'Blue Dogs' or Corporate Shills?

Capitalism is said to be in terrible trouble these days, with the profit motive suffering rampant badmouthing. Entrepreneurs are facing criticism, damnable criticism. And this criticism must stop.

If we don't watch what we say, some warn, the supermen who shoulder the world will soon grow tired of our taunting, will shrug off their burden and walk righteously away, leaving us lesser mortals to stew in our resentment and envy.

So far have things gone that the editors of the Washington Post, ever vigilant against deteriorating public morals, apparently decided last week that Americans required a strong dose of instruction in the basic principles of their old-time economic religion. Stephen L. Carter, the famous law professor from Yale University, took the pulpit. And from the heights of the Post's op-ed page, he instructed us to cheer whenever we discovered that someone was making money.

"High profits are excellent news," he intoned. "The only way a firm can make money is to sell people what they want at a price they are willing to pay."

Since that's the one and only way a firm can make a profit -- fraud isn't a problem, I guess, nor are subsidies or cherry-picking or price-fixing or conflicts of interest -- profit is a foolproof sign of civic uprightness.

Professor Carter's essay was supposed to be a word of caution in a dark, anti-capitalist time. But if you read your newspaper closely, it's not hard to spot glimmers of profit-taking here and there. For example, while some see the city of Washington as a stage for anti-corporate posturing, in fact it is ingeniously entrepreneurial.

Consider the "Blue Dog" Democrats, whose money-making ways were the subject of a page-one story in the Washington Post on the very day after Mr. Carter's sermon. The Blue Dogs, as the world knows, are the caucus of conservative House Democrats who have been much in the news of late for their role in weakening the Obama administration's plans for a public health insurance option.

Much of the writing about the Blue Dogs revolves around the question of why they do what they do. What makes the Dogs run? Where did they get their peculiar name? And why do they chase this car but not that one?

The Blue Dogs' official caucus website answers with rhetorical tail-chasing in which "centrism" is so exalted that it justifies any position the centrist takes by virtue of the label itself. The slightly more sophisticated explanation currently in vogue with the media -- the Dogs come from heartland districts where the culture wars are a big deal -- helps even less.

As the syndicated columnist David Sirota pointed out last week on the OpenLeft blog, having constituents who care deeply about, say, gun rights doesn't really have anything to do with the pro-corporate stands on mortgage modification and health insurance that have made the Blue Dogs famous.

Friday's page-one Post story about the Blue Dogs suggests a far simpler explanation: Entrepreneurship. In addition to everything else, the Dogs are champion fund raisers. Individual Dogs do far better than garden variety Democrats when it comes to bringing in contributions from folks with business before Congress, like the insurance industry and the medical industry. According to CQ, their political action committee is the only Democratic PAC to rival the big Republican dogs; in 2009 fund raising it has been bested only by Mitt Romney's gang.

So this is the Blue Dogs' day, with games of fetch down on K Street that had me reminiscing, as I read the Post's description, about the times when Tom DeLay and his pack did their own tricks for industry's table scraps.

My guess is that the Blue Dogs, like Jack Abramoff's Republicans before them, are more keenly attuned than their colleagues to that force of universal goodness, the profit motive. Theirs is simply a less ferocious version of what we had before, with cuddly bipartisan righteousness replacing the fierce red state righteousness of DeLay's dogs. But the master is the same as ever, and surely we can still count on the profit motive to deliver the very best in public policy.

Still, there remains the problem of the senseless moniker, "Blue Dog." In the interests of improved political nicknames, let me propose an alternative. Back in 1932, the future Illinois Sen. Paul Douglas advised progressives not to expect too much from the Democratic Party. It was, he wrote, "maintained by the business interests" as a kind of "lifeboat." Whenever the GOP ship sprung a leak -- whenever Republicans were no longer willing or able to do business's bidding -- the interests simply piled into the other party and made their escape.

The Democrats have improved considerably since those days, at least from a progressive standpoint. But there are still branches of the party willing to carry out the ancestral mission. Let's call them what they are: the lifeboat caucus.

Read more articles at the Opinion Journal:
Arthur Laffer: How to Fix the Health-Care 'Wedge'
Gordon Chang: Mr. Clinton Goes to Pyongyang

Comments

[aofh]

The capitalist are out to kill capitalism. True conservative would, at least, have the good sense to know that you have to take care of the cow if you expect to continue to get milk from it.

[EAM]

To ask the question is to answer it.

[Sundei]

HELLO, MR. FRANK....it's "LAP DOGS", not blue dogs...

[DrP]

Sen. Ben Nelson, "D"-Nebraska is a former insurance company attorney.

[DragonflyChase]

The Baucus Corporate Caucus

Their bill is garbage and not worth the paper it's written on or the backroom it was dealt in.

[research]

All without mentioning the Democratic Leadership Council?

The DLC is cooperate funded very successful as a result.

Clinton, Rahm, Obama, Lieberman, all DLC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Leadership_Council#Criticism

Kucinich/Dean 2012!

[tdbach]

Blue dogs bite

[JackRusselTerrier]

Approximately three years ago I was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. I had health insurance. It was then that I realized how little my "insurance" was worth. I had to pay high deductibles and my "insurance" only covered certain treatments. I missed a lot of work. It was difficult to keep up with living expenses, high deductibles, and uncovered medical bills.

