Palin Ignores Gender Discrimination: Women Would Benefit From Individual Health Care Plans
Palin Ignores Gender Discrimination: Women Would Benefit From Individual Health Care Plans
Two days after new data from insurance companies and online brokers suggested that women buying health insurance in the individual market pay more for coverage, Sarah Palin argued that Sen. McCain’s plan to push more Americans into the individual heath insurance market would benefit women:
Of course we want and deserve equal pay for equal work. But we also want to be able to afford good health care for our families. John McCain’s plan for the $5,000 tax credit will allow us to make our own decisions, to be able to afford health care, to erase these state lines that prohibit a competitive environment to purchase a good health-care package. . . . That’s an issue that is important to women.”
Palin’s pro-market rhetoric obscures the consequences of exposing health care to a “competitive environment.” In fact, despite Palin’s pro-choice assertions, allowing insurance companies to sell policies across state lines would eliminate existing consumer protections and increase the costs of insurance.
Insurance companies are already charging women more than men for identical coverage. As the New York Times reported last week, “women pay much more than men of the same age for individual insurance policies providing identical coverage.” A 30-year-old woman pays “31 percent more than a man of the same age in Denver or Chicago” and in Iowa, “a 30-year-old woman pays $49 a month more than a man of the same age.”
Women pay more because they are more likely to have certain chronic diseases and are expected — as people who bare children — to need more care.
McCain’s plan would give insurance companies even more incentive to discriminate against women. Under his proposal, in order to attract the healthiest risk pool and maximize profits, insurance companies would market bare-bones policies from states that don’t require insurers to finance maternity care or cervical cancer screenings. But an exodus of non-insurance users into bare-bones policies would further fragment the health insurance pool, divide those who don’t use insurance from those who do and force women who require pregnancy check-ups or other health care services to pay more for identical coverage.
The only “choice” McCain’s health care plan would provide women, is the “choice” of paying more for health care. And that’s certainly “an issue that is important to women.”
For more on how McCain’s health care plan would effect women, click here and here.
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Is There Anything Palin Doesn’t Like ‘Tapping Into’?
Is There Anything Palin Doesn’t Like ‘Tapping Into’?
Yesterday, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) gave a speech on energy policy at a solar energy company, in her words, “in a manner with much substance.” She repeatedly went off the script of her prepared remarks (as Jed Lewison and Ana Marie Cox have noted), using many of her favorite locutions. One of her most common rogue phrases was a call for tapping into various sources of, well, just about anything. Her approach exposes the conservative ideology that all forms of energy are created equal; that details like cost, pollution, and long-term consequences are immaterial.
Watch it:
For those watching at home, here’s the list:
| Palin’s Top Eight For The Tapping |
|---|
| Solar energy |
| Some technology that will allow our nation to be firmly put on that path towards energy independence |
| Hundreds of trillions of cubic feet [of natural gas] |
| Hungry markets flowing our resources into those hungry markets |
| Energy supplies [safely, ethically] |
| Nucular energy |
| 100 new plants [of nucular energy] |
| American ingenuity |
| Many, many alternative sources |
Of that list, only natural gas is a resource that can be literally “tapped into.” Palin’s use of an oil industry metaphor to describe all forms of energy and innovation is consistent with the mindset of supply-side exploitation, a dangerously simplistic approach to energy policy that only considers the short-term profit interests of energy corporations. Some of her off-script “tapping” remarks had some policy “meat,” such as her attack on solar energy:
We have many many alternative sources that have not yet been tapped into and allowed to become economic and reliable. That’s the key, of course, is the reliability of these alternative sources.
This false attack on the unreliability of renewable energy is one both she and McCain have made before.
The First Dude, Snowmobilin’ Mainers, And The Divisive Politics Of Karl Rove
The First Dude, Snowmobilin’ Mainers, And The Divisive Politics Of Karl Rove
Our guest blogger is Todd Darling, director of the documentary “A Snow Mobile for George,” a tour of deregulation in America. He owns a snow mobile.
As Politico’s Jonathan Martin tells us, “Iron Dog champ Todd Palin makes his direct mail debut in a piece aimed straight at the gut of a rural Mainers.” The letter warns snowmobiling Mainers, “Obama’s Extreme Environmental Policies” could make this “The Last Winter To Ride In Our National Parks?” The Maine Republican Party flier includes this edited quote from a Sierra Club blogger Pat Joseph:
In the end, the point that snowmobiles are loud and obnoxious and polluting seems obvious to everyone save perhaps the person actually astraddle the beast. . . . They just don’t have any business in our national parks.
Todd Palin’s flier dives straight into a barrel of red herrings.
In this flier, Palin is attempting to stoke a culture war between freedom-loving snowmobilers and tree-hugging environmentalists. But snowmobilers care about pollution and preserving the outdoors. And environmentalists love having fun. See how the flier edits the Sierra Club quote? Here’s what that dot-dot-dot eliminated from Pat Joseph’s criticism of snowmobiles in National Parks:
They are also fun. No doubt about it, they’re an absolute blast.
