Nearly 300 Bills Have Passed in House Since Current 111th Congress Took Office Nearly 14 Months Ago — Many With Broad Bipartisan Support — Only to be Tied Up by Unprecedented Brick Wall of Republican Filibusters in Senate; Minority Party Has No Constitutional Authority to Hold All Legislation Hostage by forcing 60-Vote ‘Super Majority’ in 100-Member Chamber

To say that the Republicans in the U.S. Senate are engaging in an unconstitutional abuse of power by blocking virtually all legislation proposed by either the Obama administration or the Democratic majority in Congress is not just political grandstanding. Nearly 300 bills that have passed in the House since the current 111th Congress took office 14 months ago have been blocked in the Senate by Republican filibusters. There is nothing in the Constitution that gives the minority party in the Senate any authority to hold these bills hostage by forcing a 60-vote “super majority.” (Chart courtesy McClatchy Newspapers)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EST Monday, March 1, 2010)

(Updated 9:00 a.m. EST Tuesday, March 2, 2010)

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By SKEETER SANDERS

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In a scathing editorial published two weeks ago on my blog site, The ‘Skeeter Bites Report, this writer argued forcefully that the minority Republicans in the U.S. Senate were engaging in an unprecedented — and unconstitutional — abuse of power with their blanket use of the filibuster to block passage of virtually every piece of legislation proposed by the Obama administration and the Democratic majority in Congress.

“Senate Republicans . . . are vowing to use their newly-bolstered filibuster power to stymie virtually every domestic policy initiative that [President] Obama proposes,” the editorial thundered. “To say that this would paralyze the Senate would be a gross understatement. This is nothing less than a declaration by the Republicans of an insurrection against the administration and the majority party in Congress intended to make it impossible for the president to govern effectively.

“This is a flat-out abuse of power that imposes a tyranny of the minority,” the editorial continued, “a tyranny that is clearly unconstitutional and violates the most precious tenet of democracy: That within the parameters set by the Constitution, the majority rules.”

In the two weeks since that editorial was published, solid evidence has emerged to back up that conclusion.

NUMBER OF FILIBUSTERS SOAR SINCE OBAMA’S INAUGURATION

For starters, the McClatchy Newspapers, in an analysis on the performance of the Senate since the current 111th Congress took office 14 months ago, reported that Senate Republicans “are using the filibuster to limit and often derail Democrats’ initiatives, paralyzing the Senate and making it nearly impossible to accomplish even the most routine matters.”

McClatchy noted that in the more than 13 months since President Obama took office, the number of filibusters — and the cloture votes to kill them — have risen dramatically. And they have come on a range of issues so broad as to be without precedent. To date, there have been 42 votes to invoke cloture, of which all but four were successful.

McClatchy estimates that if the partisan warfare continues, by the time the 111th Congress ends its term in December 2012, there could be as many as 153 cloture votes — an all-time record high.

After Thursday’s health-care reform summit between Obama and congressional leaders, in which both parties essentially dug in their heels, there is absolutely zero evidence that the warfare won’t end any time soon. On the contrary, it is certain to solidify even further.

The bickering has tied up the Senate in knots — and the GOP minority has made it abundantly clear, both privately and publicly, that a filibuster-proof 60-vote “super majority” will be required to pass “not only major Democratic programs, but also many routine proposals.”

The 100-member Senate’s 58 Democrats and two allied independents — Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut — ostensibly lost their filibuster-proof majority on February 4 with the swearing-in of Senator Scott Brown (R-Massachusetts), although Brown quickly broke ranks with his fellow Republicans to cast his first vote in favor of a $15 billion job-creation bill.

CONSTITUTION DOES NOT AUTHORIZE ‘SUPER MAJORITY’ TO PASS BILLS

However, the Senate Republicans’ determination to impose a 60-vote requirement in order to pass bills is not supported by the Constitution. The filibuster is a creature of the Senate itself. It is employed under the internal rules of the Senate.

Under Article I of the Constitution — which spells out the legislative authority of Congress — each house is free to create its own rules for parliamentary procedure. But Senate Rule 22, which establishes the filibuster, is neither part of the Constitution nor is it a statute.

Nowhere does the Constitution grant the minority party in either chamber of Congress any authority to impose a requirement that a super-majority of votes be reached in order to pass legislation.

To the contrary, in only three instances does the Constitution specifically require a super-majority: the passage of amendments to the Constitution itself; the ratification by the Senate of treaties; and the override of presidential vetoes of legislation approved by Congress.

In each case, a two-thirds majority (67 votes in the 100-member Senate, 290 votes in the 435-member House) is required.

290 BILLS PASSED BY HOUSE STALLED IN SENATE BY GOP FILIBUSTERS

That Senate Republicans have imposed an unconstitutional “tyranny of the minority” was made even more evident last Tuesday, when House leaders made public a list of 290 bills that passed in the lower chamber — only to be stalled in the Senate by the Republicans’ blanket use of the filibuster.

Many of those bills passed the House with broad bipartisan support, including a critically-needed measure aimed at bolstering the security of the Internet. That bill passed by an overwhelmingly bipartisan majority of 422 to five.

Another is a bill to crack down on predatory mortgage lending. That measure passed in May by a 300-114 margin, with 60 Republicans voting “aye.”

Still another is a measure to stimulate job growth by increasing opportunities for small-business entrepreneurs. That bill also passed the House in May by a whopping 406-15 margin, with 159 Republicans voting in favor.

In September, the House passed, by a lopsided 406-18 — with 161 Republican “ayes” — a measure to prohibit increases in medicare part B premiums charged to millions of senior citizens who do not receive their annual cost-of-living increase in their Social Security benefits.

GOP ALSO BLOCKED CONFIRMATION OF SCORES OF OBAMA NOMINEES

But legislation isn’t the only thing that Senate Republicans have been tying up for months. They’ve also stymied the confirmations of scores of nominees to high-level positions in the Obama administration by placing holds on their nominations — preventing the Senate from holding confirmation votes.

The Republicans did an about-face and allowed confirmation votes on the president’s nominees only after Obama threatened to take advantage of Congress’ week-long Presidents Day break to invoke his executive authority to make recess appointments.

The Senate confirmed 27 of the president’s nominees on February 12 after Obama made his threat in a testy exchange with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) during a White House meeting with congressional leaders.

An unusually high number of nominees to top positions in the Obama administration — 63 in all — “had been stalled in the Senate because one or more senators placed a hold on their nomination,” the president said in a statement. “And so . . . I told Senator McConnell that if Republican senators did not release these holds, I would exercise my authority [under Article II of the Constitution] to fill critically-needed positions in the federal government temporarily through the use of recess appointments.”

HOYER BLAMES SENATE GOP INTRANSIGENCE FOR PARALYSIS ON CAPITOL HILL

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) put the blame squarely on Republicans for the ongoing paralysis in the Senate.

Appearing on MSNBC, Hoyer accused the Senate Republican leadership of having decided that “failure and gridlock are to its political benefit, and as a result, we’ve had more requests for cloture or filibuster votes than at any time in history.”

The result, said Hoyer, is that the blanket filibusters by GOP senators “has brought, in effect, the Senate’s ability to do its business to a standstill sometimes and to a slow walk at others.”

SENATE GRIDLOCK A FACTOR IN BAYH’S RETIREMENT

And that paralysis is a major reason why Senator Evan Bayh (D-Indiana) has decided not to seek re-election. In an op-ed column published February 20 in The New York Times, Bayh wrote that the filibuster, which “historically . . . was employed to ensure that momentous issues receive a full and fair hearing” has instead “come to serve the exact opposite purpose — to prevent the Senate from even conducting routine business.”

Bayh noted that the Senate last fall “had to overcome two successive filibusters to pass a bill to provide millions of Americans with extended unemployment insurance.” Even though there was no opposition to the measure — it passed unanimously, with two senators absent — “some senators saw political advantage in drawing out debate, thus preventing the Senate from addressing other pressing matters.”

Historically, filibusters have been employed in the Senate most often to block passage of reform legislation, ranging from the civil rights acts of the 1950s and 1960s to the post-Watergate clean-government measures of the 1970s.

It was as a result of massive public outrage against the use of filibusters to block reform bills aimed at curbing abuses of government power under the administration of President Richard Nixon in the 1970s that prompted a change of Senate rules in 1975 to to reduce the number of votes required to kill off filibusters from 67 — the same two-thirds majority required to override presidential vetoes, ratify treaties and pass constitutional amendments — to the present 60.

But who would have thought back then that a move aimed at curbing abuses of power by the executive branch would one day pave the way for abuses of power by the minority party in the legislative branch?

‘MINORITY TYRANNY’ AN AFFRONT TO REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY

What was originally intended to protect the minority party’s right to debate and push for a compromise on legislation is now being used by the minority party to totally stymie the agenda of not only the majority party, but also that of the president.

This wholesale use of the filibuster by minority Senate Republicans is totally without precedent and is in no way supported by the Constitution.

Indeed, the U.S. Senate is the only freely elected legislative body in the world in which the minority party can thwart the will of the majority party, unless the majority party can muster 60 votes. It is an affront to representative democracy and the clearly expressed will of the American people who voted for the majority party   in the last general election.

The time is past due for the majority Democrats in the Senate to break the logjam by either invoking the reconciliation process to get those 290 House-passed bills to the president’s desk for his signature, or by invoking the so-called “nuclear option,”  in which Vice President Joe Biden, in his constitutional capacity as president of the Senate, declares the GOP’s blanket filibuster unconstitutional.

Enough is enough! Either way, this “tyranny of the minority” in the Senate must be brought to an end — now.

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Copyright 2009, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

Scott Brown Became the Darling of the Republican Party After His Stunning Upset Victory in Massachusetts’ Special Election to Fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate Seat, But Now Hard-Line Social Conservatives Are Blasting Him For Being Pro-Choice, Despite His Support for Existing Ban on Late-Term Abortions

It was perhaps inevitable that Senator-elect Scott Brown (R-Massachusetts), who scored a stunning upset victory over Democrat Martha Coakley in the January 19 special election to serve out the remaining two years of the late Edward Kennedy’s term — becoming the first Republican to represent the Bay State in the U.S. Senate in 31 years — would come under fire from hard-line social conservatives once they learned of his position on abortion. Brown says that a decision whether or not to have an abortion “should ultimately be made by a woman in consultation with her doctor” — although he does support the existing federal ban on late-term abortions. (Photo: Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EST Monday, February 22, 2010)

(Updated 2:00 a.m. EST Tuesday, February 23, 2010)

By SKEETER SANDERS

Did hard-line social conservatives — those who believe that women have no right to reproductive choice and that gays and lesbians are “the scum of the Earth” who have no right to marry — really expect the voters of Massachusetts to actually vote in as their next U.S. senator a person who shares the hard-liners’ vehement anti-choice and anti-gay views?

Get real. This is Massachusetts — which, along with Vermont, is not only one of the most deep-blue states in the nation, but also the most socially liberal.

If Scott Brown, the Republican who scored a stunning upset victory over Democrat Martha Coakley in the January 19 special Senate election to serve out the remaining two years of the late Edward Kennedy‘s term, were a hard-line social conservative, he wouldn’t have had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting elected.

