Another Republican Double Standard

It's politics. The Democrats and the Republicans both do it. It's politics!

Bill Clinton, on behalf of the White House Chief of Staff, offered Joe Sestak an unpaid position. According to a memorandum from the White House Counsel, President Clinton raised with Congressman Sestak "options of service on a Presidential or other Senior Executive Branch Advisory Board. Congressman Sestak declined the suggested alternatives, remaining committed to his Senate candidacy." The memorandum claims there was no impropriety.

We found that, as the Congressman has publicly and accurately stated, options for Executive Branch service were raised with him. Efforts were made in June and July of 2009 to determine whether Congressman Sestak would be interested in service on a Presidential or other Senior Executive Branch Advisory Board, which would avoid a divisive Senate primary, allow him to retain his seat in the House, and provide him with an opportunity for additional service to the public in a high-level advisory capacity for which he was highly qualified. The advisory positions discussed with Congressman Sestak, while important to the work of the Administration, would have been uncompensated.

It has been suggested that discussions of alternatives to the Senate campaign were improperly raised with the Congressman. There was no such impropriety. The Democratic Party leadership had a legitimate interest in averting a divisive primary fight and a similarly legitimate concern about the Congressman vacating his seat in the House. By virtue of his career in public service, including distinguished military service, Congressman Sestak was viewed to be highly qualified to hold a range of advisory positions in which he could, while holding his House seat, have additional responsibilities of considerable potential interest to him and value to the Executive Branch.

The Republicans and right wing pundits have jumped on this event to suggest several scenarios. They have claimed that President Obama hasn't fulfilled his promise of "transparency" and this just reflects a "politics as usual" administration. There are allegations that this "could be President Barack Obama's Watergate scandal." Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), even went so far as to say that, “This is punishable by prison. It is a felony, and this is exactly what President Obama campaigned against."

Watch a Fox discussion about the legality behind the Sestak offer.

Bill Crystal claims that this is "not politics as usual." As usual, Bill Crystal is wrong!

The Obama Administration White House Counsel notes that this happens all the time.

There have been numerous, reported instances in the past when prior Administrations — both Democratic and Republican, and motivated by the same goals — discussed alternative paths to service for qualified individuals also considering campaigns for public office. Such discussions are fully consistent with the relevant law and ethical requirements.

There have been several times when Republican administrations have asked candidates to drop out of a race. President Ronald Reagan, Vice President Dick Cheney and even Karl Rove have pursued this course of action.

In 1981, AP had the following story. President Ronald Reagan offered a job to Senator Hayakawa in order to "clear the field" for his daughter, Maureen to seek the Republican nomination for Senate.

Sen. S.I. Hayakawa on Wednesday spurned a Reagan administration suggestion that if he drops out of the crowded Republican Senate primary race in California, President Reagan would find him a job."

Hayakawa, who was seeking a second term at the time, was being urged by GOP officials to withdraw from the 1982 primary, a race that included, among others, Reps. Barry Goldwater Jr. & Bob Dornan, San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson, and First Daughter Maureen Reagan. The last thing the White House wanted was a split-conservative field that would end in the nomination of Rep. Pete McCloskey, a longtime anathema to the Right.

Hayakawa ultimately decided not to run for re-election. Wilson won the primary and was elected in November.arl Rove

In an April 19, 2001 Minneapolis Star Tribune article. Both Vice President Dick Cheney and Karl Rove urged Minnesota House Majority Leader Tim Pawlenty not to challenge St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman for the 2002 Republican nomination for U.S. Senate seat .

Minnesota House Majority Leader Tim Pawlenty said Wednesday that he won't run for the U.S. Senate in 2002, but only because Vice President Dick Cheney called him on his cell phone earlier in the morning and urged him not to challenge St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman for the Republican nomination.

Pawlenty's dramatic last-minute decision is the latest development in an extraordinary intervention by the White House and President Bush on behalf of Coleman, who was chairman of the Bush presidential campaign in the state.

The White House's intense interest in the race is a reflection of the 50-50 split between Democrats and Republicans in the Senate.

