to Florida, where they teamed up with Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL) to participate in a closed-door town hall event at the Palmetto General Hospital in Hialeah. ThinkProgress attended the forum.
During the question-and-answer session, Jim Dolan, president of the Florida Medical Association, expressed his anger with the American Medical Association for supporting President Obama’s health care plan. We “repudiate that action on their part,” Dolan said, speaking for his Florida chapter.
Dolan went on to propagate a version of the false “death panels” myth, claiming that the Obama administration is promoting “dranconian rationing that Rahm Emanuel’s brother, Ezekiel, talks about as though it’s going down to pick up a loaf of bread.” Dolan wondered when are people going to realize that “the people advising this president” feel that the seniors “are expendable.”
Rather than distance himself from Dolan’s false assertion, McCain wholeheartedly embraced it:
McCAIN: Doctor, I know you have a day job, but I’d like to take you with me wherever I go. [Laughter] I’ve never heard it more eloquently put than you just stated the situation.
Watch it:
When his former running mate Sarah Palin first offered the false “death panel” claim last month, McCain defended her. He said that end-of-life counseling “at least opens the door to a possibility of rationing.”
Today, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) announced that he’s slashing $171.9 million from the state’s $6 billion budget, with most of the cuts affecting education programs. According to the AP, Barbour tried to soften his announcement by pointing out that “even with budget cuts, all levels of education are receiving more money than they ever have.” The reason for this good news? The federal stimulus:
Barbour said he expects the impact to be “very, very minimal,” because K-12 and higher education programs are receiving millions of dollars in federal stimulus funds.
Salary supplements for national-board certified teachers and financial aid programs for students are among the items exempted from the cuts. Medicaid and the Department of Corrections will also not be cut at this time.
Under the stimulus, Mississippi schools received $250 million and the state received $484 million to prevent cuts, such as teacher layoffs, in education.
Mississippi shows why stimulus funds were so important for the states — and the folly of other governors such as Sarah Palin, who initially rejected federal education funds. Palin turned down $160 million for education because she believed the state should “chart our own course.” Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC) also wanted to use $700 million of South Carolina’s stimulus money meant for school funding and public safety to pay down the state debt, even though the move could have cost 7,500 teachers their jobs.
Barbour was also an outspoken opponent of the stimulus, although his main objections were over $50 million in unemployment benefits for part-time workers. (The state legislature eventually passed a bill circumventing Barbour.)
Last Monday, John Henke at TheNextRight, a right-of-center blog, called for a conservative boycott of the far-right website WorldNetDaily (WND). Henke referred to WND as “the pamphlet” of the birther movement, which he has referred to as “fringe idiocy.” Following his call for the boycott, Henke discovered that the RNC had rented access to the WND e-mail list. Henke then e-mailed the RNC and ask them to stop supporting the far-right website. The RNC Press Secretary responded to Henke’s e-mail by dodging the issue and refusing to distance itself from WND:
Nice to meet you. Pls note that we have already weighed in on the birther issue — weeks ago. Thanks.
Henke e-mailed additional questions to the RNC but has yet to recieve a response. Reflecting on the Press Secretary’s comments, Henke writes, “In the 1960’s, Goldwater and a few Republicans had the integrity and guts to denounce the irresponsible fringe in the fevered swamps of the Right. Today, as far as I can tell, the Republican National Committee works with them.”
Earlier today, ThinkProgress noted that conservatives are freaking out over President Obama’s upcoming speech to schoolchildren about “persisting and succeeding in school,” claiming that it is actually aimed at political indoctrination. On MSNBC’s Morning Joe today, host Joe Scarborough ripped into the hyperventilating conservatives. “Seriously, why don’t we want the president of the United States, any president of the United States, delivering the message to kids: work hard, stay in school, succeed,” said Scarborough, adding, “get your ratings if you want, you’re just screwing your political party.” Watch it:
On Tuesday, former attorney general Alberto Gonzales surprised everyone by defending Attorney General Eric Holder’s investigation into interrogation abuses during the Bush administration:
We worked very hard to establish ground rules and parameters about how to deal with terrorists. And if people go beyond that, I think it is legitimate to question and examine that conduct to ensure people are held accountable for their actions, even if it’s action in prosecuting the war on terror.
