I kept meaning to write something about one of government’s big success stories, Medicare, to celebrate it’s 47th anniversary, which was yesterday. Now I don’t need to write a thing since local activist Amy Smoucha has said it all a thousand times better than I could have.  A sample:

The idea of “waiting for Medicare” hit me hard. My mother was waiting for Medicare for years. As a retail clerk at Sears, she didn’t have health insurance for most of her life. My mom was one of those amazing people who got up to go to work each day, took us to church on Sunday, played bingo Thursday nights, and was afraid to go to the doctor because she didn’t have insurance. While she was waiting for Medicare, my mother developed high blood pressure and heart disease. We discovered this just as she turned 65, when her long wait for insurance was finally over. Her golden years involved struggling with congestive heart failure. She died at the age of 67, when I was 23. I take the idea of “waiting” for health insurance personally.

Right now, millions of people across America, in every state, rural community, city, and town, are waiting for Obamacare. I think especially of a friend’s son who is a carpenter with a herniated disc. He was accepted by a local Community Health Center-a sliding scale clinic-and found a wonderful primary care doctor. But because he’s uninsured, he is on a waiting list for surgery. Most recently, his foot started dragging, and the damage is affecting his urinary function. He is 40 years old and waiting for Obamacare.

Read it all here. And remember, if the Democrats lose this election, we could lose Obamacare.

Todd Akin’s trying to say something – not quite sure what. Goes to show that it helps to worry about the filler words in between the Christian dominionist pander words:

This ad is being aired in progressive blogs around the country (I’ve encountered it three times already in national blogs). Ask yourself just why progressives are giving free time to the rightest of the rightwingers attempting to crawl into the Senate? Then watch the video again and if you can stop laughing long enough to think about it, all will be clear.

What does it say about Missouri that this bozo’s currently polling ahead of McCaskill? Are folks who’ve been scared silly about fantasmagorical socialist dictators and Obamacare’s fabeled death panels so ready to knee-jerk that they’re kicking themselves comatose?

*Title corrected.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released a new video. Representative Vicky Hartzler (r) is expected to look after her own interests this week, at the expense of the middle class and the federal budget deficit:

Narrator: Good news, Republicans want to cut your taxes. Not you. You. And you deserve a break. After all, these things are expensive. So Republicans want to give you, the millionaire, another tax break. All while charging seniors six thousand dollars more for Medicare. This guy, her? They don’t need it. They’ll just buy groceries and pay the mortgage. But you? You’re going places. And Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler will knock down anyone in your way.

[Tell Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler

Stop putting millionaires over the middle class]

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is responsible for the content of this advertising.

The DCCC statement which was attached to the video:

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) continues on offense, releasing new online ads – titled “The Millionaires” – to expose twenty-three Republican Members of Congress who are about to vote for another tax cut for millionaires at the expense of the middle class and seniors. The new advertising begins today in the districts of twenty-three vulnerable House Republicans as part of the DCCC’s “Drive for 25” campaign to win the Majority.

With 100 days until Election Day, House Republicans will vote this week to give people making more than $1 million a year another $130,000 tax break, according to the Tax Policy Center, and once again double down on their failed priorities instead of protecting the middle class and seniors. This past weekend, the DCCC held “Middle Class First” grassroots events in 19 congressional districts to expose Republicans’ plans to put millionaires over the middle class.

“Democrats are on offense again as House Republicans vote this week to protect tax breaks for millionaires instead of strengthening the middle class,” said DCCC Chairman Steve Israel. “Under House Republicans’ top-down economics, millionaires, corporations that outsource jobs, Big Oil and special interests get a $130,000 tax break which we can’t afford. Democrats are holding Republicans accountable for their misplaced priorities and the heat is on House Republicans for putting millionaires and special interests first, and the middle class and seniors last.”

Uh, yep.

