…and if you aren’t a posturing republican politician you understand.

The Democratic Policy Committee issued a report on the benefits of health care reform, state by state:

The Benefits of Health Reform In Missouri (pdf)

Together, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act will ensure that all Missourians have access to quality, affordable health insurance. The Congressional Budget Office has determined that these two bills are fully paid for, will bend the health care cost curve, and will reduce the deficit by $143 billion over the next ten years with further deficit reduction in the following decade. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act will reduce the cost of health care for the middle class, ensure health security to seniors, and provide tax credits to small businesses and individuals to further reduce the cost of health coverage…

…Key Benefits for Missouri

Provide tax credits for up to 79,900 Missouri small businesses to help make coverage more affordable. [HealthReform.gov, accessed 3/20/10]

Prohibit insurance companies from excluding coverage of pre-existing conditions for the 1.4 million children in Missouri, starting this year. [U.S. Census Bureau, 1/7/10]

Close the “donut hole” and improve other Medicare benefits for 961,000 Missouri seniors. [HealthReform.gov, accessed 3/20/10]

Reduce Medicare premiums for the 779,000 Missouri seniors who are not enrolled in Medicare Advantage and will no longer subsidize these private insurance plans. [Senate Finance Committee]

Ensure affordable coverage options for 790,000 Missourians who are uninsured and 335,000 Missourians who purchase health insurance through the individual market. [HealthReform.gov, accessed 3/20/10]

Ensure immediate access to affordable insurance options for as many as 94,581 uninsured Missourians who have a pre-existing condition. [staff estimate using Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), 4/09 and HealthReform.gov, accessed 3/20/10]

Provide tax credits for up to 516,000 Missourians to help make health insurance more affordable, bringing $8.4 billion in premium and cost-sharing tax credits into Missouri during the first five years of the health insurance Exchange. [HealthReform.gov, accessed 3/20/10; Senate Finance Committee]

Reduce family health insurance premiums by $1,640 – $2,350 for the same benefits, as compared to what they would be without health reform by 2016. [Senate Finance Committee estimate based on CBO, 11/30/09]

Provide access to Medicaid for 385,388 newly-eligible Missourians, and provide $8.2 billion in federal funding for the cost of their coverage. [Urban Institute, 1/25/10; Senate Finance Committee]

Create 4,900 – 7,800 jobs by reducing health care costs for employers. [U.S. Public Interest Research Group, 1/20/10]

Allow 559,567 young adults to stay on their parents’ insurance plans. [U.S. Census Bureau, 1/7/10]

Provide more federal funding for 180 Community Health Centers in Missouri. [National Association of Community Health Centers, 2009]….

The lunatic fringe right, however, doesn’t get it either, and breaks windows.

The title for “worst bill/amendment loss” has been won by Andrew Koenig. Koenig (R-) proposed an amendment to HB 2007 (Budget bill for Econ Dev, Insurance, Transportation, etc) to cut every dollar from the Division of Tourism Supplemental Revenue Fund (all $19,339,812). The vote total was 136 to 15

Members voting for the bill: Jason Brown (termed out, running for a county office IIRC), Cynthia Davis (primarying a Senator), Mike Dethrow (termed out), Ed Emery (termed out, running for the Senate), Doug Ervin (termed out), Tim Flook (unopposed for re-election, so far), Doug Funderburk (opposed by Democrat Richard Trueba), Tim Jones (unopposed so far), Andrew Koenig (unopposed so far), Will Kraus (running for the state Senate), Cole McNary (unopposed so far), Bryan Pratt (termed out, running for the state senate), Marilyn Ruestman (termed out), Clint Tracy (running for presiding judge in Cape County), and Kevin Wilson (termed out).

And no Democrat has filed in the 8th Senate District (where Pratt and Kraus are running). I’m pretty sure that tourist locations exist in that district.

All in all, this budget session is kind of like the Meat Loaf song from the mid-1990s. They would do anything for love, but they won’t do that. Because they’re not totally stupid. Congrats to the other 70ish members of the Republican Caucus for doing the obvious thing.

Five Words to define HCR in the election season

Option A: Move forward or move backward

Option B: You Can’t Trust The Republicans

Hey, can’t hurt to have multiple options.

Ultimately the campaign over the HCR bill will have wild distortions, both for the contents of the bill and the moves that Republicans can do if they win in November.

The distortions, involving death panels, abortions, and tomatoes being poisonous, are not going to stop (zombie lies live forever) and only the most honed of the Republicans will be able to pick out a part of the bill, in the actual bill, that is the most objectionable. Which would be a fun game to play provided you have safety goggles on at the time.

