It was the night before Christmas, and all through the Senate
the right held up our health care bill, no matter what was in it.

The people had voted a mandated reform
but Republicans blew off the gathering storm.

“We’ll clog up the Senate,” they cried with a grin.
“and in the midterm elections, we’ll get voted in.”

they knew regular folks needed help right this second
but fund-raisers lobbyists and politics beckoned.

So try as they might Democrats could not win
because their majority was simply too thin

Then across every state there rose such a clatter,
the whole Senate rushed out to see what was the matter.

All sprang up from their desk and ran from the floor,
straight through the cloakroom and right out the door.

And in what in the world would be quite so raucous,
but a mandate for change from the Democratic caucus.

The president, the speaker, of course leader Reid
had answered the call in our hour of need.

More rapid than eagles, the provisions they came
and they whistled and shouted and called them by name:

better coverage, cost savings, a strong public plan
accountable options, we said “yes, we can.”

No exclusions or changes for preexisting conditions.
let’s pass a bill that restores competition.

The Democrats all came together to fight
for the American people that Christmas eve night.

And then in a twinkle, I heard under the dome
the roll call was closed, and it was time to go home.

Despite the obstructionist tactics of some,
the filibuster had broken, the people had won

And a good bill was ready for President Obama,
ready to sign and end health care drama.

Democrats explained as they drove out of sight,
better coverage for all, even our friends on the right.

And I say to all of my colleagues in this season, merry Christmas and a happy, happy new year.

Here is the YouTube Clip

It appears that Dean is done with sitting on the bench. His recent comments on health care reform have or are likely to position him as the progressive defender. He is now the Democrat who finally stood up and said to President Obama and Majority Leader Reid, enough is enough, we want everything and if we cannot get it we are going to scream and kick and toss out whatever we can get.

I know that you are probably thinking that sounds like a really dumb argument, and frankly it is but that is hardly the point. The point is, Dean has not motivation to come out this strongly against health care reform unless he is looking for a new job.

The question is what? My first thought was a potential primary challenge to Obama in 2012 but I think that is a bit drastic. Democrats have done some stupid things but I don’t think we are dumb enough to do that. Plus I think Dean’s national image is too tarnish for a successful Presidential bid (to say nothing of challenging a sitting President).

So let’s look back at Dean’s Presidential run that ended so early with a scream. The only state he one in the primaries was his home state of Vermont (despite the fact that he had already withdrawn his candidacy). He was a great governor for the state and when all was said and done, Vermont stuck by their man.

If Dean is looking to get back into the game, his only shot is to do so in Vermont. Currently Vermont is represented by the only self-described socialist, Bernie Sanders, and one of the longest serving Senators and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Patrick Leahy — both very popular in Vermont.

That said, Leahy is up for reelection in 2010 and is turning 70 in March and I think Dean is looking for his seat.

Now there has been no word from Leahy about retirement but it is certainly not out of the question. It would be very interesting to see Dean challenge Leahy in the primaries but I am not sure the he would or that he could win that challenge.

Either way, it’s clear the Dean is not content with being the chair of the DNC and it looking to get back into the heart of national politics and I think he either knows or is hoping that Leahy will retire this year and not seek reelection.

Healthcare is not a market commodity.

Neither is health insurance. For something to be a market commodity it has to meet a series of criteria.

1. Products must be interchangeable.
Sadly healthcare is not interchangeable. Getting a surgery from one hospital is not the same as getting it from another and one doctors opinion is not interchangeable with another, hence a second opinion.

2. Consumers must be adequately informed
We rely on doctors to inform us as to what medical care we need. Sure WebMD is great but it doesn’t replace an Medical Degree.

3. Consumers must be free to choose supplier
Contrary to popular belief, we do not have free choice over our doctors. Even if you are in a PPO, your choice of doctor is still restricted to ‘in network’ doctors. And if you want to talk about healthcare insurance, consumers have even less of a choice. The majority of people get their health insurance through their employer, meaning it’s their employer who chooses what plan and what network the consumer gets.

4. Sellers must accept all customers
Doctors only accept patients from the health insurance companies they sign up with. Again, as for health insurance, insurance companies do not have to accept everyone who comes through their doors, in fact they attempt to cherry pick only the healthy.

