Republican Meltdown?

Cartoon from 11/07 by Mike Keefe, The Denver Post (web site, email)

In "Party Building," News For Real's Steve Pizzo writes,

We should all be well versed by now on the does and don’t of nation building. You help the moderates in the country, even if you don’t like them, in order to empower them and isolate the radical elements. Easily said. Hard to do. Democrats are now faced with the need for some serious party-building – isolating the radicals in the party by embracing the more levelheaded moderates in the party.

He's talking about reacing out to Republicans. Some at NewsTrust read this as advice the R's and found fault with the taxonomy errors.

I, on the other hand, took it as advice to the D's and while the family tree may be mislabeled, I think Pizzo makes a valid point that more and more of the moderating forces in the Republican party have been thrown out by voters and this will make it harder for Democrats. ( To this, I would add that many have retired voluntarily--while Lincoln Chaffee was voted out, Tom Davis and John Warner of VA retired.)

James Joyner points to a George Will column (both linked below)

After the 1936 election, when the Republican nominee against FDR, Kansas Gov. Alf Landon, carried only two states, both in New England (hence the jest, “As Maine goes, so goes Vermont”), there were 29 congressional seats in New England and Republicans still held 15. With Tuesday’s defeat of Connecticut Republican Chris Shays, Democrats hold all 22 New England seats. As recently as 1996, when New York had 31 House seats, Republicans held 14; after Tuesday, they have just three of 29. With the loss of the seat on Staten Island, Republicans will hold at most one urban seat.

Both Joyner and Will are conservative Republicans and thus qualified to offer advice to their party, except according to the judgment of those who want to exile anyone who expressed doubt about McCain/Palin--see Douthat in The Atlantic). That meltdown makes me wonder what happened to Reagan's Eleventh Commandment:

Thou shall speak no evil of a fellow Republican?

It harkens back to the time here in Virginia when I observed whippersnappers being rude to mountain Valley Republican and former cabinent member Rod Layman for refusing to support Ollie North.

And of course, even some New England R's think they need an even firmer message. See Peyser.

Palin Last Nail in Republican Coffin? Outside the Beltway - by James Joyner - Nov. 6, 2008

What Would Goldwater Do? Washington Post - by George Will -Nov. 5, 2008

Why The Grassroots Needs Elites - Ross Douthat Atlantic Monthly - Nov. 10, 2008

Republicans rebrandedBoston Globe - by James Peyser - Nov. 9, 2008

Obama Wins, Goode May Be Gone, Mitch Not Ditched

Mike Keefe (website, email) The Denver Post on what Obama has inherited (from 11/14/2008). Most of the immediate images were of Lincoln being happy.

When I voted at the Newport Rec Center this morning, it look like the Dems had conceded Giles County. They had no poll watchers as compared to two for McCain, although they did have a smattering of yard signs. BREF was writing in Matt Hepler against incumbent dem Rick Boucher for the 9th Distric Congressional seat. I got an email from Wise County the the teachers there were writing in the Green candidate. Both because of Boucher's stalwalt support of handouts for the coal industry and refusing to support roadblocks to MTR such as the Clean Water Protection Act.

Watched the election results tonight over at the Spanish House on a variety of sources. After two elections where it looked like Bush would lose, the networks were being cautious in projecting a win for Obama. CNN called PA for Obama at 7:40 p.m. despite the last minute attempt to portray Obama as wanting to bankrupt the coal industry, but that only gave Obama 102 electoral votes to McCain's 49. About an hour later, at 8:34 CNN called Ohio for Obama. He had already won Michigan and Minnesota. Ky went for McCain--no surprise, but the insipid candidate the dem party hacks put forward against Mitch McConnel failed to unseat him. (more on that later, after I check in with Betsy, who lives there. It looks like Virginia will go for Obama and at 10:00 CNN suddenly (it seems) projects Virginia the winner. To tell you the truth, we are a subdued group. Happy, but no ecstasy here. We leave and, ever the news junky, I go elsewhere to watch the McCain gracious concession speech (amid boos), Obama's victory speech and Comedy Central's take.

It looks like Tom Perriello may have ousted Virgil Goode. And the Franken-Coleman race is too close to call. Other interesting reading for election day: Nate Silver on the problem with exit polls. How Tim Robbins had trouble voting in NYC. The Fox meme on the Panthers plot to disrupt voting. Lieberman's further diffection from his former party. Forensicon's news release that a security firm lining up vendors to assist the Republican National Committee with consulting related to potential allegations of computerized voter fraud had contacted the Chicago computer forensics company last Thursday.

Where Do McCain and Obama Stand on Energy?

Cartoon by Nitrozac and Snaggy--the last panel of which was used to illustrate a blog post I wrote for the Daily Yonder, commissioned on the recommendation of Betsy Taylor. Nitrozaz is a.k.a. Liza Schmalcel (interview) and Snaggy is a.k.a. Bruce Evans.

The piece appeared 11/3/08 under the title, "How will Obama or McCain Power the Nation." I had the pleasure of the help of July Ardery (email) as my editor, who also selected the illustrations. Thanks also to my friend from NewsTrust, Chris Finnie, of Finnie communications, who gave me feedback on the rough draft and submitted and reviewed it at NewsTrust. Here's what I wrote...

*

Energy. Jobs. The environment. As Michael A. Livermore, Executive Director of NYU Law School's Institute for Policy Integrity, has written, "The challenge for the next administration is to find policies that produce simultaneous economic, environmental, and energy benefits, rather than force these policy goals to fight each other in a lose-lose battle."

Like other Americans, folks in rural areas are examining senators Barack Obama and John McCain in the light of fears about a faltering economy and with high gas prices a recent memory. Many worry that the U.S. has been delaying action on climate change, with possible dire effects on agriculture and forestry. And beyond the general concern about the carbon footprint of coal-fired electric plants, those of us in Appalachia face increasing destruction of our home places from mining as companies use mountaintop-removal to raze the mountains for coal -- what has been called “strip mining on steroids.”

During his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention on August 28, Obama explicitly linked energy, climate change and jobs, declaring his goal to "end our dependence on oil from the Middle East" in ten years:

"Washington's been talking about our oil addiction for the last thirty years, and John McCain has been there for twenty-six of them. In that time, he's said no to higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars, no to investments in renewable energy, no to renewable fuels. And today, we import triple the amount of oil as the day that Senator McCain took office.

"Now is the time to end this addiction, and to understand that drilling is a stop-gap measure, not a long-term solution. Not even close.

"As President, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power. I'll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America. I'll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars. And I'll invest 150 billion dollars over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy - wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and five million new jobs that pay well and can't ever be outsourced."

McCain, in his acceptance of the Republican nomination on September 5, did not make so specific a linkage between energy and jobs. Sen. McCain emphasized that he favors fuel economy and increased use of wind and solar energy but differentiated himself from Obama by supporting increased drilling and nuclear power.

"We'll attack the [energy] problem on every front. We'll produce more energy at home. We will drill new wells off-shore, and we'll drill them now."

"...We'll build more nuclear power plants. We'll develop clean-coal technology. We'll increase the use of wind, tide, solar, and natural gas. We'll encourage the development and use of flex-fuel, hybrid and electric automobiles.

