A brief but important comment published by Robert Reich at Salon (h/t Daily Kos):

Suppose a small group of extremely wealthy people sought to systematically destroy the U.S. government by (1) finding and bankrolling new candidates pledged to shrinking and dismembering it; (2) intimidating or bribing many current senators and representatives to block all proposed legislation, prevent the appointment of presidential nominees, eliminate funds to implement and enforce laws, and threaten to default on the nation’s debt; (3) taking over state governments in order to redistrict, gerrymander, require voter IDs, purge voter rolls, and otherwise suppress the votes of the majority in federal elections; (4) running a vast PR campaign designed to convince the American public of certain big lies, such as climate change is a hoax, and (5) buying up the media so the public cannot know the truth.

Would you call this treason?

If not, what would you call it?

And what would you do about it?

Strong words. But maybe not too much so – simply consider these tidbits of recent Missouri political news:

1. First comes the Missouri GOP pols’ contribution to the effort to gum up the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). As we noted yesterday, Senator Roy Blunt is prominently engaged in Republican efforts to sabotage the ACA, with shrill support from various Missouri House members like Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-4). The congressional chorus is backed up by an advertising campaign, chock full of blatant lies, and funded by the Koch brothers. Together the one percenters and their congressional GOP lackeys, including our Missouri guys, are attempting to launch a mini coup d’etat:

Instead of trying to make the law of the land work, instead of doing the hard job of governance – like seriously considering a recent business-backed bill that would’ve tweaked the employer mandate – they’ve chosen the path of partisan sabotage. They continue to attack the law […], behaving as if it’s still 2009 (when the cry of “death panels!” led the league in lying). Worse yet, they’re actively working to prevent the public from learning more about what the law actually says.

2. At the state level, The Turner Report published a revealing report authored by State Representative Ed Emery (R-31) in which he discusses the role of the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in Missouri government:

Missouri has a representation on each of the [ALEC] task forces, and our involvement ensures that Missouri’s interests and perspectives are a part of every deliberation. Federalism makes each state a laboratory, and ALEC involvement provides Missouri state government the best opportunity to develop effective government policies and avoid harmful ones. I hope you approve.

ALEC brings corporate lobbyists and state legislators together (on ALEC’s dime) and has been behind much of the slew of anti-worker, anti-union, anti-teacher, anti-tax and pro-privatization initiatives produced by Missouri’s legislators this session, at times even providing model legislation for our legislators to crib from. Emery may not be the brightest light in the room, but he is at least open about the role of the usually secretive organization and its influence buying operation – which may, of course, be exactly because he isn’t the brightest light in the room.

3. The Turner Report also noted the $1.2 million dollars Rex Sinquefield contributed to a group dedicated to overturning Governor Jay Nixon’s veto of legislation passed this session that would have cut Missouri’s corporate taxes almost to nothing, decimating the revenue stream that ensures government functioning. This donation joins Sinquefield’s other very sizeable donations to groups that support his anti-tax, pro-educational privatization goals. Just this summer, Sinquefield has already put down almost two million dollars to bolster the down payment he’s already paid out in his effort to purchase the state.

And bear in mind that these examples are the result of twenty minutes cursory searching. One can only imagine the length of this piece were I to try to be comprehensive. What is clear is that when Reich paints a picture of politicians doing the bidding of the very wealthy for the benefit of the very wealthy, selling out government to do what is best for corporations and at the behest of rich ideologues, and sabotaging laws that these rich poobahs don’t like, Missouri’s GOP political class could have provided the model.

My question: Are we sending traitors to Washington D.C. and Jefferson City, or just borderline felons? And along with Robert Reich, I wonder what we’re going to do about it.

 

Previously:

Now what, Claire? (October 2, 2009)

Now what, Claire? – part 2 (October 27, 2009

Robert Reich has a thing or two to say about the inadvisability of the McCaskill/Corker spending cap:

[Spending Caps: Putting Lipstick On A Pig]

Hi, I’m Robert Reich. Republicans figure that if they can’t sell the pig they’ll just put lipstick on it and find some suckers who will think it’s something else. That’s the proposal emerging in the Senate from Republican Bob Corker of Tennessee and also Democrat Claire McCaskill of Missouri. It would get the deficit down, not by raising taxes on the rich, but by capping federal spending. That cap would steadily drop over time as it squeezed spending more and more.And if Congress failed to stay under the cap the budget would be automatically cut.

According to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities the McCaskill/Corker plan would require eight hundred billion dollars of cuts in twenty-twenty-two alone. That’s the equivalent of eliminating Medicare entirely, or the entire Department of Defense. Now, obviously, the Defense Department wouldn’t disappear, so what would go?

We’d have to have giant cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, education, and much of everything else American’s depend on.

It’s the republican plan with lipstick. It would have exactly the same result as the current Republican plan. But, by disguising it with caps and procedures Republicans can avoid saying what they’re intending to do, destroy Medicare and Medicaid, slash programs for poor and moderate income Americans, and not demand a penny from wealthy Americans.

The McCaskill/Corker spending cap would also make it impossible for government to boost the economy in recessions, which would lead to even higher unemployment, lasting longer.

Other Senate Democrats are showing interest in this lipsticked pig, including West Virginia’s Joe Machin. And not surprisingly, Joe Lieberman is on board.

But don’t be fooled and don’t let anyone else be. McCaskill/Corker is the same republican pig.

[Tell Congress: No Spending Caps That Slash Medicare]

Announcer: Moveon dot org is responsible for the content of this advertisement.

“…That’s the equivalent of eliminating Medicare entirely…” For republicans that’s a feature, not a bug. We just didn’t expect the same from Democrats we elected to help hold back the barbarian tide.

“…The McCaskill/Corker spending cap would also make it impossible for government to boost the economy in recessions, which would lead to even higher unemployment, lasting longer…” Yeah, we got that one covered, don’t we Claire? Just ask Paul Krugman.

You’d think that it would eventually sink in that Lucy always pulls the football away. Always.

Yeah, Claire, I bet you thought it was a great idea when your name first got top billing on the plan, eh?

Writing about the “ersatz public option”, Robert Reich pointed out that private insurers, Big Pharma, Republicans and “centrists” wouldn’t hear of Medicare for all 300 million of us–too much like Canada.

So the compromise was to give all Americans the option of buying into a “Medicare-like plan” that competed with private insurers. Who could be against freedom of choice? Fully 70 percent of Americans polled supported the idea. Open to all Americans, such a plan would have the scale and authority to negotiate low prices with drug companies and other providers, and force private insurers to provide better service at lower costs. But private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn’t hear of it, and Republicans and “centrists” thought it would end up too much like what they have up in Canada.

So the compromise was to give the public option only to Americans who wouldn’t be covered either by their employers or by Medicaid. And give them coverage pegged to Medicare rates. But private insurers and … you know the rest.

He covers each succeeding compromise, concluding with this description:

It’s a token public option, an ersatz public option, a fleeting gesture toward the idea of a public option, so small and desiccated as to be barely worth mentioning except for the fact that it still (gasp) contains the word “public.”

Sunday evening, I participated in a conference call with Jon Walker of Firedoglake. If you’ve been reading any of the FDL health care updates posted here daily for the last several weeks, you know the name. Walker knows the health care turf. And various remarks he made about the public option indicated that, although he might not go as far as Reich did, he’s well aware of how anemic the public option is. So I asked him whether he thought having it in the bill was of any account and whether the weak cost controls in the bill would end up costing the Democrats in future elections. He said that a strong public option would have saved the government $110 billion and consumers $200 billion over the next ten years. So Walker is bemused by the fact that conservatives and “moderates” keep insisting on cost control but refusing to support the one obvious means for that–a robust public option. He hasn’t seen a senator yet step up with actual proposals for serious cost controls. Mark Warner of Virginia says he plans several such amendments. We’ll see whether he, or any other senator, proposes real measures.

