Just Like Bush White House, Palin Uses Personal E-mail Accounts And Claims Executive Privilege

Sarah Palin's Personal Emails
The Washington Post reports that Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) is “being asked by a local Republican activist to release more than 1,100 e-mails she withheld from a public records request, including 40 that were copied to her husband, Todd.” Invoking a favored practice of the Bush administration, Palin has claimed executive privilege to keep the e-mails secret — despite the fact many of them were sent to Todd, who is not an elected official.

What’s more, Palin and her staff intentionally use her personal Yahoo e-mail account, perhaps to avoid document release requests:

Palin also routinely does government business from a Yahoo address, gov.sarah@yahoo.com, rather than from her secure official state e-mail address, according to documents already made public.

“Whoops!” Palin aide Frank Bailey wrote, after addressing an e-mail to the governor’s official state address.

“Frank, This is not the Governor’s personal account,” a secretary reminded him.

The lawyer filing the request pointed out that the point of government e-mail is to ensure “security and encryption.” “She’s running state business out of Yahoo?” he asked. Mother Jones reports that Palin’s refusal to hand over e-mails stands in violation of the Alaska Public Records Act.

Palin’s move is eerily reminiscent of Bush administration ploys to dramatically increase secrecy in government, such as when White House aides switched to personal e-mail accounts to avoid subpoenas during the investigation into U.S. Attorney scandal last year:

But just a week after E-mails in the U.S. attorneys case became a main focus of congressional Democrats probing the firings, several aides said that they stopped using the White House system except for purely professional correspondence. […]

At least two aides said that they have subsequently bought their own private E-mail system through a cellular phone or Blackberry server. When asked how he communicated, one aide pulled out a new personal cellphone and said, “texting.”

As Josh Marshall pointed out at the time, if the White House was using personal e-mails, “they can’t have even the vaguest claim” to executive privilege. Similarly, the fact that Palin copies her husband on her e-mails and often uses a personal account raises the question of whether her e-mails are actually official executive business.

Palin’s commitment to secrecy and her stonewalling of an ethics investigation into her role in “Troopergate” are more evidence that a McCain-Palin administration would be little more than a third Bush term.

Down Days for McCain

When it's September and important issues cry out for attention but we seem consumed by trivia -- watch out.
In September 2001, cable news and even some "serious" newspapers were preoccupied with Gary Condit, a married California congressman who had an affair with a Justice Department intern who disappeared and later was found murdered.
The news was all Condit, all the time -- until Sept. 11, when something far more consequential happened and Condit slipped back into obscurity.
This year a calamity has occurred in the financial world. The nonsense about Sarah Palin's family dynamics and other matters, down to and including lipstick on pigs, has been banished by the mayhem on Wall Street as ruthlessly as the Condit story was erased seven years ago.
Once again, New York is the focus of the nation, and the amount of mass media concentrated there guarantees that this economic crisis will remain where it belongs -- at the center of attention.
The presidential candidates certainly recognize the change. It took less than 24 hours after Sunday's dramatic developments involving Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and AIG for John McCain and Barack Obama to prepare new statements and fresh ads on Wall Street issues.
But McCain stumbled at the outset with a comment that the economy is "fundamentally sound," and the Democrats pounced. Obama, campaigning in Colorado, delivered an unusually tough critique of McCain's long record as an advocate of deregulating markets. Obama's message was reinforced by an orchestrated chorus of Democratic voices, liberated from their preoccupation with the governor of Alaska and her family.
Neither man had much to offer in the way of advice. The meetings of Treasury, Federal Reserve and banking officials in New York were dealing with questions of such technical complexity and financial importance that the politicians knew better than to intervene.
That lack of content does not reduce the political significance of what has happened. For months, McCain's managers have understood that his biggest challenge is that eight out of 10 Americans think the country is moving in the wrong direction. There are relatively few things McCain can do to overcome the voters' natural inclination to punish the party in power.
One is to sow doubts about Obama and his prospective actions, and McCain has been assiduous in doing that. He and his cohorts have questioned Obama's experience, criticized his tax policies and challenged his approach to energy issues.
Another is to create a narrative that diverts attention from the voters' fundamental dissatisfaction. That was the purpose of McCain's reform initiative -- a narrative rooted in his own rebel personality and anti-establishment history, reinforced by the choice of Palin as his running mate. That story line was launched well at the Republican National Convention, and it tightened the race.
But now the structural weaknesses in the economy -- already visible in rising unemployment and stagnant incomes for most workers -- have caught up with some of the most famous players in the game. The jobs and savings sacrificed in the great stock market sell-off were significant in themselves. And these were potential Republican voters who took this shellacking. They and their friends and neighbors will be that much harder to enlist in the McCain cause.
The larger effect is the psychological damage to an electorate already struggling to maintain any optimism about the country and its future. For all the excitement Palin has generated, the national mood is still a major barrier for McCain and the Republicans.
There may be other external events that jolt the presidential race -- and the debates are still to come. But for now, Wall Street and its woes are causing big problems for John McCain.