"Senator Obama thinks we can achieve energy independence without more drilling and without more nuclear power. But Americans know better than that.

"We must use all resources and develop all technologies necessary to rescue our economy from the damage caused by rising oil prices and restore the health of our planet."

In the rural U.S., federal energy policy has special consequences, so let's look at where McCain and Obama stand on several key energy issues.

stated his opposition to the Yucca Mountain Repository (for spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste), which McCain supports.

On June 25, McCain highlighted his plans for nuclear energy when he announced his "Lexington Project," “[n]amed for the town where Americans asserted their independence once before.” McCain described his plan "to achieve strategic independence" from imported oil supplies by 2025, calling for 45 new nuclear power plants by 2030 with the ultimate goal of 100 new plants.

Offshore drilling: Sen. McCain strongly supports increasing offshore drilling for domestic oil. Obama had opposed offshore drilling, but in August modified his position, saying he would consider permitting new drilling operations in order to reach a compromise on energy legislation. (The 27-year-old moratorium on offshore drilling expired September 30, after no such compromise was reached.) Despite government assessments that have concluded that such drilling would not affect gasoline prices significantly "before 2030," recent polls have shown public support for drilling.

Coal technology: Both candidates say that they support "clean coal" technology, including carbon capture and storage, although the economic viability of such technology has not been demonstrated. Both candidates support “cap and trade ” to reduce carbon emissions contributing to climate change. Under this system, companies would be bound by emissions limits and also receive carbon credits; to exceed their emissions limits, companies would have to buy credits from other operations that have brought their pollution below federally mandated levels. Obama's plan would charge for all carbon credits, while McCain would give an unspecified number of free credits to companies. Some experts have criticized “cap and trade” saying that this system has failed in Europe and that a carbon tax would be more effective.

Wind and Solar: Both candidates support increased use of wind and solar power, although development of both technologies has been hindered by tight credit and falling prices for coal and natural gas. According to the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman, McCain has missed eight votes on tax credits for wind and solar while campaigning, thus allowing the credits to expire in December. Obama also has missed votes on this issue but according to Friedman voted for the credits on three occasions.

The next president, alone, will not be responsible for U.S. energy policy. Energy issues were contentious during the passage of the 2007 bill and nothing of significance has passed in 2008. And, as the Washington Post noted on October 31, the Bush administration is pushing to promulgate additional regulations before leaving office, which may tie the hands of the next president.

To explore further the candidates' positions on energy and climate change see "The Candidates and Climate Change: A Guide to Key Policy Positions," by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. The New York Times also has a good comparison of the candidates' energy policies, as does the Apollo Alliance.

The Right Latches Onto Obama and Coal

This dreck from the Stentorian, who says that Obama is powered by hate? (No, I am not going to boost his technorati score by linking.) Magarac was a mythic steelworking Paul Bunyan, whose story was recorded by the New Christy Minstrels on their 1964 Columbia Records release Land of Giants:

We're gonna build a railroad down to Frisco and back, and way down to Mexico. Who's gonna make the steel for that track? It's Joe... Magarac.

The top meme today started with claims of "hidden audio" at the SF Chronicle in which Obama said that his clean air regulation would bankrupt coal. Of course the audio was hiding in plain hearing. The coal industry weighed in that they were displeased.


Ben Smith at Politico has this excerpt in his post, "Bankrupting Coal?" which was not available at the paper's site (there was an audio tape and a video and partial transcripts on the rightward blogs that cherry-picked Obama's remarks.)

Barack Obama: I voted against the Clear Skies Bill. In fact, I was the deciding vote. Despite the fact that I’m a coal state. And that half my state thought that I had thoroughly betrayed them. Because I think clean air is critical and global warming is critical. But this notion of no coal, I think, is an illusion. Because the fact of the matter is is that right now we are getting a lot of our energy from coal. And China is building a coal-powered plant once a week. So what we have to do then is figure out how can we use coal without emitting greenhouse gases and carbon. And how can we sequester that carbon and capture it. If we can’t, then we’re gonna still be working on alternatives. But...let me sort of describe my overall policy. What I’ve said is that we would put a cap and trade policy in place that is as aggressive if not more aggressive than anyone out there. I was the first call for 100% auction on the cap and trade system. Which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases that was emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants are being built, they would have to meet the rigors of that market. And the ratcheted down caps that are imposed every year. So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel, and other alternative energy approaches. The only thing that I’ve said with respect to coal--I haven’t been some coal booster. What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as a ideological matter, as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it. That I think is the right approach. The same with respect to nuclear. Right now, we don’t know how to store nuclear waste wisely and we don’t know how to deal with some of the safety issues that remain. And so it’s wildly expensive to pursue nuclear energy. But I tell you what, if we could figure out how to store it safely, then I think most of us would say that might be a pretty good deal. The point is, if we set rigorous standards for the allowable emissions, then we can allow the market to determine and technology and entrepreneurs to pursue, what the best approach is to take, as opposed to us saying at the outset, here are the winners that we’re picking and maybe we pick wrong and maybe we pick right.

Jake Tapper over at ABC posted the same excerpt a bit later with his post, "Republicans to Try Burning Obama on Coal." He also reports on a robocall, giving a link to listen to the call. He explains the context of Obama's statement which provides valuable background for readers, as the noise over Obama's interview rises on the web. Tapper does not put Obama's position in context, however, nor write about how it compares with McCain's position.

And over at ThinkProgress, while he writes from the left, Brad Johnson lays out the facts behind his observation that both candidates have supported cap and trade in "McCain And Obama Criticize New Coal Plants — Right Wing Goes Insane."

On a different topic related to the election, in covering a Biden speech, Glenn Greenwald writes on the perversion of the meaning of Commander-in-Chief in "The Single Worst Expression in American Politics."

Obama's Aunt: Is This the October Surprise?

Photo from the April 2007 newsletter of Experience Corps Zeituni Onyango, former computer systems coordinator, Boston (no longer on line, except as a thumbnail.) Obama's aunt's profile said:

I joined Experience Corps because: I felt that I should help the children in my community. I love people and enjoy interacting with them. My friend had so many wonderful things to say about her work with Experience Corps. Also, I was idle, and this was a chance to get involved.

I know I'm making a difference when: I see the change in children I have worked with. All children are fine as long as they have a good foundation, but there is no foundation without literacy.

My favorite part of tutoring with Experience Corps is: Being able to help children succeed. As an older adult I feel I have much to give young people - as well as my peers. Experience Corps has given me that opportunity.

Working with students teaches me: Just how much I can impact the education of children in the school system. I learn different strategies and approaches to help children and also to improve myself. In addition, being an Experience Corps member has taught me that I can be a leader in my community.

October 30, the Murdoch-owned Times of London published its story, "Found in a rundown Boston estate: Barack Obama’s aunt Zeituni Onyango,"

The Times could not determine their immigration status and an official at Boston City Hall said that Ms Onyango was a resident of Flaherty Way but not registered to vote on the electoral roll. However, that Ms Onyango made a contribution to the Obama campaign would indicate that she is a US citizen.

