Archive for September, 2009
Howard Dean: Reform without a Public Health Insurance Option Is Not Real Reform
BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY
(Editor’s note: the following is a chapter from Howard Dean’s book, Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform. Reproduced with the permission of the publisher, Chelsea Green).
For the great majority of Americans, staying just one step ahead of mounting medical debt is a constant struggle. Medical crises contribute to approximately half of all home foreclosure filings. According to a recent study published in The American Journal of Medicine, 62 percent of all bankruptcy filings in 2007 were partly the result of medical expenses; 78 percent of those who filed for bankruptcy actually had health insurance but found that insurance inadequate to cover their bills.
Even as skyrocketing healthcare costs are bankrupting millions of Americans, however, the earnings of private health insurance firms are rising. In most areas of the country, the insurance market is dominated by one or two large providers. Rather than bargaining for lower rates, large insurer conglomerates are transferring the high prices charged by hospitals to patients and padding their profits. As premiums soared, the profits of the top ten insurance companies grew by approximately 1,000 percent. During the same period, insurers merged more than 400 times, but employee premiums increased nearly eight times faster than average U.S. incomes.
Full Story: Howard Dean: Reform without a Public Health Insurance Option Is Not Real Reform | BuzzFlash.org.
Bill Introduced to Reform Patriot Act
| CommonDreams.org- Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI) today introduced legislation that would narrow several provisions of the Patriot Act and other surveillance laws, including the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (FAA). Three sections of the Patriot Act – the John Doe roving wiretap provision, Section 215 or the “library records” provision and the “lone wolf” provision – are up for renewal this year and will expire on December 31 if Congress does not take action. The American Civil Liberties Union has endorsed the new bill, the JUSTICE Act, and calls on Congress to move quickly to pass it.
“Over the past eight years, Congress and the executive branch have allowed for more and more surveillance while doing little to protect Americans’ privacy rights,” said Michael Macleod-Ball, Acting Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “The JUSTICE Act is a much needed remedy for the overbroad and out of control surveillance in our country. Given that three of the Patriot Act’s provisions expire at the end of the year, it’s vital that Congress pass the JUSTICE Act as quickly as it can so that proper action can be taken to protect Americans’ privacy rights.”
The JUSTICE Act would make vital changes to the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act by inserting privacy and civil liberties safeguards into each law. The JUSTICE Act would amend the National Security Letter (NSL) provision of the Patriot Act by establishing a standard of individualized suspicion, mandating meaningful judicial review and requiring thorough reporting on the FBI’s use of NSLs to Congress. The NSL provision of the Patriot Act greatly expanded the FBI’s ability to secretly demand sensitive and private customer records from Internet Service Providers, financial institutions and credit bureaus without prior judicial approval and to impose gag orders on record demand recipients. The ACLU has successfully challenged the constitutionality of the amended NSL statute’s gag provisions in a lawsuit called Doe v. Holder. A lower court ruled in 2007 that NSL gag provisions were unconstitutional and in December 2008 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld that ruling in part, agreeing that the NSL statute’s gag provision violated the First Amendment.
Full Story: Bill Introduced to Reform Patriot Act | CommonDreams.org.
Who Really Crashed the Economy?
And why do we keep blaming the wrong people?
— YES! Magazine - Mobs disrupt town meetings. Glenn Beck amplifies a careless remark by a mid-level White House staff member into a threat of a national communist takeover. The right wing spin machine creates a parent revolt over a presidential pep talk to students urging them to study hard and stay in school. Meanwhile, the Party of No blocks action on health care and climate disruption with lies and distortions and declares President Obama’s stimulus package a socialist plot and a failed waste of taxpayer money.
There is a common thread. Each of these media events has diverted attention from Wall Street’s responsibility for crashing the economy, taking trillions of dollars in public bailout money, and then rewarding itself with outlandish bonuses.
The Wall Street corporations funding the front organizations that orchestrate these and other diversions hope we will forget that America’s number one problem is Wall Street—and the overpaid Wall Street casino gamblers who destroyed our economy in a reckless test of the theory that markets can self-regulate and that the unrestrained pursuit of individual greed is beneficial to society.
Full Story: Who Really Crashed the Economy? — YES! Magazine.
Olbermann: 37 racist incidents prove Carter is right
Says of Rush Limbaugh, “The nation‘s asshole would know about the nation‘s hemorrhoid”
Raw Story » Former President Jimmy Carter’s suggestion that much of the “intensely demonstrated animosity” against President Obama is an expression of racism has been widely disputed by Republicans and some media commentators.
MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, however, came to Carter’s defense on Wednesday. “Jimmy Carter tells the truth about some, not all, but some of the rabid rage against President Obama,” Olbermann stated, “and is thus the recipient of the automatic blowback from those whose livelihoods depend on enabling the ragers to tell themselves it is not racism that they feel.”
In introducing the segment, Olbermann claimed that he could offer “at least 37″ cases that he believes “prove President Carter to be correct.” He also noted that Rush Limbaugh had attacked Carter’s statements by saying “Jimmy Carter is the nation‘s hemorrhoid” — and retorted, “”Well, I got to defer to him here, the nation‘s asshole would know about the nation‘s hemorrhoid.”
Full Story: Raw Story » Olbermann: 37 racist incidents prove Carter is right.
CIGNA Denies Cancer Patient Care, CEO Makes $120 Million In Five Years – Not A Coincidence | Crooks and Liars
Video at link
Today Brave New Films released their second installment in the Sick For Profit series, taking a look at the corrupt practices of CIGNA, denying care to their customers while their lead executives rake in millions and lead lavish lifestyles.
Meet Jo Joshua Godfrey. She had cancer without knowing for over a year.
“I would go to CIGNA and they would tell me I had bronchitis and give me medicine and send me home. No matter what medicine they gave me I wouldn’t get better. Then the CIGNA Director called me up and she told me that there was nothing wrong with me at all. I called the doctor, and I came with my film and my CAT scan and he just put it in, it took exactly thirty seconds. He told me, ‘You have cancer,’ and he said the reason CIGNA did not want to give you your records is they’ve known right way back for years that you have cancer and they’re not going to treat you.”
CIGNA took in $19.1 billion dollars in revenue last year, with a $292 million dollar income. That doesn’t include the salaries given to people like CEO Ed Hanway. He made a cool $12 million last year, and over the past five years he took in $120 million. Hanway has $28 million in unexcercised stock options. The company corporate jets, also not seen in profit statements, cost $68 million. This money is gained, as former communications director Wendell Potter says in this video, through denying claims and dumping the sick, enhancing the value of the company for Wall Street investors. The effect on people’s lives, meanwhile, is tragic. Nataline Sarkysian, featured in the Americans United For Change advertisement, lost her life after CIGNA repeated denied her a liver transplant, despite the family having full coverage.
Full Story: CIGNA Denies Cancer Patient Care, CEO Makes $120 Million In Five Years – Not A Coincidence | Crooks and Liars.
Combat “Enablers”: DON’T GO!!! Open letter to the troops from Gold Star Mom, Cindy Sheehan
Dear Combat “Enablers” and other Troops,
I read an article in the Army Times recently that said 3000 more troops will be deployed to Afghanistan and 1000 more to Iraq.
“The troops are what the military calls “combat enablers” — noncombat troops who specialize in areas such as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; explosives ordnance disposal; medical and mental health; and personnel administration. They will deploy in team-sized elements as opposed to larger units,” according to the article.
This follows close on the heels of Admiral Michael Mullen (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) going before the Senate September 15th to ask for more troops and Stanley “the Goon” McChrystal, (death squad leader and commander in Afghanistan) is expected to request more troops soon in his much awaited assessment of the mess, which will be hereafter be called: “assess-mess” to save time.
Since the Democratic Congress has already appropriated an additional 100 billion dollars and , because their leader has called Afghanistan a “war of necessity,” the followers of your Commander in Chief have stood down in the anti-war arena so I can only regretfully and gloomily predict more future disaster and body bags in the Middle East.
Full Story: Combat “Enablers”: DON’T GO!!! Open letter to the troops from Gold Star Mom, Cindy Sheehan « Dandelion Salad.
The Slick Swindler
The Slick Swindler 
Sen. Max Baucus, the Man Behind the Health Care Bill
counterpunch.com -By JOSHUA FRANK- While still in high school I had the pleasure of flying across the country to Washington, D.C., for a weeklong youth workshop on leadership and democracy. I remember the excitement I had knowing I was about to meet both of my Montana senators. Back then I was a proud registered Democrat. Having joined the Party only two months earlier, the prospect of rubbing shoulders with a veteran of my Party, I thought, was sure to be the highlight of the trip.
The swank décor of the hallways on the Hill mesmerized me as I winded through the legislative chambers. The bright carpet and gorgeous, slightly older interns meandering around the foyers made me think that perhaps politics had its subtle rewards. My intrepid journey from wing to wing led me to the bustling office of Montana Senator Max Baucus.
Max wasn’t in, however, so a cheery office assistant led me to a committee meeting that the Senator was attending. “It will be just a few minutes,” she said, continuing to chat with me about the beauty and serenity of Montana. She had grown up in Great Falls or somewhere nearby, and missed the quiet open range and starry nights. I must have reminded her of what she was like before deciding to test the dirty waters of Washington politics.
Full Story: Joshua Frank: The Slick Swindler.
The Financial Crisis One Year Later: The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same
Robert Weissman: One year ago, Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, bringing to a head the growing chaos on Wall Street.
In the days and weeks that followed Lehman’s September 15, 2008, collapse, credit markets would freeze, the stock market plunged, the government took a controlling interest in AIG, Wachovia and Merrill Lynch merged themselves out of existence, the Congress approved a plan to spend $700 billion to bail out Wall Street, the Federal Reserve innovated an array of programs involving trillions of dollars worth of support for Wall Street and the credit markets, and the national economy — and much of the global economy — declined precipitously.
As the crisis unfolded, it quickly became commonplace to suggest that nothing would ever be the same, on Wall Street or in the national economy. The Wall Street goliaths had been humbled — and many had gone out of business, via merger or bankruptcy. Deregulation went out of style and even former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan indicated that the conceptual underpinnings of his deregulatory approach had proven flawed.
Full Story: Robert Weissman: The Financial Crisis One Year Later: The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same.
Ten Things You’re Not Supposed to Know about the Swine Flu Vaccine
(NaturalNews) Let’s not beat around the bush on this issue: The swine flu vaccines now being prepared for mass injection into infants, children, teens and adults have never been tested and won’t be tested before the injections begin. In Europe, where flu vaccines are typically tested on hundreds (or thousands) of people before being unleashed on the masses, the European Medicines Agency is allowing companies to skip the testing process entirely.
And yet, amazingly, people are lining up to take the vaccine, absent any safety testing whatsoever. When the National Institutes of Health in the U.S. announced a swine flu vaccine trial beginning in early August, it was inundated with phone calls and emails from people desperate to play the role of human guinea pigs. The power of fear to herd sheeple into vaccine injections is simply amazing…
Back in Europe, of course, everybody gets to be a guinea pig since no testing will be done on the vaccine at all. Even worse, the European vaccines will be using adjuvants — chemicals used to multiply the potency of the active ingredients in vaccines.
Full Story: Ten Things You’re Not Supposed to Know about the Swine Flu Vaccine by Mike Adams the Health Ranger.
