Women, who earn less, who are commonly responsible for the most time-consuming parts of the parenting saga, who are discriminated against by their employers for being parents, who are more likely to be abused, who bear all the health risks of pregnancy and childbirth, can never be fully equal in a society that doesn’t prioritize and normalize our access to all forms of reproductive health care. When our health care is stigmatized, we are stigmatized. When it seems normal that men we don’t know get to decide if we’ll be forced into a two decade commitment, it’s only natural that men we do know might think they have the right to decide that for us, too.

If you still want to pass this health insurance reform bill, and I understand why so many people do, understand the cost. Somewhere, right now, he’s taking her lunch money, and this bill will let him force her into motherhood, too.

Planned Parenthood was bought off with the Bernie Sanders carve-out that will offer loan forgiveness to their employees and money to their clinics, just as the unions (who were going to rise up and “defend our sisters” against Bart Stupak) were bought off with $6 billion in co-op money and requirements for qualification that few could meet but them.  And NARAL — well, they just suck.

Diana DeGette won’t release her letter with 41 signatures so we’ll never know who made this promise and broke it:

We will not vote for a conference report that contains language that restricts women’s right to choose any further than current law.

There’s a grand charade that somehow the Nelson language in the Senate is okay because Bart Stupak’s is worse.  There’s hardly any difference between the two, and the ultimate impact is the same.  Two weeks ago, Planned Parenthood called the Nelson language on choice “unacceptable.”  Now….crickets.

Let’s just recall that in addition to codifying the Hyde Amendment, the Senate bill:

• Allows states to opt out of allowing plans to cover abortion in the insurance exchanges, a clear violation of Roe v. Wade. Since some state medicaid programs cover abortion as long as it is paid for with state money, the Hyde amendment (current law) obviously does allow insurance to cover abortion as long as it is paid through a separate non-federal funds.
• It prohibits insurance companies by law from taking into account cost savings when estimating the costs of abortion care, which raises premiums, thus limiting access
• It includes “conscience clause” language that protects both individuals and entities that refuse to provide, pay for, provide coverage for, or refer for abortion.

And a George Washington University School of Public Health study says that the “spillover effect” the Nelson language will have on abortion coverage will mean it has the same effect as Stupak.

Anyone who is whipping for this bill is whipping against choice.  The end.  They own it…and also its impact on the most vulnerable women in our society, who shouldn’t have to sell their reproductive rights off in exchange for health care.

He’s absolutely right. As I told Jonathan Weisman of the Wall Street Journal the other day (which he didn’t print), “f#%king r$%ards” worked.

Nobody will take progressives in congress seriously, nor should they. Their threats are idle and they won’t fight for anything they believe in. In the end, they’ll just take turns shaking their fists in futility and alternately sucking so no serious liberal challenge ever emerges to anything.

Whatever Barack Obama wants to do will be the farthest left any piece of legislation gets, and if anyone should try to challenge from the left, the unions and the liberal organizations and party blogs would rise up to condemn them and whip them into line — even if it means completely reversing themselves and devolving into total incoherence.  And they’ll be rewarded with carve-outs and corporate money and expensive advertising and personal sinecures for playing their role in facilitating the corporate cash pipeline.  Because that’s the job of the ever-expanding veal pen:  cover Obama’s left flank and shut down progressive opposition.

Donna Edwards specifically requested that we hold a fundraiser for members of Congress who signed the July 31 pledge to vote against any bill that didn’t have a public option. It was a cheap shakedown that raised $430,000 for little more than a theatrical performance, and now when donors call her office and ask what she plans to do, they’re being told to “check Thomas after she takes her vote.”

I disagree with Ben, however, that this was “smart.”  It left the White House triangulating against their own campaign message, depressing the base and risking not only their majority in the House but also down ticket races across the country that could suffer from low turnout in November.  The mandate will feed 33 state legislative efforts across the country to revoke it, 24 of which are constitutional amendments (the Missouri House approved theirs yesterday).  It will become a campaign issue in states like Florida, where Attorney General Bill McCollum is running for governor and threatening to file suit against it.  And nobody will notice if Republicans are lying through their teeth when they deliver John Shadegg’s message. If Rahm truly was the one who wanted to ditch the mandate and go with a stripped down bill, he was right about that.  But his plan to run against the “left” to pass this bill on behalf of PhRMA could have serious long term consequences.

