During the confirmation hearings today for Elena Kagan, Sen. Tom Coburn said something really dumb. Try not to faint. He told Kagan to contemplate how much of our freedom has been lost since 1980. Something to do with healthcare reform and being told to eat vegetables, which apparently he thinks is a form of tyranny (and he's a M.D.! Wonder what correspondence course sold him his degree?)
Sen. Amy Klobuchar subtly tore him a new one, pointing out that in 1980 there were no women in the Senate, none on the Supreme Court, and generally women are freer now. She was probably nicer about it than Sen. Franken would have been, but the subtext is clearly, "Sen. Coburn, how do you remember to breathe?"
This is the video from The Uptake. You'll need to crank up the sound. The audio is on the podcast of today's Quick on The Uptake. This is the video on The Uptake's site.
Solicitor General Elena Kagan heads to Capitol Hill today to begin her Supreme Court confirmation hearings before the Senate. Minnesota's own Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar are both on the Judiciary Committee, where a party-line vote will likely send her nomination to the full Senate for a vote.
Let the Kabuki theater begin. In recent years, upper-level judicial confirmations have become an easy way for Senators to grandstand on a variety of issues, especially during their opening statements, so the goal for nominees has been to say as little as possible involving specifics, but answering questions as even-handedly as possible. If the opposition party (in this case, the Party of Holding Up Economic Recovery Until We're Back In Power) can't find any chinks in the nominee's rhetorical armor, the nominee generally gets an up-or-down vote and they're on the bench.
With Kagan, the biggest sticking point the GOP has found is her lack of judicial experience; Kagan's somewhat obvious rejoinder here is that she's spent many years arguing before the court and has sterling legal experience to boot. Other than that, the only organized opposition I've seen has been from a somewhat fringey organization called Americans United for Life, which seems intent on pushing back against Kagan's nomination on (what else?) women's health and privacy issues.
But while I haven't seen any other organized efforts to defeat Kagan, that doesn't mean they're not out there -- have you? Anyone pushing hard, or is this going to be the definition of a cakewalk for President Obama's second SCOTUS nominee?
Over the past few weeks I've been analyzing Minnesota's congressional delegation, focusing first on the state's house delegation, and then on some specific house members. Now it's time to look at the state's Senators.
You can go here for a more detailed explanation of what the different numbers represent; briefly, the "DW-Nom" number is the legislators DW-Nominate score and the "PVI" number is Minnesota's Partisan Voting Index score. The "PVI v ave" and the "DW-N v ave" represent a comparison between the legislators score and the average score of their party caucus. The "SILVER" score is a composite of these two comparisons and the rank number is the legislators SILVER rank among their party caucus.
This shouldn't be that surprising; Al Franken is one of the most valuable liberals in the Senate, behind only Russ Feingold (-0.757) and Sherrod Brown (-0.375) in SILVER and his DW-Nominate score is to the left of even Keith Ellison, making him the state's most liberal legislator. Amy Klobuchar meanwhile is the only member of Minnesota's congressional delegation who has a SILVER score on the wrong side of 0 for her party.
In a strange coincidence Wisconsin has a similar situation with Russ Feingold being the most liberal member of the Senate, according to SILVER, and Herb Kohl (0.112) ranking 44th, tied with Amy Klobuchar.
Let's take a look at another chart.
Here you can see the DW-Nominate score's of Minnesota's last eight Senators, as well as a graph of the total DW-Nominate scores for the state's two active Senators combined. As you can see, besides the 107th congress when Minnesota had an all liberal Senate delegation, the total DW-Nominate score of the current Klobuchar/Franken alignment is as liberal as Minnesota's had since the Humphrey/Mondale/McCarthy days. And that probably won't change anytime soon, given the current dynamics there's a pretty good chance that this will be our Senate configuration until at least 2014 when Al Franken will be up for re-election.
Call me idealistic, but I really hope this diarist misheard what Sen. Amy Klobuchar said -- although she's apparently in favor of using reconciliation to pass the public option, she's not signing the Bennett letter and thus committing to doing so.
Sigh.
Do we need more proof that it's what big majorities of Minnesotans and Americans nationwide want from the health care reform effort? From the Research 2000/PCCC poll linked above:
QUESTION: Would you favor or oppose the national government offering everyone the choice of buying into a government administered health insurance plan -- something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and older get -- that would compete with private health insurance plans?
FAVOR
OPPOSE
NOT SURE
ALL
62%
33%
5%
...