Boehner and Cantor ‘wary of the possible damage inflicted on the party’s reputation’ by Bachmann.
OPS: Boner and Cantor are worried! 
Think Progress » Over the course of the past year, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has encouraged conservatives to “slit” their “wrists” to oppose health care reform, called AmeriCorps a “re-education camp” and called for McCarthy-like investigations into whether members of Congress are pro-America or anti-America. Politico reports that House Republican leaders are worried that Bachmann’s overboard rhetoric could hurt the reputation of their entire caucus:
Long before the tea parties or Wilson’s outburst, Boehner and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) had struggled to moderate the rhetorical excesses of House conservatives hammering away on Obama’s birth certificate, decrying the creation of “death panels” and ferreting out signs of creeping socialism.
Sources say they have been especially wary of the possible damage inflicted on the party’s reputation by bomb-throwing Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), who last fall called for an investigation into whether members of Congress are “pro-America or anti-America.”
Bachmann has previously said that she’s been “labeled a kook” throughout her entire political career. Apparently, House Republicans are concerned that she’ll make that label stick to them as well.
Full Story: Think Progress » Boehner and Cantor ‘wary of the possible damage inflicted on the party’s reputation’ by Bachmann..
Health Insurers Consider A Caesarean-Section Pregnancy A Pre-Existing Condition
Think Progress » Earlier this week, the Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim reported on the fact that in seven states plus the District of Columbia, “getting beaten up by your spouse is a pre-existing condition.” The insurance industry figures that if “you are in a marriage with someone who has beaten you in the past, you’re more likely to get beaten again than the average person and are therefore more expensive to insure,” but what it really does is punish these victims for something that wasn’t their fault.
But that isn’t the only policy that health insurers have that primarily discriminate against women. First of all, most individual health insurance markets don’t cover maternity care. In fact, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, only 14 states have a requirement for such coverage, and the number of plans without maternity coverage continues to rise dramatically. Why? Anthem Blue Cross — which has been actively fighting health care reform — considers pregnancy optional and therefore not necessary to insure:
“The point of insurance is to insure against catastrophic care costs. That’s what you’re trying to aggregate and pool for such things as heart attacks and cancer,” said an Anthem Blue Cross spokesman. “Having a child is a matter of choice. Dealing with an adult onset illness, such as diabetes, heart disease breast or prostate cancer, is not a matter of choice.”
Full Story: Think Progress » Health Insurers Consider A Caesarean-Section Pregnancy A Pre-Existing Condition.
Here comes the Z5 – Teen’s invention reduces emissions
| Jerusalem Post - Zion Badash, 18, from Savyon, has invented a device to reduce emissions from internal combustion engines in most vehicles by as much as 40 percent and significantly cut gasoline consumption.
The compact contraption called Z5 has no moving parts and can be easily self-installed in cars.
After two years of research and development, it went on the market three months ago – and by all accounts is selling like hot cakes.
“Some of the people who come to us want to reduce their emissions and others want to save money on gas,” Badash told The Jerusalem Post on Friday.
Full Story: Here comes the Z5 | Science and Environment | Jerusalem Post.
86 percent in US believe recession continues: poll
The Raw Story |- Eighty-six percent of US adults believe the country remains in recession despite upbeat statements to the contrary from Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, a CNN/Opinion Research poll out Thursday showed.
Only 13 percent of those surveyed agree with Bernanke, who on Tuesday said the US recession, which began in December 2007, “is very likely over at this point” from a technical perspective.
“Economists have typically called an end to recessions long before the public thinks hard times have passed,” said Keating Holland, the CNN polling director.
“The recession of the early 1990s was officially over by 1991, but a majority of Americans didn’t think the recession was over until late in 1993,” Holland said.
Full Story: The Raw Story | 86 percent in US believe recession continues: poll.
Swine flu death rate similar to seasonal flu: expert
(Reuters) – The death rate from the pandemic H1N1 swine flu is likely lower than earlier estimates, an expert in infectious diseases said on Wednesday.
New estimates suggest that the death rate compares to a moderate year of seasonal influenza, said Dr Marc Lipsitch of Harvard University.
“It’s mildest in kids. That’s one of the really good pieces of news in this pandemic,” Lipsitch told a meeting of flu experts being held by the U.S. Institute of Medicine.
“Barring any changes in the virus, I think we can say we are in a category 1 pandemic. This has not become clear until fairly recently.”
Full Story: Swine flu death rate similar to seasonal flu: expert | Health | Reuters.
Pentagon Study Proposes Overhaul of Defense Base Act to Cover Care for Injured Contractors – ProPublica
Congress could save as much as $250 million a year through a sweeping overhaul of the controversial U.S. system to care for civilian contractors injured in war zones, according to a new Pentagon study.
In the most extensive review ever of the taxpayer-financed system, the Pentagon suggested that the government could issue its own insurance to cover the skyrocketing costs of medical care and disability pay for injured civilians.
Currently, the U.S. pays more than $400 million annually to AIG and a handful of other carriers to purchase special workers’ compensation insurance policies required for overseas civilian contractors by a law known as the Defense Base Act, the study found.
By cutting out insurance company profits as high as 35 percent, the government could self-insure the contractors for less money, according to a copy of the study obtained by ProPublica [1]. The study is due to be released Friday.
Full Story: Pentagon Study Proposes Overhaul of Defense Base Act to Cover Care for Injured Contractors – ProPublica.
The Kucinich Prediction: Here’s what’s going to happen .
It is said one should not ask how sausage or laws are made. Are you concerned about a public option? Let me share with you some insight about health care legislation which may not be good for your health.
A lesson in politics. The Kucinich Prediction: Here’s what’s going to happen …
*
1. House will make a big deal about keeping/putting a public option in HR3200 because it competes with insurance companies and will keep insurance rates low.
2. The White House will refer to the President’s speech last week where he spoke favorably of the public option.
3. The Senate will kill the competitive public option in favor of non-competitive “co-ops”. Senate leaders like Kent Conrad have said the votes to pass a public option were never there in the Senate.
4. The bill will come to a House-Senate Conference Committee without the public option.
5. House Democrats will be told to support the conference report on the legislation to support the President.
6. The bill will pass, not with a “public option” but with a private mandate requiring 30 million uninsured to buy private health insurance (if one doesn’t already have it). If you are broke, you may get a subsidy. If you are not broke, you will get a fine if you do not purchase insurance.
This legislative sausage will be celebrated as a new breakthrough and will be packaged as health insurance reform. However, the bill may require a Surgeon General’s warning label: Your Money or Your Life!
The bill that Congress passes may pale in comparison to the bill that millions of Americans will get every month/year for having or not having private health insurance.
Full Story: Daily Kos: State of the Nation.
Pollan says health-care reform will fail unless we change the way we eat
| Grist – NPR’s Guy Raz: What if health care is overhauled and it doesn’t change the American diet in any way?
Michael Pollan: We’ll go broke. If we don’t get a handle on these health care costs, the new system or the old system, we’ll go broke. And that’s why I think that really food is the elephant in the room when we’re talking about health care.
First in The New York Times last week and then on NPR this weekend, Michael Pollan made that point that if we want to fix our health-care system, we have to fix our food system.
From his op-ed in the Times:
[T]he fact that the United States spends twice as much per person as most European countries on health care can be substantially explained, as a study released last month says, by our being fatter. …
That’s why our success in bringing health care costs under control ultimately depends on whether Washington can summon the political will to take on and reform a second, even more powerful industry: the food industry. …
Cheap food is going to be popular as long as the social and environmental costs of that food are charged to the future. There’s lots of money to be made selling fast food and then treating the diseases that fast food causes. One of the leading products of the American food industry has become patients for the American health care industry.
Full Story: Pollan says health-care reform will fail unless we change the way we eat | Grist.
A New Way to Turn Plastic Into Fuel?
- NYTimes.com - Entrepreneurs have been trying for years to turn low-value wastes into high-value products. Waste plastic is among the lowest in value, and gasoline or diesel fuel the highest, but machines that carry out that conversion usually consume a lot of energy and get gummed-up by leftover materialthat they cannot convert.
Now a company in Washington, D.C., is trying out a new way — heating the plastic to a very carefully controlled temperature range, with infrared energy.
The company, Envion, is expected to cut the ribbon on Wednesday morning on a $5 million plant that it says will annually convert 6,000 tons of plastic into nearly a million barrels of something resembling oil. The product can be blended with other components and sold as gasoline or diesel.
Full Story: A New Way to Turn Plastic Into Fuel? – Green Inc. Blog – NYTimes.com.
Following Trash on Its Journey Through the Waste Disposal System
Darin Landsberg, 42, a self-described “eco-geek” in Seattle, was so curious that she invited researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology into her home last month to fish 12 items out of her garbage and recycling bins — a can of beans, a compact fluorescent light bulb — and tag them with small electronic tracking devices.
Her trash is now on its journey to the place where it goes to die or be reborn.
The Architectural League of New York went through a similar trash-tagging exercise as part of the same project when it moved its offices from midtown Manhattan to SoHo two weeks ago. Among the discarded items tagged were a coffee cup, a filing cabinet, a book shelf, a broken wine glass and an empty plastic bottle that had held liquid soap.
Full Story: Following Trash on Its Journey Through the Waste Disposal System – NYTimes.com.
Colbert: Corporations Are People Too (VIDEO)
Stephen Colbert took on the Supreme Court case over “Hillary: The Movie” this week, which centers around a 90-minute film that savaged Clinton’s presidential ambitions and whether or not it could be regulated as a campaign ad. The film’s budget, funded by Citizens United, far exceeded the amount corporations and unions are legally allowed to spend on federal campaigns, but the court could change all that. The Supremes are on the verge of deregulating corporate campaign spending despite the fact that “[their deep pocket and the potential for corruption] amply justify treating corporate and union expenditures differently from those by individuals and ideological nonprofit groups,” according to Sens. McCain and Feingold.
Stephen disagrees. He thinks that corporations should be treated just like individuals: “Corporations do everything people do except breathe, die and go to jail for dumping 1.3 million pounds of PCBs in the Hudson River.” He took us through the legal history of corporate campaign spending, which seems to hinge largely on an over-eager court reporter.
Full Story: Colbert: Corporations Are People Too (VIDEO).
Feds keep little-used airports in business. Tax $$ for Rich Peoples toys
- USATODAY.com- One of the USA’s newest airports has a 5,500-foot lighted runway, a Colonial-style terminal with white columns, and hundreds of acres for growth. But Kentucky’s Williamsburg-Whitley County Airport lacks one feature: airline passengers.
Built using $11 million in federal money, the airport is used only by private airplanes. Many are piston-engine aircraft owned by residents such as Keith Brashear, the airport board chairman who keeps his two-seat Cessna in the airport hangar. On a typical day, the airport has just two or three flights, manager Jessica Roberts says. Some days, there are none.
INTERACTIVE MAP: Small airports land big grants
The Williamsburg airport is the result of an obscure federal program that raises billions of dollars a year through taxes on every airplane ticket sold in the United States. The taxes can add up to 15% to the cost of a flight — or about $29 to a $200 round-trip ticket.
Federal lawmakers have used some of the money to build and maintain the world’s most expansive and expensive network of airports — 2,834 of them nationwide — with no scheduled passenger flights. Known as general-aviation airports, they operate separately from the 139 well-known commercial airports that handle almost all passenger flights.
Full Story: Feds keep little-used airports in business – USATODAY.com.
