It's not the failure of "Congress," Mr. President: virtually every
Democratic representative and dozens of republican representatives would
vote immediately to pass the Senate budget resolution and re-open the
government. This is the deliberate vandalism of teabagger repugs running
riot and the cowardice of John Boehner refusing to rein them in.
Because if he's right in thinking that the Keystone Pipeline is already approved, we're all fucked.
But there are some issues on which it does not pay to be too clever by half, on which there is only one dimension in which the chess should be played. One of them is Social Security and Medicare. Another one is this damn pipeline. It is not possible to be serious about climate change and then green-light this project. This is a pipeline, so it will leak, because it always leaks. TransCanada will then lie about the leak because it is an extraction industry and that's what they do when things leak. The fuel it carries will ludicrously accelerate the pace of global climate change. And, more to the point, every case presented in its favor has turned out to be a lie. The job figures always were science fiction. It will do nothing to the price of gasoline in this country. Why we should put the Oglalla Aquifer at risk with a pipeline that the Canadians don't want to build in their own country just so that the Chinese can continue to pollute the air escapes me. I think these former campaign staffers are right. I think the bag job on this one is nearly complete.
Tell your state senator to co-sponsor Bill Request 129 by Senator Jimmy Higdon, and your state representative to co-sponsor Bill Request 198 by Rep. David Floyd. To find your legislators and get email addresses and phone numbers for them, go to http://lrc.ky.gov.
These bills don't stop the Bluegrass Pipeline in its tracks, but they establish rules to help prevent catastrophes and protect landowners.
Two Kentucky lawmakers have pre-filed bills for next year's General Assembly that they say would help protect property owners from having their land seized for the proposed Bluegrass Pipeline.Republican State Sen. Jimmy Higdon of Lebanon and Rep. David Floyd of Bardstown pre-filed measures Thursday specifying that developers of oil and gas pipeline projects would be eligible to condemn land only if they are regulated by the Public Service Commission.Floyd said in a prepared statement that while he supports business and industry, the rights of landowners must be preserved."I might understand why some want to grant easement for the Bluegrass Pipeline Project through their land, but I cannot fathom the argument that those who want to protect their property must yield to government force for the benefit of a private company," Floyd said. "The taking of private property in Kentucky must be rare, and then only for public use."Higdon said in an interview that he and Floyd are at "ground zero" of the proposal to build an underground pipeline that would transport liquid natural gas through Kentucky along a route stretching from Pennsylvania to the Gulf of Mexico.The pipeline would cut through 13 Kentucky counties, including Nelson, which both Higdon and Floyd represent."We make it very clear that if you're a pipeline and you don't have oversight by the Public Service Commission, then you don't qualify for eminent domain. You can't have it both ways," Higdon said.The pipeline isn't a regulated utility, according to the Kentucky Resources Council.
If she really wants to endear herself to Kentucky's Democratic voters - especially the ones who need some real inspiration to turn out on election day next year - Grimes will attach herself to Governor Steve Beshear's Obamacare Kynect victory tour and start singing Obamacare's praises.
Mary Meehan at the Herald:
Comparing congressmen who obstruct government funding because of the newly imposed Affordable Care Act to "9-year-olds in a food fight," Gov. Steve Beshear announced Wednesday that nearly 90,000 Kentuckians had explored health care options at the state's website, Kynect.ky.gov.By noon Thursday, the site had nearly 2 million page views, 12,779 applications started and 3,505 individuals and families approved for affordable health insurance.
Beshear said many people were able to explore their health care options through the website, making it "one of the most exciting days I have had since I have been governor."Obamacare - for all that Kentucky officials refuse to use the name or credit the President - is on track to accomplish what decades of kow-towing to Big Coal and the obscenely wealthy have not: genuine improvement in the lives of hundreds of thousands of Kentuckians, including thousands of new jobs and billions of dollars in economic growth.
Beshear choked up a bit during his first public appearance since Kentucky's health care program went into effect. At a news conference Wednesday at University of Kentucky Chandler Hospital, there was a catch in Beshear's voice after he talked about how improved health care will make a real difference in the lives of the 640,000 Kentuckians currently uninsured.
"I am proud to be a part of it," he said.
Gov. Steve Beshear said Thursday he was "disappointed" that Kentucky's U.S. senators "continue to weave their web of misinformation" about President Barack Obama's health care law instead of offering solutions.
Beshear, a Democrat, told the Lexington Herald-Leader that Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul are wrong to say Kentuckians don't want the Affordable Care Act, and he said they would pay a political price for opposing it.
"I would predict to you that a year from now all of these people are going to be turning around and looking at these critics and saying, 'Wait a minute. You were misleading us. Because this works, and I have health insurance I can afford,'" Beshear said.
