1 Boring Old Man

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Somebody Buy Joe Lieberman a Puppy
FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right
By Nate Silver
10/26/09

The reason this is a little scary for Democrats is because the usual things that serve to motivate a Congressman don’t seem to motivate Joe Lieberman.

• Would voting to filibuster the Democrats’ health care bill (if it contains a decent public option) endear Lieberman to his constituents? No; Connecticutians favor the public option 64-31.
• Would it make his path to re-election easier? No, because it would virtually assure that Lieberman faces a vigorous and well-funded challenge from a credible, capital-D Democrat, and polls show him losing such a match-up badly.
• Would it buy him more power in the Senate? No, because Democrats would have every reason to strip him of his chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee.
• Is Lieberman’s stance intended to placate the special interests in his state? Perhaps this is part of it – there are a lot of insurance companies in Connecticut – but Lieberman is generally not one of the more sold-out Senators, ranking 75th out of the 100-member chamber in the percentage of his fundraising that comes from corporate PACs.
• Are there any particular compromises or concessions he wants in the bill? He hasn’t stipulated any, at least not publicly.
• Might he have a legitimate policy objection to the public option? Certainly there are some legitimate objections – whether or not you agree with them. But Lieberman’s objections don’t make any sense.
  1. He says he’s worried about blunting "the economic recovery we’re in" even though the public option provisions wouldn’t kick in until 2013.
  2. He says he’s worried about debt-reduction when the public option would make the bill more deficit-neutral. And he campaigned on a public-option type alternative called "MediChoice" in 2006.

What Joe Lieberman wants, in all probability, is attention. He wants Harry Reid to have to stand up and say things like: "I don’t have anyone that I’ve worked harder with, have more respect for, in the Senate than Joe Lieberman." He wants face time on Meet the Press. He wants to make liberals feel some pain – especially those who tried to get Ned Lamont elected in his place. He wants everyone to know how maverick-y he is…

Nate’s right. Lieberman is like one of those Roman Senators in the old movies like The Gladiator or Julius Caesar – plotting and scheming for power, or glory, or revenge, or attention, or envy, or who-knows-what that doesn’t have anything to do with the issue on the table. He’s having his moment in the sun being oh-so-very important like he did with his pal John McCain during the campaign. Obama should’ve picked him for VP when McCain didn’t to get him out of the Senate. Then he could’ve just ignored him for four years. Whatever Joe’s up to, it’s kibitzing and grandstanding that runs his motor. I hope he enjoys himself.

As for me, the Lieberman announcement got me kind of down. It rained all day here with a high, cold wind, so I had to much time to think. It was like last time, Bush days, when some ploy like Lieberman’s went on all the time. We never know the real story, so we spent all our time guessing about the back story. And here we go again. What does Lieberman want? Indeed. Lieberman is hardly the point. As Nate points out, his objections make little sense. The most I can make of what he said is that he doesn’t want to vote for it because he doesn’t want to vote for it. And what of his constituents? "Connecticutians favor the public option 64-31."

Sen. Lieberman Literally in Bed With Drug Lobby
Truthdig
By Joe Conason
Jul 12, 2006

Editor’s note: In this column, Conason points out that the Connecticut senator who would lecture us on ethics drafted a bill in 2005 that made generous giveaways to pharmaceutical companies—one month after his wife went to work in the pharmaceuticals division of a major lobbying and PR firm.

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… Sen. Lieberman has long been known to cultivate the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, which provide jobs in his home state and contributions to his campaign fund. But he has literally been sleeping with one of their Washington representatives ever since his wife, Hadassah, joined Hill & Knowlton last year. The legendary lobbying and PR firm hired her as a “senior counselor” in its “health and pharmaceuticals practice.”

This news marked Hadassah Lieberman’s return to consulting after more than a decade of retirement. “I have had a life-long commitment to helping people gain better health care,” she said in the press release announcing her new job. “I am excited about the opportunity to work with the talented team at Hill & Knowlton to counsel a terrific stable of clients toward that same goal.”

It would be uplifting to imagine that Hill & Knowlton—after spending the past decade as a defendant in tobacco class-action lawsuits because of its role in propaganda disputing the deadly effects of smoking—is now devoted to improving everybody’s health. More likely, the firm remains devoted to improving the profits of its clientele, which has historically included Enron, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, Saudis, Kuwaitis, American International Group and Boeing.

When a senator’s wife works for one of the capital’s largest lobby shops, appearances tend to matter. In this case, something happened immediately that didn’t look very good. Mrs. Lieberman signed up with Hill & Knowlton in March 2005. The firm’s clients included GlaxoSmithKline, the British pharmaceutical giant that manufactures flu vaccines along with many other drugs. In April 2005, Sen. Lieberman introduced a bill that would award an array of new government “incentives” to companies like GSK to produce more vaccines—notably patent extensions on other products, at a cost of billions to governments and consumers.

That legislation provoked irritated comment by his hometown newspaper, the New Haven Register. In an editorial headlined “Lieberman Crafts Drug Company Perk,” the Register noted that his bill was even more generous to the pharmaceutical industry than a similar proposal by the Senate Republican leadership. “The government can offer incentives and guarantees for needed public health measures,” said the editorial. “But it should not write a blank check, as these bills do, to the pharmaceutical industry that has such a large cost to the public with what may be an uncertain or dubious return.”

No doubt Lieberman would do the bidding of the pharmaceutical lobby whether his wife was on its payroll or not, but this kind of coincidence is best avoided by a man who lectures the world about morality and ethics…