Doug Hoffman recently sent an email to his supporters, claming that the recent special election in NY-23 was "stolen," and blaming ACORN and the unions for "vote tampering."
He specifically cites problems in Oswego County:
A recanvassing in the 11-county district shows Owens' lead has narrowed to 3,026. In Oswego County, I was reported to lead by only 500 votes with 93 percent of the vote counted election night, but inspectors found I actually won by 1,748 votes
Let’s force them keep this recanvassing active! Let’s give this election a chance to end differently!Oswego County elections officials blame the mistakes on "chaos" in their call-in center that included a phone system foul-up, and on inspectors who read numbers incorrectly when phoning in results. This sounds like a tactic right from the ACORN playbook.
I'm from Oswego county and my family and I have been very active in Democratic politics- my dad is an elected town judge, and my mom and in-laws have worked on a number of national, state and local campaigns within the county, and none of us have ever encountered ACORN staff or volunteers active in the county.
Moreover, the county government in Oswego and Jefferson counties is dominated by Republicans, and they use all the old-school patronage tools to make sure that county employees (like the ones staffing the polling sites) are good Republicans. These are also really small town places, where everybody knows each other - there's no way that ACORN (even if it existed in the district) would be able to have operatives sneaking around and fiddling with the voting machines without drawing the attention of the poll workers, who have probably worked together on the same crew for every election for decades.
Oswego County (and I believe other counties in the district) had brand new voting machines, and each machine covered multiple election districts, unlike the old manual machines that were one to a district. The new machines printed out a slip at the end of the night that listed the results for each of the EDs covered by the machine. My mom was working some of the polling sites for the New York Democratic Lawyers' Council, and told me that it would be really easy for the poll-workers to call in just the results from the first ED on the slip.
By blaming ACORN for his defeat, Hoffman is further showing that he's a creature of the national right-wing, completely tied up with national right-wing boogeymen, and just as completely out of touch with the realities of political life in NY-23 (perhaps because he's never lived in the district).
Thursday, November 19, 2009
GOP nonsense about the new mammogram recommendations
“This is the little toe in the edge of the water,” said Representative Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. “This is where you start getting a bureaucrat between you and your physician.”
This is the Republican reaction to the recommendation of the U.S. Preventive Service Task Force that women between 40 and 50 not receive annual mammograms. The Wall Street Journal piled on, blaming the result on "Obamacare" and cost-cutting. The WSJ article focuses entirely on the fact that by not screening women from 40 to 50, some number of women in that range will not catch a tumor in time. That is true. What the article ignores, however, is what's on the other side of the scale- some serious negative consequences of screening women in that age-range:
The task force advised on Monday that most women should not start routine screening until they are 50, as opposed to the current standard of 40. The reason, according to the task force, is that studies show that “the additional benefit gained by starting screening at age 40 years rather than at age 50 years is small, and that moderate harms from screening remain at any age.”
While the downsides of mammography have not received much attention, cancer researchers say they are real and include excess biopsies, unnecessary anxiety and the discovery and treatment of tumors that would not cause problems if let alone.
In addition, some research has found that mammograms themselves, because of the radiation dose, lead to an increased risk of cancer.
This line of thinking is not, as the GOP would have you believe, a brand new thing brought on by Obama's desire to heartlessly kill off old people. For years, the American Cancer Society and other groups have recommended that men not be screened for prostate cancer, because screenings lead to unnecessary treatments (radiation therapy and surgery) that are oftentimes more dangerous than the cancers they are treating.
One final point- with all the squawking about how "government bureaucrats are getting in between patients and doctors," you'd think that the task force was made up of federal employees, right? Probably a bunch of unqualified hacks and bean counters sitting around dreaming up ways to screw over patients.
In fact, looking at a list of the members of the panel shows that these are actually pretty qualified people- the Dean of the College of Public Health at U. Iowa, the Director of Women's Health Services Research at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in LA, the Medical Director of HealthPartners Co. in Minneapolis, the Dean of the School of Nursing at the Medical College of Georgia, a professor from Johns Hopkins Medical School, etc. You know, the sort of people who might have a better idea of how to interpret cancer research literature than Congresswoman Blackburn, whose only work experience outside of elected office is selling textbooks door to door.
This is the Republican reaction to the recommendation of the U.S. Preventive Service Task Force that women between 40 and 50 not receive annual mammograms. The Wall Street Journal piled on, blaming the result on "Obamacare" and cost-cutting. The WSJ article focuses entirely on the fact that by not screening women from 40 to 50, some number of women in that range will not catch a tumor in time. That is true. What the article ignores, however, is what's on the other side of the scale- some serious negative consequences of screening women in that age-range:
The task force advised on Monday that most women should not start routine screening until they are 50, as opposed to the current standard of 40. The reason, according to the task force, is that studies show that “the additional benefit gained by starting screening at age 40 years rather than at age 50 years is small, and that moderate harms from screening remain at any age.”