Union members across the country are bitter about the way their leadership has sold them out, and now they’re being asked to suck up further hikes in the excise tax.  Interests groups are seeing their memberships dissipate.  Blog traffic is dropping.  The biggest blow to choice since the passage of the Hyde amendment 35 years ago will go down without any opposition from the choice groups, who are soaking up foundation money while choice as an issue dies the death of the anti-handgun initiatives.

Bart Stupak looks to be the only one with the courage of his convictions, and if he’s still willing to cast his vote in exchange for an up-or-down vote on funding each year (which he knows he will eventually win), leadership still might take it.  If you hear that Bart has come around for no discernible reason, you’ll know his deal came through.

Look, we had to get here…people had to see it in action.  I know I did.  I couldn’t imagine that members of congress would hand us all this campaign fodder, all the videos that their opposition can use against them for elections to come, if they had no intention of fighting.  But we’re watching a replay of the war supplemental:  after 80 progressives signed a letter saying they’d vote against any war funding that didn’t have troop withdrawal provisions, when their vote mattered only 32 remembered that pledge.  Magically just under the 39 needed to stop it from passing.  This is what we can expect from House progressives in the future.  Now that the number who can safely hold their principles and still allow the bill to pass is “zero,” that’s how many have them.

It doesn’t mean that progressive organizing is dead, rather that it can’t depend on unreliable partners or strength of resolve on the part of members of Congress.

Who would take these people seriously ever again? Who would follow them? Who would believe they were capable of leadership? In the end, they’ll toe whatever line Steny Hoyer tells them to…and anything in the interim is just a show.

	Rep. Donna Edwards	“Taking the FDL pledge… the pledge is consistent with what I’ve outlined as important components for any reform to be called reform. Signing up for the pledge now. But, progressives need to hold tight on this one. We cannot allow the language of robust reform to be used to describe something that is not.”
	Rep. Raul Grijalva	“Our insistence on this is based on real public policy — we don’t want a trigger, we don’t want a public plan that has no network of providers…I think the President respects the fact that these are principled issues we’re taking. This is not petty. I’m not saying “no” just to be spiteful, or petulant. This is a principled vote. It’s a principled decision.”
	Rep. Keith Ellison	“I will not vote for any healthcare that does not include a public option. I will not do it, that’s a guaranteed no vote and I will not be dissuaded from that.”
	Rep. Maxine Waters	“For the majority, I think, of our members a public option is a compromise — we wanted single payer as you know, and we backed off because they said that was going to be impossible to do. Again they brought up the more conservative elements, etc. etc., and so we will not support any bill that does not have a public option in it.”
	Rep. Emanuel Cleaver	“I have said from the very beginning and I will say even to the end that I will not support any health care program that does not have a very strong public option. If there is no way to guarantee from the very beginning that every American will have access to adequate insurance coverage, that I will not support it.”
	Rep. Lloyd Doggett	“We do need reform of health care so desperately. And I’ve joined in the communications to our leadership,and I’ve said withing the Ways & Means Democratic Caucus — no public plan, no vote for me.”
	Rep. Bob Filner	“We need to do this now. People say we are rushing it, we have been waiting since 1948 to take health care reform seriously. We cant afford much longer at this rate….So lets get the public health option, and I am not going to vote for any healthcare reform plan that does not include such a public option….We need the guarantee of accessibility on day one. Any trigger as far as I am concerned, kills my support for the bill.”
	Rep. Jerrold Nadler	“In May, I began whipping my colleagues on the absolute necessity for a public option and convinced many of them to commit, as I have done, to voting against any health reform bill that excludes the public option. This commitment will give us leverage to oppose the insurance company lobbyists, and force inclusion of a robust public option in the developing health insurance reform plan.”
	Rep. Chellie Pingree	“I’m not going to vote for any House bill that doesn’t include a robust public option without any triggers or coops–that’s a must-have for me.”
	Rep. Phil Hare	The purpose of having a public option — and that’s why I can’t vote for any bill that doesn’t have one — is that without the public option, people don’t have any place else to go, except for the insurance companies.”
	Rep. Barney Frank	“I am a strong supporter of single payer, and I do reluctantly accept a full public option as the best we can do. So I am strongly committed to a public option and I will not vote for a bill that does not include a nationwide, genuine public plan … I am not talking now about a trigger, which I greatly oppose.”
	Rep. Carolyn Maloney	“I have decided I will not vote for a health care bill in the House that doesn’t include a real public option and I Pledge to uphold the public option principles agreed upon by the Progressive Caucus.”
	Rep. Lynn Woolsey	“Oh I will vote against anything that does not include … and it’s got to be real. I mean, you can call it anything you want … I believe there are enough of us, among the 120 in the tri-caucus and the progressive caucus, that can stop any votes…. Any health care reform that does not include a strong, robust public option for all Americans will not be health care reform.”
	Rep. Yvette Clarke	Rep. Clarke: There is no health care reform without a robust public option. Eve Gittelson: You are saying you will not vote for any bill through conference that does not have a public option. Rep. Clarke: That is correct.
	Rep. John Conyers	“The centerpiece of this reform is a robust Medicare-like public health insurance plan tied to the Medicare provider system. Like many of my colleagues in both the House and Senate, I will oppose any health care reform bill that lacks such a plan. I will also oppose any legislation that seeks to replace a robust public health insurance option with health care cooperatives or which ties the availability of the public option to a trigger mechanism.”

