Archive for August, 2009
Accused of lying about health care, Fox host … lies about health care
Accused of lying about health care, Fox host … lies about health care - Raw Story »
Fox News host Brian Kilmeade bolstered on Monday Sarah Palin’s claim that health care reform would establish “death panels” to determine who deserves care and who deserves euthanasia.
Kilmeade’s assertion came during a discussion about an op-ed article written for USA Today by House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi and House Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD).
In that piece, Pelosi and Hoyer wrote:
It is now evident that an ugly campaign is underway not merely to misrepresent the health insurance reform legislation, but to disrupt public meetings and prevent members of Congress and constituents from conducting a civil dialogue.
These tactics have included hanging in effigy one Democratic member of Congress in Maryland and protesters holding a sign displaying a tombstone with the name of another congressman in Texas, where protesters also shouted “Just say no!” drowning out those who wanted to hold a substantive discussion.
These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American.
via Raw Story » Accused of lying about health care, Fox host … lies about health care.
White House fires back at health care ‘fictions’
White House fires back at health care ‘fictions’ – Raw Story »
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama fought back Monday against “scare tactics” aimed at derailing his drive to remake US health care, unleashing a battle-tested strategy adapted from his 2008 White House run.
Obama unveiled a new Internet site, www.whitehouse.gov/RealityCheck, inspired by his campaign’s fightthesmears.com site, which countered rumors like the debunked but persistent claim that he was not born in the United States.
The move came as his Democratic allies alleged an orchestrated campaign of disinformation, including plots to disrupt lawmakers’ “town hall” discussions on health care at home during the Congress’s month-long August break.
via Raw Story » White House fires back at health care ‘fictions’.
Pinkerton accuses ‘MSNBC and the liberal media’ of committing ‘the real terrorism.’
Pinkerton accuses ‘MSNBC and the liberal media’ of committing ‘the real terrorism.’ - Think Progress »
On Fox News Watch this weekend, the right-leaning panel discussed the media’s coverage of the tumult over health care at congressional town halls. “You have some legitimate outrage, some people who want answers and some people who have been sent by the Dick Armeys and the Rick Scotts of the world,” said Manhattan Institute fellow Judy Miller. New America Foundation’s Jim Pinkerton complained that rowdy protesters have been called “political terrorists” by the Washington Post’s Stephen Pearlstein. He then accused “MSNBC and the liberal media” of committing “the real terrorism”:
LOWRY: There is scare tactics on both sides.
HALL: If someone hanged an effigy and — and a congressmen having to be escorted to his car, that is not civil discourse.
PINKERTON: Here’s scare tactics. Scare tactics is Rachel Maddow taking the first ten minutes of every show this week to denounce them and call them names and talk about Astroturf. By contrast, Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat from Missouri, said in her Twitter account, listen, I think this is just real people. That’s the choice. The real terrorism going on is MSNBC and the liberal media.
HALL: Oh, that is so upside down.
Watch it:
via Think Progress » Pinkerton accuses ‘MSNBC and the liberal media’ of committing ‘the real terrorism.’.
Right Wing’s Anti-Health Care Icon Is Uninsured, Seeking Donations To Pay For Care
OPS: Karma
Right Wing’s Anti-Health Care Icon Is Uninsured, Seeking Donations To Pay For Care - Think Progress »
Last week, during a scuffle between health care town hall protesters and SEIU members at a town hall hosted by Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-MO), anti-health care reform protester Kenneth Gladney was injured and required hospitalization:
Among the injured was Kenneth Gladney, 38, of St. Louis. He said he was with the Tea Party, handing out yellow flags with “Don’t tread on me” printed on them, when he was assaulted. He said he sought hospital treatment for injuries to his knee, back, elbow, shoulder and face.
“I was attacked for something I believe in,” he said.
Since then, conservatives have been using Gladney’s case as a cause célèbre to claim that “union thugs” are being used to silence dissent at health care town halls and have turned him into a hero of their movement.
via Think Progress » Right Wing’s Anti-Health Care Icon Is Uninsured, Seeking Donations To Pay For Care.
Single-Payer & Interlocking Directorates
OPS: Interlocking boards are the enemies of Democracy. They are a control mechanism of the Ruling Class
Single-Payer & Interlocking Directorates
The corporate ties between insurers and media companies
How often are employees allowed to work on projects that might put some of the people they work for out of business? That’s the conflict of interest that journalists reporting on the healthcare reform debate are often put in by the boards of media corporations they work for, which frequently include representatives of the insurance industry.
While a recent New York Times/CBS poll (6/20/09) has found yet again that the majority of Americans believe the government would both provide better coverage and keep costs lower than private insurance companies, a single-payer plan as an option for healthcare reform continues to be underrepresented in the media (Extra!, 6/09). A single-payer plan would allow the delivery of healthcare to remain private, but the government would pay for it out of a single federal health insurance fund. Like Medicare or Canada’s healthcare program, it would cut out the middleman by bypassing private health insurance companies. But such companies are well-represented on the boards of directors of media conglomerates—a factor that may help explain the blackout of such a popular possibility for reform.
When a director from one company sits on the board of directors of another company, that’s known as an interlocking directorate. For example, directors of the New York Times Co. also sit on the boards of several other large companies, including Chevron, Verizon and Ticketmaster. These directors are expected to act in the best interest of each company they direct; when one of the corporations in question is a media company, this can pose a conflict. Would someone who sits on a media company’s board object to coverage that damages another company that board member directs? Extra! has pointed out this conflict in the past (e.g., 9–10/01), noting that “even if these board members do not attempt to influence coverage of their businesses, their presence likely suffices to make media executives think twice about covering certain stories.”
via Single-Payer & Interlocking Directorates.
Why We Should All Boycott Union Busting Beer Corporations
Why We Should All Boycott Union Busting Beer Corporations
When Obama sat down for a beer in the White House Rose Garden with Professor Gates and Sergeant Crowley, they all turned their backs on the smaller, craft brewers of the country. Obama chose Bud Light, Gates asked for Red Stripe, and Crowley drank Blue Moon.
One of the major craft brewers based where I live in Vermont is Magic Hat, a brewery with a delicious array of brews. That brewery issued a press release following the “Beer Summit” explaining, “Craft Brewers the country over are chagrined by the President’s choice to consume a beer owned by a company based outside of America’s borders. Bud Light, owned by Belgium-based AB InBev, and Blue Moon, owned by London-based SAB MillerCoors, together control 94% of the beer market in the United States. However, the United States boasts over 1,500 craft brewers, the majority being made up of small Main Street Businesses that employ less than 50 people.”
This encounter at the Rose Garden provides a perfect time to reflect on why we should all boycott the beer monopolies of the world.
via Toward Freedom – Why We Should All Boycott Union Busting Beer Corporations.
Why Dems Should Fight Right-Wing Mob Tactics
Time Running Out for Health Care | | Newsweek.com
Why the Democrats need to fight back against right-wing mob tactics. And why they need to do it quickly.
When Republican rallies began to get out of hand during the presidential race last year, responsible voices spoke up, including John McCain, whose running mate was egging on the fringe right. The grievances then centered on Barack Obama “palling around with terrorists” and wanting to tax poor Joe the Plumber. Now the conservative faithful are claiming that our president will heartlessly euthanize your grandmother, tax you up the kazoo, and take away your choice of doctor. And this time there are no responsible Republican voices calling for a halt to the mob tactics disrupting Democratic town meetings around the country.
There’s plenty of evidence that the seemingly spontaneous eruptions are orchestrated by conservative interest groups in Washington, in the same way that the antitax tea parties were made to seem like a grassroots uprising earlier this year. The public relations and lobbying firms that specialize in generating the kind of public outcry we’re seeing have a name for it; they call it AstroTurf. And it works, attracting media coverage disproportionate to the minority of a minority it represents and fooling Americans into thinking there’s a full-scale revolt underway.
The right sees an opportunity during the August recess to take a hammer and really pound home their message. All manner of poison could be unleashed with media loudmouths like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh encouraging race and class resentment. The few traditional Republicans left who want to build a more diverse party stay silent because the fanatically passionate are the GOP’s foot soldiers; without them, the party would lose its base.
via Why Dems Should Fight Right-Wing Mob Tactics | Newsweek Voices – Eleanor Clift | Newsweek.com.
Within health care hides massive, avoidable death toll | Dead by mistake
Within health care hides massive, avoidable death toll
Richard Flagg drowned in his own blood.
Stanley Stinnett choked on his own vomit.
Both were victims of the leading cause of accidental death in America — mistakes made in medical care.
Experts estimate that a staggering 98,000 people die from preventable medical errors each year. More Americans die each month of preventable medical injuries than died in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
In addition, a federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study concluded that 99,000 patients a year succumb to hospital-acquired infections. Almost all of those deaths, experts say, also are preventable.
These numbers are not absolutes. There is no definitive study — which is part of the problem — but all of the available research indicates that the death toll from preventable medical injuries approaches 200,000 per year in the United States.
via Within health care hides massive, avoidable death toll | Dead by mistake.
And You Thought a Prescription Was Private
And You Thought a Prescription Was Private - - NYTimes.com
MORE than 10 years after she tried without success to have a baby, Marcy Campbell Krinsk is still receiving painful reminders in her mail. The ads and promotions started after she bought fertility drugs at a pharmacy in San Diego.
Marketers got hold of her name, and she found coupons and samples in her mail that shadowed the growth of an imaginary child — at first, for Pampers and baby formula, then for discounts on family photos, and all the way through the years to gifts suitable for an elementary school graduate.
“I had three different in vitro procedures,” said Ms. Krinsk, now 55, a former telecommunications executive who lives with her husband in San Diego. “To just go to the mailbox and get that stuff, time after time after time, it was just awful.”
via And You Thought a Prescription Was Private – NYTimes.com.
Don’t Talk To Me About Death Panels
Don’t Talk To Me About Death Panels
Don’t talk to me about death panels, Sarah Palin.
You, who so carelessly bolstered a lie about healthcare reform to score a cheap political point; you, the most craven of political opportunists, who fearmongers about some dystopian socialist/fascist fantasyland; you, who earlier this year were only too happy to accept free medical, dental and veterinary care from the U.S. military for Alaska’s remote villages; you, dear lady, are an idiot.
In your free market wonderland everyone somehow manages to get healthcare, even those who are poor or live in isolated areas, though the poor and isolated in your own state required assistance from the federal government.
And despite all of this, you appear blithely unaware that the free market healthcare system we have now does, indeed, have “death panels.” I’ve been part of a death panel conversation. I know about death panels.
You have no idea what it’s like to be called into a sterile conference room with a hospital administrator you’ve never met before and be told that your mother’s insurance policy will only pay for 30 days in ICU.
via Southern Beale: Don’t Talk To Me About Death Panels.
Call It An Obama Depression / Despite Wall Street Celebration
Call It An Obama Depression / Despite Wall Street Celebration – OpEdNews -
President Obama inherited a Bush recession but instead of initiating needed banking reforms ~ Obama chose a top down Wall Street bailout which accelerated Main Street’s agony to the extent that it is now an Obama Depression: 
Allen L Roland Obama’s top down banking rescue has temporarily bailed out Wall Street and left Main Street still in ruins ~ setting the stage for a major Depression. As N.Y. Attorney General Cuomo’s recent report shamefully notes: “Two firms, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch suffered massive loses of more than $27 billion at each firm. Nevertheless, Citigroup paid out $5.33 billion, in bonuses, and Merrill paid $3.6 billion in bonuses. Together, they lost $54 billion, paid out nearly $9 billion in bonuses and then received TARP bailouts totaling $55 billion. For three other firms ~ Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and J.P. Morgan Chase ~ 2008 bonus payments were substantially greater than the banks’ net income.”
