President Harry Truman once said, “I don’t give [Republicans] hell. I just tell the truth, and they think it’s hell.” With a country that’s becoming increasingly hostile toward them for not getting legislation passed, and a Republican Party that is hijacking a progressively larger share of the media narrative in Washington, Democrats would be wise in taking Truman’s quote to heart by establishing a more fearsome attack machine (Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and liberal bloggers don’t count).

They needn’t resort to the same fear tactics (“death panels”), hypocrisy (GOP officials touting the stimulus back home, while ripping on it in the media), outright lies (“Obama is taxing the middle class to death,” even though he actually passed the biggest middle class tax cut ever), and nonsensical garbage (the Birther movement) that Republicans have embraced for the past twenty-plus years. They just need to recognize the psychological value of in-your-face repetition that Republicans have made into an art form.

By obstructing President Obama and the Democrats on every vote, the GOP is banking on America’s failure bringing them back to power. An effective Democratic attack machine would use something to the degree of “the Republicans’ war against the American people” as a core theme. This general idea was utilized marvelously by Republicans during the first six years of the Bush administration (the “terrorists will kill you if you elect Democrats” tactic). Each issue would be another battle in that war (“the Republicans’ war against Americans, in favor of soulless insurance companies,” “their war against Americans, in favor of corporations,” etc.).

The President still appears to consider an attack machine the beginning of the end of bipartisanship, and that Democrats need to “rise above the negative tone of Washington.” However, if anything, the result would have the opposite effect. The presence of a halfway competent Democratic attack machine would make Republicans think twice about how they will be characterized, thus compelling them to play ball. As long as Democrats simply use the truth in keeping pressure on Republicans, they’ll stay above the fear tactics and lies they don’t want to adopt.

Right now, Republicans fear their own fringe more than they fear the Democrats. Considering the Democrat in the White House, and the huge Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, this is nothing short of pathetic for the party in power.

Last year, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood proved the need for some semblance of an attack machine. After Senator Jon Kyl parroted Republican talking points slamming the stimulus, LaHood responded, “Ok, shall we cease sending money to Arizona for transportation projects?” Kyl naturally threw a hissy fit, yet Democrats didn’t run with it. So Kyl shut up for a few days, the storm blew over, then he went right back at it. One would be naïve to assume that it was a coincidence that of all of Obama’s secretaries, it was a former Republican Congressman who put Kyl in his place.

Even today, Democrats still don’t have a respected attack machine to keep the GOP on their toes. Republicans whine about deficits that they largely created. They claim to be the “protectors” of Medicare, yet they support deficit reduction acts that gut it, along with privatizing social security.

A Democratic attack machine would keep the pressure on until the Democratic leadership brought the Republican budget (authored by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, a new hero among those who idolize Ronald Reagan) to a vote. That would make them announce what they think about the safety net keeping millions, particularly seniors, from complete ruin. Right now, Republicans are able to have it both ways since Democrats won’t stand up to the schoolyard bully.

A Democratic attack machine could have had Republicans calling “uncle!” for blocking a well-qualified TSA nominee. In fact, an attack machine would keep the issue of President Obama’s 200-plus nominees still in limbo after his first year in office thanks to the Grand Obstruction Party (compared to around 75 for the Bush administration after year one).

Whenever Dick Cheney opens his mouth, uttering the same bile painting Democrats as national security wimps, a Democratic attack machine wouldn’t have a hard time finding things to mention in response: His sketchy financial gains via Halliburton; blowing Valerie Plame’s cover; lying us into Iraq and away from Afghanistan, where the actual enemy resides; and so on. They could have publicly asked Cheney why he didn’t just call the White House with his concerns like a real statesman instead of trying to create the same politically expedient panic that defined the last administration.

An effective attack machine would have kept Senator Kyl and other Republicans’ hypocritical whining about the stimulus front and center in the public eye. As a result, wiggle room would be created for the Administration to create sorely-needed jobs at a faster pace.

A halfway competent attack machine would target Republicans’ iffy credibility in the health care reform discussion. Just imagine how quickly John Boehner’s lies would subside after pointing out his connection to tobacco lobbyists, hardly flattering for someone who portrays himself as a champion of the American people. An attack machine would make sure everyone can see the Republicans enjoying their own government-run healthcare, yet refusing to even allow a vote on health care for us common folk. It would have given the President an up-or-down vote months ago.