Insurance Company Must Pay $10 Million For Revoking Policy Of Teen With HIV
The South Carolina Supreme Court has ordered an insurance company to pay $10 million for wrongly revoking the insurance policy of a 17-year-old college student after he tested positive for HIV. The court called the 2002 decision by the insurance company “reprehensible.”
That appears to be the most an insurance company has ever been ordered to pay in a case involving the practice known as rescission, in which insurance companies retroactively cancel coverage for policyholders based on alleged misstatements – sometimes right after diagnoses of life-threatening diseases.
The ruling emerges from a conservative Southern state with one of the most pro-business climates in the country. And it comes as progressive Democrats on Capitol Hill are pressing for health care reforms, such as a public insurance option, that reflect wariness about the private insurance industry’s motives.
Full Story: Insurance Company Must Pay $10 Million For Revoking Policy Of Teen With HIV.
Will Obama listen to ex-Fed chief Paul Volcker’s warnings?
Matt Taibbi
(Bloomberg) — Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman who’s an economic adviser to U.S. President Barack Obama, today renewed his call for a limit on the activities of banks that are considered “too big to fail.”
via Volcker Renews Call for Limits on Systemically Important Banks – Bloomberg.com.
So former Fed chief Paul Volcker yesterday was spouting off about how nuts it is that certain “too big to fail” commercial banks that receive mountains of public money are allowed to run around acting like high-risk hedge funds. In a haymaker that seemed to have been designed to land right between the figurative eyes of year-old commercial bank holding companies Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, who have amped up their risk profiles and continued their investment banking businesses basically in unchanged form since their conversions to more “conservative” commercial bank status, Volcker barked:
“I do not think it reasonable that public money — taxpayer money — be indirectly available to support risk-prone capital market activities simply because they are housed within a commercial banking organization,” Volcker, 82, said at a financial conference in Los Angeles.
Full Story: Matt Taibbi – Taibblog – True/Slant.
Trade and climate change to dominate EU talks
Leaders meet to prepare for G20 summit
FT.com - Climate change, bankers’ bonuses and the prospects for a world trade deal were set to dominate a meeting of European Union leaders on Thursday in preparation for next week’s G20 summit in Pittsburgh.
The EU’s 27 heads of government were due to gather in Brussels for informal talks over dinner in a session intended partly to reassure the bloc’s smaller states that the big countries represented at Pittsburgh – notably France, Germany and the UK – would take account of their views.
The G20 group of the world’s largest industrialised and developing countries is to hold talks on September 24-25 on matters ranging from financial sector regulation to an assessment of the fiscal stimulus programmes adopted over the past year to combat the recession.
Full Story: FT.com / Brussels – Trade and climate change to dominate EU talks.
Green Cars Are All the Rage At The World’s Largest Auto Show (PHOTOS)
From hybrid plug-ins to all-electric sports cars, these green cars were all the rage at the world’s largest auto show, the Frankfurt Auto Show in Germany. Check out these amazing creations and vote on which one you would like to own!
Also known as the 1L, this car will be able to travel 100 km on just one liter of gasoline (that’s 235 miles per U.S. gallon). To achieve this, it relies on light-weight materials and a one-cylinder diesel engine.
Full Story: Green Cars Are All the Rage At The World’s Largest Auto Show (PHOTOS).
Off-the-Grid Living – Self Reliance Through Home Solar and Wind Power and Farming
You may have heard about them: Off-the-gridders living in radical opposition to modern amenities by growing their own food and cutting themselves off from the rest of society. Not so. Sure, more people are choosing to cut their dependence on the power grid, the grocery story and fuel pump. But these new homesteaders are hardly radicals—they are simply DIYers who, for a variety of reasons, revel in self-reliance. This is their story.
– Popular Mechanics - The phone rang when I was shoeless and only a couple of sips into my morning coffee. “Hi, it’s Novella Carpenter,” the caller said. “My goat is giving birth.”
Twenty minutes later I was crouched in the hay at Ghost Town Farm, pushing away chickens and peering into the pen that housed the expectant mother, Bébé. Her udder was so swollen she couldn’t get her hindquarters down. Bleating, she clawed at the dirt with her right front hoof as if searching for a stash of Vicodin. “Pass me the iodine,” Carpenter said. “We better wash up.”
Similar birthing scenes have unfolded countless times in America’s agrarian past, but none, I suspected, had the soundtrack of the Ghost Town neighborhood in Oakland, Calif. As Bébé’s cries reached an apex they were matched by the caterwauling of a police car siren on Martin Luther King Jr. Way. Then came the intestine-undulating bass of hip-hop from a passing car. Residents disagree on how Ghost Town got its name—for the isolation created when freeways cleft the neighborhood from the rest of the city in the 1950s? For the appallingly high murder rate? For the casket companies that used to be located here? More unanimously accepted is that Ghost Town is a singularly odd location for a homestead that hosts pigs, goats, geese, peaches, potatoes, spinach and bees. Carpenter is living a version of the Laura Ingalls Wilder fantasy all right, but hers is Little House in the ’Hood.
Full Story: Off-the-Grid Living – Self Reliance Through Home Solar and Wind Power and Farming – Popular Mechanics.
Connie Rhodes “Birther” Challenge Thrown Out, Taitz Scolded
U.S. District Court Judge Clay Land has thrown out a complaint questioning the president’s birth from an Army captain fighting deployment to Iraq and gave a warning to her lawyer, birther maven Orly Taitz.
Land also put attorney Orly Taitz, who represents Capt. Connie Rhodes and is a leader in the national “birther” movement, on notice by stating that she could face sanctions if she ever files a similar “frivolous” lawsuit in his court.
“(Rhodes) has presented no credible evidence and has made no reliable factual allegations to support her unsubstantiated, conclusory allegations and conjecture that President Obama is ineligible to serve as president of the United States,” Land states in his order. “Instead, she uses her complaint as a platform for spouting political rhetoric, such as her claims that the president is ‘an illegal usurper, an unlawful pretender, [and] an unqualified imposter.’”
Full Story: Connie Rhodes “Birther” Challenge Thrown Out, Taitz Scolded.
Former Interior Secretary Gale Norton is focus of corruption probe
The Justice Department investigation centers on a 2006 decision to award oil shale leases in Colorado to a Royal Dutch Shell subsidiary. Months later, the oil giant hired Norton as a legal counsel.
– latimes.com – Reporting from Washington – The Justice Department is investigating whether former Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton illegally used her position to benefit Royal Dutch Shell PLC, the company that later hired her, according to officials in federal law enforcement and the Interior Department.
The criminal investigation centers on the Interior Department’s 2006 decision to award three lucrative oil shale leases on federal land in Colorado to a Shell subsidiary. Over the years it would take to extract the oil, according to calculations from Shell and a Rand Corp. expert, the deal could net the company hundreds of billions of dollars.
The investigation’s main focus is whether Norton violated a law that prohibits federal employees from discussing employment with a company if they are involved in dealings with the government that could benefit the firm, law enforcement and Interior officials said.
Full Story: Former Interior Secretary Gale Norton is focus of corruption probe — latimes.com.
Corot-7b: New Planet Discovered; Astronomers Say There’s Solid Ground
Astronomers have finally found a place outside our solar system where there’s a firm place to stand – if only it weren’t so broiling hot.
As scientists search the skies for life elsewhere, they have found more than 300 planets outside our solar system. But they all have been gas balls or can’t be proven to be solid. Now a team of European astronomers has confirmed the first rocky extrasolar planet.
Scientists have long figured that if life begins on a planet, it needs a solid surface to rest on, so finding one elsewhere is a big deal.
Full Story: Corot-7b: New Planet Discovered; Astronomers Say There’s Solid Ground.
California Attorney General Brown To Launch Investigation Into Rating Agencies’ Role In Fueling The Financial Crisis
California AG Jerry Brown joins the ranks of Attorneys General to scrutinize the disastrous role the credit rating agencies played in the financial crisis. On Thursday, Brown will announce the investigation’s launch.
From the press release:
San Francisco – At a news conference Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 10:30 a.m., Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. will announce that he is launching an investigation into the role credit rating agencies played in fueling the financial crisis.
At the peak of the housing boom, these agencies gave their highest credit ratings to complicated financial instruments, including securities backed by subprime mortgages, making them appear as safe as government-issued Treasury bonds.
In rating these securities, these agencies worked behind the scenes with the same Wall Street firms that created them. For their work, the agencies earned billions of dollars in revenue, at a rate double what they earned for rating other financial products.
Full Story: California Attorney General Brown To Launch Investigation Into Rating Agencies’ Role In Fueling The Financial Crisis.
Credit Swaps Are Back En Vogue As Market Confidence Returns
Credit-default swaps — the financial instrument that helped bring down AIG and played a key role in causing the biggest
financial crisis since the 1930s — are, a year after the fall of Lehman Brothers, back en vogue on Wall Street, Bloomberg reports. Instead of being viewed as tools of financial disaster, CDSs are said to be contributing to the credit market’s renewed confidence.
Here’s why, according to Bloomberg:
The cost to protect against a failure by New York-based Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America Corp., and 12 of the other biggest derivatives dealers dropped 66 percent in the past six months, according to an index of swaps compiled by Credit Derivatives Research LLC. While the U.S. struggles with the slowest recovery since 1945, the market where investors protect themselves from default and speculate on corporate debt shows confidence is the highest since June 2008.
For those who need a reminder of just what CDSs are and how they became such a phenomenon, it’s worth reading (or re-reading) Matt Taibbi’s story “The Big Takeover” that was published in Rolling Stone last spring.
Here is Taibbi on how the CDS was created:
Full Story: Credit Swaps Are Back En Vogue As Market Confidence Returns.
Baucus Plan Pleases Drug Makers, but Not Other Groups
- NYTimes.com – Earlier this year, after the Senate Finance Committee and the White House asked health industry groups to make concessions to help pay for a health care overhaul, only two groups ultimately came through. One, the drug industry, offered $80 billion over 10 years, while the other, hospitals, offered $155 billion.
For drug makers, the proposal unveiled Wednesday by the Finance Committee chairman, Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, met their expectations and promises to send millions of new customers their way.
Other big industries that never struck a deal are not so happy.
Full Story: Baucus Plan Pleases Drug Makers, but Not Other Groups – Prescriptions Blog – NYTimes.com.
Private Student Loans Would Be Killed By House Bill
WASHINGTON — The House is poised to vote to push private lenders out of the federal college loan business and massively expand the government’s own lending program.
Lawmakers debated a student aid bill Wednesday that has widespread support, including from the White House. The measure is expected to win passage Thursday and go next to the Senate.
Proponents of putting the government in charge of all federal loans say it would save an estimated $87 billion, though this figure has been disputed.
The money would boost Pell Grants for needy students and pay for a new college completion fund, community college reforms and more college aid for veterans.
“No student in this great country of ours should have to mortgage their future to pursue their dreams,” said the bill’s sponsor, California Democratic Rep. George Miller, chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee.
Full Story: Private Student Loans Would Be Killed By House Bill.
Plight of the Bumblebee
| Earth Island Journal – Bombus franklini, a North American bumblebee, was last seen on August 9, 2006. Professor Emeritus Robbin Thorp, an entomologist at UC Davis, was doing survey work on Mt. Ashland in Oregon when he saw a single worker on a flower, Sulphur eriogonum, near the Pacific Crest Trail. He had last seen the bee in 2003, roughly in the same area, where it had once been very common. “August ninth,” Thorp says. “I’ve got that indelibly emblazoned in my mind.”