A year later, I was diagnosed with a secondary blood disorder caused by the tumor, which ironically causes more problems than the tumor itself. Eventually I could not work any more and lost my health insurance along with my job. I collected medical unemployment for a while, but that has expired. I cannot afford the COBRA payments - so I have been without health insurance since then. I go to a free clinic now for basic care. I end up in an emergency room frequently, but they only patch me up to save my life and then release me ASAP because I have no "insurance". Hopefully I will be approved for disability soon.

To those of you who think you have good "insurance" and think this can't happen to you - think again.
If I had single payer health coverage to begin with I wouldn't be in this situation.

I for one am trying very hard to get single payer or a strong public option passed.

Whether or not it is too late to help me - time will tell.
Hopefully it's not too late for you.

[JackRusselTerrier]

Regardless of what these groups are up to, it is up to you to do your part. When all is said and done, will you be able to look yourself in the mirror and say you did all you could to get health care reform passed?

Not only do we need to contact the politicians who are also spreading this disinformation, we also need to contact the ones who are working hard on our behalf.

Tell the politicians who are obstructing health reform that you are paying close attention to their actions and there will be consequences for their negative behavior. Not only will you not vote for them if they obstruct progress - you will campaign with great effort to replace them in the next election with candidates who have the public's best interest in mind.

Tell the politicians who are working hard for health care reform that you will remember their efforts at the next election. Ask them what you can do to help get health care reform passed.

Tell the politicians who are on the fence how important this is to you and you will not accept your future being compromised.

[Shirley Fisk]

8/6/08
12:21pm
Sunny Isles Beach, FL

What a horrible situation to be in. I wish I could do something to help you.

But I'm busy feeling sorry for myself because I don't have health insurance so I can't get a doctor to see me even though I was injured in a car accident (concussion.)
After the ER visit no doctor wants to see me based on the promise of the at-fault-party's car insurance (I didn't carry medical on my car, either--I'm unemployed.)

[Sundialsvc4]

This isn't rocket science, Tom.

Article 2, Section 4 of our Constitution lists two high-crimes by name. Kindly observe that "bribery" sits right next door to "treason."

They're one and the same high crime, really. Both serve to betray a country into "the hands of its enemies," which in this case is "the enemy within." Yes, 307 million citizens can stand to lose their jobs, their homes, their financial security (and their National Treasure), their health and with it, their very lives. This isn't "a series of unfortunate events." We have been betrayed by our own leaders, whether they're wearing red shirts or blue.

"Take a bite out of high crime." You wanna seriously stop this thing? That's what you do, and you do it now.

[JackRusselTerrier]

Cosign

[usna73]

I'm with you.

[OzzieTonto]

Was it not the custom, in days of yore when men were men and the Commies were still frothing at their collective mouths with proletarian wrath, that such sold-out political prostitutes were called, 'Running Dogs'?

[Coattails]

Well, the first rule of politics is, Keep your political power.

Many of the so-called blue dogs won their seats in 2006 and 2008 by picking off the so-called moderate republicans. Many are from states that traditionally vote republican, or districts that were republican controlled for a long time before 2006.

With the new media and attention to all the big ticket spending items, and considering most blue dogs who supposedly fiscally conservative, this will be used against them in the next election.

Its all politics, they are looking at the polls in support for these issues, realizing they are much lower now than a couple months ago, and now wondering how they will keep their political power.

[Fred Hood]

BLUE DOG= A democrat that is bought and paid for just like the republicans..

[nickels]

The party needs to do whatever is necessary to make sure Baucus and Nelson (Nebraska) don't return to Congress. They need to be told to just go ahead and take the cushy job with whatever insurance/­pharma/hos­pital chain bought them off in the first place.

[WestcoastSteve]

" Whenever the GOP ship sprung a leak -- whenever Republicans were no longer willing or able to do business's bidding -- the interests simply piled into the other party and made their escape."

I'd say this is more like rats leaving a sinking ship. So instead of Blue Dog caucus, or Lifeboat caucus, let's call them what they really are: the Rat caucus.

[Rjchinook]

I created this E-mail to send:

I have a very hard time understanding why anyone would believe what they read without investigating if it's true or not! Especially people who forward these E-mail to elders/seniors like my Mother (age 79) who of course would be very worried if these rumors were true! I am a 55 year old Native American woman, I'm NOT bought & paid for by anyone! I just ask for U to please take the time to read the info I gathered below and click links, visit websites, READ & for PETE SAKES GOOGLE if U don't believe me! I also ASK THAT U PLEASE QUIT being stuck in black & white, political party or religious thinking BECAUSE U KNOW WHAT?
IT'S NOT ONLY about U its about YOUR children & their children's children!

FACT: These VIRAL E-mails are SCARE TACTICS BOUGHT & PAID FOR BY HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES! YES the same companies that bought & paid for the POLITICIANS (Dems & Repugs) who are against Public/Single Payer Health Care!

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/special-interest-money-means-longer.html

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2009/06/senators-opposed-to-public-opt.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/8/4/761744/-GOPers,-Blue-Dogs,-and-the-health-insurance-industry-that-owns-them

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/good-doggie-blue-dogs-rewarded-substa

Truth about Health Insurance Companies:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07312009/watch.html

http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/h/health-plan.htm

[usna73]

I salute you.