1990: A MODERATE REPUBLICAN DEFEATED A HARD-LINE CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRAT FOR GOVERNOR

Just ask John Silber, the ultra-conservative former president of Boston University, who ran for governor in 1990 as a Democrat — in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by better than three to one — only to end up losing to a moderate Republican, William Weld, a former federal prosecutor.

Silber — whose 20-year tenure as BU president was marked by one controversy after another — alienated many Democrats and independent voters with his often-incendiary conservative rhetoric on the campaign trail, ultimately prompting many Democrats to cross party lines and vote for Weld, whose liberal social views appealed to them.

Weld became the most popular governor in the modern history of Massachusetts, going on to re-election in 1994 by a record 71 percent landslide.

Now, it appears, Brown my turn out to to be another Bill Weld. That hard-line conservatives have found this out now is something of a surprise, given that Brown has never made any secret of his pro-choice stance on abortion. Indeed, you can’t win a statewide election in Massachusetts if you’re not pro-choice.

When Republican Mitt Romney successfully ran for governor in 2002, he held moderate to liberal views on abortion, and stated that the legislature should be the driving force behind policy decisions on that issue. During his tenure, however, he became increasingly “pro-life” and — combined with his staunch opposition to both same-gender marriage and civil unions for gay and lesbian couples — had a difficult time maintaining his job-approval ratings, which likely factored in Romney’s  decision to not seek a second term in 2006.  

But while Brown made it clear on his campaign Web site that he believes that the decision on whether or not to have an abortion is “should ultimately be made by a woman in consultation with her doctor,” he does favor the federal ban on late-term — so-called “partial-birth” — abortions. He also believes that parents should be notified when a teen-aged daughter obtains one, but significantly, does not favor requiring parental consent.

BARBOUR: ‘WE DON’T NEED PURITY’ — HARD-LINERS SHARPLY DISAGREE

Governor Haley Barbour (R-Mississippi), chair of the Republican Governors Association, recognized as much. Appearing January 31 on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Barbour acknowlegded that Brown is “very much a moderate Republican, and I think it’s a reminder to Republicans that we don’t need purity.”

Barbour, a former GOP national chairman, told CBS’s Bob Scheiffer that Republicans “need the best we can elect, and Scott Brown is the best senator for Massachusetts. . . He’s certainly not as conservative as I am. And that’s healthy and good.”

But a number of hard-line social conservatives sharply disagree. Alan Keyes, who ran unsuccessfully against Barack Obama for the U.S. Senate in Illinois in 2004, was quick to condemn Brown. Writing on the right-wing Web site WorldNetDaily, Keyes branded Brown “a typical RINO [Republican-in-name-only] who . . . embraces the substance of Obama’s socialist agenda, but ‘opposes’ Obama by criticizing his implementation of socialism . . .”

Keyes tore into Brown’s position on abortion: “[Brown] agrees in principle with the Democrats on the fundamental issues of justice and morality but employs the deceptive rhetoric of personal opinion to evade the questions of public law and policy they involve,” Keyes wrote. “Such issues include child-murder and other abrogations of the unalienable right to life, as well as the rejection of the God-endowed rights of the natural family.”

SANTORUM: ‘BROWN CONFUSED’ — TERRY: ‘HE MUST BE REPLACED’

In a January 17 Twitter posting picked up by Politico.com, former Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pennsylvania) branded Brown “confused” in his position on abortion vis-a-vis the Senate version of the health-care reform bill that’s now in limbo.

“Brown campaign confused on conscience clause in health care bills. House bill good, Sen[ate] bill bad, Coakley worst,” Santorum wrote.

Not to be outdone, anti-abortion extremist Randall Terry branded Brown “a ‘moderate’ child-killer.” In an incendiary message posted on a conservative Catholic Web forum, Terry wrote that because Brown supports Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, “he supports the brutal murder of children in the womb for any reason; he defends the barbaric practice of those babies being decapitated, or chemically burned to death, and then casting their mangled bodies into sewers and landfills for graves.”

Terry concluded his message with an appeal that “We need to replace Scott Brown as soon as we can with a true defender of babies’ lives, not a phony who supports their murder.”

SOME TEA PARTY ACTIVISTS ARE NO FANS OF BROWN, EITHER

But anti-abortion hard-liners are hardly the only ones on the far right side of the political spectrum in lambasting Brown.

A week before the election, Massachusetts Tea Party activists Carla Howell and Michael Cloud, posted a “Warning!” message on the Meetup.com Web site under “The 9/12 Project,” in which they warned that Brown “is an 11-year Big Government Republican state legislator who regularly and repeatedly voted for bigger state government budgets, voted for expanded and new Big Government programs, voted for tax increases, and voted against tax cuts!”

Howell and Cloud accuse Brown of being “a smooth-talking chameleon” on the issue of taxes and government spending. “We know every single real tax cutter in Massachusetts,” they write. “We know every major phony and fake friend of taxpayers. Every slick, smooth-talking chameleon who tries to blend in with tax-cutters — while he votes for tax hikes, votes for property tax increases and campaigns against and votes against a major tax cut!”

The pair branded Brown, a state lawmaker for 11 years, “the worst fake tax-cutter in the Massachusetts Legislature. And a fake ally is more dangerous than an open enemy.”

The ‘Skeeter Bites Report was unable to determine if Howell and Cloud’s “9/12 Project” Meetup site was related to the namesake campaign of Fox News commentator and radio talk-show host Glenn Beck; a review of the Web site of Beck’s 9/12 Project found no similar criticisms of the Republican.

ATTACKS LATEST SYMPTOM OF RIGHT-WING ‘POLITICAL CANNIBALISM’ IN GOP

The attacks on Brown from the far-right fringe should come as no surprise, for it is only the latest manifestation of an ongoing political cannibalism going on inside the Republican Party.

John Avlon, a former columnist and associate editor at The New York Sun, notes that the ongoing debate now roiling the GOP of ideological purity issues “is getting out of control.”

In a commentary posted on TheDailyBeast.com, Avlon notes that even GOP icons such as Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt are coming under attack as so-called “RINOs” and “progressive plutocrats” from right-wing hard-liners.

“This RINO-hunting impulse is getting out of control,” writes Avlon, whose new book, Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America, is now on sale. “It has been indulged by the party leadership it now seeks to consume.

“Scott Brown’s victory offers Republicans a window in how to win again outside the party’s base,” Avlon continues. “But when overheated praise . . . quickly dissolves into bitter intra-party inquisitions, it’s a sign of a deeper instability — a discomfort with representative democracy when it conflicts with ideology.”

In other words, what’s going on in the Republican Party poses a serious threat to its long-term electoral survival at a time when America’s population is changing — and that, in turn, could have serious consequences for the future of American democracy itself.

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Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

With Senate Republicans Determined to Block President Obama’s Entire Agenda, an Intransigence Never Before Seen Against Any Previous President — Democrat or Republican — the GOP is Engaging In an Unconstitutional Abuse of Power, a ‘Tyranny of the Minority’ That Must Be Stopped By Imposing the ‘Nuclear Option’ to Do Away With Filibusters

The election of Republican Scott Brown to the Senate in Massachusetts’ special election last month gives Republicans the 41 votes they need under Senate rules to maintain a filibuster. But combined with the GOP serving notice that they will block every policy proposal by the Obama administration, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the Republicans are engaging in an unconstitutional abuse of power — a “tyranny of the minority” that has never before been exercised against any previous president, whether a Democrat or a Republican. This tyranny must be stopped — and the only way to stop it is for the majority Democrats to exercise the so-called “nuclear option” — a change of Senate rules to do away with filibusters. (Photo: Mark  Wilson/Getty Images)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EST Monday, February 15, 2010)

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By SKEETER SANDERS

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By now, more than a year after Barack Obama took office as the 44th president of the United States — and the first African-American to assume the office — it is becoming more and more apparent that the Republican opposition in Congress, and particularly in the Senate, is not acting in the role of the “loyal opposition” that one would expect in a democracy.

Instead, the GOP is engaging in an unprecedented attempt to grind to a complete halt the president’s ability to govern. Not to mention the ability of the majority party in Congress to pass legislation.

This is nothing less than an outright “tyranny of the minority” that is a clearly  unconstitutional abuse of power. The evidence of this abuse of power is becoming more and more apparent with each passing month. And it must be stopped.

REPUBLICANS ABANDON THEIR OWN IDEAS AFTER OBAMA ADOPTS THEM

In a scathing expose, MSNBC’s Rachael Maddow noted that the Republicans in Congress have repeatedly done an about-face on one policy idea after another that they themselves proposed, turning around and opposing those same ideas once President Obama adopted them — even going so far as to do a 180-degree turn on policies implemented by the previous Bush administration that Obama continued.

It was the Republicans who first proposed a blue-ribbon commission to come up with ways to deal with the ballooning budget deficit, Maddow notes. But once the president endorsed the idea, the GOP turned around and came out against it.

The Republicans, who are supposedly deeply concerned about the ballooning budget deficit, voted against a major deficit-fighting tool backed by Obama: Enshrining into law the so-called “pay-as-you-go” budgeting rules that were first implemented under President Bill Clinton in 1995 under prodding from the then-GOP-controlled Congress.

Obama on Friday signed the “pay-as-you-go” measure into law — part of a larger bill raising the national debt ceiling to $14.294 trillion, without which the federal government would have been forced to shut down. Yet almost every Republican in both the House and the Senate voted against it.

Many of the same Republicans who voted in favor of the massive Wall Street bailout when Bush was president are now blasting Obama for continuing it (Although to be fair, almost everyone across the political spectrum — left and right, Republican, Democrat and independent — now deeply resents the Wall Street bailout while Main Street continues to lag behind).

WHAT’S OK FOR BUSH TO DO IS NOT OK FOR OBAMA TO DO, GOP SAYS

It’s both ironic and hypocritical on the part of Republicans that the controversial cap-and-trade plan to fight climate change which Republicans so vociferously oppose now was one of their own ideas — first proposed as an amendment to the 1970 Clean Air Act and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush in 1990.  The Republican-controlled Congress later passed — and President Bill Clinton signed — in 1995 a highly successful cap-and-trade program to fight acid rain.

And President George W. Bush signed into law a cap-and-trade system passed by the then-Republican-controlled Congress in 2005 that was intended to sharply reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from coal-fired power plants.

But now, with Obama proposing an expansion of cap-and-trade to fight climate change, the Republicans in Congress are fighting mad against it.

After being rebuked three times by the Supreme Court on constitutional habeas corpus grounds, Bush grudgingly accepted trying terrorism suspects in the civilian courts. There was nary a peep of protest by congressional Republicans then.

Yet when Obama began to more fully carry out the high court’s mandate, the GOP — prompted by former Vice President Dick Cheney — started screaming bloody murder about the president “threatening national security” by not treating terror suspects an “enemy combatants” and trying them in military tribunals.

Never mind the fact that the high court three times declared the tribunals unconstitutional.

GOP INTENT TO USE FILIBUSTER TO THE MAX IS AN UNCONSTITUTIONAL ABUSE OF POWER

And now Senate Republicans — emboldened by Brown’s victory — are vowing to use their newly-bolstered filibuster power to stymie virtually every domestic policy initiative that Obama proposes.

To say that this would paralyze the Senate would be a gross understatement. This is nothing less than a declaration by the Republicans of an insurrection against the administration and the majority party in Congress intended to make it impossible for the president to govern effectively.

