Is This Healthcare Reform Or Just Assistance To Health Corps?

/84 Comments/in , , , /by

I have a busy morning here, but want to draw attention to an article this morning in the New York Times by Robert Pear on the ongoing discussions of healthcare reform for the United States:

Since last fall, many of the leading figures in the nation’s long-running health care debate have been meeting secretly in a Senate hearing room. Now, with the blessing of the Senate’s leading proponent of universal health insurance, Edward M. Kennedy, they appear to be inching toward a consensus that could reshape the debate.

Many of the parties, from big insurance companies to lobbyists for consumers, doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, are embracing the idea that comprehensive health care legislation should include a requirement that every American carry insurance.
…
“There seems to be a sense of the room that some form of tax penalty is an effective means to enforce such an obligation, though only on those for whom affordable coverage is available,” said the memorandum, prepared by David C. Bowen, a neurobiologist who is director of the health staff at the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

The proposal for an individual mandate was one of the few policy disagreements between Mr. Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton in their fight for the Democratic presidential nomination. She wanted to require everyone to have and maintain insurance. He said he wanted to “ensure affordable coverage for all,” but would initially apply the mandate only to children.

The 20 people who regularly attend the meetings on Capitol Hill include lobbyists for AARP, Aetna, the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the American Cancer Society, the American Medical Association, America’s Health Insurance Plans, the Business Roundtable, Easter Seals, the National Federation of Independent Business, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and the United States Chamber Read more →

The Iseman Cometh, The Iseman Goeth

/28 Comments/in , , /by
BartCop/Political Humor

BartCop/Political Humor

At the end of December last year, Emptywheel reported that noted high powered Washington lobbyist Miss Vicki Iseman had filed a defamation suit against the New York Times. At issue was a February 21, 2008 Times article that Iseman contended lead people to believe that she played hanky blankie with McCain; but, as EW noted at the time:

What was at issue in the article was the appearance of an affair, not an affair itself, and the beliefs of McCain staffers about that appearance of an affair.

That was exactly right then, and it is still right now and ought to be kept in mind in light of the news yesterday that Iseman’s lawsuit was dismissed:

A lobbyist’s lawsuit against The New York Times over the newspaper’s account of her ties to Senator John McCain has been settled, both sides announced on Thursday.

The suit, filed by Vicki L. Iseman, the Washington lobbyist, was settled without payment and The Times did not retract the article. In an unusual agreement, however, The Times is letting Ms. Iseman’s lawyers give their views on the suit on the paper’s Web site.

Their opinion is accompanied by a joint statement from both sides and a note to readers, which is also appearing in Friday’s edition of the newspaper.

Let me boil down to the bone what has been accomplished legally as a result of Iseman’s complaint. Not a damn thing; both parties are sticking to the same exact public positions they maintained before the meritless suit was filed, it is just that for the sake of their pocketbooks they have agreed to take the pissing match back out of the costly court litigation system. And, now that they are back into an ink fight as opposed to boxing with attorneys, let’s take a look at how Times Editor Bill Keller describes the matter in a published statement today:

What the article set out to do, and did, was to establish that Senator McCain — a man whose career was ensnared by scandal and then rebuilt on a reputation for avoiding even the appearance of impropriety — was sometimes careless of that reputation. The story reported that a senator who cast himself as the scourge of lobbyists rode on the private jets of business executives with interests before his committee, and that a senator who disdained the influence of corporate money accepted corporate money to support that very cause.

Read more →

Steele and Boehner Go Gangsta

/34 Comments/in , , , /by
Graphic by Frederick

Graphic by Frederick

Well, you just knew that the GOP wouldn’t take the bonecrushing loss in last November’s elections to Rico Suave Obama and the too cool for school Dems lightly. They were, like an octogenarian on Viagra, going to get hip. Or a hip replacement. Whatever.

They started by electing the rootin tootin slick dick midnight mustache Michael Steele as RNC Chairman. When coupled with Boner John Boehner, their ultra- tanned sensitive Minority Leader, this is a clear cut recipe for the GOP surgarific return to power. Let’s check in on their street cred. From today’s CNN Political Ticker:

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele says his party is going to launch an "off the hook" public relations campaign that will update the GOP’s image by translating it to "urban-suburban hip-hop settings."
…
He added, jokingly, that “we need to uptick our image with everyone, including one-armed midgets.”

Steele described the new multi-platform PR offensive as “avant-garde, technically. It will come to [the] table with things that will surprise everyone — off the hook.” Asked whether that meant cutting-edge tactics, Steele demurred. “I don’t do ‘cutting-edge,’” he said. “That’s what Democrats are doing. We’re going beyond cutting-edge.”

Booyah. Get down James Brown and Fitty Cent take a backseat. Now let’s look in on the Steeley One’s partner in vice, Boner Boehner. Oooh, here he is jawing up the GOP stimulus position (yeah, okay, bad imagery) and his homeboy. What a twofer:

The stimulus has passed. In addition to voting against it, Republicans are all over the airwaves trashing it.