Mr. Palin says his wife and Senator McCain will protect snowmobile access with “practical standards.” But they don’t believe in regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant, even though global warming has meant the Iron Dog competitors have raced in the rain — and in 2003, the race was even totally cancelled because of the extreme heat. It’s sure hard to protect the fun of snowmobiling if your “standards” mean the end to snow. More »
McCaskill Straightens Out The McCain Campaign On Corporate Taxes
McCaskill Straightens Out The McCain Campaign On Corporate Taxes
On the stump, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) has been emphasizing Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) plan to cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent, citing the oft-repeated claim that the U.S. rate is the “second highest in the world.”
However, yesterday on CNBC, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) was asked if the “second highest” rate needs to be cut, and responded with the true story: the U.S. tax code is riddled with loopholes that enable corporations to pay far less. Watch it:
McCaskill is quite right to say that corporations benefit from the intricacies of the tax code, as it contains myriad “loopholes, shelters, and giveaways that minimize, or completely eliminate corporate taxes.” This week, in fact, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released a report showing that “the U.S. corporate tax burden is smaller than average for developed countries” due in part to the “plethora of generous corporate tax breaks“:
Corporations in 19 of the member states of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development paid 16.1 percent of their profits in taxes between 2000 and 2005, on average, while corporations in the United States paid 13.4 percent.
The CBPP noted that the “second highest” charge “while true…gives the false impression that the corporate tax burden is greater here than in other developed countries.”
This all makes perfect sense, since the U.S. also collects below the OECD average in corporate tax revenue. The Treasury Department actually estimates that “various corporate tax breaks will cost the federal government more than $1.2 trillion over the next ten years.”
Instead of worrying about the amount of taxes that corporations are paying, perhaps Palin should focus on the 100 million middle class households to which the McCain/Palin economic plan gives no benefit.
Is Palin Using Cheney’s Climate Change Playbook?
Is Palin Using Cheney’s Climate Change Playbook?
Our guest blogger is Jason Burnett. Burnett was most recently the Associate Deputy Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency where he coordinated energy and climate change policy across the EPA and led the development of greenhouse gases regulations.
As head of climate and energy policy for the Environmental Protection Agency, I witnessed first-hand the dangers of a Vice President who has a disregard for the balance of powers in our Constitution and a disdain for inconvenient facts.
Vice President Cheney has worked hard to cast doubt on the science of climate change. The Vice President’s office wanted my help censoring the Congressional testimony from the Centers for Disease Control to eliminate any references to how climate change endangers human health. I refused. The Vice President’s office later wanted me to water down congressional testimony on the strength of the science by not acknowledging that greenhouse gases “harm” the environment by causing climate change. Again I refused.
Having heard the words “the Vice President’s office is on the phone” many times over the past few years I could not agree more when Senator Joe Biden called them “the eight most dreaded words in the English language” for those trying to uphold our nation’s laws and respect our Constitution.
Given my experience with the dangers of an unaccountable Vice President, it sent shivers down my spine during the Vice Presidential debate when I heard Governor Palin say she’s “thankful the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the Vice President also, if that Vice President so chose to exert it, in working with the Senate and making sure that we are supportive of the president’s policies and making sure too that our president understands what our strengths are.” A bit more authority than our current Vice President has wrestled away from the President and Congress?
A strong Vice President is a great thing, but that strength should primarily come from being a trusted advisor to the President, not a separate power center somewhere between the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch. Governor Palin is fortunate her smile and wink won’t remind voters of Vice President Cheney’s smirk and grimace; maybe people won’t notice that her dismissal of science and views on the power of the office are quite similar to Vice President Cheney’s? More »
The Prepared Text For Sarah Palin’s Love Letter To Big Oil [Updated]
The Prepared Text For Sarah Palin’s Love Letter To Big Oil [Updated]
UPDATE: At Climate Progress, Joe Romm notes that Palin’s prepared remarks make it unambiguous that McCain won’t regulate global warming pollution.
UPDATE II: We’ve updated the text with her speech as delivered. Jed Lewison notes one of her more amusing revisions. Gristmill’s David Roberts calls the speech “bizarre.” Ana Marie Cox describes the travails of the teleprompter operator.
UPDATE III: Former vice president Al Gore will be delivering a true energy policy speech tonight, in a live webcast at 8:30 PM as part of the Energy Action Coalition’s Power Vote campaign for youth climate activism.
Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) just completed a “major” speech on energy policy, in which she offered no new policy, nor recognized the existence of global warming. She delivered her speech at the headquarters of the Xunlight Corporation in Toledo, Ohio, a producer of flexible thin-film photovoltaic solar panels — despite her earlier mockery of such technology:
Alternative-energy solutions are far from imminent and would require more than 10 years to develop.
This hypocritical choice is just following the lead of her running mate. In May, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) delivered a speech on global warming at the U.S. headquarters of a Danish wind turbine manufacturer, after decades of opposition to the domestic renewable energy industry.
Below is the text of her prepared remarks — a half-hour love letter to Big Oil. Please note, however, that Palin went off-script repeatedly, throwing in such catchphrases from the campaign as “Drill, baby, drill,” “He’s got the scars to prove it,” “Maverick of the Senate,” and several digs at journalists.
