Co-author Rep. Tom Perreillo (D-VA) to Insurance Companies: "Be afraid, be very afraid..."

A positive step in the right direction:

By a vote of 406-19, the House passed the Health Insurance Industry Fair Competition Act (HR 4626), introduced by Reps. Tom Perriello (D-VA) and Betsy Markey (D-CO). This bill is designed to restore competition and transparency to the health insurance market – by repealing the blanket antitrust exemption afforded to health insurance companies by the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945. Under this legislation, health insurers will no longer be shielded from legal accountability for price fixing, dividing up territories among themselves, sabotaging their competitors in order to gain monopoly power, and other such anti-competitive practices.

Over the last several years, the health insurance industry has become increasingly concentrated–giving consumers fewer and fewer meaningful choices in shopping for health insurance. According to a recent study by the AMA, there have been more than 400 mergers among health insurers in the past 14 years. [..]

This bill is also necessary because, over the years, health insurers have been able to use this antitrust exemption to block court actions regarding anti-competitive behavior. In Ocean State Physicians Health Plan, Inc. v Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island, the First Circuit Court – citing the McCarran-Ferguson antitrust exemption – overturned a jury verdict against the dominant health insurer for using its monopoly power to put financial pressure on area employers to refuse to do business with a competing HMO.

There is also evidence that removing this antitrust exemption will result in lower prices and other benefits for consumers. Time and time again, increased competition results in lower prices, increased choice, and greater innovation. A healthy and competitive health insurance market will drive prices down in the health insurance industry, just as we have seen it do in so many other industries where competition is allowed to take hold. Since California passed a law in 1988 that eliminated the state antitrust exemption for the auto insurance industry, for instance, auto premiums for consumers in California have risen by 9.8% while the rest of the country has seen auto premiums rise by over 48%.

An incremental victory, to be sure, but a victory nonetheless. I like what Nancy Pelosi had to say:

The House of Representatives, Mr. Chairman, is called "The People’s House." Today, we live up to that name. By passing legislation that increases leverage for the people by changing the playing field, a playing field that has been dominated by the insurance industry for over 65 years and now it’s the people’s turn. The insurance companies will now be playing on the people’s field.

Rep. Anthony Weiner had the money quote, however, as captured by Think Progress:

You guys have chutzpah. The Republican Party is the wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance industry. They say this isn’t going to do enough, but when we propose an alternative to provide competition, they’re against it. They say we want to strengthen state insurance commissioners and they’ll do the job. But when we did that in our national health care bill, they said we’re against it. They said we want to have competition but when we proposed requiring competition they’re against it. They’re a wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance industry. That’s the fact!

Love it! Of course, there are a couple of senators in the Democratic caucus that we can say the same thing about. I'm looking at you, Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman.

Paul Krugman says that the main Republican strategy to fight climate change legislation will be to attack it as hurting the economy:

By 2050, when the emissions limit would be much tighter, the burden would rise to 1.2 percent of income. But the budget office also predicts that real G.D.P. will be about two-and-a-half times larger in 2050 than it is today, so that G.D.P. per person will rise by about 80 percent. The cost of climate protection would barely make a dent in that growth. And all of this, of course, ignores the benefits of limiting global warming.

So where do the apocalyptic warnings about the cost of climate-change policy come from?

Are the opponents of cap-and-trade relying on different studies that reach fundamentally different conclusions? No, not really. It’s true that last spring the Heritage Foundation put out a report claiming that Waxman-Markey would lead to huge job losses, but the study seems to have been so obviously absurd that I’ve hardly seen anyone cite it.

Instead, the campaign against saving the planet rests mainly on lies.

Thus, last week Glenn Beck — who seems to be challenging Rush Limbaugh for the role of de facto leader of the G.O.P. — informed his audience of a “buried” Obama administration study showing that Waxman-Markey would actually cost the average family $1,787 per year. Needless to say, no such study exists.

But we shouldn’t be too hard on Mr. Beck. Similar — and similarly false — claims about the cost of Waxman-Markey have been circulated by many supposed experts.

A year ago I would have been shocked by this behavior. But as we’ve already seen in the health care debate, the polarization of our political discourse has forced self-proclaimed “centrists” to choose sides — and many of them have apparently decided that partisan opposition to President Obama trumps any concerns about intellectual honesty.

So here’s the bottom line: The claim that climate legislation will kill the economy deserves the same disdain as the claim that global warming is a hoax. The truth about the economics of climate change is that it’s relatively easy being green.