The lack of a Democratic attack machine isn’t just bad politics, it’s inexcusable. Because of it, Democrats are perpetually playing defense when they desperately need a go-ahead score. Without one, Democrats are put in an unnecessarily vulnerable position because their strategy is based on what Republicans might say about any given policy, vote or speech. Democrats are getting pinned inside the 20 yard line every possession; the average football fan knows what happens to teams who regularly lose the field position battle.

Right now, it seems like Democrats either don’t understand this, or don’t care. Instead of backing off of Republicans when they think they have “made their point,” they need to point at them and encourage others to take pictures. By not doing so, they’re failing to convince their own base, let alone other voters, that they actually believe what they’re saying. It would inject a crucial dose of passion into the base. Most importantly, it would allow their policies breathing room to passage, then to improve peoples’ lives.

Unique to Parliamentary Democracies, a ‘Vote of Confidence’ can spell the end of any Prime Minister’s term. In the parliamentary system, the Prime Minister’s power depends upon his ability to hold a majority caucus – and the failure of any of his major initiatives to pass results in the loss of the confidence of his membership. In essence, when the Prime Minister can’t lead his party on his budget or main social initiatives, a Ministers time in office comes to a swift end.

Had the Iraq War not passed the British parliament, Tony Blair’s days would have ended earlier. More recently, a failed vote over finances toppled the Dutch ruling party just this week. The Canadian Parliament was temporarily shut down in January as Harper’s Conservatives scrambled to avoid a no-confidence vote – but the United States has nothing even comparable to this. Our Presidents are dealt blows to their popularity, or may lose an element of their agenda – but this current healthcare situation, despite its similarities to ‘HillaryCare 1992’ is unprecedented.

This is because unlike most Presidents, Obama has pushed forward with an up-or-down vote – that he very may well lose – on Healthcare. Bush withdrew his push for comprehensive immigration reform in 2005, and barely eeked out his tax cuts in 2001. Clinton wisely retreated on Healthcare and regrouped thanks to Dick Morris – but Obama is full steam ahead on something deeply unpopular and, barring some mathematic miracle of an abortion compromise, is looking increasingly unlikely to pass – at least without a convoluted, drawn-out bloodletting that could be as equally politically damaging as a healthcare defeat.

Obama’s position is unprecedented. Sure, Presidents are legislatively rebuked all the time – their initiatives are tweaked, radicalized or centralized, and sometimes simply voted down or rescinded – but it’s almost always by the opposing party. A defeat for Obama on his domestic priority by a congressed made up of 60% of his own party would leave Washington in a never-before-seen freeze.

When Presidents haven’t been able to pass their agendas in the past, the opposing party has been in control of Washington, thus controlling and moving the congressional agenda (see: President Bush 2006-2008) and the ebb-and-flow of Washington is not interrupted. But with Democrats in complete control, a defeat for Obama makes any progress on anything unimaginable heading into the midterm elections. America would have a lame-duck President, only a year and two months into his first term.

Republicans have questioned why the President is pushing ahead with healthcare instead of job-creation, more economic overhaul or a series of smaller-scale initiatives. In realizing healthcare as a confidence-vote, it’s clear why. Following a healthcare defeat, President Obama would be a President without the full support of either party. If healthcare goes down, Republicans and moderate Democrats will have delivered something unprecedented in American politics: a vote of no-confidence.

Without healthcare, President Obama is paralyzed.

Unless President Obama and the Democrats desire a national vote of no-confidence in November 2010, the fruitless, misguided and public relations disaster that has been “Health Insurance Reform” needs to come to screeching halt immediately – but this White House will continue to push, and push hard for something that Americans do not want now, nor ever. If it does pass, it will be with razor-thin majorities that have required backroom deals, rule breaking and the literal purchasing of our moderate Senators.

No confidence, indeed.

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Stephen Marche’s “A Thousand Words About Our Culture” is my favorite part of Esquire magazine. Every month I look forward to his snarky commentary and his original cultural juxtapositions. His column always makes me laugh, but it also always makes me think. Although Marche bitches about the Academy, celebrity suicide and John Mayer’s recent blunder, his own game of connect the dots speaks to a louder and more important concern with American morale. While many of us, myself included, talk down to Perez groupies and Us Weekly aficionados, Marche reminds me that just because ours is a society a little too interested in celebrity culture, our heads aren’t entirely in the clouds.

