Episode 55 – Politics of Afghanistan, Health Care Reform and Las Vegas Room Rates

Following up on last week’s in-depth discussion of Afghanistan, the PoliTalk boys turn their sights back home to talk about the political implications of what’s happening over there. They wonder what our end game is, and how various options will play politically back home. Moving to discuss the politics of another hot button issue, they explain how room rates at Las Vegas hotels are tied to the fate of health care reform.  They also explain why they are on a crusade to counter the hate-filled sensational bombastic rhetoric found on most political talk shows, and encourage their listeners to invest in and help re-brand the nature of political discourse. Always entertaining and informative, it’s PoliTalk, your weekly political podcast.

Join us in Boston on November 10, 2009! Register now, visit http://nationaldebateseries.com

You can get the PoliTalk Podcast on  iTunes and Zune

Don’t Forget the Deficit…

I am a progressive. I want a leaner, more efficient, more effective progressive government. My liberal tendencies don’t preclude me from being a traditional Yankee — and fiscally conservative at that, despite the “progressive” label and popular beliefs. As we have discussed on our show, I’m also a huge proponent of health care reform. But the thing I fear the most right now is that our deficit is growing out of control and nobody is really focusing on it. Sure, there’s talk about it, but there isn’t action yet in the form of legislation. The best article I’ve read on this? From the Brookings Institution. Yeah, that’s right, the so-called liberal Brookings Institution. Here it is, and kudos to them. Everyone should read this article, which is why I’m posting it on the site. — Jeff

Episode 44 – Health Care Reform 101

All you ever wanted to know about health care reform can be found in this episode of PoliTalk. Glenn and Jeff put the politics aside as they walk through the bizarre evolution of health care as a business and explain why all the efforts of reform are meaningless unless we can learn from history. Irrespective of your — or their — political affiliation, listen as Jeff and Glenn clinically dissect the issues facing Congress and explain what needs to be done to address the ills of the current system. Always informative and entertaining, it’s PoliTalk, your weekly political podcast.

Listen to the current installment of PoliTalk and get yourself informed, inspired, entertained and ready for the day… spread the word… tell two friends, and so on and so on…

You can get the PoliTalk Podcast from Podcast.com and iTunes.

Episode 40 – Twitter, Iran and Healthcare

Let’s get social for Episode 40 of PoliTalk. In this show, you’ll hear not just about what is happening in Iran, but why, and how social media has been a driving force behind the political reforms in Iran. Glenn and Jeff debate the ramifications of using social media in a dictatorial regime, and its role in the future of Iran and other such states. They also explain the parallel behind its use in Iran and how it plays into the current health care reform debate. Getting to the root of the policy discussion, they explain what isn’t being talked in this debate, how social media might influence the health care reform discussion, and why you can’t call it “reform.” Always informative and entertaining, it’s PoliTalk, your weekly political podcast.

Listen to the current installment of PoliTalk and get yourself informed, inspired, entertained and ready for the day… spread the word… tell two friends, and so on and so on…

You can get the PoliTalk Podcast from Podcast.com and iTunes.

Episode 36 – Cheney and Healthcare – What is the Cure?

Health care takes center stage this episode with Glenn and Jeff calling Sen. Specter’s “Cures Acceleration Network (CAN) Act Turning Research into Cures” the most disingenuous political fundraising solicitation they have ever seen. They then take to task the healthcare executives who met with President Obama yesterday about healthcare reform — some of the very same executives who spent $20 million in the 1990s to kill health care reform. These executives offered to save $2 trillion over 10 years as a way of showing that we don’t need health care reform. The savings would come from, “administrative simplification,” and would be offered up voluntarily — not through the enforcement of regulation.  They wonder why these savings couldn’t be found during the Bush Administration when health care reform was not a priority, and what “administrative simplification” really means –cuts in benefits? Cuts in their own compensation? Finally, they take on Dick Cheney for taking on Colin Powell. They wonder if the Republican Party has room for someone like Colin Powell and former Congressman Christopher Shays?  Or is Dick Cheney the future of the Republican Party?  Always entertaining and informative: it’s politics and policy brought to Main Street by two experts in Washington and Wall Street. It’s PoliTalk — your Weekly Political Podcast.

Listen to the current installment of PoliTalk and get yourself informed, inspired, entertained and ready for the day… spread the word… tell two friends, and so on and so on…

You can get the PoliTalk Podcast from Podcast.com and iTunes.

Specter To Cure All

picture being used on specterforthecure.com

Former Republican and now Democratic Senator Arlen Specter wants you to donate to his re-election campaign in 2010 because as his website Specterforthecure.com states,

Without Arlen Specter back in the Senate to see it through, Specter for the Cure could be lost to the ordinary politics of Washington that kills real change.

You see, according to this website, the only way to insure that this legislation, gets passed and actually works as outlined is if Specter keeps his Senate seat. Notwithstanding the arrogance of this charge, it is pretty clear that this website takes a bill that has not been passed and makes it the theme to re-elect Specter.

The proposed bill starts off by saying:

To establish an independent Cures Acceleration Network agency, to sponsor promising translational research to bridge the gap between laboratory discoveries and lifesaving therapies, to reauthorize the National Institutes of Health, and for other purposes.

Read the bill. Specter is proposing yet another government agency. That is how we will find cures? He proposes to re-authorize the NIH? As if it was going to be shut down? Please… given that the Specter campaign is already using this to raise money, one has to question the motives.

Yet another reason why, in my humble opinion, Arlen Specter should lose his Senate seat. -Glenn

Health Care Reform: 2 Questions that MUST be answered

Health care reform is a joke unless it seriously answers the following 2 questions: 1) when someone suffers a serious illness, should someone profit financially, and if so, who and why? 2) Many, including Richard Scott, a multi-millionaire former mergers and acquisitions lawyer turned for-profit health care executive, attack any government involvement in health care as being overly bureaucratic. My question to them: how could the system they currently support, which made them millionaires by the way, which routinely denied my wife care she needed that I had to fight for, be more cumbersome, more bureaucratic, more byzantine, more complex and more confusing? Lets have a serious policy debate. But we can’t do that until we really expose what’s driving health care policy in Washington: and that’s the money and powered interests on all sides — liberal, conservative and everywhere in between. I’ve lots four people in my family to cancer, and the saddest thing is that I’m not alone in my struggles — there are too many people like me out there. As the debate rages on, nameless, faceless, voiceless people lay sick and dying — squeezed for profits, churned through heartless insurance bureaucracies. It’s enough to make you sick. — Jeff