I was just reading over on TPM about a poll showing the great disconnect between ours and the public's perception of how to fix the economy on health care reform. And I have a monster set of comments, with links, on various PAC donations to the Balking or Blue Dog Democrats who aren't so interested in passing the Public Option, the lever of the reform in the bill. The result is that you get a diary. What was the question? Why are these states with the relatively tiny populations dominating the discussion and holding the power on the course of the Senate Finance Committee's ever getting the health care bill out of conference?
According to this poll, and one of the commenters under the original blog post, the top concern of Americans today is The Economy. Okay, we can make the case that not having affordable health care IS part of the problem. But there's a gap. The public isn't making the connection. Regarding Health Insurance Reform: They want Democrats to fix it. They realize the Republicans are obstructing this. But they still want the Republicans, they say, to have input in the process.
Insert loud sound of exasperation. Go over the fold.
Look at the smaller states. Look at how their politicians get elected. Once we understand their motivation, perhaps we can overcome this problem.
People aren't linking the high cost of health care to anything Congress DOES.
What about those Senators (and some Representatives...) from these states, such as Iowa, Nebraska, Montana, Delaware ? Shall we rename the cliché,
What's the matter with Iowa?
In these largely rural, lightly populated states, they need money to compete with the Republicans in terms of cash for useless election campaign sloganeering advertisements at campaign crunch time. So these Balking Dems in states with few exploitable natural resources, and not much industrial base, instead seek money from the insurance lobbyists, pharma, lawyers who like to tangle everything up and make money suing, etc. All these Senators want money for their Leadership PACs because that is how they raise a stable of happy cooperating up and coming like minded political allies.
When I have looked at the donations and personal finances of each of these DINO Balking Dems, they've all got more money than G*d in terms of stock holdings. John Kerry, for example, has more stock value in just one pharma company than my house is worth. Carper of Delaware has boatloads of Koch Oil, Altria Phillip Morris Tobacco, and pharma stock, and this is where the teabagger astroturfer Republican orgs get their money from. They are also getting it from the Dept. of Defense Contractors such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin, and others. I have gone into more detail about this here, in a roundup of my recent comments on politicians and PAC money:
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Sen. Carper of tiny Delaware, gets 70% of donations from out of state, and has lots of stock in Koch Oil
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Here's something about a Blue Dog running for Congress right now in a special election, Garamendi, the current CA Lt. Gov and former CA insurance commissioner, who has taken huge amounts of insurance company donations this spring in his state account, who suddenly "got on message" quite strongly for the Public Option last nite on the Ed show, also you can click on my username because the last diary I did in August went into more detail, but this link will do http://www.dailykos.com/...
Gebhardt Group Lobbyists, Dick Gebhardt is a former Missouri politician and former Democratic leader now throwing money around like confetti for the following clients, most of whom you would associate more with Republican politicians, many of who are on my list of who funds the Teabaggers:
http://www.opensecrets.org/...
They lobby on medicare, medicaid, energy, health, fed budget appropriations etc
Something about Massachusett's Sen. Kerry's amazing wealth (he's # 1 in the Senate)
He also gets 69% of his donations from out of state
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Chuck Grassley of Iowa's Hawkeye PAC (leadership) got money from the same Koch Oil, Busch Beer, and Pharma sources that are funding the Teabagger organizers, too
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Where Claire McCaskill got money from Ben Nelson of NB Leadership PAC and from Baucus' Leadership PAC
http://www.dailykos.com/...
I refer to Ben Nelson's Nebraska Leadership PAC as the PAC from Hell because of it's perfect convergence of Oil, Dept of Defense, Insurance, Pharma, and Walmart money in one handy PAC.
Here's more on Ben Nelson of NB, the former insurance executive and former Nebraska state insurance regulator.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Max Baucus' PAC is called the Glacier PAC for good reason- as you can see, the Senate moves slooowly.
Leadership Pacs of Baucus MT, and Nelson of Nebraska
http://www.dailykos.com/...
And Just Baucus- top donor in this cycle is Blue Cross, Duke Energy, and Koch Oil, in 2008 Merke pharmaceuticals and Phillip Morris tobacco
http://www.dailykos.com/...
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edited to add link for Blanche Lincoln,D, Arkansas, Leadership PAC
"Leadership in the New Century" PAC in 2008, and sure enough, look who's there- Koch Oil. ding dong Blanche, you're busted. You have been caught using Teabagger money.
http://www.opensecrets.org/...
She got it in 2006, too, that's $20,000 just from a casual search.
In 2008, her Leadership PAC donation top category was Health Professionals, followed by Pharmacueticals, Hospitals, and Insurance.
Her top regular campaign donation this year came from Nix Patterson, & Roach LLP, a law firm representing plaintiffs, $60,200.
B. Lincoln is generous to other senators with her PAC donations, and has donated to many more liberal than her, which has to be noted as a plus. In 2007, her personal wealth was ranked 59th in the Senate, between $756,016 to $1.9 million dollars.
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2nd edit 9/29/09 The day the Senate Finance Committee voted against the Rockefeller and Schumer Public Option amendments
Kent Conrad of North Dakota, voted no, Links to his opensecrets pages and a longer comment may be found here:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Has stock in Chevron Oil, and large donations from the pro Israeli lobby
Asked for an extension on filing his personal finance report for this year, which would show last year's finances
link to opensecrets, directly
http://www.opensecrets.org/...
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And of course, I can't leave poor Chuck Grassley of Iowa, our Republican Villian, alone, look at this one more time:
Grassley's Hawkeye Leadership PAC
again, look- he's only gotten relatively peanuts (about $43,000) from the insurance and medical industries this year, compared to the million dollars it raised in 2006 and the half million in 2008. Chart of money raised per cycle: http://www.opensecrets.org/...
list of PAC donors, http://www.opensecrets.org/...