Every day—or every hour, even every few minutes, depending on your habitual news intake—the world slams us with differing visions of war. Written publications feed us war politically, filtering our consumption to important names, dates and places of news incumbents, policy legislation and V- and D-Day approximations. News anchors arrange and rearrange much of these same written news stories over and over again, with the additional photo or video of the goings-on in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thanks to these visual snippets, gamer-like images of blurry soldiers in action dance around in our heads.

And then there are the movies—the previews at the theatre, the online trailers, the commercials between your prime time television favorites and, of course, the theatrics themselves. War movies have been an American favorite for decades, grossing millions at the box office and receiving critical acclaim at award ceremonies like Sunday night’s Oscars. This month, Marche’s A Thousand Words About Our Culture brought the differing archetypical war stories into the limelight. Coining them the “virtuous struggle of good over evil,” the “moral minefield” or the “thrilling nightmare,” he asks the question, which war are you watching?

As expected, war movies change as the wars we fight change. Psychological dramas and thrillers about war and its mental caveats replace realist action epics like Saving Private Ryan or Black Hawk Down. Today’s Iraq War based HBO series The Pacific and the this year’s Green Zone explore the tumultuous moral conundrum of the American soldier in Iraq. Even the romance is bleak in today’s war films. Remember Pearl Harbor, the box office hit in which two best friend heartthrobs share a girl when the original boyfriend is presumed dead? Well, this year’s Iraq War version, Brothers, is far darker, capturing the dismal mindlessness of our generation’s Vietnam.

The days of war when the good guys and bad guys wore easily distinguishable uniforms are over. We craved the viscerally realist depictions of war, as Marche describes, back when “the conflict had a clear beginning, middle, and end, throughout which the U.S. was the ultimate hero.” We could stomach trench warfare because after the war was over, the movie reminded us that after all that bloody gore and guts, “America taught the world the true meaning of victory, rebuilding its enemies with magnanimity, generosity, and wisdom.” But these days the heroic tales of World War I and II may be too kitschy for the current hopeless deathtoll.

The Academy’s underdog, The Hurt Locker, took home many awards Sunday night, including Best Picture, making Marche’s question a very important one. The Hurt Locker laid the smack down on the highest grossing movie in the history of cinema, Avatar. Somehow the “bravery versus bravado” drama about the challenges of the human psyche under fire proved impervious to James Cameron and technology’s ten-year love child. The Hurt Locker’s official website described the film as a “gripping portrayal of real-life sacrifice and heroism, and a layered, probing study of the soul-umbing rigors and potent allure of the modern battlefield.” Apparently, that’s the kind of war we want to watch today—one that legitimizes our psychological crisis. Today’s war fields are mental battle zones, and glorifying our confusion on the silver screen somehow exonerates us.

The Golden State’s got gangrene. It’s been wounded for a while, bleeding out. A $20.7 billion budget deficit. A $14.4 billion projected gap between revenue and spending in 2010-11. A 12.5% state unemployment rate. A state constitution written for a population of 800,000 rather than California’s current 36,961,664 residents. And a state legislature too hamstrung by the two-thirds majority requirement to pass a substantial budget.

The state dug its ditch back in 1978 with the passage of Proposition 13, a voter initiative that all but crippled the state’s ability to accrue significant revenue from property taxes. And with the current housing crisis shrinking property values, the piddling revenue that property taxes do provide continues to dwindle into obscurity, stretching the budget gap.

Therefore, as CA Senate candidate Tom Campbell pointed out in a New York Times article last year, “Over 50 percent of [California’s] revenue is dependent on personal income tax.” Unfortunately, the growing unemployment rate isn’t helping matters. And rather than looking to those citizens with jobs to close, or at least maintain, the budget gap, the state used $30.2 billion of its $85 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act allotment for tax relief.

Now, with less revenue to cut the deficit, the state is cutting jobs as well as purging prisons. But according to California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office, Schwarzenegger’s prison population reduction proposal to reduce the inmate population by about 24,500 inmates in 2010–11 would only save about $255 million by fiscal year 2011-12.