While the downsides of mammography have not received much attention, cancer researchers say they are real and include excess biopsies, unnecessary anxiety and the discovery and treatment of tumors that would not cause problems if let alone.
In addition, some research has found that mammograms themselves, because of the radiation dose, lead to an increased risk of cancer.
This line of thinking is not, as the GOP would have you believe, a brand new thing brought on by Obama's desire to heartlessly kill off old people. For years, the American Cancer Society and other groups have recommended that men not be screened for prostate cancer, because screenings lead to unnecessary treatments (radiation therapy and surgery) that are oftentimes more dangerous than the cancers they are treating.
One final point- with all the squawking about how "government bureaucrats are getting in between patients and doctors," you'd think that the task force was made up of federal employees, right? Probably a bunch of unqualified hacks and bean counters sitting around dreaming up ways to screw over patients.
In fact, looking at a list of the members of the panel shows that these are actually pretty qualified people- the Dean of the College of Public Health at U. Iowa, the Director of Women's Health Services Research at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in LA, the Medical Director of HealthPartners Co. in Minneapolis, the Dean of the School of Nursing at the Medical College of Georgia, a professor from Johns Hopkins Medical School, etc. You know, the sort of people who might have a better idea of how to interpret cancer research literature than Congresswoman Blackburn, whose only work experience outside of elected office is selling textbooks door to door.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
What shall it profit a man...
Matt Yglesias has a post today that probably should be tacked on the wall of every elected official- reminding them that their job is to accomplish something, not to stick around forever:
But that’s okay—it’s not the job of an elected official to lurk around in office forever and ever. The job of an elected official is to do things. Hopefully things that make the world a better place. Winning an election is an opportunity. Not an opportunity run for election again—you can run again if you lose—but an opportunity to change the world. Look up any former legislature in the history books or on Wikipedia or what have you and you’ll see that he or she is remembered (or not) for his or her accomplishments (or lack thereof). Everyone leaves congress sooner or later, maybe in defeat or maybe in a coffin, but what ultimately matters is not how long you stay but what you leave behind.
This is particularly important for folks in tough seats like Blanche Lincoln and co. - the demographics of the southern electorate are changing, and it's going to be increasingly tough to get elected as a Democrat. To keep these seats is probably going to require a series of increasing compromises and capitulations, until one day you have to think these folks are going to wake up and have trouble remembering what they were trying to do when they first got into politics.
But that’s okay—it’s not the job of an elected official to lurk around in office forever and ever. The job of an elected official is to do things. Hopefully things that make the world a better place. Winning an election is an opportunity. Not an opportunity run for election again—you can run again if you lose—but an opportunity to change the world. Look up any former legislature in the history books or on Wikipedia or what have you and you’ll see that he or she is remembered (or not) for his or her accomplishments (or lack thereof). Everyone leaves congress sooner or later, maybe in defeat or maybe in a coffin, but what ultimately matters is not how long you stay but what you leave behind.
This is particularly important for folks in tough seats like Blanche Lincoln and co. - the demographics of the southern electorate are changing, and it's going to be increasingly tough to get elected as a Democrat. To keep these seats is probably going to require a series of increasing compromises and capitulations, until one day you have to think these folks are going to wake up and have trouble remembering what they were trying to do when they first got into politics.
Monday, November 09, 2009
The dishonesty of Joe Lieberman (updated)
Joe Lieberman was on Fox this weekend discussing why he will filibuster a Senate healthcare reform bill with the public option:
LIEBERMAN: A public option plan is unnecessary. It has been put forward, I’m convinced, by people who really want the government to take over all of health insurance. They’ve got a right to do that; I think that would be wrong.
But worse than that, we have a problem even greater than the health insurance problems, and that is a debt -- $12 trillion today, projected to be $21 trillion in 10 years.
WALLACE: So at this point, I take it, you’re a “no” vote in the Senate?
LIEBERMAN: If the public option plan is in there, as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote because I believe debt can break America and send us into a recession that’s worse than the one we’re fighting our way out of today. I don’t want to do that to our children and grandchildren.
I've met Lieberman, and I can say that unlike some other Senators (Ben Nelson, I'm looking at you), Lieberman is not a stupid man. He also has had some terrific staffers working for him in the past, and I imagine he still does. Consequently, I can only take the factual and logical errors in the snippet above to be pure dishonesty.
The bill coming out of the Senate, with the Public Option, has been scored by the CBO to reduce the deficit by over $100 billion over 1o years. Consequently, if Joe is actually worried about the debt and the deficit, it seems like he would like this feature of the bill. Moreover, the Public Option, by offering competition in states and locations that currently have local monopolists providing health insurance, would lower health insurance costs by providing competition.
