Senate Passes Healthcare Overhaul Bill
Senate Democrats erupted into applause this morning, shortly after 7:15 a.m., following the passage of the Senate’s $871 billion healthcare bill. The final vote was 60 to 39. No Republican supported the legislation, which has been President Obama’s top domestic priority. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid spoke moments before the vote.

Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid: “We certainly don’t have, Mr. President, the luxury of waiting until America becomes the only developed nation on earth where you can die for lack of health insurance. We already bear that blemish. That’s why we’re bringing security and stability to millions who have health insurance and bringing health insurance to millions who have none.”

Supporters of the Senate bill describe it as the biggest expansion of federal healthcare guarantees since the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid over four decades ago. But many progressives have criticized the Senate for removing language that would have created a government-run health insurance program to compete with private insurers. The Senate and House must now merge their two bills.


Obama Claims He Didn’t Campaign for Public Option
As the Senate moved closer to passing its healthcare reform bill, President Obama distanced himself from supporters of the creation of a government-run health insurance program. Senate Democrats removed the public option from the healthcare bill in order to gain enough votes to break a Republican filibuster. On Tuesday, President Obama told the Washington Post he never campaigned on the public option.
President Obama: “It is true that the Senate version does not have a public option, and that has been—become, I think, a source of ideological contention between the left and the right, but I didn’t campaign on a public option. I think it is a good idea, but as I said in that speech on September 9th, it just one small element of a broader reform effort.”

As a presidential candidate, Senator Obama touted the benefits of a public option. On his own campaign website, Obama promised that under his health plan, “any American will have the opportunity to enroll in [a] new public plan.” As President Obama said in his weekly address that any plan that he signs must include a public option.


Goldman Sachs Faces Probe over Betting on Housing Market Crash
The New York Times reports investigators in Congress, at the Securities and Exchange Commission and at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority have launched probes into Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms for deliberately selling risky structured securities to clients and then betting on the securities failing. The probes are looking at how Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and other Wall Street firms profited off complex mortgage-based securities, known as synthetic collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs. Pension funds and insurance companies lost billions of dollars on such securities that they believed were solid investments. One focus of the inquiry is whether the firms creating the securities purposely helped to select especially risky mortgage-linked assets that would be most likely to crater, setting their clients up to lose billions of dollars if the housing market imploded. Finance expert Sylvain Raynes said, “The simultaneous selling of securities to customers and shorting them because they believed they were going to default is the most cynical use of credit information that I have ever seen.” Raynes compared it to buying fire insurance on someone else’s house and then committing arson.


Chevron to Pay $45 Million in Unpaid Royalties
In other energy news, the Justice Department has announced Chevron will pay $45 million to resolve claims that it vastly underpaid royalties on natural gas produced on federal and Native American lands between 1988 and 2008.


Congressional Study Clears ACORN of Violating Federal Regulations
A new report by the Congressional Research Service has determined the anti-poverty group ACORN hasn’t violated any federal regulations in the last five years and that recently enacted federal legislation to prohibit funding to ACORN raises significant constitutional concerns. Earlier this year, Congress voted to strip ACORN of all federal funding after conservative activists released videos of an undercover sting operation that allegedly showed ACORN workers offering advice to a pimp and prostitute. ACORN has long been a target of right-wing scorn for its work helping poor people fight foreclosures, fix tax problems, and register to vote. For years Republicans have claimed that ACORN helps Democrats steal elections by fraudulently registering voters. But the new Congressional Research Service report also dispels this myth. The report found there were no instances of individuals who were registered to vote improperly by ACORN who attempted to vote at the polls.


Gaza Freedom March Planned for One-Year Anniversary of Israeli Assault
This weekend marks that one-year anniversary of the start of Israel’s three-week assault on the Gaza Strip that killed some 1,400 Palestinians and thirteen Israelis. To mark the occasion, a group of over nearly 1,400 individuals from over forty countries around the world are aiming to break the siege of Gaza and participate in a nonviolent march inside Gaza alongside thousands of Palestinians.


Obama: Disappointment over Climate Talks is Justified
In an interview on PBS NewsHour, President Obama said Wednesday that disappointment over the outcome of the Copenhagen climate change summit was justified. Obama made the comment one day after Sweden labeled the accord Obama helped broker a disaster for the environment.

President Obama: “I mean, I think that people are justified in being disappointed about the outcome in Copenhagen. What I said was essentially that rather than see a complete collapse in Copenhagen, in which nothing at all got done and would have been a huge backward step, at least we kind of held ground, and there wasn’t too much backsliding from where we were.”


Crusading Sports Journalist Lester Rodney, 98, Dies; Fought the “Color Line”
And the influential sports writer Lester Rodney has died at the age of ninety-eight. From 1936 to 1958, he worked as sports editor of the Daily Worker, the newspaper of the US Communist Party. Rodney campaigned to allow African Americans to play Major League Baseball. The sportswriter Dave Zirin said of Rodney, “He crusaded against baseball’s color line when almost every other journalist pretended it didn’t exist.”


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