This is a flat-out abuse of power that imposes a tyranny of the minority — a tyranny that is clearly unconstitutional and violates the most precious tenet of democracy: That within the parameters set by the Constitution, the majority rules.

Since Obama became president nearly 13 months ago, “Republicans have ratcheted up use of the filibuster up to completely unheard-of levels,” said Norman Ornstein, an expert on Congress at the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right policy organization, in an interview with the McClatchy Newspapers. “Look at the things that the House has passed that can’t make it through the Senate. The list just keeps growing.”

This is as unconscionable as it is unprecedented. Never before in the history of this republic — not even during the bitter relationship between the GOP-controlled Congress and President Andrew Johnson, an independent-turned-Democrat, in the post-Civil War Reconstruction era when the ideological roles of the two major parties were the exact reverse of what they are today — has the opposition party been so hell-bent on crippling a president’s ability to govern.

This willful abuse of power must be stopped. The Democratic majority in the Senate has an obligation to defend the Constitution of the United States “against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” as each and every member of Congress is duty-bound by their oath of office to do.

And if that means they must get rid of the Senate’s time-honored tradition of the filibuster by invoking to so-called “nuclear option” — which is really a change of Senate rules — then so be it.

This goes way beyond the issue of health-care reform, on which I have previously advocated invoking the “nuclear option.” It is becoming abundantly clear that the Republicans are employing the filibuster in an unconstitutional power grab.

SUSPICION MOUNTS OF RACIAL ANIMUS AGAINST OBAMA AS MOTIVATING FACTOR

Yet even as Maddow made her point-by-point case against the Republicans’ intransigence, one question remained unanswered — indeed, Maddow never even asked it:

Why?

Why have the Republicans done an about-face on every single policy idea they’ve proposed after President Obama embraced them?

Why have the Republicans become so bullheadedly obstructionist and come out in knee-jerk fashion against each and every policy proposal that the Obama administration come up with?

They never did that to John F. Kennedy. They never did that to Lyndon Johnson. They never did that to Jimmy Carter. They never did that to Bill Clinton.

The fact is, the Republicans in Congress have never, ever come out so forcefully against a Democratic president’s entire policy agenda – until Barack Obama.

Again, I ask: Why?

And what’s with all this public yammering by Republicans and their conservative allies about Obama being a “socialist?” Even Senator Joesph McCarthy, for all of his Red-baiting, would never have dared to publicly call President Dwight Eisenhower a “communist,” let alone a “socialist.”

They never called Kennedy a “socialist.” They never called Johnson a “socialist.” They never called Carter a “socialist.” They never called Clinton a “socialist.” Yet Republicans repeatedly claim that Barack Obama is a “socialist.”

Yet again I’m forced to ask: Why?

What is it about Barack Obama — alone among Democratic presidents since World War II — that generates so much animosity against him by Republicans? Could the fact that Barack Obama is an African-American have something to do with it?

It’s getting harder and harder for me to avoid coming to that conclusion, especially since there are no African-Americans among the Republican members of Congress.

AND WHY THE GOP HOSTILITY TOWARD PARTY’S OWN NATIONAL CHAIRMAN?

Republicans, particularly hard-line conservatives, even gone so far as to repeatedly challenge the authority of their own party’s national chairman, Michael Steele – the party’s first-ever black national chairman — curbing his powers to control party funds, for example, powers that nearly all of Steele’s predecessors have enjoyed almost unfettered.

Steele himself admitted, in an interview with CNN commentator Roland Martin on his weekly syndicated TV show “Washington Watch” last November that that he’s experienced fear from white Republicans because he’s black.

Responding to Martin’s criticism of white Republicans as being “scared of black folks” and that he faces a tough job at drawing black voter support for Republicans, Steele acknowledged that “I’ve been in the room and they’ve [white Republicans] been scared of me and I’m like, ‘I’m on your side.'”

As Republicans’ intransigence toward Obama — and even Steele — continues month after month, it’s becoming increasingly apparent to this writer by now that there some Republicans who have a problem accepting the authority of this president because he is an African-American.

The fact that there continues to be deep suspicion among GOP conservatives of Steele’s leadership of the party is making in increasingly apparent to me also that there are some Republicans who have a problem with an African-American leading their party. Indeed, it’s hardly a secret that right-wing hard-liners in the GOP never wanted Steele to be chairman in the first place and fought tooth and nail in a bitter, albeit unsuccessful, campaign to defeat him with nasty innuendo.

GOP TREATING OBAMA LIKE WHITE POLITICOS WHO OPPOSED BLACK PRESIDENT IN 1972 MOVIE

If anyone has doubts that racial animus is a motivating factor in the unprecedented degree of animosity toward Obama by the Republicans, I strongly urge you to watch the DVD — if you can find it — of the 1972 James Earl Jones movie, “The Man,” in which Jones played Douglass Dillman, an African-American U.S. Senator who found himself suddenly catapulted under extraordinary circumstances into becoming the first black president of the Untied States — and how he had to fight tooth and nail to assert his authority in the face of strident opposition from white politicians.

As I see it, what the Republicans are doing to Obama is nothing less than a real-life version of “The Man” — a direct challenge by white Republicans to the authority of the nation’s first black president and even to the authority of their own party’s first black national chairman.

The longer and more persistent this resistance to Obama and Steele goes on, the more irrational it becomes — and the more apparent it becomes that racial bias is a major reason behind it.

It’s time to face facts: There are some white Republicans — too many, as far as I’m concerned — who simply cannot stomach a black man holding the nation’s highest office. Nor can they stomach a black man leading their own party.

And the time is overdue to call these bigots out on it.

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Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

On the Eve of Their Beloved Saints’ Come-From-Behind Victory Over the Colts in Super Bowl XLIV — and Their Annual 10-Day Mardi Gras Blowout — the Crescent City’s Most Famous Family Enjoys a Political Blowout of Their Own as Son of Ex-Mayor Moon Landrieu Wins City Hall By an Overwhelming Landslide, Becoming Mostly-Black New Orleans’ First White Mayor in Over 30 Years

Louisiana Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu embraces his wife, Cheryl, after being elected mayor of New Orleans on Saturday, while his sister, U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu (far left), cheers him on. Landrieu becomes the predominantly black city’s first white mayor since his father, Moon Landrieu, left office in 1978. The outgoing mayor, Ray Nagin, barred by the city charter from seeking a third term, had become a symbol of voters’ frustration with the slow pace of recovery in the 4 1/2 years since Hurricane Katrina. Landrieu’s election was only part of perhaps the Crescent City’s biggest party ever, as its annual Mardi Gras celebration began — and its beloved Saints overcame a 10-0 first-quarter deficit to defeat the Indianapolis Colts 31-17 Sunday night in Super Bowl XLIV in Miami. (Photo: Rusty Costanza/The Times-Picayune, New Orleans)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EST Monday, February 8, 2010)

By SKEETER SANDERS

Oh, what a time to be in New Orleans right now.

Not only did the Crescent City’s beloved Saints stage a comeback from a 10-0 first-quarter deficit to defeat the Indianapolis Colts, 31-17 in Super Bowl XLIV in Miami, their victory parade later this week will land right smack dab in the middle of Mardi Gras — the annual 10-day pre-Lenten blowout of music, parades, parties and rowdiness that this year began on Sunday and ends a week from Tuesday.

Four and a half years after the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is in party mode as it’s never been before. The traditional purple, green and gold colors of Mardi Gras have this year given way to the black-and-gold colors of the Saints. If there was any place that needed a major morale boost after all it’s gone through since the agony of 2005, it’s New Orleans.

But that’s not all.

For the Crescent City’s most famous political family, the celebration — with the traditional Mardi Gras greeting of “Who Dat!” “Who Dat!” — got under way a day early as Louisiana’s lieutenant governor, Mitch Landrieu, scored an overwhelming landslide victory over five opponents to be elected mayor.

LANDRIEU WILL BE SECOND SON OF EX-MAYOR TO BECOME MAYOR HIMSELF

Landrieu’s victory is historic in that he will not only become the predominantly black city’s first white mayor since his father, Moon Landrieu, left office in 1978, but also the second son of a former mayor to become mayor in his own right. The younger Landrieu, a Democrat, racked up 66 percent of the vote in the nonpartisan open primary.

Landrieu, a former Louisiana state legislator who twice before ran unsuccessfully for mayor, will remain lieutenant governor until he is sworn in as mayor on May 6. It was not clear as The ‘Skeeter Bites Report neared its late Sunday-night deadline whom, if anyone, would serve the remaining two years of Landrieu’s second term in the largely ceremonial post.

The results marked only the second time since the city adopted its open primary system in 1975 that a mayoral candidate was elected outright without a runoff. The last time it happened was in 1998, when then-incumbent Mayor Marc Morial — whose own father, Ernest “Dutch” Morial, became New Orleans’ first African-American mayor 20 years earlier — easily won a second term over token opposition.

Marc Morial is now the president and CEO of the National Urban League, the nation’s second-oldest civil-rights organization, which this month is celebrating its centennial anniversary.

Exit polls found Landrieu drew unexpectedly strong crossover support from African-Americans, who make up a two-thirds majority of the city’s residents. Landrieu’s chief opponent, businessman and fellow Democrat Troy Henry, who is black, finished a distant second, with 14 percent of the vote.

In an unprecedented show of unity, Henry appeared at Landrieu’s victory celebration at the Roosevelt Hotel in downtown New Orleans to personally congratulate Landrieu on his victory.

“The people of the city of New Orleans did a very extraordinary thing today,” Landrieu told his supporters. “We decided that we were going to stick the pole in the ground and strike a blow for unity, strike a blow for a city that decided to be unified rather than be divided, a city that understands that where there is equal opportunity, there is equal responsibility. It is a city that really understands that we are ready to move beyond and into the next generation.”

Outgoing Mayor Ray Nagin, barred by the city charter from seeking a second term, declined to endorse either candidate in the race. But Nagin did join Landrieu and Henry in calling for unity.

LANDRIEU’S HUGE CROSSOVER APPEAL COMBINED WITH WIDE FRUSTRATION WITH NAGIN

For Nagin, it was perhaps a good thing that he could not run for a third term, for if he had been able to run again, he likely would have been defeated. Nagin had become a symbol of voters’ frustration with the slow pace of recovery from Katrina. More than four years after the hurricane devastated the city’s Lower Ninth Ward, much of the neighborhood remains a wasteland.

Much like Bobby Jindal‘s 2007 gubernatorial victory was powered by statewide voter frustration with his predecessor Kathleen Blanco‘s handling of the aftermath of the hurricane, Landrieu was able to take advantage of New Orleans voters’ frustration with the slow pace of the city’s post-Katrina recovery under Nagin, whose job-approval ratings fell to a record-low 20 percent, according to a recent poll by New Orleans television station WWL-TV.

But Landrieu also enjoyed very strong voter support across the board, especially among African-Americans, whose support for his family dates back to his father’s tenure as mayor, during which the elder Landrieu broke down decades of employment practices that discriminated against blacks — particularly on the city’s police force — and appointed blacks to many top management positions in his administration.

A pre-election poll conducted by Xavier University showed Landrieu with a strong overall lead of 54 percent, followed by Henry at a distant nine percent and a third candidate, multimillionaire businessman John Georges, with eight percent. Georges spent more than $3 million of his own money in his campaign.

