Democratic District 20 candidates on Fair Share Health Care
As I mentioned on Tuesday, I asked Democratic District 20 candidates to comment on the recent RILA v. Fielder ruling overturning Maryland's Fair Share Health Care law. The substantive part of my Monday e-mail was as follows:

Dear Democratic District 20 candidates,

As you probably know, a federal judge overturned Maryland's Fair Share Health Care (FSHC) Act last week. (I posted an item about this decision as "RILA v. Fielder strikes down Fair Share Health Care.") Colloquially if inaccurately referred to as the "Wal-Mart bill," FSHC required companies with over 10,000 employees to pay an amount equal to at least 8% of payroll to health benefits, or pay the balance into a state Medicaid fund. As I understand the ruling, the judge found this to be incompatible with the federal Employment Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), but not a violation of the principle of equal protection for Wal-Mart vs. other companies. The decision will be appealed, but the prospects for success are uncertain.

My question to all of you is:

Assuming the RILA v. Fielder decision stands, what specific legislative steps do you support -- if any -- to pass a FSHC or similar measure that would withstand judicial scrutiny? By "similar", I mean measures that address the needs of low-income wage earners with inadequate health care benefits, and/or the "free rider" problem of companies like Wal-Mart which -- despite being highly profitable -- essentially rely on state Medicaid systems to provide health care for their employees.

I then discussed suggested word limits and formatting,* and asked for responses by this evening. Here are the Assembly and Senate candidate responses I received by this evening, in the order I received them.


Delegate Gareth Murray

As you are aware, I was a strong advocate and voted for the Fair Share Health Care bill and view it as another step toward providing the Maryland workforce the rights and benefits they so richly deserve. I wish this were a problem for which I could give you a quick answer. Unfortunately this is a very complex issue which I do intend on addressing upon my return to Annapolis. The task is to craft legislation that will promote certain behaviors in reference to provision of healthcare by prohibiting or at a minimum removing economic incentive to do otherwise. Given the time required to adequately research and draft such a proposal, I do not have the time during this campaign for re-election.

Lucinda Lessley

It is my understanding that the Wal Mart bill was struck down because it was found to be in violation of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), which essentially creates a federal statute to occupy the regulation of health and benefit plans in order to ensure that firms that employ people in multiple states can maintain a standard, nationwide package of benefits.

I supported the aim of the Wal Mart bill which was to require that Wal Mart either provide health insurance to its employees or pay the State to provide the benefits that many employees obtained through State programs. If it would be possible to craft a bill that meets these objectives without violating the provisions of ERISA, I would support it.

The better way to avoid the problems faced by the Wal Mart bill, however, and to ensure that all Marylanders have access to health care, is to create a system in our State that provides universal care or coverage. While such a system may be a single payer system or it may be a system such as was adopted in Massachusetts that requires all citizens to carry health insurance (and subsidizes coverage for those who cannot afford it), I believe it is shameful that some 700,000 Marylanders lack health insurance. A state with the resources that are available to Maryland can provide universal coverage if such coverage is made a top Statewide priority; if elected, I will work to make universal care this kind of priority.

Diane Nixon

I supported the Wal-Mart bill, and I am sorry that it was struck down. But I thought of it as a stepping stone, not a solution to the health care crisis in Maryland. Since it only applied to employers who have over 10,000 employees, few residents in Maryland would have been affected. I want legislation which will provide universal coverage to all residents, modeled after the bill which passed in Massachusetts this year. Uninsured residents who can afford to buy insurance must buy it or face tax penalties. Businesses with more than ten workers must provide insurance or they will be fined. People below the federal poverty level will be provided with health insurance, without paying premiums or deductibles. Lower income people will be able to buy subsidized policies. The Massachusetts plan reduces the cost of health insurance for people who are already insured. Having fewer people without insurance will lower costs for employers. Adding healthy people, who use less health care, will keep deductibles and premiums down. The cost of health care is too expensive and it getting worse. Massachusetts legislators have shown that providing health insurance to the uninsured is possible. Since this is a new plan, it will probably undergo several changes before it works for everyone. But it does what the Wal-Mart bill failed to do. It comes close to providing universal health care, it makes most businesses responsible for covering their employees, and it offers hope that the broken health care system can be fixed.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 8:00:00 PM -- |    

