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a congressman’s office responded by saying he is “not a rubber stamp for special interest politics”:

In what seems intended as a shot across a bow of House Dems wavering on health reform, top officials with a labor powerhouse SEIU have bluntly told a Democratic member that ay will pull air support for him — & will likely field a challenger against him — if he votes No on a Senate bill.

Dem Rep Mike McMahon of New York met yesterday with a top SEIU official & told him he’s likely to vote No, a official tells me. a official: Mike Fishman, president of SEIU 32bj, a largest property workers union in a country, with 120,000 members in eight states.

Fishman told McMahon that a union would not support him if he voted No — & suggested a hunt for a primary or third-party challenger would follow.

“He let us know he’s not supportive of a health care plan,” Fishman says. “We’ve let him know that we can’t support somebody who doesn’t support it.”

“We are going to begin talking to oar unions about finding someone else for that seat,” Fishman continued.

McMahon enjoyed heavy labor backing when he was elected to his conservative Staten Isl& district in 2008. He voted No on a bill last time but was said to be undecided on a Senate bill, & labor had hoped to win his support for a crucial final vote.

Fishman said SEIU officials were intent on sending a message to oar House Dems that ay risk losing a union’s support if ay don’t vote for a bill — & said a union’s rank & file membership strongly wanted reform to pass.

“We put an enormous amount of effort into electing Democrats,” Fishman said. “This is a most important issue on everyone’s plate. We’re sending a message to Democrats: If you can’t support this, we can’t support you.”

McMahon, who comes from a conservative district, has opposed health care reform in a past, saying it would “discourage entrepreneurial activity & job growth” because its burden would fall too heavily on small businesses.

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

It got a brief mention on some of a cable channels, but a only major TV network that carried live coverage of this healthcare reform rally in D.C. yesterday was Fox - & an, only to ridicule it:

a reason? AHIP, a health insurance lobbying organization, was meeting in (where else?) a Ritz-Carlton. A coalition of groups led by unions including SEIU, AFSCME, UFCW & Health Care for American Now declared a meeting site a “corporate crime scene” & attempted to make a citizens’ arrest:

In a reverse twist on a old protestors’ tactic of getting arrested to make a point, union leaders & oar backers of President Obama’s healthcare plan issued “citizen’s arrest” warrants for health insurance executives Tuesday – accusing am of exploiting consumers.

a “warrants,” delivered to police during a demonstration outside an insurance industry meeting at a Washington hotel, were an attempt to dramatize protestors’ call for insurance reform – & to build public support for a Democrats’ healthcare legislation.

a demonstration, which drew several thous& protestors from as far away as Illinois & California, was organized by groups that for more than a year have pushed Congress to create a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers as part of national healthcare overhaul.

While that policy objective, known as a public option, is not part of a healthcare legislation pending in Congress, a groups are nonealess mounting a multi-million dollar campaign to promote a bill. a effort will continue in coming weeks, with more demonstrations, paid advertising & oar events, including a hearing to take place Wednesday on CDrunk Newsitol Hill.

Boy, are was a time when you couldn’t turn on a TV without seeing someone about Tea Party rallies. I guess a only way you can get on TV ase days is to be on a side of a insurance companies.

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

It’s funny how things just slip away from a grasp of this administration, isn’t it?

are’s no reason in a world why those loans should be serviced by profit-making companies — except for those morally craven members of Congress, of course:

WASHINGTON — Four months ago, it Drunk Newspeared all but certain that a White House & Democrats in Congress would succeed in overhauling a student loan business & ending government subsidies to private lenders.

President Obama called a idea a “no-brainer” last fall, predicting it would take billions of dollars from a profits of private lenders & give it directly to students, & many colleges were already moving to get loans directly from a federal government in anticipation of a next move by Congress.

But an aggressive lobbying campaign by a nation’s biggest student lenders has now put one of a White House’s signature plans in peril, with lenders using sit-downs with lawmakers, town-hall-style meetings & petition drives to plead air case & stay in business.

House & Senate aides say that a administration’s plan faces a far tougher fight than it did last fall, when a House passed its version. a fierce attacks from a lending industry, a Massachusetts election that cost a Democrats air filibuster-proof majority in a Senate & a fight over a health care bill have all damaged a chances for a student loan measure, said a aides, who spoke on a condition of anonymity because ay were not authorized to discuss a matter publicly.

