Archive for July, 2009
Bill Moyers Journal, July 24, 2009: Health Care
The political posturing in the health care reform debate has provided plenty of grist for the news mill. But some important information is lost in the rhetoric. What exactly is in the plans Congress is considering, and will any of them help provide health care to more Americans affordably?
To get a clearer picture of what is and isn’t being considered during the debate, Bill Moyers sits down with two experts on health care policy. Trudy Lieberman covers health care reform for COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW and is the director of the health and medical reporting program at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. Marcia Angell is a senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School and the former editor-in-chief of the NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE.
Transcript:
BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the Journal. . Transcripts | PBS
Push finally came to shove in Washington this week as the battle over health care reform escalated from scattered sniper fire into all-out combat.
REP. STEVE KING: Socialized medicine produces rationing of care
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: One of the plans that we’ve talked about is a public option
MALE REPORTER: You’ve been pushing Congress to pass health care reform by August. Why the rush?
MICHAEL STEELE: $239 billion to the deficit by 2019.
REP. LOUISE GOHMERT: We’re talking about a nightmare for the American people.
KATIE COURIC: It’s not going to add to the deficit?
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: It will not add to the deficit
REP. LOUISE GOHMERT: It is insane
BILL MOYERS: If this all seems to be getting more and more confusing, well join the club. It’s hard to see what’s happening through all the gunsmoke.
The Republicans have more than health care reform in their bomb sights — they want a loss for Obama so crushing it will bring the administration to its knees and restore Republican control of Congress after next year’s elections. In the words of Republican Senator Jim DeMint, “If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.”
The Waterloo of DeMint’s metaphor, of course, was the battle in 1815 that ended Napoleon Bonaparte’s rule as Emperor of France — a humiliating defeat and a turning point in European history. Right-wingers like Glenn Beck see Obama as Napoleon, an emperor who must be stopped.
GLENN BECK: I mean, this guy is practically an imperial president now. When he starts to lose and people start to question him and push him back against the wall, he’s not going to know how to react.”
via Bill Moyers Journal . Transcripts | PBS.
Health Care Hypocrisy
Health Care Hypocrisy | CommonDreams.org
by Ralph Nader
About the only lesson Barack Obama has learned from the Hillary and Bill health insurance debacle of 1993-1994 is to leave Michelle Obama out of his current drive to get something-anything-through the Congress labeled “reform”.
Otherwise, he is making the same mistakes of blurring his proposal, catering to right-wing Democrats and corporatist Republicans, who want an even mushier “reform” scam, and cutting deals with the drug, hospital, and health insurance industries.
His political opponents become bolder with each day as they see his party base in Congress weakening, his polls dropping, and a confused public being saturated with unrebutted propaganda by the insatiable profiteering, subsidized health care giants.
Their campaign-money-greased minions on Capitol Hill and the corporatist Think Tanks and columnists are seizing on President Obama’s aversion to conflict and repeated willingness to water down what he will fight for.
via Health Care Hypocrisy | CommonDreams.org.
The rich have never had it so good
The rich have never had it so good | Salon
Taxing the wealthy could help the poor? Not if Congress has anything to do with it
Here’s a truism: The wealthiest 1 percent have never had it so good.
According to government figures, 1-percenters’ share of America’s total income is the highest it’s been since 1929, and their tax rates are the lowest they’ve faced in two decades. Through bonuses, many 1-percenters will profit from the $23 trillion in bailout largesse the Treasury Department now says could be headed to financial firms. And most of them benefit from IRS decisions to reduce millionaire audits and collect zero taxes from the majority of major corporations.
But what really makes the ultra-wealthy so fortunate, what truly separates this moment from a run-of-the-mill Gilded Age, is the unprecedented protection the 1-percenters have bought for themselves on the most pressing issues.
To review: With 22,000 Americans dying each year because they lack health insurance, Congress is considering universal healthcare legislation financed by a surcharge on income above $280,000 — that is, a levy almost exclusively on 1-percenters. This surtax would graze just 5 percent of small businesses and would recoup only part of the $700 billion the 1-percenters received from the Bush tax cuts. In fact, it is so minuscule, those making $1 million annually would pay just $9,000 more in taxes every year — or nine-tenths of 1 percent of their 12-month haul.
Nonetheless, the 1-percenters have deployed an army to destroy the initiative before it makes progress.
The foot soldiers are the Land Rover Liberals. These Democratic lawmakers secure their lefty labels by wearing pink-ribbon lapel pins and supporting good causes like abortion rights. However, being affluent and/or from affluent districts, they routinely drive their luxury cars over middle-class economic interests. Hence, this week’s letter from Democratic dot-com tycoon Rep. Jared Polis, of Boulder, Colo., and other Land Rover Liberals calling for the surtax’s death.
via The rich have never had it so good | Salon.
The Cheney plan to deploy the U.S. military on U.S. soil
The Cheney plan to deploy the U.S. military on U.S. soil l - – Salon.com
Glenn Greenwald
This new report today from The New York Times’ Mark Mazzetti and David Johnston reveals an entirely unsurprising though still important event: in 2002, Dick Cheney and David Addington urged that U.S. military troops be used to arrest and detain American citizens, inside the U.S., who were suspected of involvement with Al Qaeda. That was done pursuant to a previously released DOJ memo (.pdf) authored by John Yoo and Robert Delahunty, addressed to Alberto Gonzales, dated October 23, 2001, and chillingly entitled “Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the U.S.” That Memo had concluded that the President had authority to deploy the U.S. military against American citizens on U.S. soil. Far worse, it asserted that in exercising that power, the President could not be bound either by Congressional statutes prohibiting such use (such as the Posse Comitatus Act) or even by the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which — the Memo concluded — was “inapplicable” to what it called “domestic military operations.”
Though it received very little press attention, it is not hyperbole to observe that this October 23 Memo was one of the most significant events in American politics in the last several decades, because it explicitly declared the U.S. Constitution — the Bill of Rights — inoperative inside the U.S., as applied to U.S. citizens. Just read what it said in arguing that neither the Fourth Amendment — nor even the First Amendment — can constrain what the President can do when overseeing “domestic military operations” (I wrote about that Memo when it was released last March and excerpted the most revealing and tyrannical portions: here). Here’s just a small sample to convey the rancid taste of that Memo (click on images to enlarge):
via The Cheney plan to deploy the U.S. military on U.S. soil – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com.
Bait and switch: How the “public option” was sold
Bait and switch: How the “public option” was sold – PNHP
The people who brought us the “public option” began their campaign promising one thing but now promote something entirely different. To make matters worse, they have not told the public they have backpedalled. The campaign for the “public option” resembles the classic bait-and-switch scam: tell your customers you’ve got one thing for sale when in fact you’re selling something very different.
When the “public option” campaign began, its leaders promoted a huge “Medicare-like” program that would enroll about 130 million people. Such a program would dwarf even Medicare, which, with its 45 million enrollees, is the nation’s largest health insurer, public or private. But today “public option” advocates sing the praises of tiny “public options” contained in congressional legislation sponsored by leading Democrats that bear no resemblance to the original model.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the “public options” described in the Democrats’ legislation might enroll 10 million people and will have virtually no effect on health care costs, which means the “public options” cannot, by themselves, have any effect on the number of uninsured. But the leaders of the “public option” movement haven’t told the public they have abandoned their original vision. It’s high time they did.
via Bait and switch: How the “public option” was sold – PNHP’s official Blog.
The Safety Net – Cracks in Unemployment System Widen Under Strain of Recession
Jobless Checks for Millions Delayed as States Struggle – NYTimes.com
Years of state and federal neglect have hobbled the nation’s unemployment system just as a brutal recession has doubled the number of jobless Americans seeking aid
In a program that values timeliness above all else, decisions involving more than a million applicants have been slowed, and hundreds of thousands of needy people have waited months for checks.
And with benefit funds at dangerous lows even before the recession began, states are taking on billions in debt, increasing the pressure to raise taxes or cut aid, just as either would inflict maximum pain.
Sixteen states, with exhausted funds, are now paying benefits with borrowed cash, and their number could double by the year’s end.
Call centers and Web sites have been overwhelmed, leaving frustrated workers sometimes fighting for days to file an application.
Jason Rosenbaum: Why Do Blue Dogs Want You and Me to Pay Three Times More Than They Do for Health Care?
OPS: EVERY Blue Dog and Blue Dog supporter should be asked this question every time you run into one.
Why Do Blue Dogs Want You and Me to Pay Three Times More Than They Do for Health Care?
The Blue Dog negotiating list for health reform has been floating around for days now. Here’s the list:
–Effectively bend the cost curve
– Realign incentives to reward high quality, efficient health care; include value-based purchasing, value index, innovation center for Medicare and Medicaid, and other delivery system reforms
–Increase small business exemption and adjust for inflation
–Address end-of-life care
–Adjust the value and cost of subsidy levels
– Provide affordability credits on a sliding scale from 100-300 percent FPL
– Public option must negotiate rates with providers, provide greater clarity on opt out, compete on a level playing field, and be available as a fallback
–Establish consumer-driven, state-based co-ops
–Create state-based exchanges with a federal fallback
–Maintain current state-federal partnership with Medicaid, while implementing reforms that increase its value and effectiveness
I’ve emphasized the two in the middle, because those are the two we hear are highest on the Blue Dog list right now. They are also the ones that cut to the heart of health reform. In short, the Blue Dogs want to keep health care unaffordable for you and your family.
China’s Growth Comes at Expense of U.S.
China’s Growth Comes at Expense of U.S.
Chinese trade policies are undermining the American economy and draining the nation’s jobs, wealth, businesses and its standing as the world’s foremost economic powerhouse.
A new report by United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission details the destruction that America’s so-called “free trade” with China is causing for the domestic economy.
According to the report, Chinese trade policies are undermining the American economy and draining the nation’s jobs, wealth, businesses and its standing as the world’s foremost economic powerhouse.
“China’s successful, fundamentally protectionist policies have changed U.S.-China trade patterns in dramatic and deeply troubling ways since China’s 2001 admission to the [World Trade Organization],” Charles McMillion, president of MBG Information Services and author of the report writes. “The most productive sectors of U.S. industry have been broadly undermined by record trade losses with China and others, and unprecedented U.S. foreign borrowing and asset sales have undermined U.S. financial independence, accumulating massive future obligations, particularly with China.”
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Examining the Stimulus and Taxation
Examining the Stimulus and Taxation
Taxes in the United States are the ultimate political scapegoat.
Taxes in the United States are the ultimate political scapegoat. Regardless of economic circumstances, taxes are either too high or too low, and the government is typically happy to lower them in order to build constituent followings.
Unfortunately, in this time of economic chaos, the pariah of taxation is once again in the news. Many conservative pundits are worried that the Obama administration is out to raise their taxes. Most Americans, who have seen their wages stagnate and disposable income disappear, favor as little taxation as possible. Even veteran political commentators like George F. Will have come out to lambast the policies which drive taxes higher. Will believes in the “free” market, sees the value-added tax as a burden, and wishes only that the government would stop compounding its mistakes.
The government has spent billions of dollars on two stimulus packages, and many in the government are now calling for a second round. They want to give the people what they want, or at least maintain the appearance that they are doing so, but there is no way to pay for it all.
Where would the funding come from? Taxes.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
There is No Improvement
There is No Improvement
Since the recession began in December 2007 the United States has lost over 7 million jobs, it has lost nearly $1 trillion to international trade, and spent roughly $2 trillion more than it could afford.
The American economy has witnessed the longest and steepest period of decline since the stock market crash of 1929. Since the recession began in December 2007 the United States has lost over 7 million jobs, it has lost nearly $1 trillion to international trade, and spent roughly $2 trillion more than it could afford.
Daily Kos, a typically well-founded website, has a recent piece discussing “stabilization” and “recovery” in everything from retail to unemployment. It even displays a graph showing the decline in new unemployment filings over the past several months. What the author fails to mention is the unemployment is still far outpacing job creation. The indicators used to exemplify recovery in fact show nothing but a slight slowing of the decline.
This idea is discussed at length by EconomicPopulist.org, which makes the convincing argument that things in the country are indeed getting much worse. On July 17 the National Employment Law Project released a report showing that over 600,000 Americans would lose their unemployment benefits by September.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
3 New Jersey Mayors and 5 Rabbis Among Those Arrested in Federal Inquiry
44 Charged by U.S. in New Jersey Corruption Sweep - NYTimes.com
A two-year corruption and international money-laundering investigation stretching from the Jersey Shore to Brooklyn to Israel and Switzerland culminated in charges against 44 people on Thursday, including three New Jersey mayors, two state assemblymen and five rabbis, the authorities said.
The case began with bank fraud charges against a member of an insular Syrian Jewish enclave centered in a seaside town. But when that man became a federal informant and posed as a crooked real estate developer offering cash bribes to obtain government approvals, it mushroomed into a political scandal that could rival any of the most explosive and sleazy episodes in New Jersey’s recent past.
It was replete with tales of the illegal sales of body parts; of furtive negotiations in diners, parking lots and boiler rooms; of nervous jokes about “patting down” a man who turned out to indeed be an informant; and, again and again, of the passing of cash — once in a box of Apple Jacks cereal stuffed with $97,000.
via 3 New Jersey Mayors and 5 Rabbis Among Those Arrested in Federal Inquiry – NYTimes.com.