 
"This is interesting," huh?
Yesterday I got to wondering what a big time righty blogger like Glenn Reynolds has to say these days about Iraq's swirls down the toilet drain. Not much, it appeared. Here's the first thing I found Wednesday afternoon, halfway down the page, in its entirety:

July 25, 2006

THIS IS INTERESTING: 'Half of Americans now say Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the United States invaded the country in 2003 -- up from 36 percent last year, a Harris poll finds. Pollsters deemed the increase both 'substantial' and 'surprising' in light of persistent press reports to the contrary in recent years.'

Apparently, trust in 'persistent press reports' isn't what it used to be.

So other than a quicky link to someone musing about libertarians and the Iraq war, what you had from Reynolds on his front page about Iraq was... a back-handed rebroadcast of the big WMD lie. To be sure, Reynolds has the perfect right to congratulate Americans holding that mistaken belief, including the tens of thousands of his daily readers he's continued to encourage in that mistaken belief. That doesn't make it any less contemptible.

Like Andrew Sullivan, I'm sorry about my role, small though I think mine was, in arguing to support the Iraq war. Of course, that and a dollar or so will buy me a cup of coffee at McDonalds, and I don't expect to keep everyone reading this from wanting to wring my neck. As I wrote in the February 2003 piece linked by Mr. Reynolds, I thought it was a choice between war now or a bigger war later.*

That in turn was based on the assumption that where there seemed to be so much WMD smoke, there was some fire somewhere, too. And that, in turn, was based on thinking that surely the entire American government (and apparently the German BND besides) couldn't be turned into a gigantic lying machine about the imminence of Iraqi nuclear and biological WMD.

Wrong.

It's one of those unanswerable and maybe empty counterfactuals whether things would be any different if Saddam had had WMDs or had been close to it. That would presume Cheney et al had been right, and truthful, and competent, and honorable in a way that might have led them to either convince more allies and send more troops, or find other even better ways of avoiding the quagmire and bloodbath now before us.

But Cheney et al were and are none of those things. Instead, we're in Evil Spock's universe now, so to speak, and that's what we -- and to a far greater extent, the Iraqis -- are stuck with. Maybe we were in it all along, or maybe it took consecutive triple snake eyes called the 2000 election and 9/11 to knock us into the history we're stuck with. But here we are, with a small assist from me, sad to say -- a small point in the scheme of things, but it looms large for me.

Given their continued influence, maybe it's more important at this point to look at people like Professor Reynolds and ask where, at long last, their respect for their readers and themselves has gone. There are no WMDs, there were none, and you and I were lied to. That's bad enough. But therefore there wasn't ever sufficient evidence for them either, meaning people like me also allowed ourselves to be misled into a war about them. We can at least make sure not to ever be fooled again by snake oil peddlers like Cheney, Rove, or Bush -- or even little apprentices like Glenn Reynolds.


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* That piece -- With regrets: for war on Saddam -- mainly addressed counterarguments to the war as I saw them. My WMD concern was more clearly raised in a pros and cons piece a couple of months earlier. But see Operation Desert Snipe for someone whose grasp of the lack of evidence was clearer than mine.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:40:00 AM -- |    

 
The July 20 Raskin-Ruben debate
As I mentioned at the end of my Jamie Raskin for Maryland Senate post last week, there was a debate between him and incumbent District 20 Democratic primary opponent Ida Ruben in Takoma Park on Thursday, July 20. You can see accounts of it at Raskin's and Ruben's web sites. You can also watch the debate on the Takoma Park city web site.*

And, of course, you can read this post for my take on the debate. To be clear, I've been for Raskin for a while -- both as a neighbor and because of his politics -- and this debate strengthened that support. Nevertheless, I hope readers will find this to be a fair account of what I saw and heard.