UPDATE: Palin’s off-script remarks are in red.
Thank you all very much. I appreciate the hospitality of Xunlight Energy, and all the people of Toledo. The folks at Xunlight are doing great work for this community and our country. I’m so excited about this, Thank you for your hospitality, again doctor, thank you. Good, good things being said about this corporation as you’re progressing with the solar panels and understanding alternative energy sources. So necessary as a piece of the puzzle that we’re working on. I know my state of Alaska is certainly working on this. All that we can do to put the pieces together to allow our nation to become energy secure.
Media Amplify The McCain Campaign’s ‘Socialism’ Charge
Media Amplify The McCain Campaign’s ‘Socialism’ Charge
On the stump recently, both Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) have been calling Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) economic plans “socialism” because he wants to “spread the wealth” by raising rates on the top two federal income tax brackets back to the level at which they were under President Clinton.
The Tax Policy Center noted that “sharing the wealth, as McCain puts it, is what government does.” But this hasn’t stopped the media from amplifying the McCain message by questioning if Obama’s plan amounts to socialism or even Marxism.
The most egregious example was put forth by WFTV Orlando’s Barbara West, who asked Sen, Joe Biden (D-DE) “how is Sen. Obama not being a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around?” But the media haven’t stopped there. Watch a compilation:
As the New Yorker pointed out yesterday, “the principle that Obama evinced, which most economists would regard as unexceptionable, can be traced to Adam Smith.” In The Wealth of Nations, Smith wrote:
It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.
Furthermore, a new analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice found that only 2.5 percent of Americans would lose any of their Bush tax cuts under the Obama plan.
Not only should those in the media point out that McCain’s charge is false, but they should note that McCain also plans to redistribute wealth. He just wants to redistribute wealth to the already wealthy.
Currently, the United States’ income concentration is at its highest level since 1928. McCain, though, has embraced the Bush economic agenda, proposing to make all of the Bush tax cuts permanent. From this, the bottom 60 percent of taxpayers would only see 12 percent of the benefit. Meanwhile, the top 0.1 percent of taxpayers would see a $1 million tax cut under McCain’s plan.
As Ben Armbruster noted on ThinkProgress, “Seeing that McCain’s policies have little to offer the average American, it seems he is now forced to acquiesce to the fringe right wing talking point that Obama just might be a Marxist.” But this doesn’t mean that the media need to follow suit.
McCain On Science: ‘Blah, Blah, Blah,’ ‘Foolishness,’ ‘Waste Of Money’
McCain On Science: ‘Blah, Blah, Blah,’ ‘Foolishness,’ ‘Waste Of Money’
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) earns great applause when he mocks science, and he does so often. This weekend, he added a new riff to his list of hits, summing up his concern for the dangers of nuclear waste:
Blah, blah, blah.
At this, McCain’s audience erupted into hoots and cheers. Watch it:
What else has McCain mocked?
BIOLOGY & ECOLOGY. The five-year, $4.8 million Northern Divide Grizzly Bear Project used DNA analysis of hair samples to peg the population size, distribution, and genetic diversity of grizzly bears in northwestern Montana, finding that their population and range has increased. The Washington Post hailed it as “an astonishingly ambitious research project.” The New York Times described the project as “a prerequisite for sensible administration of the Endangered Species Act.”
McCain’s take: “I don’t know if it was a paternity issue or criminal, but it was a waste of money.”
ASTRONOMY & SCIENCE EDUCATION. The Adler Planetarium in Chicago is the first planetarium theater in the Western Hemisphere, built 78 years ago. The planetarium’s Zeiss Mark VI projector — the planetarium’s second — is nearly 40 years old, and parts and manufacturer service are no longer available. To upgrade the planetarium will take $10 million. As Adler Planetarium officials argue, “Science literacy is an urgent issue in the United States. To remain competitive and ensure national security, it is vital that we educate and inspire the next generation of explorers to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math.” Planetarium officials requested a $3 million earmark in federal funding, but the request was rejected.
McCain described this multimillion-dollar instrument as an “overhead projector” and “foolishness.”
Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) is happy to join her running mate’s example. Scientific research with fruit flies has led to valuable discoveries that have boosted autism research. Yet last week, Palin derided “fruit fly research” as having “little or nothing to do with the public good” — contrasting it, ironically, with support for autistic children.
(Video from Raw Story.)
UPDATE: Friends of the Earth Action President Brent Blackwelder responds:
McCain is showing an alarming lack of respect for the very real risks that come with nuclear power. There have been a string of safety incidents at U.S. and international reactors, there is nowhere to store the 100,000 shipments of waste we’ve already generated, and nuclear plants are, as the FBI director has stated, “target rich” environments for terrorists. The fact that McCain so readily dismisses these very real concerns with a “blah, blah, blah,” is disconcerting to say the least. It appears that McCain’s absolute support for nuclear power has more to do with ideology than facts, and underscores the risky nature of his candidacy. He just doesn’t get it.