The poll found that Landrieu enjoyed a solid 58 percent support among African-American voters compared to only 13 percent for Henry and six percent for Georges. Among white voters, Landrieu led with 66 percent, compared to nine percent for Georges and only three percent for Henry.

DID BOTCHED ATTEMPT TO TAMPER WITH HIS U.S. SENATOR SISTER’S PHONE ALSO HELP LANDRIEU?

But the 49-year-old Landrieu may also have been helped by a backlash triggered by a botched attempt last month by a right-wing activist and three accomplices to tamper with the New Orleans office telephones of his older sister, U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-Lousiana).

Activist/filmmaker James O’Keefe and three other men — one of whom is the son of a federal prosecutor — allegedly posed as repairmen from the local telephone company, saying that they needed to “fix” technical problems with Senator Landrieu’s phones.

O’Keefe, Stan Dai, Robert Flanagan and Joseph Basel are all accused by the FBI of “malicious tampering” of the senator’s phones. Earlier reports that the four were charged with attempting to wiretap the phone were denied by the FBI.  Flanagan is the son of acting U.S. Attorney Bill Flanagan, who is based in Shreveport, Louisiana.

O’Keefe drew national headlines for his video sting of the liberal community activist group ACORN last fall, in which he and a female accomplice posed as a pimp and a prostitute and shot videos in ACORN offices where staffers appeared to offer illegal tax advice and to support the misuse of public funds.

ACORN quickly retaliated with a multi-million-dollar lawsuit against O’Keefe, accusing the activist of violating a Maryland state law by recording its staffers — since fired — at its Baltimore office without their knowledge or consent.

‘WHO DAT NATION’ HAILS THE SAINTS IN FIRST MARDI GRAS PARADES

Earlier on Sunday, the Mardi Gras celebrations kicked off in earnest, but the traditional purple, green and gold colors gave way to black and gold, hundreds of thousands of revelers celebrating their beloved Saints.

Fans of the Boston Red Sox like to refer to themselves as the Red Sox Nation. In New Orleans, fans of the Saints call themselves the Who Dat Nation. And it showed in the opening Mardi Gras parades on Sunday. Members of the Krewe of Alla, in addition to the traditional beads, Moon Pies and other goodies, also tossed out NFL referee flags and Nerf footballs in honor of the Saints, during their parade through Jefferson Parish.

The Krewe of Push Mow transformed their parade through the New Orleans suburb of Abita Springs into a pre-Super Bowl rally for the Saints, with thousands of revelers decked out in the team’s black-and-gold colors.

SAINTS’ VICTORY PARADE WILL BE NEW ORLEANS’ BIGGEST PARTY EVER

But the biggest parade in the city’s history will now come later this week, when the victorious Saints come marching home after their stunning come-from-behind 31-17 Super Bowl victory over the Colts.

As soon as Saints cornerback Tracy Porter intercepted Colts quarterback Payton Manning’s pass for a 75-yard touchdown return in the fourth quarter to ice the game, the Crescent City went happily bonkers, with thousands of revelers jamming Bourbon Street, boogying to the strains of “When the Saints Go Marching In” and greeting anyone and everyone with the traditional Mardi Gras greeting that became a Saints rallying cry: ” Who Dat!” “Who Dat!”

By deadline time, the celebration in the French Quarter was still going strong — and was likely to last all through Mardi Gras week.

# # #

Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

White House Denies Reports That Halt in the Flights Was Due to Cost Concerns and Insists Logistical Problems Were to Blame for Their Suspension; Doctors in Haiti Had Warned ‘Hundreds’ of Severely Ill and Injured Quake Victims Would Die Unless Airlifts to U.S. for Treatment Re-Started Right Away

Injured victims of the January 12 earthquake in Haiti gather at the offices of the international doctors organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) in Port-au-Prince. The United States — in a decision that outraged doctors on the scene warned could be catastrophic for Haitians in desperate need of emergency medical care unavailable in their own country due to the devastation — halted medical evacuation flights, reportedly over concerns raised about the cost of treating quake victims in the U.S. The White House announced late Sunday that the flights would resume. (Photo: Stefano Zannini/Medecins Sans Frontieres)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EST Monday, February 1, 2010)

By SKEETER SANDERS

Confronted with a firestorm of outrage by doctors on the scene in Haiti over an unexpected suspension of emergency medical airlifts of victims of the island nation’s devastating January 12 earthquake, the Obama administration announced late Sunday it will resume the flights and denied halting them over a financial dispute, insisting that logistical problems were the cause.

“Having received assurances that additional capacity exists both here and among our international partners, we determined that we can resume these critical flights,” Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman, told reporters Sunday evening.

More than 500 severely injured Haitians had been airlifted to hospitals in Miami and other cities across Florida for emergency treatment that is unavailable in Haiti due the massive devastation to the island country’s infrastructure wrought by the 7.0-magnitude quake, which may have killed as many as 200,000 people in the world’s most deadly natural disaster since the 2004 Asian tsunami.

But on Saturday, in a decision that shocked and outraged medical professionals on the scene to treat quake victims, the U.S. brought a sudden halt to the Medevac flights amid reports of a dispute between the federal government and several states over who will pay for the Haitians’ treatment.

The Medevac flights, conducted by the U.S. military with C-130 transport planes, were halted after Florida Governor Charlie Crist called on the federal government to bear more of the cost of treating quake victims.

DOCTORS WARN OF ‘DOZENS MORE DEATHS’ IF FLIGHTS AREN’T RESUMED IMMEDIATELY

Angry doctors on the scene in Haiti severely criticized the suspension of the Medevac flights, with many warning that many severely injured quake victims will die unless the flights are resumed immediately.

“People are dying in Haiti because they can’t get out,” said Dr. Barth Green, who is among hundreds of medical professionals from around the world in Haiti to treat the injured. “The consequences in the kids with crushed chests and on ventilators and respirators and some of the adults is that they will die” unless the airlift is resumed quickly.

Green is co-founder of Project Medishare for Haiti, a nonprofit organization affiliated with the Miller School of Medicine of the University of Miami. Green told The New York Times that his organization had been evacuating to the U.S. nearly two dozen quake victims a day.

Other doctors warned that 100 critically ill patients at a temporary field hospital set up at the Port-au-Prince International Airport will die in the next few days if the Medevac flights don’t resume.

Two men at the makeshift hospital afflicted with tetanus already have died waiting to be airlifted, said Dr. David Pitcher, one of 34 surgeons working feverishly at the airport hospital. A five-year-old girl, also suffering form tetanus, is also near death.

“If we can’t save her by getting her out right away, we won’t save her,” Pitcher told National Public Radio. The girl desperately needs to be airlifted to an American hospital and placed on a respirator to save her life, Pitcher said.

FLIGHTS HALTED AFTER FLORIDA GOVERNOR COMPLAINS OF ‘SATURATION’ OF STATE’S HOSPITALS

The White House had issued a statement on Saturday denying that it had ordered the halt of the flights over a money dispute, insisting that the evacuations were halted by the U.S. military because of logistical problems — specifically, that hospitals in Florida and other states were running out of space to treat quake victims.

The statement said that the administration was working to increase treatment capacity in both Haiti and the U.S., as well as aboard the Navy’s hospital ship, the USS Comfort, which is docked at Port-au-Prince.

Captain Kevin Aandahl, a spokesman for the Pentagon’s U.S. Transportation Command, or TRANSCOM, acknowledged that the decision to halt the emergency flights was made by the military. Aandahl told NPR that because “some states indicated they are unwilling to approve any more patients for this type of care, we’re not doing these types of flights anymore.”

Aandahl would not say which states declined to accept quake victims, but the suspension of the flights cane a day after Crist asked the federal government to help pay for their treatment.

In a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Crist wrote that “Florida does not have the capacity to support” the transportation and treatment of “between 30 to 50 critically ill patients a day for an indefinite period of time.”

Crist wrote that his state’s health care system “is quickly reaching saturation, especially in the area of high-level trauma care.”

IN TV INTERVIEW, CRIST ADMITS HIS LETTER ‘MAY HAVE BEEN MISINTERPRETED’

But appearing on ABC’s “Good Morning America Sunday,” Crist said that he was “puzzled” by the suspension.

“We’re welcoming Haitians with open arms and probably done more than any other state and [are] happy to continue to do so,” Crist said.

The governor acknowledged that his letter to Sebelius may have been “misinterpreted” and added to the confusion over the airlifts, leading to their suspension. “I think that’s probably what actually did occur,” he said. “That’s unfortunate.”

Crist asked that the federal government activate the National Disaster Medical System “to assist in distributing these critically ill medical patients to other states and to ensure states are appropriately reimbursed for their services.”

In Port-au-Prince, Colonel Rick Kaiser, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, told The Associated Press on Sunday that the Corps has been asked to build a new 250-bed tent hospital in the Haitian capital to relieve pressures on the USS Comfort and on makeshift emergency treatment facilities already overwhelmed with earthquake victims.

WHO WARNS RISK OF DISEASE EPIDEMICS IN HAITI IS RISING

The World Health Organization warned on Saturday that the risk of disease epidemics breaking out in Haiti is increasing as the rainy season approaches.  The United Nations’ health agency reported that it already has received reports of outbreaks of diarrhea, measles and tetanus.

Alarmed by severe damage to Haiti’s already poorly-maintained sanitation systems that have resulted in contaminated drinking water, the WHO issued an urgent alert warning that millions of Haitians are at increased risk of other water-borne diseases, including cholera.

Paul Garwood, a WHO spokesman, told Voice of America Radio that his and other UN agencies, as well as the Haitian government, will embark on an immunization campaign this week to shield “hundreds of thousands” of children under age five against diphtheria, tetanus and measles, which “are highly contagious and can spread like wildfire.”

Garwood added that there is “a critical need” for more surgeons, reporting that, to his knowledge, there are more than 2,000 amputee cases in Haiti as a result of  injuries sustained in the earthquake, with “anywhere from 30 to 100” amputations performed daily — and likely to increase.

MODERATE QUAKES JOLT CHINA, INDONESIA

Meanwhile, two moderate pre-dawn earthquakes struck southwestern China and northwestern Indonesia on Sunday, killing one person and injuring at least 11 others in China’s Sichuan Province, the Chinese government reported.

There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage in the Indonesian quake.

The temblor in Sichuan — which was devastated by an 8.0 quake in May 2008 that killed nearly 87,000 and rendered more than five million others homeless — struck at 5:36 a.m. local time (4:36 p.m. EST Saturday) with its epicenter near the city of Suining, the Sichuan earthquake authority said.

It measured Richter magnitude 5.0 on government seismographs in Beijing. The U.S. Geological Survey in Colorado said its seismographs measured the quake at magnitude 5.2.

The state-run China Central Television showed pictures of single-story homes that had collapsed into rubble. The network reported that dozens of homes were damaged or collapsed but did not give a precise figure.

The Indonesian quake, measuring Richter magnitude 5.3, struck the in Kepulauan Mentawai region, the USGS reported. That temblor, which struck at 2:07 a.m. local time (2:07 p.m. EST Saturday), was centered 460 miles west-northwest of the capital, Jakarta.

Sunday’s quake came just over a month after two other moderate temblors struck North Sulawesi province in eastern Indonesia on December 28, measuring Richter magnitude 5.2 and 5.3.