The paper reported that she had been a computer programmer at Kenya Breweries in Nairobi and framed the story as one about the differing fate of Obama and his relatives in the U.S.. Murdoch's Fox News reran the same day as "Obama's Aunt Living in Rundown Boston Neighborhood." The mainstream Boston Globe also printed a piece. Then, Drudge, the Boston Herald, and blogs like The National Review's The Corner picked up the story to disparage Obama. One of the memes was that Obama expected the State to spread wealth around (as he told Joe the plumber) but the candidaste didn't even help his own relatives. (Ironic, to me, given Clarence Thomas's harsh comments about his sister Emma Mae Martin. As Jill Niebrugge-Brantley (now a scholar in residence at American University--email) wrote in a 1992 paper being used at George Mason University's Center for History and New Media:

Emma Mae Martin's life has been very different from her brother's but her brother has not failed to capitalize on her life. Thomas used Emma Mae as an example of the kind of person welfare made dependent: "'She gets mad when the mailman is late with her welfare check'" was one of the stock lines he used to describe his only sister as he worked a public speakers circuit (cited in Stansell, 1992: 241). But as Christine Stansell (1992:261) recounts and various news reporters discovered the truth about Martin "was quite different." She finished high school in Pin Point, married, had three children and began to raise them alone after her husband left her. "While Thomas was attending Yale, she was working two minimum-wage jobs to support the family. When the aunt who raised them suffered a stroke, Martin quit her paid job to take care of her and went on welfare" (Stansell, 1992:261). Those four years were the only time on welfare in Martin's life of paid labor and family duties. In October 1991, she was working as a cook; she had for much of her life picked crabmeat. Martin had met the fate of many poor women. She had also met the family responsibilities society expects "the woman" to handle. Her brother had not had to interrupt his schooling to take care of the aunt.

Thomas was where he was for many reasons. His own effort was one. The efforts of his aunt and sister were another. The efforts of the millions of black Americans who made the Civil Rights Movement was another. The particular efforts of Thurgood Marshall, the Supreme Court Justice, he is nominated to succeed, are another: Marshall was the Justice who argued Brown vs. Board of Education in 1956. No matter what his abilities might be, might have been, Thomas under segregation would not have been a Supreme Court nominee. In an open letter to Thomas, African-American jurist Leon Higginbotham (1992:5) writes, "I know that you may not want to be burdened by the memory of their sacrifices. But I also know that you have no right to forget that history."

Obama does not suffer from this kind of forgetting history, as witness his speech on race, given after he was being questioned for his association with his pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

But the plot thickens. This morning, AP ran its own story

Information about the deportation case was disclosed and confirmed by two separate sources, one a federal law enforcement official. The information they made available is known to officials in the federal government, but the AP could not establish whether anyone at a political level in the Bush administration or in the McCain campaign had been involved in its release.

Tim Dickinson in Rolling Stone looks back at who has talked to the two AP reporters who authored the story and speculates on the source.

When I read the story, it reminded me of the ACORN leak, also to the AP, back on October 16. And, of course, of the whole Valerie Plame affair. Perhaps this story, too, represented a leak, for political purposes, rather than the work of an enterprising reporter whose piece was picked up by those on the right. And I'm in good company for wondering. John Conyers came to the same conclusion in a letter he sent to Homeland Security czar Michael Chertoff, as printed in TPM:

I was startled to read in today's Associated Press that a "federal law enforcement official" has leaked information about an immigration case involving a relative of Senator Obama. Even more troubling, the AP reports that it could not "could not establish whether anyone at a political level in the Bush administration or in the McCain campaign had been involved," a very disturbing suggesting (sic) indeed. This leak is deplorable and I urge you to take immediate action to investigate and discipline those responsible.

I note that this is not the first leak of law enforcement information apparently designed to influence the coming Presidential election -- in recent weeks law enforcement sources leaked information about an alleged investigation of a community services organization, a leak that the Department of Justice informs me is now under investigation by the Department's Office of the Inspector General and Professional Responsibility.

Such leaks are deeply harmful to the political process, and the American people expect and deserve better from their government and its law enforcement agencies.

To me, the most eloquent assessment came from Duke (no last name provided) (email), who writes about immigration issues at his blog MigraMatters and also at The Sanctuary. In "Auntie Zeituni: A Symbol of Everything Wrong with Immigration Debate" Duke says,

Basically, the authorities have kept her under wraps until they could use her as a pawn for political gain.

And here is where I see her as symbol for the whole immigration debate.

The right wing has used 12 mil people as political pawns from the start of this current debate. If we look at everything they've done from passing HR4437, which they knew would never get through the Senate, to the failed CIR attempts, to the current fascists crackdowns...it's all been nothing more than political theater. played against the backdrop of real human suffering.

And now they wheel out Obama's Aunt.

They could have finished her case and deported her ages ago if that was in fact their intent. But it wasn't. They're intent was to keep her around to use as a pawn to whip up the base, and peel off independents.

And is that really any different from anything else that's been going on for the last few years to the rest of the migrant population?

Of course not.

They've been demonized, harassed and persecuted in an attempt to maintain political power.

All those on the right who have claimed to want to solve this "problem" with enforcement, and those who claim to want to "fix" the system, have in reality showed very little concern for accomplishing that task. They still believe that there's too much political gain from perpetuating the current situation. ..And Obama's aunt is a prime example of that. She's just another person of color stuck in a failed system, that doesn't work, who can be used at the appropriate time to beat down a political foe.

UPDATE: See the WaPo's November 2, 2008 story "Disclosure About Obama's Aunt May Have Violated Privacy Policy" by Spencer S. Hsu and Judy Rakowsky.

On November 3, 2008 Zachary Roth of TPM explained the danger of leaks, as outlined in a June 15, 2005 Fact Sheet on Confidentialitymemo from Joseph E. Langlois, Director, Asylum Division of the Office of Refugee, Asylum, and International Operations of the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services.

These regulations safeguard information that, if disclosed publicly, could subject the claimant to retaliatory measures by government authorities or non-state actors in the event that the claimant is repatriated, or endanger the security of the claimant's family members who may still be residing in the country of origin. Moreover, public disclosure might, albeit in rare circumstances, give rise to a plausible protection claim where one would not otherwise exist by bringing an otherwise ineligible claimant to the attention of the government authority or non-state actor against which the claimant has made allegations of mistreatment.

Roth writes,

In other words, the leak could well increase the chances that Onyango could be persecuted -- maybe even tortured -- for seeking asylum in the U.S. if she is ultimately deported to Kenya. Or that her family members could be similarly mistreated, whether or not she's deported. And thanks to that very danger, the leak could even bolster Onyango's asylum claim.

Roth says that Matthew Hoppock (email), a lawyer in Kansas City Mccrummen Immigration Law Group , noted the regulations in an email to TPMmuckraker, and argued that the leak has

made it more likely that if Ms. Onyango is removed to her home country, she will face persecution for having sought asylum in the United States.

Dan Kowalski (website), an Austin immigration lawyer who edits Bender's Immigration Bulletin, wrote an email to Roth that because of the leak Onyango now

has a good shot at reopening her case.