Palin’s Policies That Are ‘Great For The Middle Class’: Cutting Corporate Taxes and Earmarks
Palin’s Policies That Are ‘Great For The Middle Class’: Cutting Corporate Taxes and Earmarks
Yesterday, during an interview with NBC’s affiliate in Tampa Bay, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) was asked which economic policies she and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) support that would be “great for the middle class.” The policies that Palin cited included a corporate tax cut and earmark reform, neither of which do much of anything for the middle class. Watch it:
To her credit, Palin answered this question better than McCain campaign surrogate Carly Fiorina, who was only able to come up with “drill, drill, drill” when asked about McCain’s middle class tax cut. Still, Palin put forth one policy that benefits corporations and another that has nothing to do with middle class taxpayers at all.
As the Wonk Room has noted time and again, the McCain/Palin proposal to cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25% gives $175 billion to America’s corporations, while not creating any jobs, which is the campaign’s justification for the cut. Palin also repeated the campaign’s false claim that the U.S. corporate tax rate is the “second-highest in the world.”
As for earmark reform, it’s hard to see how cutting earmarks benefits the middle class. Accordng to USA Today, “eliminating every congressional earmark in the federal budget would save an estimated $18 billion a year.” And as Matthew Yglesias noted, “normally an earmark will be for something popular that you’re proud to claim credit for,” such as food banks, schools, and medical centers.
Palin is using earmarks and corporate tax cuts to distract from the fact that the McCain/Palin economic plan includes nothing for the middle class. 100 million middle class households receive no benefit from McCain’s tax plan, and some middle-class households could actually see a tax increase if McCain’s health care plan is enacted. In the end, the McCain/Palin economic vision is not “great” for the middle class at all.
Palin’s ‘Safe’ And ‘Environmentally Friendly’ Drilling: Millions Of Gallons Of Oil Spills
Palin’s ‘Safe’ And ‘Environmentally Friendly’ Drilling: Millions Of Gallons Of Oil Spills
In the vice-presidential debate last week and on the campaign trail today, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) — the person McCain has tapped as his “energy expert” — is repeating the absurd claim that oil and gas drilling is “safe” and “environmentally friendly.” Watch it:
But saying it’s so don’t make it so. Normal drilling operations cause significant pollution, environmental damage, and of course have tremendous global warming impacts. And frequent oil spills caused by global-warming-fueled storms mean that drilling is anything but “environmentally friendly.”
A new analysis by the Associated Press shows that Hurricane Ike “destroyed oil platforms, tossed storage tanks and punctured pipelines,” resulting in: “At least a half million gallons of crude oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico and the marches, bayous and bays of Louisiana and Texas.” The Coast Guard has responded to more than 3,000 pollution reports. “At times, a new spill or release was reported to the Coast Guard every five minutes to 10 minutes.”
Ike’s enormously destructive wreckage adds further proof that conservatives’ claims regarding the safety of offshore oil drilling are totally false. With the “drill, baby, drill” chant, conservatives repeatedly insisted that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita “didn’t spill a drop” of oil. Even the Secretary of Energy, Samuel Bodman, claimed that during Katrina and Rita, “there was not one case where we had a situation with oil or gas being spilled in the environment.” This is a lie: Those hurricanes caused 595 different oil spills, totalling 9 million gallons.
Sadly, the clear evidence of Ike’s environmental damage comes just days after House progressives caved to conservative pressure and allowed the ban on offshore oil drilling to expire, potentially clearing the way for hundreds of new rigs to be built — and for just as many opportunities for new oil spills to be created. As Palin might say, “Spill, baby, spill!“
Palin Claims McCain’s Health Care Plan Is ‘Budget Neutral,’ Which Means It’s A Middle-Class Tax Hike
Palin Claims McCain’s Health Care Plan Is ‘Budget Neutral,’ Which Means It’s A Middle-Class Tax Hike
There is a contradiction in the way John McCain has been selling his health care plan: either it busts the budget, or it raises taxes on middle-class families. It has to do one or the other.
Lately, John McCain’s campaign has been going around saying he won’t raise taxes on middle class families.
But last night Governor Palin twice insisted that John McCain’s health care plan is ‘budget neutral’ too:
He’s proposing a $5,000 tax credit for families so that they can get out there and they can purchase their own health care coverage. That’s a smart thing to do. That’s budget neutral. That doesn’t cost the government anything…But a $5,000 health care credit through our income tax that’s budget neutral. That’s going to help.
Watch it:
By insisting that his health care plan is ‘budget neutral’ Palin is implying that John McCain raises taxes on middle-class families. If it doesn’t raise taxes, it’s not ‘budget neutral.’
Here’s how it works:
Giving every family a $5,000 tax credit costs $3.6 trillion over ten years, according to the McCain campaign. McCain wants to pay for it by taxing employer health benefits as income.
If he makes families pay both payroll and income taxes on their benefits, the Joint Committee on Taxation projects McCain can raise the $3.6 trillion, making the proposal ‘budget neutral.’