Today, however, Gonzales is backpedaling. In a new interview with the Washington Times, he said that just because he thinks it’s “legitimate to question and examine” the interrogators’ conduct, he doesn’t endorse an investigation:
I don’t support the investigation by the department because this is a matter that has already been reviewed thoroughly and because I believe that another investigation is going to harm our intelligence gathering capabilities and that’s a concern that’s shared by career intelligence officials and so for those reasons I respectfully disagree with the decision.
Earlier today, ThinkProgress noted that Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) told an Americans for Prosperity (AFP) rally this week that he was “pretty sure” health care reform was “going to fail.” Greg Sargent spoke to AFP President Tim Phillips, who was standing next to Enzi when he spoke at the rally, and he says he believes Enzi has now ruled out supporting whatever compromise the “Gang of Six” reaches:
That’s not all. AFP president Tim Phillips, who was standing next to Enzi and listened to his whole talk, tells me he left with little doubt that Enzi had declared his blanket opposition to the Gang of Six proposal.
Though the AFP event was about cap and trade, it seems noteworthy that a GOP Senator who’s supposed to be negotiating a health care compromise appeared at an event hosted by an ardent anti-reform group — and told them reform is likely to fail.
“Standing next to him as he spoke, it was pretty clear that he’s not going to support the Gang of Six effort,” Phillips said. “I was certainly encouraged.”
As Sargent points out, it’s “noteworthy” that someone supposedly negotiating a bipartisan compromise “appeared at an event hosted by an ardent anti-reform group — and told them reform is likely fail.” AFP has organized a series of anti-health care reform town halls around the country, including one where a Democratic lawmaker was hung in effigy. The organization has also funded television ads attacking reform.
For the past few days, conservatives have been freaking out over President Obama’s upcoming speech to schoolchildren on the first day of school. Though Obama’s speech will be about “persisting and succeeding in school,” the right wing is claiming it is about “school indoctrination” just like “what Chairman Mao did.”
On Fox News this morning, NPR’s Juan Williams defended Obama’s effort as “innocuous,” saying that “on the face of it, it seems to be almost patriotic…you should hear the president speak about the value of education, staying in school, hard work.” But Family Research Council President Tony Perkins wasn’t convinced that the speech would be benign. To buttress his argument, Perkins asserted that “the president really hasn’t pushed any educational reform issues yet in his administration”:
PERKINS: It is unprecedented in the fact that there’s a worksheet attached with this, that there’s homework involved here. And Juan has to admit that the question of write a letter to yourself on how you can help the president does raise some questions as to whether or not he could have gotten into the policy issues. The president really hasn’t pushed any educational reform issues yet in his administration. He’s been busy with other controversial things. But you know, going to elementary kids to talk about drop out. What about high school kids? That is a little — it raises some questions.
Watch it:
Perkins is speaking without regard for the facts when he says that Obama hasn’t “pushed any educational reform issues yet.” In fact, Obama has put a strong emphasis on education reform. For instance, the stimulus bill contained an unprecedented investment in education, which was aimed at incentivizing reform:
To help struggling schools, the federal government will use stimulus funding to encourage states to expand school days, reward good teachers, fire bad ones and measure how students perform compared with peers in India and China, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said yesterday.
As Matthew Yglesias has noted, that administration’s “Race to the Top” reform competition encourages states to drop restrictions on performance data. In March, President Obama delivered a speech on his goal of overhauling the education system “from the cradle up through a career.” In the speech, Obama laid out a five-tier reform plan, which included “Early Learning Challenge” grants, “tougher, clearer standards,” and funding for No Child Left Behind to be more effectively tied to results.