But even then, how much does it really save? The newly free come with a cost—albeit not one the state will be able to take to the bank. With businesses barely hiring as is, how many are looking to hire someone with a record, even if it positions them better for tax breaks? Not enough. And what politician would propose a program to get these ex-cons jobs? One who wants to lose his, because his constituents aren’t fixing help anyone but themselves and their own. So many of the newly free will opt for other, non-taxable means, maybe crime and maybe not. But some will choose the former, especially with the low probability of getting locked up again so long as they play their cards smart. They know very well that the state can’t afford it.

Not that any of the main gubernatorial candidates are willing to do much about it. . The Democratic nominee, current state attorney general and former two-term governor Jerry Brown, has vowed that “in this time of recession … there will be no new taxes, unless you the people vote for them.” (It should be noted that as governor, Brown opposed Prop. 13, calling it “a can of worms,” but after it passed with 65% of the vote, he agreed to follow voters’ orders, championing himself a “born-again tax-cutter.”) Both leading GOP nominees, former eBay CEO and political tyro Meg Whitman and one-term state insurance commissioner Steve Poizner, have advocated further tax cuts in hopes that they will stimulate the economy and spur hiring.

Furthermore, the state legislature isn’t helping matters. With a two-thirds majority required to pass a fiscally strong budget, a kidney stone’s easier to eke out. The Times paints it as “a standoff between the parties of ‘no more taxes’ (Republicans) and ‘no more cuts’ (Democrats).”

The idea of cutting taxes as well as spending is nice. But don’t complain when no one’s around to fix the potholes outside your house and you pop a tire on the way to work. Don’t complain while your car is in the shop and the buses aren’t running so you can’t even hitch a ride to work. Don’t complain when you’re fired because your company no longer gets its tax breaks for keeping you. Don’t complain when you can’t collect unemployment because it no longer exists. Don’t complain when the Salvation Army won’t help you out because they’re broke too since no one’s getting tax deductions for donations,  so no one’s donating. And don’t complain to your congressman, hell no, he’s not listening to anyone footing his bills.

California’s economic potholes need filling, not politicians and the populace digging in their heels.

Of course no one wants to shell out their own cash for anyone else, and no one wants their pocket picked. But, please, shelve any Stamp Act argument. The colonists weren’t arguing against taxes but against taxation without representation, without consent. Therefore, a republic was founded, i.e. a representative democracy. Your consent lies with your congressmen. So, don’t like your taxation with your representation? Get new representation.

As Gordon S. Wood writes in Empire of Liberty, his history of the early republic: “Although [farmers in debt] were willing to resort to violence if the tax burden became too heavy, as events in several states revealed, they were discovering that electing the right candidates was more effective.”

Unfortunately for Californians, the current candidates would rather be elected than effective, catering to voters as opposed to serving up their own menu.

If asked whether I considered myself a pragmatist or an idealist, I would probably pick the latter. But the recent progressive push to oust Arkansas’ Sen. Blanche Lincoln, a moderate Democrat, by the progressive wing of the Democratic Party seems to go beyond idealism and to enter the realm of the purely ill-advised. As frustrated I am with “Blue Dog” Democrats preventing the passage of real health insurance reform, I don’t think that targeting moderate Southern Democrats is a good idea – especially in this election cycle.

A cursory review of the polls will reveal that the Democratic majority is at risk in the House, and possibly in the Senate as well.  Four Democratic senators have announced that they will not be seeking re-election. As a lifelong pessimist, and a political science major, (and a person with eyes) I can say that things are not looking good for the Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections. Without a doubt, many, if not all, of those working at MoveOn.org and the other organizations that have been flooding my inbox asking for donations to support Lincoln’s primary challenger recognize this as well.

This is why I am baffled that they are trying to get Arkansas’ (supposedly) progressive Lieutenant Governor to beat Lincoln in the primary. This is, I repeat, Arkansas. Polling puts either Republican ahead of either Democrat.

I’ll grant that Lincoln is polling particularly badly, but if you want a Democrat to win in Arkansas, Democrats should replace her with a moderate – not a progressive. As one who makes frequent use of it, I know the argument: why bother putting a moderate Democrat in when he won’t vote with us when it counts? The thing is, this isn’t Connecticut (I was a Lamont supporter). This is not a place where progressives generally poll well. Even if the progressive candidate does win the primary, and manages to squeak by in the general election (in a year when the tide is against the Democratic Party), we must ask ourselves: how much good will he do, compared to how much good someone who ran as a moderate would do?