Thorp had been keeping tabs on the species since the late 1960s. In 1998, the US Forest Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Land Management supported an intensive monitoring project to determine whether the bee should be listed as an endangered species, in part because of its narrow endemism. The total range of B. franklini is only 190 miles north to south, from southern Oregon to northern California, and 70 miles east to west between the Coast and Sierra-Cascade Ranges.
When Thorp began to monitor the bee, populations were robust, and he even estimated their range to be slightly further to the north and southwest than previously believed. The study was, in part, an attempt to find out why franklini’s range is so restricted and other western bumblebees, such as its close relative Bombus occidentalis, are not. Thorp was investigating that question when something else occurred: Populations of both bees began to decline precipitously. “All of a sudden the bees disappeared out from under me,” he says.
Full Story: Earth Island Institute | Earth Island Journal.
Frank Schaeffer on Rachel Maddow
NOTE: This guy supported McCain – until McCain chose Caribou Barbie
GOP Sub-Culture Is “The Fifth Column Of Insanity”
35% of New Jersey Conservatives think President Obama is the anti-Christ. Frank Schaeffer explains where all this madness stems from and states that “the Evangelical sub-culture has rotted the brain of the United States of America”.
Personally, I don’t think only the sub-culture is insane, it seems like this Christofascist insanity has gone mainstream with Faux news engendering it.
YouTube – Frank Schaeffer on Rachel Maddow.
Limbaugh: We need segregated buses
OPS: Time to do a ‘Beck-job” on fat Bastard’s advertisers
Raw Story » In a remark extraordinary even by the standards of conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio heavyweight declared on his program Wednesday that the United States needed to return to racially segregated buses.
Referring to an incident in which a white student was beaten by black students on a bus, Limbaugh said: “I think the guy’s wrong. I think not only it was racism, it was justifiable racism. I mean, that’s the lesson we’re being taught here today. Kid shouldn’t have been on the bus anyway. We need segregated buses — it was invading space and stuff. This is Obama’s America.”
Full Story: Raw Story » Limbaugh: We need segregated buses.
Revealed: The secret tapes Clinton hid during Lewinsky scandal
The Raw Story » They’re unlikely to be as seminal or shocking as the Watergate tapes, but the long-awaited “Clinton tapes” are nonetheless certain to alter history’s perspective on the former two-term president.
Seventy-nine conversations between Bill Clinton and historian Taylor Branch that took place over the eight years of the Clinton administration have now been turned into a 670-page book, The Clinton Tapes.
For years, Branch, a long-time friend of the Clintons, had to keep his recordings of the conversations a secret, the GQ blog reports. Among the many topics the two friends discussed were Monica Lewinsky, and Branch says Clinton was concerned the tapes would be subpoenaed in the Whitewater investigation or the congressional impeachment proceedings launched against the president in 1998.
Full Story: The Raw Story » Revealed: The secret tapes Clinton hid during Lewinsky scandal.
On healthcare even the Brits are calling Republicans liars( Video)
Both in TV commercials and on cable news shows like Fox we have heard the opposition to the public option health 
care reform use Great Britain and their system as a poster child for why the public option would be a disaster. They have tried to promote the idea that not only are British citizens opposed to it but even members of their own government say it doesn’t work.
Now we find that all these are just more Republican lies and the Brits are furious over the way Republican opponents of health care have lied about their system. What’s worse, some British citizens who were used in anti-public option commercials say they were duped and are just as furious.
Below are some videos that expose just how far Republicans are willing to go to lie about what the Brits say about their system of universal health care.
Full Story: On healthcare even the Brits are calling Republicans liars( Video).
Conrad Praises Baucus Bill Which Contains Co-Ops He Proposed After Meeting With UnitedHealth Group
Think Progress » – After months of legislative deliberation aimed at forging a bipartisan health care bill that began by ejecting single-payer advocates from his hearing room, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) unveiled his committee’s health care bill today with zero Republican support. Baucus’s bill — which former Cigna executive Wendell Potter has referred to as “an absolute gift” to the health insurance industry — includes no public option, an individual insurance mandate, and the creation of health care co-ops.
While a number of Democrats immediately rose in opposition to Baucus’s bill — Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) said it has “no legitimacy,” outspoken single-payer advocate Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) declared it “dead on arrival,” and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) flatly refused to support it — one Democrat, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), praised the bill today:
“It’s a good product,” Conrad said on CNBC. “It is an attempt by the chairman to lay out what he thinks reflects best the discussions over this extended period of time. And I think the chairman has done a good job of capturing where the talks are at this point.” [...]
Full Story: Think Progress » Conrad Praises Baucus Bill Which Contains Co-Ops He Proposed After Meeting With UnitedHealth Group.
World food aid at 20-year low, 1 billion hungry
Food aid is at a 20-year low despite the number of critically hungry people soaring this year to its highest level ever, the United Nations relief agency said Wednesday.
The number of hungry people will pass 1 billion this year for the first time, the U.N. World Food Program (WFP) said, adding that it is facing a serious budget shortfall.
To date the WFP has confirmed $2.6 billion in funding for its 2009 budget of $6.7 billion.
“This comes at a time of great vulnerability for the hungry,” the WFP said in a statement.
“Millions have been buffeted by the global financial downturn, their ability to buy food is limited by stubbornly high prices. In addition, unpredictable weather patterns are causing more weather-related hunger,” the WFP said.
Full Story: World food aid at 20-year low, 1 billion hungry – Yahoo! News.
Baucus Bill: Rockefeller Says Dem Senators Are Not Pleased
The health care bill that Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) unveiled Wednesday without GOP support has no room for legislative error. Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s declaration a day earlier that he would oppose the measure in its current form gives the chairman a one-vote margin on the Finance Committee, which includes 13 Democrats and ten Republicans.
On the House side, the Baucus proposal falls very, very short.
Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), who has become something of a spokesman for House progressives opposed to any bill without a public option, quickly convened reporters to respond to the Baucus offering and declared it “dead on arrival.”
And Rockefeller (D-W.V.) said he has company in his reservations in the Senate.
Full Story: Baucus Bill: Rockefeller Says Dem Senators Are Not Pleased.
AFL-CIO Convention Endorses Single-Payer
Unanimous Vote for Medicare-for-All Reform
– Healthcare-NOW! - In a historic vote that adds the nation’s leading voice of American workers to a broad national campaign, the AFL-CIO voted unanimously at its national convention here today to endorse the enactment of single-payer, universal healthcare for all Americans.
The resolution was sponsored by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, and the Alameda County (California) Central Labor Council.
In urging its support, CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro, an AFL-CIO National Vice-President, noted the recent death of Crystal Lee Sutton, the real-life union organizer from the film Norma Rae who died last week after a long battle with cancer, exacerbated by her own three-year fight with her insurance company.
“No one should spend the last days of their life fighting with their insurance company,” said DeMoro. “We should not make choices of who gets healthcare based on their ethnicity, gender, or economic status. But I am addressing the labor movement, not Wall Street. And we all know what is the right thing – the moral thing – single-payer healthcare.”
Full Story: AFL-CIO Convention Endorses Single-Payer – Healthcare-NOW!.
Why Is Obama Still Using Blackwater?
Jeremy Scahill 
Two years ago on September 16, 2007, on a steamy hot Baghdad day with temperatures reaching 100 degrees, a heavily armed Blackwater convoy entered a congested intersection at Nisour Square in the Mansour district of the Iraqi capital. The once-upscale section of Baghdad was still lined with boutiques, cafes and art galleries dating back to better days. The ominous caravan consisted of four large armored vehicles with machine guns mounted on top.
As the Blackwater convoy was entering the square that day, a young Iraqi medical student named Ahmed Hathem Al-Rubaie was driving his mother, Mahasin, in the family’s white sedan. As fate would have it, they found themselves stuck near Nisour Square. The family were devout Muslims and were fasting in observance of the holy month of Ramadan.
Ali Khalaf Salman, an Iraqi traffic cop on duty in Nisour Square that day, remembers vividly when the Blackwater convoy entered the intersection, spurring him and his colleagues to scramble to stop traffic. But as the Mambas entered the square, the convoy suddenly made a surprise U-turn and proceeded to drive the wrong way on a one-way street. As Khalaf watched, the convoy came to an abrupt halt. He says a large white man with a mustache, positioned atop the third vehicle in the Blackwater convoy, began to fire his weapon “randomly.”
Full Story: Why Is Obama Still Using Blackwater?.
Israel Defence Chief – Iran Not An Existential Threat
– NYTimes.com - Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak was quoted Thursday as saying he does not view Iran as a threat to the existence of the Jewish state, a view that would seem to depart from Israeli statements of the recent past.
Israel’s mass-circulation Yedioth Ahronoth daily quoted Barak, the head of Israel’s centre-left Labour party, as saying “Iran does not constitute an existential threat against Israel.”
In response to a question about Tehran’s nuclear program which Israel has said it sees as destined to produce atomic weapons that could put its existence at risk, Barak said in an interview with the paper:
“I am not among those who believe Iran is an existential issue for Israel.”
Barak said “Israel is strong, I don’t see anyone who could pose an existential threat,” although he did add that he viewed Iran as a challenge to the whole world.
Full Story: Israel Defence Chief – Iran Not An Existential Threat – NYTimes.com.
U.S. to Shelve Nuclear-Missile Shield
- WSJ.com - Defense Plans for Poland, Czech Republic to Be Dropped as Iran Rocket Threat Downgraded; Moscow Likely to Welcome Move 
The White House will shelve Bush administration plans to build a missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, according to people familiar with the matter, a move likely to cheer Moscow and roil the security debate in Europe.
The U.S. will base its decision on a determination that Iran’s long-range missile program has not progressed as rapidly as previously estimated, reducing the threat to the continental U.S. and major European capitals, according to current and former U.S. officials.
The findings, expected to be completed as early as next week following a 60-day review ordered by President Barack Obama, would be a major reversal from the Bush administration, which pushed aggressively to begin construction of the Eastern European system before leaving office in January.
The Bush administration proposed the European-based system to counter the perceived threat of Iran developing a nuclear weapon that could be placed atop its increasingly sophisticated missiles. There is widespread disagreement over the progress of Iran’s nuclear program toward developing such a weapon, but miniaturizing nuclear weapons for use on long-range missiles is one of the most difficult technological hurdles for an aspiring nuclear nation.
Full Story: U.S. to Shelve Nuclear-Missile Shield – WSJ.com.
Administration Plans to Regulate Obscure but Economically Powerful Finance Segment Known as “Industrial Banks.”
Industrial Banks Fight Added Regulation
- NYTimes.com – Generations ago, industrialists and financiers extracted fortunes from the copper and gold mines dug into the canyons near here. Now, their modern-day counterparts are resisting a government proposal that could shut down what has become another gold mine of sorts.
Utah is the nation’s unlikely capital of industrial banks — niche institutions that primarily make loans to businesses. Corporations like Goldman Sachs, Target and General Electric have been attracted to the state to set up such institutions. While they have brought billions of dollars in deposits, thousands of jobs and millions in charitable donations to Salt Lake City, the banks have also drawn fire from Washington.