The leader of their pack is John Boehner, the man with a tan. According to him, the stimulus will not create jobs. According to Michael Steele, the new RNC Chair, if you work and earn money, you do not necessarily have a job. According to all Republicans who voted no, this bill, with terrible ideas such as helping states pay for Medicare, assisting our elders and our children, is a disaster for our country.

That’s right; the Tan With a Plan. Wow. What a dynamic duo. Crockett and Tubbs roll in DC. Oh yeah, and Sistah McKracka is going to take the toobz by storm. What could possibly go wrong?

Issa Bit Hypocritical For Darrel To Want WH Email Compliance Now

/38 Comments/in /by

You might remember a little kerfuffle over the preservation of White House emails that roiled during the Bush/Cheney Administration, consuming national discussion and court resources.

Well, that was during the Bush/Cheney Administration, those fine Republican watchdogs in Congress are calling for change from the previous policy for the Obama Administration. Yep, that’s right, now that there is a Democrat in office, they want some responsibility and accountability And point man on this righteous demand is car thief Representative Darrel Issa (R-Asswipe). From the Political Ticker:

A California Republican congressman has called on President Obama to put in place a system that ensures all White House emails be preserved even if official business was done through private e- mail accounts.

Rep. Darrell Issa, the senior Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, made the request in a February 19 letter to White House Counsel Greg Craig.

Issa specifically mentioned the new administration’s brief use of Gmail accounts after Obama was sworn in last month, as they waited for the official White House e-mail accounts to become active.

"As you know, any e-mail sent or received by White House officials may be subject to retention under the Presidential Records Act (PRA)," Issa wrote Craig in the letter.

"The use of personal e-mail accounts, such as Gmail to conduct official business raises the prospect that presidential records will not be captured by the White House e-mail archiving system. Consequently Gmail users on the President’s staff run the risk of incorrectly classifying their e-mails as non-records under the [Presidential Records] Act."

Oh, that is rich. You have got to be kidding me. Let’s look back for a moment at Issa’s past views to see what a true Galaxy Class Hypocrite looks like. From Mother Jones:

During a House Oversight Committee hearing last month on the preservation of White House records, an indignant Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), a frequent critic of Chairman Henry Waxman’s investigations, did his best to play down the extent of the Bush administration’s now well-documented email archiving problems. Defending the White House’s decision to switch from the Lotus Notes-based archiving system used by the Clinton administration, Issa compared the the software to "using wooden wagon wheels" and Sony Betamax tapes. To observers of the missing emails controversy, Issa’s comments seemed little more than an attempt to deflect blame from the White House for replacing a working Read more →

Why American Industry (And Its Future) Matters

/82 Comments/in , , , /by
Image from ExploreHistory.com

Image from ExploreHistory.com

Ian has a great piece up at FDL on the financial sector’s problems, their genesis, and the Obama Administration’s conventional wisdom, status quo, manner of dealing with them:

I have become increasingly concerned that some in the Obama administration are treating this economic crisis as a "black swan" event. That is a very rare, random and unpredictable event. The key thing about black swans is that they are random and unpredictable and you can’t stop them from happening, you can only create your systems so that they can handle them if they occur.
…
But, of course, the economic and financial crisis unfolding right now was not random. It was predicted by multiple people, and it was predicted because of policy steps taken by government and widely known private actions.
…
All of which is to say the crisis was caused by a number of factors. It was not random. It was predictable and predicted. If we just muddle through this current meltdown—spend a lot of money bailing out the banks, throw some stimulus around—and don’t fix the fundamentally flawed incentives and structures of the system, it will likely happen again.

Ian was discussing the financial sector, but it strikes me that the same applies for America’s industrial and manufacturing sector. The United States was built on the backs of hard working people that planted and built things, sweated, toiled and prevailed. In the post-modern hustle and flow of the digital and financial whiz bang world, we seem to both forget and neglect the industry, manufacturing and workers that put us here. I want to focus, and open a discussion, on that.

I am not expert on the issues and economics that underpin this area, so I am going to rely on the collective wisdom here to engage and flesh out the discussion. I do, however, want to open that discussion on a familiar note, the American automotive industry. Roland Jones at MSNBC.com yesterday did an interesting piece as to why bankruptcy is not a viable option for General Motors:

“If these companies went into bankruptcy right now, in exactly the position they are in today, they would be liquidated because no one out there would supply them with the financing they need to get through bankruptcy,” Mark Zandi, chief economist with Moody’s Economy.com, told CNBC Wednesday.

That would mean a few million jobs lost, Zandi said, which would be “cataclysmic” for Read more →

Veni, Vidi, Vici – Obama’s Foreclosure Reveal In Phoenix

/72 Comments/in , , /by

246349.thumbnail.jpgAs you may know, President Obama came to Phoenix in order to roll out his $75 Billion Plan to Fight Home Foreclosures. This was exciting for me, because Obama spent last night at a resort, Montelucia, about 3/4 of a mile from my house. Lots of excitement; even more jammed up traffic yesterday afternoon and evening. Still, all in all, pretty exciting for an old desert dweller. