I’ll say publicly what I have said privately: start a serious Draft Clinton movement, start it now.  (Her denials of interest won’t matter).

Nothing will change unless Obama personally thinks his own reelection is on the line.  Sitting president’s don’t survive serious challenges from within their own party.

I know I have to make a decision, not on the bill as I would like to see it, but the bill as it is. My criticisms of the legislation have been well reported. I do not retract them. I incorporate them in this statement. They still stand as legitimate and cautionary. I still have doubts about the bill. I do not think it is a first step toward anything I have supported in the past. This is not the bill I wanted to support, even as I continue efforts until the last minute to modify the bill.

Basically, he seems to have gotten nothing for his vote. Nothing.  And he can’t even find a good reason to vote for it.

Obama is proving, again, that he is very good at arm bending.  What I am hearing is that threats are being made to cut off all Democratic party support for many Reps who vote against the bill.  Some blue dogs will be allowed to vote against, but progressives as a group, and even some conservative Dems are expected to bite the bullet, vote for the bill, and suck up the consequences.

This is the moment when Obama flexes his muscle, proves he has control of the party, and that he will use that control against those who stand in his way.  It’s what he has to do, and progressives should take note, because this sort of hardball politics is what they’ll have to do if they ever get in power.

This is the second time Obama has really bent arms.  The first time was the bailout bill, before he was even president, which would not have passed without his intervention, an intervention which I have been told was extremely heavy handed.

It’s a pity that Obama is only good at strong arming Democrats, prefers to strong-arm progressives instead of conservative democrats, strong arms for conservative bills which are giveaways to corporate interests and appears completely incapable of playing any sort of hardball with Republicans, but this is the President that Democrats wanted.

(Full text of Kucinich’s letter after the jump)

Each generation has had to take up the question of how to provide for the health of the people of our nation. And each generation has grappled with difficult questions of how to meet the needs of our people. I believe health care is a civil right. Each time as a nation we have reached to expand our basic rights, we have witnessed a slow and painful unfolding of a democratic pageant of striving, of resistance, of breakthroughs, of opposition, of unrelenting efforts and of eventual triumph.

I have spent my life struggling for the rights of working class people and for health care. I grew up understanding firsthand what it meant for families who did not get access to needed care. I lived in 21 different places by the time I was 17, including in a couple of cars. I understand the connection between poverty and poor health care, the deeper meaning of what Native Americans have called “hole in the body, hole in the spirit.” I struggled with Crohn’s disease much of my adult life, to discover sixteen years ago a near-cure in alternative medicine and following a plant-based diet. I have learned with difficulty the benefits of taking charge personally of my own health care. On those few occasions when I have needed it, I have had access to the best allopathic practitioners. As a result I have received the blessings of vitality and high energy. Health and health care is personal for each one of us. As a former surgical technician I know that there are many people who dedicate their lives to helping others improve theirs. I also know their struggles with an insufficient health care system.

There are some who believe that health care is a privilege based on ability to pay. This is the model President Obama is dealing with, attempting to open up health care to another 30 million people, within the context of the for-profit insurance system. There are others who believe that health care is a basic right and ought to be provided through a not-for-profit plan. This is what I have tirelessly advocated.

I have carried the banner of national health care in two presidential campaigns, in party platform meetings, and as co-author of HR676, Medicare for All. I have worked to expand the health care debate beyond the current for-profit system, to include a public option and an amendment to free the states to pursue single payer. The first version of the health care bill, while badly flawed, contained provisions which I believed made the bill worth supporting in committee. The provisions were taken out of the bill after it passed committee.

I joined with the Progressive Caucus saying that I would not support the bill unless it had a strong public option and unless it protected the right of people to pursue single payer at a state level. It did not. I kept my pledge and voted against the bill. I have continued to oppose it while trying to get the provisions back into the bill. Some have speculated I may be in a position of casting the deciding vote. The President’s visit to my district on Monday underscored the urgency of this moment.

I have taken this fight farther than many in Congress cared to carry it because I know what my constituents experience on a daily basis. Come to my district in Cleveland and you will understand.

The people of Ohio’s 10th district have been hard hit by an economy where wealth has accelerated upwards through plant closings, massive unemployment, small business failings, lack of access to credit, foreclosures and the high cost of health care and limited access to care. I take my responsibilities to the people of my district personally. The focus of my district office is constituent service, which more often than not involves social work to help people survive economic perils. It also involves intervening with insurance companies.

