You know, between the crooks, the politicians and the payoffs, this issue shouldn't be a third rail anymore. Democrats need to decide which we can afford: Shoveling trillions of dollars into the military-industrial-congressional complex (and the pockets of defense donors), or rebuilding this country's economic and social infrastructure. David Sirota:

In 2000, the Pentagon admitted it has lost -- yes, lost -- $2.3 trillion. In 2003, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that a subsequent Department of Defense study said it was only $1 trillion. To put such numbers in perspective, contemplate what those sums could finance. $1 trillion, for instance, could pay the total cost of universal healthcare for the long haul. $2.3 trillion would cover universal healthcare plus the bank bailout plus the stimulus package.

Obviously -- obviously! -- these points are no cause for alarm and certainly no cause for defense spending reductions, right? All they must prove is that the archconservative Cato Institute, William Randolph Hearst's newspaper chain, National Journal employees and Pentagon officials are secretly America-hating liberals. And -- obviously! -- so are two of the most aggressive neoconservative hawks ever to hold government office, Sen. John McCain and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. After all, they’re the ones who issued those scathing statements about wasteful defense spending in the pop quiz above. That means they’re actually terrorist-appeasing lefties, right?

Really, how could anyone other than traitorous communists see the data and then consider backing the mildest Pentagon spending cuts? I mean, come on -- in a country whose paranoid conservative movement now makes a dead-serious ideology out of Stephen Colbert wisecracks, how dare any red-blooded American even think of pondering basic budgetary facts?

Of course here's a typical conservative reaction:

Lost in all the typical liberal hyperventilating over increased defense spending during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is just how low current defense spending compared to the last 45 years.

Oh, well then! Quit yer griping!

This is pretty big news, guys. Remember, the Massachusetts plan is the model they want to use for national reform - and already it's beginning to crack under the economic strain.

This is what happens with "bipartisan," market-friendly compromise: Band-aid solutions that can't handle a massive load. And it's exactly why we need single-payer universal healthcare: because it's the only plan cheap enough to stay solvent through tough times.

Overseers of Massachusetts’ trailblazing healthcare program made their first cuts yesterday, trimming $115 million, or 12 percent, from Commonwealth Care, which subsidizes premiums for needy residents and is the centerpiece of the 2006 law.

The board of the Connector Authority made the cuts as officials confronted two side effects of the recession: the state budget crisis and a surge in enrollment by the recently unemployed.

The largest share of the savings will come from slowing enrollment. An estimated 18,000 poor residents who qualify for full subsidies, but who forget to designate a health plan, will no longer be automatically assigned a plan and enrolled and thus could face delays in getting care.

The board also eliminated dental coverage for the poorest residents enrolled in Commonwealth Care, roughly 92,000 people who currently are the only ones in the program who receive that care. Regulators said that would save $10 million. Dental coverage was retained in the budget approved by lawmakers last week, and now it falls to the governor to decide its fate.

Also hanging in the balance is the health insurance status of 28,000 legal immigrants whose Commonwealth Care coverage was dropped in the budget lawmakers approved for the fiscal year that begins July 1. Governor Deval Patrick has until Monday to decide whether to veto any of that budget, which set aside $116 million less for Commonwealth Care than he proposed.

Robert Reich was out beating the drum yesterday, speaking on "This Week" and posting this piece in Salon:

If you want to save universal healthcare, you must do several things, and soon:

1. Go to the nation. You're not only a powerful orator; you're also capable of motivating, energizing, and mobilizing the American public. You must go on the road -- building public support by forcefully making the case for universal health care everywhere around the country. The latest Wall Street Journal poll shows that three out of four Americans want universal healthcare. But the vast majority don't know what's happening on the Hill, don't know how much money the medical-industrial lobbies are spending to defeat it, and have no idea how much demagoguery they're about to be exposed to. You must tell them. And don't be reluctant to take on those vested interests directly. Name names. They've decided to fight you. You must fight them.

This is the president's biggest weakness. Please, more drama, Obama!

2. Be LBJ. So far, Lyndon Johnson has been the only president to defeat the American Medical Association and the rest of the medical-industrial complex. He got Medicare and Medicaid despite their cries of "socialized medicine" because he knocked heads on the Hill. He told Congress exactly what he wanted, cajoled and threatened those who resisted, and counted noses every hour until he had the votes he needed. When you're not on the road, you have to be twisting congressional arms and drawing a line in the sand. Be tough.

3. Forget the Republicans. Forget bipartisanship. Universal healthcare can pass with 51 votes. You can get 51 votes if you give up on trying to persuade a handful of Republicans to cross over. Eight years ago George W. Bush passed his huge tax cut, mostly for the wealthy, by wrapping it in an all-or-nothing reconciliation measure and daring Democrats to vote against it. You should do the same with healthcare.