Perkins also claimed that Obama has avoided education because “he’s been busy with other controversial things.” But the truth is that Obama has been criticized by people saying that he was distracting himself from the economy by pushing education reform. In his March speech, he said that “there are some who believe we can only handle one challenge at a time,” but “we don’t have the luxury of choosing between getting our economy moving now and rebuilding it over the long term.”
Yesterday, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) held a town hall meeting with his constituents in Grove, Oklahoma, where he unleashed a tirade of hyperbolic remarks against Obama administration policies. At one point he even suggested that Obama is “obsessed” with releasing terrorists into the United States, and claimed that there has “never been a case of torture” at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp:
He is also alarmed, he said, by the proposed closing of the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Obama administration wants to shutter the camp because of its association with torture.
Inhofe said: “There has never been a case of torture there. The people there are treated better than in the federal prisons.”
He continued, “I don’t know why President Obama is obsessed with turning terrorists loose in America.”
As the Center for Constitutional Rights has documented, there have been countless cases of detainees being abused and tortured at the prison camp. Detainees have been beaten, deprived of sleep for weeks, sexually harrassed, and shackled to the floor for days at a time. Inhofe’s statement at the town hall is only the latest in his political broadsides. He has in the past suggested that Obama is “un-American,” that the mentality of Middle Easterners is “worse than Nazism,” and that the conditions at Guantanamo Bay are humane.
Yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) promised that no Republicans will vote for the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), should it come to the Senate floor. In order for the bill to pass “the Democratic members will have to do it,” he said.
In a speech before the business organization Commerce Lexington, McConnell explained that the reason for such uncompromising opposition is that workers don’t actually want to join unions due to the “very enlightened management in this country now”:
McConnell said the AFL-CIO wants the measure approved because “private sector union membership has declined from a high of 35 percent in the 1950s to 7.5 percent now.” That has happened “because we have very enlightened management in this country now, treating employees better and employees have decided they don’t want to pay the dues.”
McConnell has already made his personal opinion that EFCA will “Europeanize America” well known, and with this rhetoric, he has officially aligned the entire Republican position on EFCA with that of the Chamber of Commerce (which has said that EFCA is a “no-compromise” piece of legislation). But if McConnell truly thinks that the reason more workers aren’t joining unions is because of “enlightened management,” he hasn’t been paying any attention to the reality of working and organizing in America.
For starters, an AFL-CIO survey found that there are 60 million American workers who say that they would join a union if they could. The reason that they can’t is because employers threaten to close plants in 57 percent of union organizing drives and threaten to cut wages and benefits in 47 percent, while ultimately firing pro-union workers 34 percent of the time.
As Kate Bronfenbrenner, Director of Labor Education Research at the Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations pointed out, over the last 20 years “employer opposition [to unionization] has intensified…and the nature of campaigns has changed so that the focus is on more coercive and punitive tactics designed to intensely monitor and punish union activity.”
And in addition to anti-union campaigns, management in this country is engaged in a whole host of other labor violations. Yesterday, a new survey came out in which 68 percent of low-income workers reported being subject to a pay violation in the previous work week alone. This isn’t meant to paint the entire business community with a broad stroke — as there are surely plenty of companies that don’t engage in this sort of behavior — but the problem is far more widespread than McConnell and the rest of the Republican party are evidently willing to concede. And just like with health care reform, the GOP has already decided that it’s not interested in discussing a solution.
Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.
In recent days, former Homeland Security Adviser Tom Ridge has been backing away from claims he made in his memoir that Bush administration officials may have been pushing to raise the security alert level for political reasons. Ridge has been on an apology tour this week, insisting that he never meant to insinuate any bad motives on his former colleagues. Last night on MSNBC, former Nixon adviser John Dean said that he believes Ridge likely received pressure from Bush officials to backtrack:
OLBERMANN: Is there any reason to suggest that that back pedaling owes to political pressure or something like that?