QUESTION: Would you be more or less likely to vote for Amy Klobuchar in the future if she led the charge in the U.S. Senate to add a public health insurance option that competes head-to-head with private insurance into law, or would it have no real effect on your vote?
MORE
LESS
NO EFFECT
ALL
39%
9%
52%
...
QUESTION: Which do you think should be a higher priority for congressional Democrats right now -- working in a bipartisan way with Republicans in Congress or fighting for policies that will benefit working families, even if those policies can only be passed with Democratic votes?
PROMISES
GOP
NOT SURE
ALL
51%
39%
10%
Call Sen. Klobuchar's Washington office right now and let her staff know -- respectfully, of course -- how you feel about it. Make sure to tell them Senator Klobuchar should be leading the charge, not waiting for others to lead and then following along, and should sign the Bennett Letter and fight hard for the public-option-through-reconciliation effort.
Adam Green from Bold Progressives reports that Senator Amy Klobuchar has still not signed on with other Senators asking Majority Leader Harry Reid to bring back the Public Option through Reconciliation.
The measure that was started by Senator Michael Bennett of Colorado has been gaining a lot of momentum. Thank you Sen. Al Franken for signing on to it, however Sen. Amy Klobuchar has been a little slower to go after what most Minnesotan's want. A good health care reform bill with a public option. Let's all call Senator Klobuchar's office over the next few days and ask her to support Senator Bennett's letter asking Majority Leader Harry Reid to bring back the vote for the Public Option in the health care reform bill. Amy's toll free number at her Washington office is 1-888-224-9043.
We've been talking about Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and how little she's done for the people in her district. Compare and contrast with Senators Al Franken (D-MN), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Representatives Jim Oberstar (D-MN) and Tim Walz (D-MN). The email announcement came out on Friday, but I figured why bury this on a late Friday afternoon news dump when nobody's paying attention?
Today [last Friday] U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken and Representatives Jim Oberstar and Tim Walz announced that Minnesota will receive $18.7 million to create jobs and train unemployed workers in industries that are being transformed by technology and innovation. The grants are funded through the Department of Labor (DOL) Employment and Training Administration (ETA) and made available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act).
When you consider that obstructionist conservatives like Bachmann and Rep. John Kline (R-MN) incessantly talk about eliminating pork, I wonder what they'd say about this grant to help the people suffering the most from the Republican economic policies of the Bush era?
Twenty-five "Minnesotans for Peace" (including myself) are setting off today for Washington D.C. where we plan to exercise our First Amendment right to "Peaceable Assembly" (before the Supreme Court and the corporations take that right away). We will also exercise our throwing arms a little, too, as we deliver our message in less conventional ways along with other Creative Voices for Non-Violence. We may even take a cue from Muntazer al-Zaidi and throw our peace shoes at the White House!
Of course we'll also be busy with more conventional meetings with our elected congresspersons and Minnesota Senators Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, pleading with them to take more active roles. (It does not appear that Congress has even declared war, as the Constitution requires.) We'll each be carrying tombstones with the names of Minnesotans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. We've dripped red paint to look like blood and hand-stenciled our group t-shirts. We also sent the following letter to President Obama last week asking for a meeting with him as there is only so much one can say on a shoe and under international law, it's incumbent on all citizens to do what they can to stop torture and other war crimes. At the very least, we will try to be near where Obama gives his State of the Union speech so we can represent the views of the majority of average citizens who want the wars and the war crimes to end.
January 15, 2010
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear President Obama:
On January 26 and 27, over 20 Minnesotans will be traveling to Washington D.C. to participate in the Peaceable Assembly campaign, a national campaign to demand alternatives to U.S. militarism.
We are requesting a meeting with you or a designated staff person as we vigil at the White House on Tuesday, January 26 between 10:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m. We ask that you or your designate contact us to arrange this meeting. As citizens, we have the right to speak to our elected officials, including those making these decisions at the highest level.
Your request to spend a record $708 billion for Defense Department funds next year, as well as another $33 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, is unconscionable and unacceptable. We call on your administration to 1) cut off funding for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and 2) carry out a prompt end to U.S. combat engagement, and an orderly, prompt withdrawal of all U.S. forces and bases from these countries. -Peace and security in the region will not be gained through a military solution. Former Minnesotan Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea, reports that $1,000,000 (the cost to put one U.S. soldier in Afghanistan for a year) would fund the opening of 20 to 30 schools providing education for thousands of Afghani students.
Please meet with us while we are in Washington in order to explain your exit strategy, which must include a plan to provide aid and reconstruction of these countries. Your request to spend nearly $1 trillion on war, death, and destruction is not going to bring peace and prosperity to anyone - in the United States or abroad.