Tags: 2010 election turnout, Bill McCollum, constitutional amendments, health care, john shaddegg, mandate, public option, Rahm Emanuel, veal pen, vindication

The role of the football has previously been played by direct Medicare drug price negotiation, the public option, Medicare buy-in, 90% minimum medical loss ratio, and a national exchange. Not surprisingly, the Huffington Post is reporting that the Rate Authority will likely be dropped because it can’t survive the Byrd rule in a reconciliation bill.

Like previous provisions that have played the role of the football, the National Insurance Rate Authority was a smart-sounding, progressive idea put forward to make people feel more kindly toward the health care bill, only to see it pulled away at the last minute.

What makes this final act with the Rate Authority so disgusting is the incredibly pure cynicism all around. Within minutes of seeing that Obama proposed it be part of the reconciliation bill, I questioned its ability to survive the Byrd rule. It simply did not seem likely, based on my knowledge of reconciliation.

If I could clearly see that it would likely not survive the Byrd rule, so should have Obama’s team, the Democratic leadership in Congress, and all the big, pro-reform groups that tried to use its inclusion as justification for supporting the bill. In fact, Democrats should have (and probably did) ask the Senate parliamentarian about it before saying they would put it in the reconciliation package.

Instead, they put the provision in the package to get people excited, knowing full well it would be removed weeks later. They then waited until literally the 11th hour to crush people’s hopes by pulling the football away one more time.

To add insult to injury, they could actually still pass the Rating Authority using reconciliation. There is no reason, according to a reading of the Senate rules, that it must be removed because the Senate parliamentarian does not think it directly affects the budget enough. If Democrats really wanted the new agency, they could get it by having Joe Biden use his own judgment on the Byrd rule instead of following the parliamentarian’s non-binding suggestion.

For this latest, incredibly cynical move, I feel a lot of people are owed an apology by a large part of the Democratic/liberal/progressive establishment. Of course, if they are actually handing out apologies for broken promises and back stabs, this latest act would be at the bottom of a very long list. It is amazing how every provision suggested that might have reined in the health insurance industry always got removed, time and time again.

