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Last week I constructively proposed three alternate locations that might be better suited to a Chihuly museum than a couple acres of public land designated as open space, and in the comment thread HA readers offered several additional suggestions. But according to The Stranger’s Cienna Madrid, such reasonable conversation is apparently a nonstarter:

[Space Needle CEO Ron] Sevart insists that the Space Needle has not, and will not, consider another location for the project (although the Wright family could certainly afford it).

That’s because far from the “gift” to the city many Chihuly backers claim it to be, this project is first a foremost a for-profit venture, and there is undeniable synergy between the existing Space Needle businesses and what they are describing as “Chihuly at The Needle.”

As I’ve mentioned before, in addition to the overpriced/undercheffed restaurant at the top, the Wrights operate a bustling catering business out of the Skyline banquet facility, and the proposed Chihuly “museum” would instantly become one of the hottest catering halls in the city. But I’m sure the prospect of offering a “discounted” joint admission fee to both the Space Needle and the Chihuly museum would be lucrative as well. Rather than paying $17 for the Needle and $15 for Chihuly, $25 might get you in to see them both… and the Wrights up their average ticket by nearly 50% over what they’re getting now.

Sweet.

Meanwhile, Cienna and I aren’t the only “journalists” weighing in against the project, with Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat bucking his own editorial board, and calling out the proposed Chihuly “museum” for what it really is:

See the problem here, Seattle Center? Your Chihuly gallery is the anti-fireworks. It’s exclusive. The campaign for it is canned.

If we’re going to have a museum, can we at least broaden it beyond the overexposed Chihuly? And with a money-raising effort, make it free to enter, a la the Olympic Sculpture Park?

Or how about, instead, putting in a giant playground? Or even just trees and grass?

A giant playground! Or maybe even a giant, kick-ass one! What a great idea! Now that’s a proposal I could get behind.

Why? Because Seattle is a city desperately in need of more family-friendly amenities, something, apart from Danny, the Seattle Times doesn’t seem to recognize, but which, apparently, the New York Times does:

The Kids and Families Congress is to take place at the Seattle Center, the site of the Space Needle and the 1962 World’s Fair. The center itself has become a topic of debate, over the future of five acres of asphalt at the foot of the needle that for decades has been home to the Fun Forest, an aging amusement park.

The Fun Forest is set to close for good at summer’s end and the site’s private owners have proposed replacing it with a private museum featuring the work of Dale Chihuly, the Northwest glass artist. Critics say that sends a wrong signal about Seattle’s priorities. A private glass museum, some argue, would not necessarily be regarded as family friendly.

“It’s not just symbolic,” said Sally Bagshaw, who is chairwoman of the City Council parks committee. “It’s very much at the heart of what I’m talking about: how do we keep families here? We want to make Seattle a place where people come because it is the best place in the world for your kids.”

And ask any kid what they’d rather visit, a really kick-ass playground or a museum of glass, and I’m guessing most would choose the former.

The folks at The Stranger have been doing yeoman’s work exposing the process by which the proposed Chihuly “museum” is being foisted upon the city, and the ham-fisted public relations campaign by which the backers are attempting to fake some glass-roots street cred. What we’ve learned so far:

The committee considering bids for the Fun Forest site appears likely to be stacked in favor of the Chihuly proposal:

The problem is, certain members of the Seattle Center Advisory Commission and the Century 21 Committee have already publicly spoken out in favor of the Chihuly Museum project. For example, Jan Levy spoke for the Chihuly Museum at Tuesday’s meeting and she is Century 21 Committee co-chair; her fellow co-chair is Jeffrey Wright, owner of the Space Needle. Wright is financially backing the Chihuly Museum. Levy also serves on the Seattle Center Advisory Commission.Robert Nellums, director of the Seattle Center, also spoke in favor of the project at Tuesday’s public meeting—even though he was moderating the meeting. Representatives from Seattle International Film Festival, the Pacific Northwest Ballet, Intiman Theater, and other vested Seattle Center interests all stumped for the Chihuly Museum.

And speaking of Space Needle/Chihuly “museum” owner Jeffrey Wright, it turns out that he’s a big contributor to Republican candidates and causes — over $50,000 worth in recent years. Not that this in itself says anything about the virtues of a Chihuly museum, but as Dominic Holden astutely points out:

The company behind the Space Needle is the entity that wants to build and would profit from the Chihuly glass museum. Asked if Wright would personally make money from the Chihuly museum, Space Needle spokeswoman Mary Bacarella says, “Well he’s the owner. It’s a for-profit [business].”