As for the moves that are possible for the Republicans. They will not be able to do anything whatsoever to forcibly repeal the HCR law. They might remove portions but only if Obama agrees and an amendment to current law. If you hear a person voting Republican to repeal the law in 2011, they’re a sucker of the highest magnitude.

But plain and simple, the Republicans want to move backwards on Health Care and the only unknown is how far back they want to go when they’re tossing you out into the cold.

The alternative is moving forward. The alternative is making sure that America’s health care system is not just the biggest in the world, but that it keeps working to be the best in the world. Considering the Republican record, they’d only move forward while kicking and screaming the entire way. It’s not in their nature or reputation to move forward.

Moving forward and ironing out any possible flaws beats throwing the entire law out. Think about it, throwing the entire bill out is the statement that this is a 100% bad bill which is highly unlikely. Partly because there are a lot of elements to the bill and partly because it’d take a lot of coldness to reject every single part of the bill.

Shredding the innards of the bill and keeping some organs intact wouldn’t be a repeal, just a criminal assault. The Repealwecan Republicans want to go all the way backwards (how far, 1964? 1934? who knows).

You give the Republican an inch, they take a mile. You give them 51% and 286 electoral votes and they attempt to claim a mandate to kneecap Social Security. If they get 218 House seats and 51 Senate seats, they’d probably try to overexert themselves again.

What about the last 10 years tells you that you can trust the Republican Party? What about the last 15 months tells you that these guys are not going to propose extreme leaps back in time? Paul Ryan’s plan is not off their table and they’re prepared to be candidates who will smile when they talk about medicare and elected officials who will decimate that program.

George W. Bush has been retired to his historical infamy, but the architects of his putrid presidential policy still exist and they’re still fueling the House and Senate Republicans. These people seem to think that their policies were not rejected decisively in 2006 and 2008. Conservatives are looking all around the country and their idea is “Be more conservative”. It’s the electoral equivalent of swimming towards Niagara Falls in order to get towards dry land.

In essence, what you’d get in 2011 if the Republicans have Congress (or in 2013, if the crazy sauce has been passed out and Sarah Palin is in year 1 of her 2 1/4 year Presidency) is a faith-based plan on health care.

Why is it faith-based? because you need a lot of faith to not expect a Republican plan to be a 10 pound can of bad ideas. Only ignoring their record shields one from noticing what they are very likely to do.

Two questions to ask voters this fall

1) Do you want to move forward or backwards on health care in this country?

2) Can you trust Republicans if they win Congress back?

If you want to move this country forward, the last party you want to vote for is the Republican party. If you can’t trust the Republicans to not go crazy, like they did in 1995/1996, 2005, and so on, then don’t give them power.

This is not advanced chemistry here. I hope that the message on our side is direct and on the offensive. Only one side can move forward and deliver on this topic. We know what side that is.

Two recent posts over at FiredUp! strike me as telling. One draws our attention to Kit Bond’s assertion that the actions of our Democratic controlled congress to craft and pass health care insurance reform is comparable to suicide:

I think it may be more accurate to say they [i.e., Democrats] put red bandanas on their head, took a drink of sake, and went out on what I believe to be a Kamikaze mission.

The other posting describes Bond’s and Roy Blunt’s willingness to put their names to a hasty, Republican-sponsored measure designed to repeal the health care reform package lock-stock-and barrel. In view of today’s USAToday/Gallup poll that shows that Americans favor the reform bill 49% to 40% against, they and their buddies may have just blundered onto the Kamikaze plane by mistake – because that margin can only get better as their erstwhile followers begin to notice that the legislation did not bring about the Armageddon these fearless leaders have been frantically predicting.

Todd Akin’s official response to the health care reform victory is, as one might expect, shrill in the extreme. He has managed to jam almost every GOP screaming point into a few short paragraphs. Since the event that occasioned this vitriolic outburst is the passage of  what is actually very moderate legislation, it might be instructive to deconstruct his florid imagery in order to figure out what Republican rage is really all about:

“Today Americans are reacquainted with the danger of an arrogant all powerful government, a deadly enemy within, a clear and present danger in Washington.”

“Americans” in this context refers to Tea Partiers and corporations. “Arrogance” refers to the fact that the Democratic congress defied corporate initiated Tea Party tantrums and inept Republican legislative tactics in order to help the president fulfill one of the campaign promises that got him elected. “All powerful government” refers only to elected Democrats; when Republicans lie in order to force-march the country into deficit-busting wars, they are patriots. “A deadly enemy within” means that these same Democrats threaten a resurgent Republican hegemony, since they pose “a clear and present danger” to the GOP by revealing its sabre rattling to be nothing more than empty noise.