The governor, in Washington to speak at a conference hosted by National Journal, castigated Washington's "dysfunctionality" before responding to an op-ed co-signed by Paul and McConnell and appearing in the Cincinnati Enquirer that assailed Beshear's support of the law.
"As far as I'm concerned, they can stay up here in Washington and continue their political grandstanding," Beshear said. "I'm going to be in Kentucky, making sure that our people have affordable health insurance."
SNIP
"People are really enthused and interested in this and very excited about it," the governor said.
Executives of health insurance companies who denied affordable coverage to people with pre-existing conditions should rot in prison forever. That the motherfuckers can no longer do that to anyone is the single greatest thing about Obamacare.
Digby:
Update: An acquaintance of mine in another state who is working for the exchange tells me that people with pre-existing conditions were calling in droves today.And from Think Progress, the repugs' biggest nightmare:
Of course they are. These poor people are desperate to get get some insurance and any society that would just let them hang out there in the wind is barbaric. If nothing else works in Obamacare, the fact that people who are already sick (or just have some kind of diagnosis) will be able to access affordable health care makes it a success.
What a relief it must be for these folks to be covered. I sure hope that not even one of them or any member of their family will ever vote for Republicans again. They literally wanted them to just ... well ... die.
*She also says that people are really shocked to find out that these plans are high quality because of the 10 essential benefits, especially the chronic disease management and no monetary caps. People who've been round the private insurance block know exactly what a godsend that is.
Butch Matthews is a 61-year-old former small business owner from Little Rock, Arkansas who used to wake up every morning at 4 A.M. to deliver canned beverages to retailers before retiring in 2010. A lifelong Republican, he was heavily skeptical of the Affordable Care Act when it first passed. “I did not think that Obamacare was going to be a good plan, I did not think that it was going to help me at all,” he told ThinkProgress over the phone.
But after doing a little research, Matthews eventually realized how much the law could help him. And on Tuesday, his local Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) provider confirmed that he would be able to buy a far better plan than his current policy while saving at least $13,000 per year through Arkansas’ Obamacare marketplace.
SNIP
So what would Matthews tell other Americans who are skeptical about Obamacare? “I would tell them to learn more about it before they start talking bad about it,” he noted. “Be more informed, get more information, take your time and study and not just go by just what you hear on one side or the other. Actually check the facts on it.”
“I still am a very strong Republican, but this… I’m so happy that this came along,” he continued. “Our home is paid for, vehicle’s paid for, this is our expense that we have. We have more expense on medical care than everything else put together, so this is going to be a great help for us.”
Executives of the companies preparing to build a natural gas liquids pipeline to carry toxic fracking byproducts through the delicate limestone of Central Kentucky have apologized for surveying Kentucky State University Property without permission.
This weeks after first denying that any surveying had taken place on the KSU property (LIARS), then claiming that they had permission, I guess from some random dudes wandering around at the time (LIARS and TRESPASSERS.)
Anti-pipeline activists are hearing stories from multiple counties on the pipeline route of illegal surveying by pipeline representatives. The apparent goal is to get a route fully mapped and thus present a fait accompli to the Kentucky General Assembly in January.
And they'll get it by any means necessary.
Find out more at http://stopbluegrasspipeline.us Then Take Action.
Congress didn’t just miss the deadline on Monday night to pass a continuing resolution that would keep the government open. It also missed the deadline to reauthorize the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, formally known as welfare.From Juanita Jean:
The TANF block grant that the federal government gives to states to share the cost of welfare programs was scheduled for reauthorization in 2010, but rather than reauthorizing it then Congress instead extended it multiple times. The most recent extension was part of a continuing resolution passed in March that funded the government through the end of September 2013, so it expired Monday night along with all other government funding.
I regard this development as one of the more insidious and anti-constitutional acts of racist vandalism against the American republic in my adult lifetime. Those who keep talking as if there are two sides to this, when there are not, are as much a part of the vandalism as Ted Cruz. Obama has played punctiliously by the constitutional rules – two elections, one court case – while the GOP has decided that the rules are for dummies and suckers, and throws over the board game as soon as it looks as if it is going to lose by the rules as they have always applied.
The president must therefore hold absolutely firm. This time, there can be no compromise because the GOP isn’t offering any. They’re offering the kind of constitutional surrender that would effectively end any routine operation of the American government. If we cave to their madness, we may unravel our system of government, something one might have thought conservatives would have opposed. Except these people are not conservatives. They’re vandals.
This time, the elephant must go down. And if possible, it must be so wounded it does not get up for a long time to come.