As far as what dramatic steps are needed, he points out that in every country that isn’t single payer, a single rate setting agency exists. Either the government decides what a given MRI will cost or a coalition of insurance providers and health care providers decides. Procedures in this country cost 30 percent to 100 percent more than they do elsewhere, partly because of the incredible waste of having a thousand different health care providers negotiating with dozens or hundreds of different insurance companies.

Another big improvement we need is risk adjustment.

Risk adjustment means transferring money from insurers whose clients are healthier than average to insurers whose clients are less healthy, enough to neutralize the effect of varying health status. If it worked perfectly, insurers would have no incentive to seek out the healthy and drive away the sick because they would receive the same amount for each.

Obviously, Walker assumes the bill is worth passing, flawed though it is. I asked him what argument he would make in favor of the bill, even though it lacks adequate cost controls.

His answer:

The important thing, I feel, in health care, is to be moving in the right direction as opposed to moving in the wrong direction, to make a commitment to insure people. You’re never gonna get quality health insurance in a market system without a strong risk adjuster, because there will always be … unless you make it impossible to make money by trying to drop sick people or you make it just not profitable to drop sick people, it’s always going to be the go-to for insurance companies. They’re not going to figure out how to make things cheaper, they’re just going to figure out how to have better people to insure.

That’s the problem with the public option right now in the current bill. (Inaudible) will actually be five percent cheaper. It’ll actually do a five percent better job than private insurance, but since it will be the only insurance company not gaming the system, it will have to charge a four percent higher premium.

If insurance companies weren’t intent on merely gaming the system, they could be saving all of us and themselves a pile of money. They could, for example, get together and create standardized information systems. As it is, doctors often have to devote a third of the costs of their practice to dealing with insurance companies. Those costs would plummet if every insurance company required the same set of information in the same form. And anything that saves the doctors money enables them to charge less so that insurance premiums could be lowered. Right now, however, WellPoint and Aetna have no incentive to set about such a reform.

Jon Walker knows that they’ll expend their energies, under the coming plan, finding ways to reject the sickest people.

So that is very critical, having that [public option] as a big component. Having the public option there, if you can get the risk adjusters working right, I really think the public option will get a lot of customers. I think it will expand. Having it in place, even if it’s relatively small and only somewhat cheaper, it will be a good go-to tool when we actually get to the cost containment battle down the road.

My biggest fear is that we might not have the beginnings of a progressive solution in the reform bill so that cost containment solutions going down the road will be less generous care, less things being covered, you know, that kind of pathway.

I asked Walker if he had any feeling for when further reform might begin.

The second stage … well,our current system–it’s funny you should keep talking about strengthening it–the current system is headed for a collapse of some type. You know. It might even bring down the whole economy with it, it might not. But you can’t have health care costs grow at, whatever it is, eight percent a year. You know, we can’t, as a nation, have 35 percent of all our money being spent on health care. That just can’t happen, especially when all the other industrialized countries are spending half that amount. So something will have to be done and my hope is that progressives will try hard to get the things in place that will be, when we actually have the fight for the cost containment, we’ll have the progressive infrastructure in place to (inaudible) progressive solutions (inaudible). And that’s why I think it’s great to have a public option in there. If you have a public option with very little overhead and all these private insurance companies with much more overhead, that helps make a strong argument for a minimum medical loss ratio as a cost containment move.

So, yeah, you know, I don’t know how that next fight’s going to happen. Hopefully it’ll go our way. But if the progressives don’t win this current “health care battle”, including the public option, I don’t see them having any political power moving forward.

I emphasized that last sentence with boldface because it’s the culmination of his logic. Robert Reich thinks the compromise has gone so far that the public option is worthless:

But what more can possibly be compromised? Take away the word “public?” M
ake it available to only twelve people?

Walker, on the other hand, considers that, though the public option is weak, it is, paradoxically, huge. And we must have it.

Update: Firedoglake is pushing a petition to tell Reid we want that public option:

“The power to pass a public option is yours alone.  Don’t let corrupt Democratic senators owned by insurance industry lobbyists kill the public option and majority rule.  Get them in line, or use reconciliation to pass a public option with a majority vote.”

Go ahead and sign it.