Today, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

C111205 07/30/2012 SPENCE FOR GOVERNOR David Spence 2021 S. Warson Road St Louis MO 63124 Self Businessman 7/30/2012 $500,000.00

[emphasis added]

C111205 07/30/2012 SPENCE FOR GOVERNOR David Spence 2021 S. Warson Road St Louis MO 63124 Self Businessman [wealthy dilettante] 7/30/2012 $500,000.00

There, fixed it.

A recent poll shows Senator Claire McCskill trailing all three of her potential GOP challengers in spite of the fact that it would be charitable to characterize these particular GOPers as leftover dog’s breakfast. And this is occurring even though McCaskill has carefully avoided identification with the progressive viewpoint and honed her “moderate” credentials, usually thought to be just the ticket for purple state Democrats.

McCaskill has tried hard to present herself as a pragmatist who takes a reasonable, open-minded approach, calibrating just which right-wing memes she needs to validate in order to buy a little credibility with out-state voters and which progressive principles are too precious to abandon. Take the recent senate vote on extending the Bush tax cuts for the middle class but not for the wealthy if you want an example of how McCasill balances one step on the left with a second step to the right:

Illustrating the potential high-voltage political impact of the vote, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who is in a tight re-election race, announced she had introduced a bill preventing the estate tax from rising next year, and Tester co-sponsored it. She issued a news release to that effect just minutes after voting for the Democratic bill, which would let estate taxes go much higher in 2013.

If the polls are to be believed, this strategy has done little for McCaskill apart from almost alienating progressives. I say almost because most progressives know how to balance reality with their druthers and can live with ambiguity in the person of politicians teetering on the centrist tightrope, at least when the other choices are wallowing in rightwing mud.

Conventional wisdom is that McCaskill is trying hard to please those amorphous creatures we usually term “independent” voters. There’s some doubt that this designation actually pertains to a real entity, but McCaskill seems to be convinced that there are a few – or, at least, some erstwhile Republicans who are alienated by the circus freak show that now dominates the Republican party. The hope seems to have been that this group, if sufficiently cosseted, would provide her just enough votes in outstate areas that, combined with the Kansas City and St. Louis metro areas where she’s gold, it would enable her to prevail. It’s worked before, but I’m wondering if conditions haven’t changed since the election of America’s first black president.

There’s either not enough of these “independents,” or they are, as many have claimed, low information types who’re easily stampeded by negative sloganeering – of which we’ve had a steady barage since the election of Obama. Nasty, dishonest attacks of the same type used to slime the president and all of his initiatives have been lobbed at McCaskill as well, and it’s likely that the rate of fire will accelerate even more as we approach election day. After all, corporate interests with a lot to gain from a a GOP win also seem to have nearly bottomless pockets.

Lot’s of progressives sought to remind McCaskill that few among the GOP-leaning types were going to vote for a Democrat when they could get the real thing in the GOP shop. Nor does it seem that “moderate” is going buy McCaskill anything in an environment where the crazies are taking over, emotions are running high, lies are daily currency, facts – such as her “moderate” voting record – are easily overlooked, and where reasonable is just too … reasonable.

One can only hope that McCaskill will still pull it out, and that the endgame will justify her strategic gamble. After the primary, when she knows which variety of dufus she’ll be facing, she can direct a steady light on his or her particular strain of know-nothing Republicanism and maybe peel off a few real, erstwhile GOP moderates. Meanwhile, it’s hard to resist saying I told you so even though we know how much is at stake.

“wag more, bark less”

It’s always fun to take a look at particularly amusing past mistakes. In that spirit I offer this video of former State Rep. Cynthia Davis regaling a gathering with the reasons they should vote for her, the Constitution Party Candidate, for Lieutenant Governor this fall (h/t The Turner Report):

It’s the standard, sweetly oblivious Tea Party Cynthia we all remember so fondly, patting herself on the back for being the “most constitutional” legislator in Missouri, issuing the routine condemnations of government as incompetent and out to “ruin our lives.”