Tags: Byrd Rule, Health Insurance Rate Authority, Joe Biden, Reconcilaition

The Senate bill further entrenches the private health insurance system. It continues the terrible pattern of privatizing our social safety net in such a way that business skims 20% off the top. It makes sure the big, life saving medications of the future remain incredibly expensive, so as to enrich the drug industry. It takes a giant step towards eroding women’s reproductive rights. It wastes hundreds of millions to fortify the same, broken health care system that is crushing our economy. The worst part is I don’t see anything in this bill that might serve as a path to real reform. There is no public option or Medicare buy-in. There is no proper state single payer waiver. There is no mechanism to move to an all-payer system and/or a clear path to force for-profit companies out of the health insurance market.

I would gladly fight for a smaller health care bill that just gave Medicare to people over 50 who don’t want to keep their current insurance. That would help fewer uninsured people, but would do it the right way. It would be real help, and it would be done in a simple, cost effective, and fiscally conservative manner. It would be a small step, but, importantly, it would be a step in the right direction. That would actually be a health care reform foundation I would be proud to build on.

I have no problem fighting for incremental reform as along as it is improvement done the right way, or at least with a pathway in the right direction. What I do have a real problem with is taking big steps if they are steps in the wrong direction. If anyone can actually explain how this bill, which will funnel hundreds of billions of dollar into private hands, and force millions of Americans to be customers of the same private health insurance companies that helped ruin our health care system, will actually serve as a vehicle for the real reform we will eventually need, I would love to hear it. Personally, I just don’t see how the fight will be easier in the future, once the health insurance industry is a few hundred billion dollars richer, and already has a captive market thanks to the IRS.

Tags: All-payer, health care, IRS, private insurance, public option, state single payer

There is, of course, a very easy solution to the House Democrats’ CBO trouble. They could add a public option or Medicare buy-in. The CBO projects that even a very weak and restricted public option would save the government $25 billion. A stronger but still restricted public option would save roughly $110 billion. Those savings would be more than large enough to produce an acceptable CBO score.

Of course, Democrats are not going to include a public option because it would ruin bipartisanship, we need Olympia Snowe, Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln, Dick Durbin would whip against it, the Senate does not have the votes, the Senate has the votes the House does not, it might delay the bill Obama traded it away to the for-profit hospitals in a backroom deal. Instead, I suspect that they will make up the loss by either raising more taxes or cutting much-needed aid to students and community colleges.

Have fun explaining that move Democrats. Go home and tell your constituents that not only did you deny them the public option they overwhelming want, but you decided to take money from low income college students, and use it to protect the profits of the private health insurance industry.

Tags: backroom deals, CBO, Democrats, health care, private insurance, public option, Reconciliation

July was also the month that President Obama made a “quid pro quo deal” with the hospitals to exclude the public option from a final health care bill. Miles Mogulescu reports that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina confirmed the deal to David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times.

President Obama disingenuously confirmed his support for the public option in his September address to a joint session of Congress, but, behind the scenes, he was actively working to kill it. Obama wanted Harry Reid to be responsible for taking it out of the final health care bill so he, the president, could remain popular, according to Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo.

But Reid is facing a tough challenge of his own and didn’t want the honors, so — as predicted — Joe Lieberman was called upon to do the dirty work.  Far from opposing the President, Lieberman was doing exactly what Obama wanted him to do so that the deal with the hospitals to kill the public option would be honored.

Tom Carper famously said that it was the Senate’s responsibility to honor the deal that Obama made with PhRMA, because after all, they paid for it with $150 million in political advertising for House Democrats.  And although PhRMA was nervous about putting more money in until the President delivered on that deal, they have now agreed to another $6 million ad buy in the districts of 38 Democrats.

The objective of the White House with the health care bill has been from the beginning to secure donations of the medical industrial complex for Democrats and assure their re-election in 2010.  But recently, they switched their battle plan.  While Rahm Emanuel may have been protecting Blue Dogs from “fu&1ing r#%&rd” liberals who wanted to challenge them last fall, the Democratic establishment have now turned on Democrats in conservative-leaning districts for their unwillingness to take a vote that will no doubt cost them their seats.  So much for the “big tent.”

The generals are firing on their own troops in the trenches for their unwillingness to go on a suicide mission.  It is indeed like a scene from Paths of Glory.