“In spite of nationwide opposition socialized medicine is being forced down our throats. That medicine is toxic to freedom. But freedom dies hard in America.”

Akin considers “nationwide opposition” to be the 43% of the respondents to a  recent CNN poll that disapprove of the health care reform because it is “too liberal” – although, if truth be told, many of those probably only disapprove because they have bought into the Republican misinformation campaign, and will no doubt be pleasantly surprised to find that the passage of Health Care reform has not, in fact, killed Blaine Luetkemeyer’s father. Akin clearly does not consider worthy of consideration the other 52% who approve of the legislation, or who think it is not liberal enough.  

“Socialized medicine” reflects the Republican tendency to characterize as socialism any effort to govern for the good of the people rather than corporations or cronies. Their use of the term reflects their inability to distinguish between (1) social welfare and social justice; and, (2)  the goal of social justice (or social welfare) and the means used to achieve it; hence any legislation that has a stated goal of securing social welfare or social justice is, ipso facto, socialist, communist, or even facist (which explains those pictures of Obama as Hitler, as well as Glenn Beck’s fear of almost all Christians).

“Forced down our throats” (alternatively, the ubiquitous “crammed down our throats”) is Republican speak for the democratic process that has led to health care reform, including the decision to finally ignore Republican obstructionism. The goal of the phrase is to make relatively straightforward and commonplace legislative processes seem far more unpalatable than they really are.

“Freedom” is a fluid concept on the right. It usually means minimal or no taxes –  often without cutting social services fringewingers themselves find useful, although there are a few more sophisticated souls who understand it in the Friedmanesque  sense of untrammeled capitalism, the “nature red in tooth and claw” of the Social Darwinists revisited, this time from a macroeconomic rather than a biological perspective. In this sense, Akin is correct that “freedom dies hard in America.” The nasty, obstructionist mess that the GOP helped orchestrate during the past year bears witness to the fact that this type of ersatz “freedom” is indeed resilient, especially when liberally fertilized with money from health care industries that really, really love the freedom to run roughshod over the rest of us.*

“I do not believe that the majority of Americans will submit passively to the gold chains of socialism.” True patriots choose the bright light and fresh air of freedom where people can dare to dream- to succeed or fail.”

In this exhortation to action, Akin is calling for the Tea Party dupes to continue with their rabid displays in order to give him cover as he continues to work against their and our best interests. To create the emotional tenor that gets these babies revving their engines, he sets up an opposition in which health care reform is equated with passivity and slavery, while the advocates of unregulated market “freedom” and their corporate beneficiaries, the very folks responsible for our broken health care delivery system, are associated with words like “patriot,” “bright light,” “fresh air,” and the fulfillment of striving.

“I have confidence that freedom will rise from the ashes of socialism and that this nation under God will have a rebirth of liberty and a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

In this final trope Akin brings into play themes that will recur as Republicans attempt to use health care legislation as a lever to undo Democrats in the next election. In one grand, if rather derivative swoop, he dresses anti-health care forces in both Godly and constitutional garb. Sadly, substituting rhetoric for reasoned argument does not create a well-fitting garment, but rather one that will have to be discarded sooner or later.

Akin’s agitprop language is far from original. The words may differ slightly, “totalitarian” substituted for “socialistic,” for example, but most members of the Grand Old Party are expressing nearly identical sentiments. The Republican obstructionist message serves the same goal: getting the GOP back into power. Representative Jo Ann Emerson said it far more succinctly than Akin when she helped egg on the Tea Party thugs over the weekend, joining three other Gopers  on a balcony waving  signs reading “Kill” “The” “Bill.”  What she was really saying, of course, is “I’ll do anything, no matter how depraved, to stay in Washington.”

*The text of this sentence has been edited slightly.

 

When was the last time you took your car to a mechanic to look it over just in case he might find something that could use fixing? Never, of course. If you’ve got some bucks you can spare, you want to spend it to go to Hawaii, not to get the thingamadoodle in the innards of the engine working at peak efficiency. For the same reason, very few of us get energy audits on our homes. What? Spend hundreds of dollars on an audit so you can be told you need to spend thousands more on upgrades? Ouch.