If he subjects benefits only to income taxes, as the McCain campaign now claims they would, the Tax Policy Center showed that he would fall $1.3 trillion short in paying for his plan. Under any definition that’s not ‘budget neutral.’
The ONLY way to make McCain’s plan ‘budget neutral,’ as Palin insists it is, is to repeal the entire exclusion for health care from both income and payroll taxes. And if this is what he does, then he raises taxes on the typical family making $60,000 by $1,100 by 2013.
In either case families would see their taxes go up eventually because the tax credit grows by the rate of inflation (around 2%/year) and the current exemption grows with the rate of health care costs (close to 7%/year). But if both payroll and income taxes are imposed on benefits, McCain’s tax increase would be much larger much sooner, and would fall most heavily on the middle class.
Senator McCain and Governor Palin are trying to have their cake and eat it too.
Palin References Reagan’s Opposition To Medicare
Palin References Reagan’s Opposition To Medicare
Matt Yglesias notes that during yesterday’s vice presidential debate, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) quoted a 1961 advocacy ad by Ronald Reagan. In the ad, Reagan urges his listeners to oppose the growing menace of socialized medicine and argues that Medicare legislation will lead to national socialism:
PALIN: We’re going to find ourselves spending our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children about a time in America, back in the day, when men and women were free.
REAGAN: One of these days, you and I, are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America, when men were free.
Watch Palin’s remarks and Reagan’s quote in context:
Reagan’s rhetoric is eerily similar to McCain’s argument against comprehensive health care reform. During the 1960s, conservatives regularly claimed that Medicare would destroy the doctor-patient relationship, interject government into every-day decisions and undermine personal freedoms. Forty-seven years later, Maverick McCain is making the same argument.
Reagan was wrong then as McCain is wrong now.
Palin’s Bad Oil Math
Palin’s Bad Oil Math
In tonight’s debate, Palin suggested that the “$700 billion” the U.S. spends a year on imported oil (the figure is actually closer to $536 billion) could be replaced by domestic sources. She further claimed that Alaska’s “energy” supply (by which she means only oil) is helping America on the path to energy independence.
But the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler points out that “various government agencies” have concluded that “crude oil production could be increased at most between 1 and 3 million barrels per day, on top of the 5 million barrels a year already produced domestically. The United States currently consumes about 20 million barrels annually, so an expansion of domestic drilling would make barely a dent in that amount unless consumption also is reduced.”
On Energy, Exxon Advises Palin, Palin Advises McCain
On Energy, Exxon Advises Palin, Palin Advises McCain
On behalf of the oil and natural gas industry, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) has opposed federal protections for the polar bear, whose existence is threatened by drilling operations and their global warming pollution. A new report from the Guardian reveals that the “science” Palin relies upon to claim all is hunky dory in Alaska comes from notoriously right-wing flaks funded by Big Oil. It has been previously revealed that Palin suppressed the work of her state’s staff scientists. The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington explains Palin’s use of climate change skeptics:
In official submissions to the US government’s consultation on the status of the polar bear, Palin and her team referred to at least six scientists who have questioned either the existence of warming as a largely man-made phenomenon or its severity. One paper was partly funded by the US oil company Exxon Mobil.
Palin’s complaint to the Department of Interior cited the pre-publication Exxon Mobil paper — “Polar bears of western Hudson Bay and climate change” — six times, and even attached a copy. “Polar bears” was eventually published by the obscure Journal of Ecological Complexity, with funding not only by Exxon Mobil, but also the American Petroleum Institute (Big Oil’s lobbying shop), and the Koch Industries money machine:
This paper was authored by Alaskan scientist Markus Dyck, Timothy Ball, Sallie Baliunas, Willie Soon, and David Legates. All but Dyck are notorious climate skeptics with extensive ties to the Exxon-Bush right wing machine. As polar bear biologist Andrew Derocher told the Alaska Daily News, “I would venture to guess that, beyond Markus Dyck, none of them had ever seen a polar bear.”
Palin, McCain’s Energy Czar: ‘Weaning Ourselves’ Off Of Oil By Using More
Palin, McCain’s Energy Czar: ‘Weaning Ourselves’ Off Of Oil By Using More
Written with Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has handed to Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK), his running mate, the responsibility of handling his “energy independence” agenda — much as George Bush did with Dick Cheney. On NPR this morning, McCain expressed his devotion to her, saying, “I’ve already turned to Governor Palin particularly on energy issues.” In an interview last night with Katie Couric of CBS, Palin — who McCain claims “understands the energy issues better than anybody I know in Washington, D.C.” — outlined her plan for America’s energy future. What she says she wants to do is inarguable:
We need to make sure that our nation’s taking those steps to become energy independent. . . I support all that we can do to reduce emissions and to clean up this planet.
However, the steps McCain-Palin would take to “become energy independent” and “reduce emissions” would in fact achieve the exact opposite.
PALIN PLAN #1. ‘Weaning Ourselves Off The Hydrocarbons’ By Drilling For More.
And it’s why we should have started ten years ago tapping into domestic supplies that America is so rich in. Alaska has billions of barrels of oil and hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of clean, green natural gas onshore and offshore. . . Of course ramping up supplies domestically is a key to that. But so is weaning ourselves off the hydrocarbons.