Hal Rogers has been representing Kentucky's Fifth District in Congress since Methuselah was a pup. So unlike the teabagger screeching infants ordering John Boehner around these days, Rogers appreciates an orderly lawmaking process.
Sahil Kapur at TPM:
House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-KY) told a handful of reporters Tuesday he supports House-Senate conference negotiations over a comprehensive budget resolution, which Republican leaders have blocked since April.Rogers, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Big Coal, also knows what deep game is being played here while the shit-flinging monkeys of the RandPaul/TedCruz caucus entertain the rubes.
"They should have done that long ago," he said in response to a question from TPM, before walking into a closed-door GOP meeting to discuss the government shutdown strategy.
Corporate money is the power behind all of it, and that corporate money has but one goal -- the creation of a largely subjugated population and a workforce grateful for whatever scraps fall from the table. To accomplish this, the corporate money not only had to disable the institutions of self-government that are the people's only real protection, it had to do so in such a way that the people expect less and less of the government and, therefore, less and less of each other, acting in the interest of the political commonwealth. (The dismantling of organized labor is a sideshow to the main event in that the goal there was to cripple organized labor's political power within the political institutions so that there would be no countervailing force that could be brought to bear against the destruction of its power in the workplace.) For all the endless bloviation about the dead-hand of government, what the vandals in Washington are shooting for right now is a subject population whose tattered freedoms depend on the whimsical ethics of the American corporate class. This is the really deep game being played here, and they're more than halfway to winning it.
Now I don’t know anything about the president’s relationship with Boehner. But it’s becoming a matter of national security for him to find some way to take him aside, maybe give the Speaker a cigarette from his secret stash, and say: “I will see you in Hell before I negotiate over the debt limit. And if you let a default happen, I will devote the rest of my presidency to making sure you, personally, bear the blame, and go down in history with our most despised traitors and criminals. For generations, little school children in Ohio will cross themselves and make hex signs when your name is mentioned. So do not, do not, go back and tell your crazy people they can win if they just stick together."
It's the same secessionist motherfuckers playing the same motherfucking games they've been playing for 200 years.
aimai at No More Mister Niceblog:
They are treating the debt ceiling like it is a normal part of the budgeting process, part of the annual round of funding, rather than the part of the script where you sign your credit card reciept before leaving the restaurant. This has, of course, been observed many times before but it bears repeating--their world bears no resemblance to our earth world. In the real world the 14th amendment ought to bar them from refusing to raise the debt limit because to do so is to say that the previous congress (which many of them were in) did not lawfully appropriate the money which we now owe or that they are repudiating the payment of our just debts.
To refresh everyone's memory we passed the 14th amendment because we were about to accept back into political life our former rebels and traitors--these men, once they were back in public life, were quite likely to repudiate the war debts of the victors or to once again engage in sabotage of the union. That is what this neo-southern confederate rump is doing: they are sabotaging the US Government and using the budget to do so. They are both smarter and more cowardly than the previous batch of Confederates. Lets hope the current President can save the Union.
At this rate, every one of Kentucky's 640,000 uninsured will be signed up by the end of open enrollment in March.
As Joseph Gerth wrote in the Courier, affordable health care is going to be Governor Steve Beshear's legacy.
From the press release:
Midway through its first full day of operation, Kentucky’s health benefit exchange, kynect, has been swarmed by nearly 60,000 visitors seeking information about affordable health care.
“The response has been swift and enormous,” said Governor Steve Beshear. “The fact that nearly 60,000 unique visitors have clicked on kynect.ky.gov in its first day tells us that not only are Kentuckians ready for real, affordable health care, they don’t want to wait another minute to find it.”Kynect was online and active at 12:00 a.m. Eastern Time on October 1, 2013. Between midnight and 8:30 a.m., 24,000 users visited kynect, and filed 1,015 applications for health care coverage.The immediate crush of hits led to the discovery of a system glitch that prevented users from filing applications for several hours. The rest of the site remained operational while the problem was repaired. Full function was restored at 3 p.m.Below statistics reflect activity on kynect as of 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time:· kynect had 57,625 unique visitors; viewing close to 600,000 web pages.
· The average visitor stayed on the site for 11 minutes.
· The kynect contact center fielded 3,243 calls, and 110 e-mails. Call center workers also conducted 103 online chats.
· 52,095 people conducted pre-screenings to determine qualifications for subsidies, discounts or programs like Medicaid.
· Nearly 2,000 applications have been started; 1,235 have been completed.