The Public Option, as it exists in both the House and Senate bills, would get an initial boost of start-up funding from the government, and then be completely self-sufficient- which means that it's operation would, aside from an initial minimal cost - have zero impact on the national debt.
Joe tries to dress this all up in a "think of the children" kind of way by appealing to what the future will be like under some hypothetical recession brought on by the zero additional debt of the public option. This of course does not take into account the 40 million uninsured Americans, all of whom are somebody's children or grandchildren, and of whom 45,000 a year or so die because of lack of insurance.
On a completely unrelated note, Joe's wife Hadassah is a senior healthcare and pharmaceutical lobbyist for Hill and Knowlton.
*UPDATE- I had originally titled the post "The Perfidy of Joe Lieberman", when a friend noted that the term paired with a Jewish Senator has some negative connotations- see perfidis judaeis. I had no intention to evoke that connotatio- merely pointing out that Lieberman, as one who's caucusing with the Dems and owes his seniority and committee positions to the Democrats, seems particularly treacherous for backstabbing them on healthcare reform using obviously specious reasoning.
LIEBERMAN: A public option plan is unnecessary. It has been put forward, I’m convinced, by people who really want the government to take over all of health insurance. They’ve got a right to do that; I think that would be wrong.
But worse than that, we have a problem even greater than the health insurance problems, and that is a debt -- $12 trillion today, projected to be $21 trillion in 10 years.
WALLACE: So at this point, I take it, you’re a “no” vote in the Senate?
LIEBERMAN: If the public option plan is in there, as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote because I believe debt can break America and send us into a recession that’s worse than the one we’re fighting our way out of today. I don’t want to do that to our children and grandchildren.
I've met Lieberman, and I can say that unlike some other Senators (Ben Nelson, I'm looking at you), Lieberman is not a stupid man. He also has had some terrific staffers working for him in the past, and I imagine he still does. Consequently, I can only take the factual and logical errors in the snippet above to be pure dishonesty.
The bill coming out of the Senate, with the Public Option, has been scored by the CBO to reduce the deficit by over $100 billion over 1o years. Consequently, if Joe is actually worried about the debt and the deficit, it seems like he would like this feature of the bill. Moreover, the Public Option, by offering competition in states and locations that currently have local monopolists providing health insurance, would lower health insurance costs by providing competition.
The Public Option, as it exists in both the House and Senate bills, would get an initial boost of start-up funding from the government, and then be completely self-sufficient- which means that it's operation would, aside from an initial minimal cost - have zero impact on the national debt.
Joe tries to dress this all up in a "think of the children" kind of way by appealing to what the future will be like under some hypothetical recession brought on by the zero additional debt of the public option. This of course does not take into account the 40 million uninsured Americans, all of whom are somebody's children or grandchildren, and of whom 45,000 a year or so die because of lack of insurance.
On a completely unrelated note, Joe's wife Hadassah is a senior healthcare and pharmaceutical lobbyist for Hill and Knowlton.
*UPDATE- I had originally titled the post "The Perfidy of Joe Lieberman", when a friend noted that the term paired with a Jewish Senator has some negative connotations- see perfidis judaeis. I had no intention to evoke that connotatio- merely pointing out that Lieberman, as one who's caucusing with the Dems and owes his seniority and committee positions to the Democrats, seems particularly treacherous for backstabbing them on healthcare reform using obviously specious reasoning.
Friday, November 06, 2009
Before we jump to conclusions...
Whenever something like the Ft. Hood shooting happens, there's a real urge to jump to conclusions and use the event to score political points. I was halfway through doing so myself this morning. I scrapped a halfway drafted post that was going to be about how the shooting undermines the idea that we need to allow concealed weapons in order to thwart armed maniacs, because hey, this guy was on an army base and everybody's carrying there, right? -- until I learned that concealed weapons are banned on military bases, and the only weapons are stored away on firing ranges.
Before everybody gets too worked up about jihad in the ranks and banning Muslims from the military- take a look at the photo below (and others like it here):
Thursday, November 05, 2009
What matters vs. what gets on TV
Cable news (especially Fox) is abuzz today with Michelle Bachman's "takeover" of the capitol, where some number of teaparty folks are rallying on the steps to hear John Boehner say that the healthcare bill is the "Greatest threat to freedom I've seen in 19 years." *
We also get some yahoos with banners showing skeletons and corpses bearing the legend "National Socialist Healthcare: Dachau 1945", which frankly displays a knowledge of history I'd typically thought wasn't present in these folks.
However, away from the fun and games at the Capitol, Obama quietly announced that the healthcare reform plan (presumably some mish-mash of the Senate and House plans) has now been endorsed by the AMA and AARP. The AMA represents ~250,000 doctors, and the AARP represents 35 million seniors. My guess is that, when watching the news tonight, you won't see that.