DEAN: I would suspect the fact that Rumsfeld and Ashcroft came out and hit him pretty hard has affected his thinking on this whole matter. He doesn’t seem to be as clear on what he wrote now that they’ve spoken out on the issue.
And also Keith, he did indeed imply a rather serious criminal charge if this conduct indeed had been undertaken. So I think there’s a lot of reasons that he probably has backed off and political pressure from the Bush clan probably is part of the reason.
Watch it:
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Transcript: More »
Following Sen. Mike Enzi’s (R-WY) attack on health care reform in the weekly GOP radio address last week, the White House criticized him for turning over “his cards on bipartisanship.” Though Enzi’s office insists that he’s still trying to seek a bipartisan compromise, he indicated again at an Americans for Prosperity rally on Tuesday that he has given up striking a deal, saying that he was “sure” that reform was “going to fail“:
Enzi and John Barrasso, Wyoming’s delegation in the U.S. Senate, have been among the leaders of those opposing the cap and trade legislation, which Enzi referred to as a “cap and tax.” It is a “hidden tax” in which the government will print and sell certificates to companies who will pass the expense on to customers, Enzi said.
“They aren’t going to be able to say they passed it on, so you’re not going to know how much of that bill increase is because of higher energy costs and how much is because of taxes,” he said.
Congress won’t start serious work on cap and trade until after the health care bill is taken care of.
“That (the health care bill) is going to take awhile and I’m pretty sure it’s going to fail,” Enzi said.
President Obama will address a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, where he will “add more specifics to his vision for overhauling the nation’s health system.” According to a senior administration official, “the president’s goal is to be ‘much more prescriptive‘ than he has been, mapping out ways to merge proposals and ‘move Congress toward one single solution.’”
The White House is “holding intensive talks” with Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) about her “proposal to use the public plan as a fallback option.” In Snowe’s vision, “if prices don’t fall by a certain percentage and coverage doesn’t expand beyond 95% in a given state” after reforms have been implemented for a time, “the plan would call for adding a government insurance option to that state’s choices.”
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) said yesterday “that he would not vote for a health care bill that included a government-run option.” “There will be no shot at 60 votes, because I’m not the only one,” said Lieberman, adding that “if we start this out and three years from now a case can be made that the private market is not working effectively, I would support the public option.”
President Obama has decided to use the one-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers to begin pushing Congress for overhauls of the nation’s financial regulatory system. In a press briefing yesterday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told reporters that it’s crucial Congress move to pass reforms that will create “a much more stable, resilient, less vulnerable financial system.”
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has hired fewer law clerks than usual this year, fueling speculation that he may be preparing to retire. If the 89 year-old judge were to step down, it would “give President Barack Obama his second high court opening in two years.”
In May, Maine Gov. John Baldacci (D) signed legislation legalizing same-sex marriage in the state, saying “you can’t allow discrimination to stand when it’s raised to your level.” Opponents of same-sex marriage immediately vowed to pursue a public referendum to overturn the law. Maine election officials announced today that the ant-gay activists have succeeded in putting the law on the November ballot:
Election officials announced Wednesday that gay marriage foes surpassed the threshold of signatures necessary to put the state law on the November ballot, setting the stage for a furious, two-month campaign that’ll determine whether the number of states allowing same-sex nuptials shrinks to five.
Maine’s gay marriage law was supposed to go into effect on Sept. 12, but it was put on hold while the secretary of state’s office verified the number of signatures. With the signatures validated, Gov. John Baldacci on Wednesday signed a formal proclamation putting the gay marriage law to a statewide vote Nov. 3.
“I fully support this legislation and believe it guarantees that all Maine citizens are treated equally under our state’s civil marriage laws,” Baldacci said. “But I also have a constitutional obligation to set the date for the election once the secretary of state has certified that enough signatures have been submitted.”