[…] Building the Chihuly museum would help line the pockets of someone who donates heavily to political causes and candidates that clash with most Seattle residents. And now he’s trying to use public land, owned by those people, to make his profits.

I guess this is what many of the project’s well-heeled backers meant when they repeatedly referred to it as “a gift.”

And while “museum” backers both dis the notion of open space being essential to the Seattle Center while insisting that no other proposals for the site have been made, Cienna Madrid reports otherwise:

John Sutherland, an administrator at the University of Washington, submitted a proposal to Seattle Center director Robert Nellums in 2007. Sutherland proposed demolishing the covered pavilion and creating a greenbelt/picnic area, adding new rides in the kids area, and introducing six new major amusement park rides, including a roller coaster. Sutherland’s plan also called for a kid’s public playground and a water play area.

When Sutherland was submitting his proposal, the Seattle Center master planning process (formally called the Century 21 Master Plan) was just beginning. He attended “at least 60 different meetings,” he says, during which officials and the public made it clear that what the people wanted was more green space. In the end, Sutherland says, Nellums told him that the proposal was not going to happen. “And I thought that was fair,” says Sutherland. “Even though my proposal incorporated green space, I thought we lost fair and square. It wasn’t what the people wanted.”

So when Sutherland made his family-friendly proposal, the Century 21 Committee, which Wright co-chaired, dismissed it as not providing enough green space. And now Wright himself is proposing constructing a for-profit, paid-admission gallery/gift shop/cafe/catering hall on the site. Huh.

Oh. And from the Credit Where Credit Is Due Department, after credulously reporting “overwhelming support” for the project the morning after the sham hearing, the Seattle Times at least comes back with a report on the expensive PR offensive the backers have launched:

Representatives of the Space Needle went two hours early to a public meeting about their proposed Dale Chihuly exhibit at Seattle Center to make sure their supporters would be first on the list to speak.

They filled in the first 60-or-so speaking slots. It was clear from the handwriting that some people had signed up multiple people…

Yup. That’s why the respectable folk got to speak at 6:30 PM, while I didn’t get to the podium until almost 9.

Heard enough? The folks at Slog have conveniently compiled a list of phone numbers and email addresses of Seattle City Council members and other players for you to contact and voice your opinion. Or you can conveniently mass email them here.

What are the pinheads on the right going to lecture us about if the economy turns around? Things aren’t clear yet, but this is encouraging.

U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the chair of the House Education and Labor Committee, issued the following statement today after the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that 162,000 jobs were created in March, the largest monthly job gain in three years. Excluding the expected bump in temporary census hiring, private sector hiring was still the highest last month since the recession began.

“Today’s news that our nation created the most jobs in three years is a sign that our efforts are helping to move our economy in the right direction. When President Obama first inherited this crisis, our economy was losing around 700,000 jobs a month. Today’s figures reflect what private sector economists have told us: that the Recovery Act has increased economic activity and is helping to restore confidence in families and businesses.

If this keeps up the Fox Noise apparatus will have to come up with some phony, manufactured outrage over a trivial issue that only inflames emotions and plays to people’s worst instincts.

That’s a tall order for them, I know, but they’ll find a way. They pretty much have to, because they don’t have any meaningful ideas to offer the American people, just a grab bag of resentments. Certainly nobody on our side should count any chickens right now, because the economy is still struggling, and the perils of self-delusion have been demonstrated by the noise machine for some decades. Keep calm and carry on, as it were.

What Robert Reich says:

The Fed has finally came clean. It now admits it bailed out Bear Stearns – taking on tens of billions of dollars of the bank’s bad loans – in order to smooth Bear Stearns’ takeover by JPMorgan Chase. The secret Fed bailout came months before Congress authorized the government to spend up to $700 billion of taxpayer dollars bailing out the banks, even months before Lehman Brothers collapsed. The Fed also took on billions of dollars worth of AIG securities, also before the official government-sanctioned bailout.

As Reich points out, we have an un-elected, nearly unaccountable organization choosing winners and losers in our “capitalist” system. Keep in mind this happened in 2008, while George W. Bush was still president and Hank Paulson was Secretary of the Treasury. Ben Bernanke is still chairman of the Federal Reserve itself, and Tim Geithner, who was New York Fed chair when this “bailout” occurred, is now ensconced at Treasury. As always, Reich’s post is very much worth reading.