Ignoring Watchdog Report, Treasury Gives Three Major Banks Sweetheart Deals
Ignoring Watchdog Report, Treasury Gives Three Major Banks Sweetheart Deals
Less than two weeks after a congressional watchdog called attention to backroom deals in which the Treasury Department repurchased stock warrants from bailed-out banks at well below market value, three more such transactions have now been reported. The big loser: The U.S. taxpayer.
The Congressional Oversight Panel reported earlier last month that in 11 transactions with small banks, taxpayers walked away with about 66 percent of what they could have gotten.
At a hearing on the warrant repurchase program in the House on Wednesday, Herbert Allison Jr., a senior Treasury official, insisted that the sweet deals the banks got were needed to aid the liquidity of the smaller institutions.
via Ignoring Watchdog Report, Treasury Gives Three Major Banks Sweetheart Deals.
Costs and Compassion
Costs and Compassion - NYTimes.com
Paul Krugman
The talking heads on cable TV panned President Obama’s Wednesday press conference. You see, he didn’t offer a lot of folksy anecdotes.
Shame on them. The health care system is in crisis. The fate of America’s middle class hangs in the balance. And there on our TVs was a president with an impressive command of the issues, who truly understands the stakes.
Mr. Obama was especially good when he talked about controlling medical costs. And there’s a crucial lesson there — namely, that when it comes to reforming health care, compassion and cost-effectiveness go hand in hand.
To see what I mean, compare what Mr. Obama has said and done about health care with the statements and actions of his predecessor.
via Op-Ed Columnist – Costs and Compassion – NYTimes.com.
Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. speaks out on racial profiling after his arrest by Cambridge police.
Skip Gates Speaks
The Root Editor-in-Chief Henry Louis Gates Jr. talks about his arrest and the outrage of racial profiling in America.
I’m saying ‘You need to send someone to fix my lock.’ All of a sudden, there was a policeman on my porch. And I thought, ‘This is strange.’ So I went over to the front porch still holding the phone, and I said ‘Officer, can I help you?’ And he said, ‘Would you step outside onto the porch.’ And the way he said it, I knew he wasn’t canvassing for the police benevolent association. All the hairs stood up on the back of my neck, and I realized that I was in danger. And I said to him no, out of instinct. I said, ‘No, I will not.
via Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. speaks out on racial profiling after his arrest by Cambridge police..
Who caused the economic crisis?
Who caused the economic crisis? | Salon
Economist Simon Johnson and “Obamanomics” author John Talbott say there’s plenty of blame to go around
Editor’s note: This is the first installment in a three-part conversation between Johnson and Talbott. Read Part 2 on Thursday and the conclusion on Friday.
By Simon Johnson and John Talbott
John R. Talbott is a former investment banker with Goldman Sachs and the author of “The 86 Biggest Lies on Wall Street,” “Contagion,” “Obamanomics,” and “The Coming Crash in the Housing Market.” His books predicted the housing market crash, the financial crisis and the election of Barack Obama when Obama was still a little-known underdog. Talbott is currently engaged in trying to build what he calls “a grass-roots movement of ordinary Americans who want to take back the government from lobbyists and corporate interests.” Anyone interested in learning more can e-mail him at johntalbs (at) hotmail (dot) com.
Simon Johnson, the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is the cofounder of BaselineScenario.com, a Web site tracking the ongoing financial crisis. He is also the Ronald A. Kurtz professor of entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management, a member of the Congressional Budget Office’s Council of Economic Advisers and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C. He is one of the most visible public commentators on the ongoing financial crisis and its causes and on what role the government and regulatory policy will play in moving the economy forward.
From June to July of 2009, Talbott and Johnson held an e-mail conversation on the following topic:
via Who caused the economic crisis? | Salon.
“I would shut down the hedge fund industry”
“I would shut down the hedge fund industry” | Salon
Simon Johnson and John Talbott on downsizing banks, reducing corporate pull in D.C. and getting pissed!
Editor’s note: This is the second installment in a three-part conversation between Johnson and Talbott on the causes of the current economic crisis. Read Part 1, “Who caused the economic crisis?”, here. The conclusion of the conversation will run Friday.
By Simon Johnson and John Talbott
John R. Talbott is a former investment banker with Goldman Sachs and the author of “The 86 Biggest Lies on Wall Street,” “Contagion,” “Obamanomics,” and “The Coming Crash in the Housing Market.”
Simon Johnson, the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is the co-founder of the Baseline Scenario, a Web site tracking the ongoing financial crisis. He is one of the most visible public commentators on the ongoing financial crisis and its causes.
From June to July of 2009, Talbott and Johnson held an e-mail conversation on the following topic:
via “I would shut down the hedge fund industry” | Salon.
Fix the economy? Curb corporate America
Fix the economy? Curb corporate America | Salon
Part 3: Simon Johnson and John Talbott wrap up their talk on the real causes of the economic meltdown
Editor’s note: This is the final installment in a three-part conversation between Johnson and Talbott on the causes of the current economic crisis. Read Part 1, “Who Caused the Economic Crisis?” here, and Part 2 here.
By Simon Johnson and John Talbott
| John R. Talbott is a former investment banker with Goldman Sachs and the author of “The 86 Biggest Lies on Wall Street,” “Contagion,” “Obamanomics,” and “The Coming Crash in the Housing Market.”
Simon Johnson, the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is the co-founder of the Baseline Scenario, a Web site tracking the ongoing financial crisis. He is one of the most visible public commentators on the ongoing financial crisis and its causes.
From June to July of 2009, Talbott and Johnson held an e-mail conversation on the following topic:
via Fix the economy? Curb corporate America | Salon.
Schlumberger 2Q tumbles 57 pct as drilling slows
Schlumberger 2Q tumbles 57 pct as drilling slows
Schlumberger second-quarter profit falls 57 percent as oilfield activity declines
HOUSTON (AP) — Schlumberger Ltd. said Friday its second-quarter earnings tumbled 57 percent as oil and natural gas companies cut back on exploration and drilling, particularly in North America. Still, the results topped Wall Street expectations.
The world’s largest oilfield services company said net income for the April-June period fell to $613 million, or 51 cents per share, from $1.42 billion, or $1.16 per share, a year earlier.
One-time items aside, Schlumberger said income from continuing operations amounted to 68 cents a share — 5 cents better than the consensus estimate of Wall Street analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.
Revenue fell 18 percent to $5.53 billion from $6.75 billion in the year-ago quarter. But the most-recent result beat the consensus forecast of $5.46 billion.
Company shares jumped more than 4 percent, or $2.47, to $58.41 in premarket trading.
Schlumberger in January said it had slashed 5,000 jobs worldwide and on Friday, the company reported one-time charges of 17 cents a share related to severance payments retirement benefits.
via Schlumberger 2Q tumbles 57 pct as drilling slows – Yahoo! Finance.
The Attack of the 1-Percenters
The Attack of the 1-Percenters
By David Sirota 
Here’s a truism: The wealthiest 1 percent have never had it so good.
According to government figures, 1-percenters’ share of America’s total income is the highest it’s been since 1929, and their tax rates are the lowest they’ve faced in two decades. Through bonuses, many 1-percenters will profit from the $23 trillion in bailout largesse the Treasury Department now says could be headed to financial firms. And, most of them benefit from IRS decisions to reduce millionaire audits and collect zero taxes from the majority of major corporations.
But what really makes the ultrawealthy so fortunate, what truly separates this moment from a run-of-the-mill Gilded Age, is the unprecedented protection the 1-percenters have bought for themselves on the most pressing issues.
To review: With 22,000 Americans dying each year because they lack health insurance, Congress is considering universal health care legislation financed by a surcharge on income above $280,000—that is, a levy almost exclusively on 1-percenters. This surtax would graze just 5 percent of small businesses and would recoup only part of the $700 billion the 1-percenters received from the Bush tax cuts. In fact, it is so minuscule, those making $1 million annually would pay just $9,000 more in taxes every year—or nine-tenths of 1 percent of their 12-month haul.
Nonetheless, the 1-percenters have deployed an army to destroy the initiative before it makes progress.
via Truthdig – Reports – The Attack of the 1-Percenters.
Friday: Key Vote on Single Payer Healthcare
OPS: Once again – Time to get on the PHONE!
Friday: Key Vote on Single Payer Healthcare | Democrats.com
At last night’s press conference on healthcare, President Obama shocked the media with a very inconvenient truth:
I want to cover everybody. Now, the truth is that, unless you have a single-payer system, in which everybody is automatically covered, then you’re probably not going to reach every single individual.
So why won’t our elected Democrats in Washington fight for a single-payer system that will cover everyone? Especially when it’s the only system that will actually save money by eliminating 30% in utterly wasted overhead from greedy insurance giants?
A dedicated group of 86 Democrats are fighting for single-payer (H.R. 676), and they need our help today.
The battle over single-payer is in the House Energy & Commerce Committee (E&C). The committee was supposed to vote on Rep. Anthony Weiner’s single-payer amendment on Monday, but chairman Henry Waxman keeps postponing the vote because it might pass – just like the Kucinich Amendment for a single-payer state option passed on July 17 by a shocking 25-19 bi-partisan majority.
Today we’re told the vote could be tomorrow (Friday). This week we asked our 600,000 supporters to call all 35 Democrats, and many of you did. Based on your calls, we identified 7 solid yes and 6 more lean yes:
http://www.democrats.com/single-payer-committee-whip
Can you call the 6 lean yes and convince them to become solid yes on Rep. Anthony Weiner’s single-payer amendment in the Energy & Commerce Committee?
via Friday: Key Vote on Single Payer Healthcare | Democrats.com.
Madsen: ‘Swine flu virus began life in lab’
The number of confirmed cases of swine flu has topped over a hundred thousand, with the World Health Organization calling the pandemic ‘unstoppable’, and suggesting mass vaccination.
YouTube – Madsen: ‘Swine flu virus began life in lab’.
Global Power and Global Government: Evolution and Revolution of the Central Banking System
Global Power and Global Government: Evolution and Revolution of the Central Banking System – Part 1
by Andrew Gavin Marshall
Humanity is on the verge of entering into the most tumultuous period in our history. The prospects of a global depression, the likes of which have never been seen before; a truly global war, on a scale never before imagined; and societal collapse, for which nations of the world are building totalitarian police states to control populations; are increasing by the day. The major global trend forecasters are sounding the alarms on economic depression, war, a return to fascism and a total reorganization of society. Through crisis, we are seeing the reorganization of the global political economy, and the transformation of capitalism into a totalitarian capitalist world government. Capitalism has never stayed the same through its history; it has always changed and will continue to do so. Its changes are explained and analyzed through political-economic theory, both mainstream theory and critical. The changes are undertaken over years, decades and centuries. The next phase of capitalism is one in which the world moves to a state-controlled economic system, much like China, of totalitarian capitalism.
The global political economy itself is being reorganized into a world government body, consisting of one center of global power where the socio-political-economic power of the world is centralized in one institution. This is not a conspiracy theory; it is a reality. Nor is this a subject confined to the realm of “internet conspiracy theorists,” but in fact, the concept of world government originates and evolves throughout the history of capitalism and the global political economy. Mainstream and critical political-economic theory has addressed the concept of world government for centuries.
The notion of a world government has such a long history, as the forces driving the world into such a structure intertwine with the history of the modern global political economy itself. The purpose of this report is to examine the history of the global political economy in taking steps toward forming a world government, in both theory and practice.
How did we get here and where are we going?
via Global Power and Global Government: Evolution and Revolution of the Central Banking System.
The Censored Health-Care Option
The Censored Health-Care Option
By David Swanson
Editor’s Note: The big U.S. news media, which helped legitimize George W. Bush’s “election” in 2000 and paved the way for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, is now taking sides with “centrist” forces that want to limit the scope of any health-care reform.
Indeed, the most shunned aspect of this debate is the most practical way to cover everybody at the lowest cost, the dreaded single-payer idea, which President Barack Obama briefly referenced at his news conference but which is studiously ignored by the major media, as David Swanson of afterdowingstreet.org notes in this guest essay:
President Obama said on Tuesday night:
via Consortiumnews.com.
Sen. Bernie Sanders: We Need an Energy Revolution
We Need an Energy Revolution
Sen. Bernie Sanders
The United States today spends some $400 billion a year importing oil from countries like Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Mexico, Russia, and Venezuela. Think for a moment what an incredible impact that same $400 billion a year could have on our country if that money were invested here and not abroad, in such areas as weatherization, energy efficiency, sustainable energies like wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, public transportation and automobiles that are energy efficient or don’t use fossil fuels at all.
What we are talking about is an energy revolution that leads us toward energy independence, the cessation of support for foreign dictatorships and the ability to avoid Mideast wars fought over oil. What we are talking about is an energy revolution that will substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enable us to address the global warming crisis that threatens our planet with increases in floods, drought, extreme weather conditions, disease and wars fought over limited natural resources. What we are talking about is an energy revolution that will result in cleaner air, water and food and make us a healthier nation.
And, as our nation struggles to recover from the worst economic times since the Great Depression, what we also are talking about is an energy revolution that has the capability of creating millions of good-paying green jobs.
via Sen. Bernie Sanders: We Need an Energy Revolution.