McCain Enabled Economic Meltdown

McCain voted for abolishing all of the significant rules put in place at the time of the Great Depression designed to prevent a repeat.
Gag me with a spoon, as Valley girls used to say. Did you see that McCain-Palin ad promising "tougher rules on Wall Street to protect your life savings, no special interest giveaways"? Just how dumb do they think we are?
Seriously, 20 minutes of Google searches should be sufficient to convince all but the dimwits among us that John McCain has been a master of the special-interest giveaways to Wall Street that enabled this meltdown. He voted for abolishing all of the significant rules put in place at the time of the Great Depression designed to prevent a repeat. The two main bills accomplishing that, bills which McCain enthusiastically supported, were the Commodity Futures Modernization Act and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. The Gramm is former Sen. Phil Gramm, who was chair of the Senate Banking Committee when he acted as chief sponsor of both pieces of legislation. The same Gramm that McCain picked to co-chair his presidential campaign.
Gramm proved an embarrassment when he cavalierly insisted there was no real crisis but only the panic of "whiners," but even on Monday as his "Crisis" ad ran, McCain, in person, was still denying that there was one. "The fundamentals of our economy are strong," he told NBC's Matt Lauer, as two more of the nation's most venerable financial institutions crashed and the stock market shed more than 500 points. When a perplexed Lauer asked McCain to square his optimism with his own ad's use of the crisis word, McCain came to his senses and, discovering his inner Karl Marx, insisted he hadn't been speaking of the bankers but rather was saying "that the workers of America are the fundamentals of the economy."
OK, but never heard that from him before, as he consistently carried water for the bankers going back to his supporting role in the savings and loan scandal, a harbinger of the consequences of a severely deregulated financial market that McCain still favors. Nor did he worry then about the workers who lost their savings while McCain's wife made a million in profit from her deal with Charles Keating, the banker for whom McCain lobbied. Even on Tuesday, while McCain suddenly was thundering against the "unbridled corruption and greed that caused the crisis on Wall Street," he still did not urge anything more stringent than convening a national commission.
Barack Obama has been way ahead of McCain in grasping the severity of the problem and back in March offered a scorching criticism of the deregulation mania, in particular the Gramm-Leach-Bliley law, which allowed the stockbrokers, insurance companies and banks to merge for the first time since the 1930s, ushering in this era of irresponsibility. But that was in the primaries, and now he has turned for advice to Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, who both served as treasury secretaries in the Clinton administration and talked the president into signing that wretched legislation.
As recently as Jan. 31, Rubin, by then Citigroup's executive committee chair, was, like McCain until Tuesday, still in denial on the meltdown, insisting it was merely "all part of a cycle of periodic excess leading to periodic disruption." Fortunately, at that time he was an adviser to Hillary Clinton and remained so past March 27, when Obama delivered his main economic speech blaming for the meltdown the Gramm deregulation that Rubin had helped make law. Referring to the repeal of the Depression-era regulations, Obama stated all too correctly: "Unfortunately, instead of establishing a 21st century regulatory framework, we simply dismantled the old one -- aided by a legal but corrupt bargain in which campaign money all too often shaped policy and watered down oversight. In doing so, we encouraged a winner-take-all, anything-goes environment that helped foster devastating dislocations in our economy."
Not devastating for Rubin and Citigroup, where Rubin went to work, and which was a leader in that $300-million lobbying effort and the first huge beneficiary of the new law that permitted a merger with Travelers Insurance that previously had been illegal.
So, yes, there is a world of difference between Obama and McCain on the main issue that now challenges the American way of life, in which people's homes, retirement, kids' college education and all other dreams are threatened by a mindless deregulation led by the Republicans but which too many influential Democrats supported. What Obama needs to do, both to win and to help save the country, is denounce the whole lot of those scoundrels from both parties and rediscover his populist voice.