It may also signal a keen interest by Bush for Republicans to win the seat held by Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., who has been among the president's most severe critics.

On Tuesday night, White House political strategist Karl Rove called Pawlenty and urged him not to run. Pawlenty said he was still intending to begin an exploratory candidacy after the Rove call.

But the request from Cheney, which came as Pawlenty was returning from a dentist's office with his daughters, was impossible to resist.

"On behalf of the president and the vice president of the United States, [Cheney] asked that I not go forward. . . . For the good of the party, for the good of the effort [against Wellstone] I agreed not to pursue an exploratory campaign," Pawlenty said at a news conference.

At the White House, a spokesman for Bush confirmed that Cheney made the call, but he declined to elaborate.

Not only does Bill Crystal have a selective memory but so does Liz Cheney and Karl Rove.

Is Karl Rove guilty of 18 U.S.C. 595? Rove et al. are at least guilty of a Republican double standard.

"Traditional Marriage" GOP Style

Glenn Greenwald has an interesting article about "traditional marriage" and Republican hypocrisy. Apparently, Karl Rove was recently granted a divorce in Texas.

Karl Rove is an outspoken opponent of same-sex marriage, citing "5,000 years of understanding the institution of marriage" as his justification. He also famously engineered multiple referenda to incorporate a ban on same-sex marriage into various states' constitutions in 2004 in order to ensure that so-called ""Christian conservatives" and value voters" who believe in "traditional marriage laws" would turn out and help re-elect George W. Bush. Yet, like so many of his like-minded pious comrades, Rove seems far better at preaching the virtues of "traditional marriage" to others and exploiting them for political gain than he does adhering to those principles in his own life:

Karl Rove granted divorce in Texas

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Karl Rove, former senior adviser to President George W. Bush, has been granted a divorce in Texas after 24 years of marriage, a family spokesperson said. Dana Perino, the spokesperson, said: “Karl Rove and his wife, Darby, were granted a divorce last week. The couple came to the decision mutually and amicably, and they maintain a close relationship and a strong friendship. . . . A family friend told POLITICO: “After 24 years of marriage, many of which were spent under incredible stress and strain during the White House years, the Roves came to a mutual decision that they would end the marriage.

Rove obtained his divorce under Texas' "no-fault" divorce law, one of the most permissive in the nation. That law basically allows any married couple to simply end their marriage because they feel like it. Texas, needless to say, is one of the states which has constitutionally barred same-sex marriages, and has a Governor who cites Christian principles as the reason to support such that provision, yet the overwhelming majority of Texan citizens make sure that there's nothing binding or permanent -- i.e., nothing traditional -- about their own marriages. They're willing to limit other people's marriage choices on the moral grounds, but not their own, and thus have a law that lets them divorce whenever they feel like it. That's the very permissive, untraditional and un-Christian law that Rove exploited in order to obtain his divorce. [...]

I've long thought that the solution to the cheap, cost-free moralizing that leads very upstanding people like Karl Rove to want to ban same-sex marriages (which they don't want to enter into themselves, and thus cost them nothing) is to have those same "principles" apply consistently to all marriage laws. If Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh and their friends and followers actually were required by law to stay married to their wives -- the way that "traditional marriage" was generally supposed to work -- the movement to have our secular laws conform to "traditional marriage" principles would almost certainly die a quick, quiet and well-deserved death.

Greenwald has a point. Let's not allow those who are opposed to same-sex marriage the ability to espouse rules that they don't follow. They should live by the rules they force unto others.

Karl Rove's Myths about Public Option Insurance

Setting the record straight on the public option for health care insurance. The Wonk Room has compiled a fact-check of common public plan myths:

Karl Rove penned an editorial in the Wall Street Journal attacking the public health care option. Rove’s ‘myths’ echo the poll-tested talking points of Frank Luntz and other conservatives determined to protect the private insurer’s monopoly over coverage and deny Americans choice. Below is a fact-check of Rove’s assertions. [Download a PDF version.]