FACT: Oil and natural gas are hydrocarbons. Weaning ourselves off them, by definition, means using less, not more.
PALIN PLAN #2. Energy Independence By ‘Tapping Into The Nuclear.’
Also tapping into the nuclear, the clean coal, to biomass, geothermal, tides, waves, all those things that we have as alternative energy sources, it’s gotta be an all-of-the-above approach to energy independence.
FACTS: The U.S. imports over 90 percent of the uranium used in nuclear plants. Russia is the number one uranium supplier to the U.S. And key components for new plants are only built overseas. More »
Palin Praises Union Health Benefits
Palin Praises Union Health Benefits
Yesterday, in an effort to portray herself as “an everyday working class American,” Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) revealed that her family struggled to find health insurance “until Todd and I both landed a couple of good union jobs“:
But yeah, there’s been a lot of times that Todd and I have had to figure out how we were going to pay for health insurance. We’ve gone through periods of our life here with paying out of pocket for health coverage until Todd and I both landed a couple of good union jobs. Early on in our marriage, we didn’t have health insurance, and we had to either make the choice of paying out of pocket for catastrophic coverage or just crossing our fingers, hoping that nobody would get hurt, nobody would get sick. So I know what Americans are going through there.
Listen:
Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) strong anti-union sentiment aside, “Palin is right to credit her and her husband’s ‘good union jobs’ with securing her family health insurance coverage.” Union workers “receive more generous health benefits than nonunionized workers,” contribute a significantly lower percentage of the premium than those in firms without any union workers, and are significantly more likely to receive health insurance.
Consider the following data from the 2008 Kaiser Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Benefits:
Unfortunately,McCain’s health care plan, would throw 20 million Americans out of employer-sponsored coverage, leave 18 million Americans without health insurance by 2013, and increase “out of pocket” costs across the board. If Palin believes that she knows “what Americans are going through” because she was once uninsured, she will have many more Americans to sympathize with under the McCain-Palin health care plan.
McCain’s Confusing Coal Criticisms
McCain’s Confusing Coal Criticisms
This morning, CNN anchor John Roberts questioned Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) about Gov. Sarah Palin’s statement that the U.S. should go into Pakistan after terrorists, a clear contradiction with McCain’s position that such measures should never be discussed publicly. Roberts asked why McCain called this “gotcha journalism.” McCain responded that the “circumstances were very different.” Roberts asked, “How so?”
I believe it was a town hall meeting that he said it. Hers was an encounter in a pizza parlor where the question was framed, so that of course we’re going to go after terrorists.
Watch it:
McCain is wrong. In fact, at a town hall meeting of his own that same week, Sen. McCain said that he supported an end to mountaintop removal, a position his campaign initially denied. McCain also criticized the construction of new coal plants, saying they “will increase greenhouse gas emissions dramatically.” A week later, at the Clinton Global Initiative, McCain said, “We now know that fossil fuel emissions, by retaining heat within the atmosphere, threaten disastrous changes in climate.”
Unfortunately, no one in the media has challenged McCain on these statements, which strongly imply that McCain considers the continued use of coal “disastrous.”
UPDATE: Factcheck.org calls the ads “false.”
Palin Unable To Name Specific Examples Of McCain ‘Pushing For More Regulation’
Palin Unable To Name Specific Examples Of McCain ‘Pushing For More Regulation’
Tonight, during her interview with Katie Couric, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) dodged repeated inquiries about Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) regulatory record. When pressed by Couric “to name a specific example, in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation,” Palin fumbled:
COURIC: I’m just going to ask you one more time - not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation.
PALIN: I’ll try to find you some and I’ll bring them to you.
Watch it:
Palin may be looking for the nonexistent. Despite calling for more regulation and oversight in the wake of the Wall Street’s collapse, throughout his long career in the Senate, McCain, and his top campaign advisers, dutifully championed deregulatory policies.
In fact, during an interview with CBS News just this Sunday, McCain said he did not “regret” championing the deregulation of Wall Street, arguing that “the deregulation was probably helpful to the growth of our economy.”
In 1999, McCain supported deregulatory legislation championed by Sen. Phil Gramm, a top McCain adviser and the “odds-on favorite to be the Treasury Secretary.” The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act “destroyed the Depression-era barrier to the merger of stockbrokers, banks and insurance companies” and ended any “significant regulation of the financial community.”
Pipeline Palin’s Crusade Against Polar Bears
Pipeline Palin’s Crusade Against Polar Bears
Our guest blogger is Deborah Brennan, a journalist in Southern California.
Drowning in the gaps left by melting Arctic ice, the polar bears of Alaska have become one of the first creatures to make the endangered species list because of global warming. This was a double blow to Big Oil, as the industry’s pollution is responsible for climate change, and the polar bear seas are sitting on billions of dollars worth of oil and gas. So Gov. Sarah “Pipeline” Palin (R-AK), literally married to the oil industry, is facing down the half-ton carnivore in her legal sights — proving herself more environmentally extreme than Texas oilman Bush.