‘Barbies for War!’

By Maureen Dowd
Carly Fiorina, the woman John McCain sent out to defend Sarah Palin and rip anyone who calls her a tabula rasa on foreign policy and the economy, admitted Tuesday that Palin was not capable of running Hewlett-Packard.
That’s pretty damning coming from Fiorina, who also was not capable of running Hewlett-Packard.
Carly helpfully added that McCain (not to mention Obama and Biden) couldn’t run a major corporation. He couldn’t get his immigration bill passed either, but now he’s promising to eliminate centuries of greed on Wall Street.
The Wall Street Journal reported that McCain was thinking about taking Palin to the U.N. General Assembly next week so she can shake hands with some heads of state. You can’t contract foreign policy experience like a rhinovirus. To paraphrase the sniffly Adelaide in “Guys and Dolls,” a poy-son could develop a cold war.
The latest news from Alaska is that the governor keeps a tanning bed in the Juneau mansion. As The Los Angeles Times pointed out, when Palin declared May 2007 Skin Cancer Awareness Month in Alaska, the press release explained that skin cancer was caused by “the sun and from tanning beds.”
I sautéed myself in Sarahville last week.
I wandered through the Wal-Mart, which seemed almost as large as Wasilla, a town that is a soulless strip mall without sidewalks set beside a soulful mountain and lake.
Wal-Mart has all the doodads that Sarah must need in her career as a sportsman — Remingtons and “torture tested” riflescopes, game bags for caribou, machines that imitate rabbits and young deer and coyotes to draw your quarry in so you can shoot it, and machines to squish cows into beef jerky.
I talked to a Wal-Mart mom, Betty Necas, 39, wearing sweatpants and tattoos on her wrists.
She said she’s never voted, and was a teenage mom “like Bristol.” She likes Sarah because she’s “down home” but said Obama “gives me the creeps. Nothing to do with the fact that he’s black. He just seems snotty, and he looks weaselly.”
Ten Obama supporters in Wasilla braved taunts and drizzle to stand on a corner between McDonald’s and Pizza Hut. They complained that Sarah runs government like a vengeful fiefdom and held up signs. A guy with a bullhorn yelled out of a passing red car: “Go back to the city, you liberal Communists!”
At gatherings in The Last Frontier, pastors pray for reporters, drilling evokes cheers and Todd Palin is hailed as a guy who likes to burn fossil fuels.
I had many “Sarahs,” as her favorite skinny white mocha is now called, at the Mocha Moose. “I’ve seen her at 4 a.m. with no makeup,” said manager Karena Forster, “and she’s just as beautiful.”
I stopped by Sarah’s old Pentecostal church, the Wasilla Assembly of God, and perused some books: “The Bait of Satan,” “Deliverance from PMS,” and “Kissed the Girls and Made them Cry: Why Women Lose When They Give In.” (Author Lisa Bevere advises: “Run to the arms of your prince and enter your dream.”)
In Anchorage Saturday, I went by a conference conducted by James Dobson’s Focus on the Family and supported by Sarah’s current church, the Wasilla Bible Church, about how to help gays and lesbians “journey out” of same-sex attraction.
(As The Times reported recently, in 1995, Palin, then a city councilwoman, told colleagues she had seen “Daddy’s Roommate” on the shelf of the library and did not approve. The Wasilla Assembly of God tried to ban “Pastor, I Am Gay” by Howard Bess, a liberal Christian preacher in nearby Palmer.)
Anne Heche’s mother, Nancy, talked about her distress when her daughter told her she was involved with Ellen. Jeff Johnston told me he had “a struggle” with homosexuality “for a season,” but is now “happily married with three boys.” (Books for sale there included “Mommy, Why Are They Holding Hands?” and “You Don’t Have to Be Gay.”)
I covered a boisterous women against Palin rally in Anchorage, where women toted placards such as “Fess up about troopergate,” “Keep your vows off my body,” “Barbies for war!” “Sarah, please don’t put me on your enemies list,” and “McCain and Palin = McPain.”
A local conservative radio personality, Eddie Burke, who had lambasted the organizers as “a bunch of socialist, baby-killing maggots,” was on hand with a sign reading “Alaska is not Frisco.”
“We are one Supreme Court justice away from overturning Roe v. Wade,” he excitedly told me.
R. D. Levno, a retired school principal, flew in from Fairbanks. “She’s a child, inexperienced and simplistic,” she said of Sarah. “It’s taking us back to junior high school. She’s one of the popular girls, but one of the mean girls. She is seductive, but she is invented.”