Christian Right Aims to Change History Lessons in Texas Schools
OPS: It’s not just Texas. Most School books now come from printers under the influance of these insane bastards.
Christian Right Aims to Change History Lessons in Texas Schools | CommonDreams.org
State’s education board to consider adding Christianity’s role in American history to curriculum
The Christian right is making a fresh push to force religion onto the school curriculum in Texas with the state’s education board about to consider recommendations that children be taught that there would be no United States if it had not been for God.
Members of a panel of experts appointed by the board to revise the state’s history curriculum, who include a Christian fundamentalist preacher who says he is fighting a war for America’s moral soul, want lessons to emphasise the part played by Christianity in the founding of the US and that religion is a civic virtue.
Opponents have decried the move as an attempt to insert religious teachings in to the classroom by stealth, similar to the Christian right’s partially successful attempt to limit the teaching of evolution in biology lessons in Texas.
One of the panel, David Barton, founder of a Christian heritage group called WallBuilders, argues that the curriculum should reflect the fact that the US Constitution was written with God in mind including that “there is a fixed moral law derived from God and nature”, that “there is a creator” and “government exists primarily to protect God-given rights to every individual”.
via Christian Right Aims to Change History Lessons in Texas Schools | CommonDreams.org.
Research Firm Cited by GOP Is Owned by Health Insurer
OPS: The Definition of Fascism.
Research Firm Cited by GOP Is Owned by Health Insurer – washingtonpost.com
The political battle over health-care reform is waged largely with numbers, and few number-crunchers have shaped the debate as much as the Lewin Group, a consulting firm whose research has been widely cited by opponents of a public insurance option.
To Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House Republican whip, it is “the nonpartisan Lewin Group.” To Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee, it is an “independent research firm.” To Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the second-ranking Republican on the pivotal Finance Committee, it is “well known as one of the most nonpartisan groups in the country.”
Generally left unsaid amid all the citations is that the Lewin Group is wholly owned by UnitedHealth Group, one of the nation’s largest insurers.
via Research Firm Cited by GOP Is Owned by Health Insurer – washingtonpost.com.
Reid: No heathcare vote until fall
OPS: Reid is a traitor. It’s been obvious since 2006 that Reid must be replaced. He is a friend to the Reich and Corporations, Not to Americans.
Reid: No heathcare vote until fall
The U.S. Senate’s top Democrat has bad news for President Barack Obama’s ambitious healthcare reform agenda.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), speaking to reporters on Thursday, said there will be no vote on healthcare in the Senate at-large before Congress leaves session during the month of August. He said the decision was made mere hours after the president took his message to the American people during a televised, prime-time press conference.
“The Nevada Democrat says the decision to delay a vote was made Wednesday night in the hopes of getting a final bipartisan bill,” reported the Associated Press.
Senate Republicans have asked for a delay “so the decision was made to give them more time,” said Reid.
President Obama has pressed hard for passage of major reforms to American healthcare before the Congress breaks until fall. He has repeatedly promised the American people his health agenda would be passed “this year.”
via Raw Story » Reid: No heathcare vote until fall.
‘Blue Dog Coalition’ rakes in corporate cash.
‘Blue Dog Coalition’ rakes in corporate cash. 
bluedogsThe 52-member Blog Dog Coalition has been constantly attempting to weaken President Obama’s efforts to pass progressive health care, clean energy, and economic recovery legislation through Congress. According to a new report by the Center for Public Integrity, many of the industries that are opposing Obama’s agenda are now contributing heavily to the Blue Dogs:
So far this year, the political action committee attached to the fiscally conservative House Democratic voting bloc is on track to shatter all its fundraising records, raising more in the first six months of 2009 — more than $1.1 million — than it did in the entire 2003-04 fundraising cycle.
Nearly 54 percent of the Blue Dog PAC’s haul this year comes from the energy, financial services and health care industries, up from 45 percent in 2004, according to analysis of CQ MoneyLine data by the Center for Public Integrity.
Former Rep. Charlie Stenholm (D-TX) told Politico that the reason for the corporate cash influx is an obvious attempt to influence Blue Dogs’ policy views. “I mean, what other conclusion could you come to?” he said with a laugh. “And that’s something that the Blue Dogs have sought. They want to be in that position, to have influence.”
via Think Progress » ‘Blue Dog Coalition’ rakes in corporate cash..
Max Baucus receives considerable contributions from health care industry.
OPS: taking bribes is a crime. Baucus is a criminal
Max Baucus receives considerable contributions from health care industry.
Roll Call reported today that Senate Democrats are “increasingly frustrated by the secrecy and duration of Finance Chairman Max Baucus’ (D-MT) bipartisan talks on health care reform.” One unnamed Senator appeared irritated that Baucus ” is unlikely to run any deal by his caucus before he shakes hands on an agreement with Republicans.” OpenLeft then wondered how Baucus’s campaigns are financed and found that from 2005 to the present, the health insurance industry has significant representation among his top-ten donors:
Also today, Politico reported that many of the industries opposing President Obama’s agenda are contributing heavily to the House’s 52-member Blue Dog Coalition, which has been consistently trying to weaken efforts to pass health care, clean energy, and economic recovery legislation.
via Think Progress » Max Baucus receives considerable contributions from health care industry..
Inhofe: If GOP Can ‘Stall’ Or ‘Block’ Health Care Reform, It Will Be ‘A Huge Gain’ For The 2010 Elections
OPS: So killing people, forcing people into bankruptcy and destroying lives by denying Health Care is somehow going to translate into votes FOR the people that caused the pain and suffering. Republicans Are Insane. We have to face this.
Inhofe: If GOP Can ‘Stall’ Or ‘Block’ Health Care Reform, It Will Be ‘A Huge Gain’ For The 2010 Elections
Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) stands behind Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC)Last week, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) set off a political storm when he said that if Republicans can defeat health care reform it would be President Obama’s “Waterloo” because it would “break him.” Since then, some Republicans have sought to distance themselves from DeMint’s view that defeating health care would yield political advantages for the GOP.
But Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) isn’t shying away from revealing his honest feelings. Appearing on Janet Parshall’s radio show yesterday, Inhofe argued that the defeat of President Clinton’s health care reform “started the demise of Bill Clinton that led to the 1994 Republican takeover of the House and the Senate.” He then added that he is now “tracking the demise” of Obama’s health care plans and it is making him “optimistic”:
INHOFE: They ought to know, they ought to know from history. This is a losing proposition for them. And for those out there who believe, that would like to have something optimistic to look at, we are plotting the demise on a week by week basis of where Bill Clinton was in 1993 and where Obama is today and his demise ratio is greater than Clinton’s was in 1993. So, he’s trying to do the same things, except more extreme.
Listen here:
Blackwater Seeks Gag Order
Blackwater Seeks Gag Order
By Jeremy Scahill
It became common practice during the Iraq occupation for the US State Department to work with private security companies like Blackwater to help facilitate giving what amounted to hush money to the families of Iraqis shot dead by private security contractors. In fact, Blackwater’s owner, Erik Prince, discussed this practice when he testified in front of Congress in October 2007 and admitted to paying $20,000 to a Blackwater victim’s family and $5,000 to another.
“We don’t determine that value,” Prince told Congress when asked how his company decides how much an Iraqi life is worth. “That’s kind of an Iraqi-wide policy. We don’t make that one.”
Now, Blackwater (which recently renamed itself “Xe”) is attempting to use other means to silence its victims. On July 20, the company’s high-powered lawyers from Mayer Brown, which boasts that it represents eighty-nine of the Fortune 100 companies and thirty-five of the fifty largest US banks, filed a motion in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to impose a gag order on Iraqi civilians suing the company. The motion also seeks to silence the lawyers representing the families of Iraqis allegedly killed or injured by Blackwater in a series of violent incidents spanning several years. Four cases in the Washington, DC, area were recently consolidated before Judge T.S. Ellis III of the Eastern District of Virginia for pretrial motions. After preliminary issues are resolved, each case is slated to be tried individually.
via Blackwater Seeks Gag Order.
Lessons the GOP Learned from Adolph Hitler: the ‘Big Lie’ Called 911
Lessons the GOP Learned from Adolph Hitler: the ‘Big Lie’ Called 911
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
Those still believing Bush’s big 911 lie are of three types plus combinations: crooks, idiots, and liars! There was no fuselage, there was no airliner wreckage, there were no large titanium/steel alloy rotors each some 10 feet in diameter to be found at the Pentagon on the morning of 911. Yet –we are expected to believe the most evil, the most harmful fraud since Hitler coined the phrase: ‘Big Lie’!
All this was inspired by the principle–which is quite true in itself–that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.
–Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, MA, 1971, pgs. 231, 232
There was no airliner wreckage at the Pentagon –we were told –because a 757 airliner body ‘vaporized’ in the intense heat. Nevertheless, forensics experts claimed a 97 percent success rate identifying victims using DNA. Now –DNA is very fragile and the heat required to ‘vaporize’ an aluminum airliner body –some 11,000 degrees F –would have utterly destroyed testable DNA.
via The Existentialist Cowboy: Lessons the GOP Learned from Adolph Hitler: the ‘Big Lie’ Called 911.
The enemies of America’s real healthcare reform
The enemies of America’s real healthcare reform
As Wikepedia tells us, “In 2005, Americans spent an estimated US$6,401 per capita on health care, while Canadians spent US$3,326. This amounted to 15.3 percent of U.S GDP in that year, while Canada spent 9.8 percent of GDP on health care.”
You might ask yourself ‘where did nearly half of the US per capita dollars go?’ Was it in superior health care? I think not.
“A 2007 review of all studies comparing health outcomes in Canada and the U.S. found that health outcomes may be superior in patients cared for in Canada versus the United States, but differences are not consistent.” Even with that caveat, if the Canadian medical outcomes tend to be superior, why are they paying nearly half per capita of what we’re paying for inferior healthcare?
In fact Wiki says, “The U.S. ranks 42nd in the world for low infant mortality, 46th in life expectancy, between Cyprus and Denmark, and 37th in health system performance, between Costa Rica and Slovenia.” Abominable, isn’t it? But how could this be? Read on . . .
“Advocates say that a U.S. single-payer health care system would provide universal coverage, give patients free choice of providers and hospitals, and guarantee comprehensive coverage and equal access for all medically necessary procedures, without increasing overall spending. Shifting to a single-payer system would eliminate oversight by managed care reviewers, restoring the traditional doctor-patient relationship.” Alas, at last a breath of fresh air and hope.
Yet, here are mentioned the first enemies, perhaps the most formidable, the managed care reviewers, HMOs, PPOs, i.e., the insurance companies, that siphon off dollars from that per capita US healthcare figure. Dollars siphoned into expensive DC lobbyists, advertising, PR agencies, who will do everything from misinforming the public about the facts to stuffing campaign contributions in the pockets of the very politicians appointed to reduce healthcare costs and find equitable protection for all Americans, including the nearly 47 million with no care at all.
via The enemies of America’s real healthcare reform.
Deadly Immunity
Deadly Immunity : Rolling Stone
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. investigates the government cover-up of a mercury/autism scandal
In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Georgia. Convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat center, nestled in wooded farmland next to the Chattahoochee River, to ensure complete secrecy. The agency had issued no public announcement of the session — only private invitations to fifty-two attendees. There were high-level officials from the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, the top vaccine specialist from the World Health Organization in Geneva and representatives of every major vaccine manufacturer, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth and Aventis Pasteur. All of the scientific data under discussion, CDC officials repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly “embargoed.” There would be no making photocopies of documents, no taking papers with them when they left.
The federal officials and industry representatives had assembled to discuss a disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of a host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young children. According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who had analyzed the agency’s massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children, a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines — thimerosal — appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children. “I was actually stunned by what I saw,” Verstraeten told those assembled at Simpsonwood, citing the staggering number of earlier studies that indicate a link between thimerosal and speech delays, attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity and autism. Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants — in one case, within hours of birth — the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children.
via Deadly Immunity : Rolling Stone.
Spinning Healthcare: A Bad Case of Vertigo
Spinning Healthcare: A Bad Case of Vertigo | CommonDreams.org
by Norman Solomon
“I want to cover everybody,” President Obama said at his news conference Wednesday night. “Now, the truth is that unless you have a — what’s called a single-payer system, in which everybody’s automatically covered, then you’re probably not going to reach every single individual. . .”
The same conventional wisdom keeping single payer off Washington’s table has been spinning for various “reform” plans with such accelerated RPMs that at this point the nation’s “healthcare debate” is suffering from a severe case of vertigo.
“The overwhelming majority of Americans want healthcare, but millions of them can’t afford it,” Obama told the assembled journalists. “So the plan that has been — that I’ve put forward and that — what we’re seeing in Congress would cover, the estimates are, at least 97 to 98 percent of Americans. There might still be people left out there who, even though there’s an individual mandate, even though they are required to purchase health insurance, might still not get it, or despite a lot of subsidies, are still in such dire straits that it’s still hard for them to afford it. And we may end up giving them some sort of hardship exemption.”
That may sound good. But it’s in the service of an agenda for “healthcare reform” that’s seriously flawed.
via Spinning Healthcare: A Bad Case of Vertigo | CommonDreams.org.