The Obama administration argues that the banks pose a threat to the economy because their parent companies can engage in risky practices but are often exempt from routine scrutiny by the Federal Reserve. Treasury officials want to require the corporate owners of the nation’s 41 industrial banks to accept more rigorous regulation or be forced to sell or shut them down.
Full Story: Back to Business – In Utah, Industrial Banks Fight Added Regulation – Series – NYTimes.com.
Court rules that KBR employee’s gang rape wasn’t a personal injury ‘arising in the workplace.’
OPS: it was probably a ‘preexisting condition ‘ too.
Think Progress » In 2005, Jamie Lee Jones was gang-raped by her co-workers while she was working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad. In an apparent attempt to cover up the incident, the company then put her in a shipping container for at least 24 hours without food, water, or a bed, and “warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job.” Even more insultingly, the DOJ resisted bringing any criminal charges in the matter. KBR argued that Jones’ employment contract warranted her claims being heard in private arbitration — without jury, judge, public record, or transcript of the proceedings. After 15 months in arbitration, Jones and her lawyers went to court to fight the KBR claims. Yesterday, a court ruled in favor of Jones.” Mother Jones reports:
Jones argued that the alleged gang rape was not related to her employment and thus, wasn’t covered by the arbitration agreement. Finally, two years later, a federal court has sensibly agreed with her. Tuesday, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2 to 1 ruling, found her alleged injuries were not, in fact, in any way related to her employment and thus, not covered by the contract.
Full Story: Think Progress » Court rules that KBR employee’s gang rape wasn’t a personal injury ‘arising in the workplace.’.
Thirty-five percent of New Jersey conservative voters think Obama may be the Anti-Christ.
Think Progress » A new Public Policy Polling survey of New Jersey voters has some shocking results: 21 percent either believe or aren’t sure that President Obama is the Anti-Christ. Twenty-nine percent of Republicans and 35 percent of “conservative” voters also either believe he is or aren’t sure.
Not surprisingly, this meme has also been pushed by Fox News host Glenn Beck, who brought on controversial pastor John Hagee last year and asked, “There are people– they say this about Bill Clinton — he might be the Antichrist. Odds that Barack Obama is the Antichrist?”
Full Story: Think Progress » Thirty-five percent of New Jersey conservative voters think Obama may be the Anti-Christ..
DC Madam Customer David Vitter Is Outraged By The ACORN Prostitution Scandal
OPS: He’s outraged because no one was wearing diapers
Think Progress » Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) is the self-proclaimed “most outspoken critic of ACORN.” Following the release of incriminating videos showing ACORN workers giving advice to undercover conservative activists inquiring about how to start a brothel and not get caught, Vitter and other Republicans called for investigations and audits of the organization. On Monday, he put out a press release bragging about all his anti-ACORN work over the years and commending the administration for condemning the group:
After months of beating the drum and continued news reports of criminal investigations, the president and his administration are finally starting to distance themselves from ACORN. The Census dropping ACORN as a partner is a good, common sense move. Now we must go one step further and support my simple and direct amendment, which declares that no federal funds should go ACORN.
Full Story: Think Progress » DC Madam Customer David Vitter Is Outraged By The ACORN Prostitution Scandal.
Meet Your Insurance Company Executive: Rescission
Wendell Potter, former CIGNA Healthcare Director of Communications explains the insurance industry practice of rescission
Full Story: YouTube – Meet Your Insurance Company Executive: Rescission.
America’s failed model for the world
Europeans keep asking me, has America lost its mind? From healthcare to its economy, the US is looking merely average
| Steven Hill | guardian.co.uk – Europeans are shaking their heads over their American friends again. Whether talking to people in the street, in the cafés or to journalists or political leaders, everyone here asks me the same question: Has America lost its mind? Town halls filled with angry citizens, shouting at their elected leaders, some of them armed with guns and threatening signs? Besides the media spectacle of these neo-1776 revolutionaries, what is doubly perplexing to Europeans is the focus of the protests: healthcare.
What’s strange to a European is that everyone here already has healthcare. The place that Donald Rumsdfeld once sneeringly called “old Europe” long ago solved this dilemma, producing quality healthcare for a fraction of the price that Americans pay. Many Europeans are astonished when they find out that 47 million Americans – larger than the populations of most European nations – don’t have any healthcare at all except a hospital emergency room.
Contrary to stereotype, most of Europe doesn’t use single payer, with France, Germany and others having evolved a “third way” that combines individual choice with private, nonprofit insurance companies and Medicare-like cost controls. Even countries like Croatia, Hungary and Slovenia, with per capita incomes only a fraction of that in the United States, have healthcare for all their people. Europeans simply don’t understand how a wealthy United States could remain the last advanced nation that does not have universal healthcare.
Full Story: America’s failed model for the world | Steven Hill | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.
Doctors warn of global health catastrophe unless climate change is fixed
A failure to tackle climate change will lead to a ”global health catastrophe”, leading doctors warned today 
- Telegraph - But taking steps to cut the world’s carbon emissions, such as eating less meat and switching to cleaner energy, will have benefits for people’s health, an editorial published in both the Lancet and British Medical Journal (BMJ) said.
And in a letter accompanying the editorial, medical chiefs in the UK, Ireland and around the world called on doctors to put pressure on politicians meeting in Copenhagen in December in a bid to secure a new global deal on cutting emissions.
The heads of the Royal Colleges said doctors should demand world leaders listen to the scientific evidence of climate change and implement strategies to tackle emissions that will benefit the health of people around the globe.
Full Story: Doctors warn of global health catastrophe unless climate change is fixed – Telegraph.
“Drop Dobbs”: CNN Pressured To Give Up Controversial Host (VIDEO)
CNN is facing pressure on a number of fronts to drop Lou Dobbs from their roster of on-air talent, a move that would force millions of Americans seeking out news about the conspiracy to spread leprosy throughout America via illegal Mexican immigrants to turn instead to the guy who lives under the bridge by the old tire factory.
Leading the way in this effort are a coalition of organizations united under the “Drop Dobbs” banner, including Media Matters for America, the National Council of La Raza, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, the New Democrat Network, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Writing for Media Matters’ County Fair blog, John V. Santore sums up their beef:
For years, Lou Dobbs has been one of the most dangerous hosts on cable news. He benefits enormously from the legitimacy of the CNN brand, which provides him with an unparalleled platform from which to mainstream the hate speech and racially charged conspiracy theories normally relegated to Fox News and other conservative news outlets. Dobbs calls himself an “advocacy journalist,” but he doesn’t even live up to that ambiguous standard. Good journalism enhances the discussion of serious topics, but Dobbs helps to undermine and debase that discussion, routinely infusing it with misinformation and fear. And when it comes to issues like immigration, he has more in common with birther Orly Taitz than with Anderson Cooper.
Full Story: “Drop Dobbs”: CNN Pressured To Give Up Controversial Host (VIDEO).
World Bank spends billions on coal-fired power stations despite own warnings
- Times Online – The World Bank is spending billions of pounds subsidising new coal-fired power stations in developing countries despite claiming that burning fossil fuels exposes the poor to catastrophic climate change. The bank, which has a goal of reducing poverty and is funded by Britain and other developed countries, calls on all nations in a report today to “act differently on climate change”.
It says that the world must reduce its dependence on fossil fuels, but it is funding several giant coal-burning plants that will each emit millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide a year for the next 40 to 50 years.
Britain is contributing £400million to a World Bank fund that claims to support “clean technology” but is financing coal power plants.
The bank’s World Development Report says: “Developing countries are disproportionately affected by climate change — a crisis that is not of their making and for which they are the least prepared. Increasing access to energy and other services using high-carbon technologies will produce more greenhouse gases, hence more climate change.”
Full Story: World Bank spends billions on coal-fired power stations despite own warnings – Times Online.
Top Insurers Spend Heavily to Influence Health Care Reform Debate: $2.5M Per Month
Top Insurers Spend Heavily to Influence Health Care Reform Debate: $2.5M Per Month
Fourteen major health insurers and their industry association flexed their political muscle to the tune of $2.5 million per month — an increase of 25 percent over previous years — in the first half of 2009 to influence the health care reform debate, according to a report released today by the Public Campaign Action Fund, a nonpartisan group that tracks interest group influence in Washington.
“These highly profitable corporations are spending millions every month to protect their bottom line by fighting health care reform in Washington, D.C.,” says David Donnelly, national campaigns director of Public Campaign Action Fund. “To put it starkly, they have invested heavily in insider lobbyists and politicians to maintain their bottom line leaving Americans out in the cold and stuck with our broken health care system. It’s time to end the campaign money chase and let politicians do what we elected them to do– debate and pass sound public policy that benefits all of us and not just those who can make big campaign contributions.”
The study analyzed political spending — campaign contributions by company political action committees and employees, as well as lobbying expenses — for the 14 insurance companies that were ranked in the largest 1,000 American corporations by Forbes Magazine earlier this year, according to a statement from Public Campaign Action Fund.
Full Story: On The Hill: Top Insurers Spend Heavily to Influence Health Care Reform Debate: $2.5M Per Month.
Another lawsuit targets founder of Blackwater
| HamptonRoads.com - Yet another civil lawsuit accuses Blackwater guards of driving through the streets of Baghdad randomly shooting innocent Iraqis. 
The latest case accuses Blackwater founder Erik Prince of personally directing murders from a 24-hour remote monitoring “war room” at the private military company’s Moyock, N.C., headquarters.
Prince “personally directed and permitted a heavily-armed private army… to roam the streets of Baghdad killing innocent civilians,” alleges the suit, filed by four Iraqi citizens.
Full Story: Another lawsuit targets founder of Blackwater | HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com.
Treasury Admits Economy is Still in Trouble
The perma-bulls say that the economic crisis is over.
But a new report from Treasury entitled “The Next Phase of Government Financial Stabilization and Rehabilitation Policies” indicates that the banks and the financial system will need to remain on life support for the indefinite future:
Although we are rolling back emergency support programs that are no longer needed, significant parts of the financial system remain impaired. Unanticipated events could intensify pressure on the financial system. In this context, it is prudent to maintain capacity to address unforeseen developments [i.e. life support] …
The normalization of financial markets achieved to date is partial and fragile, and the economic recovery is, at best, in its very early stages. In residential real estate, although the rate of deterioration has slowed, the market has not established a firm bottom … and foreclosures continue to rise across all classes of mortgages, with prime mortgages now leading the way. The restructuring process for the commercial real estate market has only recently begun. The pace of bank failures has increased and it is expected to remain elevated for some time. However, liquidity-induced failures have steadily decreased given the existence of deposit insurance and the orderly resolution of failed banks. Moreover, the FSP in general and the SCAP in particular were designed to ensure that the financial system as a whole had the capacity to continue to perform its vital functions while dealing with these challenges.
India to Chinese investors: No more visas, hire Indians
BEIJING: Chinese investors should employ more Indians to run their projects in India instead of carrying large number of workers from China.
This is New Delhi’s latest response to complaints concerning India’s reluctance to grant enough visas for Chinese workers.
“An India-specific approach will have to be thought through by Chinese companies,” S Jaishankar, India’s new ambassador in Beijing told a conference attended by Indian and Chinese businessmen and officials.
He pointed out that companies from other foreign countries did not feel the need to carry their own workers to projects in India, which has a vast reservoir of skilled workmen and a long history of industry and entrepreneurship.