When the Bush administration reluctantly proposed listing the polar bear as a threatened species early this year, Pipeline Palin sided with the oil and gas industry and countered with a New York Times Op-Ed opposing the federal listing and then, once the administration went through this May, with a lawsuit against its implementation.
Now, it’s hard to believe that anyone not holed up in a militia compound could adopt a position more unfriendly to the Endangered Species Act than Bush and Cheney, but Palin made it clear that the administration was going a bit soft and green on the matter. What’s more, she maintained:
My decision is based on a comprehensive review by state wildlife officials of scientific information from a broad range of climate, ice and polar bear experts.
When University of Alaska professor Rick Steiner sought a copy of that review, the Anchorage Daily News reported, he was informed that the documents he requested would cost $468,784. (Apparently the cost of photocopies has gone up since the Freedom of Information Act was enacted.) Steiner subsequently obtained e-mail records indicating that Alaska state biologists actually supported the listing. He told the Anchorage Daily News:
Even the petroleum-loving Bush administration couldn’t find a way around the science on this issue.
The clear scientific evidence of global warming’s effects was airily dismissed by Palin as “uncertain modeling of possible effects.” In a June, 2008 interview with conservative pundit Glenn Beck, Palin maintained that polar bears are “very, very healthy,” and that “the number of polar bears has risen dramatically in the last 30 years.” In fact, Congressional testimony on the polar bear cites a 17 percent drop in the Southern Beaufort Sea populations since the 1980s, with reductions in skull size, cub survival and adult male weight.
Those declines coincide with the catastropic loss of sea ice on which the bears live — a direct result of climate change, which Palin also dismisses.
In August, Pipeline Palin sued the Fish and Wildlife Service over the polar bear listing. It appears that the person Sen. McCain (R-AZ) plans to put in charge of government reform has pulled a page from the Bush playbook — when faced with findings unfavorable to Big Oil, simply deny the data, silence the scientists, and jam up the courts.
This post was submitted through our Blog Fellows program. Make your own contribution — and get paid for it — by clicking here.
The Value of McCain’s Health Care Tax Credit = One Designer Jacket
The Value of McCain’s Health Care Tax Credit = One Designer Jacket
Our guest blogger is Adam Jentleson, the Communications and Outreach Director for the Hyde Park Project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
The centerpiece of John McCain’s health care plan is a tax credit worth $2,500 for individuals. By coincidence, in her speech at the RNC two weeks ago, Gov. Sarah Palin wore a jacket designed by Valentino Garavani that cost $2,500.
Admittedly, McCain’s health care tax credit is worth more than most jackets. The problem is that it’s worth far less than the cost of health care for most Americans.
Individuals paid an average of $4,400 for health care in 2007 – nearly twice the value of McCain’s credit. For families, McCain’s credit is $5,000 – which covers less than half of the $12,000 the average American family paid for health care in 2007.
And unlike Gov. Palin’s jacket, McCain’s credits are not tailored. They are one-size-fits-all. So if you’re healthy, you should be in good shape. But if you are sick, have a pre-existing condition, or endure a medical emergency, once you exceed the value of the credit you are on your own.
Which is why many health care experts agree than McCain’s health care plan boils down to this: don’t get sick.
‘Pro‐Life As Any Candidate’ Palin Picketed Abortion Doctor
‘Pro‐Life As Any Candidate’ Palin Picketed Abortion Doctor
For pro-choice activists, Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R-AK) short time in public office is characterized by her strong opposition to reproductive rights and sensible sex-education.
As mayor of Wasilla, the Palin administration “cut funds that had previously paid” for rape kits “and began charging victims or their health insurers the $500 to $1200 fee.” Palin expressed support for a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion, opposed abortion in cases of rape or incest, strongly supported failed abstinence-only initiatives, and generally described herself as “pro‐life as any candidate can be.”
In her exclusive interview with ABC’s Charlie Gibson, Palin moderated her rhetoric, saying that she respected the views of the pro-choice community:
I am pro-life. I do respect other people’s opinion on this also, and I think that a culture of life is best for America. What I want to do when elected vice president with John McCain, hopefully be able to reach out and work with those who are on the other side of this issue…I do understand McCain’s position on this, I understand others who are very passionate about this issue who have a differing view.
Watch it:
But Palin’s wasn’t alway so understanding. In fact, according to at least one report, Palin may have physically prevented or intimidated women from exercising their right to have an abortion.
Salon reports that in 1996, as “evangelical churches [in Alaska] mounted a vigorous campaign to take over the local hospital’s community board and ban abortion,” Palin participated in a “boisterous picket line” against an OB-GYN who opposed activists’ efforts to “take over the local hospital’s community board and ban abortion”:
At one point during the hospital battle, passions ran so hot that local antiabortion activists organized a boisterous picket line outside Dr. [Susan] Lemagie’s office, in an unassuming professional building across from Palmer’s Little League field. According to Bess [a priest who often clashed with Palin and the evangelical community] and another community activist, among the protesters trying to disrupt the physician’s practice that day was Sarah Palin.