In the past week it has become clear that the vote on the final health care bill will be very close. I take this vote with the utmost seriousness. I am quite aware of the historic fight that has lasted the better part of the last century to bring America in line with other modern democracies in providing single payer health care. I have seen the political pressure and the financial pressure being asserted to prevent a minimal recognition of this right, even within the context of a system dominated by private insurance companies.

I know I have to make a decision, not on the bill as I would like to see it, but the bill as it is. My criticisms of the legislation have been well reported. I do not retract them. I incorporate them in this statement. They still stand as legitimate and cautionary. I still have doubts about the bill. I do not think it is a first step toward anything I have supported in the past. This is not the bill I wanted to support, even as I continue efforts until the last minute to modify the bill.

However after careful discussions with the President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, Elizabeth my wife and close friends, I have decided to cast a vote in favor of the legislation. If my vote is to be counted, let it now count for passage of the bill, hopefully in the direction of comprehensive health care reform. We must include coverage for those excluded from this bill. We must free the states. We must have control over private insurance companies and the cost their very existence imposes on American families. We must strive to provide a significant place for alternative and complementary medicine, religious health science practice, and the personal responsibility aspects of health care which include diet, nutrition, and exercise.

The health care debate has been severely hampered by fear, myths, and by hyper-partisanship. The President clearly does not advocate socialism or a government takeover of health care. The fear that this legislation has engendered has deep roots, not in foreign ideology but in a lack of confidence, a timidity, mistrust and fear which post 911 America has been unable to shake.

This fear has so infected our politics, our economics and our international relations that as a nation we are losing sight of the expanded vision, the electrifying potential we caught a glimpse of with the election of Barack Obama. The transformational potential of his presidency, and of ourselves, can still be courageously summoned in ways that will reconnect America to our hopes for expanded opportunities for jobs, housing, education, peace, and yes, health care.

I want to thank those who have supported me personally and politically as I have struggled with this decision. I ask for your continued support in our ongoing efforts to bring about meaningful change. As this bill passes I will renew my efforts to help those state organizations which are aimed at stirring a single payer movement which eliminates the predatory role of private insurers who make money not providing health care. I have taken a detour through supporting this bill, but I know the destination I will continue to lead, for as long as it takes, whatever it takes to an America where health care will be firmly established as a civil right.

The White House is telling people that if they don’t pass this bill, it will be a disaster for Democrats in the fall. That’s abject nonsense — their “fallback plan” for health care doesn’t have the toxic mandate that makes the IRS the collection agency for Blue Cross/Blue Shield, or any of the abortion issues that inflame both pro- and anti-choice groups.  It’s a better bill on the merits anyway, and most of the country wouldn’t know the difference over a bill that doesn’t kick in until 2014 anyway.

Kill the health care bill, pass the fixes that can be put through, minus the mandate and abortion restrictions.  Sounds like a win to me.

If he couldn’t even be bothered to replace the majority of the Justice Department’s USA’s, men and women chosen by Bush for their partisan credentials, which is completely within his purview and not subject to Republican filibustering, why would anyone  think that he wants to push the courts to the left?

1) not stopped the Bush era raids against Hispanics which is totally at his discretion;
2) not lived up to his promises to gays, and he can stop DADT any time he bloody well wants to;
3) not been willing to protect women’s abortion rights
4) not shown any intention of passing EFCA (a bill helping unions organize)

Unions, women, latinos, gays…

Who does he bloody well think is going to support him in 2012?

Credit default swaps, at the end of the day are just insurance.  They insure against loss of money due to default.  Thus, they should be regulated like insurance.

Ae standard rule of insurance underwriting is that someone buying insurance must NEVER be better off if the event occurs than if it doesn’t.  Ideally, they should always take a loss, the insurance should not make them completely whole.

This means, if you want to keep CDSs (and I’m fine with banning them outright), that:

1) no naked CDS’s should be written. ie. you can’t bet on a company going under unless you have loaned money to that company.  You can’t sell a CDS to someone who doesn’t have that risk.
2) you cannot have a CDS whose value equals the value of your loans, otherwise you will want the business to fail.  I would suggest an absolute maximum of 80% of the value of the loans.  There’s a case for less.