“I have personal experience in working with many of India’s other major economic partners. I cannot recall their investments and projects requiring such large manpower support from home,” Jaishankar, who was earlier ambassador in Singapore, said.
Suicide Victim May Have Hidden Millions Abroad
….a UBS tax dodger
NYTimes.com - He seemed, in many ways, like a man from another time, a Gatsbyesque figure who glided through a world of old money, private clubs and pedigree horses, his family name emblazoned on Ivy League halls.
Then, in an instant, he was gone — his privileged life ended, by his own hand, with a single gunshot to the head.
No one can know exactly what Finn M. W. Caspersen, a prominent philanthropist and the heir to the Beneficial Corporation fortune, was thinking when he decided to take his life on Labor Day. Although Mr. Caspersen, 67, was battling kidney cancer, his suicide shocked his family and friends, The New York Times’s Lynnley Browning writes.
Full Story: Suicide Victim May Have Hidden Millions Abroad – DealBook Blog – NYTimes.com.
UCP fares poorly in Army camo test
- Army Times - The Army’s Universal Camouflage Pattern, now under scrutiny by soldiers and Congress, is “significantly” worse at concealing soldiers than the Marine desert digital and MultiCam camouflage patterns, according to a two-year Army camouflage test obtained by Army Times.
The “Photosimulation Camouflage Detection Test,” conducted by U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development between March 2007 and March 2009, identifies four camouflage patterns that outperform the Army Combat Uniform’s UCP.
The Marine Corps desert digital, MultiCam, Desert Brush and a Syrian military pattern all “improved the soldier’s visual detectability by decreasing the detection distance by a minimum of 16% in the desert and woodland environments as compared to the target wearing UCP,” the report shows.
Full Story: UCP fares poorly in Army camo test – Army News, news from Iraq, – Army Times.
Why Government-Run Healthcare Is Good For Business
On The Hill- By Scott Nance : Instead of leaping out of their seats to call President Obama a liar, by all rights Republicans ought to be jumping up to demand enactment of a robust public option today.
That’s at least if the GOP was actually listening to the needs of its major constituency: the business community.
It’s obvious that the insurance industry desperately doesn’t want a federally run public option because of the potential for new competition that it will bring. As for the rest of Corporate America, they ought to be cheering every time the words “public option” are even mentioned.
Just look at the results of a new poll of U.S. business leaders: nearly 90 percent of whom cite health care costs as a major concern, more than cite taxes, government regulation, labor costs or energy costs.
Full Story: On The Hill: Capitol Idea: Why Government-Run Healthcare Is Good For Business.
Baucus Senate Legislation Finally Unveiled: An Utter Failure
After Months Of Negotiations And Concessions, Senator Baucus’ Health Care Bill Introduced With Zero Republican Support
WASHINGTON — Sen. Max Baucus on Wednesday released the much-awaited Senate version of an American health-system remake – a landmark $856 billion, 10-year measure that starts a rough ride through Congress without visible Republican backing.
The bill by Baucus, chairman of the Finance Committee, would make major changes to the nation’s $2.5 trillion health care system, including requiring all individuals to purchase health care or pay a fine, and language prohibiting insurance company practices like charging more to people with more serious health problems.
“This is a unique moment in history where we can finally reach an objective so many of us have sought for so long,” Baucus said. “The Finance Committee has carefully worked through the details of health care reform to ensure this package works for patients, for health care providers and for our economy.”
Full Story: Health Care Bill: Baucus Senate Legislation Finally Unveiled.
US retail sales leap 2.7 percent in August
The Raw Story | US retail sales surged 2.7 percent in August, led by the government’s popular “Cash for Clunkers” program that boosted auto sales, the Commerce Department said Tuesday.
The monthly increase was the steepest since January 2006, the department said.
The jump in retail sales followed a revised 0.2 percent decline in July, worse than the initial estimate of a 0.1 percent drop.
The sharp increase in August retail sales surprised most analysts who had expected a 1.9 percent increase.
On an annual basis, sales remained 5.3 percent below the August 2008 level.
Full Story: The Raw Story | US retail sales leap 2.7 percent in August.
Good Billions After Bad
Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele on the U.S. Treasury
As the Bush administration waned, the Treasury shoveled more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in tarp funds into the financial system—without restrictions, accountability, or even common sense. The authors reveal how much of it ended up in the wrong hands, doing the opposite of what was needed.
By Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele
| vanityfair.com – Just inside the entrance to the U.S. Treasury, on the other side of a forbidding array of guard stations and scanners that control access to the Greek Revival building, lies one of the most beautiful interior spaces in all of Washington. Ornate bronze doors open inward to a two-story-high chamber. Chandeliers line the coffered ceiling, casting a soft glow on the marble walls and richly inlaid marble floor.
Full Story: October 2009: Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele on the U.S. Treasury | vanityfair.com.
Blockbuster Will Close Up to 960 Stores
- CBS News- Blockbuster is planning to close as many as 960 stores by the end of next year. That would shrink the video rental chain by more than 20 percent as it struggles against stiff competition from Netflix and Redbox.
The store closures disclosed in documents filed Tuesday show that Blockbuster is having to cut much deeper than it anticipated to save money and keep its lenders happy.
Blockbuster now expects to close between 810 and 960 of its U.S. stores through 2010, up from the 380 to 425 stores that normally would be closed. If Blockbuster hits the high end of the new target for store closures, it will represent 22 percent of its 4,356 U.S. stores.
Full Story: Blockbuster Will Close Up to 960 Stores – CBS News.
Democrats now comprise majority of ‘most corrupt in Congress’ list
Raw Story » Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington was once characterized as a liberal group on a witch hunt to oust then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX).
Not anymore. On Tuesday, the Washington watchdog group released its list of what it called the “most corrupt members of Congress” — and Democrats, who now control both chambers of Congress, comprise the majority.
The group posted the list of their 15 most corrupt members of Congress on a special website, CREWsMostCorrupt.com.
Democrats on the list are Sen. Roland Burris (D-IL), Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL), Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (D-WV), Rep. John P. Murtha (D-PA), Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-NY), Rep. Laura Richardson (D-CA), Rep. Pete Visclosky (D-IN) and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA).
Republicans on the list include Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL), Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA), Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA), Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Rep. Don Young (R-AK). For what it’s worth, there are more Republicans percentagewise than there are in Congress, but this is probably small consolation to those who voted in a Democratic majority on the heels of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.
Full Story: Raw Story » Democrats now comprise majority of ‘most corrupt in Congress’ list.
Employer Health Benefits 2009 Annual Survey
Kaiser Family Foundation
This annual survey of employers provides a detailed look at trends in employer-sponsored health coverage, including premiums, employee contributions, cost-sharing provisions, and other relevant information. The survey continued to document the prevalence of high-deductible health plans associated with a savings option and included new questions on health risk assessments. The 2009 survey included 3,188 randomly selected public and private firms with three or more employees (2,054 of which responded to the full survey and 1,134 of which responded to an additional question about offering coverage). Researchers at the Kaiser Family Foundation, the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, and Health Research & Educational Trust designed and analyzed the survey.
Free Full report available in pdf download
Excerpt: H E A LT H I N S U R A N C E P R E M I U M S
In 2009, the average annual premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance are $4,824 for single coverage and $13,375 for family coverage. Premiums for family coverage are 5% higher than last year
($12,680), but there was no statistically significant growth in the single premiums. Since 1999, average premiums for family coverage have increased 131% (Exhibit A). Average premiums for family coverage are lower for workers in small firms (3–199 workers) than for workers in large firms (200 or more workers). Average premiums for high-deductible health plans with a savings option (HDHP/SOs) are lower than the overall average for all plan types for both single and family coverage
Full Story: Employer Health Benefits 2009 Annual Survey – Kaiser Family Foundation.
Many Employers to Raise Cost of Health Benefits, Survey Finds
David S. Hilzenrath - Washington Post – Though Americans who already have medical coverage may be wary of change, a new survey indicates that they may be hard-pressed to escape it — even in the absence of health-care reform.
As businesses contend with rising costs, many workers face an erosion of health benefits next year, according to an annual survey released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust.
Forty percent of employers surveyed said they are likely to increase the amount their workers pay out of pocket for doctor visits. Almost as many said they are likely to raise annual deductibles and the amount workers pay for prescription drugs.
Nine percent said they plan to tighten eligibility for health benefits; 8 percent said they plan to drop coverage entirely. Forty-one percent of employers said they are “somewhat” or “very” likely to increase the amount employees pay in premiums — though that would not necessarily mean employees would pay a higher percentage of the premiums. Employers could simply be passing along the same share of the overall increase that they are doing this year.
The authors of the study said the findings underscore the need for federal action to rein in costs.
Full Story: Many Employers to Raise Cost of Health Benefits, Survey Finds.
Rep. Alan Grayson Announces a Hearing on Ron Paul’s Bill to Audit the Federal Reserve (HR 1207)
Rep. Alan Grayson announces there will be a hearing in late September on the bill to audit the Federal Reserve. If this bill passes, the audit will be the first time the central bank has been independently audited.
Full Story: YouTube – Rep. Alan Grayson Announces a Hearing on Ron Paul’s Bill to Audit the Federal Reserve (HR 1207).
Mafia sank boat with radioactive waste: official
The Raw Story |- Italian authorities have discovered a ship that was sunk by the mafia off the coast of southern Italy with 120 barrels of radioactive waste on board, a local prosecutor said.
The 110-metre (360-feet) long ship was found on Saturday 500 metres (1,640 feet) under water and around 28 kilometres (17 miles) from the coast of Calabria, Paola city prosecutor Bruno Giordano told AFP.
“For the moment, we do not know the origin of the waste, but it is probably from abroad. It is a first lead,” he said.
The Cunsky is one of 32 vessels carrying toxic material that has been sunk by the mafia in the Mediterranean, according to the prosecutor’s office in Reggio Calabria.
Full Story: The Raw Story | Mafia sank boat with radioactive waste: official.
Innovating our Way to Economic Growth
Our recovery lies in innovation on a massive scale, according to economist and former Vice Presidential candidate Pat Choate.
Alexia Cameron – economyincisis.org- Eventually our leaders will realize that this country will not experience longterm economic growth through the effects of the current stimulus package. Our recovery lies in innovation on a massive scale, and a patent system that encourages inventors to invent.
In his latest book, Saving Capitalism , Economist and former Vice Presidential candidate Pat Choate outlines how the U.S. can restore economic prosperity through altering patent laws and fostering innovation. Choate states that tackling this approach is the least expensive way to emerge from the current depression and sustain long-term economic growth.
As it currently stands, the U.S. patent system is detrimental to innovators, investors and entrepreneurs. The Federal Trade Commission favors a big-entity, antipatent agenda that allows big companies and foreign countries to weaken the patent system while weakening barriers to infringement, thus lessening protections for inventors.
Full Story: Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Job Loss: Persisting Fear
According to The Washington Post, a nationwide survey shows that six of every 10 Americans are worrying about job loss in the months ahead.
Craig Harrington – economyincisis.org - Despite working over a year to allay fears and arrest the financial crisis, fear still remains in the minds of tens of millions of Americans. According to The Washington Post, a nationwide survey shows that six of every 10 Americans are worrying about job loss in the months ahead.
Meanwhile, despite the government’s continual insistence that the stimulus will eventually begin to positively affect the economy, a majority still see the program as a failure.
