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Politics : Those Damned Democrat's -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (1387)	9/7/2003 2:03:11 AM
From: calgal	Respond to of 1604

Lieberman Offers Plan to Widen Health Coverage By Ceci Connolly Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, September 3, 2003; Page A02 Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), accusing President Bush of neglecting the nation's health care crisis, unveiled a proposal yesterday to provide care to 31 million uninsured Americans within 10 years. On a visit to Broad Acres Elementary School in Silver Spring, the Democratic presidential candidate laid out a detailed health plan that in the early stages would target children, unemployed adults and people over the age of 50 who have retired but do not yet qualify for Medicare. "George W. Bush didn't create these problems -- but he has turned his back on them, and by doing so, he's made them worse," Lieberman said from a pint-sized lectern in the school library. "He's let the sickness and side effects in the health care system spread and get worse." A moderate Democrat who was Al Gore's running mate in 2000, Lieberman said that he has devised the most economical plan of those offered by the Democratic contenders, an assertion supported by independent analyst Kenneth Thorpe. "My plan will provide coverage to more than 31 million currently uninsured Americans -- at the lowest per person cost of any presidential candidate," Lieberman said. Thorpe, a Clinton administration official who teaches health care economics at Emory University, estimated that Lieberman's proposal would cost the federal government $53 billion a year, or $747 billion over the next decade. According to Thorpe's analysis, Lieberman's plan covers about the same number of uninsured but for significantly less money, in part because it takes longer to be phased in. A plan offered by Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) would cost $2.5 trillion over 10 years, and former Vermont governor Howard Dean's proposal would cost $932 billion, according to Thorpe's analysis. The plans of Democratic Sens. John F. Kerry (Mass.) and John Edwards (N.C.) would reach fewer people, Thorpe found. Like several of his opponents, Lieberman would expand government health programs such as Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, called CHIP, though he would offer more generous subsidies to middle-income families. And Lieberman would create two new private insurance programs to be administered by the government. Modeled after the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, Lieberman's MediKids and MediChoice would offer guaranteed, comprehensive coverage through large, low-cost purchasing pools. To keep the cost down, Lieberman would cap insurer profits at 2 percent, as the federal program does now. His aides predicted that insurers would be willing to accept limited profits in exchange for the "tens of thousands, if not millions, of new customers." As president, Lieberman said, he would streamline costly and burdensome paperwork in the medical system and push for more evidence-based medicine. He would also guarantee laid-off workers two months' insurance and establish a tax credit for long-term care insurance. Lieberman made his announcement at Broad Acres to spotlight the school's health center, which provides comprehensive physical and mental health care to children and uninsured parents. If elected, he would increase federal grants for such centers, he said. "I want to see if we can open thousands more school-based health centers," he said after a tour of the Linkages to Learning center. Lieberman did not specify where he would find the money for his health proposal or for a proposed $150 billion American Center for Cures. © 2003 The Washington Post Company

To: calgal who wrote (1387)	9/7/2003 2:04:12 AM
From: calgal	Respond to of 1604

Clark Allies Himself With Democrats By Will Lester The Associated Press Wednesday, September 3, 2003; 5:16 PM URL:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21064-2003Sep3.html Wesley Clark still won't say definitively whether he will seek the presidency, but the retired Army general finally revealed his political affiliation Wednesday: Democrat. "As I looked at where the country is now domestically and look at our policies abroad, I have to say that I'm aligned with the Democratic Party, I like the message the party has. I like what it stands for," Clark said in an interview on CNN's "Inside Politics." For months, the former NATO commander has said he belongs to no political party and is not raising money, though many expected him to enter the Democratic presidential primary. In recent days, Clark has said he is getting closer to a decision and will make his intentions clear before a speech in Iowa Sept. 19. "I'm closer to working my way through it, I'm closer to understanding what partisan politics is about," he said Wednesday. "My family and I are moving toward closure on this issue." If Clark enters the race, he would be the 10th Democratic candidate. He would be far behind his rivals in organization and fund raising at this stage in the process, although he would bring an extensive military background and national security credentials. The 58-year-old Clark is a Rhodes scholar who graduated first in his class at West Point and served as NATO commander during the 1999 campaign in Kosovo. Clark now works as a businessman and consultant in Arkansas. Clark said he has talked to potential staffers and held discussions about money, but has not made a final decision. He said said he hopes his announcement on party loyalty "helps clarify the situation," adding: "I am proud to be a Democrat." © 2003 The Associated Press