Oddly, though, Davis doesn’t seem to realize what it means that that she got a chance to fix what she perceived as wrong by serving in government. That fact might suggest to some that government actually serves a legitimate purpose and that we need it. Additionally, if, in democracies at least, individuals can enter government to correct perceived problems – and here I’m not making any judgments about the corrections a Cynthia Davis would pursue – it means that in general government has the power to self-correct through the agency of engaged citizenry, something that is not always true of other social institutions – particularly when it comes to private enterprise of which folks like Davis seem to be so enamoured.

Davis does, though, to give her credit, put her finger on a big problem facing our democracy right now. Seems that Cynthia has learned the hard way that politics involves money – and was shocked to learn that her fellow GOPers did favors in return for hefty campaign dollars. Pervasive corruption she implies, is why she, a seeming bastion of “constitutional” purity, decamped from the GOP.

Of course, a meaner-minded person than I might ask if Davis hadn’t actually been rejected by the party first – and perhaps might still be going great GOP guns if she had prevailed against Scott Rupp in the 2010 state Senatorial primary, or if her short tenure as Chair of the St. Charles Republican Party had been happier. Nevertheless, she deserves credit for speaking up now about a real and very obvious problem in Missouri (and in the wake of Citizens United, elsewhere) where untrammeled campaign donations flow far too freely with no accountability.  Ask yourself, though, if someone as lame as Davis can, in her halting way, identify the biggest problem facing our democracy today, the role of big money, hadn’t we  better get busy and do something about it before it’s too late?

Addendum:  More on money and political favors: Paul Blumenthal and Howard Fineman write that what Super PAC donors really want is a return on their investment. Also, more on the “dark money” that, via, for example, Crossroads GPS, is influencing elections right here in Missouri – just ask Claire McCaskill who’s been blitzed with Crossroads ads and billboards – and who’s now, as a result, according to the most recent poll running behind every one of the sad doofuses vying for the GOP nomination.  

It’s one hundred days until the election. A new video from Obama/Biden 2012:

The hard volunteer work for a presidential campaign needed to start yesterday.

In every campaign there are always people who are concerned about the future but who only start paying attention to the election noise a few weeks out. They may not understand how it all works and they may have distraction and demands in their every day lives. They want to help and they show up to volunteer a week or two before the election. Bless them, that’s a good thing. But, if you’ve got the time and the ability to do so now you can help lay the groundwork to assist those late volunteers in being more effective:

100 Days

Do it now.

This is apparently the group that called me: Target Point Consulting.  The caller said she was in Orem, Utah.  She sounded Indian.

I said, because I think, I an independent.

It was focused on the Senate race. Was it a push-poll?  

I was told to say how angry (from 0-100)I was when I heard the a number of statements about McCaskill.

The topics after the fold.  

Here are the topics I wrote down:

McCaskill did not pay certain taxes on time.

McCaskill voted to cut Medicare.

McCaskill voted to raise the debt ceiling 7 times.

McCaskill’s husband profited by the stimulus because of the provision on Section 8 housing.

McCaskill voted for a stimulus package that paid for studying ants in Africa.

McCaskill voted to raise the price of energy.

McCaskill voted to raise the number of bureaucrats determining our health care.

I was asked whether I was pro-life and whether the NRA endorsement would make me more likely or less likely to vote for a candidate.

I was not pushed to say who I would support for president. As an independent, of course I don’t know yet.  I am neither a Republican or a Democrat.

I was not given any name of a Republican candidate against McCaskill.

I was asked my race, not my age, not my martial status. I was asked how often I vote.

So, a push poll or the Republican National Committee or the Club for Growth trying to figure out how to attack McCaskill?  

No, we’re not making this stuff up. Via Twitter:

Rep. Vicky Hartzler ‏@RepHartzler

Optimism is low and has declined among #SmallBusiness. Let’s #StopTheTaxHike and give businesses the esteem they need. [….] 8:33 AM – 27 Jul 12

Because all our problems would be solved if corporations liked themselves better.