With the health care debate becoming increasingly muddied by partisan antics, and the Republicans in Congress becoming more openly hostile to the administration, the president’s once sterling approval rating has dropped to just above 50 percent. The president’s approval in terms of the economy alone has dropped to just 45 percent – it was as high as the mid-60s in February 2009.
Full Story: Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Return Of The Dubious Duo
Religious Right Has-Beens Ralph Reed And Randall Terry Are Trying For A Resurrection
The last few years haven’t been easy ones for Ralph Reed.
By Rob Boston| Americans United - The former Christian Coalition executive director and Religious Right strategist ran for lieutenant governor of Georgia in 2006. Early on, the race looked to be a cakewalk. Political observers predicted Reed would easily win the position, use it as a stepping stone to the governor’s mansion and perhaps bag a Senate seat or even seek the White House after that.
But Reed hit a serious pothole on his road to victory. His ties to disgraced casino lobbyist Jack Abramoff became an issue, and Georgia Republicans quickly threw Reed under the bus. On Election Day, he lost decisively to State Senator Casey Cagle by 56 percent to 44 percent.
Undeterred, Reed tried to reinvent himself as a novelist. In 2008, he published Dark Horse, a political thriller about an independent candidate seeking the White House. It tanked.
Full Story: Return Of The Dubious Duo | Americans United.
What’s the Deal With Vegetarianism?
Vegetarians and meat eaters clash constantly on the issue of whether or not it’s wrong to eat meat. 
There’s a range, for sure; from PETA activists to macrobiotics to self-described feminists to farmers, meat is a controversial issue. But now it’s time to know for sure: what’s the deal with vegetarianism?
The following is an excerpt from The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved: Inside America’s Underground Food Movements by Sandor Ellix Katz. It has been adapted for the web.
: Chelsea Green - I love meat. The smell of it cooking can fill me with desire, and I find its juicy, rich flavor uniquely satisfying. At the same time, everything I see, hear, or read about standard commercial factory farming and slaughtering fills me with disgust. I hold great respect for the ideals that people seek to put into practice through vegetarianism.
Vegetarianism is the original manifestation of food activism. Since ancient times vegetarians have sought to embody ideals that they see as making the world a kinder, gentler place. A small minority of people throughout history—mostly inspired by religious ideals—have eschewed animal flesh, among them Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, Roman Catholic Trappist monks, and Essenes, an ancient Jewish sect. Historically vegetarianism has been a practice of asceticism: a rejection of material pleasure and an embrace of universal compassion. In more recent times vegetarianism has largely been motivated by political and ethical ideas, as well as the pursuit of good health, as we shall explore below.
Full Story: What’s the Deal With Vegetarianism? : Chelsea Green.
Obama Banking Too Much On Banks
In his Wall Street speech, the president outlines reforms—but they don’t go deep enough.
Nomi Prins- Mother Jones – On Monday—one year after the once-mighty Lehman Brothers collapsed in the nation’s biggest bankruptcy—President Obama addressed the state of the economy and again outlined his proposals for what he calls reform. The location—Federal Hall at 26 Wall Street, near the New York Stock Exchange and New York Federal Reserve Bank—was fitting. George Washington took his presidential oath there, a precursor for how intertwined Washington and Wall Street would become. And Obama’s speech indicates that he’s still making the grave error of mistaking the health of Wall Street for the health of the American economy.
Obama chose not to deliver his speech on, say, the streets of Bend, Oregon, or Fresno, California, which provide different indicators of our economic predicament. That’s because Washington’s approach to the crisis has been to focus on the banking system, throw a few crumbs to citizens, and hope everything else will magically work itself out.
The problem with concentrating on the banking system is that it allows the administration to present an overly optimistic assessment of its actions. “The storms of the past two years are beginning to break,” Obama pronounced, attributing this to a government that “moved quickly on all fronts, initializing a financial stability plan to rescue the system from the crisis and restart lending for all those affected by the crisis.” He continued: “By taking aggressive and innovative steps in credit markets, we spurred lending not just to banks, but to folks looking to buy homes or cars, take out student loans, or finance small businesses. Our home ownership plan has helped responsible homeowners refinance to stem the tide of lost homes and lost home values.”
Full Story: Obama Banking Too Much On Banks | Mother Jones.
A Recipe for Disaster: School Cops Are Being Armed with 50,000-Volt Tasers
By Liliana Segura, AlterNet - Tasers aren’t ‘non-lethal’; they’ve killed hundreds. With younger people being especially vulnerable to the taser’s shock, the risks could be very deadly.
The two were not inmates at the prison, however. They were students visiting the facility as part of “Take Our Daughters and Sons To Work Day.”
The move cost Sgt. Schmidt his job, despite his claim that he merely intended to demonstrate how the devices worked. He even asked the children’s parents (who were also employees at the prison) permission first. “When they said ‘sure,’ I went ahead and did it,” he told the Times.
“It wasn’t intended to be malicious, but educational. The big shock came when I got fired.”
Full Story: A Recipe for Disaster: School Cops Are Being Armed with 50,000-Volt Tasers | Rights and Liberties | AlterNet.
Republic Windows & Doors CEO arrested for theft
Last Wednesday former CEO of Republic Windows & Doors, Richard Gillman, was arrested at his Magnificent Mile condominium in Chicago and charged with a laundry list of crimes related to the liquidation of the company’s enterprise in Chicago last December.
Among the eight felony counts detailed by Assistant State’s Attorney John Mahoney were money laundering, theft, organizing a continuing financial crime enterprise, and mail fraud. Gilman was subsequently taken into custody after Cook County Judge Peggy Chiampas set bail at $10 million.
Last December, about 250 workers at Republic’s Chicago plant occupied the factory following its abrupt closing. At issue was the payment of unused vacation time, the immediate termination of health insurance, as well as the 60-days severance pay mandated by federal law in a mass layoff event. After six days of mounting working class support in the US and internationally, the occupation was defused though a deal brokered with Bank of America for an extension of credit to pay the workers back pay and to provide two months of health insurance coverage.
Full Story: Republic Windows & Doors CEO arrested for theft.
Many Employers to Raise Cost of Health Benefits, Survey Finds
- washingtonpost.com – Though Americans who already have medical coverage may be wary of change, a new survey indicates that they may be hard-pressed to escape it — even in the absence of health-care reform.
As businesses contend with rising costs, many workers face an erosion of health benefits next year, according to an annual survey released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust.
Forty percent of employers surveyed said they are likely to increase the amount their workers pay out of pocket for doctor visits. Almost as many said they are likely to raise annual deductibles and the amount workers pay for prescription drugs.
Full Story: Many Employers to Raise Cost of Health Benefits, Survey Finds – washingtonpost.com.
Bernanke is babbling nonsense again…”Recession is ‘over’ says Bernanke “
BBC NEWS | The US recession is probably over but the economy will remain weak for some time due to unemployment, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke has said.
“From a technical perspective, the recession is very likely over,” he told a Washington think tank. He said the consensus is the economy is growing.
But he added that the economy would still feel “very weak” to Americans concerned about job security.
Stocks on Wall Street fell marginally lower following his comments.
Mr Bernanke also said that he felt “quite confident” that Congress would approve comprehensive reform of US financial regulation.
Full Story: BBC NEWS | Business | Recession is ‘over’ says Bernanke.
Sanders’ call for Afghanistan exit strategy draws cheers
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has joined Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold in declaring that the United States needs to start thinking about how to extract its military from Afghanistan.
While almost 100 members of the House (including many conservative Republicans) have signed on to Massachusetts Congressman Jim McGovern’s call for the development of an Afghanistan exit strategy, Feingold has been a relatively lonely Senate advocate for a rethink of the eight-year occupation.
At the annual Fighting Bob Fest gathering in Baraboo, however, Sanders drew cheers from the crowd of 8,000 when he said, “We need to take a very, very hard look at our war in Afghanistan. We need to be clear in our goals and we need a real discussion about an exit strategy to bring our troops home.”
Full Story: Sanders’ call for Afghanistan exit strategy draws cheers.
Sarkozy Wants G-20Cult of the Market” to Reject “
The Nation - John Nichols- When the G-20 meets in Pittsburgh next week, French President Sarkozy will urge world leaders to make two moves — one immediate and one long-term — that have the potential to temper capitalism’s worst abuses and reassert human values at the national and international levels.
Sarkozy’s aides say he will walk out of the summit of presidents and prime ministers from the world’s most developed countries if the leaders fail to endorse a plan to curb bonuses for bankers.
That’s the immediate demand. And it is an important one, as it could put the G-20 in the unusual position of trying to tame — rather than cheer on — the banksters and corporate CEOS that have so unsettled the global economy.
But even more important will be the French president’s push to “revolutionize” international definitions of development, progress and achievement.
Full Story: Sarkozy Wants G-20 to Reject “Cult of the Market”.
Secretive spending on US intelligence disclosed
(Reuters) – Intelligence activities across the U.S. government and military cost a total of $75 billion a year, the nation’s top intelligence official said on Tuesday, disclosing an overall number long shrouded in secrecy.
Dennis Blair, the U.S. director of national intelligence, cited the figure as part of a four-year strategic blueprint for the sprawling, 200,000-person intelligence community.
In an unclassified version of the blueprint released by Blair’s office, intelligence agencies singled out as threats Iran’s nuclear program, North Korea’s “erratic behavior,” and insurgencies fueled by militant groups, though Blair cited gains against al Qaeda.
Full Story: Reuters AlertNet – Secretive spending on US intelligence disclosed.
Treasury Admits Economy is Still in Trouble
The perma-bulls say that the economic crisis is over.
But a new report from Treasury entitled “The Next Phase of Government Financial Stabilization and Rehabilitation Policies” indicates that the banks and the financial system will need to remain on life support for the indefinite future:
Although we are rolling back emergency support programs that are no longer needed, significant parts of the financial system remain impaired. Unanticipated events could intensify pressure on the financial system. In this context, it is prudent to maintain capacity to address unforeseen developments [i.e. life support] …The normalization of financial markets achieved to date is partial and fragile, and the economic recovery is, at best, in its very early stages. In residential real estate, although the rate of deterioration has slowed, the market has not established a firm bottom … and foreclosures continue to rise across all classes of mortgages, with prime mortgages now leading the way. The restructuring process for the commercial real estate market has only recently begun. The pace of bank failures has increased and it is expected to remain elevated for some time. However, liquidity-induced failures have steadily decreased given the existence of deposit insurance and the orderly resolution of failed banks. Moreover, the FSP in general and the SCAP in particular were designed to ensure that the financial system as a whole had the capacity to continue to perform its vital functions while dealing with these challenges.
During this difficult period of adjustment, the system could be sensitive to unanticipated market events. Further, in those markets where conditions have improved, it is unclear whether the improvements achieved to date will persist without a period of continued government support.
Why Propaganda Trumps Truth
Why Propaganda Trumps Truth
By Paul Craig Roberts
Information Clearing House - “Information Clearing House” — -An article in the journal, Sociological Inquiry, casts light on the effectiveness of propaganda. Researchers examined why big lies succeed where little lies fail. Governments can get away with mass deceptions, but politicians cannot get away with sexual affairs.
