Marcy Kaptur is on C-Span right now talking glowingly about the anti-women's rights addition to the Insurance Industry Protection Act.

Sigh.

Now somebody else [Christopher Smith] is up, talking about the huge number of babies who would have been killed and all the mothers who would have been wounded without the intervention of the brave right-to-life souls who got this amendment into the bill.

Eric Massa and Dennis Kucinich voted against the bill. Thank you.

Alan Grayson, John Conyers, and Anthony Weiner voted for the bill. Hard to blame them, as there are good things tucked into this bill among all the other stuff we could really have done without. Thanks, guys [not].

According to a post on Pennsylvania blog, House speaker Nancy Pelosi will allow a mere twenty minutes of debate on single-payer, albeit indirectly.

He's apparently still planning to introduce both a full single payer bill in the Senate, a la Anthony Weiner's substitution move last I heard, and he's planning to introduce a Kucinich-style states' rights single payer amendment too.

By DANIEL BARLOW
Times-Argus (Vt.)
Oct. 29, 2009

MONTPELIER — U.S. Sen. Bernard Sanders will likely make history this year when — for the first time ever — he brings a bill creating a national single-payer health care system to the floor of the Senate for a vote.

I'm guessing No, but perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised:

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) secured a commitment from Pelosi and House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) for a vote on a fully government-run, “single-payer” insurance program in July to get liberal support for moving the bill out of committee. Weiner said Thursday that he'd been told “all systems are go,” but leaders have pointedly declined to confirm that.

Odd, that.

[I'm leaving this sticky because a synonym for "economic rent" would be really nice to have and propagate. -- lambert]

Go read Numerian for a lucid explation of how GS is making its money. I'll wait.

Now, I want to pull out two paragraphs:

We’ve seen this year the scandal over High Frequency Trading, where Goldman and other firms have computers positioned at the New York Stock Exchange getting information on trades a millisecond before they are posted publicly. Goldman sees where the market is going second by second, positions itself for very short term profits, and in effect extracts a tax on trading by individual investors and mutual funds.

This tax is, exactly, a "rent," a concept which -- lambert blushes modestly -- we were hammering on rather early on, and which our tribunes of the people on the A list still haven't latched on to.

The second paragraph:

Thank gawd we've got true progressives in office and a charismatic President who's a combination of Lincoln and FDR! Reuters blogger James Pethokoukis:

You can add House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the group of Democrats or Obama allies (John Podesta, Paul Volcker, Roget Altman) calling for a value-added tax. (I predicted all of this days ago.) Here is Pelosi (via The Hill):

Thank gawd we've got true progressives in office and a charismatic President! Reuters blogger James Pethokoukis:

You can add House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the group of Democrats or Obama allies (John Podesta, Paul Volcker, Roget Altman) calling for a value-added tax. (I predicted all of this days ago.) Here is Pelosi (via The Hill):

Pelosi, appearing on PBS’s “The Charlie Rose Show” asserted that “it’s fair to look at” the VAT as part of an overhaul of the nation’s tax code.

“I would say, Put everything on the table ...

Ha ha. Except single payer, of course, which would save the country $350 billion a year, since we wouldn't be paying the health insurance companies 30 cents on the dollar to deny us care. But whatever.

More than 100 rally in Albany to try to revive plan, as vote by Congress expected this month

Single Payer New York Co-chairman Mark Dunlea said voters should ask their Congressional representatives to support the measure, which is sponsored by Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-Queens .

Dunlea said a single-payer plan would help pay for itself by cutting $400 billion in insurance company overhead and profits out of health-care costs.

If you have already written your Representative and Senator about this, try to take a friend to their district office to ask them to support the Weiner amendment. Office visits are the gold standard in citizen contact.

October 10, 2009, Albany, NY

The day’s activities will include:
-Presentations on national and state developments in the struggle for healthcare reform
-Strategies for building a grassroots movement
-Opportunities to meet and share with other activists from around the State
-Speakers include: Congressmen Paul Tonko and Eric Massa, Anthony Weiner invited.

Albany Medical College
Albany, NY
10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Pre-registration appreciated: ateuthemia [at] nycap [dot] rr [dot] com
Questions: healthylink [at] earthlink [dot] net
For more information go to: www.singlepayernewyork.org

Nice headline:

What Grayson gave the country and the news media was a much needed anatomy lesson in how to govern, how to make a point, how to stand up for what you believe is right, how to fight for it, and how to handle bullies. Which is smack them back and they stop. A teachable moment and anatomy lesson for everyone, not the least of which, hopefully was President Obama.

Policy aside, yes, that's what Grayson did.

Obama, in the Rose Garden, speaking to a gathering of physicians today:

Every one of you here today took an oath when you entered the medical profession. It was not an oath that you would spend a lot of time on the phone with insurance companies. (Laughter.) It was not an oath that you would have to turn away patients who you know could use your help. You did not devote your lives to be bean counters or paper pushers. You took an oath so that you could heal people. You did it so you could save lives.