Healthcare and Free Press: Two Human Rights We Lack
Healthcare and Free Press: Two Human Rights We Lack
By David Swanson
President Obama said on Tuesday night:
“Now, the truth is that, unless you have a — what’s called a single-payer system, in which everybody is automatically covered, then you’re probably not going to reach every single individual because there’s always going to be somebody out there who thinks they’re indestructible and doesn’t want to get health care, doesn’t bother getting health care, and then, unfortunately, when they get hit by a bus, end up in the emergency room and the rest of us have to pay for it.”
Another name for “what’s called a single-payer system” would be: healthcare as a human right, not a commodity to be purchased. Many humans have this right. They just aren’t Americans.
Obama’s mention of single-payer, in passing, as something that would be better than anything else, but something that mysteriously lies out of reach, is typical of the very few mentions of single-payer healthcare in the U.S. corporate media.
via Healthcare and Free Press: Two Human Rights We Lack | Let’s Try Democracy.
Chemical makers go on the offensive in agriculture
Chemical makers go on the offensive in agriculture – Salon.com
- The only green shoots the chemical industry has seen lately are coming from the one-time diminutive agricultural side of the business, a shift that has spurred both new partnerships and legal battles to stake out new territory and protect profits.
Chemical makers have been hard hit by the global economic downturn because the products they make go into clothes, toys, cars, and thousands of other products that consumers are not buying.
But food is one area where consumers can’t cut back that much, a saving grace for an industry that relies increasingly on the sale of high-tech seeds, fertilizer and herbicides.
Operating income at Dow Chemical’s agricultural unit jumped 63 percent from 2007 to 2008 when it reached $761 million. At BASF and DuPont, the jump was 37 percent to 705 million euros and 24 percent to $1.11 billion, respectively.
via Chemical makers go on the offensive in agriculture – Salon.com.
Gonzo Gastronomy: How the Food Industry Has Made Bacon a Weapon of Mass Destruction
Gonzo Gastronomy: How the Food Industry Has Made Bacon a Weapon of Mass Destruction
Among my fondest childhood memories is savoring a strip of perfectly cooked bacon that had just been dragged through a puddle of maple syrup. It was an illicit pleasure; varnishing the fatty, salty, smoky bacon with sweet arboreal sap felt taboo. How could such simple ingredients produce such riotous flavors?
That was then. Today, you don’t need to tax yourself applying syrup to bacon — McDonald’s does it for you with the McGriddle. It conveniently takes an egg, American cheese and pork and nestles it between pancakelike biscuits suffused with genuine fake-maple-syrup flavor.
The McGriddle is just one moment in an era of extreme food combinations — a moment in which bacon plays a starring role, from high cuisine to low.
via Gonzo Gastronomy: How the Food Industry Has Made Bacon a Weapon of Mass Destruction | | AlterNet.
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also see: Bacon Explosion: The BBQ Sausage Recipe of all Recipes
US, Israeli and British Air Forces in big war game over Nevada
OPS: US war ‘ exercises’ over Chicago, DC other major cities. Now this.
US, Israeli and British Air Forces in big war game over Nevada
Southern Nevadans were warned last week that 62 warplanes would take off twice a day from Nellis Air Force Base, home of 414th Combat US Training Squadron northwest of Las Vegas in the latest 11-day Red Flag exercise. They would see (and hear) Israeli and US Air force fighter-bombers in dogfights and bombing raids.
DEBKAfile‘s militarys sources say the size of the Nellis air base, 111 kilometers long by 190 kilometers broad, enables large groups of aircraft to practice combat missions in wide spaces unavailable to their air crews at home.
A large number of Israeli F-16C fighter-bombers from IAF Squadron 110 are taking advantage of the opportunity for mock combat drills in large groups and bombing missions with live ordnance. They flew in directly from home base, refueling on the way.
The group is split in two – friendly “Blue Air” and enemy “Red Air” – to practice “Red Flag Measurement and Debriefing system” – RFMDS – which simulates real combat conditions.
US F-16CGs of the Ohio Air National Guard will join Israeli craft in interdict missions for intercepting and downing enemy planes. Also taking part are US E-3 spy planes and US and British 135 transports.
DEBKAfile‘s military sources report that the Nevada exercise, which ends July 24, is not related to any Israeli plans for striking Iran’s nuclear facilities except from affording its air crews valuable experience in flight and combat over broad spaces.
via DEBKAfile – US, Israeli and British Air Forces in big war game over Nevada.
More bodies go unclaimed as families can’t afford funeral costs
More bodies go unclaimed as families can’t afford funeral costs - Los Angeles Times
The poor economy is taking a toll even on the dead, with an increasing number of bodies in Los Angeles County going unclaimed by families who cannot afford to bury or cremate their loved ones.
At the county coroner’s office — which handles homicides and other suspicious deaths — 36% more cremations were done at taxpayers’ expense in the last fiscal year over the previous year, from 525 to 712.
via More bodies go unclaimed as families can’t afford funeral costs – Los Angeles Times.
States Where the Unemployed Are Giving Up
OPS: There are discouraged workers in EVERY State
States Where the Unemployed Are Giving Up – US News and World Report
The high levels of discouraged workers in these states suggest people are short on hope
In some U.S. states, nearly half of the job seekers who have stopped looking for work have done so because they simply don’t believe they’ll find anything. Indeed, the number of discouraged workers nationwide has more than doubled in the past year. This trend won’t be reflected in the widely publicized unemployment rate, as discouraged workers aren’t included among the unemployed. Still, in states as diverse as Mississippi, South Dakota, and New York, the span of this often invisible slice of workers signals a population losing its hope.
[Search for your best place to find a job.]
Most jobless people who have stopped looking for work are otherwise engaged—they’re back in school, taking on family responsibilities, or too sick to search. They, along with workers who have stopped because they’re discouraged, make up a group that the Labor Department calls the “marginally attached.” They’re included in some of the broader measures of unemployment, but they’re officially not part of the workforce. While discouraged workers make up about a third of the marginally attached nationwide, their numbers have been increasing.
Between the third quarter of last year and the second quarter of this year, Mississippi averaged the highest percentage of discouraged job seekers among its marginally attached—nearly 50 percent, compared with 32.6 percent nationwide. South Dakota ranked second after Mississippi, with 48.5 percent of marginally attached workers classified as discouraged. Florida, Michigan, Connecticut, West Virginia, and New York followed in ranking for the highest rates of discouragement.
via States Where the Unemployed Are Giving Up – US News and World Report.
Cancer cause and cure link found
Atg4D a cells worst enemy and best friend
The protein Atg4D (autophagy related 4 homolog D (S. cerevisiae)) has been demonstrated to exist in two forms by Dr. Jon Lane of the University of Bristol’s Department of Biochemistry.
One form promotes cell survival autophagy. Autophagy is the degradation of cell components by lysomes. The process called apoptosis is the disposal of cellular decay debris and is essential to survival.
The second form of Atg4D causes the destruction of mitochondria. Mitochondria are the structures that produce energy for cells. This form of Atg4D prevents autophagy and apoptosis from occurring.
This discovery is considered a great leap forward in understanding cancer and neurodegenerative diseases.
The trick is to understand the cause of the change in function (the change in protein structure) and to develop a means to prevent or reverse the resulting disease state.
Ever hear the expression “you are your own worst enemy.”
Apparently this is true of the protein Atg4D and cells.
via Atg4D a cells worst enemy and best friend.
UnitedHealth profit soars 155%
UnitedHealth profit soars 155%
The Minnetonka-based insurer loses 0commercial members but gains in its public-sector work.
The challenges facing America’s biggest health insurer range from the uncertain to the unknowable.
Unemployment could continue to surge, cutting membership rolls. Health reform could produce a new government health plan, creating competition and crimping profit. Swine flu could push up medical costs.
For now, though, Minnetonka-based UnitedHealth Group has reason to celebrate.
Despite a continued drop in commercial members in the recession, UnitedHealth reported Tuesday better-than-expected earnings for the second quarter because of lower administrative costs and strong growth in its public-sector businesses, Medicare and Medicaid.
via UnitedHealth profit soars 155%.
Ron Paul: End wars to fund health care
OPS; Broken Clock Boy gets one right. It’s a shame this clown is such an idiot on 95% of the other issues.
Ron Paul: End wars to fund health care
House Rep. Ron Paul may be America’s most famous libertarian these days, but he’s making a surprising concession to progressives when it comes to the debate about public health care.
Though the house representative from the 14th District of Texas still insists that government should get out of the health care trade altogether, he told CNN’s Kiran Chetry on Wednesday that “you don’t want to cut under these [economic] conditions medical care from poor people who have been dependent, or the elderly.
“Even though I have my ideal system I would like to see, with the government out completely — because that would be a much better system — that’s not going to happen. I’m realistic.”
But, the House rep said, “one thing we shouldn’t do is pay for it with money out of thin air,” referring to the federal government’s ballooning deficit.
“So what i would do in a transition … is cut spending somewhere and take care of the people were talking about.”
via Raw Story » Ron Paul: End wars to fund health care.
H-1B demand may be retreating as feds increase scrutiny
H-1B demand may be retreating as feds increase scrutiny
OPS: Good. A step in the right direction
A small decline from May in the number of H-1B petitions gives rise to theories on cause
For what may by the first time, the number of H-1B petitions withdrawn by applicants or rejected by U.S. authorities is exceeding the number of new petitions for the visas.
The numbers have resulted in a slight decrease over the past two months in the H-1B visa petition count on the scale of a rounding error. The drop may be little more than a short-term phenomenon, but it is inviting theories as to its cause, ranging from increased U.S. scrutiny of the H-1B petitions to the general economy.
The U.S. has received approximately 44,900 visa petitions toward its 65,000 H-1B visa cap, one of two caps, since it began accepting petitions on April 1. But the number of visa petitions reported in mid-May by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) was 45,500 visas. There has been a net decline of 600 visa petitions from May to June.
via H-1B demand may be retreating as feds increase scrutiny.
From the hospital to bankruptcy
Barry Rosenzweig: From the hospital to bankruptcy
Any health care reform must address how medical costs ruin families’ financial lives.
No conversation about reform of our health care system is complete unless it includes a discussion of how medical costs are driving Americans to bankruptcy court. The first nationwide study on medical causes of bankruptcy (released June 4 by Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School and Ohio University) found that 62.1 percent of all bankruptcies filed in 2007 were related to medical problems. This represents a 50 percent increase since 2001, according to the researchers.
Those people seeking the protection of bankruptcy due to uncovered medical expenses are typically middle class, according to the study. Two-thirds of them own their homes. Three-fifths have college degrees. They are employed and have medical coverage from private insurers when the crisis hits, but, by the time they are considering bankruptcy, most have lost their jobs due to their illness, have lost their medical coverage and are unable to get new private coverage.
They are often stuck in a Catch-22: too well-off for Medicaid but unable to afford private health insurance or unacceptable to private insurers because of their preexisting conditions. They further risk their health because they must balance buying food and paying their rent or mortgage against buying medications.
via Barry Rosenzweig: From the hospital to bankruptcy.
E-cigarettes contain toxic chemicals, FDA says
E-cigarettes contain toxic chemicals, FDA says
Officials find cancer-causing ingredients despite makers’ safety claims
Federal health officials said Wednesday they have found cancer-causing ingredients in electronic cigarettes, despite manufacturers’ claims the products are safer than tobacco cigarettes.
The Food and Drug Administration said testing of products from two leading electronic cigarette makers turned up several toxic chemicals, including a key ingredient in antifreeze. FDA scientists said they tested 19 varieties of cigarettes, many of which contained fruit and candy flavors.
Public health advocates have complained the products are marketed toward young people and can serve as a “gateway” to tobacco smoking. Because electronic cigarettes are not covered by federal tobacco laws, they are often easier for young people to purchase.
via E-cigarettes contain toxic chemicals, FDA says – Addictions- msnbc.com.
Ode to Sean Hannity by John Cleese
Ode to Sean Hannity by John Cleese
Aping urbanity
Oozing with vanity
Plump as a manatee
Faking humanity
Journalistic calamity
Intellectual inanity
Fox Noise insanity
You’re a profanity
Hannity
Oakland Voters Pass Landmark Pot Tax To Boost City Coffers
Oakland Voters Pass Landmark Pot Tax To Boost City Coffers
OAKLAND, Calif. — Oakland residents overwhelmingly voted Tuesday to approve a first-of-its kind tax on medical marijuana sold at the city’s four cannabis dispensaries.
Preliminary election results showed the measure passing with 80 percent of the vote, according to the Alameda County Registrar of Voters.
The dispensary tax was one of four measures in a vote-by-mail special election aimed at raising money for the cash-strapped city. All four measures won, but Measure F had the highest level of support.
Scheduled to take effect on New Year’s Day, the measure created a special business tax rate for the pot clubs, which now pay the same $1.20 for every $1,000 in gross sales applied to all retail businesses. The new rate will be $18.
via Oakland Voters Pass Landmark Pot Tax To Boost City Coffers.
Plugging Along At 62 With Lots Of Debt, No Job And No Credit
Plugging Along At 62 With Lots Of Debt, No Job And No Credit
James O’Connell of California wrote the Huffington Post in response to an item about credit card companies tightening payment requirements for cardholders. In May, Citibank suddenly closed the account on his last credit card, citing delinquencies on other accounts, leaving O’Connell with no credit at all. “No way to rent a car, or do anything else where a credit card is a must,” he wrote.