I would argue that progressives would gain very little. A progressive elected by a moderate state would likely reflect his moderate constituency in his votes. Granted, his votes might also reflect his personal progressivism, but a senator elected by a slim majority by a moderate – perhaps even conservative – constituency will likely not stray far from how they would like him to vote (or how he expects they would want him to vote).

What are the benefits of running a moderate? A moderate Democrat is far more likely to win the seat in Arkansas. A moderate Democrat is far better than a conservative Republican. A moderate Democrat will side with the party, at the very least, on procedural votes. A moderate Democrat will count toward the Party’s majority in the Senate.

This last point, in my opinion, is the most important issue right now. While seemingly unimportant, the majority party actually gets to control the rules of the chamber, all of the committee chairmanships, and it gets to have a majority on every committee. Given the Democratic Party’s inability to pass healthcare even with a supermajority, I suspect that if they lose their majority in the Senate they will be able to get even less done. I would much rather have one more moderate Democrat and a Democratic majority than a failed progressive Democratic candidate, and no majority at all.

One of the favorite phrases of the gay rights movement seems to be ‘inevitable’ and the post California/Maine strategy this: ride it out and wait.

There seems to be a general agreement that this upcoming generation, my generation, (and those younger,) will simply usher gay marriage into the norm as we take over the voter rolls.
There’s good reason to hold this belief: over two-thirds of those under age 30 support gay marriage, and virtually the entire generation supports legal recognition of ‘some kind.’

We’re the complete reverse of our grandparents generation (where support for gay marriage hovers around 20%) and far more accepting than our parents generation (support has stayed consistently between 35 and 45%.)

There is no doubt the internet generation will bring about wide-spread acceptance of gays and lesbians (indeed, it already has among the nation’s colleges and universities.) But I’m willing to raise a question I’ve hardly even heard asked: what if our generation, like our parent’s generation, and nearly every generation before that, becomes more socially conservative as they grow older?

It’s not an often asked question but it’s surely worth consideration. Gay marriage is a new issue, and it’s nearly impossible to track how views progress and change on the issue since the mere concept of same-sex marriage didn’t really become a mainstream topic until the 1990s.  We can’t be sure if support for gay marriage, like support for abortion, will start to drop off as young adults become parents, have their own children and become the “American Family” that groups like Focus On The Family and National Organization for Marriage seek to shore-up and push to the polls to ‘protect’ society against gay marriage.

How do we know that our friends, who are pro-gay marriage now, will not adopt the position many of our parents now have – socially accepting of our gay friends and family, but draw the line at marriage? Do we know, for sure, that when those who are now so-called ‘straight-allies’ go off and get married, at least some of them won’t suddenly have a new understand of marriage, or at the very least, change their mind and become susceptible  to the arguments of a group like National Organization for Marriage? The answer that should grab the attention of equality activists is: no, we don’t.

Take abortion for example: polls taken in the 1980s and 1990s showed that women who are now currently in their 40s and 50s were overwhelmingly (60+ %) pro-choice. Polls taken today tell a much different story: These Women have ended up opposing Abortion in larger numbers.

There is no foreseeable way that such a large pro-gay marriage majority among the internet generation will suddenly revert to a pro-traditional marriage majority – the question is likely better phrased this way: how large of a majority will marriage equality activists have? I would caution any activist from assuming their majority among the current 18-30somethings will be any larger than it is right now. Those who haven’t been swayed by college, family, or workplace experiences and friends yet likely aren’t going to budge, and it’s fair to say that at least some young adults who are currently pro-gay marriage may align themselves with more socially conservative causes in the future, vis-à-vis abortion.

There is one statistical certainty that works in gay rights activists’ favor: when someone personally knows a gay person, they are three-times more likely to support gay marriage. Simply coming out has had an immeasurable effect when it comes to breaking into the baby-boomer generation, and likely explains to huge wave of support gay marriage enjoys among the internet generation. Plus, when an anti-gay speaker gets booed off stage at CPAC, you know things can’t be too bad.