Myth 1: A public option is unnecessary.
Myth 2: Private competition in Medicare Part D has reduced costs.
Myth 3: A public plan would shift costs to Americans with private insurance.
Myth 4: A public plan will lead to a welfare state.
Myth 5: The public option is too expensive.
Myth 6: Americans will be forced into a public option.
Myth 7: The public option would put a bureaucrat between you and your doctor.

MYTH 1: A public option is unnecessary: “It’s unnecessary. Advocates say a government-run insurance program is needed to provide competition for private health insurance. But 1,300 companies sell health insurance plans. That’s competition enough.” [WSJ, 6/11/2009]

TRUTH: Insurer and hospital markets are dominated by large insurers and provider systems. Private insurers rarely negotiate with dominant hospital systems and typically pass on the higher costs to beneficiaries in the form of higher premiums. Already, “1 in 6 metropolitan areas in a 2008 study of more than 300 U.S. markets is dominated by a single health insurer that controls at least 70% of consumers enrolled in health maintenance organizations or preferred provider organizations.” Such consolidation negates any real competition. Without it, insurers don’t negotiate prices and boost their profits. In fact, “there have been over 400 health care mergers in the last 10 years,” and premiums have risen “nearly eight times faster than average U.S. incomes.” A public plan could, in an environment of head-to-head competition, push private insurance companies to negotiate more aggressively with providers and dramatically lower health care spending.” [Urban Institute, 10/03/2008; LA Times, 4/09/2009]

MYTH 2: Private competition in Medicare Part D has reduced costs: “The results of robust private competition to provide the Medicare drug benefit underscore [the ability of private competition to lower prices]. When it was approved, the Congressional Budget Office estimated it would cost $74 billion a year by 2008. Nearly 100 providers deliver the drug benefit, competing on better benefits, more choices, and lower prices. So the actual cost was $44 billion in 2008 — nearly 41% less than predicted. No government plan was needed to guarantee competition’s benefits.” [WSJ, 6/11/2009]

TRUTH: Medicare Part D beneficiaries have experienced significant cost increases. According to a recent analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows “significant increases in premiums, costsharing amounts, use of specialty tiers, and utilization management restrictions since 2008 that could have important implications for beneficiaries’ access to needed medications and out-of-pocket expenses.” [KFF, 6/2009]

MYTH 3: A public plan would shift costs to Americans with private insurance: “Second, a public option will undercut private insurers and pass the tab to taxpayers and health providers just as it does in existing government-run programs. For example, Medicare pays hospitals 71% and doctors 81% of what private insurers pay.” [WSJ, 6/11/2009]

TRUTH: Private insurer payments promote medical inefficiency. A new public option will change the way the health care reimbursement system so that we pay for value, not volume and reward efficient providers. According to MedPAC, Medicare rates are adequate and consistent with the efficient delivery of services. In fact, over-payments by private insurers to health-care providers drives up overall costs. “Hospitals which didn’t rely on high payment rates from private insurers ‘are able, in fact, to control their costs and reduce their costs when they need to’ and ‘combine low costs with quality.’” [WSJ, 3/17/2009]

MYTH 4: A public plan will lead to a welfare state:“If Democrats enact a public-option health-insurance program, America is on the way to becoming a European-style welfare state.” [WSJ, 6/11/2009]

TRUTH: Americans will choose a public health insurance plan from a menu of different options. The private insurance market isn’t going anywhere. Private insurers will play an important role in providing more integrated coverage options than the public plan and would retain a “brand advantage” (in the same way that a lot of people rather have the branded drug than the generic) for consumers. Private insurers who “offer a superior product through high levels of efficiency, satisfaction in consumer preferences and ease of access to quality medical services” will thrive in a reformed market. [Urban Institute, 10/03/2008]

MYTH 5: The public option is too expensive: “Fourth, the public option is far too expensive. The cost of Medicare — the purest form of a government-run “public choice” for seniors — will start exceeding its payroll-tax “trust fund” in 2017. The Obama administration estimates its health reforms will cost as much as $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years. It is no coincidence the Obama budget nearly triples the national debt over that same period.” [WSJ, 6/11/2009]

TRUTH: A public option will lower family premiums. If a public plan is “far too expensive” and has higher premiums, then Americans will not enroll. But if a public plan offers lower premiums, it will motivate private insurers to lower their costs. As a result, health care costs would decrease across the board.