Comparing Bush and McCain

Democrats say that electing John McCain would bring the equivalent of a third Bush term, while Republicans say these charges are just political spin. Here is where Mr. McCain and Mr. Bush stand on key issues.
WHERE THEY MOSTLY AGREE
Abortion and Judges
Both men oppose use of federal money for abortions, including aid to groups that help women obtain them. Both support the ban on Partial-Birth Abortion Act of 2003 and parental notification for minors. Mr. McCain says Roe v. Wade “should be overturned,” altering his 1999 stand, and says he would appoint Supreme Court justices who “strictly interpret the Constitution.” He voted for both of Mr. Bush’s picks to the court. Mr. Bush has not publicly called for repealing Roe.
Education
Mr. McCain generally supports No Child Left Behind, Mr. Bush’s signature education policy. Calling it a “good beginning,” he has said, “there’s a lot of things that need to be fixed” about it. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a McCain adviser, has said “the law needs to start addressing the underlying cultural problems in our education system.”
Diplomacy With Iran and Syria
Like the president, Mr. McCain has ruled out direct talks with Iran and Syria for now. Mr. McCain supported Mr. Bush when he likened those who would negotiate with “terrorists and radicals” to appeasers of the Nazis, a remark widely interpreted as a rebuke to Senator Barack Obama.
Immigration
Mr. McCain supported a 2007 bill, strongly backed by Mr. Bush, that called for establishing a guest-worker program and setting up a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. He sponsored a similar bill in 2006 but this year he said he would not vote for his own proposal now. “Only after we achieved widespread consensus that our borders are secure, would we address other aspects of the problem in a way that defends the rule of law,” he said in February.
Iraq
Mr. McCain supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003 but strongly criticized the Bush administration’s handling of the war in the first four years. He was a vocal advocate of the troop increase strategy, eventually adopted by the president, and has supported Mr. Bush in resisting calls for a withdrawal timetable. Last month, Mr. McCain said he believed the war could be won by 2013; but this month he said a timetable was “not too important,” in comparison with the level of casualties in Iraq.
Guantánamo Detainees
Mr. McCain was a key backer of the 2006 legislation that allowed detainees to be tried in military courts and abolished habeas corpus rights for detainees labeled “enemy combatants” by the administration. He would close the Guantánamo prison and move prisoners to a maximum-security military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kan.
Health Care
Mr. McCain’s proposal to eliminate tax breaks that encourage employers to provide health insurance for their workers is very similar to one that Mr. Bush pushed last year, to little effect. The Bush plan offered a $15,000 tax deduction for families buying their own insurance, while the McCain plan would give a refundable tax credit of $5,000 to families for insurance whether or not they pay taxes. Both men opposed a 2007 bill to expand a children’s health insurance program for lower- and middle-income families.
Medicare
Both support having wealthier Medicare recipients pay higher premiums for prescription drug coverage. In 2003, Mr. McCain voted against the bill that added a prescription drug benefit to Medicare.
Social Security
“I’m totally in favor of personal savings accounts,” he told The Wall Street Journal in March, “along the lines that President Bush proposed.” Mr. Bush did not find enough support in Congress for his proposal to allow workers to divert a portion of Social Security payroll taxes into personal investment accounts in exchange for reduced guaranteed benefits.
Same-Sex Marriage
Mr. Bush supported a constitutional amendment to ban such marriages, but Mr. McCain voted against it, saying states should enact such bans. He said he would consider a constitutional ban if “a higher court says that my state or another state has to recognize” same-sex marriages.
Civil Unions
Both would leave the matter to the states. Mr. Bush said in 2004 that he would not “deny people rights to a civil union” if a state chose to legalize it. Mr. McCain supported a 2005 initiative in his own state, Arizona, that would have blocked civil unions and domestic partnerships. Last month he said that “people should be able to enter into legal agreements” for things like insurance and power of attorney.
Taxes
Mr. McCain would make permanent the large Bush tax cuts he opposed in 2001 and 2003. He has also proposed four new tax cuts of his own: a reduction in the corporate tax rate, immediate tax breaks for corporate investment, a repeal of the alternative minimum tax and doubling the value of exemptions for dependents to $7,000 from $3,500.
Trade
Both are proponents of free trade and support opening up markets with Colombia, Panama and South Korea. They also support education programs to help displaced workers.