To: calgal who wrote (1387)	9/7/2003 2:05:17 AM
From: calgal	Respond to of 1604

URL:http://www.nationalreview.com/frum/diary090503.asp SEP. 5, 2003: ARNOLD AND IMMIGRATION Arnold Schwarzenegger, for better or for worse the front-running Republican candidate for Governor of California, has come under some fire for his opposition to drivers’ licenses for illegal immigrants. The classic answer to questions about illegal immigration was offered by the late Sony Bono in his first race for Congress: “What can I say? It’s illegal?” But drivers’ licenses for illegals raise a broader issue. The license is in effect America’s national ID card. It’s the document that proves your identity just about everywhere, from the jetway of an airplane to the entrance to Congress. As it is, it’s a document that is almost absurdly easy to manipulate: the 9/11 hijackers, for example, carried Virginia licenses because Virginia required no proof of residency at all – all you had to do was bring a friend to the DMV who would attest that your application was true. A California state legislator named Gil Cedillo has proposed loosening these standards even further. Under his bill, an illegal immigrant could get a driver’s license if he possessed a federal taxpayer ID number. Since the feds require no proof that your name really is your name before giving you a taxpayer ID, the effect of the Cedillo bill would be to permit the 2 million estimated driving-age illegals in California to receive authentic identification under any name they chose. It would be hard to invent a better terrorist-protection program. Arnold is 100% right on the drivers’ licenses question. And he – and Arianna Huffington, in her previous incarnation! – were right about Proposition 187: the law denying welfare benefits to illegal immigrants. It’s hard even to begin to imagine what the case for welfare benefits for illegals would be. If California liberalism has reached the point where it is considered harsh and insensitive to suggest that America’s supremely generous and welcoming immigration laws actual be enforced – then may I suggest that California liberalism has lost its marbles?