None of the quakes were strong enough to trigger tsunami warnings.

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Copyright 2009, Skeeter Sanders. all rights reserved.

Article 25 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights Says All Have the Right to ‘Adequate Medical Care and Necessary Social Services,’ But America Is the Only Developed Country in the World Without a Universal Health-Care System, Which Puts Millions of Americans at Risk of Poor Health — and Financial Ruin — Because They Cannot Afford Private Health Insurance

Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt holds up a copy of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights in this photo taken at UN headquarters in New York in November 1949, 11 months after its formal adoption by the world body, including the United States. Much of the Universal Declaration, in fact, was drafted by the U.S. and derived from the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration says that “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.” So why is the U.S. not in compliance with Article 25 by not having a universal health-care system? (Photo Courtesy United Nations)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EST Monday, January 25, 2010)

By SKEETER SANDERS

When the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, it did so against the backdrop of a world still reeling in shock and revulsion at the unspeakable crimes against humanity committed by the Nazis before and during World War II.

Indeed, national and international pressure for a global bill of rights had been building throughout the war and reached a crescendo after the Nuremberg trials of top Nazi leaders in 1946.

The United Nations Charter “reaffirmed faith in fundamental human rights, and dignity and worth of the human person” and committed all member states to promote “universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion.”

To that end, Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — to which the United States was one of its principal authors — says:

“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”

President Franklin D. Roosevelt had championed a global bill of rights as far back as 1941, when, in his State of the Union address, Roosevelt called for the protection of what he termed the “essential” Four Freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom from fear and freedom from want.

Yet more than 60 years after its adoption, the United States remains out of  compliance with Article 25 because it is the only industrialized nation on Earth that does not have a system of universal health care for all of its citizens.

And the minority Republicans on Capitol Hill — emboldened by Scott Brown’s victory in last week’s special Senate election in Massachusetts, robbing the majority Democrats of their filibuster-proof 60-vote majority — appear determined to keep it that way.

BULK OF UNINSURED MAKE LESS THAN $39K A YEAR

For months now, the Republicans have been fighting tooth and nail against every single health-care reform bill that’s been proposed by the Democrats, yet they have steadfastly refused to come up with any viable reform proposals of their own.

And when this writer says “viable,” I mean proposals that enables the estimated 31 million Americans who cannot afford private health insurance to obtain coverage they can afford.

These 31 million Americans — as well as the estimated 13 million illegal immigrants living in this country — are only one serious illness or accident away from financial ruin because they cannot afford the high cost of private health insurance.

According to a 2006 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, two-thirds of the uninsured are low-income individuals or from low-income families, making less than 200 percent of the poverty level, or $38,614 for a family of four in 2004.

Over a third of the uninsured (37 percent) are poor, according to the Kaiser study and another 28 percent are near-poor — defined as those with incomes between 100 percent and 199 percent of the poverty level, or between $19,307 and $38,228 in 2004.

Were it not for Medicaid, the Kaiser study notes, “many more of the poor would be uninsured. The near-poor also run a high risk of being uninsured because they are not likely to be eligible for Medicaid.”

LACK OF INSURANCE OFTEN MEANS INADEQUATE — AND EVEN NONEXISTENT — CARE

What impact does not having health insurance have on receiving the kind of adequate medical care that all Americans are entitled to under Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? A very severe impact, according to the Kaiser study, which says that the uninsured are up to three times more likely than those with insurance to report problems receiving needed medical care, even for serious conditions.

Part of the reason many of the uninsured postpone or forgo needed care is because “over 40 percent do not have a regular place to go when they are sick or need medical advice,” the study found, “compared to just nine percent of those with coverage.

“About 20 percent of the uninsured — vs. three percent of those with coverage — say their usual source of care is a [hospital] emergency room,” the study found. “Anticipating high medical bills, many of the uninsured are not able to follow recommended treatment. Over a third of uninsured adults say they did not fill a drug prescription in the past year and over a third went without a recommended medical test or treatment due to cost.”

The Kaiser study also found that insured adults under 65 years of age are at least 50 percent more likely to have had preventive care such as pap smears, mammograms and prostate exams than uninsured adults.

HIGH NUMBERS OF UNINSURED IS COSTING TAXPAYERS BILLIONS

Aside from the risk to one’s health that lack of health insurance poses, there is also the severe financial strain that lack of health insurance can wreak, not only on individuals, but also on the country’s health-care system as a whole.

The Kaiser study found that having health insurance makes a huge difference to a person’s credit worthiness. “Like any bill, when medical bills are not paid or paid off too slowly,” the study found,”they are turned over to a collection agency, and a person’s ability to get further credit is significantly limited. Nearly a quarter of the uninsured — 23 percent — report that they were contacted by a collection agency about unpaid medical bills in just the past year [2003].”

More importantly, the cost of caring for the uninsured is costing taxpayers billions of dollars.

In 2004, the Kaiser study found, taxpayers forked over $41 billion to pay for the health-care costs of the uninsured. More than half of all public funds to cover the costs of medical care for the uninsured came from the federal government, with the majority of federal dollars — 70 percent — flowing through Medicare and Medicaid.

Most government dollars to cover the uninsured goes for hospital care, which is paid indirectly to hospitals based partly on the share of care they provide to the uninsured. Health-care costs in direct service programs to the uninsured, such as community health centers and the veterans’ health system, are funded almost completely by taxpayer dollars.

The Kaiser study notes, however, that federal health-care spending “has not kept up with the recent growth in the number of uninsured. Although federal support for community health centers increased by more than 50 percent between 2001 and 2004 — from $430 million to $670 million — these expenditures account for only three percent of total federal spending for [caring for the uninsured]” — even as the number of uninsured Americans increased by 11 percent during the same period.

ACCESS TO ADEQUATE HEALTH CARE IS INDEED A HUMAN RIGHT

The bottom line is that if you don’t have health insurance, you have no guarantee of access to adequate health care which Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says you are entitled to — and to which this country is a signatory.

That the Republicans on Capitol Hill have fought against all attempts to enable the uninsured to afford health insurance — while at the same time refusing to come up with any viable health-care reform plan of their own — means that they are violating Americans’ right under international law to universal access to adequate health care.

At the same time, the Republicans’ intransigence is costing taxpayers billions of dollars that would otherwise not be spent if the uninsured had health insurance that they could afford.

That many private insurers continue to exclude hundreds of thousands of Americans from coverage due to pre-existing medical conditions also violates Article 25. Such discrimination is unconscionable and can no longer be tolerated. Outlawing such discrimination is long overdue and absolutely essential for any meaningful health-care reform.

The United States has been out of compliance with international law on health care for more than 60 years. How much longer will this country remain an outlaw state when it comes to universal health care?

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Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

Senate Democrats Have Lost Their Filibuster-Proof Majority With Brown’s Upset Win Over Coakley in Massachusetts Special Election, But if Republicans Think Health-Care Reform is Dead, They’d Better Think Again: Without It, Unemployment Will Remain Stubbornly High — and Could Even Get Worse

Republican senatorial candidate Scott Brown gets a pat on his shoulder from his daughter, Ayla, after winning last November’s Republican primary. Brown, a state senator who was an unknown outside Massachusetts before the race, had an even greater reason to celebrate Tuesday night, when he scored a stunning upset victory over Democratic state Attorney General Martha Coakley in the special election to serve the remaining two years of the late Senator Ted Kennedy’s term. Brown’s victory robs Senate Democrats of their filibuster-proof 60-vote majority. But if Republicans think they’ve stopped health-care reform in its tracks, they’re sorely mistaken. Without it, companies will not hire back laid-off workers — and the recession will last a lot longer. (Photo: John Thornton/Dover-Sherborn Press)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EST Thursday, January 21, 2010)

Volume V, Number 6

Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

With Polls Showing Battle for Ted Kennedy’s Seat Surprisingly ‘Too Close to Call,’ a Victory for Republican Scott Brown, a Fierce Opponent of Health Reform Bill, Would Leave Senate Democrats With No Choice But to Invoke the So-Called ‘Nuclear Option’ — Impose a New Senate Rule to Permanently Do Away With Filibusters — in Order to Get the Final Bill Passed

Suddenly, the road to health care reform, which to date had overcome obstacle after obstacle thrown in its path by congressional Republicans, is facing a major new political threat. But this time, it’s the voters of Massachusetts — arguably the most overwhelmingly Democratic and liberal state in the nation — who might throw up the newest roadblock. Tomorrow (Tuesday), they will decide who will succeed the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who made health-care reform his life’s work. With polls unexpectedly showing a neck-and-neck race between Democrat Martha Coakley, who supports it, and Republican Scott Brown, who’s against it, a Brown victory may force Senate Democrats to ram through a rules change to do away with the filibuster in order to get the final version of the bill passed with a simple 51-vote majority. (Image courtesy Politics.MyNC.com)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EST Monday, January 18, 2010)

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A ‘SKEETER BITES REPORT EDITORIAL

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For months, it appeared that the path to health-care reform had moving inexorably, overcoming one obstacle after another thrown into it by congressional Republicans — and even squabbling Democrats. And leading the way, step by step, has been President Obama.

But now, suddenly, all those months of hard work to get the measure to Obama’s desk for his signature are being jeopardized — from an unlikely quarter.

Tomorrow (Tuesday), voters in Massachusetts — arguably the most predominantly Democratic and liberal state in the nation — will decide in a special election who will succeed the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy, for whom health-care reform has been his number-one domestic priority for nearly his entire 46-year career in the Senate.

Massachusetts has not had a Republican in the U.S. Senate since Edward Brooke, who made history in 1966 as the first African-American ever elected to the U.S. Senate and the first to serve in the upper chamber since the post-Civil War Reconstruction period (when senators were appointed). And Brooke — who served from 1967 to 1979 and is now 90 years old — was something that is now almost extinct: a liberal Republican.

Given the fact that Democrats in the Bay State outnumber Republicans by better than three to one, conventional wisdom would say that the Democratic candidate in this special election should coast to an easy victory.

But independent voters form the majority of the state’s electorate — and to the surprise of almost everyone, deep dissastisfaction with the Democrats among independents has thrown the contest between the Democrat, state Attorney General Martha Coakley, and the Republican, state Senator Scott Brown, into a neck-and-neck race, with the final outcome very much in doubt.

With pre-election polls in the Bay State showing wildly conflicting results, no one is willing to predict who will win. But the outcome will determine the fate of the health-care bill now being negotiated between House and Senate Democrats and the president.

A Coakley win would all but assure the final measure’s passage. A Brown victory, however, would rob Senate Democrats of the 60 votes needed to overcome a solid — and, to date, unbreakable — brick wall of Republican opposition.

Brown made it abundantly clear in a series of TV and radio campaign commercials in recent weeks that he will vote to defeat the final version of the health-care bill if elected. Conservative groups backing Brown’s candidacy have also saturated the airwaves with ads urging a vote for Brown to “stop government-run health care.”

For her part, Coakley has been running a series of ads of her own that attack Brown not only for his opposition to the health-reform bill, but also accusing her Republican opponent of being against emergency contraception for rape victims. Liberal groups allied with Coakley have blitzed the state with similarly-themed ads.