Make no mistake about this ~ Government tax revenue is now the worst since the great Depression, the federal deficit has ballooned to a record $1.8 trillion, unemployment continues to skyrocket and we are obviously in a major Depression. The sooner Obama stops wishful thinking and faces this reality ~ the better.
via OpEdNews – Call It An Obama Depression / Despite Wall Street Celebration.
Nader Was Right: Liberals are Going Nowhere With Obama
Nader Was Right: Liberals are Going Nowhere With Obama – Truthdig –
Chris Hedges 
The American empire has not altered under Barack Obama. It kills as brutally and indiscriminately in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan as it did under George W. Bush. It steals from the U.S. treasury to enrich the corporate elite as rapaciously. It will not give us universal health care, abolish the Bush secrecy laws, end torture or “extraordinary rendition,” restore habeas corpus or halt the warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of citizens. It will not push through significant environmental reform, regulate Wall Street or end our relationship with private contractors that provide mercenary armies to fight our imperial wars and produce useless and costly weapons systems.
The sad reality is that all the well-meaning groups and individuals who challenge our permanent war economy and the doctrine of pre-emptive war, who care about sustainable energy, fight for civil liberties and want corporate malfeasance to end, were once again suckered by the Democratic Party. They were had. It is not a new story. The Democrats have been doing this to us since Bill Clinton. It is the same old merry-go-round, only with Obama branding. And if we have not learned by now that the system is broken, that as citizens we do not matter to our political elite, that we live in a corporate state where our welfare and our interests are irrelevant, we are in serious trouble. Our last hope is to step outside of the two-party system and build movements that defy the Democrats and the Republicans. If we fail to do this we will continue to undergo a corporate coup d’etat in slow motion that will end in feudalism.
via Truthdig – Reports – Nader Was Right: Liberals are Going Nowhere With Obama.
Stop Complaining About Right-Wing Protests! The Left Should Be (Re)Learning How It’s Done
Stop Complaining About Right-Wing Protests! The Left Should Be (Re)Learning How It’s Done – | CommonDreams.org
by Dave Lindorff
OMG! Those protesters showing up at Democratic “town meetings” to promote the president’s health care “reform” program are being bused in from out of town?
Scandal! Que horrible! (Gasp!)
But wait! That’s exactly what we on the left always did when we held demonstrations–at least if we could. Who in the trade union movement hasn’t called on fellow workers in other unions to join them in rallies during struggles with an employer, or asked them to join sparse picket-lines? Who hasn’t pulled out the stops trying to get people from other cities to attend a local protest?
U.S. recession seen ending in Q3
OPS: propaganda aimed at idiots. None of the basic reasons we are in this mess have been addressed yet. For one; we won’t get out of this until we are Manufacturing something besides weapons that the rest of the world wants to buy.
U.S. recession seen ending in Q3 – | | Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The worst U.S. recession since the Great Depression will probably end in the third quarter, but there is uncertainty over the speed and duration of the economic recovery, according to the most recent survey of private economists.
The Blue Chip Economic Indicators survey of private economists released on Monday showed about 90 percent of the respondents believed the economic downturn would be declared to have ended this quarter.
This upbeat assessment followed recent government data showing gross domestic product (GDP) contracted at a shallow 1.0 percent rate in the second quarter after sinking 6.4 percent in the January-March quarter.
via U.S. recession seen ending in Q3 | U.S. | Reuters.
Two Key Details Emerge about Mob at Now Notorious Lloyd Doggett Town Hall
Two Key Details Emerge about Mob at Now Notorious Lloyd Doggett Town Hall - Firedoglake »
Lloyd Doggett’s town hall on health care in Austin last week was one of the first such events that got national attention because of the outrageously thuggish tactics employed by the Teabagger mob. At the time, the media coverage suggested this was a spontaneous protest.
We now know that isn’t true.
A Gazette reporter was there to witness an unruly hollering mob of people disrupt the meeting and personally insult Congressman Doggett. Conservative cable news and talk radio stations around the country hailed the event as a spontaneous outbreak of opposition to proposed healthcare reform. But it was later discovered that the Travis County Republican Party Chair had led an organizing effort to disrupt the event…
These people were Republican ringers, period. Keep in mind that Travis County went for Obama. This is hardly a right-wing stronghold.
There’s a lot of good reporting in this article — but this exchange is really important.
Congressman Doggett stressed that opponents of healthcare reform are also the opponents of Social Security and Medicare, which he said have worked “very successfully.”
He added: “Near the beginning of the session…because they were holding up all these Tenth Amendment signs, I was saying, ‘Well, if that’s your attitude about health care, then I suppose you don’t really support Social Security and Medicare,’” Doggett said. “And they said, ‘Yes, we don’t. We don’t think they’re good.’”
via Firedoglake » Two Key Details Emerge about Mob at Now Notorious Lloyd Doggett Town Hall.
Death Panels Already Exist, They are Called Corporate Health Insurance Bureaucrats
Death Panels Already Exist, They are Called Corporate Health Insurance Bureaucrats
….”never once did I have a Medicare bureaucrat tell me what I couldn’t do for a patient, but all the time we have bureaucrats from the insurance companies calling up and saying we’re not going to cover this, we’re not going to pay for that, we’re denying coverage for that. The system we have now is broken. We need to fix it.” Dr. Howard Dean, former Democratic Presidential Candidate and former DNC Chairman
The most intrusive system to life-saving medical care is already occurring. Doctors daily have to contend with the regulation on their medical practice by the Health Insurance Industry that decides what treatment is acceptable for payment. So while former Republican VP candidate Sarah has called President Obama’s health plan “evil” because it may lead to “death panels” that decide who gets to live and die. Unfortunately, we already have these death panels and they are insurance company executives that decide who will get to live and die based upon what they will pay for.
via OpEdNews – Death Panels Already Exist, They are Called Corporate Health Insurance Bureaucrats.
Immune System Cancer Found In Young 9/11 Officers
Immune System Cancer Found In Young 9/11 Officers
Researchers say a small number of young law enforcement officers who participated in the World Trade Center rescue and cleanup operation have developed an immune system cancer.
The numbers are tiny, and experts don’t know whether there is any link between the illnesses and toxins released during the disaster.
But doctors who coordinated the study, published Monday in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, said people who worked at the site should continue to have their health monitored.
“What we are trying to get out there is: Be alert,” said Dr. Jacqueline M. Moline, director of the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
The researchers looked at 28,252 emergency responders who spent time amid ground zero dust and found eight cases of multiple myeloma.
via Immune System Cancer Found In Young 9/11 Officers.
What’s Missing From The Health Care Debate: Prevention
What’s Missing From The Health Care Debate
The nationwide debate over health care reform touches on many issues, from affordability to access. But one crucial element has been largely missing from the discussion: prevention. That is, how to help Americans stay or become healthy.
Dr. Dean Ornish and Dr. Andrew Weil both provide their perspectives on the need to take an in-depth look at the type of health care system that we really want in this country and at how our individual lifestyle choices impact our health.
Dr. Ornish, who was just named the medical editor of the Huffington Post, argues in “Resuscitating Health Care Reform” that health reform is in danger of failing because the focus is too much on who is covered rather than what is covered:
via What’s Missing From The Health Care Debate.
Tesla Says It Is Now Profitable, Ships 109 Roadsters In July
Tesla Says It Is Now Profitable, Ships 109 Roadsters In July
Silicon Valley’s electric car company, Tesla Motors, says that it hit profitability in July. The private company reports that it made “approximately $1 million of earnings” on revenues of $20 million, and that it shipped 109 Roadsters, its $109,000 all-electric sports car. The revenues reflect GAAP accounting standards and are only for the month of July.
Founder and CEO Elon Musk predicted in June that the company would soon hit profitability at the end of a lengthy blog post dealing primarily with a lawsuit brought on by Tesla’s ousted co-founder Martin Eberhard. In June, Tesla was also awarded a $465 million loan from the Department of Energy, which will help it manufacture its more reasonably priced Modern S sedan.
The $20 million in revenues and $1 million in profits do not reflect any proceeds from that loan, the company tells us.
via Tesla Says It Is Now Profitable, Ships 109 Roadsters In July.
GM to launch car sales through eBay
OPS: Say good bye to Dealerships? Will they become independant delivery depots and service centers?
GM to launch car sales through eBay | - The Detroit News
Test in Calif. will let buyers haggle over price for new vehicles
San Francisco — General Motors and eBay Inc. are expected to announce today that hundreds of the automaker’s California dealers will let consumers haggle over the prices of new cars and trucks through the online marketplace, as part of a previously disclosed trial.
About 225 of California’s 250 GM dealers are set to take part in the program, which will begin Tuesday. They will be selling Buick, Chevrolet, GMC and Pontiac vehicles on co-branded Web sites through eBay’s online auto marketplace, eBay Motors, until Sept. 8. The cars will also be searchable through eBay Motors and eBay’s main site.
The trial is part of GM’s turnaround plan, making more official a practice some of its dealers had already participated in on their own. It expands an existing partnership covering GM certified used vehicles sold through eBay.
via GM to launch car sales through eBay | detnews.com | The Detroit News.
9/11 Rescue Workers’ Cancer Link Probed
Small Number of Young Law Officers From World Trade Center Aftermath Develop Immune System Cancer - – CBS News 
Researchers say a small number of young law enforcement officers who participated in the World Trade Center rescue and cleanup operation have developed an immune system cancer.
The numbers are tiny, and experts don’t know whether there is any link between the illnesses and toxins released during the disaster.
But doctors who coordinated the study, published Monday in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, said people who worked at the site should continue to have their health monitored.
“What we are trying to get out there is: Be alert,” said Dr. Jacqueline M. Moline, director of the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
via 9/11 Rescue Workers’ Cancer Link Probed – CBS News.
US losing in Afghanistan, top general admits
US losing in Afghanistan, top general admits - Raw Story »
About that country where the Sept. 11 attackers were actually given safe harbor: We’re losing.
The top American commander in Afghanistan declared that the Taliban are winning in Afghanistan in a startling interview published Monday — a striking contrast to the “Mission Accomplished” rhetoric of the Bush Administration as regards Iraq.
His remarks appear carefully tailored to lower expectations and shift public opinion in support of operations in the war-torn country where few foreign powers have ever seen victory. The Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, when they were routed by a US invasion.
Currently, US operations in Afghanistan cost taxpayers about $4 billion a month. That comes to roughly $133 million per day, or $5.5 million per hour.
via Raw Story » US losing in Afghanistan, top general admits.
Vast expanses of Arctic melting fast – 86 degrees
Vast expanses of Arctic ice melt in summer heat – The Raw Story »
In late July the mercury soared to almost 86 degrees – in the ARCTIC
Vast expanses of Arctic sea ice melt in northern summer; `the kids were swimming in the ocean’
The Arctic Ocean has given up tens of thousands more square miles (square kilometers) of ice on Sunday in a relentless summer of melt, with scientists watching through satellite eyes for a possible record low polar ice cap.
From the barren Arctic shore of this village in Canada’s far northwest, 1,500 miles (2,414 kilometers) north of Seattle, veteran observer Eddie Gruben has seen the summer ice retreating more each decade as the world has warmed. By this weekend the ice edge lay some 80 miles (128 kilometers) at sea.
“Forty years ago, it was 40 miles (64 kilometers) out,” said Gruben, 89, patriarch of a local contracting business.
via The Raw Story » Vast expanses of Arctic melting fast.
DeMint: Town hall disruptions are ‘unacceptable.’
DeMint: Town hall disruptions are ‘unacceptable.’ – Think Progress »
This past week, town halls held by members of Congress across the country were disrupted by “increasingly ugly scenes of partisan screaming matches, scuffles, threats and even arrests,” many of which were part of an orchestrated conservative strategy. The town hall tumult has been encouraged by some prominent Republicans like House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH). But in an interview with a McClatchy reporter, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) said the disruptions were “unacceptable“:
via Think Progress » DeMint: Town hall disruptions are ‘unacceptable.’.