Interest in the race is obviously running high. When I got to the Takoma Park city council room, most seats were taken and there was eventually standing room and floor seating only. I'd guess there were maybe 200-250 people in attendance.

This was the first time I've seen substantial numbers of Ruben supporters, who were identifiable by campaign t-shirts and signs; Raskin has had a much more visible campaign, at least in Takoma Park, than Ruben has. Raskin t-shirted supporters were also present in force, so that there was a rough balance of visibly partisan (and more or less equally vocal) spectators accounting for perhaps a quarter of the audience in the muggy council room.

Opening statements, key challenges
Right out of the gate, the opening statements illustrated the candidates' different outlooks. Raskin said he wanted to be "the best state senator District 20 has ever had." Rather gallantly, I thought, he celebrated the honorable service of all of the District's past senators including Ms. Ruben -- but then went on to say that the "politics of yesterday" were not good enough any more, in view of so many Marylanders without health insurance, and millions in corporate donations getting in the way of pursuing the common good. Re "politics of yesterday", he decried State Comptroller (D-DINO) Donald Schaefer's myriad recent sexist and prejudiced remarks, and challenged Ruben to join him in calling for Schaefer's resignation.

Ruben, by contrast, unaccountably led off with a soliloquy on the importance of family and her (no doubt) "gorgeous" grandchildren. I wonder how many others in the audience were thinking that then maybe it wouldn't be so bad to help her spend more time with them. Assuming that wasn't her intent, she still displayed a bit of a tin ear for the underlying critique Raskin and his supporters are advancing, which is not that she's personally remote from District 20, but that she's politically remote from it. (However, towards the end of the debate, Ms. Ruben did finally join in calling for Schaefer's resignation.)

On key challenges for the Maryland Senate, the candidates agreed that health coverage and a Purple Line (a Metro Line paralleling the north Beltway) are priorities. Responding second to the question, Raskin said Ruben has claimed "so-called universal health care is not the answer," but that he thinks it is the answer. Raskin also noted that Ruben was a key champion of the InterCounty Connector (ICC), a proposed highway also paralleling the north Beltway that is pretty unpopular (in my part of District 20, at any rate) and with good reason. Ruben mentioned getting full funding for Thornton Commission recommendations.

Themes
The Takoma Voice's Eric Bond posed more questions to both candidates, ranging from the importance of global warming to ideas to help small business in the county to alleviating traffic congestion. That was followed by closing statements and a number of questions from the audience. I'll try to hit some of the themes and highlights of Raskin's and Ruben's comments.

Ruben's refrain could be boiled down to "you've got to get the money, it isn't easy to get the money, and I can get the money." She took credit for assisting the Silver Spring revitalization project, ESOL (English Speakers of Other Languages) programs, and for fighting for CHP (Children's Health Program) among others. On that score, Raskin reminded the audience that Ruben shouldn't pose as a provider -- it's our money. Nevertheless, it doesn't necessarily always get spent on what we'd like, and Ruben has a lot to her credit here.

Raskin's themes were removing corporate campaign contributions -- "they're not citizens, they don't vote; why should they be able to put $4000 into our race?" -- 100 percent high school voter registration, and championing progressive values he feels he more clearly shares with District 20 voters than Ruben does. Raskin charged that corporate contributions didn't make it harder for Senator Ruben to vote seven times for electricity deregulation under a scheme that will cost Marylanders about $470 more a year. For her part, Ruben declined to join in calling for banning corporate contributions, saying maybe she would but "I have to listen to what the arguments will be"; while corporations aren't individuals, they do "bring money to a lot of people."

Exchanges
Ruben challenged Raskin's out-of-state contributions from Manhattan (which turned out to be a fundraiser held by friends at The Nation) and at an event hosted at the DC offices of the Arnold & Porter law firm (where Raskin has assisted with pro bono work), while Raskin challenged her votes to raise the corporate contribution limit. For her part, Ruben defended her Maryland and Montgomery County corporate support, saying she "consider[s] the whole state and county mine," and declined to join in committing to a ban on corporate campaign contributions.