I used to work in life insurance.  In life insurance there are many studies which show that people who are worth more dead than alive, tend to die more often than they should.  I am entirely confident the same is true of companies and government debt defaults.  Since companies defaulting when they could survive is not in the public interest, credit default swaps need to be regulated so that it isn’t in the interest of holders of CDSs to put a knife into companies which would otherwise live, or to yawn and say “nope, not making a deal, we’re better of with you dead.  Too bad what happens to the unsecured creditors, workers, stockholders and everyone else.”

Let me get this straight, Kos wants to primary one of the most reliable and principled progressives in Congress (perhaps the most principled one) because Kucinich doesn’t want to vote for a bill which will force Americans to buy crappy health insurance from private companies?

First they came for Massa, and now, not being able to find any dirt on Kucinich, they’re putting the pressure on, and Kos is going along with it?

Because, lord knows, what progressives should spend their time and money is primarying someone like Kucinich.  What they should do is start an left wing fucking civil war so that Obama, Hoyer and Rahm Emmanuel can sit back and laugh as the left wing tears itself apart over a bill which, whether you want it passed or not, no one who is on the left wing should think is better than mediocre.

Be very clear, if “progressives” like Kos want to primary Kucinich, many other progressives will defend him and fight for him.  So, instead of picking up new seats, we’ll be wasting time and money fighting over a seat already held by a progressive.

Those who want to go after Kucinich are acting as Obama and Rahm’s heavies.  Acting as enforcers for a President who believes in indefinite detention without trial, who has expanded the war in Afghanistan, gutted civil rights and who wants to force every American to buy health insurance from private companies.

It’s time for Kos’s 15 minutes to end.  The man’s stupidity, hubris and willingness to be used by a president who is objectively a conservative means he is now doing more damage to the left than good.

(I am informed that it’s too late to primary Kucinich in 2010.  Thank goodness.  Still a stupid threat in most ways.)

The bottom line is that health care reform is a giveaway to special interests, funded by cuts from Medicare and forcing people to buy insurance or pay or a fine.  There’s some decent stuff in it, but less than folks think (for example, old folks can be charged multiple times what young folks are).

I’m still opposed.  I don’t think the good outweighs the bad.  This is not a case of “we can get better if it fails”, this is a case of “this is worse than nothing.”

This austerity plan aims at saving some € 4.8 billion at the expense of the Greek population, for the purpose of repaying creditors. The money saved will also be used to pay the fees of Goldman Sachs, a bank which we now know helped the government conceal part of its debt. Among the measures to be taken:

a freeze on recruitment and reduction of civil servants’ salaries (heavily reduced 13th and 14th months, reduced bonuses, coming after a 10 % decrease in salaries decided in January);
a freeze on retirement pensions;
VAT increase from 19% to 21%, despite the fact that this is an unfair tax that hits poorer people harder;
dramatic cuts in social budgets, including the Social Security budget.

Somehow progressive tax increases never seem to occur.  Somehow a pan-European Tobin tax never happens.

The interesting question though is this: how many European governments played the exact same games Greece did?  How many are concealing their true fiscal picture, which is much worse than people think?

The answer, dear friends, is most of them.  Including the Germans, who have been acting very high and mighty.

The only people in the world even stupider about financial engineering than the US were the Europeans, who bought toxic waste by the boatload.

They forgot what Americans forgot.  There’s no free lunch.

Ever.

Really.

That’s what keeps going through my head.  Most of the entire year was spent on Kabuki, we now know for a fact what was obvious by the summer, Obama never wanted a public option, never wanted a good bill, and was putting together a bill whose fundamental structure was created by cutting deals with pharma, insurance companies and various other health care providers.  It was always intended to be a dog’s breakfast.

I suppose somebody has to be part of the left wing noise machine, however much it amounts to pushing the same boulder up the hill over and over again, then being bitchslapped by your “friends”.  I’ll pass.

The end result of all the fuss is that some people got paychecks, some progressive legislators got donations,  and if a lousy bill passes, it will be no more to the left than Obama originally intended.  In fact, it will amount to a right wing bill intended as a huge giveaway to various powerful interests.

The only good thing which could be said, I suppose, is that for most of a year, various people have been given an education in healthcare economics. Unfortunately, when you get out into the general population, most of what they heard was lies and liberal blog readers already knew that single payer was the way to go.

Clinton was the “spin” presidency.  Bush was the “big lie” presidency.  Obama is the “Kabuki” president—there’s lots of bullshit pretense at consultation and process, but the end result they want is predetermined, and it’s almost always conservative.