To: calgal who wrote (1387)	9/7/2003 2:05:42 AM
From: calgal	Respond to of 1604

Calif. Race Extends Online Invitation to Profit URL:http://www.siliconinvestor.com/msg_reply.gsp?msgid=19279513 By Guy Gugliotta Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, September 7, 2003; Page A06 Put your money where your mouth is. Will California voters keep Davis? Will they get rid of him and pick Schwarzenegger? Or will it be Bustamante? And if so, by how much? At the Iowa Electronic Markets, you can spend $5 or $500 online buying and selling futures for the California recall election, with 12 different outcomes open for trading and an opportunity to treble your investment if you don't let sentiment get in the way of greed. "We ask you to think about not what you want to happen, but what you think is going to happen," said Joyce Berg, a member of IEM's board of directors and an accounting professor at the University of Iowa's Henry B. Tippie College of Business, inventors and custodians of the electronic market. "You make money here by buying low and selling high." IEM traders are predicting that around 54 percent of California voters will choose to recall Gov. Gray Davis (D). Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) will get around 39 percent of the gubernatorial vote, and Lt. Gov. Cruz M. Bustamante (D) will get 32 percent. But the market has been running only since Aug. 27, and the differences are still wide between the buying prices bid on various outcomes ("contracts") and the selling prices asked for them. When there are more "traders" and more transactions, the differences between "bid" and "ask" will shrink. Berg noted, for instance, that bidders late Friday were willing to buy a Schwarzenegger contract for 34 cents (corresponding to his predicted percentage of the vote), but sellers wanted 45 cents: "If somebody asked me today, 'Could you pick a winner?' -- to me, it says no," Berg said. "The more traders you have, the better the data and the smaller the spreads. This is far from over." Sound confusing? That was the intention, at least in part. The IEM was the brainchild of a group of University of Iowa professors dismayed at the quality of polling during the 1988 presidential election. Could markets do a better job? There were several advantages. "Markets are good at aggregating information," Berg said. A political futures market would reflect not only polling data, but also knowledge gleaned from newspaper stories, television appearances, stump speeches, debates, and assessments of the effectiveness of spin and strategy -- all of this crystallized into a single money number rating the likelihood of a given outcome. This approach had two advantages over polls, Berg said. Traders do not cross their fingers, lie to the pollster and hope for the best -- they're risking money, albeit modest sums. Second, the market does not worry about "likely voters," "Latinos," "union members" or "elderly voters." "Our traders aren't a random sample," Berg said. "We want informed people who are interested." Traders will have seen the poll numbers for various ethnic, age, regional and occupational groupings and will use the information in their investment decisions. If they don't do it right, disaster awaits. "We have found this to be an excellent way to teach students about markets," Berg added. "In general, students don't appreciate the rule that if you don't know anything, you probably don't want to be trading." Since 1988 the IEM has traded more than 50 markets in 13 countries. In elections for which the IEM had polling data, the market outperformed the polls by a bit more than four-tenths of 1 percent. Polls averaged 1.93 percent deviation from actual outcomes, whereas the market averaged 1.53 percent. IEM was significantly more accurate than the polls in the 1988 and 1992 U.S. presidential elections, significantly less so in 1996, and ended in the middle of the pack, as muddled as anyone, in 2000. IEM was clearly the inspiration for the Defense Department's effort to develop an online futures market to predict terrorist events, an initiative that was abandoned this summer. Berg called this an "interesting idea" and noted that regardless of the morality of such an enterprise, it would probably be difficult for a terrorist to bid up the possibility of an attack in one place while setting up another target. "In the political markets, you can try to push the price up for one candidate, but it will move right back down," Berg said. "Other traders will say 'this is stupid,' and the bubble will burst. And besides, efforts to game the system are very detectable." The California recall presented unusual challenges for IEM because balloting was double-barreled, and the second-round results, in the event that Davis avoided recall, would not be published. To get around this dilemma, IEM put together two packages -- one on Davis's prospects and the other on the second ballot question: Who should replace Davis if he is recalled? As in all IEM markets, traders could predict voting percentages or simple win-lose outcomes. The resulting array of possibilities can be bewildering not only to rookies but also to seasoned political junkies. Former Clinton White House official Mark Kleiman, a public policy expert at the University of California at Los Angeles, used IEM last week to predict that Bustamante had a 40 percent chance of being governor "when the dust clears," with Davis and Schwarzenegger at 30 percent apiece. "Wrong," he wrote on his Web site a couple of days later, after watching IEM. Recalculating, he gave Schwarzenegger 37 percent, with Bustamante at 33 percent and Davis holding at 30 percent. But in a telephone interview the next day, he reconsidered yet again. "Maybe large numbers of Democrats will only vote if they see Schwarzenegger move ahead," Kleiman said. "Maybe that's why the traders go for Bustamante." © 2003 The Washington Post Company

To: calgal who wrote (1387)	9/7/2003 2:06:07 AM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1604