Reached by phone, O’Connell explained how it came to that.
I was laid off from my job in December 2006. I was a configuration manager at a turbine company. It came at a very bad time.
Right after I lost my job we found out that dad had a recurrence of cancer from about 10 years earlier and it turned out to be inoperable. It was surrounding two main arteries. It had started in the lung and metastasized. He decided to just ride it out this time. We’d already lost mom in 2002 and I think he was tired. He was 87.
via Plugging Along At 62 With Lots Of Debt, No Job And No Credit.
Daley takes pass on pot question
Daley takes pass on pot question - Chicago Breaking News 
Mayor Richard Daley today described the issue of decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana in Cook County as, appropriately enough, “clouded.”
At an unrelated event on the South Side, the mayor was asked about the measure passed by the County Board Tuesday that would make it possible for someone to get a $200 fine if they’re caught with a small amount of marijuana in unincorporated Cook County.
“We just had a ban on smoking. People say you can’t smoke, they said, ‘Please don’t smoke.’ And now everyone’s saying, ‘Let’s all smoke marijuana.’ I mean, after a while you wonder where America’s going to,” Daley said.
But when asked if he was against such a measure, Daley didn’t take a position, saying he thought the issue is “really clouded.”
Board President Todd Stroger said after Tuesday’s meeting he had yet to read the ordinance and couldn’t say whether he would veto it. It would take 14 commissioners to override a veto. A Stroger spokesman could not immediately be reached today.
via Daley takes pass on pot question – Chicago Breaking News.
Blue Dogs Party After Health Care Reform Markup Canceled
Blue Dogs Party After Health Care Reform Markup Canceled
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce was supposed to be the third leg supporting health care reform legislation already approved by two other House committees. Instead, this week it’s become more of a fifth wheel. The committee’s markup sessions for Tuesday and Wednesday have been canceled in the face of opposition to the bill from the panel’s conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats.
So Monday’s markup may have lasted past midnight, but on Tuesday evening the committee’s Blue Dogs were free to party, and party they did! Reps. Mike Ross (D-Ark.) and Jim Matheson (D-Utah) feted fellow Blue Dog Rep. John Barrow (D-Ga.) at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse in Northwest Washington from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Ross is the lead Blue Dog on health care reform.
According to an invitation to the event obtained by the Sunlight Foundation and posted on its website, www.politicalpartytime.org, the price of admission was a $2,500 contribution to Barrow’s campaign committee. Blue Dog Reps. John Tanner (D-Tenn.) and Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) were also on the invite.
via Blue Dogs Party After Health Care Reform Markup Canceled.
Crisis: Nearly Five Million Adults Have Lost Insurance Since Sept. ’08
Crisis: Nearly Five Million Adults Have Lost Insurance Since Sept. ’08
As President Barack Obama prepares to address the nation tonight, a new survey provides a boost to his claim that the health care system is at a perilous place and in need of reform. Since September of last year, nearly five million adults have lost their insurance.
A survey of more than 29,000 individuals in June by Gallup shows that 16 percent of Americans over the age of 18 are currently without health insurance. That number reflects what the survey’s authors describe as a “small but measurable uptick in the percentage of uninsured adults.”
Indeed, the average number of uninsured adults recorded by Gallup in 2008 was 14.8 percent. In September 2008, the monthly total recorded was at a yearly low of 13.9 percent.
While the difference in percentage may seem small, the aggregate number of additional uninsured is vast.
via Crisis: Nearly Five Million Adults Have Lost Insurance Since Sept. ’08.
Peters Continues Attack On Captured U.S. Soldier: He’s A Liar And ‘A Deserter’ Who ‘Shamed His Unit’
Peters Continues Attack On Captured U.S. Soldier: He’s A Liar And ‘A Deserter’ Who ‘Shamed His Unit’
Late last week, media outlets reported that Taliban forces had captured U.S. Army soldier Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl in Afghanistan. While the circumstances of his capture are not entirely known, Bergdahl said in a video released by his captors that he lagged behind a patrol, while other reports say he walked off a base with Afghan soldiers. In an appearance on Fox News earlier this week, retired Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters suggested that the Taliban should kill Bergdahl because he is an “apparent deserter.”
Last night on Fox, Peters walked back slightly from that comment (“I do hope for his family’s sake this guy comes back safely,” he said) but he continued to attack the missing U.S. soldier. “I asked a very senior military leader for a yes or no answer. Is PFC Bergdahl a deserter? The answer was yes,” Peters said, calling Bergdahl a liar. He and O’Reilly then repeatedly attacked Bergdahl’s mental capacity:
O’REILLY: He leaves his weapon and he goes out someplace. Number one that tells me that he is crazy, Colonel, that he is a nut. Nobody does that.
PETERS: He may be mentally disturbed. [...]
O’REILLY: It’s got to be I’m totally out of my mind. And that’s what I think this guy is. I think he is crazy.
TARP Inspector General Debunks His Own False $23 Trillion Bailout Estimate
TARP Inspector General Debunks His Own False $23 Trillion Bailout Estimate
Yesterday, TARP Inspector General Neil Barosky released a report which crudely tallied up the cost of every economic rescue program proposed during the current crisis — including those that have been discontinued or never even began — to state that the total scope of all financial rescue programs comes to about $23.7 trillion. Cable news hosts ran wild with the report, using it to claim that taxpayers will “ultimately” wind up paying $23 trillion in “bailouts.”
The number continued to be cited on cable last night and this morning, with Fox News even claiming that $23 trillion will be the final cost of TARP alone. But Barofsky himself appeared on CNN to explain that the actual outstanding amount for the financial rescues is closer to $3 trillion, including loans that have yet to be repaid. Watch a compilation:
via Think Progress » TARP Inspector General Debunks His Own False $23 Trillion Bailout Estimate.
Ohio legislator’s bill dictates that men should have final say on abortion.
OPS: can you believe that any woman, even a wingnut, would support this?
Ohio legislator’s bill dictates that men should have final say on abortion.
State Rep. John Adams (R-OH) has re-introduced radical legislation that would prevent a woman from having an abortion until she gets written consent from the biological father. As proposed, the bill triggers criminal penalties against women for “providing a false biological father.” Adams says the “first-degree misdemeanor” would be punishable with up to “six months” in jail and a “$1,000 fine.” Labeled by Adams as a “father’s right bill,” the lawmaker would give men the final say on abortion in the state of Ohio:
In the case where the father isn’t known, House Bill 252 would compel the woman to provide a list of names of people who may be the father in an effort to determine paternity. The bill also would make it a crime for women to lie about who the father is, and make it illegal for doctors to perform abortions without the father’s consent.
The bill would force a woman to have a child if the father does not agree to an abortion.
“That child should be born, not killed,” Adams said.
via Think Progress » Ohio legislator’s bill dictates that men should have final say on abortion..
Single Payer System Cost?
How Much Would a Single Payer System Cost? | Physicians for a National Health Program
Editors’ Note: With the recent resurgence of interest in controlling health care costs, we thought a review of some of the state and national fiscal studies performed on single payer over the years might be useful.
(Updated through January 2008. If you know of a study we have missed, please contact Dr. Ida Hellander at (312) 782-6006 or info@pnhp.org)
National Studies
June, 1991 General Accounting Office
“If the US were to shift to a system of universal coverage and a single payer, as in Canada, the savings in administrative costs [10 percent of health spending] would be more than enough to offset the expense of universal coverage” (“Canadian Health Insurance: Lessons for the United States,” 10 pgs, ref no: T-HRD-91-35. Full text available online at http://archive.gao.gov/d20t9/144039.pdf).
December, 1991 Congressional Budget Office
“If the nation adopted…[a] single-payer system that paid providers at Medicare’s rates, the population that is currently uninsured could be covered without dramatically increasing national spending on health. In fact, all US residents might be covered by health insurance for roughly the current level of spending or even somewhat less, because of savings in administrative costs and lower payment rates for services used by the privately insured. The prospects for con-trolling health care expenditure in future years would also be improved.” (“Universal Health Insurance Coverage Using Medicare’s Payment Rates”)
April, 1993 Congressional Budget Office
“Under a single payer system with co-payments …on average, people would have an additional $54 to spend…more specifically, the increase in taxes… would be about $856 per capita…private-sector costs would decrease by $910 per capita.
via Single Payer System Cost? | Physicians for a National Health Program.
New Evidence Reveals Feds ‘Coached, Cajoled, Threatened’ Star Witness in Siegelman Case
New Evidence Reveals Feds ‘Coached, Cajoled, Threatened’ Star Witness in Siegelman Case – The BRAD BLOG : 
Declarations filed in former AL Governor’s request for new trial, describe government prosecutors manipulating key testimony, pressuring former aide in exchange for lighter sentence
Notes, communications and required FBI disclosures said illegally withheld from defense team…
How it’s even possible that former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman’s bribery case and conviction has not long ago been dropped by the Dept. of Justice is beyond us. There is now so much evidence of clear conflicts of interest, overt partisan political prosecutorial targeting, failures to recuse by at least one conflicted prosecutor as well as the judge in the case, evidence withheld from the defense team, and now evidence of the coaching and strong-arming of witnesses in exchange for a lighter prison sentence and a promise to conceal embarrassing personal information, it all makes the prosecutorial misconduct in the case of former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens — a Republican whose case was dropped by Obama’s Justice Dept. shortly after they came to power — look like jaywalking.
Official declarations filed along with a recent motion by Siegelman, requesting a new trial in light of the new evidence, reveal what seems just the tip of the iceberg of a flagrant and wholly inappropriate case of wide-spread prosecutorial misconduct. The allegations (with much evidence to back them up) paint a compelling picture of an illegally targeted political prosecution/witch-hunt carried out by Karl Rove and his Alabama-based Dept. of Justice cronies in an attempt to remove Alabama’s most popular Democrat from the political grid all together.
Health Care, Media and the Case for Socialized Medicine
A Distorted Debate
Health Care, Media and the Case for Socialized Medicine
We may look back at the last few weeks as a historic time in American politics. Free market rhetoric used to denigrate government-sponsored health care is finally being seriously challenged. But is media debate on health care truly open? Commentary on Congress’s attempts at health care reform fluctuates between restrained optimism at best, to distortion and outright demonization at worst. At the liberal end of the corporate press, the New York Times supports the “public option” as an alternative to single payer health care, while conservative outlets like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal repeat clichéd stereotypes about the dangers of big government and inefficient public administration of health care.
The New York Times is the most open to the limited reform of corporate care. Its editors concede that the status quo of ever increasing health care costs is unsustainable for the American public, economy, and the business community. Addressing the United States’ “bloated, inefficient health care system” may cost over a $1 trillion under the Obama plan, the Times concedes. The alternative is to allow for “costs [to] continue to soar, [while] millions more people lose their health insurance and individuals and families face rising premiums and greater cost-sharing as employers shift more of the burden or drop their coverage.” Of course, the Congressional Budget Office has challenged the claim that the Obama plan will effectively reduce costs, despite the Times’ promises that this plan will do so.
The Times has long refused to support a genuinely non-profit single payer health care system. In a November 2007 editorial, for example, the paper claimed that “single payer is no panacea for the cost problem,” citing as evidence the rising expenses associated with Medicare. Of course the Times’ editors ignored the most important reason for Medicare’s cost increases: a for-profit pharmaceutical system that has presided over a double digit, 24 percent increase in the costs of pharmaceutical drugs from 2006 to 2008 (Medicare is a major purchaser of pharmaceuticals). It also doesn’t help that the Congress voluntarily neutered itself in a 2003 bill that made it illegal for the federal government to negotiate lower drug prices with pharmaceutical corporations that provide drugs to the Medicare program (an attempt to repeal the negotiation ban was blocked in Congress in 2007). Don’t expect, however, to hear about any of these inconvenient truths in the editorial pages of the Times.
via Anthony DiMaggio: Health Care, Media and the Case for Socialized Medicine.
Rep. Blackburn: “We’re Not Going To Cry ‘Emergency’ Every Time We Have A Katrina”
OPS: More evidence that republicans are completely out of touch with reality. We MUST start accepting that, and start acting accordingly . These people are a danger to themselves , the Nation and you and me.
Rep. Blackburn: “We’re Not Going To Cry ‘Emergency’ Every Time We Have A Katrina”
While speaking on the floor of the House on July 22, 2009, Congressman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) shockingly exclaimed: “we’re not going to cry ‘emergency’ every time we have a Katrina.”
The Meaning Of “Emergency”
While extolling the virtues of a balanced budget during a PAYGO debate on the floor of the House, Rep. Marsha Blackburn shamefully exclaimed:
Let’s agree that we’re going to have PAYGO enforcement. That we’re not going to cry ‘emergency’ every time we have a Katrina, every time we have a Tsunami, every time we have a need for extra spending, that we don’t go call for a special appropriation that allows us to circumvent the PAYGO rules.
Bachmann, Kline oppose public option because it’s ‘cheaper’
OPS: Well there it is in a nutshell 
Bachmann, Kline oppose public option because it’s ‘cheaper’ -Minnesota Independent
If you’re trying to dissuade someone from buying something, it’s best not to tell them it’s the cheaper option. But that’s the strategy behind some GOP opposition to the “public option” contained in the healthcare reform efforts currently being debated in Washington. U.S. Reps. Michele Bachmann and John Kline say the option is bad for America because it will be cheaper than the health insurance currently breaking the backs of many individuals and small businesses.