But, but. If your house wasn’t blowing money out of drafty spots, you might save enough on utilities to actually go to Hawaii. Someday. But first you’ve got to pay for the upgrades. When Tom Appelbaum broached this subject at the Creve Coeur Democratic Township meeting, he asked rhetorically how many years it might take to get the investment back on a $7000 loan. Someone snapped right back with a facetious guess: “137 years.” Appelbaum and the other board members of Missouri Association of Accredited Energy Professionals (MAAEP) know that Missourians could cut energy use by thirty percent just by making energy efficiency upgrades, but they also know that it’s critical to help people spread the cost of the investment out over long periods of time, so that they can begin to see a positive cash flow from the improvements on day one. Otherwise? It ain’t happenin’.

‘Oh, is that all that’s needed? Well, okay,’ say the MAAEP members. ‘We can tell you how to do that.’

First of all, if you’re buying a home, look into an energy efficiency mortgage that will enable you to finance upgrades and pay for them month by month with your house payment. By doing so, you might add, say, $48 to your monthly payment–but perhaps save $80 a month on utilities. And besides the savings, your home would be more comfortable.

That’s fine for home buyers, but what about the rest of us? I’ve been in my home for 23 years, and we’re not looking to sell anytime soon. The house is 57 years old, and it’s far from efficient. There’s a bill in the Missouri legislature now, PACE for Property Assessed Clean Energy, that proposes allowing municipalities to opt to establish municipal bonds. Then property owners can apply to their municipalities for loans for energy efficiency upgrades. The loans would be amortized over twenty years and would be tied to the homeowner’s real estate tax. If the property is sold, the loan stays with the property because the improvements stay with the property. Like the energy efficiency mortgages, this setup would create a positive cash flow for the homeowner as soon as the upgrade was completed. It’s an idea spreading across the nation. Eighteen other states have already enacted similar programs.

I’ll follow the progress of that bill and report on it.

One more advantage accrues to homeowners from these upgrades: their property becomes more valuable. Because buyers want energy efficient homes, MAAEP has been working on a system to certify homes at various levels of efficiency, and they are talking to realtors in the expectation of establishing such certification as a marketing tool for realtors. A recent study done in Atlanta showed that homes certified as energy efficient sold more quickly than others and that the owners came closer to getting their asking price.

Tallying up the advantages so far then, we’ve got more comfortable homes that do less to contribute to climate change and that save us money on utilities. They are also worth more on the real estate market. Add to these benefits the fact that such upgrades will create a lot of jobs:

When you start thinking about how many houses are in Missouri and how many of these homes need energy audits and need energy efficiency upgrades, this is a trillion dollar industry over the next ten years. It’s a huge opportunity. And it’s money that we can throw away on utilities or we can invest in jobs and have people out there working to do this.

So. You ready to cough up $300-500 for an energy audit?

Blink.

I was afraid you might react that way.

But there’s little point in making improvements without one. If you don’t know for sure what needs fixing, you’re likely to just blow a lot of money. And people always assume it’s going to be the high dollar items, like windows, that need to be replaced. Actually, energy auditors are less likely to go there than they are to show you all kinds of little stuff you would never think about, like adding insulation around plumbing vent stacks.

You know you need the audit, and here’s great news: the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) will soon be receiving stimulus funds earmarked for exactly that purpose. Jim Trout, whom you may remember from his run for the state senate seat in Kirkwood in ’08, is now at the MDNR. He’s in charge of the program to dispense stimulus funds to homeowners to pay for energy audits. I’ll splash that news across the front page of Show Me Progress as soon as he tells me the funds are available.

And right after I post the news, the next thing I’m going to do is get in line for some funds.

Previously: Campaign Tracker: the worst job in politics and you still have to wear a suit (March 17, 2010)

Representative Denny Hoskins (r – noun, verb, CPA) was on the radio today complaining about mean people, or something:

….Representative Denny Hoskins: Well, one of the other things I wanted to talk about was just the, uh, article in last Friday’s paper…

Marion Woods, KOKO radio: I saw that.

Representative Hoskins: …talking about trackers.

Marion Woods: I saw that.

Representative Hoskins: Yes, yes, and, uh…

Marion Woods: Where did that come from anyway?

Representative Hoskins: I don’t know.  I, uh, think some people have active imaginations.

Marion Woods: [laughter]

Representative Hoskins: Is it [inaudible][crosstalk]…

Marion Woods: You have no tracker, do you?

Representative Hoskins: No, I, I have not hired any tracker. My campaign has not hired any tracker. [crosstalk]

Marion Woods: I didn’t know there was such a thing as a tracker.