5. Information Symmetry
Both sellers and consumers must have a similar level of knowledge. Doctors know far more then patients.

6. Predictable costs
Healthcare costs are about as unpredictable as anything. Not only are your costs tied to your age, illness, geographic location and doctor, complication is surgery or symptoms based on interfering medication are nearly impossible to predict.

7. Consumers must be responsible for payment
Only a tiny sliver of the American population pay for their healthcare completely out of pocket. Even when it comes to health insurance, most people only pay about a third of their insurance costs while their employers pay for most of it.

For something to be a market commodity it must meet all of the above criteria, healthcare fails to meet, not just one but on all criteria. As such, the ‘free market’ cannot be the solution to our healthcare problems.

By the way, this post is basically a sarcastically annotated version of notes from a healthcare class taught by Todd Eberly. He just wrote a great post outlining the economic case for a single payer system.

The Public Option is a step towards socialism
Response: “Nixon, the King of Anti-Communism, was the first to propose a public option in ’74. Maybe he was a double agent!”

Death Panels
Response:  ”The only death panels are the insurance companies who rescind your coverage preexisting conditions, like rape.”

The Government has no right to get involved in heatlhcare
Response: “50% of all HC spending in the US already comes through the Gov’t you cannot argue for our current system and against Gov’t involvement.”

Socialism Medicine is UnAmerican
Response: “We have socialized medicine in the US, the VA System. Are you calling the US Military UnAmerican?”

HSA Will Control Costs
Response: “Yes, they will reduce the use of unneeded services but they will also reduce the use of needed services.”

Consumer choice will solve our healthcare problems
Response: “Consumer choice assumes the consumer is well informed. Since it takes 10 years to become a doctor, how can a patient be informed?”

Other governments just ration to bring down costs
Response: “We ration and don’t bring down costs. We ration based on your income while others ration based on need, which is more fair?”

Illegal immigrants shouldn’t get healthcare
Response: “They already do and our taxes pay for it. hospitals must treat emergencies, so if they don’t have insurance, we pay for those visits.”

These are just a few of my favorites, please feel free to add more via comments or Tweet me @dchase.

In fact, the only real success that we have seen across the country in education reform is in charter schools. Charter schools, nationwide, out preform their district schools in standardized tests and college acceptance rates. Despite these successes, most States still have caps or funding limits on charter schools.

There are typically two arguments used against charter schools. The first is that they do well because you have to choose to attend one and that naturally draws more active and engaged children, those who will do well no matter where they are. The second argument is that charter schools divert necessary funds from district schools, thus making it more difficult for those schools to function.

As to the first argument, Harvard recently completed a study in which they looked at the success of students who entered the lottery to get into their local charter schools. The tracked student test scores on standardized tests (MCAS and SATs) and found that the students who got into the charter school out preformed the students who did not get into the charter school. Since both groups took the active step of choosing to go to a charter school, this study eliminates the argument that charter school’s success is attributable only to their students.

Now, the diversion of funds from district schools to charter schools does have some merits. However, since charter schools operate on considerably smaller budgets and yet achieve considerably better results the question must be asked, why could district schools not achieve those results pre-charter schools, when they had even larger budgets?

Money is clearly not on only thing standing in the way of educational success.

Now the most vocal opponents of charter schools tend to be teacher unions, which should be a clue as to where we might look to find what is standing in the way of educational success. There is little questions why teacher unions oppose charter schools, charter schools demonstrate how schools can succeed without teachers unions.

It would be outrageous to blame our education woes entirely on teacher unions but with policies like teacher tenure, time based raises and mandatory work hour limits, it’s hard to not at least question the wisdom of charter schools (even if I get kicked out of the Democratic party for asking such a question).

Fortunately we finally have a few charter school advocates at the national level — President Obama and Education Secretary Arnie Duncan. In fact, the Obama Administration is such a supporter of charter schools that they wrote into the Stimulus Package a requirement of States to lift their caps on charter schools to receive federal stimulus money aimed a school improvements. The tacit has lifted the cap in many states and at least sparked the debate in many more.

Stay tuned for more on the debate in MA.

After a summer of brutal town halls, lunatic TV/Radio hosts and angry protesters, it’s hard to say that President Obama’s health care reform effort is where he, or the millions of Americans supporting him, hoped it would be. With three bills, two from the Senate and one from the House, floating around, it looks like the final bill will bring little more than further tweaks to the system, not the broad and comprehensive reform that is desired.