Gov. Dean Debunks Gingrich’s Health Care Falsehoods: ‘Nobody Is Forcing You In To The Public Option’
Gov. Dean Debunks Gingrich’s Health Care Falsehoods: ‘Nobody Is Forcing You In To The Public Option’ – Think Progress »
On ABC’s This Week today, former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich claimed that most government-run health systems are disasters. He said that the Veterans Health Administration is “the one system that actually works reasonably well,” and dismissed Medicare as “basically a private system with a government funding.”
Gingrich also claimed that Americans really won’t have any “choice.” “One estimate by Lewin Associates [sic] is 131 million Americans will lose their private insurance and be pushed into a government plan,” he claimed.
DEAN: Look, let’s be fair. Lewin Associates is owned by a health insurance company. So let’s — let’s — let’s — the CBO, which I think is a more reasonable organization, says 5 million or 10 million people are going to end up there. [...]
Second of all, what the speaker didn’t tell you is, let’s just suppose you get forced out of your employer-based system, which I think is unlikely, but let’s suppose that you do. You’ve got a choice. The government will pay your subsidy to either go into — based on your income, either to go into the public option or a private option. Nobody is forcing you in to the public option.
Watch it:
GOP Rep. Kingston Separates Himself From Palin: There Are ‘No Death Panels’
GOP Rep. Kingston Separates Himself From Palin: There Are ‘No Death Panels’ – Think Progress »
In recent weeks, conservatives have been attacking a small provision in the House-proposed health care legislation that would allow Medicare to cover advanced care consulting. The Republican National Committee sent out a research document claiming the House legislation is encouraging euthanasia. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) said it was placing “seniors in a position of being put to death by their government.” Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin picked up this meme on Friday and took it further in a statement she posted on her Facebook page:
The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.
These claims are complete lies. The House bill would simply give seniors the option of speaking with an expert about advanced care issues, such as living wills. As FactCheck.org explains, “[I]t requires Medicare to cover counseling sessions for seniors who want to consider their end-of-life choices — including whether they want to refuse or, conversely, require certain types of care.”
via Think Progress » GOP Rep. Kingston Separates Himself From Palin: There Are ‘No Death Panels’.
FreedomWorks advocates people being ‘aggressive’ at town hall meetings.
OPS: Clearly a Crime against Democracy and the Democratic process. Is another word for this? Treason?
FreedomWorks advocates people being ‘aggressive’ at town hall meetings. – Think Progress »
This morning on MSNBC, The Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky and FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe discussed the astroturf campaign many right-wing groups (including FreedomWorks) are engaged in to disrupt health care town hall meetings across the country with members of Congress. Igor noted that these groups are “very good at tapping into that paranoid place in American politics that we saw at the end of the 2008 election when people were coming to McCain’s town halls and calling President Obama a terrorist, a socialist.” When pressed by host Alex Witt if his organization is encouraging people to be disruptive, Kibbe at first dodged the question, but said that “shouting is not the way to get this done.” He then, however, admitted that FreedomWorks urges people to be “agressive”:
HOST: So you are not encouraging, do you want to tell me definitively, you have not encouraged your members in FreedomWorks to show up at these town hall meetings and be disruptive? [...]
KIBBE: Shouting is not the way to get this done. The right thing to do is to be aggressive, get to the microphone, express your opinion, but let the congressman talk as well. That’s always been our position.
Watch it:
via Think Progress » FreedomWorks advocates people being ‘aggressive’ at town hall meetings..
At Town Hall Meeting With Pre-Screened Questions, Vitter Mocks Democratic Concerns Over Protesters
At Town Hall Meeting With Pre-Screened Questions, Vitter Mocks Democratic Concerns Over Protesters – Think Progress »
Yesterday, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) held a town hall meeting in Pineville, LA, attended by nearly 1,500 people. The discussion mostly focused around health care reform, and Vitter said that he is “totally and unalterably opposed” to the proposals being put forth in Congress.
At one point, however, an attendee asked Vitter about the confrontations at Democratic town hall meetings around the country. Vitter seemed to mock his colleagues, saying that although he had been advised to have “security” for his town hall meetings, he “told them the best security is to do what the people want you to do.” He added that “the angry mob is always welcome at my events.” Watch it:
Effort to Rein In Pay on Wall Street Hits New Hurdle
Effort to Rein In Pay on Wall Street Hits New Hurdle - – NYTimes.com
A guaranteed bonus might strike many people as a contradiction in terms. But on Wall Street, banks have become so eager to lure and keep top deal makers and traders that they are reviving the practice of offering ironclad, multimillion-dollar payouts — guaranteed, no matter how an employee performs.
The resurrection of the guaranteed bonus is sure to become a hot-button issue for the Obama administration’s pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg, who is preparing this week to review how compensation should be structured at seven companies that received two or more federal bailouts.
The companies must each submit 2009 compensation plans for their top 25 earners by Thursday, and Mr. Feinberg has 60 days to rule on them. He has the authority to single out any of those employees and adjust their pay packages.
via Effort to Rein In Pay on Wall Street Hits New Hurdle – NYTimes.com.
The Expiring Economy
The Expiring Economy - Economyincrisis.org -
America’s wars are contrived affairs to serve the money-laundering machine: from the taxpayers and money borrowed from foreign creditors to the armaments industry to the political contributions that ensure $636 billion “defense” bills.
Paul Craig Roberts, with video by Craig Harrington
Tent cities springing up all over America are filling with the homeless unemployed from the worst economy since the 1930s. While Americans live in tents, the Obama government has embarked on a $1 billion crash program to build a mega-embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, to rival the one the Bush government built in Baghdad.
Hard times have now afflicted Americans for so long that even the extension of unemployment benefits from 6-18 months for 24 high-unemployment states, and to 46-72 weeks in other states, is beginning to run out. By Christmas, 1.5 million Americans will have exhausted unemployment benefits while unemployment rolls continue to rise.
Amidst this worsening economic crisis, the House of Representatives just passed a $636 billion “defense” bill.
Who is the United States defending against? Americans have no enemies except those that the U.S. government goes out of its way to create by bombing and invading countries that comprise no threat whatsoever to the U.S. and by encircling others — Russia for example — with threatening military bases.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
The Me-First, Screw-Everyone-Else Crowd
The Me-First, Screw-Everyone-Else Crowd - Creators.com
Finally, there’s no pretense. The ugliest traits of this despicable movement are there for all to behold.
David Sirota
I know I should be mortified by the lobbyist-organized mobs of angry Brooks Brothers mannequins who are now making headlines by shutting down congressional town hall meetings. I know I should be despondent during this, the Khaki Pants Offensive in the Great American Health Care and Tax War. And yet, I’m euphorically repeating one word over and over again with a big grin on my face.
Finally.
Finally, there’s no pretense. Finally, the Me-First, Screw-Everyone-Else Crowd’s ugliest traits are there for all to behold.
The group’s core gripe is summarized in a letter I received that denounces a proposed surtax on the wealthy and corporations to pay for universal health care:
“Until recently, my family was in the top 3 percent of wage earners,” the affluent businessperson fumed in response to my July column on taxes. “We are in the group that pays close to 60 percent of this nation’s taxes … Think for a second how you would feel if you built a business and contributed more than your share to this country only to be treated like a pariah.”
via The Me-First, Screw-Everyone-Else Crowd by David Sirota on Creators.com – A Syndicate Of Talent.
The Economic Fallout Has Decimated the Black Middle Class
The Economic Fallout Has Decimated the Black Middle Class
40 percent of African Americans will have experienced unemployment or underemployment by 2010 and child poverty will increase to slightly over half.
To judge from most of the commentary on the Gates-Crowley affair, you would think that a “black elite” has gotten dangerously out of hand. First Gates (Cambridge, Yale, Harvard) showed insufficient deference to Crowley, then Obama (Occidental, Harvard) piled on to accuse the police of having acted “stupidly.” Was this “the end of white America” which the Atlantic had warned of in its January/February cover story? Or had the injuries of class — working class in Crowley’s case — finally trumped the grievances of race?
Left out of the ensuing tangle of commentary on race and class has been the increasing impoverishment — or, we should say, re-impoverishment — of African Americans as a group. In fact, the most salient and lasting effect of the current recession may turn out to be the decimation of the black middle class. According to a study by Demos and the Institute for Assets and Social Policy, 33 percent of the black middle class was already in danger of falling out of the middle class at the start of the recession. Gates and Obama, along with Oprah and Cosby, will no doubt remain in place, but millions of the black equivalents of Officer Crowley — from factory workers to bank tellers and white collar managers — are sliding down toward destitution.
For African Americans — and to a large extent, Latinos — the recession is over. It occurred between 2000 and 2007, as black employment decreased by 2.4 percent and incomes declined by 2.9 percent. During the seven-year long black recession, one third of black children lived in poverty and black unemployment — even among college graduates — consistently ran at about twice the level of white unemployment. That was the black recession. What’s happening now is a depression.
“When in Doubt, Add Bacon and Cheese”: How the Food Industry Hijacked Our Brains and Made Us Fat
“When in Doubt, Add Bacon and Cheese”: How the Food Industry Hijacked Our Brains and Made Us Fat
By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
The food industry has changed American eating habits and helped create the country’s No. 1 public-health issue.
Anjali Kamat: While the House of Representatives hopes to hold a vote on health care reform this September, the Senate is considering a bill that concentrates on preventing people from getting sick. The draft legislation would provide up to $10 billion a year for a prevention-and-public-health-investment fund that would include a focus on curbing obesity.
Some Senate Republicans have opposed the bill as wasteful spending, but a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that the direct medical costs of obesity total about $147 billion a year. That amounts to 9 percent of all U.S. medical costs. It’s also over $50 billion more than the annual spending on cancer.
CDC Director Thomas Frieden noted that, “Obesity, and with it diabetes, are the only major health problems that are getting worse in this country.”
Speaking at the country’s first obesity conference last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said: “If there was an epidemic of little kids getting cancer, it would be a national crisis. But because it’s obesity and the damage doesn’t come until later in life, we’ve been slow to act.”
Amy Goodman: In the midst of this national focus on obesity, today we’ll speak with a man who’s spent the last seven years trying to understand how the food industry has changed American eating habits, made certain foods difficult to resist, helped create the country’s No. 1 public-health issue.
The Epidemic of Pot Arrests in New York City
The Epidemic of Pot Arrests in New York City - AlterNet
Marijuana possession is decriminalized in New York State. Nonetheless, New York City makes more pot arrests than any city in the world.
There are two things that need to be understood about marijuana arrests in New York City.
First, possession of less than an ounce of marijuana is not a crime in New York State. Since 1977 and passage of the Marijuana Reform Act, state law has made simple possession of less than seventh-eights of an ounce of pot a violation, like a traffic violation. One can be given a ticket and fined $100 for marijuana possession, but not fingerprinted and jailed. For over thirty years, New York State has formally, legally, decriminalized possession of marijuana.
Second, despite that law, since 1997 the New York City Police Department has arrested 430,000 people for possessing small amounts of marijuana, mostly teenagers and young people in their twenties. Most people arrested were not smoking pot. Usually they just carried a bit of it in a pocket. In 2008 alone, the NYPD arrested and jailed 40,300 people for possessing a small amount of marijuana. These extraordinary numbers of arrests and jailings, continuing for over twelve years, now make New York City the marijuana arrest capital of the world.
via The Epidemic of Pot Arrests in New York City | DrugReporter | AlterNet.
Whatever Happened to Progressive Talk Radio? Did Air America Kiss it Good Bye?
Whatever Happened to Progressive Talk Radio? Did Air America Kiss it Good Bye?
When Air America announced that Montel Williams would be the second émigré from the television talk show circuit to appear in the prime nine a.m. to noon slot originally occupied by Unfiltered (hosted by Rachel Maddow, Chuck D and Lizz Winstead) many across the blogosphere shared the sentiment of itsrobert, who wrote on DemocraticUnderground.com: “Montel Williams? Air America just keeps getting worse.”
In June, the network had Montel Across America broadcasting live at America’s Future Now, the largest annual conference of progressive activists and leaders in the country.
From his table in “radio row,” located next to Thom Hartmann’s — who was named Top Progressive Talker this year by Talkers Magazine — the newest member of the Air America family had an interesting perspective on his foray into progressive radio:
Inside Story on Town Hall Riots: Right-Wing Shock Troops Do Corporate America’s Dirty Work
Inside Story on Town Hall Riots: Right-Wing Shock Troops Do Corporate America’s Dirty Work - | | AlterNet
How the health-care industry, the GOP and one media mogul made common cause with the anti-government fringe.
Since the days in the late 1970s, when the New Right began its takeover of the Republican Party, it has cultivated a militia of white people armed with a grudge against those who brought forth the social changes of the ’60s.
These malcontents have been promised their day of retribution, a day for which they are more than ready. Few seem to understand that they are merely dupes for a corporate agenda that will only worsen the conditions in which they live.
Why, you may ask, would men of power and fame shake the rough, unmanicured hands of gun enthusiasts, conspiracy theorists, gay-haters, misogynists and racists?
Hate-Mongering Right Wing Provocateurs and their Dangerous Victims/Victimizers (Rachel, et al., re the “Dog Whistle Calls for Violence”)
Hate-Mongering Right Wing Provocateurs and their Dangerous Victims/Victimizers (Rachel, et al., re the “Dog Whistle Calls for Violence”)
Rachel Maddow’s first question on her Friday msnbc show to Crazy for God author Frank Schaeffer:
Do you think that calling the President a Nazi — calling the President Hitler — is an implicit call for politically motivated violence?
Frank Schaeffer:
These people can be energized to go out and do really dreadful things.
[snip]
The Glen Becks of this world literally are responsible for unleashing what I regard as an anti-democratic, anti-American movement in this country that is trying to shut down legitimate debate and replace it with straight out intimidation.
This interview is worthy of a serious listen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzvmhNtmUks&feature=player_embedded
Some further provocative thoughts and observations on the continuing and escalating violence of the far right fringe:
http://www.womenspress-slo.org/?p=803
Women’s Press:
The point is, the culture we now live in has deteriorated to such an extent that the majority who do not believe in vigilantism, who do not believe in physically striking out at others who disagree with them on an issue, have become powerless to stop the minority who do.
With commenter:
As Dr Tiller used to say “women are morally and intellectually and spiritually capable of struggling with complex ethical issues and coming to the appropriate decision for themselves and their families.” Anti-choice people disagree with this fundamental premise.
Averting the Worst
Averting the Worst - - NYTimes.com
So it seems that we aren’t going to have a second Great Depression after all. What saved us? The answer, basically, is Big Government
Paul Krugman
Just to be clear: the economic situation remains terrible, indeed worse than almost anyone thought possible not long ago. The nation has lost 6.7 million jobs since the recession began. Once you take into account the need to find employment for a growing working-age population, we’re probably around nine million jobs short of where we should be.
And the job market still hasn’t turned around — that slight dip in the measured unemployment rate last month was probably a statistical fluke. We haven’t yet reached the point at which things are actually improving; for now, all we have to celebrate are indications that things are getting worse more slowly.
For all that, however, the latest flurry of economic reports suggests that the economy has backed up several paces from the edge of the abyss.
via Op-Ed Columnist – Averting the Worst – NYTimes.com.
The White House deal with Big Pharma undermines democracy
The White House deal with Big Pharma undermines democracy – | Salon
Obama’s agreement with Big Pharma may help healthcare reform pass, but it may also mean higher drug prices for you 
By Robert Reich
I’m a strong supporter of universal health insurance, and a fan of the Obama administration. But I’m appalled by the deal the White House has made with the pharmaceutical industry’s lobbying arm to buy their support.
Last week, after being reported in the Los Angeles Times, the White House confirmed it has promised Big Pharma that any healthcare legislation will bar the government from using its huge purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices. That’s basically the same deal George W. Bush struck in getting the Medicare drug benefit, and it’s proven a bonanza for the drug industry. A continuation will be an even larger bonanza, given all the Boomers who will be enrolling in Medicare over the next decade. And it will be a gold mine if the deal extends to Medicaid, which will be expanded under most versions of the healthcare bills now emerging from Congress, and to any public option that might be included. (We don’t know how far the deal extends beyond Medicare because its details haven’t been made public.)
Let me remind you: Any bonanza for the drug industry means higher healthcare costs for the rest of us, which is one reason why critics of the emerging healthcare plans, including the Congressional Budget Office, are so worried about their failure to adequately stem future healthcare costs. To be sure, as part of its deal with the White House, Big Pharma apparently has promised to cut future drug costs by $80 billion. But neither the industry nor the White House nor any congressional committee has announced exactly where the $80 billion in savings will show up nor how this portion of the deal will be enforced. In any event, you can bet that the bonanza Big Pharma will reap far exceeds $80 billion. Otherwise, why would it have agreed?
via The White House deal with Big Pharma undermines democracy | Salon.
U.S. banks to make $38 billion from overdraft fees: report
U.S. banks to make $38 billion from overdraft fees: report – | | Reuters
(Reuters) – Banks in the United States are poised to make $38.5 billion in customer overdraft fees this year, the Financial Times said, citing research by Moebs Services.
A large portion of the revenue is likely to come from the most financially stretched consumers, according to the paper.
It said the research showed that many banks have increased charges on overdrafts and credit cards in order to boost profits.
The median bank overdraft fee rose this year by one dollar to $26, the paper said, citing the Moebs data.
“Banks are returning to a fee-driven model and overdraft fees are the mother lode,” Mike Moebs, the company’s founder was quoted by the paper as saying.
via U.S. banks to make $38 billion from overdraft fees: report | U.S. | Reuters.
Where did that bank bailout go? Watchdogs aren’t sure
Where did that bank bailout go? Watchdogs aren’t sure – | McClatchy
WASHINGTON — Although hundreds of well-trained eyes are watching over the $700 billion that Congress last year decided to spend bailing out the nation’s financial sector, it’s still difficult to answer some of the most basic questions about where the money went.
Despite a new oversight panel, a new special inspector general, the existing Government Accountability Office and eight other inspectors general, those charged with minding the store say they don’t have all the weapons they need. Ten months into the Troubled Asset Relief Program, some members of Congress say that some oversight of bailout dollars has been so lacking that it’s essentially worthless.
“TARP has become a program in which taxpayers are not being told what most of the TARP recipients are doing with their money, have still not been told how much their substantial investments are worth, and will not be told the full details of how their money is being invested,” a special inspector general over the program reported last month. The “very credibility” of the program is at stake, it said.
via Where did that bank bailout go? Watchdogs aren’t sure | McClatchy.
Progressives must be ready to kill a bad health care reform bill
Progressives must be ready to kill a bad health care reform bill that actually Benefits Big Pharma and Insurance Companies – | BuzzFlash.org
God knows this country desperately needs to have a good health care reform package passed into law. But it’s becoming increasingly obvious that may not happen — the good part that is — unless progressives make it clear they’re willing to kill a bad “reform” package.
Let’s look at some of the recent evidence: Senator Dick Durbin, generally one of the good guys, just announced a willingness to dump the public option to get a bill passed. Meanwhile, we learn that the White House has entered into a deal with Big Pharma to oppose the government using its purchasing power to negotiate lower prices for prescription medicines.
The truth is that the White House sees a political imperative to pass a bill, any bill. Otherwise, they’re afraid, Barack Obama will be damaged politically in much the same way Bill Clinton was when reform efforts failed during his presidency. And that’s where the rub comes in: because while progressives — generally strong supporters of the president — share these concerns over Obama’s political health, to us they play a poor second fiddle to making certain that health care reform is done right.
via Progressives must be ready to kill a bad health care reform bill | BuzzFlash.org.
Gov. Sanford Used State Aircraft To Travel To Vacation Spots, Kids’ Sporting Events, His Hairdresser
AP Investigation
COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford used state aircraft for personal and political trips, often bringing along his wife and children – contrary to state law regarding official use, an Associated Press investigation has found.
According to state budget law, “Any and all aircraft owned or operated by agencies of the State Government shall be used only for official business.”
Records reviewed by the AP show that since he took office in 2003, the two-term Republican has taken trips on state aircraft to locations of his children’s sporting events, hair and dentist appointments, political party gatherings and a birthday party for a campaign donor.
Another Blow To Public Option: Durbin Open To Dropping It
OPS: Democrats must be expecting Republicans to come out and vote for them next time around
Another Blow To Public Option: Durbin Open To Dropping It 
One of Barack Obama’s chief allies in the United States Senate hinted on Sunday that a public insurance option could go by the wayside as Congress hammers out its health care legislation.
Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), one of the chamber’s foremost progressives, said that while he supported a government-run option for insurance, he was “open” to alternatives.
“Just understand that, after we pass this bill — and I hope we do — in the Senate, it will go to conference committee,” said Durbin. “We’ll have a chance to work out all of our differences.”
“So we’ll see how this ends, but I don’t want the process to be filibustered to failure, which unfortunately, many senators are trying to do,” Durbin added. “I want to make sure that we do something positive for the American people.”
The comments are similar to the line coming from the White House in recent days, with officials indicating that they would be open to a co-op based insurance model, provided that it had enough leverage to lower costs for consumers. (In this plan, non-profit cooperatives would get a charter from the government to take premiums from members and cover claims, expanding the risk pool for individuals buying insurance). Indeed, for Durbin to make the remarks he did on CNN is a strong indication that the party — from Obama on down — sees the public option as a likely victim in an effort to get 60 votes for health care’s passage in the Senate.
via Another Blow To Public Option: Durbin Open To Dropping It.
Crist Touts Health Reform With Tenth Of A Percent Success Rate
OPS: A one tenth of One Percent chance of being successful is good enough for YOU
Gov. Charlie Crist touts Cover Florida healthcare plan as `national model’ despite its failings – - MiamiHerald.com
Gov. Charlie Crist says his health-insurance idea should be a national model, even though it’s done little to help Florida’s uninsured.
A success rate of less than a tenth of a percent might not sound like much, but to Gov. Charlie Crist it’s campaign-trail bragging material for healthcare reform.
Crist’s new Cover Florida healthcare proposal has signed up only 3,757 people in a state with nearly four million uninsured. Meantime, an estimated 77,250 Floridians have lost health-insurance coverage since Cover Florida began releasing statistics in March.
Yet Crist touts Cover Florida as a “national model” and as a private-sector alternative to the government-run insurance plans of congressional Democrats and President Barack Obama.
During Crisis, Paulson’s Calls to Goldman Posed Ethics Test
Paulson’s Calls to Goldman Tested Ethics – NYTimes.com
Before he became President George W. Bush’s Treasury secretary in 2006, Henry M. Paulson Jr. agreed to hold himself to a higher ethical standard than his predecessors. He not only sold all his holdings in Goldman Sachs, the investment bank he had run, but also specifically said that he would avoid any substantive interaction with Goldman executives for his entire term unless he first obtained an ethics waiver from the government.
But today, seven months after Mr. Paulson left office, questions are still being asked about his part in decisions last fall to prop up the teetering financial system with tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, including aid that directly benefited his former firm. Testifying on Capitol Hill last month, he was grilled about his relationship with Goldman.
“Is it possible that there’s so much conflict of interest here that all you folks don’t even realize that you’re helping people that you’re associated with?” Representative Cliff Stearns, Republican of Florida, asked Mr. Paulson at the July 16 hearing.
via During Crisis, Paulson’s Calls to Goldman Posed Ethics Test – NYTimes.com.
8 Ways To Read Your Body’s Warning Signs For Health
8 Ways To Read Your Body’s Warning Signs For Health
This morning, I woke with a stiff neck. I was not aware of it until I turned by head to brush my hair and then – ouch! A stiff neck tells me I am being inflexible. And I was. I had been planning my day to go a certain way – and it was not lining up to my expectations. Do you ever have days like that? You plan everything to order – and life does not conform to it?
“Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.”
John Lennon
Hearing the message, I let go of my rigid schedule and allowed the day to flow as it would, with me cooperating with what showed up. I had a really good day. Healing and learning are for me two sides of the same coin. When I learn from the message, the condition eases.
Healing is more than curing disease. It is about making you whole – inviting aspects of yourself that were cut away, shut down or somehow incapacitated. In healing, you become an active participant and vital cooperator as beautifully illustrated by Dr Judith Rich in her comment to my post last week.
via Anne Naylor: 8 Ways To Read Your Body’s Warning Signs For Health.
Matthew Dowd: GOP Playing With Fire On Health Care
Matthew Dowd: GOP Playing With Fire On Health Care
Former Bush strategist Matthew Dowd, who was something of a reliable foil for the GOP during the 2008 campaign, offered another off-message moment on Sunday when he warned that the Republican Party was playing with fire on health care.
Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Dowd cautioned conservatives to not go too far in pushing back against Obama’s agenda, lest they be blamed for actually preventing people from getting better health care coverage.
“I think the Republicans soon have to be careful of something,” Dowd said. “I know Republicans are all patting themselves on the back and saying, “We’ve got the Democrats on the run, Obama on the run.’ I don’t think it’s necessarily a good political place to be in by November if you’ve defeated any health care reform.”
via Matthew Dowd: GOP Playing With Fire On Health Care.
Bankrupt US Financial System: The Bubble Bursts and the Economy goes into a Tailspin.
Bankrupt US Financial System: The Bubble Bursts and the Economy goes into a Tailspin.
by Mike Whitney
The World needs a breather from the US. And they’ll get it sooner than many think
We’re making this way too complicated. It’s simple really.
The Fed has only one tool at its disposal; to create more money. Typically, the way the Fed adds to the money supply is by lowering interest rates. When the Fed lowers rates below the rate of inflation; they’re basically selling dollars for under a buck. That’s a good deal, so, naturally, speculators jump on it and trigger a credit expansion. What follows is a frenzy of market activity that ends in a housing, credit, tech or equity bubble. Eventually, the bubble bursts and the economy goes into a tailspin. Then, after a period of digging-out, the process resumes again. Wash, rinse, repeat. It’s always the same. The moral is: Cheap money creates bubbles; and bubbles move wealth from workers to rich motherporkers. It’s as simple as that. That’s why the wealth gap is wider now than anytime since the Gilded Age. The rich own everything.
The Federal Reserve is the policy arm of the big banks and brokerage houses. Period. Ostensibly, its mandate is to maintain “price stability and full employment”. Right. Anyone notice how many jobs the Fed has created lately? How about the dollar? Is it really supposed to zig-zag like it has been for the last decade? The central task of the Fed is to shift wealth from one class to another. And it succeeds at that task admirably. The Fed’s “mandate” is public relations claptrap. Bernanke hasn’t lifted a finger for homeowners, consumers or ordinary working stiffs. “Yer on yer own. Just don’t expect a handout. That’s socialism!” All the doe is flowing upwards…according to plan. The Fed is a social engineering agency designed to serve as the de facto government behind the smokescreen of democratic institutions. Did you really think a black, two year senator with no background in foreign policy or economics was calling the shots?
via Bankrupt US Financial System: The Bubble Bursts and the Economy goes into a Tailspin..
A Cure for an Ailing Economy: Taxing the Rich
A Cure for an Ailing Economy: Taxing the Rich
Healthcare isn’t the only social ill in the U.S. that needs a serious remedy. The list is long and growing: state budget crises, unemployment, infrastructure, education, housing, food assistance, etc. These are all things that must be paid for, but the money seems to be in short supply. When a country is in as much debt as the U.S., – $12 trillion and counting — the tasks at hand seem all but unachievable.
And this is exactly what many politicians would like you to believe.
Fortunately, the seriousness of the crisis is forcing a return to a forgotten, “radical” debate. For the first time in decades, some mainstream media and politicians are posing an extremely controversial question: should we increase taxes on the rich — and if so, how much?
The debate is being open to the public for lack of other options. The social inequality in the U.S. has been rising for decades, and has now reached the point where most of the population has zero disposable income; millions owe much more than they own. The only people who have money to spare are the wealthy. Another reason to tax the rich is that “…tax increases on high-income residents are less harmful than spending cuts; wealthier taxpayers tend to pay higher taxes from savings, not money they would otherwise spend.” (The New York Times, August 3, 2009).
Not pursuing higher taxes on the rich is resulting in social devastation. Look no farther than California, where Governor Schwarzenegger proudly declared that the state budget deficit was balanced “without raising taxes.” Instead, the budget was balanced at the expense of education, health care, welfare, etc. The working class and poor bore nearly the full extent of the burden. This dynamic is quickly turning the country backwards to a world that resembles the last depression.
via A Cure for an Ailing Economy: Taxing the Rich.
Cyber-attacks ‘aimed at Georgia blogger’
Cyber-attacks ‘aimed at Georgia blogger’ – FT.com
Facebook and LiveJournal suffer in assault
The cyber-attacks that felled the internet messaging service Twitter and blogging platform LiveJournal this week were apparently aimed at silencing a single person who had been posting comments critical of Russian activity in the country of Georgia, another victimised company and outside security experts said on Friday.
The critic had a Facebook user name of Cyxymu Livejournal, and posted elsewhere with variations of the name, according to Facebook, the social networking website that was also attacked and slowed but not brought down. He had a blogging account on Google as well, which was a fourth company slowed by the massive assault
via FT.com / Technology – Cyber-attacks ‘aimed at Georgia blogger’.
Deposition of Sibel Edmonds Completed, DoJ a ‘No Show,’ Bombshells Under Oath
LIVE BLOG: Deposition of Sibel Edmonds Completed, DoJ a ‘No Show,’ Bombshells Under Oath – The BRAD BLOG :
Deposition now concluded, stunning; FBI whistleblower answered ‘thorough questioning’; implicated Congressmembers in criminal conspiracy, bribery, espionage, sexual blackmail; Brewster Jennings bombshell..
UPDATES INCLUDE: CONGRESS MEMBERS NAMED IN ESPIONAGE, BRIBERY, SEXUAL BLACKMAIL SCHEMES; NEW BREWSTER JENNINGS / VALERIE PLAME DISCLOSURE…
‘State Secrets’ privilege NOT asserted by DoJ; FBI whistleblower answered ALL questions under oath on Turkish infiltration of U.S. Government…
Live blogging coverage of the Sibel Edmonds deposition at the National Whistleblowers Center in Washington D.C. For background see previous coverage:
* 8/5/09: Sibel Edmonds Subpoenaed, Set to ‘Break’ Gag Order
* 8/7/09: EXCLUSIVE: FBI Attempts to Block Edmonds Testimony in OH Election Case
* 8/7/09: EXCLUSIVE UPDATE: DoJ Pressures Ohio Election Commission to Block Edmonds Testimony
[Updates at bottom...]
Three more bank failures bring yearly total to 72 thus far
Three more bank failures bring yearly total to 72 thus far 
– Raw Story »
US authorities have closed three more US regional and local banks, bringing the total of failed US banking institutions to 72 this year, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation announced.
The banks include First State Bank of Sarasota, Florida, which had total assets of 463 million dollars and total deposits of approximately 387 million. Stearns Bank, N.A. agreed to purchase approximately 451 million dollars of these assets. The FDIC will retain the remaining assets for later disposition, the agency said Friday.
Also shut down was the Community National Bank of Sarasota County, Venice, Florida, which had total assets of 97 million dollars and total deposits of approximately 93 million.
via Raw Story » Three more bank failures bring yearly total to 72 thus far.
It’s time to fight dirty
Sunday Forum: It’s time to fight dirty
Foes of health-care reform are winning because they know it’s a war,
There are times when I want to quit being a progressive liberal, tear up my ACLU membership card and surrender my implanted mind-control chip through which I receive marching orders from Hugo Chavez. No matter the righteousness of the cause, liberal progressives cannot seem to get on top of any public policy debate, cannot seem to win any war of words — which is just weird because you have to assume there are many more English majors among liberals.
While opinions on health-care reform break sharply along partisan lines, with most Democrats in favor and most Republicans opposed, independent voters strongly oppose the health-care reform measures pending in Congress by a whopping 70 percent to 27 percent, according to a recent Pew Research poll. How could the left possibly be losing the debate on health-care reform when its opponent is the roundly loathed health insurance industry — an ongoing criminal syndicate, in my view, that demands protection money from sick people?
It’s because the insurance industry’s demagoguery is better and smarter than the reformists’ demagoguery. This is a gunfight to which the reform agenda has brought a dull spoon.
via Sunday Forum: It’s time to fight dirty.
Faltering News Media Spell Trouble for U.S.
The News Americans Need – - washingtonpost.com
By Dan Rather
You don’t have to care about media companies or reporters to care about the state of the news, because if it’s in trouble — and it surely is — this country is in trouble. That’s why, while speaking recently at the Aspen Institute, I called upon President Obama to form a commission to address the perilous state of America’s news media.
Some might scoff at the notion that a president and a country occupied by two wars and a recession should add the woes of the news media to an already crowded plate. But the way the news is delivered, and the quality of the information the American public receives about what’s going on here and abroad, has and will continue to have a profound effect on these very issues and on the overall quality of government by, for and of the people.
I am not calling for any sort of government bailout for media companies. Nor am I encouraging any form of government control over them. I want the president to convene a nonpartisan, blue-ribbon commission to assess the state of the news as an institution and an industry and to make recommendations for improving and stabilizing both.
via Dan Rather – Faltering News Media Spell Trouble for U.S. – washingtonpost.com.
Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds Finally Testifies Under Oath
Former FBI Language Specialist Sibel Edmonds finally gets to testify under oath, after being hit with a gag order. For more information on her and the deposition, see http://www.bradblog.com
via YouTube – Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds Finally Testifies Under Oath.
Max Keiser – ‘Hank Paulson is a financial suicide bomber’
OPS: Keiser: Paulson is a Financial Terrorist. Don’t appease the Terrorists
YouTube – On the Edge with Max Keiser – 07 August 2009 (1/3).
Part 2 Part3
OPS: Part 3 get to the heart of the matter but watch and Max blows a gasket [and rightly so]. But the first two parts first.
Kepler telescope makes quick discovery – CNN.com
NASA’s Kepler space telescope has already made a discovery, and its science operations aren’t even officially under way yet.
NASA scientists who put the telescope through a 10-day test after its March 6 launch said this week that Kepler is working well. Its ability to detect minute changes in light has enabled scientists to determine that a planet orbiting a distant star has an atmosphere, shows only one side to its sun and is so hot it glows.
Kepler’s ability to take measurements that precise at such a great distance “proves we can find Earth-size planets,” William Borucki, Kepler’s principal science investigator told reporters at a recent briefing.
The powerful scope is looking at thousands of stars in its vision field in the Milky Way on a 3½-year mission to find planets the size of Earth and to determine how common these planets are.
The planet used in the test, a giant gas planet about the size of Jupiter, orbits a star called HAT P-7 in just 2.2 days and is 26 times closer than Earth is to the sun, according to NASA. It is called an exoplanet because it orbits a star outside the solar system.
via Kepler telescope makes quick discovery – CNN.com.
Dennis Kucinich-HealthCare briefing in Washington, DC
How to help
Become a part of the growing single payer movement
Visit PDA and CNA on the web
Support State Single-Payer initiatives at the national and state.level
Tell your congressional representative and Democratic Leaders in Congress to support the Kucinich amendment to HR 3200.
Tell your congressional representative to support HR 676
via YouTube – Dennis Kucinich-HealthCare briefing in Washington, DC.
Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security
OPS: No Shit. Many of us have been saying this for many years.
Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security - - NYTimes.com
The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.
Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.
Recent war games and intelligence studies conclude that over the next 20 to 30 years, vulnerable regions, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia, will face the prospect of food shortages, water crises and catastrophic flooding driven by climate change that could demand an American humanitarian relief or military response.
via Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security – NYTimes.com.
The China Deficit
The China Deficit – Economyincrisis.org –
The largest drain on this economy is the annual deficit with China. …. our underlying economic instability has not been addressed.
The United States has witnessed several major positive economic developments in the past few months. First of all, after pumping hundreds of billions of dollars in liquid assets into banks and finance houses, the collapse of Wall Street has been staved off. As a result, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and others reported massive profits in the last fiscal quarter.
Driven by strong banking numbers, the stock markets have buoying significantly. The Dow Jones, S&P 500 and NASDAQ each witnessed huge percentage gains in July. Each reported their strongest July numbers in a decade or more.
Total unemployment in this country is still rising, and the government may soon find itself unable to give benefits to the hundreds of thousands of new unemployment insurance applicants. But, the monthly increases are less enormous than they once were. In both January and February of this year the economy shed over 600,000 jobs. According to CNNMoney.com, in July the number decreased to just under 400,000.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
The Demise of Detroit
The Demise of Detroit - Economyincrisis.org
After being rocked by suburban flight, decades of outsourcing, and a crippling economic depression, Detroit, Michigan has lost all of its former glory.
Detroit, Michigan was once a boom cosmopolitan metropolis. The lakeside city was in a perfect position to take advantage of a population boom in the Midwest and an industrial boom nationwide. The city was once called the “Arsenal of Democracy” for its immense contributions to the Allied effort during World War II. Detroit is the 11th most populous city in the United States, and the 11th most populous metro area.
However, after being rocked by suburban flight, decades of outsourcing, and a crippling economic depression, the city has lost all of its former glory.
The city has an unemployment rate nearly twice the national average. After being so dedicated to car manufacturing for decades, insourced foreign plants and outsourced American facilities have done nothing but siphon jobs away from the city and surrounding auto making areas.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
US Still Paying Blackwater Millions
US Still Paying Blackwater Millions - The Nation
By Jeremy Scahill
Just days before two former Blackwater employees alleged in sworn statements filed in federal court that the company’s owner, Erik Prince, “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,” the Obama administration extended a contract with Blackwater for more than $20 million for “security services” in Iraq, according to federal contract data obtained by The Nation. The State Department contract is scheduled to run through September 3. In May, the State Department announced it was not renewing Blackwater’s Iraq contract, and the Iraqi government has refused to issue the company an operating license.
“They are still there, but we are transitioning them out,” a State Department official told The Nation. According to the State Department, the $20 million represents an increase on an aviation contract that predates the Obama administration.
via US Still Paying Blackwater Millions.
Insurance Industry Is Targeting Blue Dogs To Shape Health Reform In Its Favor
Insurance Industry Is Targeting Blue Dogs To Shape Health Reform In Its Favor - Think Progress » 
In a new cover story, BusinessWeek claims that the “health insurers have already won” the battle over health care reform. According to the magazine, their strategy has been to “quietly” focus on “shaping the views” of more conservative Democrats. Central to the health insurers’ strategy is to target the Blue Dog Coalition, which includes Rep. Jim Matheson (D-UT) and Rep. Mike Ross (D-AR):
Impressing fiscally conservative Democrats like Matheson, a leader of the House of Representatives’ Blue Dog Coalition, is at the heart of UnitedHealth’s strategy. It boils down to ensuring that whatever overhaul Congress passes this year will help rather than hurt huge insurance companies. [...]
Matheson, whose Blue Dogs command 52 votes in the House, can’t offer enough praise for UnitedHealth, the largest company of its kind. “The tried and true message of their advocacy,” he says, “is making sure the information they provide is accurate and considered.” [...]
Fifteen years after the insurance industry helped kill then-President Bill Clinton’s health-reform initiative, Ross is frustrating the Obama White House by opposing proposals for a government-run insurance concern that would compete with private-sector companies.
via Think Progress » Insurance Industry Is Targeting Blue Dogs To Shape Health Reform In Its Favor.
Rice: Bolton’s criticism of Bill Clinton’s humanitarian mission to North Korea is ‘ridiculous.’
Rice: Bolton’s criticism of Bill Clinton’s humanitarian mission to North Korea is ‘ridiculous.’ – Think Progress »
Soon after news broke of former President Bill Clinton’s trip to North Korea to secure the release of journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, former ambassador John Bolton went on the attack, declaring that it was “perilously close to negotiating with terrorists.” On CNN today, John King asked Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice to respond to Bolton. “That’s, in fact, a ridiculous statement,” replied Rice:
KING: A man who once held your job at the United Nations, John Bolton, saying “it comes perilously close to negotiating with terrorists.” Sending Bill Clinton over there and giving North Korea, certainly, a propaganda victory with those photographs. Perilously close to negotiating with terrorists?
RICE: Absolutely not. That’s, in fact, a ridiculous statement. We don’t negotiate with terrorists, that’s the policy of the United States. But this was an unique opportunity for the former president on a private humanitarian mission to obtain the release of two American women who’ve been held for many months. It would have been disgraceful for the United States, having verified that this was a real opportunity to obtain their release, to leave them in captivity.
Watch it:
UK ‘may have 40-year Afghan role’
UK ‘may have 40-year Afghan role’ - BBC NEWS
Gen Richards said the Afghan Army and police force must be built up
The UK’s commitment to Afghanistan could last for up to 40 years, the incoming head of the Army has said.
Gen Sir David Richards, who takes over on 28 August, told the Times that “nation-building” would last decades.
Troops will be required for the medium term only, but the UK will continue to play a role in “development, governance [and] security sector reform,” he said.
Shadow defence minister Gerald Howarth said the UK had to be there long-term to achieve its objectives.
via BBC NEWS | UK | UK ‘may have 40-year Afghan role’.
Obama’s Bid to Bypass Congress on State Secrets
Obama’s Bid to Bypass Congress on State Secrets – | Corrente
On Monday Adam Liptak reported on a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the Obama administration that “argued, though no one had asked, that the state secrets privilege [SSP] was rooted in the Constitution.” The story itself raised some questions to me about the journalistic process: What prompted it to be written now and not when the brief was first filed? Liptak describes the state secrets claim seeming almost tacked on to the end of an otherwise dry and unremarkable document; did its significance escape everyone until recently? Whose attention did it finally come to? There is no note of civil liberties groups raising awareness on it or any other kids of activism. Did someone from such a group become aware of its importance and contact Liptak? Had he been reviewing it himself and finally gotten to the last bit? I would love to know how it came to be published now when it had already been out there and nothing that I am aware of had happened to advance the story. (I mean that sincerely, too, not in the way “interested” is sometimes used to intimate bad practice or dark intentions.)
As for the filing itself, it seems like nothing so much as an attempt to short circuit the early rumblings on the issue in Congress. In February Senators Feingold, Kennedy, Leahy and Specter introduced the State Secrets Protection Act (SSPA), “a bill that provides guidance to federal courts considering cases in which the government has asserted the state secrets privilege.” As Liptak points out, and as can never be pointed out often enough, the SSP was created by the 1953 United States v. Reynolds decision, in which an Air Force accident report was suppressed because the government claimed that public disclosure of the details of the accident would jeopardize national security. Liptak: “When the report was finally released in 1996, it contained no secrets, but it did show that the deaths of nine men in the crash of a B-29 bomber had been caused by the Air Force’s negligence.” In other words, the prototype case for the SSP – the one that established the precedent that has been invoked for SSP claims since – was based on a lie used to cover up politically inconvenient facts.
via Obama’s Bid to Bypass Congress on State Secrets | Corrente.
The secret history of TARP: How Goldman bailed out Goldman…
The secret history of TARP: How Goldman bailed out Goldman… – Raw Story »
Former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson wasn’t on Goldman Sachs’ payroll when the US government bailed out his former employer, but he may as well have been.
That’s the implication in a New York Times article, published Saturday, that shows President George W. Bush’s last treasury secretary, a former CEO of investment bank Goldman Sachs, had frequent conversations with the current CEO of Goldman during the week of Sept. 16, when the US government handed over $85 billion to rescue the troubled insurance giant AIG.
AIG’s outstanding debts to Goldman Sachs meant that $13 billion of the money handed over to AIG went directly to Goldman Sachs.
“During the week of the AIG bailout alone, Mr. Paulson and [Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd] Blankfein spoke two dozen times … far more frequently than Mr. Paulson did with other Wall Street executives,” the Times reports.
via Raw Story » The secret history of TARP: How Goldman bailed out Goldman….
Reply to critics of Bait and switch: How the public option was sold
Reply to critics of Bait and switch: How the public option was sold – Physicians for a National Health Program
by Kip Sullivan, JD 
Conservatives never base their opposition to single-payer on the ground that it is “politically infeasible.” They oppose single-payer on policy grounds and they say so. The “political feasibility” argument is used exclusively by proponents of universal health insurance who profess to admire single-payer systems but who refuse to support single-payer legislation in any meaningful way (and often support legislation that impedes single-payer’s progress) on the ground that single-payer cannot be enacted, soon or at all. Merton Bernstein and Ted Marmor refer to these people as “political yes buts.”
“Political yes buts” have been lecturing single-payer advocates since the modern American single-payer movement began in the late 1980s. Several “yes buts” took issue with a comment I posted on July 20 on this blog entitled “Bait and switch: How the ‘public option’ was sold.” In that comment, I compared the original version of the “public option” promoted by Jacob Hacker, the intellectual godfather of the idea, and Health Care for America Now (HCAN) with the version incorporated in two bills introduced by congressional Democrats in July.
I reported that Hacker’s original proposal called for a public health insurance program that would enroll 130 million people whereas the “public option” contained in the Democrats’ House bill would enroll 10 million at most and the “public option” in the Democrats’ Senate HELP Committee bill would enroll approximately no one. (Now that Democrats in the House have compromised away to the Blue Dogs a requirement that the “public option” use Medicare’s rates plus 5 percent, I assume the Congressional Budget Office will attribute roughly zero enrollment to the House version too.)
via Reply to critics of Bait and switch: How the public option was sold – PNHP’s official Blog.
Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor?
Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor? - – NYTimes.com 
IT’S too bad so many people are falling into poverty at a time when it’s almost illegal to be poor. You won’t be arrested for shopping in a Dollar Store, but if you are truly, deeply, in-the-streets poor, you’re well advised not to engage in any of the biological necessities of life — like sitting, sleeping, lying down or loitering. City officials boast that there is nothing discriminatory about the ordinances that afflict the destitute, most of which go back to the dawn of gentrification in the ’80s and ’90s. “If you’re lying on a sidewalk, whether you’re homeless or a millionaire, you’re in violation of the ordinance,” a city attorney in St. Petersburg, Fla., said in June, echoing Anatole France’s immortal observation that “the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges.”
n defiance of all reason and compassion, the criminalization of poverty has actually been intensifying as the recession generates ever more poverty. So concludes a new study from the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, which found that the number of ordinances against the publicly poor has been rising since 2006, along with ticketing and arrests for more “neutral” infractions like jaywalking, littering or carrying an open container of alcohol. The report lists America’s 10 “meanest” cities — the largest of which are Honolulu, Los Angeles and San Francisco — but new contestants are springing up every day. The City Council in Grand Junction, Colo., has been considering a ban on begging, and at the end of June, Tempe, Ariz., carried out a four-day crackdown on the indigent. How do you know when someone is indigent? As a Las Vegas statute puts it, “An indigent person is a person whom a reasonable ordinary person would believe to be entitled to apply for or receive” public assistance.
via Op-Ed Contributor – Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor? – NYTimes.com.