Wiretapping and Executive Power
Mr. Holtz-Eakin, a top adviser to Mr. McCain, said last week that Mr. McCain believes that the Constitution gave Mr. Bush the power to authorize the National Security Agency to monitor Americans’ international phone calls and e-mail without warrants, despite a federal statute that required court oversight. When Mr. McCain was asked about the same issue in January, he had said: “I don’t think the president has the right to disobey any law.
SHIFTING AND IMPLEMENTING THE PALIN-FACTOR
Climate Change
Unlike Mr. Bush, Mr. McCain supported first a cap-and-trade program that would set a national ceiling on carbon emissions. Although critical of the Bush administration’s lack of initiatives on the climate, Mr. McCain has said that “America did the right thing by not joining the Kyoto Treaty” and that any such global accord should include China and India, an argument used by Mr. Bush. Ms. Palin says that climate change is not man-made, so, why should one take measures against it?
Energy and Oil
The early Mr. McCain has called for a “great national campaign to put us on a course to energy independence,” adding that the next president must be willing to “break completely” with the energy policies of previous administrations. That he has changed radically. New clean and sustainable energy generating technology is not important he says, because it is too marginally or of no influence to energy production.
Drilling
The early Mr. McCain opposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, once a top goal for Mr. Bush. On Monday, Mr. McCain said the federal ban on offshore drilling should be lifted, allowing states to pursue energy exploration off their coasts. The Bush administration has proposed drilling off the coasts in several states. He picks a well-vetted VP who makes drilling in the ANWF a top-priority.
Tax Breaks
Mr. Bush opposes a windfall profits tax on oil companies. Mr. McCain has voted against similar taxes in the past, but at a certain moment he said he was “angry at the oil companies not only because of the obscene profits they’ve made but at their failure to invest in alternate energy.” Ms. Palin increased taxes on oil and gas-industries in Alaska and made profit for the state by high energy-prices.
Renewable Energy
Both support development of more nuclear power. Mr. McCain urged the Bush administration to waive requirements for high ethanol production, blaming the alternative fuel for driving up food prices. He has made a 180 degrees turn around on ethanol and doesn’t mention higher food prices anymore. Ms. Palin falsely claiming that Alaska already provides 20% of the USA’s fuel consumption (in real 2.5%) added that full extension of drilling and building the appropriate infrastructure (pipelines) will make America energy-independent.
Federal Spending
Mr. McCain has sought to emphasize his differences with Mr. Bush by portraying himself as a stronger opponent of pork-barrel projects and other wasteful spending. He says he would not sign any earmarked projects into law and would cut financing for ineffective programs, including Amtrak. Mr. Bush has so far allowed earmarks in spending bills, but signed an executive order this year directing federal agencies to ignore earmarks that Congress did not vote on. Mr. McCain would also put a one-year freeze on discretionary spending, except veterans benefits and the military. Mr. Bush has had a similar freeze in place. Ms. Palin is the undisputed pork-barrel champion of the USA.
Interrogation Tactics
Mr. McCain has battled the Bush administration on a number of bills to end torture by the U.S. But this year he voted against a bill to force the Central Intelligence Agency to abide by the rules set out in the Army field manual on interrogation. He said that a 2005 law he helped pass already prohibits the C.I.A. from “cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment.” But the same law gives the president the last word in establishing specific permissible interrogation techniques. The Bush administration has not ruled out waterboarding, considered illegal by Mr. McCain, as impermissible. The point of McCain-Palin is that torture is no real torture if the prisoner survives, not mentioning that the prisoner frequently doesn’t survive in the end.
Arms Control
Mr. McCain, trying to distance himself from Mr. Bush, said he would pursue a new arms control accord with Russia. His proposal to eliminate tactical nuclear weapons in Europe and his calls for nuclear talks with China set him apart from the president as well. In the past, Mr. McCain urged Mr. Bush to return to his demand for a complete and irreversible disarmament of North Korea’s nuclear programs. The Bush administration began relying on diplomacy to persuade North Korea to begin dismantling its nuclear program. It’s a move towards Obama’s views but McCain persists in the old Bush-policy of no talks with the “evils”. Calling Europe America’s arch fiend and along Palin’s view seeking war with Russia about Georgia the places in politics are adrift as they were for seven long Bush-years.