With large majorities in the House and Senate, the question of the day seems to be, “Why are the Democrats not getting more of what they want?” The answer is a fundamental misunderstanding, by both the President and the Democratic leadership, of the world of professional partisan politics.

The President’s mistake was letting the far right drive the debate. For months, we heard of socialized medicine, death panels, and a government take over of health care. Perhaps the most emblematic example of the Democrats’ complete failure to drive the debate was when one retiree stood up at a Town Hall meeting and said, “Keep government hands off my medicare!” Educating the public to both the needs and goals of reform should have been the President’s number one priority.

His bigger mistake was pushing for bipartisanship while the Democrats were running the show. The President, Speaker Pelosi, and Majority Leader Reid all assumed that if they produced legislation that incorporated Republican ideas, they would subsequently get Republican votes. Why would a single Republican vote for a bill that they have never been publicly asked to support, contribute ideas to, or even read, before it was publicly announced as the Democratic Healthcare Plan? The Republicans get many of reforms they want (more than they should — given their minority status) and they still get to blast the Democrats.

The President should have pushed for radical and comprehensive reform and then compromised, not just skip ahead to the compromising, without making the other side compromise too. Alexander Hamilton argued for a King so that he could get a strong executive because he understood that in a Democracy, compromise is king.

It will be interesting to see what the final bill will look like, but it is clear that Liberals across the country will not get the kind of reform they want; not because of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh but because the Democratic Leadership forgot, at least for a moment, how to play the game.

Let’s first describe what we are talking about and what we are not talking about. We are talking about organized and school sponsored prayer. No one is saying if a student wants to say a Hail Mary before a test that he or she should not be allowed to. However, we are talking about organized school prayer even if it is voluntary.

In reverse order:

#5: School prayer does not help schools accomplish their mission. The mission of any public school is to first and foremost educate its students. There is no doubt that education about religion can be valuable to this goal but simply reciting a prayer tells students nothing about that religion or it’s history. Another goal of schools is without question to instill a set of moral values within it’s students but yet again reciting a prayer does not accomplish this goal without further discussion of it’s religious context. If you want to have that discussion, which religion do you choose?

#4: It’s unconstitutional. Since the Government can make no law respecting an establishment of religion under the first amendment to the constitution for a State sponsored school to promote any religion let alone to promote one religion over the other is unconstitutional. And the Supreme court agreed some 50 years ago in the case Engel v. Vitale.

#3: In practice, it favors Christians. Although one could argue that voluntary school prayer could be organized for any religion, in reality it favors Christians. That leaves out a large number of people including (just to name a few) Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and, the group that is most often left out in these discussions, atheists. Even Catholics can be left out of the lurch since they say certain prayers differently then other Christian denominations.

#2: Promotes the concept that the founders intended us to be a Christian nation. By sanctioning prayer in our public institutions we are, however subtly, suggesting that our government is tied to a particularly religion. Regardless of how you feel, it is very clear not only from the first amendment but from the federalist papers that the founders intended a very clear separation of church and state. Beyond the historical argument, there is the moral argument that our government should not be promoting any religion in a country as religiously diverse as ours… 25% of the country is non-Christan and another 25% is Catholic. That’s half the country who wouldn’t say Our Father (or at least not the same way as Protestants would).

#1: It is just another way to make kids different from one another. Allowing voluntary prayer automatically singles out whoever in the class is different. Don’t kids have enough ways to be singled out for not being able to read yet or wearing used clothes because they cannot afford new ones? Do we really need to add relgion to it?

Toby: We have got to get real now. Leo, Ann Stark is a war time consigliere that is why she was bumped up.

Leo: I am war time consigliere too, Toby. I was just hoping it would be peace time a little longer.

I am not sure if there was anyone who did not think that Rahm Emanuel was going to be President Obama’s Leo McGarry but as the Washington Post has recently reported, we have seen a completely different tact taken by Mr. Emanuel.

In fact, his appearance on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos earlier this week summed up how he has been as a chief of staff — he was eerily on message, well thought out and, frankly, charming. That being said, we certainly saw hints of the old Emanuel as he talked about the Presidents messages as just that, the President’s message, suggesting he might disagree with some of them. But alas, he did his job and got out.