There were not any Tea People in late 2008, and it seems to be forgotten that the use of the Boston Tea Party as a symbol was first thrown out by CNBC hack Rick Santelli in a a possibly pre-planned and infamous rant in early 2009. Now that we know the Fed was operating as an unelected shadow government, the specter of Santelli yelling about not wanting to pay the mortgages of “losers” is even more insidious.

Divide and conquer is a very old concept, and that’s what is happening to this country. I can’t help but think that as the Tea People bitch and moan about a health care reform law that holds the promise of modest but very real improvements in things like pre-existing conditions bans and such, they are missing the actual economic tyranny that is so clear to anyone who chooses to look.

Republicans could have participated in the reform process, but instead they decided to lie endlessly and fan popular resentments that should be directed at their benefactors, namely the corporate barons of this country, and re-direct them using classic disinformation techniques like conspiracy theories, racism and anti-intellectualism.

At least with health care reform there will be democratic elections, and if a majority of citizens choose to punish Democrats for enacting the reform, they will do so. Not so with the Fed and the nation’s gigantic financial institutions, who are accountable to nobody but themselves. As long as moral hazard and the picking of winners and losers stands, talk from the Tea People about “free markets” and “smaller government” is nothing but a cruel and absurd joke. They accuse us of wanting socialism, an asinine claim when their puppet masters are running an organized criminal enterprise.

As it turns out, they are the mob. Just not in the way they thought.

With all of the focus on how terrible a newspaper the Seattle Times is, I temporarily forgot how terrible a newspaper the Tacoma News-Tribune is. To be fair, I’ve seen far more incoherent anti-drug editorials than the one in that link, but it ends up completely missing the larger point behind the corruption within the medical marijuana community. The recent violence against members of that community has intensified a few pre-existing rifts, but it also turns out to be a good example of why moderation within that group is as important as ever if we’re to overcome the outdated stereotypes about marijuana and close the curtain on a truly destructive social policy – and why creating a legal and regulated market remains the smartest solution to the problem.

That editorial is a good springboard for tackling various aspects of those topics, so I’ll take it piece by piece:

[Read more…]

Oregon Attorney General John Kroger, a Democrat, is the first state AG to announce he will file a brief supporting the new health care law. From KATU-TV in Portland:

In an interview with KATU News reporter Anna Song Kroger said, “I think if you look at the Supreme Court’s cases on the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution over the last 70 years, it clearly suggests that the government has the power to regulate insurance and indeed to require people to either buy insurance or to pay additional taxes to help pay for insurance.”

As you more than likely know, Washington AG Rob McKenna, a Republican, has joined up with about twelve other AG’s to support a Florida-based lawsuit against the law.

If you go to the KATU link above and click on the “video” tab, you can watch about a ten minute interview with Kroger. It’s not the greatest interview, because the reporter seems to have only a rudimentary grasp of the constitutional issues at stake, but since Kroger is a professor and constitutional scholar you kind of figure he can write a good brief. He kept making the point that it’s important the courts hear from states who hold the law is constitutional, perhaps an indication that there will be others doing the same as Kroger.

I really don’t think Rob McKenna and Bill McCollum (and the rest) have any idea what is going to hit them. The best constitutional minds in the country are lining up against them. All Rob McKenna can do now is double down with the Tea People and The Seattle Times, which right now is advertising a “live chat” with McKenna scheduled for 12:45 pm tomorrow. That would be tomorrow, April 1. Yeah, I know. It would be funny if it weren’t so damn transparent and pathetic.

Yet another disgruntled ex-reader cancels their subscription to the Seattle Times:

Editor
Seattle Times

By this email I am canceling my subscription to the Seattle Times. Your endorsement of Rob McKenna’s self-serving challenge to the constitutionality of the health insurance reform bill argues that the suit is a challenge to Big Insurance that progressives should approve. The idea that the Seattle Times supports the challenge out of a concern for the power of corporations in American life lacks any credible evidence in the editorial positions historically taken by the Times.

The Times has every right to support McKenna’s efforts to tack the gubernatorial shoals of Tea Parties and Clubs for Growth, but doing it with a lecture about what liberals should believe grates one last time too many on me. Lawsuits are supposed to be filed in a good faith belief in the positions advanced. Unless he is dumb and, therefore not qualified to be Governor, McKenna cannot believe that this lawsuit has merit. When McKenna files and the Times endorses a suit against corporate personhood to overturn Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad, I’ll re-subscribe.

I’ve learned to live without the PI. Living without the Times will be like noticing it’s not raining.

