Gutsy Grayson Fires Back on Health Care Reform
Supporters of health care reform have been waiting for Democrats to re-energize the debate. Who knew slinging mud was the answer?
Supporters of health care reform have been waiting for Democrats to re-energize the debate. Who knew slinging mud was the answer?
Last week, Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida claimed that the Republican plan for health care is “don’t get sick,” and those who do should “die quickly.”
His comments drew the ire of the GOP, which demanded an apology and recommended that congressman be censured. Grayson, however, is refusing to retract his comments and instead apologized to those who have died because they were uninsured.
For better or worse, his verbal attack is firing up the left. And the fact that he won’t express regret is earning him respect.
Republicans are calling the remarks “mean-spirited” partisanship. I think Adam Serwer of The American Prospect put it best by noting that Grayson is simply giving the GOP a taste of its own medicine.
“For months, the GOP has accused Democrats of wanting to kill old people, ration health care based on race or party affiliation, or usher in an era of totalitarian repression,” writes Serwer, “and they haven’t been shy about the holocaust comparisons either. For the first time since the health care debate started, a Democrat has accused Republicans of being the kind of inhuman monsters Republicans regularly accuse Democrats of being.”
Since the health care debate started, the GOP has successfully stalled the discussion for political gain by exploiting the misguided fears of its constituents. Its party members sat by quietly as misinformation spread about the bill currently before Congress and, in some cases, they helped encourage it.
For Americans who support a public option — some 77 percent — Grayson is emerging as the one Democrat brave enough to get nasty. Actually, by Republican standards, his comments don’t seem that nefarious. Are they inflammatory? Probably. Totally off base? Not really. The GOP hasn’t offered much in the way of alternatives. And when it comes to people’s health, inaction is also an action.
Democrats could learn something from the Grayson spectacle: People admire politicians who fight back. They find it honorable, even when they don't agree with the approach. Until Grayson took center stage, the Dems were looking like the guy in the ring who refuses to throw blows as he's getting pummeled to a pulp. And that is not the way to win over Americans.
Censuring the freshman congressman would send the wrong message to voters and opponents alike. If anything, Democratic lawmakers should take advantage of the media hype surrounding Grayson. They’re going to need it if they plan to pass real reform.
How Rio De Janeiro is like Barack Obama
Well, the word is in for the 2016 Olympics, and it’s bad news for my hometown, Chicago. The International Olympic Committee announced that Rio de Janeiro will host the games--but the voting pattern mirrors somewhat the dynamic that handed Barack Obama the Iowa caucuses held in January 2008.
Well, the word is in for the 2016 Olympics, and it’s not so pretty for my hometown, Chicago. After three rounds of voting in Copenhagen, Denmark, the International Olympic Committee announced that Rio de Janeiro will host the games, making it the first Olympics to be held in South America. That alone is news worth cheering.
But conservative American commentators, particularly Matt Drudge, have somehow convinced themselves that this optical defeat for president Barack Obama is cause to promote a strange sort of anti-Americanism (since when is the crime-ridden, heavily black and latino Rio the bastion of all things Republican?). Writing at Commentary magazine, Jennifer Rubin sneers:
[Obama] simply can’t help himself. It’s the same force of ego that drives him on to those TV talk shows again and again and that imagines that a grand speech with no content and no appeal outside his base will be a game changer on health-care reform.
Now, I was on record as thinking the president’s 20-hour jaunt to Copenhagen was ill-advised. And over at Foreign Policy, Annie Lowrey looked into the troubles London is having as it prepares for the 2012 Olympics and concludes: “The recession is bedeviling the Olympic effort” in unexpected, expensive ways. But there’s no reason to rub salt on the Americans’ wounds.
It may be, however, worth parsing just how Chicago lost—on the first round of balloting—and why Rio emerged triumphant. From ESPN:
The final result was decisive: Rio beat Madrid by 66 votes to 32. Chicago got just 18 votes in the first round, with Tokyo squeezing into the second round with 22. Madrid was leading after the first round with 28 votes, while Rio had 26.
In the second round, Tokyo was eliminated with just 20 votes. Madrid got 29, qualifying it for the final round face-off with Rio, which by then already had a strong lead, with 46 votes.
This voting pattern mirrors somewhat the dynamic in the Iowa caucuses held in January 2008. The highly watched political competition hinged not just on who was one’s first choice for president in the Democratic primary, but who was a second and third choice. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson’s supporters, for example, were reported to have cut a backroom deal with the Obama campaign to throw their votes to Obama if and when their fourth-place candidate didn’t reach viability. And even as many Iowans supported Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, or even Joe Biden for president, their second choice was often Obama—allowing the Illinois senator to rack up extra delegates in certain precincts, and ultimately a decisive victory.
In the case of the Olympics, Chicago was the unlucky Richardson, and Rio more like Obama. Rio, remember, was not ahead at the first balloting—Madrid had a two-vote lead. But it seems that Brazil was the second choice for virtually all of the voters who backed Chicago. On the later rounds, it surged ahead of Tokyo and squarely beat Madrid. Maybe the Chicago delegation could have cut its own deal with Tokyo's supporters, or maybe Madrid's. But it wasn't so. Chicago and Obama are both, for now, are unhappy campers—but both will get another chance to win the world’s favor.
John Edwards? Not so much.
—DAYO OLOPADE
"Brick City" Offers More Real Talk Than Pep Talks
Brick City, the Sundance Channel documentary on Newark, New Jersey and its Mayor, Cory Booker, aired last week. What have we learned?