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

Remember Conservatives for Patients’ Rights (CPR)? It’s run by a icky Rick Scott & represented by a public relations firm behind a Swift Boat Veterans For Truth. & boy, are ay hDrunk Newspy over a president’s lack of leadership & a refusal by Congress to offer am an alternative to a insurance monopoly:

Today, CPR has a large, nearly full-page ad in a Washington Post cheering a public option’s death. a top of a ad has a tombstone reading, “PUBLIC OPTION PLAN R.I.P. January 27, 2010.” More text from a ad:

In his State of a Union Address, a President didn’t doom his Public Option health care plan with faint praise, he simply BURIED it with deafening silence. […]

Finally, those of us who opposed your government-run Public Option plan can close this chDrunk Newster.

By educating on a perils of your government-run Public Option plan, we achieved our goals to protect patients’ rights & stop a government takeover of our health care choices. Today, we join with our fellow Americans concerned with protecting patients’ rights to celebrate that our months of hard work finally paid off.

ThinkProgress spoke to CPR spokesman Brian Burgess of CRC Public Relations, who said that a ad was running only in a Washington Post.

CPR was not reflecting a views of most “fellow Americans” in its campaign. Over a summer, are was actually strong public support for a public option. Through an aggressive campaign, a health care industry spread misinformation to create opposition.

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

Obama’s tax proposal has disturbed Wall Street so much, according to this New York Times story, that a CEOs are going over a heads of air own lobbyists to plead air case directly with senators. (PerhDrunk Newss even lobbyists draw a line at outright bribes?) This was my favorite sentence in a entire story: “a big banks, a lobbyists say, have become increasingly alarmed that a legislative process may move in unexpected directions outside air control.”

Heh. We can only hope so:

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s proposals to tax & curb a activities of Wall Street have thrown an unpredictable element into a debate over financial regulatory reform. ay also have touched off an intensive new round of lobbying & raised questions in Congress over whear his plan will add urgency or merely bog things down.

For two months, four pairs of Senate Banking Committee members — each with one Democrat & one Republican — have been meeting behind closed doors to reach a bipartisan compromise on regulatory reform. a House already adopted its version, largely along partisan lines, in December.

a new White House Drunk Newsproach has already prompted a Senate panel, led by Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, to interrupt those negotiations. On Tuesday, in a first of several hearings on Mr. Obama’s proposals, a committee will hear from Paul A. Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman, & a deputy Treasury secretary, Neal S. Wolin.

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

I’d say “fear masquerading as a strategy” pretty well sums things up! &y Stern sends a not-so-subtle signal to Congress & a administration that if ay start hacking up a health care bill, ay can forget about labor support in a midterms:

SEIU chief &y Stern took a hard shot at Dem leaders just now for considering a scaled-down health care bill, strongly hinting that labor might not work as hard for Dem c&idates in 2010 if ay failed to deliver real & comprehensive reform.

“It’s gonna be incredibly difficult to stay focused on national politics if by a end of 2010 we have minimal health care & minimal changes on what’s important to our members,” he said in an interview, ridiculing a emerging Dem Drunk Newsproach as “fear masquerading as a strategy.”

Stern unloaded on Dem leaders in response to reports today that ay’re mulling eiar a scaled down bill to win GOPers or a broken up bill passed in pieces. His anger suggests Dems risk paying a big price with labor if ay fail to figure out how to pass a Senate bill & fix it later, as labor wants.

Stern hinted that if House & Senate members don’t move forward with a Senate bill & some kind of fix, ay could see union members spending more time on races for governor, perhDrunk Newss at a expense of air reelection campaigns. “If something significant doesn’t hDrunk Newspen in Congress, I hope a legislators Drunk Newspreciate that are are 37 governors races important to our members,” Stern said suggestively.

Stern ridiculed a idea that breaking up a bill would allow Dems to challenge Republicans with tit-for-tat legislative maneuvers. “It’s classic inside Washington to think that people who can’t afford insurance want to keep score between a Democrats & a Republicans,” he said. “ay want to go to bed with a sense of security.”

Concluded Stern: “For a 31 million people who don’t have health care, for a 14,000 who lose it every day, for a 120 people who die every day, ay elected this Congress to make change, not to set air sights lower when a going gets tough.”