Jan Bianchi
Attorney at Law

Nearly 19,000 citizens have joined the “Washington Tax Payers OPT OUT of Rob McKenna’s Lawsuit” Facebook group over the past week, yet the Times dismisses our opposition as a mere “politically orchestrated hiss.”

So if you’re sick and tired of being disrespected by Frank Blethen and his cronies, cancel your subscription and send a copy of your correspondence to me, and I’ll be happy to post it to HA, with or without attribution.

Just a provide even more of an exclamation point on Rob McKenna’s hypocrisy over the Commerce Clause, here’s a page that the Marijuana Policy Project put up shortly after the Gonzales v. Raich decision came down. In Gonzales v. Raich, the Supreme Court ruled that the Commerce Clause gives the federal government the right to arrest people who are following their state’s medical marijuana law. This decision (which was agreed upon by both the more liberal members of the court and Scalia) is why most legal experts believe that the challenge to the health care reform bill’s mandates will rejected.

What’s interesting about that page is that, of the 10 states that had medical marijuana laws at the time of the decision, all but two of the respective state Attorney Generals publicly affirmed that their state medical marijuana laws were still valid despite the ruling. One of the two who sat silent was Rob McKenna. In fact, I can’t find a single public statement from McKenna at that time standing up for the Washington voters who’d voted overwhelmingly to allow marijuana use among seriously ill individuals. This is why the Seattle Times editorial claiming that McKenna’s opposition is somehow rooted in his deep convictions about the Constitution is such a joke.

Instead, Josh Feit gets this one exactly right:

I’ll tell you exactly what Rob McKenna was thinking: Charlie Crist.

Sure McKenna may have jeopardized his shot at winning the governor’s race in 2012, but he has to make it through the primary to even have a chance. And even in a top-two primary (or especially in a top two primary), he needs the Republican base.

Feit thinks that McKenna’s gamble could work and get him to the Governor’s Mansion. I’m not so sure. But for the Seattle Times not to be able to see through his transparent bullshit – well, that’s pretty much what we’ve come to expect from them.

I couldn’t make it down there myself, but I’m told a healthy media contingent showed up to watch the protesters drop off petitions at the Attorney General’s office, presumably on the off chance that there might be a little drama.

I’d say that was well played on my part, but, you know, one can only go to that particular well so many times.

When several thousand health care reform backers packed into Westlake Park last September the rally earned relatively little media coverage and absolutely zero ink in the Seattle Times. Yet when maybe a hundred or so Teabaggers gathered on a street corner to mark the anniversary of their so-called “movement,” the Times deemed that worthy of a reporter, a photographer and twenty column inches.

Why? Media bias, of course, though not necessarily of the kind you might think.

Yeah, sure, our media’s corporate owners are biased toward the right-wing agenda and away from ours, but outside of, say, Fox News and handful of other ridiculously partisan media outlets, that only explains a small part of the disproportionate coverage the Teabaggers have enjoyed. No, what the media is really institutionally biased toward is a good story. And the angry, crazy, froth-at-mouth Teabaggers are nothing if not a good story.

Peacefully dropping off a bunch of petitions on the other hand, not so much… not at least unless you’re Tim Eyman prancing about in a rented costume, and spouting off his usual anti-tax/anti-government sound bites. But up the ante a little — provoke the AG’s office into ordering a lockdown, for example — and voila… three TV cameras show up. You know, just in case.

Am I proud that it took turning up the angry rhetoric a couple notches to spark some attention? Not particularly, but neither am I ashamed. I’ve been at this too long not to know how this game is played.

In my emails today with AG communications director Janelle Guthrie, she wrote: “It doesn’t have to be as ugly and contentious as you seem to like to make it. Reasonable people can have reasonable discussions.”

Yeah, well, reasonable people can have reasonable discussions, but apparently, if you want the media to pay attention, it does unfortunately have to be a little ugly and contentious. After all, my long time readers know that at my core, I’m a policy wonk who often digresses into lengthy, technical policy discussions, only to be completely ignored by the legacy press. But break a bit of dirty muckraking — or vaguely threaten to vaguely threaten a public disturbance — and that catches the media’s attention.

I’m a smart critic, an entertaining writer and a damn fine analyst with long track record of getting stuff right, but honestly, I know what my main role is: publicly saying the things respectable folk wish they could publicly say, if they weren’t so cautious and polite. That’s why folks read me, because I’m willing to call a spade a fuckin’ spade. And there’s something naturally cathartic in that.

