Unbelievable. Et tu Sherrod Brown? Why would any reality-based person reconfirm such a catastrophically terrible economic manager? I mean, look at that unemployment rate, the flatulent economy, or just read about his and other conventional thinkers' gigantic MISS on the real estate bubble. The whole corrupt financial sector takeover of the political system is responsible for our deep recession, of course, but why shouldn't Bernanke take a fall for his ostrichy lack of foresight? Why shouldn't somebody take a fall for the catastrophically bad economic forecasting, the record-breaking giveaway to incompetent financial institutions? And then there is pwoggieland's utter silence (except for David Sirota and, I guess, Jane Hamsher) and worse (see Dean Baker below on 'liberal' NPR 'reporters' openly ridiculing Senator Jim Bunning, a Republican Senator willing to criticize Bernanke, giving him an F- on his management of and responsibility for the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression). This is why common sense people say there is no left in the U.S., and why we so desperately need one. Here's Merkley:

Tomorrow, I will vote against confirming Ben Bernanke as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. The reason, in short, is that as Chairman, Dr. Bernanke failed to recognize or remedy the factors that paved the road to this dark and difficult recession. Following our economic collapse, it is also apparent that he has not changed his overall approach to prioritizing Wall Street over American families. . . .

Our nation is just beginning to emerge from the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression, and there is no guarantee we will continue on the road to recovery over the long or short terms. Unemployment remains far too high, credit is unavailable to too many businesses, and families are plagued by falling home prices and high foreclosure rates. Even as we move forward with our efforts to get our economy back on track, it is critical we carefully examine what led us to this point.

For too many years, federal regulators turned a blind eye to signs of an impending financial crisis. Tricks and traps proliferated in the credit card and consumer lending industries. Predatory mortgage loans exploded, fueling an unsustainable housing bubble. Regulators lifted rules requiring banks to keep adequate capital, and a laissez-faire approach to securitization, derivatives, and proprietary trading encouraged excessive risk-taking on Wall Street. As a member of the Board of Governors, Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, and then ultimately as Chairman of the Board of Governors, Dr. Bernanke supported each of these decisions, failing to take the necessary precautionary steps that could have averted or mitigated financial collapse.

There's more...

By Nezua, Media Consortium Blogger

A crowd of thousands gathered on Capitol Hill Tuesday, to lobby for and support immigration reform, as Debayani Kar writes for RaceWire. Representative Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus "presented his key principles for comprehensive immigration reform" at the rally. They include:

There's more...

With little debate and even less reasoning the Senate Finance Committee recently included in its health care legislation 50 million dollars for teaching abstinence only sex education classes in schools.  These programs teach students to avoid having sex as the only way to avoid pregnancy and stay healthy.

By definition, these programs are not reality-based and, therefore, have proven to be ineffective.  They deny the existence of condoms, birth control pills, and other proven ways to stay healthy and avoid pregnancy.  They are ineffective because many young people will have sex even if you warn them about the dangers, and not educating them about the number of options available to have safe sex unnecessarily places their health at risk.

You might call these "ignorance only" programs because their objective is to keep young people ignorant of the facts of sex and prevention of medical conditions that could harm them.

There's more...

Crossposted from Hillbilly Report.

The legislation the Senate Finance Committee will vote on next week relies heavily on Co-ops to help cover the uninsured. It discards a robust public option, or any public option completely. It also mandates that uninsured Americans must buy insurance with subsidies to help them do it. Senators Baucus and Conrad are intent on including this model into law and voting against any more Progressives ideas such as a Public Option and single-payer.

There's more...

By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium Blogger

Yesterday, the powerful Senate Finance Committee met to debate two amendments that would have inserted a public option into the committee's health reform bill. Both amendments were defeated as key Democrats sided with Republicans and the insurance companies. David Corn of Mother Jones diagnoses what ails Senate Democrats. It's split personality disorder: "They are the best friends of the health insurance industry. They are fiercest foes of the health insurance industry."

Sen. Jay Rockefeller's (D-WV) strong public option amendment was defeated 15-8 because senators Max Baucus (D-MT), Kent Conrad (D-ND), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Bill Nelson (D-FL), and Tom Carper (D-DE) joined the committee's ten Republicans. In the next round of voting, Nelson and Carper backed Chuck Schumer's (D-NY) amendment, but Baucus, Conrad and Lincoln stuck with the GOP and voted it down. Ironically, as Corn observes, the Senate Democratic communications team was busy emailing blistering indictments of the insurance industry while key members of the caucus were doing the insurers' bidding.

John Nichols of The Nation worries that yesterday's defeat is a sign that Congress is backing away from a public option, which was itself a compromise alternative to a single-payer, Medicare-for-all type system:

Tuesday's day-long gathering of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, where chairman Max Baucus has spent months lowering expectations, offered a sense of just how dim prospects for meaningful systemic change have become.

Baucus, the insurance-industry representative who doubles as a Democratic senator from Montana, long ago rejected the notion that a robust public option might be a part of any healthcare reform measure that would pass the Senate.

The Senate Finance Committee went on to add tens of millions of dollars for discredited abstinence-only propaganda for teens, as Mike Lillis of the Washington Independent reports. Well, at least pseudoscience has a public option. If kids can learn this nonsense for free at school, maybe they'll ditch church, where you have to put your money in the collection plate to hear the sermon.

Chris Bowers of AlterNet argues that a public option still has 51 votes in the Senate. Which means that the Democrats could still pass a healthcare bill by majority vote in the upper chamber, if they decided to forgo their quest for a filibuster-proof 60 and pass the bill through budget reconciliation.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), chair of the Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee, claims to have the votes to pass a plan with a public option, Lynda Waddington reports in the Iowa Independent. Harkin believes that the full Senate should have the opportunity to vote on the public option, considering that it's part of four out of the five bills that have been approved so far.

The fight for a public option isn't over yet. To date, all of the other health reform bills that are out of committee include a strong public option. The next step is putting these bills together to create the final legislation for the House and Senate to vote on.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care and is free to reprint. Visit  Healthcare.newsladder.net for a complete list of articles on health care affordability, health care laws, and health care controversy. For the best progressive reporting on the Economy, and Immigration, check out Economy.Newsladder.net and Immigration.Newsladder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and created by NewsLadder.

There's more...