Blue Dogs are all heart (rant, sorry)

From an April 11 press release posted on Rep Herseth Sandlin's website:

Washington, DC – Today, members of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition, led by Representatives Frank Kratovil of Maryland and Travis Childers of Mississippi, announced their plans to introduce legislation that would require the federal government to cut non-security spending by nearly 6%, saving the American taxpayers over $400 billion.

May we ask the Blue Dogs why we are still be spending massive amounts of money to fight the Cold War?

Sure we need a military, sure we need to be ready. Why all the troops in Germany and South Korea? I mean, we need a strategic presence, but in this day and age we can move around the globe pretty quickly if we need to.

Clearly, everyone else has figured out how wasteful this is -- what's our problem?


Meanwhile, in the reality-based world:

The Working Poor Keep Getting Poorer

The Working Poor Families Project October 2008 study highlighted similar problems from 2002 through 2006. Titled "Still Working Hard, Still Falling Short: New Findings on the Challenges Confronting America's Working Families," it reported:

-- jobs paying poverty-level wages rose by 4.7 million;
-- low-income working families (earning less than double the Census definition of poverty) increased by 350,000;
-- below poverty-level jobs rose to 29.4 million and comprise 22% of all jobs compared to 19% in 2002;
-- most disturbing is that this happened during a period of economic growth, but at the same time wages haven't kept pace with the cost of living;
-- low income family numbers rose to nearly 9.6 million or 28% of the population;
-- children in them number 21 million;
-- 72% of low-income families with working adults in them performed the equivalent of one and one-quarter jobs - a far greater burden than in other OECD countries; and
-- income inequality is highest in New York; California is fourth, but all states are in a race to the bottom as conditions deteriorate everywhere, so all rankings are disturbing compared to the late 1990s.

Note the numbers above come BEFORE Wall Street almost destroyed our financial system, and the resulting waves of unemployment and foreclosures growing the ranks of the poor. (America's Dirty Little Secret, Leo Hindery, HuffPo):

... 100 million people, fully one-third of the entire U.S. population, are at or below "200% of the federal poverty line of $21,834 for a family of four", which is a needs-measure made lame by the fact that no family of four can actually comfortably live on such a low annual income.

Now, THAT's a national security issue. This is not sustainable.

Some shining city on a hill.

Those that loudly assert America's status as a "Christian nation" would do well to ponder why they are more concerned about promoting military might, government control of our private lives, and the death penalty, rather than than the poor and sick.

Speaking of Reagan's "shining city on a hill," the significantly less arrogant real quote is worth reflection as we ponder on how we want to react as a nation to the health care and financial issues of the day:

For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us; so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses . . .
-—John Winthrop, aboard the Arbella, 1630.

Another letter to Rep Herseth Sandlin

The Hon. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin
US House of Representatives
Washington, DC

January 2, 2010

Dear Rep. Herseth Sandlin

I read with interest your recent flyer sent to my home (my wife and I both received one!) concerning your admirable work supporting the Veteran's Administration and their excellent health care system. I applaud your efforts in this area – especially your efforts to inform recent veterans especially of the services available to them.

However, I would be very receptive to hear some news of your work supporting the health care for the rest of us. When I called in to South Dakota Public Radio and asked why ordinary South Dakotans don't also deserve affordable access to health care, your response included a long (quite condescending in my opinion) discussion on how we have a "special relationship" with our veterans and that we simply can't afford to provide health care to everyone. You also brought up the meme that rural health care is being shortchanged my Medicare. (This line of argument, run by protectors of the immoral status quo in health care such as you and Kent Conrad (D [sic] - North Dakota) has been strongly refuted by clear evidence (Ezra Klein, Wash. Post, 12/9/ (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/12/does_medicare_discriminate_aga.html).

(Dear readers: this exchange is here online at about 15:00 on the "tape") -- thank you SDPB)

Unless you turn around and support health care access, your re-election campaign may run into a major roadblock – the South Dakota Democrats who expect you to help people, not the health-care and health insurance industry. This business is one-sixth of our economy, and that is way too much.

America needs health care reform and will demand it. Even West River Republicans that I know are starting to get very impatient with Congress. South Dakota Democrats I know have gotten to the point that unless you do a major about-face on this issue, your base is likely to vote Republican for your House seat next fall to keep your inflexibility from holding up the Democratic majority in the House. The need for reform is that bad.

Stephanie Herseth Sandlin and the Blue Dogs are getting a clue?

Ryan Grim on Huffington Post:
Blue Dog Opposition To Public Option Fades In Whip Count

Blocking a public health insurance option is a relatively low priority for conservative Blue Dog Democrats, according to an ongoing survey of its members. The fading House opposition could clear the way for the public option to move through the chamber.

The Blue Dogs have been surveying their membership over the last several days; coalition co-chair Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.) has been collecting the responses. She listed the four top priorities that have emerged: Keeping the cost under $900 billion, not moving at a faster pace than the Senate, getting a 20-year cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office and addressing regional disparities in Medicare reimbursement rates.

So, the Huffington Post asked, the public option is not a top priority?

"Right, the group is somewhat split," she said.

My favorite quotable from the excellent Mr. Grim:

Blue Dogs and others representing low-competition areas see the disparity as unjust and want the rates increased. The push for more government spending goes against their core priority of fiscal discipline, but Blue Dogs have never been known for their ideological coherence.

I agree: it's very true ideological coherence is not the forte of either conservaDems or "out" Republicans. However, they do tend to excel in cognitive dissonance!

My note to Stephanie Herseth

Rep. Herseth Sandlin,

There's a reason 80 percent of Americans want a public option -- so we will have a choice when insurance companies abuse their government-protected oligopoly on health care. And the only way it will work is if it run as a government non-profit. If we require people to have health insurance, this is the only viable option.

Many countries have done this successfully, with no socialist takeover (notably Australia and France, which have both private/public systems that both do just fine).

I have to say that if you do not support a public option, which is what the country wants and the insurance companies don't, I this is the final straw. I might as well have a Republican representing me.

Compromising anything on the health bill for "bipartisanship's" sake is a cop-out to keep your Republican base. You will lose South Dakota's Dems if you do not work hard in the Blue Dog coalition to turn this debacle around and support a *real* public option. You know as well as I do that few, if any Republicans are going to vote for this thing in the end. We gain nothing by allowing the current profit-driven system to continue the way it has.