But like I said, one can only go to that particular well so many times before it runs dry, and if I’m the only person around here expressing any real emotion, the media will continue to largely ignore our side of the story while heaping outsized coverage on the handful of loud, angry wingnuts across the street.

And for those in the media who take issue with my assessment of what it takes to manipulate you, well, actions speak louder than words. (Or at least, actions would speak louder than words, if only there was anybody around to report on them.)

State Attorney General Rob McKenna has ordered his offices on “modified lockdown” today in anticipation of protests against his bullshit lawsuit to block national health care reform. According to spokesperson Janelle Guthrie:

“We understand that a number of groups are going to be rallying tomorrow and bringing petitions over to our office. Some blogs have been encouraging acts of violence toward our office,” Guthrie said, declining to identify which ones caused alarm. “It’s for protection of all the employees here who have nothing to do with this lawsuit.”

Uh-huh. Well, I didn’t make an exhaustive search, but I haven’t seen any of the local blogs I usually read advocating violence, so I can only assume that Guthrie is referring to me. And here’s what I wrote on the subject:

Tomorrow at the AG’s office, let the polite petitioners do their thing, but if you’re pissed off at Rob McKenna for pandering to Teabaggers and threatening health care reform with his cheap political ploy, I encourage you to show up at his office and make a ruckus. Get loud, get angry, get threatening. I don’t particularly want to see any actual violence or property damage, but I’d love to see the genuine fear of it.

So here’s my question to our state’s top law enforcement officer: if saying that “I don’t particularly want to see any actual violence or property damage” can be understood as advocating violence and property damage, then you damn well better send a state trooper to my door and have me arrested, because I’m not backing down.

I mean, Jesus Christ… the teabaggers are faxing nooses and cutting gas lines and flashing their weapons and generally behaving like health care reform is the legislative equivalent of Red Dawn, and you’re locking down your offices because some blogger says he hopes protesters will be loud and angry? Could you be a bigger pussy?

That said, protesters will be gathering at the Tivoli Fountain on the Capitol campus at noon today, and marching to the locked-down AG’s offices at 1125 Washington Street SE to deliver over 18,000 petitions. And yes… I urge you to show up and get loud, angry and disruptive. But you know, not violent per se, because that sort of behavior is apparently only acceptable from the right.

UPDATE:
Guthrie confirms via email that yes, she was referring to my post, but claims she was misquoted.

UPDATE, UPDATE:
Guthrie elaborates that it was this line that allegedly prompted the need for a lockdown — “… it’s not our fault if some people get out of hand” — a line that parodies the refusal of Republican congressional leaders to forcefully condemn the violent acts and threats from the right that has been spurred on by their party’s incendiary rhetoric during the health care debate.

But, you know, I am a liberal, so you can never be too careful.

On the same day that real estate salesman Dino Rossi teases the NRSC with word that he’s seriously considering a run for the U.S. Senate, the 18,000-strong Washington Association of Realtors announce their enthusiastic endorsement of Democratic incumbent Sen. Patty Murray:

“Realtors are proud to endorse Sen. Murray as she has been a tireless advocate for housing affordability and the American dream of home ownership,” said Bill Riley, Washington Realtor president. “She has also been keenly aware of the state of the housing market and its importance to our economic recovery.”

With the Realtors’ endorsement comes the financial support of the RPAC, the state’s largest political action committee, with as many as 10,000 annual contributors. RPAC endorses Democrats and Republicans who share the organization’s concerns for the housing industry, home buyers, and homeownership in Washington state. In 2008, Realtors invested more than $750,000 to support political races around the state; about 93 percent of Realtor-endorsed candidates were elected to office.

Oh man, that’s gotta sting, doesn’t it, when the folks who know you best endorse your opponent? Kinda like David Irons losing the endorsement of his own mother.

The Podcast emerges from its undisclosed location to make a fleeting appearance at Drinking Liberally. Goldy and his panel of political wonks and blogoratti take the opportunity to celebrate the passage of sweeping health care reform legislation…because it IS a big fucking deal! At the same time, they express collective bemusement in the Republican response to the new law: “It’s Armageddon!”

At the local level, the panel takes bewildered delight in the decision by Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna to join the Florida anti-health-care-reform lawsuit. Rob, who everyone knows is running for Governor in 2012, has done a wonderful job maintaining the façade of a moderate Republican. The panel dissects the decision and concludes that the lawsuit was a huge political blunder, and one that will re-brand McKenna as something of a “far rightie Tenther nutcase.” Explaining McKenna’s blunder proves more elusive for the panel. Was it anger? Was it self-delusion? Was it extortion? Was he reacting to a potential primary challenge by Dino Rossi?