No brazen attacks. No subtle threats to Republicans on the hill.

And we can look at how Emanuel handled the stimulus bill and and the budget. He met with key congressman, made deals and made friend AND never stormed out of a meeting screaming at anyone. Speaking of which, he apparently has made nice with Howard Dean.

The most surprising part of Emanuel’s shift in tacit is it comes just 2 years after he played a central role in winning Congress back for the Democrats in the 2006 midterms, thanks largely to his totally disregard for the finer points of the political game and instead becoming a force to reckon with. One that scared the crap out of many in Washington.

Is it the new seat of power he holds? Or perhaps Obama has put him on a short leash? Either way, it seems clear that Emanuel has found a new set of tools to orcestrate the democratic party.

The question now is who will be the White House enforcer if not Emanuel? Do they plan on playing it nice for the next 4-8 years? That might work while Meghan McCain and Rush Limbaugh are the head leaders face whatever of the Republican party but what happens when the Republicans find some real political leadership and get back into the game?

All I am saying is that someone is going to have to whip into the shape the Southern Blue Dog Democrats that Emanuel got elected in the last few years and I am not sure Bo is up to the job!

The little known fourth branch of the US Government, responsible mostly for ruling on laws involving interstellar commerce. Their most famous ruling is probably The Star Wars Kid v the State of Iowa where they ruled that because the nature of light sabers are inherently tied to self defense, they are protected under the 2nd amendment right to bear arms and the 39th amendment right to wield mop handles.

In case you do not recognize our honorable justices here is a list of them as they appear in the above ‘photo’ from left to right: Justice Anthony Kenned, Justice John Stevens, Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice Ruth Ginsburg, Justice John Roberts, Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Stephen Breyer, Justice Sammuel Alito and Justice David Souter.

By the way, this is what happens when you combine a college student with photoshop on night without any homework and the unwillingness to work on one of three papers he or she has due the next week.

I felt the need to comment on these so called “patriotic acts” since the original act (The Boston Tea Party) not only occurred in my home state (MA representin’) but was organized by a group of college students from the then hardly known Harvard College.

I was trying to figure out the best way to express how I feel about this little charade but I think Tina Dupuy from the Huffington Post put it best, “The Boston Tea Party was standing up to tyranny after years of neglect. Not standing up to being mad that your candidate didn’t win.”

I would love to rip apart the economic and moral argument that the organizers of these tea parties have but they don’t seem to outline their argument anywhere on their website. Well unless you count the below video of Glen Beck dressed up as Thomas Paine… I am honestly not sure who I am happier is a Republican, Glen Beck or Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh gives you that gut I-want-to-puke-my-brains-out-at-this-ignorant-horse-crap feeling but Beck… well, just watch the video, it’s self explanatory.

Just for the record, if Paine was alive, I would bet my live savings (which actually as a college student isn’t much but my future life savings) that he would kick Becks ass all up and down Boston harbor.

So, without knowing their argument since they decided to not display it, let me tell you why the National Tax Day Tea Party is a stupid idea.

1. The stimulus package, like it or not, is absolutely necessary to ensure long term growth in the economy. It really doesn’t matter what the government spends it on, that money is going to provide jobs and increase our overall GDP. We could buy porn with the money and it would grow the economy. If you are concerned about our debt, watch what happens to our debt when our GDP decreases.

2. If you are worried about our national debt, fighting taxes will not help it. Even if you want to cut all of the spending that Obama and the Democrats have put into this years budget and the stimulus package, we would still have a deficit. To get a surplus we would have to cut all government spending beyond entitlement commitments and defense spending. So unless you want to completely shut down all government programs, we simply have not choice but to raise taxes to chip away at the debt. A debt, I might remind you, that was mostly amassed during a Republican administration.

3. This one is my favorite. These people claim to be noble patriots fighting for the American people. But they do so by arguing against job creation, universal health care and social security. How is it that you can be for the “average Joe American” yet fight for no action to combat 11% real unemployment, 50 million uninsured and 1 in 5 children living below the poverty line?

All I am saying is that anyone who puts Glenn Beck on the homepage of their website shouldn’t be allowed to try to sway public opinion.