On November 7, Denise LaVoie of AP reported that due to press attention in Boston, Onyango had fled to Cleveland where her cousin, a minister, lives and that he had, on her behalf, contacted immigration attorney Margaret Wong.

Wong, a prominent immigration attorney and frequent political contributor to candidates of both parties, said Onyango believes someone leaked information about her immigration status to try to hurt Obama's candidacy.

"She's upset that people could just hurt her like that ... use her to try to hurt Barack," Wong said.

"She had never asked Barack for help. She just doesn't want to hurt him," she said....

Wong said she is exploring legal avenues, including filing a motion to reopen her case, or making a humanitarian appeal for her to stay.

"I will try to keep her here legally," Wong said.

Onyango has been sickly since her immigration status became public, and Wong said she would not immediately make her available to speak to a reporter.

The "S" word

Cartoon by Mike Keefe, Denver Post, 10/23/08)

Looking for Radio IQ (our local nrp talk station) on am radio on the way into work, ran into Fox and Limbaugh and their meme that Obama is a socialist. (Interestingly skipping that, according to the October 14 Frontline, the Federalist Society members on the Harvard Law Review were pleased with their appointments to the editorial board during his tenure) Then saw this cartoon from Mike Keefe in the Denver Post. Thought you'd enjoy it.

Fear an dLoathing in PA: The Odd Official Email about Obama

Facebook photo of Bryan Rudnick, whom I guessing is the same fellow who penned a campaign email against Obama. Either that or he shares an interest in rightwing Republicans and Florida politics.

The NYT's Jim Rutenberg reports October 24 that Jewish voters in PA are receiving Rudnick's email sponsored by the Pennsylvania Republican Party’s “Victory 2008” committee falsely alleging that Obama

taught members of Acorn to commit voter registration fraud

It also equates a vote for the Democrat with the

tragic mistake...[of those who ignored the warning signs in the 1930’s and 1940’s.

Rudick, BTW, is the CEO and President of the PR firm Alliance Strategies Group, whose other clients include Katherine Harris (an opponent of separation of Church and State). He was her fourth campaign manager during during her ill-fated run 2006 for Senate. His firm also has done pr for Standing for Israel by Christians United for Israel’s Executive Director David Brog's with a forward by Pastor John Hagee. The neo-con Republican Jewish Coalition mailed that book out to rabbis in early 2007. Rudnick also ran the unsuccessful campaign of Hal Valeche for Republican nomination for the Florida District 16 Congressional seat.

On 10/25, Brett Lieberman of The Forward provides Rudnick's complete email here:

Dear Fellow Jewish Voter: In the 5,769 years of our people, there has never been a more important time for us to take pro-active measures in order to stop a second Holocaust. Israel faces immeasurable threats from its neighbors, most especially Iran. The global community and the United Nations are strongly influenced by many Muslim nations and have therefore turned their backs to Israel and the Jewish community. We did not write this letter to scare you, but rather, to help you make an informed decision on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008. When voters elect a new President in less about two weeks, it is imperative that the Jewish community elects the one man who understands the challenges facing Israel and the Jewish people—John McCain. John McCain has always been a friend to Israel and the Jewish people and as leaders of the community throughout the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, we want to remind you of the importance of your vote to the future of our Jewish homeland. John McCain has never wavered on the need to keep Jerusalem the capital of a Jewish Israel. He has even vowed to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.

More importantly, John McCain understands that radical members of the Islamic faith from Hamas, Hezbollah, Muslim Brotherhood and other extremist groups seek to do us harm no matter how we try to appease them. He will not cave into the pressures to divide OUR homeland as a result of threats from people whose agenda is deleterious to the fate our people. John McCain is an American hero who has selflessly served the United States since he was 18 years old. America and Israel need John McCain as President of the United States NOW MORE THAN EVER. What do we really know about Barack Obama?

He has served in the Illinois legislature before joining the U.S. Senate in 2006 having sponsored no meaningful legislation in either body.
· Prior to beginning his legislative career, he served as a corporate lawyer and community activist. · During his days of community activism, he taught members of ACORN to commit voter registration fraud. · He associated with a known terrorist, William Ayers, who thought the terrorists didn’t do enough on 9/11. Later, Obama used Ayers’ home o launch his Senate campaign, but referred to Ayers as “just a guy in the neighborhood”. If a known terrorist lived in your neighborhood, would he just be a “guy in your neighborhood” or would you be calling the FBI to have him removed?

For 20 years, Obama and his wife attended the church of Rev. Jeremiah Wright who called Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan “one of the greatest minds of the 20th Century.” (National Press Club Speech, 4/28/08) · Farrakhan said Obama is the “hope of the entire world that America will change and be made better.” (Associated Press, 2/25/08) Obama and Iran Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says: Israel is “a stinking corpse” and should be “wiped off the face of the earth.” (The Jerusalem Post, 5/8/08)

Ahmadinejad says: “The real Holocaust is what is happening in Palestine where the Zionists avail themselves of the fairy tale of Holocaust as blackmail and justification for killing children and women.” (The Jerusalem Post, 5/22/06) Obama says: HAMAS and Hezbollah have “legitimate claims.” (David Brooks, Op-Ed, “Obama Admires Bush,” The New York Times, 5/16/08)

Obama says: “I would” when asked if he would be willing to meet separately, without precondition, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea. (CNN/YouTube Democrat Presidential Candidate Debate, Charleston, SC, 7/23/07)

The World on Obama

The Wall Street Journal said Barack Obama’s foreign policy “could strengthen Mr. Ahmadinejad.” (Jay Solomon, “Obama’s Foreign-Policy Pledge Sparks Criticism from Rivals,” Wall Street Journal, 3/26/08)

“We don’t mind - actually we like Mr. Obama. We hope he will (win) the election…” HAMAS Political Advisor Ahmed Yousef (Mosheh Oinounou, “A Hamas Problem For Obama?” Fox News’ “Cameron’s Corner” Blog, foxnews.com http://app.streamsend.com/c/1659811/6/1mnp7WD/aDmL?redirect_to=http://foxnews.com/?utm_source%3Demail_marketing_system%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_content%3D1659811%26utm_campaign%3DBarack%2520Obama%2520is%2520Dangerously%2520Unprepared , 4/16/08) “The four years ahead are far too critical for global security to place the presidency of the United States in the hands of a leader whose campaign is leaving us with more questions than answers.” (Former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Danny Ayalon, Op-Ed, “Who Are You, Barack Obama?” The Jerusalem Post, 1/23/08) o Jesse Jackson said of Barack Obama’s foreign policy, “Jackson believes that, although ‘Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades’ remain strong, they’ll lose a great deal of their clout when Barack Obama enters the White House.” (Amir Taheri, Op-Ed, “The O Jesse Knows,” New York Post, 10/14/08) Do you really think that the Jewish community’s interests could be in line with that of William Ayers, Rev. Jeremiah Wright or Louis Farrakhan? Do you really think that Barack Obama has shown proper judgment by associating with such individuals? Can America, Israel and the Jewish Community really rely on someone as dangerously inexperienced as Barack Obama? NO! Jewish Americans cannot afford to make the wrong decision on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008. Many of our ancestors ignored the warning signs in the 1930s and 1940s and made a tragic mistake. Let’s not make a similar one this year! As leaders of Pennsylvania’s Jewish Community, we strongly URGE you to VOTE for John McCain for President of the United States—a true friend of Israel and the Jewish Community. Thank you.