MYTH 6: Americans will be forced into a public option: “Government-run health insurance would crater the private insurance market, forcing most Americans onto the government plan.” [WSJ, 6/11/2009]

TRUTH: The government would not force Americans to purchase coverage from the public plan, but Rove would force everyone under 65 to enroll with a private insurer. Rove is essentially arguing that the public plan would work too well. It would use its inherent efficiencies to lower family premiums and force private insurers to aggressively negotiate on behalf of their beneficiaries.

MYTH 7: The public option would put a bureaucrat between you and your doctor: “The public option puts government firmly in the middle of the relationship between patients and their doctors.” [WSJ, 6/11/2009]

TRUTH: A public option improves the doctor-patient relationship. Existing reform legislation explicitly preserves the doctor-patient relationship. As a draft of the HELP bill notes, “a strong doctor-patient relationship is essential to the practice of medicine, and patents have a right to an effective doctor patient relationships…Doctors, nurses, and other health professional have the right to judge what is best for their patients.” Moreover, the public plan’s payment innovations would reward doctors for providing quality care and spending more time listening to their patients. [HELP Legislation, 6/09/2009]

A GOP Conundrum

It was apparent even before President Obama named a Supreme Court replacement for Justice Souter that the GOP would oppose his choice. It really didn't matter who the nominee was. What mattered to the GOP was that Obama, a "screaming socialist liberal," was the one who would choose the nominee.

Judge Sonia Sotomayer has presented the GOP with a conundrum. How will they oppose her? She was of course nominated in 1991, by President George H. W. Bush to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

In 1968 she was confirmed, with solid Democratic support, and support from 25 Republican Senators, for the seat she presently holds as a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

The GOP's answer is to call Sonia Sotomayer ‘not the smartest’ and an ‘intellectual lightweight’.

The Booman Tribune responds to these allegations with a witty article which is on point, BrainPower: Karl Rove v. Sonia Sotomayor.

Karl Rove is just one of several Republicans that have chosen to call Sonia Sotomayor stoopid in a transparent effort to make her selection look like an affirmative action pick.

This morning on Fox News, Karl Rove questioned whether she was smart enough to be on the Supreme Court. “I’m not really certain how intellectually strong she would be, she has not been very strong on the second circuit,” he said.

Let's take a look at Karl Rove's academic accomplishments:

In the fall of 1969, Rove entered the University of Utah, on a $1,000 scholarship, as a political science major and joined the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity...

...In December 1969, the Selective Service System held its first lottery drawing. Those born on December 25, like Rove, received number 84. That number placed him in the middle of those (with numbers 1 [first priority] through 195) who would eventually be drafted. On February 17, 1970, Rove was reclassified as 2-S, a deferment from the draft because of his enrollment at the University of Utah in the fall of 1969. He maintained this deferment until December 14, 1971, despite being only a part-time student in the autumn and spring quarters of 1971 (registered for between six and 12 credit hours) and dropping out of the university in June 1971. Rove was a student at the University of Maryland, College Park in the fall of 1971; as such, he would have been eligible for 2-S status, but registrar's records show that he withdrew from classes during the first half of the semester. In December 1971 he was reclassified as 1-A. On April 27, 1972, he was reclassified as 1-H, or "not currently subject to processing for induction". The draft ended on June 30, 1973.

Sonia Sotomayor's academic accomplishments appear to suggest a more robust intellect (not to mention, superior character):

She earned her A.B. from Princeton University, summa cum laude, in 1976, where she won the Pyne Prize, the highest general award given to Princeton undergraduates. Sotomayor obtained her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1979, where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal.

Any questions?