Drug Industry to Run Ads Favoring White House Plan
OPS: Maybe this will be a Red Flag for a few more people
Drug Industry to Run Ads Favoring White House Plan – - NYTimes.com
The drug industry has authorized its lobbyists to spend as much as $150 million on television commercials supporting President Obama’s health care overhaul, beginning over the August Congressional recess, people briefed on the plans said Saturday.
The unusually large scale of the industry’s commitment to the cause helps explain some of a contentious back-and-forth playing out in recent days between the odd-couple allies over a deal that the White House struck with the industry in June to secure its support. The terms of the deal were not fully disclosed. Both sides had announced that the drug industry would contribute $80 billion over 10 years to the cost of the health care overhaul without spelling out the details.
With House Democrats moving to extract more than that just as the drug makers finalized their advertising plans, the industry lobbyists pressed the Obama administration for public reassurances that it had agreed to cap the industry’s additional costs at $80 billion. The White House, meanwhile, has struggled to mollify its most pivotal health industry ally without alienating Congressional Democrats who want to demand far more of the drug makers. White House officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
via Drug Industry to Run Ads Favoring White House Plan – NYTimes.com.
Criminal investigation into CIA treatment of detainees expected
Criminal investigation into CIA treatment of detainees expected - – Los Angeles Times
Insiders say Atty. Gen. Eric Holder is close to naming a prosecutor to look into reports of excessive waterboarding and other unauthorized methods. Convictions could be hard to get.
Reporting from Washington — U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. is poised to appoint a criminal prosecutor to investigate alleged CIA abuses committed during the interrogation of terrorism suspects, current and former U.S. government officials said.
A senior Justice Department official said that Holder envisioned an inquiry that would be narrow in scope, focusing on “whether people went beyond the techniques that were authorized” in Bush administration memos that liberally interpreted anti-torture laws.
via Criminal investigation into CIA treatment of detainees expected – Los Angeles Times.
South Florida doctors paid thousands by Eli Lilly
South Florida doctors paid thousands by Eli Lilly – - MiamiHerald.com
While policymakers question whether drug makers are hurting healthcare reform by paying doctors fees, Eli Lilly revealed that it paid 10 South Florida providers more than $10,000 each during the first quarter.
In the first revelation about how much drug makers are paying doctors, Eli Lilly has created an online registry detailing payments to 3,400 healthcare providers — including more than two dozen in South Florida in the first three months of this year.
Top on the South Florida list — and No. 3 in the nation — was internist Manuel Suarez-Barcelo, who told The Miami Herald that he earned $65,000 by traveling through 11 states, making 41 presentations, mostly to nursing home staff, about the advantages of the Lilly drug Forteo, used to treat osteoporosis.
Seven others in South Florida pulled in more than $10,000 each, including Broward obstetrician-gynecologist Jay S. Cohen, who received $38,000.
via South Florida doctors paid thousands by Eli Lilly – South Florida – MiamiHerald.com.
Sick for Profit – Insurance CEOs UnitedHealth
OPS: $1 in every $700 paid for all Health Care in the US went to pay this guy
United Health CEO 
Stephen J. Hemsley
2007 Compensation$13.2 million
2008 Compensation (Forbes) $3,241,042
Former Managing Partner and CFO of Arthur Andersen (BusinessWeek)
Total Value of Unexercised Stock Options (Forbes) $744,232,068
2009 Options Exercise $127,001,281
Value of Wayzata, Minnesota Home (Hennepin County Assessor) $6,640,000
Articles:
Hemsley returns $190 million in stock options acquired as a result of practices found to be fraudulent by the SEC (American Medical News)
via Sick for Profit – Insurance CEOs.
Sick for Profit – Insurance CEOs – CIGNA
CIGNA CEO Edward Hanway
Five-Year Compensation, as of April 30, 2008 (Forbes) – $120.51 million
Total Value of Unexercised Stock Options (Forbes) – $28,881,000
Value of New Jersey Beach Home (Cape May County Assessor) -$13,607,400
Articles:
The family of a 17-year-old girl who died hours after CIGNA reversed a decision and said it would pay for a liver transplant plans to sue the company, their attorney said Friday.
Hundreds of entertainment industry workers in California and New Jersey who buy health insurance as a group are being hit with a rate increase that will raise some family-plan premiums to more than $44,000 a year.
via Sick for Profit – Insurance CEOs.
Is Obama Punking Us?
Whoa, the Inestimable Frank Rich Nails the Key Obama Problem with Many Middle Class and Progressive Voters: He Appears Not to be Fundamentally Changing a System “Fixed” from the Top. Big Money and Lobbyists Still Appear to be Running the Country. Coming from Rich, This is a Pivotally Significant Column. – BF
Is Obama Punking Us? - – NYTimes.com
Frank Rich
“AUGUST is a challenging time to be president,” said Andrew Card, the former Bush White House chief of staff, as he offered unsolicited advice to his successors in a television interview last week. “I think you have to expect the unexpected.”
He should know. Thursday was the eighth anniversary of “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” the President’s Daily Brief that his boss ignored while on vacation in Crawford. Aug. 29 marks the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s strike on the Louisiana coast, which his boss also ignored while on vacation in Crawford.
So do have a blast in Martha’s Vineyard, President Obama.
Even as we wait for some unexpected disaster to strike, Beltway omens for the current White House are grim. Obama’s poll numbers are approaching free fall, we are told. If he fails on health care, he’s toast. Indeed, many of the bloviators who spot a fatal swoon in the Obama presidency are the same doomsayers who in August 2008 were predicting his Election Day defeat because he couldn’t “close the deal” and clear the 50 percent mark in matchups with John McCain.
via Op-Ed Columnist – Is Obama Punking Us? – NYTimes.com.
Republicans Use Chaos as a Shock Doctrine to Create Authoritarian Rule
Republicans Use Chaos as a Shock Doctrine to Create Authoritarian Rule - | BuzzFlash.org
BUZZFLASH EDITOR’S BLOG By Mark Karlin
There is a method to this madness of chaos and obstructionism that is the hallmark of modern Republicanism.
It is to do politically what Naomi Klein detailed in her economic analysis in the “Shock Doctrine”; it is to so bollix and confuse and make feel vulnerable the displaced white working and middle class that they will turn to authoritarian leadership out of fear.
Fear is the cudgel of the GOP leadership across the nation, and the “victimization” of white people (particularly the white male) is the emotional drumbeat of the right wing media echo chamber.
Together, they have converged to ignite the Townhall Terrorists and create an incipient threat of violence and revolt against democracy in order to establish a white rightwing tyrannical corporate government with a GOP leadership.
via Republicans Use Chaos as a Shock Doctrine to Create Authoritarian Rule | BuzzFlash.org.
Fiat Money Created Out of Thin Air: The Bank Bailouts are Unconstitutional
Fiat Money Created Out of Thin Air: The Bank Bailouts are Unconstitutional
by Bob Chapman
The starting point for all analysis of the ongoing bailout orgy that is currently being used in crony capitalist fashion to transfer wealth from our middle class to the financial elites and their transnational conglomerates is whether these bailouts are authorized by the US Constitution. The answer is a resounding NO!
Nothing in the Constitution could ever be interpreted in any manner that would in any way allow the conversion of our quasi-capitalist republic into a police state, which is the last thing our Founding Fathers had in mind.
How can our government simply hand over fiat money created out of thin air, which in itself totally violates the provisions in our Constitution dealing with the issuance of money, to whoever they deem to be too-big-to-fail? The very idea of such targeted bailouts violates every precept upon which our nation was founded, and our Constitution in no way allows the bailout of any private person or business entity, especially where this creates special privileges to be given to a chosen few “anointed” entities at the expense of our citizens in general. Regulation of interstate commerce does not mean doling out crony capitalist bailouts, which amount to nothing short of the implementation of feudalism under the Puppet Master oligarchs of our Shadow Government. Regulation would mean fining and jailing these criminals and allowing them to fail so better run companies can acquire their assets via liquidation to be supervised by regulators. You reap what you sow in this nation. You do not reap profits for yourself and have everyone else pay for your losses. That is pure poppycock detritus.
But where is our redress? We have a President who is a usurper pushed into office by the Puppet Masters in another violation of our Constitution that limits the Presidency to natural born citizens, we have a bogus Congress beholden to the Puppet Masters for the filling of their campaign coffers in a political system where elective offices are bought and sold based on wealth instead of ability and integrity, and we have a Kangaroo Court System where the judges know not to bite the hands that appointed them, lest their skeletons be released from their closets or worse. Our regulators, who are in on almost every scam and public rip-off (i.e. the Madoff debacle), look the other way or issue chump change fines without requiring any accountability. The only redress left now are forceful public demonstrations, and if the President and Congress still turn a deaf ear, then there is always the Second Amendment, which is the option which we predict will eventually be used to create a change in our government from total corruption back to public service. Obama wanted “change,” and that is what the American people are going to give him, not what he is going to give us. And let’s also make that perfectly clear to the Illuminati, whose boots Obama daily licks like a slobbering dog.
via Fiat Money Created Out of Thin Air: The Bank Bailouts are Unconstitutional.
TVA plan for Ala. nuclear plant drops to 1 reactor – washingtonpost.com
TVA plan for Ala. nuclear plant drops to 1 reactor
The Tennessee Valley Authority, faced with falling electric sales and rising costs from cleaning up a massive coal ash spill in Tennessee, on Friday trimmed plans for a potential four-unit nuclear plant in northeast Alabama to one reactor.
The nation’s largest public utility, which two years ago had positioned itself as a leader in this country’s so-called “nuclear renaissance,” said it would prepare a supplemental environmental impact statement to consider a single reactor for its unfinished Bellefonte site near Scottsboro, Ala.
That single unit might be one of the two advanced Westinghouse AP1000 reactors for which TVA has already applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a combined construction and operating license. Or it might be one of the two incomplete reactors that have been mothballed at the site since 1988.
via TVA plan for Ala. nuclear plant drops to 1 reactor – washingtonpost.com.
Cash-strapped Cuba says toilet paper running short
Cash-strapped Cuba says toilet paper running short
HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuba, in the grip of a serious economic crisis, is running short of toilet paper and may not get sufficient supplies until the end of the year, officials with state-run companies said on Friday.
Officials said they were lowering the prices of 24 basic goods to help Cubans get through the difficulties provoked in part by the global financial crisis and three destructive hurricanes that struck the island last year.
Cuba’s financial reserves have been depleted by increased spending for imports and reduced export income, which has forced the communist-led government to take extraordinary measures to keep the economy afloat.
“The corporation has taken all the steps so that at the end of the year there will be an important importation of toilet paper,” an official with state conglomerate Cimex said on state-run Radio Rebelde.
The shipment will enable the state-run company “to supply this demand that today is presenting problems,” he said.
via Cash-strapped Cuba says toilet paper running short – Yahoo! News.
Rachel Maddow guest, author Frank Schaeffer, summarizes The Right Wing
OPS: From the ‘horses mouth’ – Schaeffer is the author of – Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back . …. This is video worth the time. Everyone should be concerned. This video should be shared
Rachel Maddow guest, author Frank Schaeffer, summarizes The Right Wing
A frightening window into the current efforts by corporate and authoritarian interests to bring the nation to a boil
via YouTube – Rachel Maddow guest, author Frank Schaeffer, summarizes The Right Wing.
EXCLUSIVE UPDATE: DoJ Pressures Ohio Election Commission to Block Edmonds Testimony
EXCLUSIVE UPDATE: DoJ Pressures Ohio Election Commission to Block Edmonds Testimony - The BRAD BLOG :
Long-gagged FBI whistleblower re-iterates request for citizen media in D.C. to show up at Saturday morning deposition…
The DoJ is now jumping into action, at least on behalf of covering the FBI’s rear, if not yet to issue any “states secrets” claims to stop the scheduled testimony of FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds in D.C. tomorrow morning in the Ohio Election Commission (OEC) case of Schmidt v. Krikorian.