Sincerely yours,

I. Michael Coslov
Mitchell Morgan
The Honorable Sandra Schultz Newman

Paid for by Republican Federal Committee of PA - Victory 2008

*

After Rutenberg made several calls for comment, party leaders on October 24

said it had been released without their authorization and that they had fired the strategist who helped draft it, Bryan Rudnick.

Michael Barley, the communications director for the Pennsylvania state Republican Party told him

There were some points that were accurate, there were two that we cannot substantiate, however; as a result of them we’ve let him go....There are points that could have been made and he touched on some of them, but he definitely went a little bit farther than the facts would support.

After a suggestion by Obama spokesman that the Republicans send an email to the list
"debunking thier own lies" Barley told Rutenberg that the party would send a correction.

We apologize and that was definitely not something we authorize.

One of the signers of the letter, attorney and former State Supreme Court Justice Sandra Schultz Newman (email, website), told the reporter earlier on October 24 that she had helped to write the letter. She passed the telephone to Mr. Rudnick who said the e-mail was sent to 75,000 voters in Pennsylvania. he asked that other questions be e-mailed to him, but failed to respond to an email.

Contacted after the interview with Barley, Rudnick claimed to have had approval for the letter from officials at several levels. He said that he was dispatched from Florida where he usually works to Pennsylvania to help with Jewish outreach. Rutenberg reports that he was unable to reach Barley again regarding the refutation by Rudnick.

And in other news, Politico's Lisa Lerer reports "Courts continue to rule against Republicans."


UPDATE:

Newman apologized on October 27.


On October 30, a fellow Brandeis alum, in reflecting on the PA email, describes Rudnick's bringing of Charleston Heston to that campus thus:

Ridiculous security procedures had to be enacted to keep students safe and Rudnick, in my opinion, turned this into a political launch pad to ingratiate himself with right wing power brokers.

The security procedures and other “hurdles”–such as booking the right room–were turned by Rudnick as an us vs. the liberal college establishment battle which many eager right winger ate up. This article is one of many examples of the spin Rudnick was putting on this. Then again, it seems from what I read Rudnick was great at baiting people with outrageous comments and the playing the victim and getting PR for it. I’m not saying I agree with the Student Senate over reaction in that or any other case involving Rudnick, but I am saying he’s very experienced in making ourageous comments and the playing the victim (though luckily in the PA case, he can’t play the victim).

Yes, Virginia, there was no 6'4" Black man (and a bit about the C'ville Fall Festival)

Illustration of The Bogeyman from Chapter 1 of the d20 Menace Manual by J.D. Wiker, Eric Cagle and Matthew Sernett (Wizards of the Coast, 2003)

In one of the oddest sidebars to the election, a Pennsylvania McCain campaign worker Ashley Todd, 20, has recanted her story to the Pittsburgh police that she was robbed at an ATM in Bloomfield the night of October 22 and that the suspect began beating her after seeing a John McCain bumper sticker on her car, then cut a backwards letter "B" in her cheek.

Fox News Executive Vice President John Moody, a native of that city, had written yesterday,

this incident could become a watershed event in the 11 days before the election.

If Ms. Todd’s allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee.

That struck me as an odd denial of racism. Why would an act, even if committed, by a black thug, reveal to folks that they don't know enough about one of the candidates. Moody went on to write,

If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting.

For Pittsburgh, a city that has done so much to shape American history over the centuries, another moment of truth is at hand.

That seems hyperbole which shifts the blame. If McCain is associated with race-baiting, why not for for Sarah Palin's playing to the base (pun intended) with racially tinged innuendos warning that Obama would "pal around with terrorists." And while I'm at it, let me say, that I also dislike the way Palin's and McCain's comments on William Ayers smack of red-baiting.

At least Moody's piece is better than some of the screed from the right, as run down in today's The Atlanta Journal-Constitution post "The aftermath of Ashley Todd’s story" by Jay Bookman (email), a columnist and deputy editorial page editor, specializing in foreign relations, the environment and state and local politics.

In fairness, though, Bookman also should have credited conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who today has the pleasure of writing, "I told you so." Although Malkin made the divisive comment on October 22 that most fake hate crimes were "perpetrated by liberals," she went on record as saying that the Todd incident "smells awfully weird," acknowledging that

there have been some shameful ...[fake hate crimes] on our side of the aisle as well.

Today, she instructs her readers,

Final lesson: Trust your instincts. Use your brains. Stop jumping every time Drudge hypes something in Armageddon-sized font.

She adds a caveat to those who don't share her political persuasions:

And those of you on the left who are now so interested in debunking despicable hate crimes might show a little more skepticism yourselves next time when similar narratives hit the news pages involving politically correct hoaxers who share your politics.

Skepticism is always good advice. I'd like to see it throughout the political spectrum. And I'll hope that Ms. Malkin holds to the same standard when she is helping to circulate memes which accord with her own point of view.

In other news, I am in Charlottesville this weekend staying at Rob and Sue's to attend the Charlottesville Fall Festival. Featured band is Crowfoot with caller Nils Fredland
Adam Broome (guitar, vocals), Jaige Trudell (fiddle), and Nicholas Williams (flute, accordion). Also staying with Rob and Sue are long time NC dancer Rod Edens, as well as Keith Gillis and Leigh Partington. Below you will find a photo Doug Plummer posted at Flickr of Crowfoot playing at the Scout House in Corcord MA.





UPDATE: On October 28, Anil Dash (email) "What Sarah Palin Is Saying," an insightful take on how language is used.

Republicans sue Brunner. Again.

Illustration for "Block the Vote" in Rolling Stone.

Mark Niquette (email) of the Columbus Dispatch reports that the Ohio Secretary of State is under seige by Republicans in this battle ground state. Meanwhile, today Rolling Stone published a new piece on voter theft by Robert Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast, "Block the Vote," which I submitted today (despite its October 3o byline) to NewsTrust with a successful solicitation for reviews.

Meanwhile, Lyle Denniston (email) over at SCOTUSblog reports today in " Court blocks Ohio voter match order, that the Supreme Court denied the Ohio Republican Party's attempt to uphold a federal judge’s order

that would have required Ohio election officials to set up new procedures to verify voter registration across the state in the weeks before the Nov. 4 balloting. The unsigned (”Per Curiam”) order is here. The order blunts an effort by the Ohio Republican Party to gain access to registration data that would enable it to challenge voters’ eligibility at polling places.

The state GOP had complained that the Ohio Secretary of State had violated her duty, under federal election procedures law, to share with county election boards the lists of voters whose names in a voter registration database do not match data in the state’s drivers’ license files. The GOP argued that the secretary of state had put a stop to required efforts to pass along the non-matching data so that local election officials could deal with it. Lack of matches could be the basis for challenges to individual voters.