Via Baratunde Thurston of Jack and Jill Politics, a stirring clip from Brick City, the Sundance Channel documentary on Newark, New Jersey and its Mayor, Cory Booker:
I pulled this clip because I think it’s the most powerful monologue I’ve seen in a good long while. The speaker is not an actor, however. This is real. It’s the passion and pain of an inner city principal unable to keep his students safe, and it is heartbreaking.
From Natalie Hopkinson's smart piece on the meta-story behing the heartbreak:
Even when he’s complaining about the media, to the media, while being filmed by another member of the media, Cory Booker has a message he needs to get out. It’s all part of the job description of today’s "urban" leader. The battle for the future of communities like Newark begins with changing perceptions. Before he can change the institutions, he has to change the narrative about them. (And if that means taking on Conan O’Brien via YouTube, then so be it.)
A whole and more accurate story would explain that post-industrial communities like Newark have become veritable islands, cut off from the kind of resources needed to truly address deep-seated issues. The story might begin somewhere before slavery, then move on to racial and economic segregation.
Booker knows as well as any other black person in Newark that the endless hagiography being spilled about him since his 2006 election is simplistic and plain inaccurate.
Watch for yourself! Sundance will be replaying the series beginning Saturday.
--DAYO OLOPADE
On Health Care, Rep. Alan Grayson Calls Republicans "Neanderthals." Really?
I don’t agree with Rep. Grayson’s remarks any more than I agree with the actions of Rep. Joe Wilson, who could not restrain himself from yelling “You lie!” at the President of the United States of America. But they show that members of Congress are not the mature adults we all deserve working on our behalf in Washington, D.C.
Democratic Florida Congressman Alan Grayson has a bone to pick with the Republican party. Watch:
He continued his tirade on CNN, calling the GOP more names. The Republican party may be many things, but "foot-dragging, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals"? I think not.
As someone who spent 20 years in the GOP (I now consider myself an independent), I don’t agree with Rep. Grayson’s remarks any more than I agree with the actions of Rep. Joe Wilson, who could not restrain himself from yelling “You lie!” at the President of the United States of America.
Rep. Grayson’s remarks are not the worst I have ever heard, true enough, but they tell us something about our political culture. The comments show that members of Congress are not the mature adults we all deserve working on our behalf in Washington, D.C. They tell us that civility and honest debate about issues that affect the American people has fallen to the wayside and instead given rise to the “reality show” mentality that seems to plague us all. I see it in everyday life—people say whatever, do whatever, and react to whatever comes to mind, without any thought to the consequences of what we say.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi commented on Grayson's remarks today (via Politico):
"Apparently Republicans are holding Democrats to a higher level than they are holding their own members," she said, referring to floor comments by some Republicans who have said Democratic health care reforms would lead to higher deaths among seniors. "There's no more reason for Mr. Grayson to apologize... If anybody’s going to apologize everybody should apologize."
It is my hope that the American people will wake up and start paying attention to the comments, actions, and votes of their elected officials. The American people deserve better from Grayson, Wilson, and Speaker Pelosi--who can’t even see the difference between when the partisan political line has been walked up to and when it has been crossed.
--SOPHIA A. NELSON
Don't Tax the Kool-Aid!
Mentholated cigarettes may have avoided the FDA's axe last week, when all other flavored smokes were banned outright. But another African American favorite—sugary drinks—is increasingly a subject of legislative interest.
Mentholated cigarettes may have avoided the FDA's axe last week, when all other flavored smokes were banned outright. But another African American favorite—sugary drinks—is increasingly a subject of legislative interest.
Though New York State has tabled discussions about "sin taxing" (just the name is problematic) sugar-heavy drinks like soda and Kool Aid, the New York City public health department has green lighted a new subway-ad campaign designed to warn people off sugary beverages. The posters—which implore, "Don't drink yourself fat"—come on the heels of a September Men's Health article, in which President Barack Obama said he'd be willing to consider taxing soda:
I actually think it's an idea that we should be exploring. ... There's no doubt that our kids drink way too much soda. And every study that's been done about obesity shows that there is as high a correlation between increased soda consumption and obesity as just about anything else. Obviously it's not the only factor, but it is a major factor.
Health experts writing in the New England Journal of Medicine have also called for a stern tax on soda.
Already, higher cigarette taxes disproportionately affect low-income smokers, many of whom are black. Now, with the movement to tax sugary drinks gaining steam, once again, the government is looking to penalize rather than educate the African American community, whose children consume sweet drinks at a higher rate than white youths. It's the wisdom of the war on drugs—and just look how great that's turned out!
The subway posters are a good start, but without proper, well-funded nutrition classes in the schools, they're unlikely to change anything. New York City plans on spending $277,000 developing their anti-soda campaign over the next three years. In 1998, Coca Cola's annual ad budget was $1.6 billion.
—CORD JEFFERSON
UPDATE: Ta-Nehisi Coates weighs in with the correlation between obesity and poverty:
What about people who are born into hardship? Who are born into stress and born into eating as a way of ameliorating that stress? Who grow up in an environment where mostly everyone else does the same? And then this gets conflated with old ideas about food and money--the notion that "All You Can Eat" is a good thing.
There is a culture to being fat, and putting fresh veggies in the hood isn't enough to counter it. The culture is complicated--and its more American than it is hood. I would encourage people to think about all the negative ways we cope. The upper-class may not be fat, but in my experience, they know their way around the tequila bottle.
Dan Engber has more on the economics of fat at Slate.
