Barbarian Peanut by CHS.

What has struck me forcefully about the so-called "health care debate" is how little actual issues debate there has been.  And how much orchestrated noise from paid operatives has been ginned up to distract the public from the real prize: real reforms.

Bill Moyers has a profile up on Dick Armey’s Freedomworks astroturf extravaganza that needs viewing far and wide.

It illustrates a fundamental political operative truth: sowing dissent, even based on outright falsehoods, is a means to an end in a public divide and conquer strategy.  Something folks like Armey use to their moneyed clients’ advantage whenever possible because it is the way they earn their multi-million dollar Beltway living.

How so?

Think about the interests involved and their objectives for a moment: maintaining the status quo in health care means that the people making the money continue to rake it in, which means they can continue to dole it out on the Hill. People like Armey bring access on the Hill to the halls of power and that translates into valuable legislative inroads, for which moneyed interests pay handsomely.

In exchange for said donor largesse, keeping the angry public — who are clearly well and truly tired of feeling screwed these days — on the fringes of the discussion had to be a strategic priority.

The best means of doing that? Sow dissent that keeps the public’s eyes off the real ball, thereby throwing any chance at unity of purpose among the public out the window.

Why?  Because a unified public pushing for reform is what drives any substantive change this country ever sees.  It’s what gave FDR the ability to push through New Deal legislation and Wall Street regulations.  It’s what eventually forced an end to the Vietnam War.  It’s the engine that has driven major changes through our entire history.

And the forces of the status quo know that, fear it, and undermine it at every turn. 

Status quo means profit.  Change means instability which makes things tough to control or outright loss of profit, and that is not acceptable, now is it? (more…)

Pillars at SCOTUS via David Paul Ohmer.

The full transcript from yesterday’s Citizens United arguments has been released by SCOTUS.  SCOTUSblog has links to both the transcript and the tape of oral argument, made available from PBS Newshour.

Depending on the outcome of the case, there could be a reversal of laws which sought to balance speech rights against a compelling interest to prevent public corruption that go all the way back to Taft-Hartley and beyond.

Nina Totenberg hit the nugget of the day squarely in her NPR reporting: "When Olson argued that Congress must have a compelling reason to limit corporate speech, Justice Stephen Breyer said the compelling argument is that "people think representatives are being bought."

Lyle Denniston has some excellent analysis as well, including:

Kennedy was less aggressive in his questioning, but openly voiced concern that government arguments for leaving intact the two precedents against corporate political spending would undercut the Court’s 1976 decision in Buckley v. Valeo, finding constitutional free speech rights in political spending by all sources, corporations included. And he said those precedents meant that corporations would be “silenced” when they had contributions to make to public policy by speaking out during campaigns.

The core problem with those prior rulings, Kennedy said, was that they “chill expression” based on the speaker. “There is no place where an ongoing chill is more dangerous than in the election context,” he commented.

As in every case the last few years that has had a close divide, satisfying Kennedy’s concerns will likely be the path to the majority.

Reading through the transcript, several things jumped out at me including the gulf between core beliefs of the Justices, and the weighing of the public’s interest in curbing corruption versus the corporate interests. It’s fascinating stuff.

See if you can guess which justices said each of the following from the SCOTUS bench: (more…)

Not in practice, mind you, but as a codeword sop to the masses as justification for defending the status quo.

The end result of bipartisanship is paring down a bill until it changes next to nothing of import.  And then selling it as if it were the greatest thing since the last bucket of lukewarm spit to pass this way.

This is nothing new in politics. The money has always been on the side of the status quo, since change can be costly to one’s bottom line. 

And the status quo has perennially been about "I’ve got mine.  Screw you," now hasn’t it? 

One only need watch the FDR Fala speech (Youtube above) to get that. Or read a little history, you can pretty much pick any era.

What is new? That there is no real voice for change and the little guy capitalizing on this moment in our nation’s history.

And it shows.

Jean Edward Smith has a fantastic op-ed in the NYTimes today talking about FDR, the false sop of bipartisanship and the real value of a little more backbone:

. . .this fixation on securing bipartisan support for health care reform suggests that the Democratic Party has forgotten how to govern and the White House has forgotten how to lead.

Roosevelt understood that governing involved choice and that choice engendered dissent. He accepted opposition as part of the process. It is time for the Obama administration to step up to the plate and make some hard choices.

He cites numorous examples of Roosevelt New Deal reforms which were enacted in spite of entrenched interests, and not because they’d been pared down to mere windowdressing to win their support.

Was Glass-Steagall passed in a bi-partisan fashion with entrenched interests on Wall Street given a seat at the negotiating table? Hell no. Social security?  Are you kidding me?!?

Were there membes of Congress consorting with moneyed interests trying to block the bill, much like Max Baucus’ lobbyist-filed anteroom? Undoubtedly.  Although, as Krugman points out, there’s a lot more of that lobbyist payola floating around these days.

But the real difference between then and now?

FDR sold the need for change at the grassroots by making that change actually happen.  And without selling the public’s interest down the river in the process.  Which made his grassroots support all the stronger, and enabled him to fend off opposition by painting them as being against the public, fueling more public support in the process. 

FDR drew his power for change from the people, not just from the people around him inside the Beltway.

Better political leadership in the Democratic party would help.  So would those leaders actually believing in the need for change instead of giving it political lip service and then undercutting it with their actions.

Can the Obama administration still make needed changes? Absolutely.

Will they? Well, that’s the big question, isn’t it?

Digby points to a Catherine Rampel piece at NYTimes. In it, Rampel underscores a universal political truth: According to two recent polls from The New York Times/CBS News and The Wall Street Journal/NBC News, Americans appear very worried about controlling the federal deficit….

Best idea I’ve seen in ages: I heard a friend suggest that our congress people be required to wear NASCAR uniforms bearing the logos of their “sponsors”. Of course, it would be a lot of logos for some of them, so maybe only the logos of the top ten or fifteen “sponsors”

All the smarmy Republican legal smear tactics?  Say it straight out: it’s all about the right-wing moolah.

Jane said it all here, but I’m risking a repeat:

Boy, does this sound familiar:

While conservatives say they know they have little chance of defeating Mr. Obama’s choice because Democrats control the Senate, they say they hope to mount a fight that could help refill depleted coffers and galvanize a movement demoralized by Republican electoral defeats….

With the dismissal of the Stevens’ indictment, AG Holder signaled loudly that there would be a return to evidentiary fundamentals within the DOJ. The lassez faire management stylings of Gonzales and Mukasey were to be a thing of the past. But will they be? It certainly will not be instantaneous.

Just double checking: this is still 2009, right? Because this is beyond ludicrous and insulting:Although Ms. Johnsen is a well-regarded scholar and spent five years in leadership roles at the OLC under the Clinton administration — one and a half of those years as head — Republicans were quick to dismiss her qualifications.