The Supreme Court said it was not expressing any opinion on whether the state official had violated any duty under federal law. But, it said, it was not persuaded that the federal law gives a private party — like the state GOP — a right to go to court to enforce those provisions in the Help America Vote Act.

For further details, see his post of October 16, "Ohio seeks to block voter challenge ruling."

The Last 2008 Presidential Debate

Cartoon (10/18/08) by Matt Bors.

As conservative James Joyner of Outside the Beltway said in his analysis this morning, McCain is getting crushed in the polls.

Here's the transcript for the final debate tonight.

And in a bit of intrigue, ABC's Jake Tapper reports that the Obama team accidentally released his "talking points."

This is John McCain’s last chance to turn this race around and somehow convince the American people that his erratic response to this economic crisis doesn’t disqualify him from being president.

Not sure what the surprise is that Obama would be saying this.

And in Ohio, Cleveland's Plain Dealer's Reginald Fields reports that voter registration remains a problem in 2008, as a battle wages between the Republicans and the the Democratic Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner:

More than 200,000 Ohioans who registered to vote this year for the first time or updated their voting information since Jan. 1 could be affected by the latest court ruling requiring the state to set up a new registration verification system by Friday, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said. Brunner said she would comply with the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling late Tuesday but said she is deeply concerned that the decision is a veiled attempt at disenfranchising voters. The court's 9-6 opinion, written by Judge Jeffrey Sutton, suggested that voters whose driver's license number or Social Security number does not exactly match those found on databases maintained by the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles or Social Security Administration could be required to use provisional ballots instead of conventional ones.

Kill the Messenger: The Hubbub over Gwen Ifill

While the National Review "works the refs" complaining that the host of the VP debate set for tomorrow has, gasp, written a book about politics, McCain told CNN's Juan Carlos Lopez that while the situation concerned him he was sure Ifill would be professional.

So why is he concerned? As Ifill said to Howard Kurtz at the WaPo on September 3,

no one's ever assumed a white reporter can't cover a white candidate.

O v. McC: The Debate

"The First Debate" which Nate Beeler says had to draw for the Sunday Washington Examiner before the debate even took place.

Obama's September 26 debate with McCain reminded me of a therapy session, as moderator Jim Leher told the men to

talk to each other about it. We've got five minutes. We can negotiate a deal right here.

And then to Obama,

...Do you have something directly to say, Senator Obama, to Senator McCain about what he just said?

...Say it directly to him.

...Say it directly to him.

...I'm just determined to get you all to talk to each other. I'm going to try.

Robert Dreyfuss, who writes for The Nation, was not impressed with Obama, especially with regard to foreign policy, writing that

he utterly blew a chance to draw a stark contrast with John McCain on America's approach to the world.

Lose your house, lose your vote?

September 10, the Michigan Messenger reported on its telephone interview with Macomb County Republican party chairman James Carabelli regarding "election challengers."

We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses.

Today Democracy now has an interview with Jefferson Morley, National Editorial Director of the Center for Independent Media, which sponsors the Messenger.

WSJ: Ohio Republican Election Tacts: "Nothing is off the table."

On September 5, the current Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, Democrat, issued a directive that undeliverable mail was not sufficient to remove voters from the rolls saying she considered the 2006 law unconstitutional and also that every challenged voter must be notified and given a chance to attend a hearing before Election Day.

Kevin DeWine, a Republican in the Ohio State House of Representatives had authored the law requiring that a piece of registered mail with election information be sent to every registered voter in the state--with those whose mail is returned required to show id or vote on a provisional ballot. Voting rights groups say the practice amounts to “vote caging” in which legitimate voters are removed from election rolls because their residency is questioned.

According to Politico, while Republicans are complaining, they have not yet decided to file suit. DeWine, deputy chairman of the Ohio Republican Party, told the Wall Street Journal's Amy Merrick (email) for her story today
"nothing is off the table" in terms of election tactics, but he declined to be more specific.

Merrick outlines what happened in the 2004 election in Ohio, when election proactices were controlled by Republican Ohio Secretary of State Blackwell:

the state Republican party used returned mail to challenge the registrations of 35,000 new voters, most of whom lived in urban, heavily Democratic areas.

Not many voters were successfully removed, because "there was so much litigation and public backlash," said Teresa James, a lawyer in Ohio for Project Vote, a nonprofit voter-registration group. But she said some voters likely were intimidated by the challenges and stayed home.

Andrew Sullivan on Sarah Palin

Here's a transcript of Sarah Palin's speech at the Republican Convention from September 3. Now Rasmussen finds that Palin is more popular than either McCain or Obama. After linking to an an analysis by Mark Blumenthal, The Atlantic's Andrew Sulllivan opines today over at his blog, the Daily Dish:

My view is that the GOP is now like Wile E Coyote about half a mile off the cliff suspended in mid-air. Yes, the speech was a great moment: a former sportscaster knows how to deliver a speech written for her. But we have two months to get to know her, if she's still on the ticket in November.

I think she'll still be on the ticket, but it will be interesting to see if her popularity holds up, or if Troopergate and her polarizing tactics become a drag on McCain's efforts to win the White House.

Sarah, Who?

Photo by Jim Wilson accompanied "Palin Disclosures Raise Questions on Vetting," by Elisabeth Bumiller in the September 1, 2008, New York Times.


The Governor of Alaska for less than two years and the mayor of a town of about 5-7K folks before then. This is who McCain picks to take over the presidency?

In "Palin Disclosures Raise Questions on Vetting," Elisabeth Bumiller, in the September 1, 2008, New York Times writes

an F.B.I. official said Monday the bureau did not vet potential candidates and had not known of her selection until it was made public.

In doing so, she refutes the claims made in "Palin Made an Impression From the Start: Fellow Maverick Survived McCain's Thorough Vetting Process, Aides Say," where Dan Balz and Robert Barnes of the Washington Post acted as front page stenographer to the McCain campaign on August 31, writing,

Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager and the person at the point of the vice presidential process, said there was no abrupt change of course in the final hours. Nor, he said, was Palin selected without having gone through the full vetting process that was done for other finalists. That process included reviews of financial and other personal data, an FBI background check and considerable discussion among the handful of McCain advisers involved in the deliberations.

"Nobody was vetted less or more than anyone in the final stages, and John had access to all that information and made the decision," Davis said. "It's really not much more complicated than that."

It's interesting and damning, if true, that McCain wasn't truthful about an FBI vetting. Also that he didn't get his choice of running mate who would have been Lieberman or Ridge, both supposedly disqualified as being pro-choice.

As I mentioned at Newstrust, the story raises some questions in my mind, as there are so many anonymous sources, other than the Alaskans, who are willing to go on record. And what Bumiller fails to tell you or credit, in typical NYT fashion, is that in "Choice stuns state politicians," Anchorage Daily News reporters Sean Cockerham and Wesley Loy published interviews with many of the same folks on August 29 and that, although fellow Republicans, the three quoted by the NYT, all are her political adversaries. From that story,

Lyda Green said she thought it was a joke when someone called her at 6 a.m. to give her the news. "She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president?" said Green, a Republican from Palin's hometown of Wasilla. "Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?"