On Labor Day, tens of thousands of people will be gathering for the coal-powered “Friends of America Rally” in Holden, WV. The point of the gathering is to rail against the Waxman-Markey clean energy legislation. It will feature right-wing guests such as Sean Hannity and Ted Nugent (who once ranted about killing Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton), and is being pushed by mountaintop-removal mining company Massey Energy. Last week, Massey CEO Don Blankenship even recorded a video inviting people to attend the rally, saying they would learn about how “environmental extremists and corporate America are both trying to destroy your jobs.” Watch it:
The sponsors for the rally are mostly regional oil, gas, and coal companies. However, the list also includes the Science and Public Policy Institute — a fringe climate-denial organization — and Verizon Wireless. CREDO Action recently launched a campaign calling on Verizon to drop its sponsorship. CREDO Political Director Becky Bond contacted Verizon’s Vice President of Corporate Communications Jim Gerace to inform him that that CREDO would be launching a campaign against Verizon. Gerace responded by disparaging Bond:
This is how our response is going over with the activists. Becky once lived in a tree for a while. At least now I know where the emails are coming from.
For the record, Bond never lived in a tree. Verizon’s vice president of federal government relations also sits on the board of the global-warming denier National Association of Manufacturers.
Blankenship recently gained attention because the Supreme Court rebuked him for buying West Virginia judges. He has called opponents of his coal “communists,” “atheists,” and “greeniacs” and labeled a cap and trade system a “Ponzi scheme.”
Verizon Wireless spokeswoman Laura Merritt told the Charleston Gazette that Verizon’s decision to sponsor the rally was made “at the local level to support the community.” “It wasn’t an effort to take a position on any particular issue,” she added. However, the pro-coal policies that Verizon is now sponsoring actually hurt communities in West Virginia. As the Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson has written:
The coal-dominated economy of West Virginia is a troubling example of the cruelty of coalocracy. Despite $118 million in coal-mining annual income, West Virginia has the nation’s lowest median household income, worst educational services, worst social assistance, the highest population with disabilities, and nearly a quarter of West Virginia children in poverty.
Interestingly, Verizon brags that “environmental stewardship is ingrained in Verizon’s heritage, and the company prides itself on having a positive influence on the environment in which it operates.” It has a whole page devoted to its “green initiatives.” Take action here and tell Verizon that if it really wants to be green, it needs to stop sponsoring global warming denial rallies.
The Lousiana newspaper the Advocate recently reported that Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) has been using tax dollars to fund helicopter trips to and from church. Now, a Lousianian pastor who heads a national interfaith group, the Interfaith Alliance, says Jindal should reimburse taxpayers for the trips:
The Rev. Welton Gaddy, president of the liberal Interfaith Alliance, sent a letter to the governor this week, saying Jindal should reimburse the state for the trips.
“It appears that you owe the people of Louisiana an apology and the treasurer of the state a reimbursement of at least $45,000 in addition to whatever money was spent in the period not covered by the Advocate’s investigation. No taxpayer money should have been used for your travel,” Gaddy wrote.
A spokeswoman for Jindal responded to Gaddy’s request by attacking the Interfaith Alliance rather than addressing the issue: “This political group opposes putting crosses up in honor of fallen policemen, has attacked the National Day of Prayer and advocates for same-sex marriage, so it’s not surprising that they are attacking the governor for accepting invitations to speak at Louisiana churches.” Last year, Jindal also came under scrutiny for taking state helicopters to attend Chamber of Commerce banquets, a fishing rodeo, and a halftime appearance at a basketball game.
Yesterday, the AFL-CIO drew “a line in the sand” when it outlined three elements any health care bill it supports must have: a public health insurance option, an employer mandate, and no taxation of health benefits. AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Richard Trumka told the press that this means the 11 million member-strong labor organization “won’t support the bill if it doesn’t have the public option in it.” Today, Trumka appeared on MSNBC and explained to Norah O’Donnell that the inclusion of these three elements marks the difference between “coming up with a bill that you have reform and actually having health insurance reform.” Watch it:
The AFL-CIO’s declaration comes at time when there is speculation that Obama may be willing to sacrifice the public option, with reports that “some administration officials welcome a showdown with liberal lawmakers … [for] Obama to show he is willing to stare down his own party to get things done.” Despite the political wrangling over the inclusion of a new public plan in the final health care bill, the public remains overwhelmingly in support of including such an option.