While I think Raskin got the better of Ruben on those and most exchanges, it wasn't all Raskin, all the time. One exchange that made me smile was when Ruben reminded Raskin and the audience she had supported his appointment to a labor relations board he was proud of serving on. Raskin, smiling, countered, "I never said I disagreed with everything you've done." Ruben came back a minute later with the delicate jab that "it was a big step for him."

But she undid that in the next breath with the charge that she doesn't go to papers "crying about everything that happens," which was the opening for Raskin to essentially rebut that she goes to high school principals to do that, regarding Raskin's endorsement by the Montgomery High School "Silver Chips" newspaper -- which Ruben managed to turn into a debacle by her complaints. (It appears Ruben didn't return several phone calls from the paper, leaving Raskin's views dominant and his endorsement by the paper not entirely surprising; she says she was looking for equal time, not a retraction.)

Puzzling statements
Ruben made one of several puzzling statements of the evening when she referred to "a lot of unsolved words" about that dispute. Another was when she revealed a poor grasp of air quality and global warming issues, saying "all that air will be stagnant and will stay in one area" if the rest of the country and the world don't join in addressing global warming. While she seemed to be driving at regional cooperation, and she's right that Montgomery County can't solve global warming or even its own air quality concerns by itself, she might have avoided compounding those problems by supporting the ICC. She had a similarly weak response to Raskin's point that she's voted to double corporate campaign contribution limits -- she essentially said it was adjusting for inflation since the 1970s.

Death penalty
The candidates had a particularly interesting exchange on the death penalty. Ms. Ruben explained that she opposes the death penalty in principle, but voted to make it an option in the case of homicides of police officers, since law enforcement personnel deserve protection. Raskin felt that racial disparities illustrate the injustice of the death penalty, and is unequivocally against it.**

Summing up
To me, Ruben seemed to suffer from a form of incumbentitis: not quite believing she actually needs to explain herself, and more importantly her plans and her political outlook to her constituents yet again. It's true, she was certainly up there talking on the dais, but she was mainly saying how hard it was to get stuff done in the Maryland Senate, yet how essential it was that she stay there to bring home what Raskin called the "bacon bits." Raskin was right to call those "somewhat contrary propositions."

While I was predisposed to feel this way, Raskin made the better impression on me -- more on point, more progressive, and more focused on outlining plans for the future. The debate and the turnout made clear, though, that Ruben is putting up a fight.



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* Thanks as ever to the efforts of Lonni Moffet, Takoma Park's Office of Communications director -- w00t!
** I'll insert my views as a footnote: I'd be against the death penalty even if there were no significant racial or other disparities in its application. The possibility -- and, over time, the certainty -- of putting innocent people to death make it an irreversible, avoidable miscarriage of justice waiting to happen. I think that's true no matter what races the victim and/or alleged perpetrator belong to, whether the victim is a police officer or not, and whether the death penalty is a net lifesaver (via estimated/guesstimated homicide deterrence) or not.

UPDATE, 7/26: Gilbert (at the Takoma Voice "granola park" blog) provides another view of the debate. He worries that Takoma Park loses either way -- by either losing Ruben's seniority, or her good will. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:30:00 PM -- |    

 
Worth reading
Senator John Edwards on Poverty --- from an R. Neal interview at "Facing South":

It's time to finish the job of welfare reform by giving low-income men the opportunity to work and challenging them to take responsibility for doing so. Welfare reform asked young mothers to join the workforce and gave them help to get there. Millions of poor women benefited, but poor men lost ground during the best economy we've ever had. In America today, there are communities where half the young men are out of work.

I believe that we should create one million 'stepping stone' jobs over five years. A good job that will let people work their way out of poverty in the short term, and help them get experience so they can get better jobs in the future.

We also need to give America’s workers a real right to organize. Unions helped move manufacturing jobs into the foundation of our middle class, and they can do the same for our service economy.