We are suffering through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and spending those funds on war will further damage our economy. It's outrageous to waste so much of our national wealth on war when so many other needs are pressing.
Thank you for your prompt response. You may contact our delegation through: Marie & John Braun (address and contact info) Minneapolis, MN 55412.
Sincerely,
Marie Braun Mary Percich Coleen Rowley
John Braun Angelo Percich Delia Jurek
Diane Haugesag John Schmid Rebecca Kramer
George Pridmore Mickey Patterson Steve Clemens
Ward Brennen Vicki Andrews Joe Palen
Maxine McNamara Mel Thorson Bill Habedank
Grace Kamrath Sue Ann Martinson Audrey Wesley
Duane Kamrath Ann Turner Robert Palmer
We've witnessed how easy it was to start the wars and how very difficult it is to end them. Heaven only knows how many meetings with elected leaders, these last eight years, how many millions of letters, postcards and e-mails have been sent! We've worn out our shoes marching for peace! We've stood in summer and winter with banners and signs over highways and on bridges. We've even snowblogged for peace. We supported political campaigns promising hope and change and we even voted thinking it might help. There's probably a creative limit to what one can do with old shoes and snow, and we, the people, are not so foolish as to believe that we can compete with the big money of the profit-driven military industrial complex or other special interests for war but we remember these words of (former Minnesota cub reporter) Molly Ivins and we must try.
"We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous... We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, "Stop it now!"
The news that Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) will retire at the end of the current cycle rather than seek reelection is being shouted from the rooftops in Washington D.C.'s pundit class -- but does it have any real effects on Minnesota?
Well, maybe. Minnesota shares not only a border, but a small metropolitan area (Fargo-Moorhead) with North Dakota. Political ads that air in one town also appear in the other, so a competitive race on one side of the border could affect turnout on the other -- as could effective field work by any of the four state parties involved.
On policy matters, the move means that Al Franken, who is currently at the bottom of the Indian Affairs Committee seniority heap, will move up. After Dorgan, Hawaii's Daniel Inouye is next in line, but he already chairs two other committees. Next is North Dakota's other Senator, Kent Conrad, but Conrad also chairs the influential Budget committee. Next? Hawaii's other Senator, Daniel Akaka, who also chairs the Veteran's Affairs Committee. Only when you reach South Dakota's Tim Johnson do you find a Democrat who's not already chairing another committee.
So unless something drastic happens in the U.S. Senate (which is not likely to happen in the 2010 cycle), Franken will find himself at least one rung further up the ladder on this committee.
The same goes for Amy Klobuchar and the Commerce Committee, where several senior Democrats stand between Dorgan's current seniority and where Minnesota's senior senator now sits.
However, in an institution where seniority is next to godliness (paging Joe Lieberman), this could be seen as a decent thing for Minnesota as long as the Democratic caucus maintains a strong majority.
Beyond that headline, the utility of Rasmussen's latest approval poll on Minnesota's Senators and resident Insane Untruthteller is somewhat limited.
A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state shows that 58% of likely voters at least somewhat approve of the job Klobuchar is doing while 38% disapprove. But 36% strongly approve of her Senate performance, compared to 21% who strongly disapprove.
Fifty percent (50%) of the state's voters approve of the job performance of Franken who took office in July after months of legal wrangling over the election results with his Republican predecessor Norm Coleman. Twenty-four percent (24%) strongly approve of the job he is doing.
Forty-five percent (45%) disapprove of how Franken is doing, with 29% who strongly disapprove.
Minnesota voters give similar marks to Bachmann, who represents the 6th congressional district in the southeastern section of the state.
Wait a minute, what? We're polling all of Minnesota to get approval ratings for Michele Bachmann now? Since when do the other seven congressional districts have a say in rating how she's doing?
In mid-September, 56% of Minnesota voters said Klobuchar was doing a good or excellent job, and just 19% rated her performance as poor. Franken was seen as doing a good or excellent job by 41% of Minnesota voters, while 31% said he was performing poorly.
Since Klobuchar and Franken are Democrats and Bachmann is a Republican, the partisan divide among Minnesota voters is predictable.
So by Rasmussen's scale, this represents a marked improvement for Franken. Rasmussen uses a weird "intensity" scale -- comparing "strong approval" to "strong disapproval" -- and manages to give themselves some extra numbers to report. But one general takeaway from this is to remember how many poll respondents don't necessarily know anything about what these elected officials are actually doing. All we know is that the poll hit whatever Rasmussen considers "likely voters" -- that could mean the respondent said yes, I voted in the past three congressional elections. It doesn't necessarily mean they have any direct knowledge of what's going on in the Senate right now, so using likely voters as a polling sample for approval polls seems like a slightly apples-to-oranges comparison.