On the House floor Monday evening, Bachmann railed against the public option partially because because it will provide cheaper health insurance to millions of Americans.
Approximately 114 million Americans are expected to leave private health insurance. Why? Their employers will drop the insurance because the taxpayer-subsidized plan will be 30 to 40 percent cheaper. This action will collapse the private health insurance market, and then the Federal Government will own the health provider game.
Bachmann’s statement echoes the sentiments expressed by Rep. John Kline in an interview with Minnesota Public Radio’s Tom Crann in late June. He also said that millions of people will flock to the cheaper insurance plan, also called the public option.
Toyota says it’s no longer profitable in North America
Toyota says it’s no longer profitable in North America
Washington — Toyota’s top executive in the United States said Monday the company was reviewing its entire operation here, including whether to close a factory in California and when to open a factory in Mississippi.
In an hour-long interview with reporters at Toyota’s Washington office, Yoshimi Inaba said Toyota is not profitable in North America despite cost cutting in the organization, but he said he hopes the company could be profitable in its next fiscal year in North America. Inaba, who is president and chief operating officer of Toyota Motor America and chairman and CEO of Toyota Motor Sales USA, is taking up his responsibilities at a crucial time for the Japanese automaker.
Toyota’s sales have fallen 38 percent in the first six months of the year — to 770,000 cars and trucks from nearly 1.25 million vehicles in the first six months of 2008. U.S. industry auto sales fell 35 percent in the first half of the year.
via Toyota says it’s no longer profitable in North America | detnews.com | The Detroit News.
“C Street” Cabal of Anti-Democracy Fundamentalist Senators and Reps Wouldn’t Turn Over Child Rapist Among Them to Police?
“C Street” Cabal of Anti-Democracy Fundamentalist Senators and Reps Wouldn’t Turn Over Child Rapist Among Them to Police?
BUZZFLASH EDITOR’S BLOG By Mark Karlin
Kudos to Rachel Maddow for latching on to the captivating and chilling story about not just the lascivious and potentially illegal activities of some of the “C Street” Family, but — more importantly — focusing on their belief that they are chosen by God to lead and infiltrate our governnment.
And she hasn’t stopped pursuing this startling story, defying the normal news cycle of a nano-second of coverage unless it’s Michael Jackson’s death or a blonde white girl disappearing in Aruba.
What gets lost in the disgusting details of Ensign’s adulterous affair, Mark Sanford’s (an associate member of the Family) lust for an Argentine, and former Congressman Chip Pickering’s adulterous bonking on-site at the C Street “Christian fellowship house” is something that Maddow has repeatedly come back to: these men don’t believe they are responsible to moral or governmental laws. If they deviate from the “righteous path,” God is only testing their strength, because they are the ones divinely chosen to lead — and it is weakness to succumb to remorse about one’s “misbehavior.” That is why Mark Sanford said he won’t resign and compared himself to King David, who slept adulterously with Bathsheba and then had her husband killed.
The Blue Dogs’ Can’t-Do Attitude and the Health-Care Debate
The Can’t-Do Blue Dogs - washingtonpost.com
Watching the centrist Democrats in Congress create more and more reasons why health care can’t be fixed, I’ve been struck by a disquieting thought: Suppose our collective lack of response to Hurricane Katrina wasn’t exceptional but, rather, the new normal in America. Suppose we can no longer address the major challenges confronting the nation. Suppose America is now the world’s leading can’t-do country.
Every other nation with an advanced economy long ago secured universal health care for its citizens — an achievement that the United States alone finds beyond the capacities of mortal man. It wasn’t ever thus. Time was when Democratic Congresses enacted Social Security and Medicare over the opposition of powerful interests and Republican ideologues. In fact, our government used to actually pave roads, build bridges and allow for secure retirements by levying taxes on those who could afford to pay them.
To today’s centrist Democrats, this has become a distant memory, a history lesson they cannot grasp. The notion that actual individuals might have to pay to secure the national interest appalls them. In the House, the Blue Dogs doggedly oppose proposals to fund universal coverage by taxing the wealthiest 1 percent of the nation’s households. Their deference to wealth — whether the consequence of our system of funding elections or a byproduct of the Internet generation’s experience of free access to information and entertainment — is not to be trifled with.
via Harold Meyerson – The Blue Dogs’ Can’t-Do Attitude and the Health-Care Debate – washingtonpost.com.
China to deploy foreign reserves
OPS: “aid” my ass
China to deploy foreign reserves - FT.com
Part of $2,000bn to aid overseas growth
Beijing will use its foreign exchange reserves, the largest in the world, to support and accelerate overseas expansion and acquisitions by Chinese companies, Wen Jiabao, the country’s premier, said in comments published on Tuesday.
“We should hasten the implementation of our ‘going out’ strategy and combine the utilisation of foreign exchange reserves with the ‘going out’ of our enterprises,” he told Chinese diplomats late on Monday.
via FT.com / Asia-Pacific – China to deploy foreign reserves.
Real Competition Can Stop Health Insurance Gouging
Real Competition Can Stop Health Insurance Gouging | CommonDreams.org
by Jim Hightower
Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama is all for the congressional effort to produce health-care reform — as long as the legislation we end up with doesn’t contain any actual reform.
Indeed, the senator gets fainting spells at the mere mention of Barack Obama’s proposed reforms, gasping that they add up to socialized health care. He recently stammered that the president’s plan would destroy “the best health care system the world has ever known.”
Huh? This guy puts the “dumb” in dumbfounding. Maybe by “finest” he meant the most expensive, for it surely is that. But the best? Hardly. The quality of our care ranks 37th in the world — only one notch better than Slovenia!
But perhaps it’s not Shelby’s fault that he’s so out of touch with the unpleasant reality that most Americans face when they’re sick and have to cope with the costly, bureaucratic, uncaring system now run by a handful of insurance corporations. After all, he’s been in Congress for 30 years, so he and his family have long been receiving platinum-level coverage courtesy of us taxpayers. Maybe he assumes everyone gets the same. You see, since Shelby already gets excellent socialized health care, of course he thinks it’s the finest.
via Real Competition Can Stop Health Insurance Gouging | CommonDreams.org.
NORAD to Conduct Exercise Over D.C. Area
NORAD to Conduct Exercise Over D.C. Area
WASHINGTON – The North American Aerospace Defense Command will conduct a one-day exercise in the Washington area.
The exercise, called Falcon Virgo 09-10, will be conducted beginning early Wednesday.
The exercise will include training flights conducted in coordination with the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Capital Region Command Center, the Joint Air Defense Operations Center, the Continental U.S. NORAD Region, Civil Air Patrol, U.S. Coast Guard and others.
Civil Air Patrol aircraft and Coast Guard HH-65 Dolphin helicopters will also take part in the exercise.
via NORAD to Conduct Exercise Over D.C. Area|ABC 7 News.
Intelligent Design’s Latest Sneaky Assault on Science
Intelligent Design’s Latest Sneaky Assault on Science
One of the architects behind the unscientific intelligent design movement is finding success in referencing its greatest enemy: Charles Darwin.
Last month, while speaking at McLean Bible Church, a megachurch in McLean, Virginia, intelligent design superstar Dr. Stephen Meyer rolled out a magnetic white board adorned with block letters spelling out “DC ROCKS.” John Donahue, the head of McLean’s apologetics ministry and a domineering man whose closely trimmed beard makes him look more like Chuck Norris than Jeremiah, introduced Meyer. A self-described “celebrity-geek,” Donahue first warning the attendees that “our faith has come under attack” and that “no doctrine or ideology has had a more negative effect that the ‘so-called’ theory of evolution.” Evolution, Donahue continued with the passion of a true believer, was supported by “fraudulent research, cherry-picked data, fabricated drawings, and scientific fraud.” Meyer, Donahue insisted, was “one of the finest scientific authors of our time,” and was there to show how the “scientists” got it all wrong.
Meyer’s “DC ROCKS” demonstration served to show what all those evolutionary scientists were missing. The fact that the letters stuck down the board was the result of the laws of magnetism, Meyer said, but the letters arrangement, in a way that bore meaningful information, was the product of intelligence.
via Intelligent Design’s Latest Sneaky Assault on Science | Belief | AlterNet.
Judicial Apartheid
The National Arbitration Forum isn’t impartial — it’s financially shackled to debt collection law firms representing major credit card companies.
Judicial Apartheid
Heralded by the Supreme Court as Fair, Vast Private Judicial System Exposed as Fraud
By PAM MARTENS
For the past 18 years, a motley mix of corporate law firms, Wall Street powerhouses and private justice providers have been serving up false testimony to the highest court of our land that mandatory arbitration is “inexpensive, fast and fair” and a proper substitute for the public court system. And for 18 years a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court has been cozying up to these brazenly preposterous statements while gutting our Constitution’s Seventh Amendment guarantee to a jury trial. In doing so, wittingly or unwittingly, the Supreme Court had aided and abetted the key linchpin of a wealth transfer system that has brought the nation to its knees.
Today, everything from Wall Street brokerage accounts, employment contracts, credit cards, mortgages, even cell phone contracts have routinely removed the individual’s constitutional right to file a claim in court to seek redress of a grievance or fraudulent action. Instead, the individual’s claim is forced into one of the privately run arbitration organizations where conflicts are rampant, discovery is limited, and the right to appeal is typically impossible because the arbitrators are not required to explain the rationale for their decisions in writing.
In a saner era, these mandatory arbitration contracts would be thrown out by courts as contracts of adhesion because they were offered on a take it or leave it basis. Under any rational interpretation of contract law, contracts must be a meeting of the minds, freely entered into, between parties of equal bargaining power.
But just as profits have been privatized on Wall Street and losses socialized, the right to a jury trial in a court system paid for by individual taxpayers is now increasingly reserved for corporations, not people. It’s a form of judicial apartheid not dissimilar to the way the Supreme Court rationalized the segregation of blacks in its Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896, promising “equal” facilities, just separate.
via Pam Martens: Judicial Apartheid.
Do Grown-Ups Really Need to Drink Milk?
Do Grown-Ups Really Need to Drink Milk?
Despite what the food pyramid says, we don’t need milk after we’re babies. Maybe it’s time to wean ourselves from cows and grow up.
Should grown-ups be drinking milk at all, much less the milk of another species?
Mammals are named after the milk-producing glands that developed as a way to feed babies, but only humans continue drinking mammary secretions after infancy — and no other species drinks the milk of another. Today, dairy consumption is at the center of several interconnected social, economic, and health crises. Maybe it’s time to reconsider our relationship with dairy.
“Every time the milk truck pulls in, more money leaves the farm,” says Philip Ranny, a seventh-generation Vermont dairy farmer so in debt he’s decided to sell his herd. Across the country, farmers are going bankrupt, cashing in their IRAs, and selling their herds to slaughter because a crash in the price of milk has left them earning less for their milk than it costs to produce it.
And while wholesale prices have dropped by half, retail prices have remained relatively steady. That’s been good business for distributors like Dean Foods, which controls about 70 percent of the milk production in Vermont. Its dairy subsidiary reported $182 million in operating income in the first quarter of 2009, 39% more than it earned in the first quarter of 2008, when wholesale milk prices were strong.
via Do Grown-Ups Really Need to Drink Milk? | Environment | AlterNet.
The Chicago Reporter Lower Standards
Lower Standards 
Luzella Roberts knew something was wrong when a nurse in the dialysis room at her nursing home approached her with a syringe and moved it toward her left arm. It was Sept. 25, 2006, and Roberts’ sixth day at International Nursing and Rehab Center in Chicago’s New City neighborhood.
There were explicit instructions on her medical chart not to administer dialysis through that arm, said the family’s lawyer Steven M. Levin. Instead, they were to use a catheter that was surgically implanted in Roberts’ right arm. It was there for the dialysis treatments that Roberts, an African American, received three times a week to remove waste from her body, Levin said.
But now, the nurse was preparing to insert the needle in Roberts’ left arm. It was the same arm that for 60 years had cooked dinner for her husband, dressed her four children, and had three weeks earlier cupped her newest great-granddaughter.
via The Chicago Reporter Lower Standards.
No Cadillacs in U.S. healthcare reform proposals
UPDATE 1-No “Cadillacs” in U.S. healthcare reform proposals | Reuters
WASHINGTON, July 22 (Reuters) – Some of the ideas proposed for U.S. healthcare reform could cost patients thousands of dollars a year out of their own pockets, and premiums could end up being too high, according to two reports.
One analysis for the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network showed a plan now offered to federal employees, including members of Congress, sometimes costs patients $7,000 a year in out-of-pocket expenses — many of which a seriously ill patient would have no way of avoiding.
The Blue Cross/Blue Shield insurance plan, operated by Wellpoint Inc (WLP.N), has been called a “Cadillac” plan for its generous benefits by healthcare reform advocates, who compare it to the luxury car. They say it should form the minimum basis of what is offered to Americans under a reworked system.
via UPDATE 1-No Cadillacs in U.S. healthcare reform proposals | Deals | Regulatory News | Reuters.