Go to his regular campaign contributors, and since 2005 he's raised $22,000 from Occidental Petroleum. Everybody is ignoring this. helloooo
He's also gotten $20,000 from the Biotechnology pharmaceutical company Amgen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/... based in Thousand Oaks, CA
This company makes Anti Tumor Necrosis Factor Biological Modifier drugs, such as Enbrel, and Kineret, both used in the treatment of arthritis and auto immune conditions, and both are very, very expensive drugs- they can cost thousands of dollars per month, or around $14,000 a year for treatment. Because they actually dampen down and alter a person's immune system, they are also potentially dangerous drugs, which require physician patient monitoring. Insurers don't like paying for them here in the United States, which can be readily seen by reading any arthritis support board and reading of the battles of people trying to keep their insurance coverage once they are prescribed these things. Loosing coverage and ongoing treatment means the patient goes into a huge auto immune flare up. So to keep up the market, the drug companies do sometimes give the desperate a reduced price script in return for good PR talk on the blogs.
A 2007 story on Amgen and investments in venture capital
http://silico.wordpress.com/... Amgen had 100 million to invest in small biotechnology start ups, starting in 2004, in biotechnology for cancer, auto immune inflammation, blood, kidney, heart, and metabolic disorders just in these little start up companies, at $1 to $3 million apiece.
According to this article in USA Today from January 2008, Amgen made 14.78 BILLION dollars in revenues 2007. Their 4th quarter profits were 835 million.
http://www.usatoday.com/...
It is the potential to make more on investments that is driving a lot of these politician's behaviors. Drug companies seek to make drugs to treat existing disease, because that is profitable, but the research to prevent disease by finding causes and stopping their development, which could stop having to pay $2000 a month to get drugs, is not as profitable, pretty obviously. If you were a pharmaceutical company, which would be your motivation?
Chuck Grassley's net worth according to his 2007 opensecrets report was between 2.3 and 6 million dollars, ranking 37 out of a 100 senators.
http://www.opensecrets.org/...
The Grassley personal finance pdf form I downloaded for 2008 showed a lot of investments in various equity funds, but absolutely no brand names of anything easily recognized, and not that much income from any of them. There is no smoking gun, but that just means I'm not looking hard enough yet.
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When I started researching these I realized I had to look at the "bigger picture," because the actual donation amounts of pharmaceutical and health insurance industry money, which I expected to be the largest gross amounts, were instead secondary. Why throw a vote for only $10,000 a year in donations in one category, when you are taking in a half million to a million a year total in donations for a Senate run. It didn't make any sense. I went back to my older story, "Teabaggin'..." about where the groups who are running the Tea Party Patriots Tax Protest "movement" are getting financial support from, and then it makes much more sense. Bobby Eberle of GOPUSA and RussoMarshRogers/MAF http://www.dailykos.com/... have definite links to the Bush White House and Karl Rove, Eberle of GOPUSA thru the Plamegate scandal, and RMR/MAF worked with Doolittle(not yet indicted in the Abramoff scandal) and McClintock to swiftboat. Now they're going after Harry Reid. What was also fascinating was how many people Anheuser Busch Beer (Cindy Lou McCain's company, the heiress wife of Republican Senator McCain) donates to, besides the Koch Oil donations or stock of most of them.
Bush and Cheney were Oil Business in every thing they did. Their strategists never went away. It would make sense, as you read the Republican strategy I blockquoted in the earlier diary, to note how the Republicans in Exile planned to take out health reform first to break the Democratic Presidency's agenda success early in Obama's term. Now we can look at these Senators from these smaller states in terms of population demographics, and see why they would be willing to thwart the reform agenda for health care to keep their seats- relatively fewer people madder at them, but better personal political alliances with the most powerful businesses in our country. And it helps to not paint a big bull's eye target on your posterior to be nice to certain interests if you don't want negative advertising.
Because their citizens don't connect what Congress does with having anything to do with how much health care costs.
They can't see how $20,000 could end up costing the country billions of dollars a year.
You know how the Republicans are always going OMG OMG 10 years of health care reform could cost us a TRILLION DOLLARS ! They say it that way so the number looks bigger. A trillion dollars is 66 years of gross revenues just for AMGEN, one biotech pharmaceutical company. A trillion dollars is what we are going to spend on the total military budget in the next .... 2 years. Actually, before that, because we are already past the half trillion per year point, or 500 billion.
100 billion a year, for more health care, is 1/5 of the defense budget of 500 billion. or 20%. Not of the entire United States budget, just as a percentage of the military part of it.
Amgen biotech pharma drugs makes 14.8 Billion a year.
Repeat after me. Twenty frigging percent. That is what the Republican Party and the Balking Dems are having their hissy fit over. What one drug company can make in 7 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Because, starting with Iowa, their citizens don't connect what Congress does with having anything to do with how much health care costs.
They can't see how $20,000 from one lobbyist, could end up costing the country billions of dollars a year. Why are we fighting for this particular product, when, allegedly, the producers are really wanting to sell it to us anyway? And you can say the same thing for foreign oil. Anything.
Do you go to the supermarket with a helicopter, an MRAP, an AK47, a flak jacket, and an armed escort into the produce section ? Will people start growing more lettuce, corn, and zuchini if you do ?
Did you call in an airstrike the last time you visited the doctor's office ? How did that help with the co pay ?
Are you deploying several more brigades to get the car to the body shop ? How's that fender bender repair and paint job coming along ?
So, the question is, how to we show them it does, and that this in turn drives the economy farther into the depths ?