theCLog

Yesterday, Sen. Kay Hagan announced her support of the health care reform package proposed by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, of which she is a member. Hagan’s announcement means that, after contradictory statements by the senator triggered a huge grassroots campaign to push her toward support of a public option as part of the health care plan, she has given her supporters what they wanted.

Probably.

There’s still some confusion about Hagan’s position, as her descriptions of the public option plan appear to contradict the actual words of the proposed law. Sigh. Whatever. Sometimes the best you can do with a politician is to get her to vote for your position whether she’s on top of the issue or not. Come what may, Hagan will vote for committee’s health care reform plan, which includes a public option, which is the reason NC progressives contacted her office in droves over the past couple of weeks. Although Hagan is generally more conservative than many of her supporters, she’s also a bright rookie senator who realizes that she’s in Washington due to a huge wave of progressive support. In other words, sometimes this democracy thing — as in, calling your representatives — actually works.

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In case you haven’t heard the latest craze among right-wing talkers, it’s about Al Carlin, an Environmental Protection Agency analyst who stated his skepticism about global warming. Conservatives are saying that Carlin’s views on climate change were suppressed by EPA honchos because they didn’t agree with Obama administration opinions.

Now, it’s true that conservatives are well-versed in the issue of presidents stifling scientists who oppose their views — Bush did it for a solid eight years, after all. But here’s the big difference: Carlin is not a climate scientist — he’s an economist who wrote some reports on his own, without prompting by the EPA, after taking on the issue of global warming as a “hobby” on his own time. Nothing was “suppressed,” since Carlin’s reports weren’t EPA reports at all. Meanwhile, of course, Sen. James “The global warming debate is predicated on fear, rather than science” Inhofe of Oklahoma is calling for a criminal investigation into the Carlin matter – in order, we imagine, to scare the daylights out of the scientists at the EPA.

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As a follow-up to my column this week on health insurance companies, which has triggered an, er, healthy online discussion (along with the usual name-calling), here’s an interesting sidelight to the debate in Congress. Just how out of touch are some politicians when it comes to average Americans’ struggles with insurance companies? Some of them, specifically Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama and Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, say that the one thing they want to avoid is cutting into health insurance companies’ profits.

Snowe is expected to support health care reform in the end, but Shelby is adamant in opposition, saying that Pres. Obama’s plan for a public option would “destroy the marketplace for health care,” to which most Americans would answer, “*What marketplace?” Since when do Americans enjoy anything resembling a competitive marketplace for health care?

A new report from the reform group Health Care for America Now (HCAN), using AMA data, shows that 94 percent of the country’s insurance markets are “highly concentrated,” according to Dept. of Justice standards. Rather than offering much choice for consumers, the report states, the current health insurance system is “a market failure where a small number of large companies use their concentrated power to control premium levels, benefit packages, and provider payments in the markets they dominate.”

Gee, no wonder premiums have nearly doubled in the last six years, while profits for 10 of the largest health insurance companies shot up over 400 percent. That kind of “marketplace” we can, and should be able to choose to, do without.

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If you’ve been alive on Earth at any point in the last 30 or so years, you’ve engaged from time to time in celebrity worship. Sorry, don’t try to say you haven’t, it’s just not believable.

So, regarding Michael Jackson’s untimely death after an amazingly creative career and sad life, well, umm, I’m just saying … can everyone start to take a deep breath before we all go as nuts as the guy who says MJ’s face has appeared on a piece of toast?

OK, a Web designer was fooling around with Photoshop and paying tribute, albeit in a really odd way, but if you’re like most people, you know at least one person who has gone off the deep end over Jackson’s demise. Try to calm them down, maybe help them make a homemade card, or video or whatever to send to the family. Just don’t fix them any toast for the time being.

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Louisiana and South Carolina may share a reputation for producing wacked out, goofy, or just plain odd politicians, but those states have nothing on North Carolina. We’ve already introduced you to N.C. political weirdos like Congress members Sue Myrick, Patrick McHenry and Virginia Foxx, as well as N.C. House of Representatives Minority Leader Skip Stam. Ready for another one?  Just when you thought you’d gotten used to conservatives turning into crybaby whiners who blame nearly everything on liberal conspiracies, along comes Hugh Webster to up the ante. Webster, a former state senator from Burlington, N.C., is on trial in Caswell County for allegedly using his power of attorney to embezzle money from an elderly aunt. The former state legislator, whose opposition to all things “lib’ul” earned him the Jesse-esque nickname “Senator No” in Raleigh, says he’s not to blame in the current criminal controversy. “They call me a defendant,” said Webster, “I’m a victim.” And you’ll never guess whom he blames for his troubles. It’s “leftists, liberals — the people who would try to rob us of our money and freedoms” who are the evil forces behind Webster’s embezzlement charges. As Betsy Muse of the progressive website BlueNC put it, “I’m not sure if former state senator Hugh Webster is insane or just bat shit crazy, but whatever it is, it is our fault.”