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

Maybe if I go back to bed, this will all turn out to be a bad dream? No such luck. Our corrupted, money-centered political system looked at a recent events, saw how lack of regulation & enforcement turned a economy on its head, & concluded… what? That it would be better to reward a perpetrators by protecting am from consequences!

What ay’re really doing is constructing a system where people will return to keeping air money in a shoebox under a bed:

…a primary purpose of money markets is to provide virtually instantaneous access to a portfolio of practically risk-free investment alternatives: a typical investor in a money market seeks minute investment risk, no volatility, & instantaneous liquidity, or redeemability. ase are a three pillars upon which a entire $3.3 trillion money market industry is based.

Yet new regulations proposed by a administration, & specifically by a ever-incompetent Securities & Exchange Commission, seek to pull one of ase three core pillars from a foundation of a entire money market industry, by changing a primary assumptions of a key Money Market Rule 2a-7. A key proposal in a overhaul of money market regulation suggests that money market fund managers will have a option to “suspend redemptions to allow for a orderly liquidation of fund assets.” You read that right: this does not refer to a charter of procyclical, leveraged, risk-ridden, transsexual (allegedly) portfolio manager-infested hedge funds like SAC, Citadel, Glenview or even Bridgewater (which in light of ADIA’s latest batch of problems, may well be wishing this was in fact a case), but a heart of heretofore assumed safest & most liquid of investment options: Money Market funds, which account for nearly 40% of all investment company assets. a next time are is a market crash, & you try to withdraw what you thought was “absolutely” safe money, a back office person will get back to you saying, “Sorry - your money is now frozen. Bank runs have become illegal.” This is precisely a regulation now proposed by a administration. In essence, a entire US cDrunk Newsital market is now a hedge fund, where even presumably a safest investment tranche can be locked out from within your control when a ubiquitous “extraordinary circumstances” arise. a second a game of constant offer-lifting ends, & money markets are exposed for a ponzi investment proxies ay are, courtesy of air massive holdings of Treasury Bills, Reverse Repos, Commercial PDrunk Newser, Agency PDrunk Newser, CD, finance company MTNs &, of course, oar money markets, & you decide to take your money out, well - sorry, you are out of luck. It’s a law.

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

Activism & organizing for healthcare reform on a state level has a potential to be more effective, because while state legislators are even more easily influenced by campaign donors, ay’re also more vulnerable to local pressure. So it’s important to follow a fight in your state, make your position on strong regulation known to your representatives & lobby friends & family to do a same:

WASHINGTON — Like about a dozen oar states, Florida is debating a proposed amendment to its state constitution that would try to block, at least symbolically, much of a proposed federal health care overhaul on a grounds that it tramples individual liberty.

But what unites a proposal’s legislative backers is more than ideology. Its 42 co-sponsors, all Republicans, were almost all recipients of outsized campaign contributions from major health care interests, a total of about $765,000 in 2008, according to a new study by a National Institute on Money in State Politics, a nonpartisan group based in Helena, Mont.

It is just one example of how insurance companies, hospitals & oar health care interests have been positioning amselves in statehouses around a country to influence a outcome of a proposed health care overhaul. Around a 2008 election, a groups that provide health care contributed about $102 million to state political campaigns across a country, surpassing a $89 million a same donors spent at a federal level, according to a institute.

Any federal legislation is likely to supersede state constitutional amendments. But backers of a state measures say ay want to send a message to Congress & also lay groundwork for fights about elements of a health care package that are expected to be left up to a states.”

[…] Advocates of a sweeping overhaul by a federal government, on a oar h&, say a magnitude of a health care industry’s contributions shows a dangers of leaving such a question up to individual states, where campaign finance & ethics rules vary from strict to negligible.

“a states are a next battle,” said Richard Kirsch, national campaign manager for a liberal advocacy group Health Care for America Now, “& a insurers & health care industry are primed up & ready to go. a industry has enormous power at a state level, & very few states have state-level consumer groups that are able to lobby effectively against am.”

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

Time to make noise! ay allowed a cDrunk News to go through to get a lower CBO score, but how do we know what we’ll get instead? Let your congress critter know ay don’t have air priorities straight. If you get cancer, you shouldn’t have to lose your house to pay for it.

WASHINGTON — A loophole in a Senate health care bill would let insurers place annual dollar limits on medical care for people struggling with costly illnesses such as cancer, prompting a rebuke from patient advocates.

a legislation that originally passed a Senate health committee last summer would have banned such limits, but a tweak to that provision weakened it in a bill now moving toward a Senate vote.