Green, who has feuded with Palin repeatedly over the past two years, brought up the big oil tax increase Palin pushed through last year. She also pointed to the award of a $500 million state subsidy to a Canadian firm to pursue a natural gas pipeline that is far from guaranteed.

Former House Speaker Gail Phillips, a Republican political leader who has clashed with Palin in the past, was shocked when she heard the news Friday morning with her husband, Walt.

I said to Walt, "This can't be happening, because his advance team didn't come to Alaska to check her out," Phillips said. Phillips has been active in the Ted Stevens re-election steering committee and remains in close touch with Sen. Lisa Murkowski and other party leaders, and she said nobody had heard anything about McCain's people doing research on his prospective running mate. "We're not a very big state. People I talk to would have heard something."

And while the local article could not get an interview with another NYT interviewee, it noted that Ruedrich, that Palin's complaints against him

before she became governor led to the state fining him on ethics charges.

BTW, Bumiller co-authored another piece August 30 with Michael Cooper on why Lieberman was deleted from the veep list.

Premier Election Solutions (aka Diebold) Acknowledges its Voting Machines Can Drop Votes

What good is a presidential election, if the votes are miscounted? This question arose in 2000 results for Florida and 2004 results for Ohio. And it's arising again is the 2008 election nears.

August 21, the Washington Post's blog feature "The Hidden Campaign" included aMary Pat Flaherty's post, "Ohio Voting Machines Contained Programming Error That Dropped Votes." Gordon seemed to take at face value a claim by Premier Election Solutions (formerly known as Diebold) when its spokesman, Chris Riggall, said

I can't provide odds on whether droppe votes were not recognized...but based on what we know about how our customers run their elections and reconcile counts we believe any results not uploaded on election night would have been caught when elections were being certified.

McClatchey's investigative reporter Greg Gordon (email, bio and article archive,) however, noted in his August 31 story, "Warning on voting machines reveals oversight failure,"

Voting experts reacted skeptically to the company's assertion that election workers' routine crosschecks of ballot totals would have spotted any instances where its servers failed to register some precinct vote totals when receiving data from multiple memory cards.

Gordon also details the lack of oversight in the machine's integrity.

Premier's products were declared "qualified" under a voluntary testing process overseen from the mid 1990s until 2005 by the National Association of State Election Directors.

Computer scientists, some state officials and election watchdog groups allege that the NASED-sponsored testing system was a recipe for disaster, shrouded in secrecy, and allowing equipment makers to help design the tests.

Premiere/Diebold had acknowledged in letter August 19 to Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, that a 10-year-old error in logic for the Global Election Management System(GEMS) can cause votes to disappear while being electronically transferred from memory cards to a central tallying point. The system, used in its touch screen and optical scan machines, is supposed to save information from one card at a time to be counted in order as the cards are read by a database. Instead, incoming votes, within milliseconds, can displace earlier votes waiting in the electronic line before they are counted. Company president Dave Byrd wrote,

We are indeed distressed that our previous analysis of this issue was in error.

Election officials in Ohio, one of 34 states to use the machines, complained following the March primary. As recently as May, the company had said the problem stemmed from anti-virus software. It also briefly said the mistakes could be attributed to human error. Brunner has said no Ohio votes were lost because the nine Ohio counties that found the problem caught it before primary results were finalized. Premier and Brunner are in an ongoing court battle over the voting machines and whether Premier violated its contract with the state and warranties. Half of the Ohio's 88 counties use the GEMS system. Brunner has been a vocal critic of electronic voting machines.

August 19, the company also issued a nationwide alert with recommended actions to the approximately 1,750 jurisdictions which use the flawed system The problem is most likely to affect larger jurisdictions that feed many memory cards to a central counting database rapidly. While both Virginia and Maryland use the GEMS system, Virginia does not relay its votes to a central counting point, while Maryland does. The mistake is not immediately apparent and would have to be caught when elections officials went to match how many memory cards they fed into a central database against how many show as being read by that database. Each card carries a unique marker.

The Post dutifully reported that Primiers' problem cannot be fixed by sending out a coding fix to its customers because changes to systems must go through the Election Assistance Commission and take two years on average for certification and approval. But, as Gordon wrote,

The federal Election Assistance Administration, created in 2002, took over the testing responsibility in 2005, but has yet to certify a single voting machine. (My emphasis added.)

The help America Vote Act has resulted in $1.5 billion worth of voting equipment sold nationwide since 2003. But, John Washburn, a software tester in the Milwaukee suburb of Germantown, told Gordon, that he predicts most all of the machines will have to be replaced in a process he likened to the early 20th Century Teapot Dome scandal.

as just the epitome of how government money goes down a rat hole.

McCain's Corporate Welfare

Cartoon by Mark Hurwitt (website, email) from the September 13, 2007 Black Commentator.


June 26, 2008m the Center for American Progress detailed how Senator John McCain’s proposed $45 billion in tax cuts to the 200 largest U.S. companies would double the Bush cuts. And of those, eight would each receive over $1 billion a year: Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhillips Co., Bank ƒƒof America Corp., AT&T, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Microsoft Corp.

So, I wasn't surprised to read Michael O'Brien's August 15 piece in The Hill, "Top CEOs give 10 times more to McCain than to Obama."

The presumptive GOP nominee has received $208,200 from the chief executive officers of the 100 biggest Fortune 500 corporations, according to a review of campaign finance reports. Obama has taken in $20,400 from the same group of people.

Of the top eight, only Berkshire Hathaway's CEO Warren Buffet has given exclusively to Obama. And what's interesting is how much the giving gap between the parties has grown.

In 2004, the difference between the Republican and the Democratic candidates was much less pronounced in terms of Fortune 100 donations. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) nearly kept pace with President Bush.

Among the same 100 individuals, the vast majority of whom were in their current positions in 2004, Kerry raised nearly three-quarters of what Bush did. Kerry brought in $74,500 from the business leaders, while Bush raised $103,200.

Also interesting is that while

42 of the CEOs donated to ..[the 2004 Bush] campaign; only 29 have donated to McCain — the president’s would-be Republican successor has managed to bring in more than twice as much than Bush did.

That uptick has been largely due to the fact that several donors have contributed large additional sums to McCain’s Victory 2008 political action committee (PAC).

WSJ: McCain's Health Plan embraces troubled model

Cartoon of July , 2004 by Tim Dolighan (site, email, bio)


Currently, the National Academy of Sciences is looking at the health repercussions of lacking health insurance coverage, but back in 2004, it noted,

Although America leads the world in spending on health care, it is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not ensure that all citizens have coverage.

So on June 2, I was interested to read the Wall Street Journal article "McCain's Free-Market Health Plan Would Boost Role of High-Risk Pools," by Laura Meckler and Anna Wilde Mathews. (The article is only available as a synopsis, if you're a non-subscriber, unless you go grab a copy at the library. I happened to run across the article when I looked at the actual paper, courtesy of our local bakery and coffee shop, Bollos. )

The lede:

McCain derides government-run health care, but the high-risk pools in existence now require a heavy dose of government intervention.