“While it’s very encouraging that so many people immediately visited kynect today to learn more about available health insurance, you don’t have to sign up today,” said Carrie Banahan, executive director of kynect. “Open enrollment lasts for six months – there’s plenty of time to get information and determine the best plan for you and your family.”Kentuckians in all 120 counties can visit kynect.ky.gov to comparison shop for health insurance products. Kynect is expected to help uninsured residents get coverage through private insurance plans or Medicaid, as well as the Kentucky Children’s Health Insurance Program (KCHIP).Four out of five Kentuckians who use kynect are expected to qualify for financial assistance to help cover a portion of their healthcare costs.Kentuckians who sign up before Dec. 15 will start coverage on January 1. Open enrollment is available through March 31, 2014.
Even in the best-case scenario, austerity rules.
Digby:
Meanwhile, lest Democrats get it in their head that a clean vote will be Big Victory and we can all start dancing around like a bunch of drunk kids on prom night like we always do when the wingnuts pull one over:
That's a real winner isn't it? But hey, if we're lucky we'll get this "clear CR" and then the White House can start negotiating on the debt ceiling and we can cut all the "entitlements" too.
We are living in another gilded age of rampant greed. Conservative talking points that inequality doesn't matter because the economic pie can expand infinitely have been proven to be a joke. We have a moral and economic crisis on our collective hands.
But Republicans are so crazy that all we can talk about is how much to cut from our safety net in order to placate them lest they shut down the government and throw the economy further into tailspin.
It's totally insane.
Or, we can take Charlie Pierce's advice:Of course, what should happen now, since not much else is going on, is that the Democrats in the Senate should start dismantling The Sequester brick by brick. They should reject it, root and branch, and tell the Republicans that the deal is off and that, for every day the government gets shut down, demands for stimulus spending on social programs is the price of obstruction. Yeah, that'll happen.
It didn't just happen. It's been coming for 33 years. Charles Pierce, in a righteous fury, explains:
Ultimately, as we all wrapped ourselves in good intentions, a prion disease was eating away at the country's higher functions. One of the ways you can acquire a prion disease is to eat right out of its skull the brains of an infected monkey. We are now seeing the country reeling and jabbering from the effects of the prion disease, but it was during the time of Reagan that the country ate the monkey brains.Read the whole thing.
Because it's not about the budget; it's about imposing freakazoid, conservatard control on the nation.
Scott Lemiuex at Lawyers, Guns and Money:
Like Atrios, I’m so old I remember when the hot proposition among centrist pundits was a “Grand Bargain” in which pro-choicers would agree that abortion was gross and should be made arbitrarily less accessible to poor women in exchange for greater access to contraception. In addition to the first part being a terrible idea, the crucial flaw in the plan has always been that most actually existing American anti-choicers care about regulating female sexuality, not protecting fetal life. You can’t get anything by trading someone something they don’t want and greater access to contraception for women is emphatically something most American proponents of criminalizing abortion don’t want.
And don’t call it a “conscience clause.” It’s a “denial of healthcare people are legally entitled to” clause and an “imposing one’s religious beliefs on others” clause.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Friday tore into what he called "extreme right-wing Republicans" for threatening to shut down the government and default on the nation's debts if President Barack Obama's health care reform law was not defunded.
In a speech on the Senate floor, Sanders said that he welcomed a discussion about how to improve the health care law.
"But one thing is certain, you do not hold the American people hostage by threatening to shut down the government or for the first time in the history of our country not paying our bills and bringing this country and perhaps the entire world into a major financial crisis," he explained. "There was an election a year ago on this very issue -- one of the major issues in the campaign -- and the Republican candidate said, 'Let's defund Obamacare.' He lost the election! Republicans lost seats in the Senate, they lost seats in the House! And that's what democracy is about."
"What democracy is not about is a handful of members of the House of Representatives, extreme right-wing Republicans, saying, 'If we do not get our way, we are prepared to punish tens of millions of Americans. Yeah, we lost the election. Yeah, we lost seats in the House and Senate. But we are prepared to bring this government down. We are prepared to cause, perhaps, a major global financial crisis unless we get our way!'"
He continued: "Let us not tell men and women in the United States armed forces, who today are putting their lives on the line to defend us, that they're not going to get paid. Let us not tell police officers here in Washington and elsewhere, they may not get paid. Let's not tell working families, who take take their little kids into Head Start so they can then go out to work, that that program may be killed. Let's not tell senior citizens, who are on the Meals on Wheels program who can't leave their homes who depend upon a meal, let's not punish them because you've got small number of extreme right wingers who want to get their way at the expense of millions and millions of people."
Sanders pointed out that the current debate in Congress was "making us look like fools throughout the entire world because a handful of right wing extremists are so determined to try to destroy this president."
"There's a lot to be debating about, but one thing we should not be debating about is shutting down the United States government in order to achieve a narrow political goal."
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