Liberal watchdog group Media Matters appears to be Fox News’s newest target. Karl Frisch explains that they caught a cameraman filming the organization’s headquarters today:
Earlier today a member of our research staff was on his way to lunch when he spotted a man filming the Media Matters office building from across the street.
When the staffer returned from lunch he spoke to one of our building’s great security guards and was told that the cameraman had initially been on our side of the street filming but they’d asked him to move. The cameraman identified himself as affiliated with “Fox TV” and said that his assignment was to take several exterior shots of the building from different angles.
On MSNBC today, Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) argued that if President Obama wanted to find a “bipartisan” health care solution, he should vow to veto any reform legislation that contains a public option or a co-op. “Let’s don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” said Gingrey. “Let’s remove the public option, and also anything that smacks of a public option, like a co-op. And indeed, I will veto that if it comes to my desk with that in there.” Watch it:
Gingrey claimed that the American people “are rejecting the public option,” but this isn’t supported by public opinion. Last month, SurveyUSA found that 77 percent of Americans support a “choice” between a government-run health care insurance option and private coverage. Gingrey also says that a bill without a public option would be “a good bill that we can all agree on,” but a significant amount of Democrats will not agree to a bill without a public option.
RNC Chairman Michael Steele has strongly condemned Democrats who have criticized the town hall protests by opponents of health care reform. Last month, Steele said:
We are not inciting anyone to go out and destroy anything. We’re not organizing the town halls; their senators are. But instead of focusing on the fact that people are genuinely concerned about what is going on, this administration has the arrogance, the arrogance to look down at my mother, to look down at my co-worker.
Yesterday at Howard University, Steele encountered his own “genuinely concerned” citizen — 23-year-old college grad/activist Amanda Duzak. Duzak stood up and interrupted Steele, arguing that “everyone in this country should have access to good health care” and cited the case of her own mother who died of cancer six months ago because she couldn’t afford her prescription chemotherapy medications. The audience applauded her.
Steele responded by chastising Duzak and accusing her of pulling antics to get on TV. “So people go out to town halls, they go to the community, and they’re like this. (SHAKES ARMS) It makes for great TV. You’ll probably make it tonight. Enjoy it.” The audience immediately went “Ohhh” and “Oooo.” Watch it:
On the Huffington Post, Dave Zirin also notes that Steele’s “effort to connect with young black students got off to a rather cringe-worthy start when right before the billed ’student dialogue’ two dozen white members of area young Republicans arrived to sit in the reserved first two rows of the packed room.”
Electric utility giant Duke Energy has quit the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) because of the coal group’s unethical opposition to President Obama’s clean energy reform agenda. For the last few years, Duke has been one of the most prominent industry voices calling for the regulation of industrial global warming pollution, but has also supported the efforts of various right-wing lobbying groups to prevent such action. ACCCE, in addition to promoting “clean coal” Christmas carols, employs right-wing public relations firms to paint the American Clean Energy and Security Act as a job-killing energy tax through whatever means necessary — even blatant forgery. According to the National Journal, Duke has finally recognized that the time has come to choose energy reform over old pollution:
Duke Energy left the American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy on Tuesday over differences with “influential member companies who will not support passing climate change legislation in 2009 or 2010,” the company said.
Duke Energy left the right-wing National Association of Manufacturers in May for similar reasons, but Duke’s CEO, Jim Rogers, still sits on the board of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — alongside right-wing climate deniers Don Blankenship, Harry Alford, and George Argyros — which is spending tens of millions of dollars to kill clean energy jobs.
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog Roll