So Verizon Wireless is one of sponsors of the Friends of America Rally this Labor Day weekend, an anti-environment, pro-coal event. Most of the other sponsors are in the coal industry and there is even a link to the National Mining Association’s anti-Waxman-Markey petition on the home page.

Credo Action wanted to know why Verizon would sponsor such a reactionary event with such polarizing figures--especially ones that have gone out of their way to foment violence. From their email:

Before we launched our campaign, CREDO Action reached out to Verizon Wireless to confirm its sponsorship of the pro-coal "Friends of America" rally. Becky Bond, our Political Director, then sent a cordial follow-up to give Verizon Wireless a heads-up that our campaign had launched. Verizon replied as follows:

"This is how our response is going over with the activists. Becky once lived in a tree for a while. At least now I know where the emails are coming from."

— James Gerace, VP of Corporate Communications at Verizon Wireless

You got that?

If you don't think that Verizon Wireless should support global warming deniers and practitioners of mountaintop removal mining, then Verizon Wireless thinks it's okay to dismiss your concerns because you must have "lived in a tree for a while."

If they're going to try to mock us for opposing right wing demagoguery, then we'll just have to make more noise.

So please take a minute to ask your friends and family to join this campaign, especially if they are Verizon Wireless customers.

Let's remember how this campaign started. Verizon Wireless apparently sees nothing wrong with co-sponsoring a rally put on by Massey Energy, the biggest violator of the Clean Water Act in history; sees nothing wrong with giving a platform to people who deny global warming; sees nothing wrong with giving the emcee microphone to Ted Nugent who famously said:

Obama, he's a piece of sh — . I told him to suck on my machine gun...Hey Hillary [Clinton] you might want to ride one of these [machine guns] into the sunset, you worthless b — ch.

Apparently these are the values and sentiments Verizon Wireless feels comfortable associating itself with. You can violate the law, pillage the Earth and publicly insult Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the most vulgar way. Verizon Wireless is fine with that. But when we express common sense concerns about environmental stewardship, Verizon Wireless thinks we're tree-hugging nuts.

You know you want to give Verizon a piece of your mind. Remember, be polite. Show more class than they have.

Shakesville: Facts Schmacts...but Waxman-Markey passes the House anyway

Scott Horton: Did a Bush Justice Department official obstruct the Renzi investigation?

FAIR Blog: Why I couldn't say what Dan Froomkin said reporters should do

Mondoweiss: Naomi Klein in Bil'in: Boycott Israel

Iraq Today: War News.  It aint good

Alien Truth: Ayatolla tweets can't be beat

Many thanks to Batocchio for filling in so ably for the past ten days

[Ed. note: Please welcome to C&L our old friend and erstwhile congressional candidate from Washington's 8th District, Darcy Burner. Darcy's now heading up Progressive Congress, and we hope to have her contribute posts as often as she's willing and able. -- DN]

We talk a lot about wanting representatives who will display courage and conviction. But the real test of that isn’t what they do when it’s easy – it’s what they do when it’s hard.

**

When I was running for Congress, my son Henry would take every opportunity he could to talk about climate change. He talked to me, he talked to Democrats at legislative district meetings, he grabbed the microphone if he saw TV cameras. He used my webcam two years ago to cut this video:

Today the U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on the Waxman-Markey energy bill, the most significant climate change legislation in history. It establishes a cap-and-trade regulatory system designed to decrease the amount of carbon dioxide we release into the atmosphere over the next several years.

I want to help principled progressives who vote their conscience when it's politically costly understand that we have their backs.

Continue reading »

The Net Neutrality Act

Alternet:

"Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) threw down the gauntlet just moments ago, introducing the Network Neutrality Act of 2006...read on"

NY Times:

"Net neutrality" is a concept that is still unfamiliar to most Americans, but it keeps the Internet democratic. Cable and telephone companies that provide Internet service are talking about creating a two-tiered Internet, in which Web sites that pay them large fees would get priority over everything else.

"One of the Internet's great strengths is that a single blogger or a small political group can inexpensively create a Web page that is just as accessible to the world as Microsoft's home page. But this democratic Internet would be in danger if the companies that deliver Internet service changed the rules so that Web sites that pay them money would be easily accessible, while little-guy sites would be harder to access, and slower to navigate. Providers could also block access to sites they do not like."