Five Years of Attention Whoring --- Pablo Shounin is the blogger formerly known as Sgt. Stryker, pretty well known back in 2001-2003 or so as a serviceman both willing and able to deliver sharp commentary on politics, current events, and other bloggers. This title to the contrary, I've noticed many posts by Pablo/Stryker over the years whose honesty, eloquence, and/or humor stood out. From "Five years":

...my claims of liberal thought didn’t seem to matter as long as I was saying what people wanted to hear. I was “right on” and I routinely “nailed it”. Nevermind that half the time, I trolled low-rate Freeper posts and newer conservo blogs to find the latest material and mock it using Stryker’s Schtick. I was purposely using words and phrases in exaggerated prose to mock what I was seeing, while at the same time slipping-in an honest point. [...]

...things started to change right after the Iraq war started. I was involved in a chat with some other prominent bloggers that sent alarm bells ringing in my head and really started me on the path to seeing them in an entirely new light. ... There was a lot of the typical tough-talk in the chat and I mentioned my hope that an “Alpine Redoubt” wouldn’t play itself out in Iraq. When asked what I was talking about, I said it was Eisenhower’s main fear that the die-hard Nazis would take to the Alpine mountains and launch a guerilla war that would last for years. The people in the chat replied that the only mountains in Iraq were in the Kurdish north and the Kurds wouldn’t fight us. So help me, these people literally thought I was talking about an actual flight to the mountains by Saddam’s followers. [...]

I know I’ll get tired of it eventually, but so far I still feel the need to let the world know what I think, as if it really matters. No, correct that: I still feel the need to let a close circle of people that I respect (note: over in the blogroll) know what I think and that matters to me.

I'm honored to be one of them.

For Thomas --- riggsveda ("It's My Country, Too") responds to a comment of mine on an earlier post of hers (also worth reading) with an extended quote by Gore Vidal, which reads, in part:

The time has come to hold another contitutional convention. Those conservatives known as liberals have always found this notion terrifying, because they are convinced that the powers of darkness will see to it that the Bill of Rights is abolished. This is always a possibility, but sometimes it's best to know the worst all at once rather than to allow those rights to be slowly taken away from us by, let us say, the present majority of the Supreme Court...

(I had suggested that a constitutional convention "would be more likely to produce a reactionary disaster than a step forward.") Riggsveda continues:

I admit it: I'm sick of it all. When I hauled out my long-buried optimism about the possibility of reversing the aristocracizing of America during the last election, I was stunned that Bush was returned to office, and what I have seen on my local front as those near to me have involved themselves in politics has made me all but despair of any hope. [...]

Can the party be saved? Maybe. But to do so would require the kind of wholesale changes to the electoral system that would allow outsiders and poor people to campaign. In my neck of the woods, there is a concerted effort by the Democratic machine to rebuff all attempts to run for any office at all if you haven't been vetted and approved by the county Commission. On a more statewide level, the attempts of Chuck Pinnacchio and Alan Sandals to run for office were deep-sixed by Chuck Schumer and Ed Rendell long before the primary ever got off the ground, so now I've got a Democratic candidate to represent PA in the Senate that was hand-picked by a New Yorker who ran the machine. This is not representative government. This is puppetry.

I got yer Geneva Conventions right here --- Tarek ("Liquid List"):

Being forced to show proof is what this administration sees as the final battle. They defend and defer and lie and deceive and finally give in -- on paper. And they say, "trust us." The world cannot trust us any longer. The world simply mustn't. We're habitual liars, and we gladly smile in your face while suspending a mortally wounded man by his shackled arms from a jailhouse window until his heart stops as soon as you turn your back.