I'd like to think MPP is having a positive effect on Franken's numbers, detailing the positive and impactful initiatives on which he's worked so far...but I doubt Rasmussen is going to start adding a crosstab like "Do you regularly read MN Progressive Project?"
Today Organizing for America, the political arm of President Obama, set a goal of making 100,000 calls to Congress for the President's Plan for Healthcare Reform. That includes a public health insurance option. Well it's only 3:54 CT right now and already 171,215 have called their members of Congress.
This is unprecedented. More than any "tea party" or protests or ads this is what members of Congress will look at when they are thinking about how to vote on a public option and how to vote on healthcare reform. If you haven't yet, call both of your Senators as well as your representative. If they are already strongly behind healthcare reform and a public option thank them for it (for example, when you call Franken). If they still need a little nudging tell your personal story about why healthcare is important to you and urge them to back real healthcare reform that includes a strong public option.
That will give you the numbers for our representatives in Congress and will let you report how the calls went so calls can be tracked.
And let us know in the comments if you've made a call. Anyone called one of our "moderates" like Rep. Peterson to see where he is standing now? Let us know.
Amy Klobuchar is going to have a big role in the debate over the jobs / climate / national security bill that Congress is working on right now. As a member of three committees with jurisdiction over this legislation (Environment and Public Works, Agriculture and Commerce, Science and Transportation) as well as one of the crafters of the Senate legislation she is uniquely poised to stand up for strong legislation that does three main things: prevents catastrophic climate change, creates good jobs and reduces imports of oil.
She'll definitely vote yes on this legislation, but she wants some concessions. On the Renewable Electricity Standard that's good news but we need to push pressure on her to make sure she doesn't give away too much to the coal industry as well as other polluters. Keep reading for more about her position on this important issue.
(Welcome its_oshea, who's going to be taking over the Mud Soup entries! Volunteers are welcome -- we usually don't bite. - promoted by Joe Bodell)
I'll be trying to do E's Daily MN Blog round-up, otherwise known as "Mud Soup" going forward. I'll read all the MN news that's fit to type, so you don't have to, then I'll pick out what sticks out and share it here.
The WAMM Troupe, representing Billionaires for Wealth Care, delivered a million dollar check to Amy Klobuchar's office in appreciation of her opposition to the health care public option. Her position greatly benefits the wealthy owners of health insurance companies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Here's an email I received today, verbatim, minus the identity of the sender and the entire subject line. I bet you can fill in the blanks.
Subject: OBAMACARE is F*CKED
From: XXXXXX <XXXXXX@XXXXXXXX.XXX>
To: joe@mnprogressiveproject.com
Look the MAJORITY OF US DO NOT want any kind of obamacare in any way shape or form. Amy Klobashar is constitutionally REQUIRED to do what the majority of us tell her to do in this state. Otherwise it is gov. by the party not by the people. I am in the VA and I have had to deal with MN care due to a kid running a stop sign. Those are the people that should be required by law to pay completely for the increased medical care they caused. Gov. run health care SUCKS, they give you the run around and treat you badly and when you get upset about it they do even more to make your life miserable.
SO DO NOT try to get Amy to over ride THE PEOPLES WISHES. Do not allow any illegals any kind of educational or medical or any other services in the USA. THEY are the ones literally STEALING from EVERY person either born or LEGALLY in this country.
Captain Creative Capitalizer is just itching for a fight, aren't they? Let's go point by point after the break...
(Just to be clear, Franken has already said he supports the public option. - promoted by The Big E)
Now is a great time to tell Sen. Klobuchar that Minnesotan's want the Public Option on Health Care. Call her and call Al Franken and tell them that the Baucus plan for Health Care Reform is wrong and not good for Minnesota.
The Baucus plan gives greater increases to insurance companies, but not better benefits to those who need health care. In addition to making health care more expensive, it will also allow the Federal Government to fine us up to $750.00 for individuals and up to $1500.00 for families if we do not have health insurance. What is the use of fining people who don't have insurance if we cannot afford the options given to us?
Call Senator Amy Klobuchar at: 1-888-224-9043
Call Senator Al Franken at: 202-224-5641
Tell them the Baucus plan is unacceptable and bring us back the Public Option and affordable options.