Representative Hoskins: Yes, you know, until I got into politics I didn’t realize that there was, either. But, you know, back in two thousand eight when, um, you know, you had Ike Skelton running and, and you had, you know, other people.  Now, even, you know if I’m at event with, uh, state Senator Stoufer or, or Vicky Hartzler…

Marion Woods: Um, hm.

Representative Hoskins: …I mean there will be a tracker there. Uh.

Marion Woods: There will be.

Representative Hoskins: Yes, usually there’ll be a tracker there videotaping them and taking pictures of, of everything they say. Um, you know, same thing goes for Ike Skelton. When he’s around lots of times there’s a, there’s a tracker there. When Roy Blunt came through on his job’s tour…

Marion Woods: Uh, huh.

Representative Hoskins: …and was down at Heroes [Warrensburg restaurant] there was a tracker there that was recording and, and taking pictures.

Marion Woods: Is now, is that tracker from the other party from where you are?

Representative Hoskins: Lot.

Marion Woods: Is that the way that works?

Representative Hoskins:  Lots of times. Lots of times it’s from the other party. But, I have not hired any tracker to, to, I, I could, you know, care less about where Courtney is going [Woods: laughter] or when she’s in Excelsior Springs and when she’s here and…

Marion Woods: Yuh.

Representative Hoskins:   So it, you know, it’s one of my least priorities I guess I should say…

Marion Woods: [laughter]

[….]

Representative Hoskins:   So, when, you know, articles come out in the paper and, you know, Courtney’s says that I’ve stooped to some, having, following her, she’s lying.

Marion Woods: Yeah.

Representative Hoskins:   I’ll call a spade a spade, she’s lying. I’m not having anybody follow her…

[….]

Marion Woods: I, I, I never have understood that why, why, uh, why we have to have the dirt slinging and things like that that goes on. Uh, that doesn’t.

Representative Hoskins:  No it doesn’t, it doesn’t serve any purpose. But like I’ve said before, you know, this hundred twenty-first district has been a swing district. [crosstalk]

Marion Woods: Yuh.

Representative Hoskins:   And we’ve been honorably represented by Republicans and Democrats. And it’s the number one, um, due to that fact and, and the fact that I won by a hundred twenty-two votes this past time….

“…I don’t know. I, uh, think some people have active imaginations…”

Uh, we were there. There was a tracker. We asked him. We photgraphed him.

SMP: …So, are you a tracker or something?

Tracker: Uh, you could say that I guess…

In fact, he has a unique license plate:

…Tracker: You like the license plate? [In response to me photographing the back of the car.]

SMP: Actually? Interesting…

So, I suppose there must be some way to track that down. And if we did, we could check that identity against campaign payments to individuals to see who might be paying him. I mean, the tracker must at least be getting mileage, right? He did say he worked in politics:

…Tracker: Uh, yeah, I’ve been working in politics for a while…

And who is virtuous?

“…I, I, I never have understood that why, why, uh, why we have to have the dirt slinging and things like that that goes on. Uh, that doesn’t….”

“…No it doesn’t, it doesn’t serve any purpose…”

Dirt slinging in politics? You think for some people it depends on the truth? Or who is doing it? Does anyone remember candidate Denny Hoskins complaining about this lie?:

Denny Hoskins (r) in the 121st Legislative District: attack piece ignores the NRA (October 17, 2008)

The Missouri republican State Committee is hurling an outrageous amount of money on behalf of Denny Hoskins (r – noun, verb, CPA) in his quest to take the open seat race in the 121st Legislative District over Jim Jackson (D).

The typical republican campaign startegery – throw lots of money at their problems

The problem for Hoskins and the Missouri republican State Committee is that they’re so desperate to attack a Democrat on guns that they neglected to check with the National Rifle Association before they created their attack piece. Either that, or they can’t read. Which brings up the issue of the total lack of republican support for education. But, I digress.

The republican way – when in doubt, attack and damn the facts

Uh, you forgot to check in with the NRA:

Well, it looks like they got the same rating. Here’s a word problem for all you logic whizzes: If Jim Jackson and Denny Hoskins have the same “A” rating from the NRA, and “Missouri gun owners can’t trust Jim Jackson to defend our gun rights”, doesn’t that mean that “Missouri gun owners can’t trust Denny Hoskins to defend our gun rights”? Just asking….

Or did Denny Hoskins complain about this?:

Meet your Missouri GOP: an unholy alliance with Missouri Right to Life (October 27, 2008)

I get it, *IOKIYAR.

*it’s okay of you’re a republican