September 5, 2003, 1:00 p.m. Democratic Racism The real reason behind the borking of Miguel Estrada. URL:http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-alt090503.asp By Robert Alt n Thursday, Miguel Estrada asked President Bush to withdraw his nomination as the first Hispanic on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Estrada's nomination had been held up for well over two years. Despite impeccable credentials and a bipartisan majority supporting his confirmation, 45 Democratic senators persisted in a filibuster through seven attempts at cloture. Given his record, why did these Democrats block Estrada's nomination? Put simply, because he is a Hispanic who broke from the party fold. Despite their inevitable protesting to the contrary, it is clear that Ted Kennedy's gang of 45 discriminated against Estrada because he is Hispanic, like they discriminate against another nominee, William Pryor, for his devout Catholicism. Indeed, if Congress were an ordinary employer and a federal judgeship were treated as a job under federal antidiscrimination law, then Estrada would likely win on a claim of employment discrimination. First, the Democrats treated Estrada differently than non-minority nominees. In the D.C. Circuit, for example, John Roberts, a white applicant, was confirmed without fanfare, while Estrada was filibustered. But aside from ethnicity, there are few substantive differences between the candidates: Both were voted unanimously well-qualified by the American Bar Association; both went to prestigious law schools; both clerked for the Supreme Court; both worked at the Justice Department; and both went on to prestigious law firms where they argued numerous cases before the Supreme Court. And yet John Roberts was asked relatively few questions during his confirmation hearing, while Estrada was pummeled with over 200. Roberts, nominated the same day as Estrada, was confirmed by the Senate on a voice vote, while Estrada was denied the opportunity to even have a vote. Of course, this is not the first time that a member of a protected class has been treated differently than a white male. Take Justice Priscilla Owen, for example. She was nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit the same day that Michael McConnell was nominated to the Tenth Circuit. Both have distinguished careers making them well-qualified for the bench — McConnell as a law professor, and Owen as a Texas supreme-court justice. Owen has been filibustered because she issued a series of opinions interpreting a Texas law that requires a minor in most cases to notify her parents if she is seeking an abortion less narrowly than the Democrats in Congress would prefer. Indeed, her offense was little more than applying established U.S. Supreme Court precedent to the question. Furthermore, she affirmed to the Judiciary Committee that she would apply Roe as the law of the land. By contrast, Judge McConnell wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal in which he described Roe as "an embarrassment to those who take constitutional law seriously . . . ." He offered the same sort of reassurances to the senators that he would apply the law. He is now a federal judge, and she is still being filibustered. Second, Estrada has been subjected to what can only be described as ethnic slurs by groups who have worked in concert (or to use the legal term, entered into a conspiracy) with Ted Kennedy's 45 to keep Estrada off the bench. For example, they have claimed that he is not really Hispanic, and claim that being Hispanic requires more than a surname. I'm sure that those statements would sit very well with a jury in a case in which the party was denied a job that was handed over to a similarly situated white male. Third, the justifications offered by Teddy's 45 for the borking of Estrada are pretextual, and would not stand up in court. First, they alleged that he failed to answer their questions. But Estrada answered all the questions that he felt would not violate the canons of judicial ethics. He then offered to answer any questions the senators had in follow-up, but very few even bothered to submit questions. Then, they said that they needed internal DOJ documents in order to make a decision. Leaving aside the fact that this is an egregious breach of separation of powers, the senators did not ask for such files from white candidate Roberts. Finally, Sen. Charles Schumer suggested yesterday that Estrada was outside the mainstream. But there is not one single sliver of evidence to suggest that this is true. The only evidence that the Democrats could muster to suggest that Estrada is ideological was a statement by former DOJ political appointee Paul Bender — a man whose statements were so quickly and thoroughly discredited by Clinton Solicitor General Seth Waxman that Bender ceased spreading his spurious opinion. Democrats will inevitably respond that they opposed Estrada because they believed that he was conservative. But they had less reason to believe he was conservative than Roberts. This demonstrates what is at the heart of the issue: They opposed him more vehemently because he was perceived to be a conservative Hispanic, and as such is thought to be a viable Supreme Court nominee. As much as they may say that they just love Hispanics (some of their very best friends are Hispanic!), they can't avoid the fact that it is because he is conservative and Hispanic that they oppose him — even if they are using Hispanic heritage as a proxy for upward mobility. Because mixed-motive discrimination is still discrimination — Sen. Kennedy should know, he pushed for expanding the bases for mixed-motive discrimination claims in the Civil Rights Act of 1991 — the Democrats can't hide behind the "permissible" factor of opposing conservatives to excuse the fact that they treat candidates differently based on whether they believe that their race, ethnicity, or gender will make them viable candidates for higher office. Unfortunately, Estrada is the first to fall prey to Ted Kennedy's obstruction, but he inevitably won't be the last. Who will be the next victim of the Democrats' racism? Most likely California supreme — court justice Janice Rogers Brown. While the Democrats in the Senate are likely to say that they only oppose her because she is conservative, their actions will prove otherwise. Listen for comparisons of her to Clarence Thomas, and note that she will be treated much differently than was her White fellow nominee John Roberts. That Teddy's 45 should treat Republican minorities differently is disappointing but not shocking. After all, nothing upsets Sen. Kennedy and his pals more than when those they view as intellectual slaves dares to leave the Democratic plantation. — Robert Alt is a fellow in constitutional studies and jurisprudence at the John M. Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs at Ashland University.