Okay, maybe the exclamation point isn’t quite necessary. But we’ve got a favor to ask. We’d like to get the @tpmmedia twitter to 10,000 today. And we have under a 1000 to go. We’re using Twitter not only to flag some of our best articles and posts but also as a platform to quickly notify TPM Readers about breaking news. So it’s a great little addition to your Twitter feed. Can you help us? Many thanks in advance!
… but we might own it. Longtime reader, on the Haiti situation:
I confess to being underwhelmed by the coverage of Haiti. So much of what I’ve seen has focused on the immensity of the human tragedy and the immediate relief efforts. Very little has stopped to contemplate what this means.
As of today, for all practical purposes, Haiti is an American Protectorate. Its own government, to the extent it ever functioned, has now collapsed. Its major city has been leveled, along with most of the institutions of the state and of civil society. Other states and international institutions will contribute aid and resources. Perhaps the UN will expand its current mission in the nation, and assume formal responsibility. But the only nation capable of keeping Haiti from absolute collapse is the United States. Irrespective of the bodies through which we choose to work, the responsibility is ultimately ours.
If Scott Brown wins on Tuesday, you can bet he’ll arrive in DC the next morning waiting to be sworn in. And there’s just not much precedent for any real delay of swearing in the winner of a special election, as long as the election result is not in dispute. (Oddly, there haven’t been that many Senate special elections — as opposed to appointments until the end of a given senate. So we’re actually trying to figure out now what precedent would apply.) At that point, Health Care Reform will be dead unless the House agrees to pass the Senate bill verbatim — which I really wonder about, given how dug in the progressives in the House are. Barney Frank doesn’t seem to think it’ll happen.
At that point, how incredibly stupid is the dawdling over the last few weeks going to look? The work of a year, arguably the work of a few generations, let go needlessly over a single special election?
It’s really almost beyond comprehension.
Late Update: TPM Reader VL responds … Read More
The Massachusetts senate race is all about Health Care.
But is Scott Brown even providing health care coverage for his staff? He’s got his whole staff working as independent contractors — top to bottom — so they’re paying their own payroll taxes and presumably finding health care coverage on their own.
Looks like PhRMA is getting cold feet and threatening to blow up the deal it has with the White House on supporting health care reform. From the AP:
The drug industry is threatening to end its support for President Barack Obama’s health overhaul effort because of a rift with the administration over protecting brand-name biotech drugs from low-cost generic competitors.
In an e-mail obtained Friday by The Associated Press, the president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America told the trade group’s board members that “we could not support the bill” if the industry is given less than 12 years of competitive protection for the expensive products. …
“Please activate immediately all of your contacts,” said the e-mail from Billy Tauzin, the group’s president.
The late afternoon news that PhRMA, the drug manufacturers lobby, will pull its support from Health Care Reform if it doesn’t get further patent protections on its drugs is quite a commentary on the state of business in Washington today. We’re not naive: each of the big corporate lobbies owns, or at least rents, big chunks of the membership of each body. And making nice with PhRMA was the price of getting enough support in each House of Congress. Fine.
But look at this. Everyone’s already voted. In both chambers. Perhaps someone could change their position if one of the big ticket compromise issues — taxes, abortion, exchanges, etc. — didn’t go their way. But here, is the idea that someone is going to change their vote based on a small revision to the number of years of patent protection against generics because Billy Tauzin giving the ceremonial thumbs down? There’s not even really time or ambiguity enough to come up with a good cover for changing positions on this basis. I guess the answer is yes.