OBSERVERS STUNNED BY WILDLY CONFLICTING POLL NUMBERS

Observers have been stunned by pre-election polls showing wildly conflicting results. Just in the last 10 days, one poll showed Coakley leading Brown by 14 points. But another poll showed almost the exact opposite — Brown leading Coakley by 15 points.

The Boston Globe called into question the accuracy of some of the polls, noting that the one showing Coakley with a 14-point lead was conducted by a longtime Democratic pollster, Mark Mellman, while the other poll showing a 15-point Brown margin was conducted by Pajamas Media, a conservative website with ties to Republican consultants.

Adding to the confusion are two other polls also showing conflicting results. One, by Suffolk University, showed Brown ahead by four points, while the other, commissioned by the liberal blog BlueMassGroup, showed Coakley ahead by eight points.

The bottom line: The race is simply too close to call.

“God, what a puzzle!” exclaimed Mark Blumenthal, editor and publisher of Pollster.com, in an interview with the Globe. “My advice to a voter would be to say that the only thing we can say with any scientific precision is that it’s looking like it will be a close race, and go vote if you want your voice to be heard.”

FATE OF OBAMA’S PRESIDENCY TIED TO PASSAGE OF HEALTH REFORM BILL

For the Democrats — and particularly the president — the stakes could not be higher. The president has said repeatedly since last July that health-care reform was vital to the nation’s economic recovery.

But from a political perspective, health care reform is just as vital to the viability of Obama’s presidency and of the Democrats’ control of Congress.

Indeed, in the past few weeks, the president has taken full command of the process of getting the health-care bill to his desk for his signature, investing extraordinary amounts of his time and energy to that end.

Last Wednesday, Obama met with Democratic congressional leaders at the White House to hammer out a final measure for nearly eight hours, then, after a dinner break, met again in an evening session that ran into the wee hours of Thursday morning — interrupted only by telephone calls keeping the president up to date on the situation in earthquake-ravaged Haiti, according to congressional sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Obama then convened a third marathon session with the Democratic leaders on Friday, the sources said.

BROWN VICTORY COULD FORCE ‘NUCLEAR OPTION’ TO KILL OFF FILIBUSTER

But all that effort is now in danger of going for naught in the Senate. With the outcome of the Massachusetts race uncertain, Democrats on Capitol Hill are becoming increasingly nervous. A Brown victory, given his vow to join with his 40 fellow Republicans to kill the health-care bill with a filibuster, could force Senate Democrats to do something that until now they have been loathe to do.

That something would be what Republicans threatened to do in 2005 when they controlled the upper chamber: Resort to the so-called “nuclear option,” a change of Senate rules that would permanently abolish the filibuster and enable passage of legislation by a simple 51-vote majority.

It’s too late for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) to invoke “reconciliation” — the process allowing a contentious bill to be considered without being subject to filibuster — to ensure the measure’s passage, because the measure has already been approved and is now being negotiated with the House to resolve differences with the House version.

When Bill Clinton was president, he wanted to use reconciliation to pass his 1993 health care plan, but Senator Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia) insisted that the health care plan was out of bounds for a process that is theoretically about budgets. Sixteen years later, however, Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-New Mexico), a member of the Senate Finance Committee working on the current health reform bill, said that reconciliation may be used, is an acceptable option, and that he can support it.

‘NUCLEAR OPTION’ BASED ON 1957 NIXON OPINION WHILE VEEP

The “nuclear option” — so named by then-Senator Trent Lott (R-Mississippi) in 2005 — is based on a 1957 advisory opinion by then-Vice President Richard Nixon, serving in his capacity as president of the Senate, that no Senate may constitutionally enact a rule that deprives a future Senate of the right to approve its own rules by the vote of a simple majority.

The Constitution specifies that, except for the ratification of treaties and constitutional amendments and the override of presidential vetoes of legislation — in which case, a two-thirds majority is required — the Senate is free to establish its own rules for parliamentary procedure. Although legally nonbinding, Nixon’s opinion has been treated by the Senate ever since as a definitive precedent.

Moreover, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled as far back as 1892, in United States v. Ballin, that both houses of Congress are parliamentary bodies, implying that they may make procedural rules by a simple majority vote.

HOW THE ‘NUCLEAR OPTION’ WORKS

The “nuclear option” is used in response to a filibuster or other dilatory tactic. A senator makes a point of order calling for an immediate vote on the measure before the body, outlining what circumstances allow for this.

The presiding officer of the Senate — usually the vice president of the United States or the president pro tempore — makes a parliamentary ruling upholding the senator’s point of order. The Constitution is cited at this point, since otherwise the presiding officer is bound by precedent.

A supporter of the filibuster may challenge the ruling by asking, “Is the decision of the Chair to stand as the judgment of the Senate?” This is referred to as “appealing from the Chair.” An opponent of the filibuster will then move to table the appeal. As tabling is non-debatable, a vote is held immediately. A simple majority decides the issue.

If the appeal is successfully tabled, then the presiding officer’s ruling that the filibuster is unconstitutional is thereby upheld. Thus a simple majority is able to cut off debate, and the Senate moves to a vote on the substantive issue under consideration.

GOP THREATENED TO ‘GO NUCLEAR’ TO HALT FILIBUSTERS OF BUSH’S JUDICIAL NOMINEES

The one danger with invoking the “nuclear option” is the fact that it is not limited to the single question under consideration, as it would be in a cloture vote. Rather, the “nuclear option” is a change in the rules of the Senate that would effectively bar future filibusters.

It was fear of the “nuclear option” doing away with filibusters altogether that prompted fourteen moderate senators — seven from each party — to join forces in 2005 to block an attempt by then-majority Republicans to invoke the “nuclear option” to force confirmation votes on ten judicial nominations made by then-President George W. Bush who were blocked by filibusters by minority Democrats.

Democrats blocked the confirmation of the ten on the grounds that they were too “out of the mainstream” — in other words,  too far right-wing — for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench. At the beginning of his second term, Bush resubmitted seven of the 10 names.

Reid, then the Senate minority leader, vowed to fight their confirmation. Senator Bill Frist (R-Tennessee), then the majority leader, threatened to use the “nuclear option” to get the nominees confirmed.

The fourteen centrist senators — who came to be known as the “Gang of 14” — forged an agreement whereby the seven Democrats among them would no longer vote along with their party on filibustering judicial nominees (except in “extraordinary circumstances”), and in turn the seven Republicans among them would break with the Republican leadership on voting for the “nuclear option.”

The agreement by the “Gang of 14” robbed both parties of their leverage and forced them to back down. As a result, five of the filibustered Bush nominees were confirmed. The other five withdrew after it became clear that their nominations would not be voted on.

FINAL BILL DEEPLY FLAWED WITHOUT ‘PUBLIC OPTION,’ BUT IT MUST PASS REGARDLESS

In two editorials, posted on October 29 and on November 23, The ‘Skeeter Bites Report forcefully editorialized that any health-care reform bill that reached Obama’s desk must include a “public option” — a government-run health insurance exchange that would compete directly with private health insurers that would give the estimated 31 million Americans who cannot now afford health insurance an option to purchase health insurance they can afford.

With a “public option” having no chance of being included in the final bill, The ‘Skeeter Bites Report steadfastly believes that the measure will not address the affordability issue for Americans whose incomes are not high enough to enable them to afford private health insurance but are too high for them to qualify for Medicaid.

But unlike many other commentators on the liberal/progressive side of the political spectrum, I am not willing to “throw the baby out with the bath water” and see the bill go down to defeat solely because it doesn’t contain the “public option.” It is absolutely imperative that the bill — even with all its flaws — reaches the president’s desk for his signature.

The “public option” and other matters that address the affordability issue can be addressed at a later time. We’ve come too far to allow health-care reform to fail now. Even a flawed reform bill is better than no reform at all; the status quo — which is what the Republicans are hell-bent and determined to preserve — simply cannot be allowed to continue. Their bullheaded obstructionism must be defeated at all costs.

And if that requires the Senate to do away with its long-cherished filibuster to get the health reform measure passed, then so be it.  Americans cannot wait another generation for health-care reform. It must pass — or else there will be hell to pay in November’s midterm elections.

# # #

Volume V, Number 5

Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

One Year After Being Elected the Republican Party’s First African-American National Chairman, Michael Steele’s Authority Is Still Under Fire From Hard-Line Conservatives — Now Steele’s Foes Are Claiming He’s Using His Post For Personal Profit, Charging Up to $20G in Speaking Fees

In the year since he became the first African-American to be elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele has had to endure one controversy after another — some of which were of his own making with his repeated episodes of off-the-cuff remarks. Hard-line conservatives — who never wanted him to be chairman in the first place — have constantly challenged his authority, succeeding in stripping him of powers that GOP national committee chairmen before him had long enjoyed unfettered. Now, midway through his two-year term, Steele’s future as party chairman is becoming increasingly cloudy, as he has come under fire for allegedly using his position for personal profit, charging up to $20,000 in speaking fees. (Photo courtesy ThePalmettoScoop.com)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EST Monday, January 4, 2010)

By SKEETER SANDERS

When Michael Steele was elected the first African-American chairman of the Republican National Committee nearly a year ago, it had appeared at the time that the GOP — having suffered two consecutive shellackings at the ballot box in which voters shunned Republican  candidates the way Superman shuns kryptonite — had finally decided to make a clean break from the regime of conservative, white and mostly Southern males that had dominated the party for more than 30 years.

“We have been misdefined as a party that doesn’t care, a party that’s insensitive, a party that is unconcerned about minorities, a party that is unconcerned about the lives and the expectations and dreams of average Americans,” Steele told reporters in a news conference following his election.

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” he continued. “I’m saying enough’s enough, that day is over. This is the dawn of a new party moving in a new direction with strength and conviction . . . It’s time for something completely different.”

Steele vowed that under his leadership, “We’re going to say to friend and foe alike, we want you to be a part of us.” And, in a remark that some in the mainstream media interpreted as a warning to party conservatives, he added, “To those of you who will obstruct, get ready to get knocked over.”

Instead, it was Steele who got “knocked over” — again and again — by party conservatives in the most tumultuous tenure by a Republican national chairman in the party’s history.

Now, midway through his two-year term, Steele’s future as GOP national chairman is becoming increasingly cloudy. And the conservative GOP establishment, figuratively speaking, is out for blood — Steele’s blood.

STEELE’S PREDECESSORS RIP HIS RAKING IN AS MUCH AS $20G IN SPEAKING FEES

At least two of his predecessors, Frank Fahrenkopf and Jim Nicholson, have sharply criticized what they say is Steele’s attempt to personally profit from his speaking engagements at colleges, trade associations and other groups, raking in as much as $20,000 in honorariums, or speaking fees.

“Holy mackerel!” exclaimed Fahrenkopf in an interview with The Washington Times. “I never heard of a chairman of either party ever taking money for speeches. The job of a national chairman is to give speeches. That’s what the national party pays him for.”

As chairman, Steele earns an annual salary of $223,500.

Nicholson, also interviewed by the conservative daily, said the job “demands so much of your time that you can work 24/7 and not get everything done, so taking time out to speak for the benefit of one’s own bank account is not appropriate.”

Fahrenkopf served as RNC chairman under President Ronald Reagan from 1983 to 1989 and is now chief executive of the American Gaming Association, the national trade association for the commercial casino industry. Nicholson was party chairman from 1997 to 2000 and served as Secretary of Veterans Affairs under President George W. Bush from 2005 to 2007. He is now a Washington attorney.