For background, first see Wednesday night’s report:
• FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds Subpoenaed, Set to ‘Break’ Gag Order Unless DoJ Intercedes
Former agency translator called to testify in Ohio election case this Saturday on Turkish infiltration of U.S. government…
…and then today’s update:
• EXCLUSIVE: FBI Attempts to Block Edmonds Testimony in OH Election Case; Attorneys Say Effort Insufficient to Stop Her
Whistleblower org says FBI/DoJ attempting ‘censorship,’ trying to ‘silence whistleblower’ answering ‘lawful subpoena’
Tonight Arthur Goldberg of the DoJ’s civil division sent a letter to the OEC’s Executive Director Philip C. Richter, and Richter has replied. Both letters are downloadable below, and the text is posted there as well.
via The BRAD BLOG : EXCLUSIVE UPDATE: DoJ Pressures Ohio Election Commission to Block Edmonds Testimony.
The Cheney-Like Secrecy of the Obama White House
The Cheney-Like Secrecy of the Obama White House
John Nichols
Those of us who proposed the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney for violating his oath of office and engaging in a Nixon-on-steroids spree of high crimes and misdemeanors began to recognize the abusive nature of the previous administration when Cheney refused to release details of the industry insiders with whom he met to craft energy policies.
The refusal of the Bush-Cheney administration to permit public review of White House visitor logs detailing who was meeting with the vice president’s energy task force during the very first weeks of their tenure was a deliberate decision made to cloak dirty dealing by officials who were determined to serve corporate rather than public interests.
It also provided an early indicator that darker and dirtier deeds would eventually be done by Cheney and his compatriots. And they were.
So what should we make of the news that the Obama administration is now refusing to release White House visitor logs that detail meetings between members of the new administration and health-care industry insiders?
via The Cheney-Like Secrecy of the Obama White House.
We Need More Protest to Make Reform Possible
We Need More Protest to Make Reform Possible
By Peter Dreier
Why is there so little protest in response to these hard economic times?
One of the rare examples of civil disobedience occurred in late July, when more than 100 people, mobilized by the community organizing group ACORN, gathered outside a foreclosed home in Oakland and attempted to take it back on behalf of its owner. The owner, Tosha Alberty, said she is the victim of a predatory loan. She claims she had tried to work with her lender to modify the loan, but the lender refused. Alberty was at work on July 20 when sheriff’s deputies showed up and evicted her family from the house, she said. A few days later, the ACORN group sat on the steps behind the padlocked gate and refused to move. Six of them were arrested for trespassing.
The protest was part of ACORN’s nationwide Home Defenders campaign to challenge foreclosures and evictions by lenders and to push Congress to strengthen anti-foreclosure legislation so that banks will be required to renegotiate mortgages. (The Obama administration’s program is voluntary.) The Oakland protest, however, received no attention in any major media outlet. A protest without reporters and TV cameras is like the proverbial tree falling in the forest that nobody hears. When the media cover rallies and protests, it gives people a sense that they are not alone, that others share their fears and hopes. It makes them more likely to get involved in efforts to bring about change.
via We Need More Protest to Make Reform Possible.
Faulty Forecasting
Faulty Forecasting - | CommonDreams.org
by Ralph Nader
Companies that specialize in stock market forecasting and trading—such as Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan Chase—pay very high salaries to their employee-vendors. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo just released data showing that these and other large banks are giving each of their 5000 trader-forecasters bonuses of at least one million dollars.
In return, these fat cats are very frequently wrong in their recommendations and decidedly unprofessional in their fiduciary relationships with the clueless, trusting clients who rely on them. Win or lose, they get their fees.
These firms and brokers are making money largely from other people’s money—pensions, savings and investments. Overall many produce little more than gambling tips. When these moneyboys try to justify their doings as providing liquidity, hedging against risk, assembling capital for productive investment, listeners are permitted to robustly laugh. This is especially so now during Wall Street’s massive, self-inflicted financial collapse. The economy, and taxpayers, are paying for this reckless speculation.
via Faulty Forecasting | CommonDreams.org.
Star-spangled-bannered authoritarian brutes
Star-spangled-bannered authoritarian brutes | BuzzFlash.org
THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter
Yep, just one more reason to be glad the Wehrmacht went down to ignominious defeat: They and their ideological masters were, you see, as the Cliff Clavin of talk radio so knowledgeably informed us this week, “insanely, irrationally against pollution.”
Not only that, as they burned and pillaged and raped and slaughtered their way through Europe and Euroasia and North Africa, wearing loutish insignia which looked — wouldn’t you just know it? — strikingly similar to Obama’s healthcare logo, they held within their black hearts a psychotic hatred of big business (which had financed their continental ravages), and wanted only to return to the fiscally profligate Fatherland, where, just like the bunch of left-leaning Nazis they were, they could enjoy “cradle-to-grave nationalized healthcare.”
Those mid-century Teutons, however, probably didn’t need such a comprehensive healthcare system quite as much as others, since they all stayed pretty healthy by toiling on “a whole bunch of make-work projects … one of which was the Autobahn,” and, once while taking a break from their founding of the first PETA chapter, they had “banned smoking.”
via Star-spangled-bannered authoritarian brutes | BuzzFlash.org.
Brad Miller Death Threat: Capitol Police Looking Into Phone Call Made To Congressman Over Health Care Reform
Brad Miller Death Threat: Capitol Police Looking Into Phone Call Made To Congressman Over Health Care Reform
A North Carolina congressman who supports an overhaul of the health care system had his life threatened by a caller upset that he was not holding a public forum on the proposal, his office said Friday.
Democratic Rep. Brad Miller received the call Monday, one of hundreds the congressman’s office has fielded demanding town-hall meetings on the health care proposal, said his spokeswoman, LuAnn Canipe. She said the callers were “trying to instigate town halls so they can show up and disrupt.”
“We had one of those kind of calls that escalated to what we considered a threat” on the congressman’s life, said Canipe. “These are some strong-arm tactics, and we are trying to deal with and trying to talk to people in good faith about health care reform.”
Geithner asks Congress for higher U.S. debt limit
OPS: Insane. We don’t need to mortgage any more of the Future of this Country. What we need to do is leave Iraq and Afghanistan and cut out Military budget in half. Even then we will be spending more than TWICE what our next nearest competitor (China) spends. Then, roll back the Reagan tax cuts and we are in the clear
Geithner asks Congress for higher U.S. debt limit
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner formally requested that Congress raise the $12.1 trillion statutory debt limit on Friday, saying that it could be breached as early as mid-October.
“It is critically important that Congress act before the limit is reached so that citizens and investors here and around the world can remain confident that the United States will always meet its obligations,” Geithner said in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that was obtained by Reuters.
A Treasury spokeswoman declined to comment on the letter.
Treasury officials earlier this week said that the debt limit, last raised in February when the $787 billion economic stimulus legislation was passed, would be hit sometime in the October-December quarter. Geithner’s letter said the breach could be two weeks into that period, just as the 2010 fiscal year is getting underway.
via Geithner asks Congress for higher U.S. debt limit – Yahoo! News.
Ben Stein fired by New York Times
Ben Stein fired by New York Times - The Raw Story »
The guy with the annoying voice who led a crusade against evolution has lost his job with the Grey Lady after taking a job advertising for a financial services company.
Apparently, Ben Stein’s decision to become a pitchman for freescore.com, a dubious financial services firm, finally put his employer over the edge.
Reuters Felix Salmon, who reported the news, has reacted with glee.
“You’ll forgive me if I take some small measure of credit for this one: after something in the region of 35,000 words of the Ben Stein Watch, the world’s worst financial columnist has finally been fired from the New York Times,” Salmon writes. “And I couldn’t be happier. The reason was his appearance in commercials for (and on the homepage of) freescore.com, a sleazy company which exists only to extract large sums of money from those who can least afford it.
via The Raw Story » Ben Stein fired by New York Times.
Generation Lost
Generation Lost - Economyincrisis.org
Members of Generation Y were told that a college degree would virtually guarantee high income and long-term stability. Now, they are shocked to find that it cannot even get them through the front door.
In May and June thousands of graduates of the class of 2009 received their diplomas from colleges and universities across the country. They entered the professional world with finely tuned educations and hope for the future. But many American graduates are finding employment to be an increasingly difficult prospect for them.
The workforce in the United States is shrinking drastically. Since the recession began in December 2007 the economy has shed roughly 7.5 million jobs. These positions have yet to be replaced, and nationwide unemployment has risen to 9.5 percent. Even the most optimistic outlooks from Washington see double-digit unemployment by the end of 2009.
What are American graduates and prospective graduates supposed to do in the face of such obstacles?
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
GOP congressman co-sponsoring birther bill won’t show his birth certificate.
GOP congressman co-sponsoring birther bill won’t show his birth certificate. - Think Progress »
Last week, Politico asked the 11 House Republicans co-sponsoring the so-called “birther bill” — legislation requiring presidential candidates to prove they were born in the United States — to provide their own birth certificates. While a number of them complied, Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) explicitly refused to show his proof of birth. His staff instead sent a one-line e-mail response: “Congressman Neugebauer will not be submitting a copy of his birth certificate.” Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) did not respond to the request at all.
via Think Progress » GOP congressman co-sponsoring birther bill won’t show his birth certificate..
Gonzales ‘angry’ his reputation has been tarnished: I don’t deserve this treatment.
OPS: True, Gonzales does not deserve THIS treatment. He deserves the same treatment he forced on others.
Gonzales ‘angry’ his reputation has been tarnished: I don’t deserve this treatment. - Think Progress »
The New York Times Magazine has a new interview with former Bush attorney general Alberto Gonzales, who is set to begin a job teaching political science at Texas Tech this fall. Gonzales is also currently writing a book — although he doesn’t yet have a publisher — in which he plans to discuss more about why he resigned. In the meantime, Gonzales said that he has been upset at the way his legacy has been ruined:
Would you agree that your reputation was damaged by your service as attorney general?
It has had an effect, a negative effect, no question about it, and at times it makes me angry because it is undeserved. But I don’t want to sound like I am whining. At the end of the day, I’ve been the attorney general of the United States. It’s a remarkable privilege, and I stand behind my service.
Gonzales truly believes that he has been unfairly characterized. “What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?” he asked last year. (Here’s a reminder.) Gonzales still has not received any offers for jobs from any law firms since leaving the White House.
via Think Progress » Gonzales ‘angry’ his reputation has been tarnished: I don’t deserve this treatment..
Corporate Dominance of Every Aspects of Our Lives Is Suffocating us
Corporate Dominance of Every Aspects of Our Lives Is Suffocating us - AlterNet
Author Doug Rushkoff warns of the dominance of profit and consumerism in our mindsets, and offers a way out of the corporate culture.
Are we all corporate shills? That’s the thesis of Doug Rushkoff’s provocative new book Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back.
Rushkoff, the new media theorist who came up with the term “viral media” in the early 1990s to describe how advertising concepts replicate in the virtual world like fast moving viruses, is now arguing that the corporate values of business, profit, and consumerism have so infected our lives that we are no longer cognizant life can be lived any other way. We are victims of a dysfunctional societal relationship — one that has come to seem so normal we are almost incapable of processing of how screwed up it really is.
The corporation, one might say, has gone viral.
Rushkoff’s epiphany came via a Christmas Eve mugging in the leafy brownstone liberal Brooklyn enclave of Park Slope. When he turned to a local parenting listserv to tell of his experience, his virtual first responders did not offer sympathy. Instead, they castigated him for publicly naming the block where the crime occurred, for fear it would damage local real estate values.
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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. 