There are currently 36 resolutions in states across the country to ban the mandate which forces people to buy private insurance, or face a penalty of up to 2% of their income that the IRS will collect — the very thing that Obama campaigned against.  It will become a rallying cry for the right.

John Shaddegg gives a preview of what the GOP will be saying in the fall:

SHADEGG:  You could better defend a public option than you could defend compelling me to buy a product from the people that have created the problem.  America’s health insurance industry has wanted this bill and the individual mandate from the get go.  That’s their idea. Their idea is “look, our product is so lousy, that lots of people don’t buy it.  So we need the government to force people to buy our product. And stunningly, that’s what the Congress appears to be going along with.  Why would they do that?

As Jon Walker noted, the President’s recent campaign wherein he railed against insurance companies for jacking up premiums was an exercise in incoherence.  “If private insurance companies are evil, why are you forcing me to be their customer?”

The claims made by the administration about the virtues of the health care bill are outright fabrications.  As Marcy Wheeler has documented in her post entitled “Health Care and the Road to Neofeudalism,” it does not control either insurance premiums or health care costs.  Forcing 31 million people to buy a product they don’t want and can’t afford to use does not constitute health care reform.  Once again, the poor get used as human shields so corporations can be the beneficiaries of massive government bailout.

Rather than actually helping the poor, this bill is a dangerous and unprecedented step on the road to domination of government by private corporate players who use it to suppress competition and secure their profits — the textbook definition of fascism.

When we launched the public option campaign in June of 2009, I made several assumptions.  One, that the White House ultimately cared more about preserving the Democratic majority than they did about passing a corporate bailout and when forced to choose between the two they would pick the former.  And two, that members of Congress have a base interest in keeping their seats and would not cast a vote that jeopardize them.

Both of those assumptions were wrong.  Members of Congress are dealing their seats away, planning to retire after the vote is cast in exchange for appointments or other sinecures from the administration.  The alternative, as Dennis Kucinich found out, was to be hounded from office by liberal interest groups whose job is now apparently to play enforcer on the left so the President can follow through with his PhRMA and AHIP deals.

This bill has already triggered an electoral crisis that will continue, not only for members of Congress in 2010  but for Democrats across the country.Polling indicates that Democrats plan to stay home just as they did after the passage of NAFTA in 1994.  Down ticket races are at serious risk of the “Coakley effect” as independents flock to the GOP.   While members of Congress in strong Democratic districts may feel safe from the repercussions, state legislatures that progressive activists have worked so hard to take over the past few years could become casualties of war.

I spoke with Dennis following his speech, and his campaign will return the money to those who have donated in support of his pledge to vote against any health care bill that does not have a public option.  It’s the honorable thing to do.  While he shouldn’t be expected to carry the weight of the health care bill on his back when the other 64 members of Congress have abandoned him, it is both disheartening and illuminating to realize that the progressives in Congress have no true commitment to anything but putting on a show.    Rep. Edwards and her fellow members of Congress should follow Rep. Kucinich’s lead and return the $430,000 they collected from donors for their part in the House kabuki as well.

A PR blitz by the President may sway liberals to support this bill, but it won’t hold. You can’t fight for Medicare prescription drug price negotiation in 2008 when it has no chance of passing, and then fight against it when it actually can, and hope that nobody notices.  This is a deeply corrupt bill that among other things puts lifesaving cancer drugs out of the financial reach of many cancer patients by keeping them from becoming available as generics, even after taxpayers footed the bill for their development.

Cokie Roberts said on This Week that the reason the health care bill is so unpopular is because the public option campaign dragged out its passage for so long.  She’s right.  By forcing the President and members of Congress to keep passing the public option hot potato and reporting on the corruption, lies and lack of affordability that were the hallmarks of the bill, it allowed the public to measure the gap between what Obama says and what he actually does.

That in itself has value, because without broad awareness of the bad faith with which the President engaged in the health care debate, it was difficult to get people to shake off the pixie dust of the 2008 election and deal with the reality of what progressives are up against.  We also got to see that the veal pen institutions will be flooded with corporate money expressly for the purpose of neutralizing progressive organizing attempts against corporate control of government.