It’s Full of Stars --- In South Africa for a conference and to visit historical archives there (be sure to read that link, too), Tim Burke took time to visit the Ithala game preserve:

For me the animals were secondary to the night sky, however. In mountainous or desert regions of the United States, you can still get very good views of the stars at night, but I have to say there’s nothing in the U.S. like the sky we saw in Ithala, in my experience. There are no lights besides the muted camp lights for many, many miles around the park, nothing at all. The camp is at elevation, and in the winter, the air around it is mostly clear, though occasionally the smell and sight of distant grass fires presents itself. Looking up at the Milky Way, undisguised by anything, with bushbabies making weird cries all around you in the trees, fills you with a kind of skin-prickling awe. I think I could have that sensation every single night and it would never get old or banal.

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UPDATE, 7/25: Avedon Carol ("The Sideshow") also raises the idea of a constitutional convention (well, strictly, a reader of hers does); she sounds about as wary of it as I am. posted by Thomas Nephew at 7:45:00 PM -- |    

 
Poor widdle Wal-Mart
Once again, the Washington Post takes the beleaguered behemoth of Bentonville under its motherly wing with the Monday editorial "Spare Goliath," subtitled "Maryland's "Wal-Mart law" is a bad idea that doesn't deserve a second chance." The editorial notes that Maryland Senate leader Mike Miller wants to reintroduce Fair Share Health Care legislation next session, in the wake of the RILA v. Fielder ruling overturning this year's legislation, and argues:

...even if Mr. Miller could find a way to draft a legally viable version of the law, he still shouldn't reintroduce the measure.

Targeting a single company because it's unpopular -- or, as Mr. Miller implied, because it's buying political protection with "contributions to the Republican Party" -- is a misuse of governmental power. [...] About 800,000 Marylanders don't have health insurance, and most of them don't work at Wal-Mart. Massachusetts, a state that is trying to responsibly address rising health-care costs, hasn't resorted to preying selectively on its large employers. Neither should Maryland.

While I wrote about it last week, I don't pretend to be an authority on the RILA v. Fielder ruling overturning the Fair Share Health Care Act. But as far as I can tell, the "singling out" objection seems to be an argument the judge actually rejected in his ruling:

...legislatures are permitted the “leeway to approach a perceived problem incrementally.” [...]

... It is only in cases involving politically vulnerable groups that the Supreme Court has appeared to rely, at least in part, on legislative antipathy when invalidating a law under the rational basis test.

The Post has opposed the Fair Share Health Care bill all along, so nuts to them. But to respond in brief, Fair Share Health Care is (or was) just that: as much about fairness to other businesses -- and thus some kind of halfway decent health care floor for all employed Marylanders -- as it was about Wal-Mart in particular. Wal-Mart's business practices (and those of companies emulating it) are the ebbing tide that lowers all boats when it comes to health care plans. As the CEO of Giant Foods -- presumably no wild-eyed radical -- said in 2003:

All we ask for, and what we need, is a 'level playing field' where every employer pays their fair share, and where a company's competitive advantage is achieved by means other than avoiding the provision of medical care coverage and shifting the costs towards those companies who do provide that coverage.

It's true that in a better world, we'd have universal health care, paid for by a fair, progressive tax structure. But in the meantime, what we have is employer-based health care -- and Wal-Mart is getting away with fobbing off its workers' health costs on the rest of us while it makes billions of dollars.

A recent Washington Post poll found that 77% of Marylanders supported the Fair Share Health Care act. Like them, I think this was a good measure and is an important issue -- important enough that I've asked the Democratic candidates for District 20 Assembly and Senate seats for their views on what should come next if the RILA v. Fielder ruling stands. I hope to have some responses collected by Friday evening.

Meanwhile, check out this great bit of Wal-Mart activism by Kris Hall in Maine: Wal-Mart walking tour podcasts; story here, via "Sandwichman" at "MaxSpeak, You Listen." posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:16:00 PM -- |    

 
Bad apple authorization form Z/0901

There was an authorization template on a computer, a sheet that you would print out, or actually just type it in. And it was a checklist. And it was all already typed out for you, environmental controls, hot and cold, you know, strobe lights, music, so forth. Working dogs, which, when I was there, wasn’t being used. But you would just check what you want to use off, and if you planned on using a harsh interrogation you’d just get it signed off.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:58:00 AM -- |