Recall gel filled baby teethers
Recall gel filled baby teethers
The FDA and Luv N’ Care Ltd. of Monroe, La., have issued a nationwide recall of gel-filled teethers with the brand names”Nuby,” “Cottontails” and “Playschool,” because the liquid inside the gel-filled teethers has been found to contain Bacillus subtilis and Bacillus circulans bacteria in the gel.
The recall includes the following products:
UPC code Brand Name
48526-00451 Nuby
48526-00452 Nuby
48526-00453 Nuby
48526-00454 Nuby
48526-00455 Nuby
48526-00459 Nuby
48526-00467 Nuby
48526-00472 Nuby
48526-00473 Nuby
48526-00482 Nuby
48526-00483 Nuby
48526-00487 Nuby
48526-00490 Nuby
48526-00519 Nuby
48526-00521 Nuby
41520-87115 Cottontails
50428-91511 Playschool
41520-91660 Cottontails
Stop using the products immediately. There is a small chance that a child with weakened immune system can become very ill if they eat the gel with the bacteria in it.
via Recall gel filled baby teethers.
The NSA is still listening to you
The NSA is still listening to you | Salon 
Bush went away, but domestic surveillance overreach didn’t. It’s now the law, and the ACLU is fighting back
This summer, on a remote stretch of desert in central Utah, the National Security Agency will begin work on a massive, 1 million-square-foot data warehouse. Costing more than $1.5 billion, the highly secret facility is designed to house upward of trillions of intercepted phone calls, e-mail messages, Internet searches and other communications intercepted by the agency as part of its expansive eavesdropping operations. The NSA is also completing work on another data warehouse, this one in San Antonio, Texas, which will be nearly the size of the Alamodome.
The need for such extraordinary data storage capacity stems in part from the Bush administration’s decision to open the NSA’s surveillance floodgates following the 9/11 attacks. According to a recently released Inspectors General report, some of the NSA’s operations — such as spying on American citizens without warrants — were so questionable, if not illegal, that they nearly caused the resignations of the most senior officials of both the FBI and the Justice Department.
via The NSA is still listening to you | Salon.
Stephen Colbert on Chuck Todd and torture investigations
Stephen Colbert on Chuck Todd and torture investigations - Salon.com
Glenn Greenwald
Amazingly, reports that Eric Holder is considering commencing an investigation into Bush-era torture crimes has created extreme consternation in multiple Beltway circles despite how narrow and limited those investigations would be. As I wrote last week, numerous reports indicate that Holder wants to replicate the Abu Ghraib travesty by investigating only low-level interrogators who exceeded the torture limits approved by John Yoo and George Bush, and not investigate the high-level policy makers who instituted the criminal torture regime or the DOJ lawyers who authorized it.
Since then, the Newsweek reporter who first printed what DOJ officials told him about Holder’s intentions, Daniel Klaidman, confirmed in an interview on The Young Turks that Holder intends to confine any investigations only to “rogue” interrogators who exceeded John Yoo’s torture permission slips while shielding high-level Bush officials who acted in accordance with Yoo’s decrees. Proving yet again that there is nothing more difficult than satirizing our rotted political culture, here is what I wrote about Holder’s intentions last week:
via Stephen Colbert on Chuck Todd and torture investigations – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com.
The Blue Dogs flunk obedience school
OPS: It’s about time we STOPPED calling these creatures “Fiscally conservative”: Unlimited funding for illegal Wars, unlimited tax breaks for millionaires and Corporations, raises for themselves, unlimited bailouts for Wall Street. They are not fiscally conservative. They are as conservative as the Republicans they are.
The Blue Dogs flunk obedience school | Salon News
Fiscally conservative Democrats, not Republicans, are Obama’s real obstacle on the road to healthcare reform
- The moment had finally come, Tuesday afternoon, for President Obama to follow through on a pledge that he’d taken some heat for making during last year’s campaign: He would meet, and negotiate on key issues, with enemies, no matter how vile they might seem to be. Which is how a group of conservative Blue Dog Democrats from the House found themselves invited into the Oval Office to chat about healthcare policy for an hour.
As the White House tries to stir itself into action to keep Obama’s chief domestic policy priority from going off the rails, the administration is finding that its biggest problem isn’t Republicans. Sure, the GOP opposes the healthcare reform plans moving through Congress, but what else is new? The GOP has opposed everything Obama’s tried to do in his first six months in office. The complaints the White House is trying to accommodate now are coming from conservative and moderate Democrats.
In the House, a group of Blue Dogs have basically held legislation hostage, leveraging their numbers on the one committee in that chamber that has yet to pass a bill, the Energy and Commerce panel. In the Senate, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus and a handful of moderate Democrats are engaged in painstaking, secretive talks with moderate Republicans in an effort to draft a proposal that might win bipartisan support. None of the senators involved in the talks would discuss them with reporters this afternoon, but they insisted they were doing the right thing. “What we’re doing in this group is working very methodically,” said Sen. Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat who’s pushing for “co-ops” instead of a government-run public health insurance option in the reform. “We’re not impatient, we’re trying to get this job done in the right way so it can stand review and stand scrutiny.”
via The Blue Dogs flunk obedience school | Salon News.
Village Fairy Tale: Coming From a Pro-Gun State Explains Opposition to Health Care Reform
Village Fairy Tale: Coming From a Pro-Gun State Explains Opposition to Health Care Reform
by: David Sirota
NOTE: Make sure to check out this piece by Kaiser Health News about Blue Dog Rep. Mike Ross’s (D-AR) town begging him to stop trying to thwart health care reform. This is exactly what I’m talking about in this post – just because someone like Ross represents a district that might be filled with working-class cultural conservatives doesn’t mean those same working-class cultural conservatives want their congressman whoring himself out to the health insurance industry.
I know I’m only supposed to post once a day here, and I will only be posting once a day – but because my China series has been going all week, I’ve not been able to post on the health care situation. So I’m breaking my rule just to make a really important point that we all need to remember about the so-called “Blue Dogs” and “conservative Democrats” who are working their asses off to prevent real health care reform.
The Villagers in the D.C. media (ie. the power-worshiping pundits and journalists who preen around the nation’s capital telling the Rest of Us what to think) continue to claim that “Blue Dogs” and “conservative Democrats” come from “moderate districts,” and this is supposed to clearly explain their opposition to health care reform and progressive taxation to pay for said health care reform. These Democrats are just representing their culturally conservative constituents who not only like guns and hate abortion, but allegedly love the health-insurance companies so much they are threatening an electoral backlash against legislators who refuse to act like health-industry harlots!
Howard Deans goes after Max Baucus for accepting 3.9 million from health and insurance interests
WeWantThePublicOpti on.com/results PCCC & DFA Montana ad targeting Max Baucus for opposing President Obama’s public option while taking $3.9 from health and insurance interests.
via YouTube – Help air this ad in MT – WeWantThePublicOption.com.
Blowing the Lid off the Bizarre (and Frighteningly Powerful) Members of The Family
Blowing the Lid off the Bizarre (and Frighteningly Powerful) Members of The Family
These people are seriously demented, un-Democratic, and fanatical. Most importantly, they are in positions of great power.
Jeff Sharlet continues his brilliant reporting on the bizarre christo-fascist cult called “the Family” which counts among its members some of the most powerful people holding elected office in the United States. How bizarre and extreme is the Family?
Attempting to explain what it means to be chosen for leadership like King David was — or Mark Sanford, according to his own estimate — [Doug Coe, son and heir-apparent to Family leader David Coe] asked a young man who’d put himself, body and soul, under the Family’s authority, “Let’s say I hear you raped three little girls. What would I think of you?” The man guessed that Coe would probably think that he was a monster. “No,” answered Coe, “I wouldn’t.” Why? Because, as a member of the Family, he’s among what Family leaders refer to as the “new chosen.” If you’re chosen, the normal rules don’t apply.
And just who are known to be members of the Family?
Men under the Family’s religio-political counsel include, in addition to [John] Ensign, [Tom] Coburn and [Chip] Pickering, Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham, both R-S.C.; James Inhofe, R-Okla., John Thune, R-S.D., and recent senators and high officials such as John Ashcroft, Ed Meese, Pete Domenici and Don Nickles. Over in the House there’s Joe Pitts, R-Penn., Frank Wolf, R-Va., Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., Ander Crenshaw, R-Fla., Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., and John R. Carter, R-Texas. Historically, the Family has been strongly Republican, but it includes Democrats, too. There’s Mike McIntyre of North Carolina, for instance, a vocal defender of putting the Ten Commandments in public places, and Sen. Mark Pryor, the pro-war Arkansas Democrat responsible for scuttling Obama’s labor agenda. Sen. Pryor explained to me the meaning of bipartisanship he’d learned through the Family: “Jesus didn’t come to take sides. He came to take over.” And by Jesus, the Family means the Family…
The Family sponsors missions overseas
via Blowing the Lid off the Bizarre (and Frighteningly Powerful) Members of The Family | PEEK | AlterNet.
Words you’ll never hear in the Canadian health care system
Words you’ll never hear in the Canadian health care system
As a Canadian I marvel at all of these terms that are so common to Americans, but are virtually unknown to us.
Here’s a partial list off the top of my head:
1. “Out of network”
There are no “networks” in Canada. Doctors and hospitals are not affiliated with private insurance companies. Doctors are private business entities and hospitals are usually run by non-profit boards or regional health associations.
2. “COBRA”
Health coverage is NOT tied to your place of employment in any way. So any COBRA-like scheme is unnecessary.
3. “Co-Pay”
The government pays 100% of basic care, 100% of the time. Drugs are not covered, but are subsidized by government to a point. And because of mass buys, discounts are obtained from the drug companies. That’s why our prices are so much lower. Most employers offer a drug plan that pays for 100% of drug cost coverage.
4. “monthly premium\deductible”
Wazzat? We don’t consider our health to be the same as our possessions.
5. “waiting for approval”
Doctors are the sole decision makers for health care. NOBODY influences or delays their decisions, warns them of costs or prevents them from giving treatment for any reason.
6. “Government interference”
The provincial government in each province PAYS for whatever services doctors provide. No questions asked. Unless the procedure is experimental, not medically necessary or unwarranted, doctors cannot deny basic care – by law.
7. “Health insurance lobby”
There are NO insurance companies for basic care, only companies for providing insurance for travelers. No money to be made here.
8. “bureaucracy”
When we visit a hospital or doctor’s office, we walk in, get treated, walk out. No “applications”, “registrations” or any other kind of paperwork is required. We NEVER have to talk to a single “government official” or wait for a “judgment”.
9. “PRE-EXISTING CONDITION”
This is such a foreign concept to us. A Canadian’s usual reaction to the explanation of this term is astonishment.
I’m glad to see that a sane health care system is within reach in America. Fight for it. It’s WORTH it.
via Words you’ll never hear in the Canadian health care system – Democratic Underground.
Check Out Howard Dean on Health Care
Speaking with Campus Progress about healthcare reform on Tuesday, July 21
YouTube – Check Out Howard Dean on Health Care.
Obama’s Strategy to Reverse Manufacturing’s Fall
Obama’s Strategy to Reverse Manufacturing’s Fall - NYTimes.com
If the Obama administration has a strategy for reviving manufacturing, Douglas Bartlett would like to know what it is.
Buffeted by foreign competition, Mr. Bartlett recently closed his printed circuit board factory, founded 57 years ago by his father, and laid off the remaining 87 workers. Last week, he auctioned off the machinery, and soon he will raze the factory itself in Cary, Ill.
“The property taxes are no longer affordable,” Mr. Bartlett said glumly, “so I am going to tear down the building and sit on the land, and hopefully sell it after the recession when land prices hopefully rise.”
Though manufacturing has long been in decline, the loss of factory jobs has been especially brutal of late, with nearly two million disappearing since the recession began in December 2007. Even a few chief executives, heading companies that have shifted plenty of production abroad, are beginning to express alarm.
via Obama’s Ad Hoc Strategy to Reverse Manufacturing’s Fall – NYTimes.com.
Lewis Black hits GOP for demonizing health care reform
Lewis Black hits GOP for demonizing health care reform
Comedian Lewis Black reviewed Republicans’ arguments against health care reform Wednesday on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. The comedian singled out Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who was quoted as saying “I had a friend of mine in Florida who lost a friend in Canada because the government decided he was too old for a certain kind of procedure.”
Black didn’t buy McConnell’s story. “Your anti-health care anecdote is a friend of a friend? That’s not even enough proof for an urban legend. I have a friend of a friend who brought home a dog from Mexico then he shaves it. It turns out someone had stolen its kidney and replaced it with a polaroid picture of my tooth brush up Richard Gere’s ass. Go figure. If you can’t give me any evidence then at least do the honorable thing and confuse me,” joked Black.
This video is from Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, broadcast July 20, 2009.
video at link
via Raw Story » Lewis Black hits GOP for demonizing health care reform.
Judge reinstates Dan Rather’s fraud claim against CBS
Judge reinstates Dan Rather’s fraud claim against CBS
A New York City judge has restored a fraud claim he previously dismissed from Dan Rather’s lawsuit against CBS Corp. over a story about former President George W. Bush.
Rather’s lawyer Martin Gold said Tuesday the fraud stems from CBS’ failure to keep promises it made to Rather before firing him over problems with the story about Bush’s Vietnam-era military service.
Rather’s lawyer Martin Gold said Tuesday the fraud stems from CBS’ failure to keep promises it made to Rather before firing him over problems with the story about Bush’s Vietnam-era military service.