Few organizations resisted the urge to whip for the very bill they asked members of Congress to oppose last August during the fundraising drive for the public option.  The entire progressive movement devolved into complete message incoherence as the unions announced their willingness to step outside of the Democratic party in order to enforce corporate deals within it.   The PCCC deserves special mention for staying true to their word throughout.

If indeed this bill passes, people across the country will have to start examining the basic assumptions with which we have heretofore approached politics.  The thing I have learned above all else in this campaign is that the corporate control of government is much more extensive than I ever imagined, and the tools we have to fight its influence are ineffective.

We need to develop new partners in the fight, because there is tremendous public will to resist and the old ones can’t be trusted.   We also need a new language to describe it, because the old “right-left” paradigm is firing past the true opponent.

The effort to keep this bill from passing lives on after Dennis Kucinich’s defection, though it did indeed signal the death of the progressive resistance in Congress.  In the end, what we learned is that we can’t count on members of Congress in either party to do anything but play their part in “villain rotation” — a game they can only play as long as we let them.   It is up to each of us to challenge our old ideas and forge new ways to seek out those who are truly willing to oppose the corporate domination of our political system, and help them to do it.

A bit of good news for Democrats: PhRMA agreed Tuesday to fund an initial $6 million ad buy in the districts of 38 wavering House Democrats. The pro-reform ads will come from the industry-funded coalition Americans for Stable Quality Care and could hit the airwaves as early as today, a top industry official said. The deep-pocketed trade group didn’t decide how much it would spend in total on the campaign; officials are waiting to review the bill first.

Take this to be a sign that the reconciliation package will likely not include drug re-importation or direct Medicare drug price negotiations. Take this also as a good sign that the bill is unlikely to do anything to bring down prescription drug prices for the majority of Americans, despite the fact that we, on average, pay more for the same medications than any other industrialized nation.

Remember when Democrats rallied together as a party to nearly unanimously oppose Medicare Part D because it was written behind closed doors to win the support of PhRMA lobbyists? Remember when almost every Democrat, including Presidential candidate Barack Obama, promised to “fix” Medicare part D by passing drug re-importation and direct Medicare drug price negotiations? Remember? Because it appears everyone in Washington, DC and in the Democratic establishment is pretending that they forgot.

Tags: drug re-importation, health care, lobbyists, Medicare Part D, Obama Administration, Phrma, PhRMA deal, secret deal, White House

Kucinich told Obama that he wants a full ERISA waver and a public option in exchange for his vote.  And if he actually gets an ERISA waver, it will be the biggest victory of the entire health care debate.   As Jon Walker says, “ERISA is the 900 pound Gorilla that has fucked up America’s health care system something good.”

If on the other hand he settles for some worthless reassurances that “Obama will work toward it in the future” (which nobody but Lynn Woolsey is dumb enough to actually believe), or a meaningless symbolic vote that achieves little more than 15 minutes of futile grandstanding, good luck to him.  A thousand people have donated over $16,000 to Dennis since yesterday to thank him for standing up for what he believes in. We’ll be asking him to return it.

Tags: Dennis Kucinich, ERISA, fundraiser, hawaii, Howard Fineman, Lynn Woolsey, public option

I can understand why Democratic senators don’t want to do that. I can even understand why the Obama administration is insisting House Democrats pass the Senate bill as is. Clearly, it is the bill that Obama wanted all along, with all the secret deals with PhRMA and the for profit Hospitals persevered. What I don’t understand is why the House Democrats are not in full revolt.

The House Democrats don’t need to vote for a bill with the “Cornhusker kickback,” the “Louisiana Purchase,” the publicly toxic excise tax, the hated individual mandate to buy private insurance, or the special Medicare Advantage deal for Florida, and they would still be able to pass comprehensive health care reform. All it would take is for Joe Biden plus 50 Senate Democrats, willing, as a result of unprecedented Republican obstructionism, to exploit the existing rules to the maximum extent possible. Heck, House Democrats should proceed with the strategy anyway and drop the burden for passing health care reform squarely on the Senate Democrats instead.