These questions have no answer because only time will be able to tell, and with no historical statistics or examples to pour-over, whether or not the internet generation will shift to the right on its gay friends will be standing question over at least the next decade.

This question does, however, bring new urgency to the cause of marriage equality supporters: just because equality has a lead among young people now, doesn’t mean it can be counted on for the future – they may want to start shoring up their supporters as the oldest of the iGen starts to pop the question.

I was not planning on writing about the Healthcare Summit that took place in Washington last week. However, upon reading Kevin Hollinshead’s Olbermann-esque sob story, I felt it was my duty to clarify a few disparities. From what I could derive, the main tools of the Democratic faction in last Thursday’s forum were anecdotes that could not be easily verified.* To put them concisely, cost was the common denominator in the instances brought forth as evidence of a broken system.

While I do not believe our healthcare system is perfect, it’s important to understand that no healthcare system has achieved this feat. In a large country like the United States, it’s inevitable that unfortunate lapses and mistreatments will occur in the delicate practice of medicine. No country or region in the Western world is without its healthcare problems. For a list of combating sob-stories from far more “advanced” countries like Britain, Canada, Australia, and Ireland, look here: http://www.biggovhealth.org/stories.  For those of you who do not have the time to analyze this contrasting set, the crux of these sad tales are not laden in affordability, but rather in accessibility. When doctors are made to be wage workers, the result is a decline in the quality of medicine. A great example of this can be found in the UK, where in 2004, “as a cost-cutting measure, the government negotiated low salaries for general practitioners in exchange for allowing them to cut back the hours they practice.” The result? Few are now available nights or weekends and more than half of British patients wait 18+ weeks for care.

Many oppose healthcare, though this is not in opposition to the goal of everyone having coverage. Instead, disapproval is rooted in the realization that the government cannot operate a sixth of the economy more efficiently than the private sector. Originally, President Obama advocated a parallel government structure to “keep the standards up” for private and public services. Again, this results in a decline in quality. Against the British Employer-based system, “the United States has four times as many MRI units per million people and twice as many CT scanners. The situation would be worse without the existence of the small private insurance sector. Private insurance puts competitive pressure on sickness funds, pushing them to expand their quality and services. At one time, CT scanners were even rarer in the public system, available only under exceptional circumstances and after long waits, yet relatively common in the private sector.”

The most outspoken Republican Senators and Congressmen proposed means to decrease the cost of healthcare by increasing competition and pushing for tort reform. Sen. Tom Cobourn, Rep Eric Cantor (who earned a chastising from President Obama for bringing in *gasp* the actual bill), and Sen. Lamar Alexander did a decent job of outlining the Republican perspective on Healthcare. (Gov. Mitch Daniels gave a great overview of Indiana’s answer to healthcare in a Wall Street Journal piece published Monday.) However, the standout player for the Republican Party was Rep. Paul Ryan, who cut through the anecdotes and vague generalizations to give definitive criticism that has yet to be refuted:

“- This bill does not control costs (or) reduce deficits. Instead, (it) adds a new health care entitlement when we have no idea how to pay for the entitlements we already have.

- The bill has 10 years of tax increases, about half a trillion dollars, with 10 years of Medicare cuts, about half a trillion dollars, to pay for six years of spending. The true 10-year cost (is) $2.3 trillion.

- The bill takes $52 billion in higher Social Security tax revenues and counts them as offsets. But that’s really reserved for Social Security. So either we’re double-counting them or we don’t intend on paying those Social Security benefits.

- The bill takes $72 billion from the CLASS Act (long-term care insurance) benefit premiums and claims them as offsets.

- The bill treats Medicare like a piggy bank, (raiding) half a trillion dollars not to shore up Medicare solvency, but to spend on this new government program.

- The chief actuary of Medicare (says) as much as 20% of Medicare providers will either go out of business or have to stop seeing Medicare beneficiaries.

- Millions of seniors who have chosen Medicare Advantage (Medicare through a private insurer) will lose the coverage that they now enjoy.”

No medical structure is perfect and I doubt there will ever be one that fulfills everyone’s needs. I have no qualms with driving down the cost of healthcare, but the President’s proposal is not the way I believe we can achieve that end. (Again, Universal Coverage is the wrong answer – Friedrich Breyer, an economist from Konstanz University in Germany, estimated that “health care spending could reach 30 percent of [their] GDP by 2020.” As a result, Germans have to co-pay more and more of their services. “Germans pay out of pocket for about 13 percent of total health care spending, only slightly less than Americans.”) Until the Democrats justify their plan by substantively refuting the points of Rep. Ryan, I see no need to succumb to a system more privy to the universal incompetence of government control.