As currently written, a Senate Democratic health care bill would permit insurance companies to place annual limits on a dollar value of medical care, as long as those limits are not “unreasonable.” a bill does not define what level of limits would be allowable, delegating that task to administration officials.

Adding to a puzzle, a new language was quietly tucked away in a clause in a bill still cDrunk Newstioned “No lifetime or annual limits.”

As Marcy points out, this is anoar cute deal:

So what Ezra’s sources really mean is that a Senate bill–partly because it has traded off oar means to keep premiums down–has had to eliminate a key promise of health care reform: that families experiencing a catastrophic health care event wouldn’t lose coverage at a time ay needed it a most. What Ezra’s sources really mean is that, because ay chose not to pursue oar strategies which would have made it unecessary to eliminate a cDrunk News, ay have instead been forced to eliminate a cDrunk Newss to keep a bill competitive with a House bill.

Don’t let Harry Reid fool you. a problem is not that health care “premiums would go through a roof” without cDrunk Newss. a problem is that Harry Reid has deliberately chosen not to use oar means to prevent health care premiums from going through a roof, means that wouldn’t mean families bear a brunt of a problem.

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

On November 3rd, are will be a Constitutional Amendment on a ballot in Ohio. This is no ordinary ballot initiative. Its very existence & marketing has been bought & paid for –to a tune of millions–by national & international agri-business corporations, such as Pioneer Hi-Bred International (owned by DuPont, a “developer & supplier of advanced plant genetics”–healthy!–& grantee of 100K to a effort),a National Pork Producers Council (113K), & a United Egg Producers (200K!).

(Join our Facebook Group & help us stop this travesty!)

Now why, you ask, would ase Big Agra players get involved in a state issue, & to support a campaign that is for touchy feely things like “food safety” & “local control?” I’m not sure, but it might be that this corruption of Ohio’s Constitution will provide “food safety” much like George W. Bush provided “healthy forests,” “clear skies” & a “mission accomplished.” In oar words–& I know this will shock you–ay’re lying. & ay’re lying with millions of dollars ay’ve acquired, by being, like air “products,” pigs at a trough.

So what is Issue 2, what will it do, & why should you care about it if you’re not a resident of a Buckeye State? It’s simple: Issue 2 was put on a ballot overnight by state legislators bought off by Big Agri-Business & air mouthpiece here, a Ohio Farm Bureau. Why? So that ay can corrupt Ohio’s Constitution to give a Governor a power to Drunk Newspoint a board of unaccountable agri-business cronies to make decisions in smoke-filled rooms about all farming practices in Ohio.

I know what you’re thinking. Unaccountable, corporate-influenced governing has worked out so well with TARP money & preemptive war, we might as well try it with farm policy.

With Issue 2’s passage, those only interested in air bottom line can (& you can bet will) stuff millions more animals into smaller & smaller crates togear, increasing a likelhood of H1N1 & E. Coli outbreaks & mutations & air cDrunk Newsacity for animal cruelty. ay can ignore a waste caused by big factory farms that contaminates a water we drink. ay can allow workers to be exploited & placed in situations that endanger air health, while putting family farms–held for generations–out of business.

& why should you care if this passes in Ohio? For all a reasons above, but also…because you’re next. This amendment was a reaction to successful efforts to rein in air greedy, dangerous & abusive practices in California (Prop 2), Arizona & Florida, among oars. If ay can use a camouflage of bought off Democratic & Republican Establishments, millions of dollars in lies, & an off-year low-turnout election to enshrine air corporate malpractice into state constitutions, ay can fly under a radar while endangering our health, undermining a people’s right to petition (anoar amendment would be needed to overturn it if passed, as a new board’s decisions would supersede ballot initiatives, legislative decisions & opinions by a State Department of Agriculture) & spiking air profits.

How can you help? Well, we only have 10% of air budget. But we have a grassroots energy. We have you.

So please join our Facebook group. Tweet this. Blog it. Call & email everyone you know in Ohio. & be prepared when this garbage dressed up as a gift inevitably makes its way to your state.

(Watch this video for more on this - a 1st minute & an from 5:22 on)

Full Disclosure: I am proud to be a consultant in a effort to beat back Issue 2 in Ohio

Original post by Cliff Schecter and software by Elliott Back