Although the Journal would be expected to be sympathetic to Mr. McCain, it actually pointed out that the plan has more problems than those of his Democratic rivals. While all would continue to rely on insurance companies to shore up the system, McCain proposes a federally funded Guaranteed Access Plan to establish the high-risk health insurance pools for individuals who cannot obtain private coverage because of pre-existing medical conditions or no previous group coverage. (which doesn't, by the way, take into account the higher premiums charged those with previous group coverage who join COBRA plans to replace their group plans.)

Take a look at the observation in the WSJ article by those who operate such plans. Douglas Stratton, chair of the National Association of State Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans, said,

There's no way you can ever charge a premium that's going to pay the cost of this population.

Sara Collins is an assistant vice-president at Commonwealth Fund,
a private foundation "working towards a high-performance health system." She told the Journal, that the risk pool plans

tend not to work particularly well. States have really struggled to finance these adequately.

According to the Journal, fewer than 200,000 U.S. residents currently are enrolled in high-risk health insurance pools, which charge "high premiums and sometimes sharply restrict benefits." In 2006, premiums provided 61% of the funds for high-risk health insurance pools, with most of the remainder of the funds -- about $722 million, or an average of $3,800 per enrollee -- provided by state governments.

McCain senior policy advisor, Douglas Holtz-Eakin said that McCain's proposal would require $7 billion to $10 billion from the federal government to fund the high-risk health insurance pools. Others maintain that the estimate is "nowhere near enough, particularly given the large number of people with pre-existing conditions who would need this help if employers send their workers out to the open market."

It makes a gal wonder what happened to the fiscally conservative maverick?

*

McCain's proposal would also replace a tax break for employees who receive health insurance from employers with a refundable tax credit of as much as $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families for the purchase of private coverage. As health care analyst Robert Laszewski noted back in February,

With the average cost of employer-provided family health insurance at $12,000 a year a $5,000 tax credit will often come up way short.

The candidate had unveiled his current iteration in a speech in Tampa on April 29. New York Times reporters Michael Cooper and Kevin Sack covered the topic April 3o, in "Federal Money in Health Care Plan From McCain:"

His proposal to move away from employer-based coverage was similar to one that President Bush pushed for last year, to little effect. And his call for expanding coverage through market-based competition is in stark contrast to the Democrats’ proposals to move toward universal health care coverage, with government subsidies to help lower-income people afford their premiums.

McCain's health care plan also allows insurers to operate across state lines. As noted by LA Times reporter Rong-Gong Lin II in "McCain’s health plan fails her test," on March 30, 2008, Elizabeth Edwards voiced criticism of McCain's proposal when she spoke at the annual meeting of the Association of Health Care Journalists on March 29.

Although mosts attention was devoted to her statement that "Neither one of us would be covered by his health policy," (referring to her breast cancer and his melanoma), she especially criticized McCain’s provision to allow companies to sell health insurance across state lines, which his campaign website justifies as offering consumers more options and thus promoting competition.

Edwards countered that the plan would allow insurers to move their headquarters to states in which consumer protection laws are weak. Giving as an example how many credit card companies are based in Delaware, where the state’s laws are more accommodating to corporate interests, she said,

Hard-fought state-by-state protections would be lost. They mask this proposal as a cost-saving technique. This is giving insurance companies a pass.

According to the LA Times, McCain's cheif policy advisor, Holtz-Eakin, said that

Edwards’ comments were disappointing and that they revealed she did not understand the comprehensive nature of the senator’s proposal.

Edwawrds makes her rebuttal in a guest post April 1 at ThinkProgress:

I freely admit that I am confused about the role of overnight funding in repurchase markets in the collapse of Bear Stearns. What I am not confused about is John McCain’s health care proposal. Apparently Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a senior policy advisor to McCain, thinks I do “not understand the comprehensive nature of the senator’s proposal.” The problem, Douglas, is that, despite fuzzy language and feel-good lines in the Senator’s proposal, I do understand exactly how devastating it will be...

Holtz-Eakin had also spoken to the LA Times about the

the power of competition to produce greater coverage for Americans.

Supposedly, this would reduce healthcare costs for consumers "with or without preexisting conditions." Given the way I've see my health insurance company, Anthem, cherry pick, I'd like some hard data on that.

Let me give you an example from Virginia. A secondary policy with with a $1,500 deductible costs four times as much as ten years ago. How can this be?

Anthem would tell you that the plan is grandfathered and no longer exists, except for its original enrollees. There is one just like it, which you can buy for a lot less. In order to participate in the new plan, you would have to re-enroll. If you have suffered cancer and its treatment, or other health problems and enrolled in an individual policy as a "healthy Virginian" before diagnosis, you are grandfathered under the policy with the escalating premiums. If you apply for the "new plan" you will be told you now have a pre-existing condition and thus are ineligible.

Thus, Anthem can attract the young and healthy into this year's version of the plan, and they can move on to next year's version, until they, too, are trapped. If Anthem had not cherry-picked, while the new pool would be paying slightly more, the rest would be paying slightly less. And so it goes. The power of competition? The power of competition only works when you are not locked into your current insurer, which will only be the case when pre-existing conditions cannot be factored in. And if you say, well, the insurer is allowed to make a profit, I would ask, what is insurance for, if not a pooled risk and pooled premiums. Matthew Holt, in his May 15 critique of the McCain plan, "Half A Plan is not half a loaf," has some figures on the "medical loss ratio" of various insurers--the college market, for instance takes in $10 in premiums for every dollar it pays out.

Of course, there is another solution, truly universal coverage. Until now, that has been banished by the specter of "socialized medicine." But that is a topic for another day.

*
Other Resources

• If you'd like to read the arguments on both sides of the "socialized medicine" debate, check out the materials at the Cato InstituteCenter for American Progress.
• While cost containment must be balanced against availability of care, to read a critique of the cost containment provisions offered by McCain, Clinton and Obama plans and alternatives judged to be more effective, see "Putting the Brakes on Health Care Costs: Would the Candidates' Plans Work? Are There Better Solutions?" This forum for journalists held June 3 by the Alliance for Health Reform and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation featured health economists Paul Ginsburg of the Center for Studying Health System Change (which has intersting data on health insurance costs here), Uwe Reinhardt of Princeton University and the National Academy of Sciences and Mark McClellan of the Brookings Institution.
• Check out the information at the site for the National Coalition on Health Care, a non-profit founded in 1990 is comprised of more than 70 organizations representing large and small businesses, labor, consumer, religious and primary care providers and health and pension funds.
• You can view a comparison of the candidates plans, as well as that of others at the site for the World Health Care Congress, whose April 2008 conference convened senior officials from the "nation's largest employers, hospitals, health systems, health plans, pharmaceutical and biotech companies, and leading government agencies."
• May 1, the Congressional Budget office analyzed Senator Ron Wyden's (D-OR) Healthy Americans Act of 2007 (S 334) with regard to his currently proposed amendments.Employer Health Costs In a Global Economy
• Employer Health Costs in a Global Economy: A Competitive Disadvantage For U.S. Firms, Len Nichols and Sarah Axeen, New America Foundation (may, 2008)