* – The whole affair reminded me of the Sadler report where stories of the industrial age were “exposed,” yet no person quoted could be convinced to testify under oath.

Starting in 2004, with the election of Colorado Senator Ken Salazar, the west steadily got bluer and bluer. By 2008, Colorado, Montana, Kansas, Wyoming and New Mexico had all elected democratic governors. Nevada, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota had all elected at least one Democrat to the Senate, with many of the states having a majority of Democratic Members of the House.

Many of these Democrats are moderate and have a wide appeal, yet despite their former popularity and current centrism, the “D” on the ballot may be their downfall.

With traditionally liberal states like New Jersey and Massachusetts electing Republicans, the Democrats in the West have a lot to be afraid of. The economy is still in shambles, we’ve seen very little progress on health care reform, and it seems the government is getting bigger and bigger—all things that Westerners fear and will likely reject come Election Day.

Can the Democrats hold on to the West?

Democrats rose to power in the west by running moderate Democrats in moderate-to-conservative districts. These moderate districts and states rejected the Republicans in 2006 and 2008 because the GOP wasnt delivering, but the roles are now reversed and the Democrats are the ones underperforming. They are the next victims of the political backlash that inevitably happens every midterm election, though perhaps this backlash will be worst due to big government and fiscal concerns, and it could be particularly bad in the West.

The typical Western voters are rural farmers who need to see an improvement in the economy and environmental policy, none of which has really been achieved by Washington. Simply put, many feel the elected officials whom they trusted have betrayed them. The Democrats must act with their western, moderate constituents in mind in the next few months.

Figures like John Tester and Ken Salazar gained a reputation for being “men of the people.” They traveled around Montana and Colorado talking to people from all walks of life and promised to focus on the specific needs of the moderate, rural West – a novel campaign from Washington Democrats. They were accessible and seemingly compassionate. Democrats need to hold onto their grassroots and strive to understand their constituents and they better do it better than the Republicans.

Democrats have very little to show from the 111^th Congress.  While much of the gridlock is not their fault, the divisions within the party have weakened them considerably. All those who were filled with hope by Obama and other Democrats feel let down, and arguably justified in this opinion. While it was impossible to expect turn around in a short amount of time, disappointment is felt across the country, Westerners included. This round of midterms, the West is nearly completely up for grabs and littered with toss-ups.

It was the new Democrats from the West who sent the Republicans packing in 2006 and 2008…will those same voters turn around two years later to send them back?

Five year-old Kyler VanNocker of Edgewater Park, NJ has neuroblastoma, a rare and deadly type of childhood cancer that attacks the nervous system, leaving his body riddling his body with tumors. Diagnosed at 2 ½, he has cumulatively spent almost a quarter of his young life in and out of hospitals, nearly dying twice from complications.

He was finally granted a reprieve in September 2008 when his cancer went into remission. For the next year, he enjoyed a relatively normal childhood.

Then, Kyler’s cancer returned. Recurrent neuroblastoma is much harder to treat; Stephen Grupp, the boy’s oncologist, said that he needed two or three rounds of a treatment called MIBG therapy, in which a radioactive drug, delivered intravenously, bombards tumor sites with radiation. The nightmare would finally end, right?

Wrong. Kyler’s insurance carrier, Harrisburg, PA-based HealthAmerica, denied coverage for the treatment, which it considers “investigational/experimental” because there is “inadequate evidence in the peer-reviewed published clinical literature regarding its effectiveness.” The company also requires that a treatment be approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Only about 650 children in the U.S. are diagnosed with neuroblastoma each year. Half of them, including Kyler, have the most lethal form of the disease. So it’s tough to study a large enough pool of patients like Kyler to yield research results that HealthAmerica might consider valid.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean MIBG is ineffective. “It’s considered the standard of care in Europe and the United States for recurrent neuroblastoma,” Grupp told the Philadelphia Daily News. “It’s not an unproven treatment with no basis in medical science. Actually, the results are often very good.”

