In my bread-and-butter job, I'm an advocate for home health care.  The patients of home health are the frail elderly and the low-income disabled, which means 90% of the revenue stream for home care is Medicare/Medicaid.  Those of you who follow health care politics know that this translates into home care sitting on the bottom rung of the health care pay scale.  In fact, home care providers qualify as the "working poor."

These working poor make house calls to dispense their care and compassion, which means they drive (especially here in rural Wisconsin).  When your drive for your living, you get killed when gas costs go insane, as they are now.  When you're poor and you drive for a living, you reach a point when you just can't do it.  In this case, that will mean frail elderly patients and low-income disabled will either go without care or be forced into institutional care (where the risks for them and the costs for all of us are higher).

I asked Exxon to help.  The reply is below the fold.

Cross-posted at Street Prophets.

I've been a subscriber to "Campaigns & Elections"  magazine for a couple of years now, and I've noticed that the last several issues have been trending lightweight and rightwing (not that the publication was ever "deep" or progressive).  The current issue actually gave a byline to Dick Morris.  This, I call, the last straw.  Anyone have any advice for better publications for geeks like me who are interested in the nuts and bolts of campaigns?

Michael Moore is saying that HMOs were born when Edelman talked Nixon into it with the argument that Kaiser in California had come up with a way to deny care to people and make a greater profit.  I'm wondering....

Cindy Sheehan's leaving the peace movement to go home and be a mom.  She's lost everything in giving us her best.  Can't we help her out and say thanks at the same time?

The link below takes you to a YourTube program put together by a 15-year-old, Lizzie Palmer.

http://www.youtube.com/...

It is beautiful, touching, gut wrenching -- for both the pro-war and anti-war folks, but for different reasons.  More below....

We gave the world Ed Gein, Jeffrey Dahmer, Tailgunner Joe McCarthy, Donna Shalala, Bud Selig, Tommy Thompson and now, as Ed Garvey notes on his blog....

Joe Repya, as you may recall, wrote an op-ed piece about how tired he was with a whole list of boogeymen back in 2004.  The letter became the darling of the Rightwing nuts and circulated across the Internet. (Repya was identified by his military rank, but not by his co-chairmanship of Veterans for Bush).  Well, it's back and making the rounds, because Repya is running to head the Minnesota Republican Party.

Below is his list of beefs, punctuated by my point-by-point response.  Could be a fun read...

For the sake of any brave lefty/liberal/progressive folks who are thinking of running for office, I'll ask questions they're likely to ponder in the hope of drawing wisdom from the DKos well.  The first, below, is on responding to smear campaigns.

Last time Tommy Thompson ran for president, I wrote an op-ed for the Wisconsin State Journal detailing why he could never be president.  Looking back, there's not much I'd change about that critique.  I would, of course, have to add a chapter on his utter failure as Dubya's HHS secretary, and there's always details you're forced to leave out due to space considerations, but the piece translates pretty well from 1995 to 2007.  You'll find it below the fold...

Mitt the Not-So-Great Hunter only shoots at varmints and has never had a hunting license?  He should feel a kinship with Tommy Thompson, former governor of Wisconsin, former HHS secretary under Dubya and latest Repug to enter the race for preznit....

I'm no expert on either Medicaid or all the details of Tommy Thompson's record, but here's what I know that others may not, but might want to. It ain't pretty.

When Tommy Thompson ran for president back in 1996, I wrote an op-ed piece for the Wisconsin State Journal detailing why he could never be elected president.  At the GOP convention in San Diego, he was referred to by the Republican delegates as "Governor Whiner" and his spotlight never shone beyond the borders of his own skull.  Now, he's back and running again.

In later posts, I'll recount why Thompson cannot be elected president and why his record is one of someone who shouldn't be trusted to clean your garage, much less run the country.  In this post, I'll examine a factor even more fatal to his overblown hopes:  The collective yawn from conservative opinion leaders and faithful.

Shortly after President Kennedy was killed, a list of coincidences between him and President Lincoln began circulating, and has been since.  Things like: both were shot on a Friday; both were shot in the head; both were assassinated by Southerners; both were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson.  

Silly?  Meaningless?  Sure.

But just for grins, here's one for our current president:

I've received yet another chain e-mail telling me how superior things were  in the 1950s.  Actually, this one contends that our superior '50s world produced superior people with superior brains. The contention of the e-mail is that "the lawyers and the government regulated our lives" so now there are things we used to do, that were good for us, but our kids can no longer do.  These things we used to do were so good for us that they turned us into courageous inventors and thinkers.  (Sigh.)

Below, I've taken apart the contention, point by point, and given it a score.  It ain't pretty.

About once a month, I get some e-mail chain letter that carries on about how great Americans and America was in the 1950, and how, in comparison, we're all crap now.  Mostly, they're the whining of conservatives about how the world isn't the way they imagined it was when they were kids.  I delight in replying and proving the lie to the e-mail, point by point.  Today, I turned the fun up another notch and made a preemptive strike.  What follows is a fictional conversation with my grandparents that tries to set the record straight.  The Good Old Days never were....

Transparency in Health Care Insurance
(cross posted from Z Magazine Online)

By Kip Sullivan

Comedian Jon Lovitz used to do a skit for "Saturday Night Live" in which he played Tommy Flanagan, the pathological liar. Lovitz’s character was always telling tall tales that made him look good. When a tale would become so outrageous even he suspected he was about to be exposed, Flanagan would stop for a moment, then, with a huge grin, he would blurt out a new fib and proclaim, "Yeah, that’s the ticket."

The health insurance industry is proving to be a master at the Jon Lovitz routine. For a quarter-century the industry and its apologists in business, politics, and academia told the public managed care would solve the health care crisis. When even diehard defenders of the industry realized in the late 1990s that managed care had flopped, the industry came up with a new excuse to justify its existence and to distract public attention from real health care reform. Of the several names bestowed on the new excuse, the most faddish is transparency in health care. "Yeah, transparency, that’s the ticket."

The governor who gave us this wants to be president.  A federal appeals court has likened conditions in Wisconsin's Supermax prison -- the love child of Tommy Thompson's passions -- to the most punitive "gulags" of the former Soviet Union.

In a stinging 14-page decision, the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals questioned whether the treatment of inmates at the Boscobel prison violated constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment. Read this from the three-judge panel:

Tommy Thompson -- former HHS secretary under Bush and former governor of Wisconsin -- has formed an exploratory committee for a run for the White House in 08.  Oh Please.  This is making me laugh out loud. When he tried this a few years ago, the Repugs at the convention in San Diego derided him as "Governor Whiner."  His own party thinks he's a joke. Below the fold is a roundup of Tommy's record I wrote for TPMCafe a few months ago. For your enjoyment, I've posted it below. Let me know if you think of additions, corrections or updates.