The Weekly Wrangle

The kids are out of school, the temperatures are climbing, the SDEC just met last weekend and accomplished absolutely nothing, and the Texas Progressive Alliance has another blog post round-up. This week's compilation was performed by George Nasser of the Texas Blue.

Neil at Texas Liberal writes about the relocation of the National Cash Register company from Dayton, Ohio to Georgia. Treating people like dirt for 200 years gives Southern states an advantage in creating a so-called "business friendly" low-tax low-wage climate.

BossKitty at TruthHugger is so amazed at the short-sighted policies our state and country continue to pursue. "Buy American" is a path to destruction, as she notes in Isolationist Trends Protect US From Reality.

Lamar Smith wins South Texas Chisme's asshat of the week award. Hyper-partisan Smith thinks all media should be like Fox News.

Who would have thought that an otherwise obscure bill about granting homestead exemptions to folks who lost their house in Hurricane Ike would become the most controversial issue in the first week post-sine die, including a threat by the Land Commissioner to refuse to follow the law if it gets signed by the Governor? Off the Kuff has the details.

Citizen Sarah over at Texas Vox sheds a tear over good environmental bills lost this legislature ... so much for the "solar session".

Burnt Orange Report writer Todd Hill has been selected as an Archer Fellow by UT-Arlington and will be headed to Washington DC in 2010 for a semester.

Vince at Capitol Annex takes a look at the former Tyler mayor looking to replace state representative Leo Berman.

Over at TexasKaos, liberaltexan argues that even Christians at Liberty University should be able to dissent. What a radical idea!

A Devon official strongly suspects a connection between recent North Texas earthquakes and the widespread hydraulic fracturing. Devon and other operators are leaving their mark on TXsharon's statcounter. She wonders what they are so worried about on Bluedaze: DRILLING REFORM FOR TEXAS.

Teddy at Left of College Station reports on the College Station red light camera debate, and covers the week in headlines.

Bay Area Houston has the scoop on Perry calling a special session on Voter ID.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson posts on the excellent first session for Williamson County's Democratic state representative: Diana Maldonado -- Freshman of the Year.

Robert Reich describes how Big Pharma and Big Insurance plan to kill the public health care option, excerpted at Brains and Eggs.

WhosPlayin has AARP's call for Michael Burgess to act decisively on health care.

This week, McBlogger takes a look at some fashion advice from Details.

Lastly, The Texas Blue looks at the big winners and losers of this year's legislative session in Sine Die: The Aftermath.

Richard Shelby claims the 'Douchebag of the Week'

An unbelievable performance from the senior senator from Alabama:



Jed Lewison picks out the highlights if you can't stand to listen to them:

• The Obama administration is "obviously" turning America into a socialist nation.
• "No doubt we're going to government intervention everywhere, government ownership."
• It all started when Obama bailed out the banks last fall. (Yes, that was when Obama was a candidate and Bush was president, a fact Shelby later acknowledged.)
• Obama is "destroying the best health care system the world has ever known" by creating an alternative to private health insurance companies.
• Obama will "destroy the marketplace for health care" and the "American people better be careful in what they want."

Yes we had, Senator Shelby. And what this American person wants and what you want could not be further removed from each other than if I were you and you were RuPaul.

Update: The "best healthcare system the world has ever known" is in 37th place.

Funnies: Some dare call it terrorism

Key Figures in Global Battle Against Illegal Arms Trade Lost in Air France Crash

ARGENTINA: Argentine campaigner Pablo Dreyfus and Swiss colleague Ronald Dreyer battled South American arms and drug trafficking

Amid the media frenzy and speculation over the disappearance of Air France's ill-fated Flight 447, the loss of two of the world's most prominent figures in the war on the illegal arms trade and international drug trafficking has been virtually overlooked.

Pablo Dreyfus, a 39-year-old Argentine who was traveling with his wife Ana Carolina Rodrigues aboard the doomed flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, had worked tirelessly with the Brazilian authorities to stem the flow of arms and ammunition that for years has fuelled the bloody turf wars waged by drug gangs in Rio's sprawling favelas.

Also travelling with Dreyfus on the doomed flight was his friend and colleague Ronald Dreyer, a Swiss diplomat and co-ordinator of the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence who had worked with UN missions in El Salvador, Mozambique, Azerbaijan, Kosovo and Angola. Both men were consultants at the Small Arms Survey, an independent think tank based at Geneva's Graduate Institute of International Studies. The Survey said on its website that Dryer had helped mobilise the support of more than 100 countries to the cause of disarmament and development.

It is always amazing to me that sometimes the unfortunate circumstances of airplane disasters claim the prominent as well as the anonymous as victims.

Though his focus was on Latin America, Dreyfus also advised the government of Mozambique and at the time of his death was preparing to do the same for the government of Angola, where stockpiles of weapons left over from the civil war continue to pose a security problem.

Dreyfus and Dreyer were on their way to Geneva to present the latest edition of the Small Arms Survey handbook, of which Dreyfus was a joint editor. It was to have been their latest step in their relentless fight against evil.

Sunday Funnies: Sotomayor Derangement Syndrome

How Pharma and Insurance intend to kill the public option

Robert Reich:

I'ved poked around Washington today, talking with friends on the Hill who confirm the worst: Big Pharma and Big Insurance are gaining ground in their campaign to kill the public option in the emerging health care bill.

You know why, of course. They don't want a public option that would compete with private insurers and use its bargaining power to negotiate better rates with drug companies. They argue that would be unfair. Unfair? Unfair to give more people better health care at lower cost? To Pharma and Insurance, "unfair" is anything that undermines their profits.

So they're pulling out all the stops -- pushing Democrats and a handful of so-called "moderate" Republicans who say they're in favor of a public option to support legislation that would include it in name only. One of their proposals is to break up the public option into small pieces under multiple regional third-party administrators that would have little or no bargaining leverage. A second is to give the public option to the states where Big Pharma and Big Insurance can easily buy off legislators and officials, as they've been doing for years. A third is bind the public plan to the same rules private insurers have already wangled, thereby making it impossible for the public plan to put competitive pressure on the insurers.

That sorry-ass Max Baucus is behind this. The Democrats are more dishonest than the Republicans in this regard; at least the GOP is straight-up about their intentions. Mitch McConnell: "The key to a bipartisan bill is to not have a government plan in the bill, no matter what it's called ... When I say no government plan, I mean no government plan. Not something described some other way, not something that gets us to the same place by indirection. No government plan." The Blue Dogs will put together a Potempkin bill which looks like a public option, but as a practical matter won't be -- their modus operandi in other policy matters.

All this will be decided within days or weeks. And once those who want to kill the public option without their fingerprints on the murder weapon begin to agree on a proposal -- Snowe's "trigger" or any other -- the public option will be very hard to revive. The White House must now insist on a genuine public option. And you, dear reader, must insist as well.

This is it, folks. The concrete is being mixed and about to be poured. And after it's poured and hardens, universal health care will be with us for years to come in whatever form it now takes. Let your representative and senators know you want a public option without conditions or triggers -- one that gives the public insurer bargaining leverage over drug companies, and pushes insurers to do what they've promised to do. Don't wait until the concrete hardens and we've lost this battle.

We remain silent at our peril.