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Are you ready for a former professional comedian as U.S. Senator? You may as well be, because the Minnesota Supreme Court has confirmed that Al Franken was the winner of the election in that state. You remember? There was an election w-a-a-a-y back in November? Franken’s move to the Senate will give the Democrats 60 seats in that venerable body, although it’s not as big an advantage as you’d think, if recent tiffs between liberals and centrists in the party are any indication. Franken will be among the most liberal senators, and by far the funniest (unless you really start thinking about Larry Craig again, but that’s another type of funny).

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Championship caliber chiseler Bernie Madoff was rightfully sentenced to 150 years, i.e., the rest of his life, in prison yesterday for gypping many people out of their savings through the the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. The way I see it, that’s one down — one of several crooks-in-suits who should be headed to jail. My guess, though, is that few of the other weasels will ever be arrested. I’m not talking about the 10 other people who allegedly helped Madoff in his massive fraud, and who are set to be prosecuted next. The crooks I’m referring to are the heads of lending institutions who brought the American economy to its knees and ruined lives while gambling our collective future on ill-considered “ticking time-bomb loans” for way-overpriced houses — high-risk loans which were then bundled and used as collateral for even higher-risk investments. As bad as Bernie Madoff’s crimes were, they pale before the damage done by these shysters. It’s encouraging that Angelo Mozilo, head honcho of scandal-ridden Countrywide Mortgage (which was subsequently bought by Bank of America), has been arrested, but here’s my question: Why haven’t the rest of the leading lights of the mortgage scams and derivatives schemes been hauled off to jail? It’s good that Madoff was caught and prosecuted, but there are bigger criminals — who committed less personal crimes, perhaps, but, still, massive financial crimes against the nation itself — who, apparently, will remain free.

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Ever wonder just how dumb some of the folks at FoxNews and their FoxNation website are? God knows a lot of us do. First, Fox hires someone of dubious IQ like Sean Hannity to be a major voice for their neocon rants (“Sean Hannity: He asks the questions other reporters are too smart to ask”). Then they make fools of themselves by pushing a satirical story , thinking it was true, about disgruntled Muslim students in Maine, which had been created by the parody site Associated Content. Now they’re at it again. Recently, after a tense exchange of quotes by former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge and radio blowhard Rush Limbaugh over who is and isn’t a real Republican, the satirical site Elective Decisions ran a hilarious story which, somehow, the FoxNation site took seriously. Not only took seriously, but kept coming back to in amazement and commenting on, as if they were clueless morons or something. Who’d-a thought, huh?. The Elective Decisions joke story had Ridge saying he was sick of Limbaugh and challenging the famed Oxycontin addict to a boxing match, ending with “I’m calling you out, Limbaugh. Let’s see if you have a big enough set of marbles to back up your crap!”  FoxNation’s geniuses treated it as a factual story, apparently without even checking it out. I’d like to say it’s unbelievable, but the sadder truth here is that, if it’s Fox, it’s all too believable.

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OK, this is the last straw. As you and everyone else on earth knows (Note to the slow: This is an ongoing joke), I made an opening bid for the Charlotte Bobcats a month ago, offering $11,500 ($500 upfront and $100 per month) out of the goodness of my heart, trying to help out poor Bobcats owner Robert Johnson (still no relation to the legendary 1930s bluesman). I thought I was doing the city a favor, taking a chance on a bad financial risk so that our city could continue enjoying mediocre basketball at exorbitant prices. But did the Bobcats appreciate it? Did they even respond? No-o-o-o. Now we find out, thanks to the Observer, that George Postolos, a former CEO for the Houston Rockets, is interested in buying the Bobcats and — this is what gets to me — was invited to tour the Uptown arena and talk about the team’s finances. The nerve! Inviting some out-of-town newcomer to a day of coddling in the Q.C., while a hometown bidder like me gets bupkes, zilch, nuttin’. And just because Pustule or whoever has access to millions of dollars — the ingratitude is staggering! So, although I hate to do it, and hope that Charlotteans won’t suffer as a consequence, I am withdrawing by generous bid for the Bobcats until I receive an apology and a tour of the arena, dammit. Bob, I await your call.

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Tomorrow, June 27, marks the 40th anniversary of the event that triggered the gay rights movement in America: the Stonewall Riots. On June 27, 1969, the New York City Police Department’s Public Morals Squad (sounds like something from the novel 1984, doesn’t it?) raided a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village. Raids were a fairly common occurrence, even though the police received payoffs from the bar’s owners. There was a routine: the cops would raid the place, put bar employees in the paddywagon, go back in to arrest the people who had offended the police’s sensitive moral standards, and the other patrons would scurry away. That night, the bar patrons decided they’d had enough of this kind of treatment and fought back, throwing anything they could get their hands on at the cops, who retreated into the paddywagon for their own protection. The riot didn’t automatically start a movement, of course, but it was the spark that lit the long fuse of frustration felt by gays and lesbians everywhere who, in those days, were disparaged and degraded daily by society’s prejudices. The gay rights movement made tremendous strides and helped change attitudes; gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people are still fighting for the right to be treated as if they’re human beings. As fellow journalist Frye Gaillard once put it, anti-gay sentiment is “the cutting edge of bigotry today.” It ‘s high time — hell, it’s past high time — for members of the LGBT community to be allowed to fully be themselves. Such statements were few and far between 40 years ago; then the Stonewall Riots came.

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