The Democratic leadership has a choice between protecting stupid Senate rules, which the whole Senate Democratic leadership agrees need to be changed, or sacrificing their rank-and-file House members by forcing them to vote for a politically toxic bill. The Democratic leadership clearly chose to make the House Democrats walk the plank. Why rank-and-file House Democrats are going along with what seems like an act of collective insanity is beyond me. I guess House Democrats just really want to protect the weird Senate rules more than their own seats.

Tags: Byrd Rule, Joe Biden, Reconciliation

I spoke to Kathryn A. Serkes of the Doctor Patient Medical Association at this morning’s rally against the health care bill, after Serkes had addressed the smallish crowd.

“I’m in contact with folks on the progressive side,” said Serkes. “They’re saying right now that Pelosi’s almost there with the votes. What they’re saying is that there’s some serious arm-twisting — their words were ‘union thuggery.’ One progressive source told me that there was serious union thuggery this weekend, targeting Rep. Jason Altmire (D-Pa.).”

The source, she said, was Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake, a liberal blog that’s also paid for polls in some Democratic districts asking voters whether “aye” votes on health care reform would help or hurt their re-election chances. “She said that they’re very close — [liberal blogs] are better at keeping a tab on it. And I think Pelosi’s very close. I think we’re right at the edge.”

I know Katherine, we were on MSNBC together and we’ve spoken about working on the pot legalization measure in California in the future.    She tells me that when Weigel approached her and asked her who her “source” was, she didn’t say. He said “It’s Jane Hamsher, isn’t it…I’ve been around.” According to Katherine, she didn’t respond.

Weigel decided to print his own suspicions as fact, and didn’t bother to contact me for confirmation. It’s a pattern with him.

Weigel goes on to accuse me of using the words “union thuggery,” in quotes.  He completely put words in my mouth.  That is a totally fabricated quote.

I’m not “working” with the tea partiers on health care. But Weigel doesn’t care about the truth — any reporter would’ve contacted me first before printing something like that. He’s just a fantasist printing propaganda, and the Washington Independent has no higher standards than to print it.

I guess trading in political smears is something their donors approve of.

Update I: I found an email from Weigel.  Timestamped minutes before he posted, when I was in a meeting.

Update II: Weigel now accuses me of “making up quotes.”  This is how Katherine related her exchange with Weigel to me, I didn’t “make up” anything:

In my speech was trying to make a point about bipartisan opposition and I said to the crowd “now I want to say something to you and I don’t want to boo me, but there are liberals on the left and progressives who are very much against this bill too.  They think that an individual mandate is immoral.  We think it’s unconstitutional, but we’re saying the same things, so when we go tell the Democrats that their own constituents who oppose this as well.”   Transpartisan, transpartisan, transpartisan.

Afterwards, Weigel was talking to Amy Kramer, and I went up to them.  Amy left, and he recognized me from Grover Norquist’s meeting and  asked me about the votes.  And I said “well, I’m hearing from the left that Pelosi is very close.  And I said it seems to me that the folks on the left are going to have a more accurate count than our side will.”

He said “well who’s your source.”  I just looked at him. He said “Is it Jane Hamsher?”  I said “what makes you think that?  He said something to the effect of, “I’ve been around.”

Then I was talking about votes. I said “look, my thought is, if I were a Democrat and I was planning on voting “no,” I’m not sure if I would announce it because I didn’t want to take a beating.  Then I talked about the union stuff — the arm twisting that was going on, Altmire was a target — that’s what I remember of it.

But I didn’t say anything like “I’m working with Jane Hamsher.”    We talk about things…we talk about stuff, and we’re also talking about marijuana and hemp legalization. These are “conversations.”  I’m a professional person who’s been doing professional policy work.   I represent a nonpartisan professional association.

My “source” on where the vote stands is Dave Dayen’s daily column.  Katherine says that if he was taping the conversation, he did so without her knowledge.