Health’s Gain May Be Army’s Loss

Call it the law of unintended consequences. When you fix one thing, it messes up other things.
If the Democrats win the election this year, and are able to enact a health care plan that extends adequate coverage to all Americans, the loser could be the Army. Getting enough people to enlist could become a major problem for the next president.
Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate, has already pointed out that Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate, never served in the military. It remains to be seen how potent that will be as an issue, given the fact that the last four presidential elections have been won by the candidate with the less impressive military resume.
But there is something else that distinguishes Mr. Obama from all recent candidates for the presidency. He would be the first presidential nominee to come of age after the draft was abolished in the administration of Richard M. Nixon. He never had to decide how to deal with the draft, and legally was under no more pressure to enlist than he was to go to medical school or become a bus driver. Joining the military was a career option like any other.
And that has made it harder to put the Army together. Government polls show that the proportion of young people who think they might enlist is roughly half what it was in the late 1980s. The military has responded with more recruiters and higher cash enlistment bonuses, and has met its goals. A significant factor for many recruits, it turns out, is the military’s generous health benefits for dependants.
Michael Massing, writing in the April 3 issue of The New York Review of Books, tells the story of one part-time college student from Brooklyn, who was holding down two jobs but still going into debt. “Meanwhile, he got married, his wife got pregnant, and he had no health care. From a brother in the military, he had learned of the Army’s many benefits, and, visiting a recruiter, he heard about Tricare, the military’s generous health plan.” He enlisted.
It seems a bit perverse that the incentives for a young person with children to join are greater than the incentives for his childless friend. But that is the way it is. All that could change if the push for some kind of national health insurance program were to be successful.
It is true, of course, that Democrats have been talking about such things for generations. The failure of health care legislation during Bill Clinton’s first two years in office left some viewing the issue as political dynamite — good for a campaign but fatal to anyone who tries to pass a specific program. It is quite unclear how the government would pay for a comprehensive program, and no candidates seem eager to discuss ways to hold down health care spending.
But if such a program were adopted, it seems likely that the military, and particularly the Army, would feel the immediate effect. To expand the Army, as all the candidates say they want to do, would require some other incentive for enlistment, particularly when the economy recovers.
In the near term, it is possible that a recession will improve the military’s recruiting success. The official unemployment rate is growing but still low, however the proportion of Americans who expect the job picture to improve is at its lowest level in a quarter century, according to the Conference Board’s consumer confidence survey. That survey shows that younger people are still more confident than older ones, but the confidence of both groups has fallen sharply this year.
One partial solution to the negative effect on enlistment of a health care plan for all could be a new G.I. education benefit. Both the House and Senate have approved such a plan, but as part of the Iraq funding bill on which there are major differences. President Bush is opposed to the legislation (and so did Senator John McCain), which its sponsors say would cost $50 billion over 10 years, and it is far from clear it will be enacted.
The bill approved by the Congress would give enhanced education benefits to all veterans who spent three years in the military after Sept. 11, 2001. They would be eligible for full tuition at a public university, and about $1,000 a month for living expenses and more for books.
Senator Jim Webb, a freshman Democrat and Vietnam veteran, is the principal Senate sponsor of the legislation. He argued — with something less than precise data — that passage of the bill would increase enlistment by 16 percent, and bring in more high-quality recruits who valued the education benefit. Both Senator Obama and his former Democratic rival, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, support that bill.
Senator McCain has proposed a less costly alternative that would provide better benefits to those who stay in the military longer. The try until you die principle. He should have a point if joining the army is healthy. Last year about three-quarters of Army volunteers who completed their first term of enlistment, and nearly as many marines, chose not to re-enlist. Offering better education benefits after three years could encourage enlistment and discourage re-enlistment.
If we get a real health care plan for all Americans, it might require something like the Webb bill — or a very unpopular revival of the draft — just to keep fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The backers of health care legislation do not want to hurt the Army, but that is what could happen.