The researchers explain why so many Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, years after it has become obvious that Iraq had nothing to do with the event. Americans developed elaborate rationalizations based on Bush administration propaganda that alleged Iraqi involvement and became deeply attached to their beliefs. Their emotional involvement became wrapped up in their personal identity and sense of morality. They looked for information that supported their beliefs and avoided information that challenged them, regardless of the facts of the matter.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler explained the believability of the Big Lie as compared to the small lie: “In the simplicity of their minds, people more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have such impudence. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and continue to think that there may be some other explanation.”
Full Story: Why Propaganda Trumps Truth : Information Clearing House – ICH.
Vitter endorses privatization of Medicaid.
Think Progress » Throughout the summer, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) has attacked President Obama’s efforts to reform health care in America, bragging on his Twitter page about how he is “fighting Obamacare.” At the same time, Vitter has told his constituents that he does support some reform, but that he doesn’t want “to throw the baby out with the bathwater” or push “a lot of people off insurance that they have now, that they enjoy now.” But Vitter supported doing just that yesterday as he endorsed a plan that would privatize Medicaid and scrap the nation’s employer-based health insurance system:
U.S. Sen. David Vitter has endorsed a new study from a conservative think tank that calls for scrapping the nation’s employer-based health insurance system in favor of individually owned policies and converting the Medicaid program into vouchers for private insurance. [...]
Vitter, a staunch opponent of the public option, called the document “an important contribution to the debate.”
Full Story: Think Progress » Vitter endorses privatization of Medicaid..
Rockefeller Announces He Will Not Support Baucus’ Health Care Bill
Think Progress » This afternoon, on a conference call with reporters, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), a member of the Senate Finance Committee, announced that he would not support Chairman Max Baucus’ (D-MT) health care framework in its current form:
The way it is right now, now we have an amendment process coming up next week. I’ll have many, many, many amendments and we will see what happens on that. But now, there is no way that I can vote for the Senate package. For a lot of reasons. Obviously the lack of a public option is one of them. So that I want to be very clear about.
Listen:
Full Story: Think Progress » Rockefeller Announces He Will Not Support Baucus’ Health Care Bill.
Santorum Ties Himself Into Knots Justifying Congress’ Use Of Reconciliation During The Bush Years
Stephen Foley, U.K. Independent - On an RNC conference call today, Politico’s Ben Smith asked former Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Rick Santorum why he believes it would be an “abomination” for Congress to use the budget reconciliation process — which requires 51 instead of 60 votes — to pass health care reform, considering that the Republican Congress also used it to pass bills, such as President Bush’s tax cuts.
Santorum tried to name every way he could think of that might justify his position, including: 1) unlike health care, a tax bill is a “revenue bill” and “affects the budget,” 2) health care is “major policy initiative,” and 3) the reconciliation process will make a “huge and complex” bill even “more complex.”
When Smith pointed out that Republicans used the reconciliation process to push through drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — which is also arguably a major policy initiative that isn’t just a revenue bill — Santorum tried to argue that it wasn’t AS major, so it was accceptable:
Full Story: Think Progress » Santorum Ties Himself Into Knots Justifying Congress’ Use Of Reconciliation During The Bush Years.
The Real Lesson of Lehman’s Fall
Lehman Died So TARP and AIG Might Live
By MIKE WHITNEY
“Lehman’s fate was sealed not in the boardroom of that gaudy Manhattan headquarters. It was sealed downtown, in the gloomy gray building of the New York Federal Reserve, the Wall Street branch of the U.S. central bank.”
Stephen Foley is on to something. Lehman Bros. didn’t die of natural causes; it was drawn-and-quartered by high-ranking officials at the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve. Most of the rubbish presently appearing in the media, ignores this glaring fact. Lehman was a planned demolition (most likely) concocted by ex-Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson, who wanted to create a financial 9-11 to scare Congress into complying with his demands for $700 billion in emergency funding (TARP) for underwater US banking behemoths. The whole incident reeks of conflict of interest, corruption, and blackmail.
The media have played a critical role in peddling the official “Who could have known what would happen” version of events. Bernanke and Paulson were fully aware that they playing with fire, but they chose to proceed anyway, using the mushrooming crisis to achieve their own objectives. Then things began to spin out of control; credit markets froze, interbank lending slowed to a crawl, and stock markets plunged. Even so, the Fed and Treasury persisted with their plan, demanding their $700 billion pound of flesh before they’d do what was needed to stop the bleeding. It was all avoidable.
Lehman had potential buyers–including Barclays–who probably would have made the sale if Bernanke and Paulson had merely provided guarantees for some of their trading positions. Instead, Treasury and the Fed balked, thrusting the knife deeper into Lehman’s ribs. They claimed they didn’t have legal authority for such guarantees. It’s a lie. The Fed has provided $12.8 trillion in loans and other commitments to keep the financial system operating without congressional approval or any explicit authorization under the terms of its charter. The Fed never considered the limits of its “legal authority” when it bailed-out AIG or organized the acquisition of Bear Stearns by JP Morgan pushing $30 billion in future liabilities onto the public’s balance sheet. The Fed’s excuses don’t square with the facts.
Here’s how economist Dean Baker recounts what transpired last September 15:
Full Story: Mike Whitney: The Real Lesson of Lehman’s Fall.
U.S. Justice Dept wants surveillance methods extended
(Reuters) - The Obama administration has asked the U.S. Congress to extend three surveillance techniques for intelligence agencies tracking suspected militants that expire this year, according to a letter to lawmakers.
Approved after the September 11 attacks in 2001 at the request of the Bush administration, techniques such as roving wiretaps and accessing all kinds of personal records drew criticism from civil liberties groups and some lawmakers who said they were unconstitutional and violated privacy rights.
In the letter released on Tuesday, a Justice Department official asked that three of the techniques expiring on December 31 be renewed and said the Obama administration was open to lawmakers’ plans to add more privacy protections.
Full Story: U.S. Justice Dept wants surveillance methods extended | Politics | Reuters.
Exclusive: US planning to weaken Copenhagen climate deal, Europe warns
Exclusive: Key differences between the US and Europe could undermine a new worldwide treaty on global warming to replace Kyoto, sources say
| guardian.co.uk - Europe has clashed with the US Obama administration over climate change in a potentially damaging split that comes ahead of crucial political negotiations on a new global deal to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
The Guardian understands that key differences have emerged between the US and Europe over the structure of a new worldwide treaty on global warming. Sources on the European side say the US approach could undermine the new treaty and weaken the world’s ability to cut carbon emissions.
The treaty will be negotiated in December at a UN meeting in Copenhagen and is widely billed as the last chance to save the planet from a temperature rise of 2C or higher, which the EU considers dangerous.
Full Story: Exclusive: US planning to weaken Copenhagen climate deal, Europe warns | Environment | guardian.co.uk.
Some showerheads harbor disease-causing bacteria
What’s in your showerhead? Don’t wanna know, do you?
Too late, you’re reading this — it’s disease-causing “mycobacteria” microbes stuck there in their own slime.
- USATODAY.com - “Microbes are everywhere, so in fact finding them in showers is not a surprise,” says Laura Baumgartner of the University of Colorado, Boulder, an author of the showerhead survey study. “Finding large numbers of (disease-causing) mycobacteria was a bit of a surprise, though.”
Released Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science journal, the study looked at 45 showerheads in nine cities, including Denver and New York. Using standard genetic tests, the team looked for microbes, expecting to find harmless varieties usually seen in tap water.
Full Story: Some showerheads harbor disease-causing bacteria – USATODAY.com.
How corporate P.R. works to kill healthcare reform
Health insurers have become expert at using P.R. to get what they want. I got out before the latest round
Editor’s note: Wendell Potter, formerly a communications officer for the private health insurer Cigna, is now the Senior Fellow on Health Care for the Center for Media and Democracy. He delivered the remarks below at the Center for American Progress.
By Wendell Potter - | Salon
It is easy to think of efforts to influence lawmakers as the exclusive domain of K Street lobbyists. Much has been said and written about the millions of dollars the special interests are spending on lobbying activities and the hundreds of lobbyists who are at work as we speak trying to shape healthcare reform legislation. Very little by comparison has been written about the millions of dollars that special interests are spending on P.R. activities to accomplish the same goal and that are vital to successful lobbying efforts.
One of the reasons I left my job at CIGNA, where I headed corporate communications and was part of the Legal & Public Affairs division, was because I did not want to be involved in yet another P.R. and lobbying campaign to kill or gut reform. I finally came to question the ethics of what I had done and been a part of for nearly two decades to influence decision making and bill writing on Capitol Hill.
When I testified before the Senate Commerce Committee in late June, I told the senators how the industry has conducted duplicitous and well-financed P.R. and lobbying campaigns every time Congress has tried to reform our healthcare system, and how its current behind-the-scenes efforts may well shape reform in a way that benefits Wall Street far more than average Americans. I noted that, just as they did 15 years ago when the insurance industry led the effort to kill the Clinton reform plan, it is using shills and front groups to spread lies and disinformation to scare Americans away from the very reform that would benefit them most. The industry, despite its public assurances to be good-faith partners with the president and Congress, has been at work for years laying the groundwork for devious and often sinister campaigns to manipulate public opinion.
Full Story: How corporate P.R. works to kill healthcare reform | Salon.
Will the Corporate Supremes now dance on democracy’s corpse?
Harvey Wasserman - The Four Courtsmen of the Apocalypse are poised to finally bury American democracy in corporate money. The most powerful institution in human history–the global corporation–may soon take definitive possession of our electoral process.
It could happen very soon.
While America agonizes over health care, energy and war, Justices John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas could make it all moot. They may now have the fifth Supreme Court vote they need to open the final floodgates on corporate spending in political campaigns.
In short, the Court may be poised to shred a century of judicial and legislative attempts to preserve even a semblance of restraint on how Big Money buys laws and legal decisions. The ensuing tsumani of corporate cash could turn every election hence into a series of virtual slave auctions, with victory guaranteed only to those candidates who most effectively grovel at the feet of the best-heeled lobbyists.
Not that this is so different from what we have now. The barriers against cash dominating our elections have already proven amazingly ineffective.
But a century ago, corporations were barred from directly contributing to political campaigns. The courts have upheld many of the key requirements.
Full Story: Will the Corporate Supremes now dance on democracy’s corpse? | The Smirking Chimp.
Health Insurance Insider Slams Baucus Bill: ‘An Absolute Gift To The Insurance Industry’
Think Progress » On the eve of the Senate Finance Committee’s release of its much anticipated health care plan, Wendell Potter — the insurance industry whistle blower and former communications director of health insurance giant Cigna — called the Baucus framework “an absolute gift to the industry.” “And if that is what we see in the legislation, [America’s Health Insurance Plans chief] Karen Ignagni will surely get a huge bonus,” Potter said at a briefing for reporters.
The bill establishes a new regulated health insurance exchange and compels every American to purchase qualified health insurance coverage by 2013. Americans with employer-sponsored insurance can stay in their existing plans, while the uninsured would have to enroll in an expanded Medicaid program, a new plan in the Exchange or the now-regulated individual health insurance market. According to a report released by the Congressional Budget Office, the bill would cover 94% of Americans and cost $880 billion over 10 years.
Potter argued that the lax employer requirements would shift the cost and risk of coverage onto the individual and maintained that the bill’s “network of cooperatives” would be unable to compete in today’s concentrated health insurance markets. “The co-ops won’t stand a chance,” he concluded.
Full Story: Think Progress » Health Insurance Insider Slams Baucus Bill: ‘An Absolute Gift To The Insurance Industry’.
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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. 