DOWNLOADS: (1440)

PLAYS: (2844)

Embed

OK, pop some popcorn and pull up a chair. Glenn Beck is calling out the dogs … on Republicans.

He ran a special segment last night urging his audience descend en masse upon the “Cap and Traitors” – Republican House members who actually voted for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill last Friday – all eight of them. With him to seal the deal was the Washington Examiner's Kevin Mooney, who besides being in need of a new suit was also in need of a logic text:

Beck: Now, there are eight Republicans who voted for cap and trade. ... Look at this map that we put up. It looks like all of the votes -- there it is -- it looks like all of these votes -- and we're going to have some showers -- uh -- all of the votes really came, half of the votes, more than half -- from those areas. The West Coast and from the liberal Northeast.

Mooney: Well, Glenn, you're put your finger on it. Uh, the votes, whether they're Democrat or Republican, in favor of this bill, out of the coastal areas, the elite areas of this country, they're areas of the country where the energy prices are already high. Democrats and Republicans voted against this bill in other parts of the country where they already are using other fossil fuels and have lower energy prices.

Beck: Isn't it interesting that those are the areas that are collapsing the fastest?

Mooney and Beck, not to put too fine a point on it, are full of crap. Just by way of example, look at my own home state of Washington, whose delegation voted strongly for the bill, and is included on their list of "coastal states" whose energy prices are supposedly too high. In reality -- somewhere far distant from these guys' residence on Planet Wingnuttia -- Washington's energy prices are among some of the lowest in the nation (for instance, our electricity costs are far below the national average, since we get so much of it from hydroelectric sources. Likewise for Oregon, another "elite coastal" state. Meanwhile, some of the nation's highest electricity costs can also be found in Florida and Texas -- some of the "non-elite" states on Beck's graphic.

And Glenn? Our economy here in Washington is far from collapsing. The housing bubble didn't overinflate as much here as elsewhere -- including, say Florida and Texas. And we have Microsoft and Boeing. So we're hurting, yes -- but we'll be fine. No thanks to the right-wing ideologues like yourself who wrecked the national economy.

Phony methodology aside, it is in any event always fun to see the right savage its own -- because nearly all of the eight Republicans who voted for the bill came from vulnerable districts. Dave Reichert, from Washington's 8th District, just barely survived two tough challenges from Darcy Burner, and did so in part by selling himself as friendly to environmentalists. And indeed, he comes from a district that has never elected a Democrat, but whose growing technology-worker base is a rapidly changing demographic politically -- and particularly big on environmental issues.

So we're happy to see them get hell from the Glenn Beck wing of their party. It just reminds the large mass of swing voters in the 8th District and others like it, once again, why it's stupid to vote even for a "moderate" Republican -- because they will always be overwhelmed by the pseudo-populist Wingnuttians who dominate the GOP at all levels. Especially the pundit one.

I know we're supposed to be all bipartisan and forgiving and stuff in the wake of the Great Repudiation, but sometimes you've gotta sit back and smell the schadenfreude. Case in point: Colorado Republican Marilyn Musgrave:

Two weeks after the brutal loss, Musgrave still hasn’t called her opponent to concede or to congratulate the victor, as is not only textbook but also mannerly to do.

Moreover, Musgrave’s ill manners bleed into her own team. Rumor has it she still — 14 days later — hasn’t even thanked her campaign staff. (Again, textbook.)

Musgrave press secretary Joseph Brettell tells us: “It’s a campaign matter, and I have no further comment.”

And as for Markey, her campaign manger, Anne Caprara, who is in town this week with her boss for orientation, tells us of Musgrave: “No, she hasn’t called to concede, but we’re moving forward.”

Though the Markey team doesn’t plan on stopping by Musgrave’s office while in town, eventually the two camps will have to touch base — just in terms of transitioning. But curiously, more rumors abound that no one has seen or talked to Musgrave since the brutal loss; she’s all but disappeared.

One of the joys of this past election was seeing the final exit of characters like Musgrave from the nation's political stage. This was, after all, the woman who tried to have Michael Schiavo arrested merely for showing up to one of her events.

My favorite Musgrave moment, though, came with the above video, which shows Musgrave critics trying to get her to answer their questions. Not only does Musgrave ignore them as her entourage shoves the questioners out of the way; but at the end, some of her supporters confront the questioners and physically intimidate them by shoving them and grabbing their mike.

Congratulations to Betsy Markey. She did the whole nation a service.