Who in the GOP Fought Pandemic Preparedness

When the stimulus bill was begin honed down and chipped away by the GOP, a focus for their revisions was on money for pandemic preparation. John Nichols has the story:

When House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who has long championed investment in pandemic preparation, included roughly $900 million for that purpose in this year's emergency stimulus bill, he was ridiculed by conservative operatives and congressional Republicans.

Obey and other advocates for the spending argued, correctly, that a pandemic hitting in the midst of an economic downturn could turn a recession into something far worse -- with workers ordered to remain in their homes, workplaces shuttered to avoid the spread of disease, transportation systems grinding to a halt and demand for emergency services and public health interventions skyrocketing. Indeed, they suggested, pandemic preparation was essential to any responsible plan for renewing the U.S. economy.

Bad Players!

But former White House political czar Karl Rove and key congressional Republicans -- led by Maine Senator Susan Collins -- aggressively attacked the notion that there was a connection between pandemic preparation and economic recovery.

Now, as the World Health Organization says a deadly swine flu outbreak that apparently began in Mexico but has spread to the United States has the potential to develop into a pandemic, Obey's attempt to secure the money seems eerily prescient.[...]

Famously, Maine Senator Collins, the supposedly moderate Republican who demanded cuts in health care spending in exchange for her support of a watered-down version of the stimulus, fumed about the pandemic funding: "Does it belong in this bill? Should we have $870 million in this bill No, we should not."

Even now, Collins continues to use her official website to highlight the fact that she led the fight to strip the pandemic preparedness money out of the Senate's version of the stimulus measure.

Any Good Players?

Collins played politics with public health, and the economic recovery. That makes her about as bad a player as you will find in a town full of bad players.

But Senate Democrats bent to her demands. That makes them, at the very least, complicit in the weakening of what needed to be a muscular plan.

The bottom line is that there were no heroes in either party on the Senate side of the ugly process that ridiculed and then eliminated pandemic preparedness funding.

There is, however, a hero on the House side. Throughout the process, David Obey battled to get Congress to recognize that a pandemic would threaten not just public health but a fragile economic recovery.

The Obama administration and the Democrats should be sorry now for even trying to negotiate with Republicans who value there own politic gain over the health, welfare and safety of their constituents. Shame on the Democrats who bought into their arguments.

FOX: Spinning the Truth, Again

From Jed Lewison at Daily Kos:

Here’s video of Fox’s Chris Wallace and Karl Rove playing what they claimed to be a DNC ad criticizing Rove, along with the actual, unedited ad from the DNC:

As you can see, Wallace spliced out 15 seconds from the middle of the ad without disclosing or indicating that it had been edited. Wallace and Rove then went on to discuss the ad with Karl Rove as if they had just played the full thing, even though some of the toughest criticism of Rove (including the firing of U.S. attorneys and the outing of a CIA agent) had been removed from the ad they aired.

It’s common practice to use excerpts from ads, but when an ad is spliced together, news organizations should make it clear to their audience that the ad has been edited. They can offer verbal, textual, or visual indications of the edits, but in this case, the ad was presented as if it hadn’t been tampered with at all.

But the ad had been edited, and by treating it as if it were the full actual ad Wallace violated every journalistic principle that there is, which should serve as a reminder that nothing on Fox is real journalism. It’s all conservative propaganda.

The segment with Wallace and Rove was broadcast by Fox on Sunday, March 29.

Standing up to Rove

On ABC's This Week, Karl Rove was very critical of President Obama's proposed budget.

He's now going to add more debt in the first 20 months and 11 days than was incurred in 2 wars, 9/11 and the previous administration.

Katrina vanden Heuvel who was on the panel with Rove was refresingly bold as she countered Rove's GOP talking point.

It's laughable for you to talk about fiscal responsibility from someone who helped plunge this nation into trillion dollars of debt through tax cuts for the very rich and a war we never should have fought. Starving the beast, starving the government has been a republican role in terms of government and therefore when George asks why government hasn't functioned, people have not seen the role of government in improving the conditions of their lives in decades.

It is about time that the GOP's critism of the President's budget is being countered with a dose of reality. How refreshing!!!!