RIGHT-WING HARD-LINERS FOUGHT STEELE FROM THE START

That Steele would find himself embroiled in a controversy over getting paid for his speaking engagements is only the latest in a string of brouhahas that have marked his tenure as party chairman from the very beginning.

Even his election last January, hailed as a historic turning point for the GOP just days after President Obama’s inauguration as the nation’s first African-American chief executive, came after a campaign within the party riven with charges of racism — a contest that an Ohio state GOP chairman called “the dirtiest ever.”

Hard-line party conservatives — who never wanted Steele to be chairman in the first place — fought tooth and nail in a bitter, albeit unsuccessful, campaign to defeat him with nasty innuendo.

Steele was forced to face down vicious accusations — often made anonymously — that he did not possess a true conservative philosophy and that he was actually a social liberal, citing Steele’s past association with the Republican Leadership Council, which he co-founded with former New Jersey Governor Christie Todd Whitman.

A moderate who served as the head of the federal Environmental Protection Agency during Bush’s first term, Whitman’s outspoken support for abortion rights infuriated many social conservatives.

STEELE BLASTS LIMBAUGH, THEN APOLOGIZES AFTER TALK-SHOW HOST ‘WHACKS’ HIM

Then there was the memorable back-and-forth in March between Steele and right-wing radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh — whom many Democrats and liberals believe is the real boss of the GOP — when Steele criticized Limbaugh while appearing on CNN’s now-defunct “D.L. Hughley Breaks the News” on February 28. “I am the leader of the Republican Party,” Steele told Hughley. “Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. His whole thing is entertainment. Yes, it’s incendiary. Yes, it’s ugly.”

Limbaugh roared back on March 2 with a blistering smackdown of Steele. “It’s time, Mr. Steele, for you to go behind the scenes and start doing the work that you were elected to do, instead of trying to be some talking-head media star,” Limbaugh thundered. “If it’s your position as the head of the Republican National Committee that you want a left-wing Democrat president and a left-wing Democrat Congress to succeed in advancing their agenda . . . I think you have some explaining to do. Why are you running the Republican Party?”

And Steele’s response to Limbaugh’s verbal whacking of him? Appearing March 4 on Sean Hannity’s Fox News Channel show, Steele said he had a private conversation with Limbaugh and denied that his comments on CNN were intended as an attack on talk radio’s undisputed godfather.

“It’s all good. . .We’re past this,” Steele told Hannity. “It was clearly a misunderstanding. My intent was never to go after my friend. I like Rush. He’s an important conservative voice for our party and for 20-plus years, he’s been holding that line.”

STEELE FORCED TO GIVE UP POWERS OVER SPENDING OF REPUBLICAN PARTY FUNDS

Although they failed to block Steele’s election as GOP chairman last January, party conservatives have waged an unrelenting war to undermine his authority in the year since — and partially succeeded.

Steele was forced last spring to sign a secret pact with party conservatives in which he agreed to submit to controls and restraints on how he spends millions of dollars in party funds and contracts. For decades, the RNC chairman enjoyed almost unrestricted authority over how to spend the party’s funds.

The so-called “good governance” agreement imposed restrictions on Steele’s authority to conduct the Republican National Committee’s business — including contracts, fees for legal work and other expenditures. Steele agreed to cede some of his authority after several conservative committee members threatened a “no-confidence” vote against the chairman at a special RNC meeting in Washington that was scheduled to convene in late May.

GOP CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS WARN STEELE TO ‘BACK OFF’ ON POLICY

Steele’s style as party chairman has even ruffled the feathers of Republican leaders of Congress — so much so that they told him in no uncertain terms in a closed-door private meeting in September to quit meddling in public policy matters.

According to Politico.com, citing several sources, the GOP congressional leadership issued their blunt warning to Steele amid a heated discussion at the Capitol Hill office of House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) “about the roles of congressional leadership and Steele.”

The Republican congressional leaders were furious with Steele for proposing a “health care bill of rights” for senior citizens without consulting them. They told Steele point-blank to concentrate on the governors’ races in New Jersey and Virginia and other political matters and leave the policymaking to the GOP lawmakers.

That didn’t sit well with Steele, according to the sources, who said he was responding to questions asked of him about where the Republican Party stood on a variety of issues and that he was determined to continue fighting and aggressively defending the party.

FLAP OVER SPEAKING FEES COULD BE THE FINAL STRAW

The controversy over Steele’s speaking fees could end up jeopardizing his chances of being re-elected GOP national chairman a year from now. According to The Washington Times, Steele charges between $8,000 and $20,000 per speech, plus first-class travel and lodging expenses.

Harry Sandler, whom the paper identified as a person who manages some of Steele’s bookings for the American Program Bureau, a private booking agency, said that the GOP chairman usually charges between $10,000 and $15,000 per speaking engagement.

Sandler said Steele was paid about $15,000 for a speech in September at Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas. Steele has an upcoming speaking engagement at DePaul University in Chicago, for which he will be paid $12,500.

Steele’s office sought to downplay the controversy. An RNC spokeswoman dismissed it as “silly,” claiming that many past party chairmen — both Republican and Democrat — “have regularly received outside income.”

But coming just weeks after yet another feud within the party — this time over a leaked proposal by conservatives to pull the financial plug on Republican candidates who don’t support core conservative party principles, including opposition to abortion and same-gender marriage — it’s now an open question as to whether Steele can win a second two-year term in 2011 as GOP national chairman.

That, of course, assumes that he even wants to keep the job. Especially after he told CNN commentator Roland Martin on his weekly syndicated TV show “Washington Watch” in November that that he’s experienced fear from white Republicans because he’s black.

Responding to Martin’s criticism of white Republicans as being “scared of black folks” and that he faces a tough job at drawing black voter support for Republicans, Steele acknowledged that “I’ve been in the room and they’ve [white Republicans] been scared of me and I’m like, ‘I’m on your side.'”

With all the grief that Steele is getting from party conservatives, one wonders how much longer he’ll remain on their side.

# # #

Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

In the Tradition of the Razzie Awards for the Worst Films of the Year, The ‘Skeeter Bites Report Presents its Third Annual ‘Dishonors’ for the People Who Have Had the Worst Impact on Politics, Society and Culture in America — and the World — in 2009

To say that 2009 was a year of transition would be an understatement, with a new president in the White House and an opposition more fierce than ever before. But who would have thought there the year would see a number of characters who would resort to blatant appeals to racist and religious hatreds? Some of this year’s ‘Skeeter Bites Award winners for inflicting the worst damage on humanity are such no-brainers that it’s difficult to classify who’s the worst among them. But here goes . . . (Image courtesy Google Images)

(Posted 5:00 a.m EST Monday, December 28, 2009)

HOLIDAY PUBLISHING SCHEDULE: This is the final ‘Skeeter Bites Report article for 2009 — appropriately enough, our year-end “dishonors” for the worst people who have had the most negative impact on society in the past 12 months.  The Thursday edition of The ‘Skeeter Bites Report will resume on January 7. Happy New Year!

By SKEETER SANDERS

As the first decade of the 21st century draws to a close — wow, has it really been  ten years since we all rang in the new millennium? — it’s that time again to take a look back at some of what’s transpired over the past 12 months, make resolutions for 2010 — geez, we finally get to say “twenty-something” instead of “two-thousand-something” when referring to the year — and, of course, cast an eye on the crystal ball and predict who’ll win what in the upcoming awards season.

From time immemorial, it seems, we mark the early months of each new year by bestowing awards to honor the best among us, such as the Golden Globes, the Grammys, the Oscars, the Tonys and the Emmys — and to dishonor the worst among us as well, such as Mr. Blackwell’s annual “Worst-Dressed Women” list and the Razzie Awards for the worst movies of the year.

(Richard Blackwell, the former fashion designer who became Hollywood’s most famous fashion critic, died in October 2008 at the age of 86. More than 14 months later,  It’s still not known who, if anyone, will continue his annual list of the “Ten Worst-Dressed Women” in Hollywood.)

In 2007, this writer chose to join in the awards-giving parade, but unlike the “Big Five” best-of entertainment awards and more in the tradition of Mr. Blackwell and the Razzies, I chose to join in the bestowment of “dishonors” to the most richly deserving crooks, liars, power-mad despots and just plain weirdos who’ve made life a lot more complicated for Americans and the world at large in the previous 12 months.

It seems that choosing the “winners” for the ‘Skeeter Bites Awards is getting more and more difficult, even though this is only the third year of the SBAs’ existence.  Almost like the Energizer bunny, the list of nominees richly deserving these dishonors just keeps growing and growing and growing.

But, here goes . . .

THE MACHIAVELLI ‘ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS’ AWARD: ORLY TAITZ

This year’s winner of the Machivelli Award is also the first multiple-category nominee in the ‘Skeeter Bites Awards’ brief history. Orly Taitz, the undisputed queen of the “Birther Movement” that still doggedly seeks to remove President Obama from office with trumped-up — and, I dare say, racially-motivated — charges that the president is not a native-born U.S. citizen, could just as easily also have won the David Duke Bigot of the Year Award or the Hunter S. Thompson Fear-and-Loathing Award.

But under the rules of the SBAs, you can only win one award per year — and in Taitz’s case, the Machivelli Award is most appropriate for her, for Taitz has proven beyond doubt that she is absolutely determined and will do just about anything to get Obama tossed out of office — no matter how many times her lawsuits get thrown out of court or she gets slapped with warnings and fines from judges against her repeated filings of frivolous suits.

But then again, what else can you expect from a person who’s a virulently Islamophobic bigot tied to a group of radical Jewish extremists who insist that Obama is a Muslim and a “danger to Israel,” despite all evidence to the contrary that the president is a Christian — as The ‘Skeeter Bites Report revealed in a September 7 expose?

And the fact that Taitz and other “birthers” of her ilk continue to present trumped-up, immediately-exposed-as-fraudulent “evidence” that Obama was born in Kenya shows just how racially bigoted against the nation’s first black president they really are.

More on this year’s David Duke Bigot of the Year Award winner later.

THE PINK FLOYD ‘BRICK WALL’ AWARD: MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD

That the hard-line president of Iran wins this year’s Brick Wall Award for the world’s most obstinate head of state is a no-brainer — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has proven to be even more stubborn and bullheaded than either George W. Bush or the late Saddam Hussein.

His re-election to a second term as Iran’s president last June remains controversial, but his regime’s brutal repression of its critics in Tehran puts Iran right up there with China’s even more cold-blooded mass murder of pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing’s Tienanmen Square almost exactly 20 years earlier.

The only difference between Beijing and Tehran is that the reins of power in China have passed on to a new generation of Communist Party leaders in the two decades since Tienanmen and the leaders directly responsible for the massacre are no longer in charge (Although Beijing’s current leadership remains steadfast in not tolerating political dissent and refuses to re-examine the Tienanmen crackdown).

But nowhere has Ahmadinejad proven to be more stubborn and bullheaded than over Iran’s nuclear development program, one that the United States, the European Union, Israel and — increasingly — Arab countries believe is aimed at building a stockpile of nuclear weapons.