The protest came two years after President Clinton signed the Freedom of Access to Clinics Entrances Act (FACE), “legislation that makes it a Federal crime to attack or blockade abortion clinics, their operators or their patrons.” Not surprisingly, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who has consistantly received a score of zero from NARAL, voted against the bill.
UPDATE: Dr. Susan Lemagtie’s 16-year-old daughter reflected on anti-abortion protests in a 1998 essay:
Picketers began protesting at the hospital across the street from my mom’s clinic. In late ‘94, when the national papers carried stories about bombed abortion clinics and murdered doctors, they moved to the sidewalk outside the clinic. My mother no longer talked about managed care and AIDS; she talked about buying a bulletproof vest.
Sarah Palin’s Plan for High Risk Pools
Sarah Palin’s Plan for High Risk Pools
The centerpiece of Sen. McCain’s plan to “help” those with chronic conditions to get health insurance is the creation of high risk pools in every state.
But, McCain has also said that he would ask the nation’s governors how to create these pools (with about 30 states having one today). Since Alaska is one of the states with a high risk pool, it might be interesting to get a sense of how Governor Palin might advise McCain on the creation of these pools.
Based on the high risk pool in her state, Palin’s advice would clearly be to create a high risk pool that: offers very expensive coverage, puts as much burden on individuals as possible, excludes preexisting conditions, and limits benefits as much as possible.
Alaska’s pool is one of the smallest in the country, with 510 enrollees (end of 2006). And, Alaska is one of the most expensive programs in the country—the total cost per enrollee of the program is $18,569 (when you include the enrollee premium spending and subsidies). In the US, the average family premium for an employer sponsored health plan is roughly $13,000—yes, that is for a whole family, not for an individual in Alaska.
Alaska’s high risk pool imposes very high cost sharing on enrollees, which limits enrollment and access to care:
- Premiums: Overall, the monthly premiums are very high. For example, if you are 55 years old and elect the PPO with the $1,000 deductible, your monthly premium cost is $1,404 a month ($16,848 a year). Assuming a two-person, middle class household making $43,750 a year (250 percent of the federal poverty level in Alaska), the premium cost for that one person would consume 39 percent of household income.
- Deductibles: Alaska has a minimum deductible of $1,000 (which is high, but not uncommon for high risk pools). Options exist to allow enrollees to choose from a range of deductibles up to $15,000 (which is very high, even for high risk pools).
- Out-Of Pocket Costs: The premium and deductible are not the only costs to the individual. When seeing an in-network provider, the individual is still responsible for 20 percent of the cost of most services. There is an overall cap on out-of-pocket costs, but that is as high as $25,000 a year for one of the policies.
Alaska’s preexisting condition exclusion and limited benefits hut enrollees:
- Pre-Existing Condition Exclusion: For many individuals in the Alaska high risk pool, pre-existing conditions are excluded for six months. This means that if you are in the pool because you have ovarian cancer, then you will not get any coverage for cancer-related services for six months.
- Limits on Benefits: The PPO plan does not cover many services, including for the following from Part I of the PPO contract: maternity coverage and fertility tests, routine physicals, immunizations, eyeglasses, and mental health benefits services are capped at $4,000 a year.
Alaska’s high risk pool discourages individuals from seeking preventative care and chronic disease services by making such care subject to a deductible. A plain reading of the benefits package shows that preventative care and chronic care services are part of this deductible. Many states will exclude those services from the deductible to encourage patients to get the chronic care they need. Instead, Alaska makes you pay out-of-pocket for such services until the deductible is met.
Where Does McCain Stand On Public Service?
Where Does McCain Stand On Public Service?
Tonight, in honor of the seventh anniversary of 9/11, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) are “taking a breather from their campaign-trail feud,” and making a joint appearance at “a Columbia University forum on public service.”
This forum, somewhat ironically, comes just a week after the Republican National Convention, where McCain’s supporters reserved some of their biggest jokes for community organizers - or those who make a career out of public service. Watch it:
McCain himself, however, has a more ambiguous stance on public service.
Though he is now a solid supporter of AmeriCorps, he initially voted against its creation and later joined conservatives “in efforts to zero-out funding.” To his credit, McCain has publicly announced that his opposition to the program was “wrong,” and he has since co-sponsored legislation to expand the corps.
But despite campaign claims that he “has constantly spoken to the need for young Americans to serve a cause greater than their self-interest,” McCain has not proposed a comprehensive public service plan of his own. As NPR notes, “McCain said military service is the noblest of all causes. But otherwise, he seems to view public service as something that happens more or less outside of government.”
The Politico noticed the same thing, and wrote that McCain “has yet to offer any proposals to expand or transform national service outside of the military.” And even now, on a day during which McCain will spend an evening discussing service, his campaign website provides no national service plan beyond a page of links to other organizations.
Obama, meanwhile, has laid out a clear plan to encourage public service, in the form of an expanded AmeriCorps, five new “corps” - Classroom Corps, Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, Veterans Corps and Homeland Security Corps - and a $4,000 college credit “for Americans willing to complete 100 hours of public service a year.”