The panel wraps up with a discussion of the remaining reconciliation process and Republican prospects and reactions in the immediate post-health-care-reform world…seemingly, “no!,” “nuh-uh,” and “naaah.”

Goldy was joined by Drinking Liberally Seattle co-host Chris Mitchell, Effin’ Unsound’s & Horsesass’s Carl Ballard, Peace Tree Farm’s N in Seattle, and me.

The show is 53:07, and is available here as an MP3:

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_mar_23_2010.mp3]

[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to Confab creators Gavin and Richard for hosting the Podcasting Liberally site.]

Via DailyKos.

“[Rob McKenna] may represent the people of Florida, but not on the dime of the taxpayers of Washington.”
— Washington Governor Chris Gregoire

Perhaps this helps explain why over 6,500 Washington citizens have already joined the Washington Tax Payers OPT OUT of Rob McKenna’s Lawsuit Facebook group?

UPDATE:
Oops.  A new USA Today/Gallup poll shows public opinion swinging strongly in favor of health care reform.

Americans by 9 percentage points have a favorable view of the health care overhaul that President Obama signed into law Tuesday, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, a notable turnaround from surveys before the vote that showed a plurality against it.

By 49%-40% those surveyed say it was “a good thing” rather than a bad one that Congress passed the bill. Half describe their reaction in positive terms, as “enthusiastic” or “pleased,” while about four in 10 describe it in negative ways, as “disappointed” or “angry.”

The largest single group, 48%, calls the bill “a good first step” that should be followed by more action on health care. An additional 4% also have a favorable view, saying the bill makes the most important changes needed in the nation’s health care system.

Perhaps this is why Republicans vehemently opposed passage… because the knew public opinion swing in the Democrats favor once it was passed? And notice how 48% call it “a good first step”… seems to be a pretty clear indication that a lot of the folks previous polls reported as opposing the bill, merely thought it didn’t go far enough.

Writing on the Washington State Insurance Commissioner’s official blog, Rich Roesler explains what yesterday’s passage of federal health care reform means for us here in Washington state:

The health care reform bill passed by the U.S. House Sunday will cut the number of uninsured in Washington state by more than 500,000, provide better coverage to those with insurance, and save $500 million in uncompensated care – health care that’s delivered in Washington state but not directly paid for.

Which makes it hard to explain why Republicans Dave Reichert, Doc Hasting and Cathy McMorris-Rodgers would vote against it. Unless, of course, their votes were purely ideological and/or political.

Ezra Klein makes this point magnificently:

When Medicare was being considered, the American Medical Association hired Ronald Reagan to record a record housewives could play for their friends. It was called Operation: Coffee Cup, and you can listen to it in the clip atop this post, or read the text here.

Reagan was a more graceful speaker than Blackburn, but his point was much the same. Kill the bill. “If you don’t do this and if I don’t do it,” he said, “one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.”

Well, the bill passed. And moments ago, Rep. Paul Ryan was on the floor of the House, bellowing against Democrats who would dare propose “across-the-board cuts to Medicare.” This is breathless opportunism from Ryan — he has proposed far deeper across-the-board cuts to Medicare, and is making arguments against the Democrats’ bill that would be far more potent and accurate if aimed at his own — but leave that aside for a moment. The GOP’s embrace of the program that Ronald Reagan fought, and that Newt Gingrich sought to let “whither on the vine,” is based on the lived experience seniors have had with the bill: It has made them more, rather than less, free.

Blackburn’s introduction aside, people do not “celebrate” the freedom to not be able to afford lifesaving medical care. They don’t want the freedom to weigh whether to pay rent or take their feverish child to the emergency room. They don’t like the freedom to lose their job and then be told by insurers that they’re ineligible for coverage because they were born with a heart arrhythmia.

When faced with the passage of programs that would deliver people from these awful circumstances, the Republicans adopt a very narrow and cruel definition of the word “freedom.” But when faced with the existence of programs like Medicare, and the recognition that their constituents depend on those programs to live lives free of unnecessary fear and illness, they abandon their earlier beliefs, forget their dire warnings and, when convenient, defend these government protections aggressively. There’s nothing much to be done about that. It is, after all, a free country. But Americans should feel free to ignore these discredited hysterics.

The House now has the votes to pass this thing.