The Islamic Republic adamantly insists that its nuclear program is strictly for peaceful purposes — but has refused to furnish any evidence to back up its claims. Iran is under three sets of United Nations sanctions for refusing to suspend enrichment and risks a further round after rejecting a UN-brokered deal to send its low-enriched uranium abroad to be further refined into fuel for the reactor.

Although Tehran allowed inspectors from the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) access in October to a second, previously top-secret uranium enrichment facility near the Shiite holy city of Qom, the agency’s newly-retired director-general, Mohamed Elbaradei, declared in late November that the IAEA’s cooperation with Tehran had reached a “dead end.”

Ahmadinejad’s words and actions have done little to bolster his country’s credibility on the nuclear issue. Only last week, in an interview with new “ABC World News” anchor Diane Sawyer, the Iranian president stunned the world when he steadfastly refused to state flatly that his country would never develop nuclear weapons.

When pressed point-blank by Sawyer for a yes-or-no answer to whether Iran would weaponize its nuclear material and turn it into a bomb, Ahmadinejad refused to answer the question directly. Instead, he shook his head and said, “We have got a saying in Iran which says, ‘How many times shall I repeat the same thing?’ You should say something only once. We have said once that we don’t want nuclear bomb. We don’t accept it.”

But it’s clear that the U.S. and much of the world doesn’t believe him — nor should they.

THE DARTH VADER ‘DARK SIDE’ AWARD: RUSH LIMBAUGH

Former Vice President Dick Cheney had won this prize two years in a row for having been the chief enforcer of former President George W. Bush’s policies — much as Luke Skywalker’s father was brutal enforcer of the Galactic Empire’s rule across the galaxy — the right-hand man of the evil Emperor Palpatine.

Emperor Dubyah and his regime are no longer in power, but one of its staunchest allies is still the undisputed “boss of bosses” when it comes to keeping the former emperor’s party in line.

Of course, I’m referring to right-wing radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh.

Much like the fictional New Jersey crime-family boss Tony Soprano, Limbaugh and his “Dittohead Mafia” of angry, mostly white-male listeners have “whacked,” at least rhetorically, one Republican after another — from party chairman Michael Steele on down — for daring to publicly “cross the boss.” Each and every one of them ended up apologetically bowing down to Boss Limbaugh within 24 hours after they got “whacked” on his show.

It should be noted that Limbaugh was the first runner-up for the David Duke Bigot of the Year Award for his deliberate and repeated race-baiting on the air (I’ll tell who the winner of that award is later on).

His disgusting remark in September that school buses should be segregated in the wake of a violent incident aboard a school bus in Illinois went too far — it was an open call to deliberately violate more than a half-century of federal and state laws outlawing segregation and discrimination by race.

Then there is Limbaugh’s questioning of Obama’s ethnicity — going so far as to claim that the nation’s foirst black president isn’t an African-American at all, but a foreign-born Arab.

This prompted The ‘Skeeter Bites Report to editorially call for an advertiser boycott of Limbaugh’s show — just as there is one of the Fox News TV show of our next award winner.

THE HUNTER S. THOMPSON MEMORIAL ‘FEAR AND LOATHING’ AWARD: GLENN BECK

This award is also a no-brainer. Who’s more deserving of it this year than Fox News talk-show host Glenn Beck, named by the liberal media watchdog organization Media Matters as its 2009 “Misinformer of the Year.”

Beck is the real-life version of Howard Beale — the “mad prophet of the airwaves” played by the late Oscar-winning actor Peter Finch in “Network,” Paddy Cheyefsky’s uncannily prophetic 1976 commentary on the state of American television in general and television news in particular.

The “mad prophet” image fits Beck to a T. As Media Matters points out, “Beck’s well of ridiculous was deep and poisonous before he launched his Fox News show, but the inauguration of the 44th president of the United States — and the permissive cheerleading of his Fox News honchos — uncorked the former “Morning Zoo” shock jock’s unique brand of vitriol, stage theatrics, and hyperbolic fright.”

Who else but Beck would dare call the nation’s first black president — who carefully avoided racial issues as much as he could during his successful campaign for the White House and in the year since he took office — a “racist” with “a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture” on national television — without a shred of evidence to back him up?

Who else but Beck would call Obama’s proposal to expand the foreign service, AmeriCorps, and the Peace Corps “what Hitler did with the SS?”

Who else but Beck would claim that the 2008 election was a coup d’etat conducted “through the guise of an election” and allow a guest on his show to boldly state that the “only chance we have as a country right now is” for Osama bin Laden to “detonate a major weapon” on American soil?

There are a lot more “Beckisms” — far too many to retell here. Suffice it to say that there is no one who is more deserving of the Hunter S. Thompson Memorial Fear and Loathing Award this year than Glenn Beck.

THE DAVID DUKE ‘BIGOT OF THE YEAR’ AWARD: KEITH BARDWELL

This year’s David Duke Bigot of the Year Award could have been won by Orly Taitz for her relentless, Islamophobic drive to kick President Obama out of office. It could have been won by Glenn Beck, for having the gall to call the president a “racist” on national television without producing a single scrap of evidence to back him up. It could even have been won by Rush Limbaugh, for his repeated race-baiting on his daily radio show.

But nope. The three of them were outdone by a Louisiana man who until two months ago had been totally obscure — Keith Bardwell.

Keith Who?

The aforementioned Bardwell wins the David Duke Bigot of the Year Award hands down for doing something that has been illegal under federal law for more than 40 years. Bardwell, a justice of the peace in Louisiana’s Tangipahoa Parish, refused to issue a marriage license to Beth Humphrey, 30, and her fiance, Terence McKay, 32.

Humphrey is white. McKay is black.

Why did Bardwell refuse to issue a marriage license to this interracial couple more than four decades after the U.S. Supreme Court declared unanimously that such refusal violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution?

Bardwell says he couldn’t personally endorse the marriage out of concern for any children that would result from it. In an interview with CBS News, Bardwell says that he had seen “countless” interracial couples where the children were rejected by family members, and he didn’t want to see that happen again.

Oh, really? Isn’t that one of the reasons the Ku Klux Klan was founded — to prevent interracial unions, particularly between black men and white women?

And yet this man denies that he’s a racist. “I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house,” he told Baton Rouge television station WAFB-TV. “My main concern is for the children [of interracial unions].”

Ironically, McKay is himself the son of black-white interracial parents. He and Humphrey were eventually married by another justice of the peace. Bardwell said he does not believe that interracial marriages last and it is not his place to perform them. “I stand by my decision and it is my right not to marry an interracial couple,” he said.

Bardwell’s decision sparked nationwide outrage. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal declared flatly that Bardwell’s refusal to issue the license “is a clear violation of constitutional rights and of federal and state law.” The governor called for disciplinary action to be taken against Bardwell, “including the revoking of his license.”

As it turned out, however, the heat got to be too much for Bardwell. He resigned on November 4 after McKay and Humphrey filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against him on October 20. Bardwell said he tendered his resignation to the Louisiana Secretary of State’s office after being advised “that I needed to step down because they was going to take me to court, and I was going to lose.”

Indeed, Bardwell didn’t stand a chance of winning in court. But he has won the 2009 David Duke Bigot of the Year Award — named for fellow Louisiana resident and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, now a Louisiana state representative.

You’ll recall that Duke embarrassed the national Republican Party leadership in 1991 when he unsuccessfully ran for the GOP presidential nomination. Duke remains a self-proclaimed “white nationalist.”

THE JERRY SPRINGER ‘NAUGHTY-NAUGHTY’ AWARD: (TIE) — MARK SANFORD AND TIGER WOODS

For the first time in the history of the ‘Skeeter Bites Awards, there is not one, but two winners of this year’s Jerry Springer Naughty-Naughty Award for bad personal behavior.

Named in honor of the ringmaster of the daily circus in which guests bare all their dirtiest personal laundry before a national TV audience, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford had for months been a shoo-in to win it by himself. But then on the day after Thanksgiving, Tiger Woods crashed his SUV into a tree near his Florida mansion. The billionaire golfer’s life would never be the same after that.

More on Woods later.

Sanford was a rising Republican star — especially after his highly publicized opposition to President Obama’s economic stimulus package. For months, Sanford refused to accept some $700 million in federal stimulus money for his state. Supporters of the stimulus package sued and the South Carolina Supreme Court in June ordered the governor to accept the funds.

But things started to unravel later that summer. Sanford mysteriously dropped out of public view, his whereabouts unknown. It later turned out that the state’s first lady, Jenny Sanford, found a love letter the governor wrote to his mistress and demanded the relationship end. But Sanford fled the state — to Argentina, to be precise — leading his staff to believe he had gone on a hike along the Appalachian Trail.

After a growing furor over his whereabouts, Sanford returned to South Carolina and held an emotional news conference in which he acknowledged that he had carried on an affair with an Argentine woman in Buenos Aires. In subsequent interviews with the Associated Press, Sanford identified his mistress as Maria Belen Chapur, whom the governor said was his his “soul mate.”

Sanford survived an attempt by his fellow Republicans to impeach him, but his marriage will not survive; two weeks ago, Jenny Sanford filed for divorce. The governor still faces a formal rebuke from the South Carolina legislature and possible fines resulting from a state ethics investigation into his travel and campaign finances.

Tiger Woods, on the other hand, is the last person one would expect to become embroiled in an infidelity scandal. The world’s number-one professional golfer had spent years cultivating an image as a stand-up guy and as an inspiration for millions of young people.

So when the news broke on the day after Thanksgiving that Woods had crashed his SUV less than a mile from his Florida mansion, this writer immediately thought, “Oh, no! I hope it’s not a DWI!”

But as the days and weeks passed, with Woods refusing to talk to the media, all hell broke loose, with the tabloids printing lurid stories about Woods having affairs with several women. Woods, who married Elin Nordegren, a Swedish former model, in 2007, was ultimately linked to as many as 40 women — one of whom, New York club hostess Rachel Uchitel, is reportedly pregnant by him.

That was shocking enough. Now there are reports that Woods may soon find himself embroiled in an even worse scandal: alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Sunday that Keith Kleven, Woods’ longtime trainer, has come under scrutiny in the wake of a joint U.S.-Canadian investigation of a Canadian doctor who treated the world’s top golfer.

The FBI was called in after Dr. Anthony Galea was arrested October 15 in Toronto. Galea had earlier been stopped at the U.S.-Canada border, where U.S. Customs agents found human growth hormone and Actovegin, a drug extracted from calf’s blood, in his car.

Meanwhile, the New York Daily News reported Saturday that Kleven’s silence “has done little to stop the speculation about the dramatic changes in Woods’ body beginning around 2004, the same year other Kleven clients began noticing Woods’ regular appearances in the Kleven Institute and peaking around 2006 or 2007.”

Say it ain’t so, Tiger.

AND FOR 2010 . . . WHO KNOWS?

Of course, there a lot of other notorious names that I left out, particularly Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke — named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” for 2009. On the one hand, he paid far closer attention to Wall Street than he did to Main Street, but on the other hand, he did take measures that, by all accounts, prevented the severe recession — the worst in 30 years —  from plunging headlong into the Second Great Depression. The jury is still out on Bernanke.

Of course, if I included everyone deserving of this year’s awards, this article would run far too long for anyone to read. Suffice it to say that 2009 was a strange year. One can only hope that 2010 will finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Happy New Year!

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Copyright 2009, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.