The other thing you probably won't hear about is the Republican "healthcare reform bill", which just got scored by the CBO, with the following interesting results:
*On his website, Boehner has the text of a Floor Statement on the 9/11 resolution, where he calls the terrorists Enemies of Freedom and conveniently lists a number of acts committed by these enemies:
On September 11th we came face-to-face with evil. But it wasn’t the first time. During the 1990s, the enemies of freedom used terror and violence in futile attempts to intimidate the United States and the cause of freedom.
On February 26, 1993, the 1st World Trade Center Bombing killed six people and injured more than 1,000 others.
On June 25, 1996, the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia killed 20 people and injured 372 people.
On June 7, 1998, the Kenya Embassy Bombing killed 213 people and injured 5,000 people.
On June 7, 1998, the Tanzania Embassy bombing killed 11 people and injured 68 people.
On October 12, 2000, the U.S.S. Cole bombing killed 17 people and injured 39 people.
Oddly, even though all of these events, plus the 9/11 attacks, were made by enemies of freedom during the past 19 years, they clearly, to Boehner, pale in comparison to a public healthcare plan.
We also get some yahoos with banners showing skeletons and corpses bearing the legend "National Socialist Healthcare: Dachau 1945", which frankly displays a knowledge of history I'd typically thought wasn't present in these folks.
However, away from the fun and games at the Capitol, Obama quietly announced that the healthcare reform plan (presumably some mish-mash of the Senate and House plans) has now been endorsed by the AMA and AARP. The AMA represents ~250,000 doctors, and the AARP represents 35 million seniors. My guess is that, when watching the news tonight, you won't see that.
The other thing you probably won't hear about is the Republican "healthcare reform bill", which just got scored by the CBO, with the following interesting results:
- Right now aboyut 17% of Americans don't have health insurance. After 10 years of the GOP reform... 17% still wouldn't have healthcare.
- The GOP plan would shave about $68 billion off of the deficit. That sounds great, except the Democratic Senate plan would take $104 billion off of the deficit. While covering all but 4% of Americans.
But hey, don't let the facts get in the way of your banners.
*On his website, Boehner has the text of a Floor Statement on the 9/11 resolution, where he calls the terrorists Enemies of Freedom and conveniently lists a number of acts committed by these enemies:
On September 11th we came face-to-face with evil. But it wasn’t the first time. During the 1990s, the enemies of freedom used terror and violence in futile attempts to intimidate the United States and the cause of freedom.
On February 26, 1993, the 1st World Trade Center Bombing killed six people and injured more than 1,000 others.
On June 25, 1996, the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia killed 20 people and injured 372 people.
On June 7, 1998, the Kenya Embassy Bombing killed 213 people and injured 5,000 people.
On June 7, 1998, the Tanzania Embassy bombing killed 11 people and injured 68 people.
On October 12, 2000, the U.S.S. Cole bombing killed 17 people and injured 39 people.
Oddly, even though all of these events, plus the 9/11 attacks, were made by enemies of freedom during the past 19 years, they clearly, to Boehner, pale in comparison to a public healthcare plan.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
The real news buried under the tea leaves
Lots of commentators on both sides spinning pretty wildly last night and this morning about what the results of last night's election mean for support for Obama and his agenda. A couple salient points:
- Corzine was an already-unpopular governor who was a.) in charge when the economy went in the tank, and b.) tied to Goldman Sachs, one of the villains of this recession. Anybody surprised that he lost?
- Deeds had already lost once to McDonnell in a statewide race for AG. He ran a lousy campaign focused mostly on McDonnell's master's thesis while McDonnell talked about jobs. Again, anybody surprised he lost?
- VA and NJ have, since 1985, consistently elected governors of the opposite party of whoever was holding the Whitehouse.
- Exit polls showed broad support (consistent with non-election-related approval polls) of Obama in NJ and VA.
- NY-23 showed two things- a.) that the tea-bagging fringe of the GOP is stronger than the moderates, and has the desire and ability to take out moderate candidates in primaries; and b.) moderate Dems will beat tea-baggers, even in conservative districts.
- In NY, a moderate Republican was replaced by a moderate Dem. In California (in the race to replace Ellen Tauscher, who's an Assistant Sec. State), a moderate Dem was replaced with a progressive Dem. Thus two seats in the House shift left, making it easier for Pelosi to get 218 votes for the public option.
The races last night will have some significant impact on policy in VA and NJ (and also, sadly, on Gay and Lesbian couples in ME), but nationally- this was not a "find a silver lining" night for Dems, because they lost where expected, and showed that they can continue to win by keeping a big tent while the GOP continues to devour itself.
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