Judicial Hearing Officer Ira Gammerman dismissed the claim last year because of technical legal errors but ruled Rather could refile it.
via The Raw Story » Judge reinstates Dan Rather’s fraud claim against CBS.
From ‘Socialized Medicine’ To ‘Dead Baby Juice,’ GOP Moderate Faces Down Rabid Right-Wing Conspiracies
From ‘Socialized Medicine’ To ‘Dead Baby Juice,’ GOP Moderate Faces Down Rabid Right-Wing Conspiracies
Moderate Republican Mike Castle (R-DE), who holds Delaware’s only Congressional seat, hit a wall of right-wing rage during a town hall meeting in Georgetown, DE. The June 30 meeting, part of his health care “listening tour” across the state, came just days after Rep. Castle was one of just eight Republicans to vote in favor of the American Clean Energy and Security Act. The event rapidly devolved into a moblike atmosphere as conservative activists challenged Castle with the full spectrum of right-wing conspiracy theories:
‘Socialized Medicine’ Will Destroy The Nation ‘Faster Than The Twin Towers.’ Audience member: “I don’t have the answers for how to fix the broken pieces of our health care system, but I know darn well if we let the government bring in socialized medicine, it will destroy this thing faster than the twin towers came down.” [Applause and cheers]
The Cap And Trade ‘Tax’ Will Kill The American Economy. Audience member: “Do you have any idea what that cap and trade tax thing, bill that you passed is going to do to the Suffolk County poultry industry? That’s how chicken houses are heated, with propane. It outputs CO2. I mean, I’m outputting CO2 right now as I speak. Trees need CO2 to make oxygen! You can’t tax that!”
RNC memo: ‘[E]ngage in every activity we can to slow down’ health care.
RNC memo: ‘[E]ngage in every activity we can to slow down’ health care.
After following GOP pollster Frank Luntz’s advice to demonize President Obama’s health care plan by distorting it, many conservatives have recently embraced a new obstructionist tactic: delay any reform measure going through Congress for as long as possible. The Republican National Committee is giving the strategy its official stamp of approval. In a 12-page memo obtained by the Huffington Post, the RNC urges Republicans to “engage in every activity we can to slow down” health care reform:
In particular, the 12-page memo makes the case that it is a Republican priority to slow down the consideration of health care reform before it can become codified.
“The Republican National Committee will engage in every activity we can to slow down this mad rush while promoting sensible alternatives that address health care costs and preserve quality,” the memo affirmatively declares.
via Think Progress » RNC memo: ‘[E]ngage in every activity we can to slow down’ health care..
Jindal takes credit for stimulus, presents constituents with jumbo-sized stimulus check.
Jindal takes credit for stimulus, presents constituents with jumbo-sized stimulus check.
Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) reemerged on the national stage yesterday, penning an op-ed in the Politico to slam efforts to reform health care and declaring the Economic Recovery Act a failure. Jindal declared the Recovery Act “a nearly trillion-dollar stimulus that has not stimulated.” However, less than 24 hours before Jindal published his op-ed, Jindal traveled to Anacoco, Louisiana to present a jumbo-sized check to residents of Vernon Parish. The funds included hundreds of thousands of dollars directly from the Recovery Act — at least $157,848 in Community Block Grant money authorized by the Recovery Act and $138,611 for Byrne/JAG job training programs created by the Recovery Act. Rather than credit the federal government or the Recovery Act he opposed, Jindal printed his own name on the corner of the massive check.
Jindal was one of the GOP governors who opposed the Recovery Act and he succeeded in blocking money for unemployment compensation
Leaked Memos Reveal AHIP Is Recycling Playbook Against Michael Moore To Derail Health Reform
Leaked Memos Reveal AHIP Is Recycling Playbook Against Michael Moore To Derail Health Reform
Wendell Potter, a former top CIGNA health insurance official, left his job recently and is trying to atone for his role in propagating what he called “Wall Street-run health care that has proven itself an untrustworthy partner to its customers, to the doctors and hospitals who deliver care and to the state and federal governments that attempt to regulate it.” Appearing on PBS two weeks ago, Potter also divulged that the private health care industry “was really concerned” with Michael Moore’s documentary SiCKO because Moore “hit the nail on the head with his movie.” Host Bill Moyers posted copies of internal strategy memos from AHIP, the trade group and lobbying juggernaut representing the health insurance industry, detailing how to discredit Moore and conduct a PR campaign to maintain the status quo.
Now, as Congress moves into high-gear for reforming health care, AHIP appears be positioning itself to defeat a public option by using the same playbook they used against Moore in 2007. The AHIP anti-Moore memo similarly states:
Barton plays dumb, says he may have taken ’some’ contributions from the health sector.
Barton plays dumb, says he may have taken ’some’ contributions from the health sector.
Citing a Washington Post article on health care industry cash flowing to lawmakers, Washington Journal guest host Libby Casey asked Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) to respond to a Twitter question inquiring how much money he has “taken from the insurance industry.” Barton played coy on the question, saying that he was “sure” he had “received some political action committee donations from the health insurance sector” over 25 years in Congress. Watch it:
McCain refuses to endorse Steele’s charge that Obama’s health care plan is ‘socialism.’
McCain refuses to endorse Steele’s charge that Obama’s health care plan is ‘socialism.’
Yesterday during a confusing question-and-answer period after a speech at the National Press Club, RNC Chair Michael Steele was asked if he thought President Obama’s health care plan amounted to “socialism.” “Yes. Next question,” Steele quipped. Piling on the GOP’s new strategy to kill health care reform, Steele later added, “Slow down, Mr. President. We can’t afford to get health care wrong. Your experiment proposes too much, too soon, too fast.” This morning on CNN, host Kiren Chetry asked Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) if he agreed with Steele, but McCain — who hasn’t been shy to drop the S-bomb in relation to Obama — wouldn’t endorse the charge:
CHETRY: Yes, Michael Steele called it an experiment. He called it socialism, talking about the health care plan that’s out there right now in the House. Do you agree?
MCCAIN: I have my own opinions on most issues now, and I’ll be glad to give you my opinions, and I appreciate the opportunity to do so.
Watch it:
Matthews To GOP Rep. Advancing ‘Birther’ Myth: ‘You Are Feeding The Whacko Wing Of Your Party’
OPS: Tweety gets one right!
Matthews To GOP Rep. Advancing ‘Birther’ Myth: ‘You Are Feeding The Whacko Wing Of Your Party’
Over the past several months, the right wing has been advancing the discredited myth that President Obama is not a natural-born U.S. citizen. These so-called “birthers” claim that Obama hasn’t produced his a valid birth certificate to prove that he is eligible to be president. (He has). CNN’s Lou Dobbs is the latest to traffic in this nonsense, despite the fact that his own guest-host debunked the “birther” claims on Dobbs’s show.
Today on MSNBC, host Chris Matthews interviewed Rep. John Campbell (R-CA), co-sponsor of a bill that would require candidates for president in the future to present a copy of his or her birth certificate “to establish that the candidate meets the qualifications” for president. “The proposal is not crazy,” Campbell said in defense of the measure. “Congressman, nice try,” Matthews replied. “What you’re doing is appeasing the nutcases…you’re verifying the paranoia out there,” he said. Matthews then held up a copy of Obama’s birth certificate and said, “That’s the way to deal with this, mail this birth certificate to the whacko wing of your party.”
Matthews asked Campbell seven times if he believes Obama is a natural born U.S. citizen, and after a series of dodges, Matthews said, “You are feeding the whacko wing of your party.” Campbell finally answered, “As far as I know, Yes.” “As far as you know? I’m showing you his birth certificate!” Matthews exclaimed:
Executives receive one-third of all pay in the U.S.
Executives receive one-third of all pay in the U.S.
According to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Social Security Administration data, more than one-third of all pay in the U.S. now goes to executives and other highly-paid employees:
Executives and other highly compensated employees now receive more than one-third of all pay in the U.S., according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Social Security Administration data — without counting billions of dollars more in pay that remains off federal radar screens that measure wages and salaries. Highly paid employees received nearly $2.1 trillion of the $6.4 trillion in total U.S. pay in 2007, the latest figures available. The compensation numbers don’t include incentive stock options, unexercised stock options, unvested restricted stock units and certain benefits.
Between 1979 and 2006, the inflation-adjusted after-tax income of the richest 1 percent of households increased by 256 percent, compared to 21 percent for families in the middle income quintile. Despite these numbers, Democratic leaders, “bowing to unease among lawmakers and governors in their own party,” are reconsidering the House Ways and Means committee’s proposal to implement a surtax on the richest one percent of Americans as a way of financing a portion of health care reform. The Wonk Room has more.
via Think Progress » Executives receive one-third of all pay in the U.S..
No More Excuses, Mr. President
No More Excuses, Mr. President – The Nation
In an environment that resembled a revival much more than a conference, the NAACP repeatedly and enthusiastically sought to reaffirm its relevance last week as it celebrated its centennial anniversary. Speaker after speaker insisted, somewhat defensively, that we need the NAACP “now more than ever” and with its young and charismatic new CEO, Benjamin Jealous, the organization made a significant push to court more youthful members. But every speech and presentation was inevitably overshadowed by the most prominent person of color on the planet–President Barack Obama.
Naturally, no event during the week conjured up more anticipation than the president’s address. After nearly six years of being snubbed by George W. Bush, the NAACP’s community was sure to offer a hero’s welcome to the nation’s first black president–and he did not disappoint them. In one of his most emotionally charged, relaxed and almost conversational speeches he proclaimed it was “good to be here among friends.”
This performance truly would halt any pundit opining about Obama’s supposed lack of passion and conviction in their tracks. In front of the first predominately black audience he has addressed since his inauguration, the president did not shy away from tough questions and from examining the ugly side of life in America for people of color.
via No More Excuses, Mr. President.
Congress Is Behaving as if the Health Care System Isn’t in Tatters
Congress Is Behaving as if the Health Care System Isn’t in Tatters
When it comes to health care reform, I feel like the house is on fire, but nobody in Washington (except maybe President Obama) seems to see it. Or worse, they see it, and they don’t care.
Here are some statistics, via the nonpartisan/bipartisan National Coalition on Health Care (NCHC), to demonstrate just how dire the current health care situation is:
- 46 million Americans under the age of 65 (which represents 18 percent of the population) had no health insurance in 2007. And given the spike in the unemployment rate and downturn in the economy since then, that figure has to be even higher now.
- 2.4 trillion was spent on health care in 2008, representing 17 percent of the U.S.’s gross domestic product. That’s more than four times what we spend on defense.
- more…..
via Mitchell Bard: Congress Is Behaving as if the Health Care System Isn’t in Tatters.
President Barack Obama authorizes extended Secret Service guard for former VP Dick Cheney
President Barack Obama authorizes extended Secret Service guard for former VP Dick Cheney
WASHINGTON – Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s Secret Service protection has been extended for at least another six months, beginning Tuesday.
Normally, ex-veeps only get six months of protection at taxpayer expense. But Cheney asked for an extension, and President Obama – whom Cheney has excoriated in several interviews since leaving office – recently signed off.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano signed the order extending Cheney’s security detail, her spokeswoman Sara Kuban confirmed Monday.
via President Barack Obama authorizes extended Secret Service guard for former VP Dick Cheney.
The Department of Justice, Corporations, Buying the Law – Part II: Strange Bargains
The Department of Justice, Corporations, Buying the Law – Part II: Strange Bargains
Bush US Attorney arranged lenient plea deal with company paying terrorists; Lawyer who helped secure plea deal? Obama’s future Attorney General
When the US Justice Department announced in March 2007 that Chiquita Brands had pleaded guilty to “one count of engaging in transactions with a specially-designated global terrorist” and would be paying a $25 million fine, observers were astonished at the lightness of the sentence.
Between 1997 and February of 2004, Chiquita made $1.7 million in payments to a right-wing paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), in regions where it had banana-growing operations. During that period, AUC conducted a “dirty war” against Colombia’s left-wing FARC guerrillas, marked by widespread murders of union leaders and farmers, as well as trafficking in cocaine and heroin
via Raw Story » The Department of Justice, Corporations, Buying the Law – Part II: Strange Bargains.
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Republicans Don't Care about Voter Fraud....owa Republicans are trying to dismiss claims that the vote count in Tuesday's Iowa Caucus was wrong. An Iowa voter told a local TV station yesterday that he noticed a 20-vote discrepancy in the count - and that Rick Santorum was the real winner of the Caucuses. Republican Party officials, though, are sticking to their first count - showing Mitt Romney as the winner by 8-votes - and there will be no recount.The Republican Party has launched a war on voters around the nation this year with strict new laws that will disenfranchise over 5 million Americans. They claim these laws are necessary to combat so-called voter fraud. Yet in Iowa - where there are no such laws - and where a very, very close and questionable election was just held - Republicans don't seem to care at all about getting it right.Clearly - the war on voters isn't about making sure the people's voices are represented accurately - it's about making sure poor people, young people, and minorities who tend to vote for Democrats - can't vote at all.-Thom(Who do you think won? Tell us here.) -
LEGALIZE Democracy
" We the corporations" On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. __________
MOVE to AMEND
a project of the CAMPAIGN TO LEGALIZE Democracy
Help end Corporate personhood
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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. 