4. Insist on a real public option. It's the linchpin of universal healthcare. It's one thing to give up on single payer, and say that a public option is the best feasible alternative. But further compromise would essentially gut any healthcare plan. Don't accept Kent Conrad's ersatz public option masquerading as a "healthcare cooperative." Cooperatives won't have the authority, scale, or leverage to negotiate low prices and keep private insurers honest.

5. Demand that taxes be raised on the wealthy to ensure that all Americans get affordable healthcare. Not even a real public option will hold down costs enough to make healthcare affordable to most American families in years to come. So you'll need to tax the wealthy. Don't back down on your original proposal to limit their deductions. And support a cap on how much employee-provided healthcare can be provided tax free. Yes, you opposed this during your campaign. But you have no choice but to reverse yourself on this. These are the only two big pots of money.

6. Put everything else on hold. As important as they are, your other agenda items -- financial reform, home mortgage mitigation, cap-and-trade legislation -- pale in significance relative to universal healthcare. By pushing everything at once, you take the public's mind off the biggest goal, diffuses your energies, blur your public message, and fuel the demagogues who say you're trying to take over the private sector. You have to win this.

In this small world, Dr. George Tiller's long-time lawyer, Dan Monnat, has been one of my closest friends for over 40 years.  Tiller's murder was American Taliban terrorism, period. We already know the identities of the killer's accomplices, and it isn't only media wingmutts and Christianist frauds that encourage violence. Our own David Neiwert has been writing about these "Eliminationists" for years. Time to stand up to cowards and extremists

Prairie Weather: Oops...maybe we'd better rethink universal healthcare

BAGnewsNotes: Sunday news show roundup

Mercury Rising: Some Good News

Discourse.net: Stark foreclosure data for 2009

Krugman's right - the time is right to push for universal health care. I mean, I've been unemployed since July, have several pressing medical problems, and have been paying through the nose for COBRA. (The money's about to run out.) There's a new COBRA subsidy - but I got laid off one month too early to be eligible. Oh well!

Sure would be nice if President Obama saw this as a priority!'

Krugman says:

Let’s talk about the magnitude of the looming health care disaster.

Just about all economic forecasts, including those of the Obama administration’s own economists, say that we’re in for a prolonged period of very high unemployment. And high unemployment means a sharp rise in the number of Americans without health insurance.

After the economy slumped at the beginning of this decade, five million people joined the ranks of the uninsured — and that was with the unemployment rate peaking at only 6.3 percent. This time the Obama administration says that even with its stimulus plan, unemployment will reach 8 percent, and that it will stay above 6 percent until 2012. Many independent forecasts are even more pessimistic.

Why, then, aren’t we hearing more about ensuring health care access?

Now, it’s possible that those of us who care about this issue are reading too much into the administration’s silence. But let me address three arguments that I suspect Mr. Obama is hearing against moving on health care, and explain why they’re wrong.

First, some people are arguing that a major expansion of health care access would just be too expensive right now, given the vast sums we’re about to spend trying to rescue the economy.

But research sponsored by the Commonwealth Fund shows that achieving universal coverage with a plan similar to Mr. Obama’s campaign proposals would add “only” about $104 billion to federal spending in 2010 — not a small sum, of course, but not large compared with, say, the tax cuts in the Obama stimulus plan.

It’s true that the cost of universal health care will be a continuing expense, reaching far into the future. But that has always been true, and Mr. Obama has always claimed that his health care plan was affordable. The temporary expenses of his stimulus plan shouldn’t change that calculation.

Second, some people in Mr. Obama’s circle may be arguing that health care reform isn’t a priority right now, in the face of economic crisis.

But helping families purchase health insurance as part of a universal coverage plan would be at least as effective a way of boosting the economy as the tax breaks that make up roughly a third of the stimulus plan — and it would have the added benefit of directly helping families get through the crisis, ending one of the major sources of Americans’ current anxiety.

Finally — and this is, I suspect, the real reason for the administration’s health care silence — there’s the political argument that this is a bad time to be pushing fundamental health care reform, because the nation’s attention is focused on the economic crisis. But if history is any guide, this argument is precisely wrong.

[...] One more thing. There’s a populist rage building in this country, as Americans see bankers getting huge bailouts while ordinary citizens suffer.

I agree with administration officials who argue that these financial bailouts are necessary (though I have problems with the specifics). But I also agree with Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, who argues that — as a matter of political necessity as well as social justice — aid to bankers has to be linked to a strengthening of the social safety net, so that Americans can see that the government is ready to help everyone, not just the rich and powerful.

The bottom line, then, is that this is no time to let campaign promises of guaranteed health care be quietly forgotten. It is, instead, a time to put the push for universal care front and center. Health care now!

This is a subject close to my heart, since I've spent at least half of the past decade as a member of the uninsured class. Right now, I'm unemployed again and paying COBRA out of reader donations - donations which run out next month, with no job in sight. Oh well!

