Pro-choice advocates protesting in January.

This January, SFR reported on a rally for abortion rights. Pro-choice groups worried that with a federal health care bill could come a rollback in women’s right and access to abortion and reproductive health care—a possibility that seems to become more likely by the hour.

Yesterday, Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., of the now-infamous Stupak Amendment to forbid federal funding for all insurance plans that allow abortion, said he and 11 other Dems won’t vote for health care unless the Senate bill is equally restrictive. Continue reading »

In case there was ever a moment when you weren’t less than two feet from the worst, most expensive coffee in the universe, Starbucks has invented a mobile canister of the crap to be force-fed to passersby on the Plaza.

The paragon of liberal-acceptable capitalism was doing taste tests this weekend to see if people could tell the difference between Starbucks Instant Coffee™® and the company’s regular brewed stuff. And—no way—they couldn’t. People had no idea which was worse. A little tweaking (“People had know idea which was better!”), and this becomes a multimillion dollar ad campaign.

A little tweaking of the silly vessel this poor Starbucks employee is forced to tote around for the prospect of living wage and health care—assuming he’ll be allowed access to the highly touted but practically mythical coverage—and he can be a Ghostbuster for Halloween.

Show us what has left the back of your eyelids burning. Send pictures
of visual trespass and peculiarities to copyeditor [at] sfreporter.com,
subject “eyedropper.”

The Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Responsive Politics have released an extremely timely and thorough expose,
“Curious Clusters“, involving “hidden” Congressional campaign contribution bundling by health care special interests. Here’s their 1-2-3 on the investigation:

The investigation identified outside lobbyists that donated to the same members of Congress as their clients, and strongly suggests that special interest giving is enhanced by the K Street contributors they hire…

There is no indication that the extra giving by lobbyists was part of a planned effort by the healthcare firms to solidify their support among key members of Congress. But whether coordinated or not, the newly-found clusters of lobbyist giving clearly illustrate the intensity of the full-court press that the industry is currently waging on Capitol Hill.

In all, 61 members of Congress—39 in the Senate, 22 in the House, 38 Democrats and 23 Republicans—got money from 10 or more outside lobbyists whose healthcare or health insurance industry clients also contributed to their campaigns.

Sen. Max Baucus, the Senate Finance Committee chairman who recently voted down two public-option amendments, was the third largest recipient after Republicans Sen. John McCain and Sen. Mitch McConnell. (click the chart to enlarge). Of the 61 members, only two New Mexican names turn up: Sen. Tom Udall and Rep. Martin Heinrich, both Democrats.

According to the research, Udall accepted $2,250 from two health-related organizations—Roche Holdings and UnitedHealth—which was then “enhanced”  ten-fold by $22,700 in donations from 21 lobbyists. Heinrich accepted $2,250 from Amgen, which was then amplified by $9,850 from 11 lobbyists.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, one of the original “gang of six” assigned to hash out a health reform bill and one of the eight Senate Finance members to vote for both public option amendments, was not one of the 61 Congressmen. Nor was Rep. Ben R. Lujan or Rep. Harry Teague.

There was much more to our interview with US Rep. Ben Ray Luján than we were able to fit into this week’s SFR Talk or last week’s health care discussion, including:

* Why he thinks it’s important for the US to stay in Afghanistan

* Whether he thinks PNM, one of his bigger campaign contributors, is doing enough to develop renewable energy

* Why he posed with Truffles the Office Pig

Listen to the full interview with the embedded player below, or download the MP3 right here.

And here are some rough and incomplete topical time stamps, for your inconvenience.

0-3 min.: Life in Washington

3-21 min.: Health care

21 min.: Energy issues

23 min.: Changing the national labs’ mission

26 min.: PNM and renewable energy

31 min.: PRC and Jerome Block Jr

32 min.: Iraq and Afghanistan

43 min.: Commercial space travel

44 min.: Adam Kokesh, miscellany

50 minutes: The stimulus

SFR’s Julia Goldberg, Zane Fischer, Dave Maass and Corey Pein just had a sit-down interview with Santa Fe’s man in Washington, US Rep. Ben Ray Lujan. Look for our entire discussion next week. In the meantime, it seems timely to excerpt and post the audio from the portion of the interview dealing with health care reform.

Trust me, listening to our interview is more fun than going to a town hall. Enjoy.

(If the media player takes too long to load, try downloading the mp3 directly. Just right-click this link and “save as.”)

Also check out, via LP, Salon’s jaundiced take on New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman:

“Bingaman may be the prime example of the way some Senate Democrats seem to have approached the healthcare debate this summer: count votes first, figure out what should be in the bill later. And while you’re counting, take the most pessimistic view possible.”

Ouch.

“What’s mysterious about Bingaman’s decision to join the negotiations is how badly New Mexico needs help getting its citizens — his constituents — health insurance.”

Double ouch.