McCain’s Radical Agenda on Health Care

Talk about a shock to the system. Has anyone bothered to notice the radical changes that John McCain and Sarah Palin are planning for the nation’s health insurance system?

These are changes that will set in motion nothing less than the dismantling of the employer-based coverage that protects most American families.
A study coming out Tuesday from scholars at Columbia, Harvard, Purdue and Michigan projects that 20 million Americans who have employment-based health insurance would lose it under the McCain plan.
There is nothing secret about Senator McCain’s far-reaching proposals, but they haven’t gotten much attention because the chatter in this campaign has mostly been about nonsense — lipstick, celebrities and “Drill, baby, drill!”
For starters, the McCain health plan would treat employer-paid health benefits as income that employees would have to pay taxes on.
“It means your employer is going to have to make an estimate on how much the employer is paying for health insurance on your behalf, and you are going to have to pay taxes on that money,” said Sherry Glied, an economist who chairs the Department of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
Ms. Glied is one of the four scholars who have just completed an independent joint study of the plan. Their findings are being published on the Web site of the policy journal, Health Affairs.
According to the study: “The McCain plan will force millions of Americans into the weakest segment of the private insurance system — the non-group market — where cost-sharing is high, covered services are limited and people will lose access to benefits they have now.”
The net effect of the plan, the study said, “almost certainly will be to increase family costs for medical care.”
Under the McCain plan (now the McCain-Palin plan) employees who continue to receive employer-paid health benefits would look at their pay stubs each week or each month and find that additional money had been withheld to cover the taxes on the value of their benefits.
While there might be less money in the paycheck, that would not be anything to worry about, according to Senator McCain. That’s because the government would be offering all taxpayers a refundable tax credit — $2,500 for a single worker and $5,000 per family — to be used “to help pay for your health care.”
You may think this is a good move or a bad one — but it’s a monumental change in the way health coverage would be provided to scores of millions of Americans. Why not more attention?
The whole idea of the McCain plan is to get families out of employer-paid health coverage and into the health insurance marketplace, where naked competition is supposed to take care of all ills. (We’re seeing in the Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch fiascos just how well the unfettered marketplace has been working.)
Taxing employer-paid health benefits is the first step in this transition, the equivalent of injecting poison into the system. It’s the beginning of the end.
When younger, healthier workers start seeing additional taxes taken out of their paychecks, some (perhaps many) will opt out of the employer-based plans — either to buy cheaper insurance on their own or to go without coverage.
That will leave employers with a pool of older, less healthy workers to cover. That coverage will necessarily be more expensive, which will encourage more and more employers to give up on the idea of providing coverage at all.
The upshot is that many more Americans — millions more — will find themselves on their own in the bewildering and often treacherous health insurance marketplace. As Senator McCain has said: “I believe the key to real reform is to restore control over our health care system to the patients themselves.”
Yet another radical element of McCain’s plan is his proposal to undermine state health insurance regulations by allowing consumers to buy insurance from sellers anywhere in the country. So a requirement in one state that insurers cover, for example, vaccinations, or annual physicals, or breast examinations, would essentially be meaningless.
In a refrain we’ve heard many times in recent years, Mr. McCain said he is committed to ridding the market of these “needless and costly” insurance regulations.
This entire McCain health insurance transformation is right out of the right-wing Republicans’ ideological playbook: fewer regulations; let the market decide; and send unsophisticated consumers into the crucible alone.
You would think that with some of the most venerable houses on Wall Street crumbling like sand castles right before our eyes, we’d be a little wary about spreading this toxic formula even further into the health care system.
But we’re not even paying much attention.