Also, the company previously covered two (less expensive) therapies for Kyler that weren’t peer-reviewed or FDA-approved. The first treatment consisted of the only known drug at the time to treat his condition, and the treatment came courtesy of a second drug making its maiden voyage on the market.

Kyler’s father Paul appealed HealthAmerica’s decision. The claim was again rejected. HealthAmerica again cited the MIBG’s “experimental” nature, not the $55,000 per round of treatment it would cost. Paul and Maria VanNocker have filed a lawsuit on behalf of their son, and, in spirit, on behalf of others who’ve had the bad luck of coming between an insurance company and profits.

Right-wing political hacks spent the better part of last year yelping that a public health insurance option would create government ‘death panels’ that would take medical decisions out of doctors’ hands, and place them with soulless bureaucrats.

Well, that’s exactly what we have here. HealthAmerica has decided to place their profits over a doctor’s professional opinion so the company had been effectively calling the shots. To deny Kyler coverage was to prescribe his death.

Fortunately the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), a morbid second home to Kyler lately, proceeded with two rounds of MIBG therapy despite the VanNockers’ inability to pay for it– Kyler’s parents recently declared bankruptcy after pouring in more than $60,000 of their own money (remember, they have insurance) to keep their son alive.

CHOP hopes that HealthAmerica will reverse their decision by reimbursing the VanNockers, or that Medicaid will cover the cost of MIGB, since the bankrupt VanNockers are now eligible for benefits.

Kyler’s condition has improved considerably thanks to MIGB, and his doctors hope to get him started on a treatment regiment that is less toxic to his overall system.

This is not to say Kyler is out of the woods yet. Neuroblastoma, to understate things, is a serious diagnosis, so his prognosis will always be up in the air to a degree. He’s completely at the mercy of his cancer.

But at the moment, because his doctors, all internationally renowned experts on neuroblastoma, and not his insurance company, are making medical decisions, Kyler at least stands a chance of making it to his sixth birthday in November.

Political courage can come in some strange packages, but no matter how the package is wrapped, the contents are still good news for citizens. Jim Bunning, whose Senate career has not been otherwise particularly noteworthy, lately shines like a supernova.

Senator Bunning has recently become a human dartboard for politicians – of both parties – because of his efforts to block an unemployment bill in the Senate. The bill would fund tax credits for health coverage for those who lost their jobs, as well as unemployment benefits and federal highway/transportation projects. His reasoning is simple: we don’t have the money for it. While I always admired the prowess of the former pitcher for the Phillies, Bunning is certainly no hawk when it comes to deficit issues. Ranked one of the worst Senators by Time Magazine, Bunning voted for a lot of questionable bills during the Bush Administration, such as the expansion of Medicare drug benefits. He also authorized funding for two extended wars that we obviously could not afford – thus contributing to the significantly to the deficit that he now rails against.

Credit: Salon

Given the recent history of the budget deficit, Bunning is on the right track. The national debt was not created by the President – but other than announcing some purely cosmetic changes, Obama has done little to formulate a concrete plan to solve this impeding crisis. The deficit is a monster that threatens the quality of life for future generations, and thus imperils the very existence of this country. The first head of this two-headed monster is the national debt itself (sale of government treasury bonds) and the enormous amount tax revenue needed to pay interest on them (servicing the debt); the second head, which looms larger, is the budget itself. These two are interrelated. Apparently realizing this, Bunning refused to increase the budget deficit which is astoundingly in the range of 11.4 trillion dollars.

This is not to say that funding for job creation should not be a national priority; rather, the point is that the funding for this endeavor should be found elsewhere instead of increasing the already-bloated budget deficit, e.g. trimming the defense budget or taking money from the pork barrel projects so beloved by Senators. Their misdirected anger falls upon the deaf ears of Senator Bunning, and rightly so, for there are so many other ways to obtain the money needed for the job bills.

I advance one step further than Senator Bunning: not only should the deficit not be expanded to fund the job bill, but funds to make it happen should be taken from other, over-funded, items. Although such an effort may fill in the category of “lost causes”, such cases are, like the immortal Senator Jefferson Smith in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, really the only ones worth fighting for in the final analysis. Their champion may not be the one we expected, but his message and the consequences of his actions are an alarm bell for the body politic.