When Obama announced Tom Daschle as his health czar, my heart sank. After all, Daschle worked for a law firm whose lobbying arm represented the insurance industry, and that didn't bode well for actual reform. Instead, it seems to point toward corporate-friendly incrementalism.

I hope I'm wrong. I hope the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress are focused enough to produce legislation which actually solves this massive problem. But voters will certainly have to stay vocal if they want to make their own interests the priority in this national healthcare debate:

Karen Goroncy, a home health aide in Washington, Pa., has taken care of people for 25 years but can't afford health insurance to take care of herself.

A reader has promised to buy Goroncy insurance after she was profiled this fall in The Inquirer, and she hopes to have hernia surgery in the New Year.

But short of the generosity of readers - not a good national solution - Goroncy and millions like her are awaiting the sweeping health reform now being considered by President-elect Barack Obama.

Obama's plan, which has not been formally announced, could mark the biggest change in health care in 40 years. A central goal will be to cover 50 million Americans who don't have insurance. It is conceivable that all Americans will be required by law to have health insurance.

A principal architect of Obama's reform - Tom Daschle, nominated to become secretary of the Health and Human Services Department - has written at length about creating a powerful new board that would control health-care spending much like the Federal Reserve Board influences the nation's monetary policy.

Senator McCain sits down with the editorial board of the Des Moines Register and gets stumped by one of the best questions I've heard asked of him so far this campaign.

"Throughout your adult life, am I right, as a veteran and a member of Congress and now someone over sixty five, throughout your adult life have you been covered by a taxpayer-financed health care plan?

Think of the brilliance of this question: McCain has received "government-run" health care his entire life, and I'm sure he's never had a single complaint. If "government-run" health care is so inefficient and wasteful, how has it served him so effectively for over thirty years? If it's good enough for him, why isn't it good enough for the 40 million Americans who desperately need it and are forced to live without it? I'm always amazed at how successful the Republicans are at convincing voters they don't want something that clearly works well, and something that they themselves have no problem taking advantage of.

Flipping through a few of the other clips I can't help but notice that McCain is becoming increasingly hostile. Check them out and tell me I'm wrong.

We love Shakespeare's Sister because she writes posts like this:

Sometimes I just close my eyes and pretend that the media still plays a useful role in the republic, the Democrats are a genuine and effective opposite party, our government isn't being sold piecemeal to corporations, our elections are fair, we've got universal healthcare, and Al Gore is really our president.

And sometimes I just close my eyes and pretend I'm making out with Al Gore.

But mostly the president thing.

Open Thread below....

Good morning, scamps and scoundrels. I’m your round-up guest host for the week, Melissa McEwan, otherwise known as Shakespeare’s Sister (that’s a Smiths’ and Woolf reference, not an egregious bit of braggadocio, cheeky gits!), the bare-knuckled proprietress of Shakesville—a group blog absolutely chock-a-block with shameless purveyors of libertine feminism and the radical gay agenda. Buckle up; off we go…

Egalia over at Tennessee Guerilla Women knows she not the only dummy who expected the Dems to act like an opposition party.

The Heretik helpfully suggests they could try actually opposing something.

Peter at Right Wing Watch finds that professional a**hole Randall Terry is heartbroken by Pat Robertson's endorsement of Giuliani and his "hypocritical and seductive evil."

Amy at Incertus puts on her science geek cap to take a look at what brains are saying about the candidates.

Eric Hopp raises his voice once again in support of universal healthcare, in the wake of the news that the US is among the worst in the world for infant deaths.

Dave Neiwert provides space for Trefayne to take a stroll down Memory Lane and spend some time with Ron Paul's Congressional record.

Amanda finds one more reason for people in the Reality-Based Community to avoid seeing Bee Movie, if anyone still needed one.

And over at WIMN's Voices, the lovely Echidne takes a look at the alarming allegation that feminism killed the Neanderthals. We're so powerful, evidently, we can retroactively kill entire species! Mwah ha ha ha!

That’s all for today. Seeya tomorrow! If you’ve got any hot tips, email me at shakespeares_sister at comcast dot net.

Ezra Klein has an op-ed in today's Los Angeles Times arguing for the inevitability of universal health care in the U.S. "The realization that our illogical, mistaken healthcare system can't go on forever has dawned," he writes, "and so it will end. The question now is what replaces it."

I'm not sure that realization has dawned everywhere, but I do think we've reached a point at which a critical mass of the American middle class understands the system is seriously bleeped and is willing to listen to options. Unfortunately the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy still has a tight enough grip on news media that it is damn near impossible to have the dispassionate national discussion on health care we need to be having. As soon as the phrase "universal health care" leaves anyone's lips, you can count on a right-wing goon to be standing nearby to shout it down. Thanks to the VRWC, all the average person knows about other nations' health care systems is that there are waiting lines in Canada.

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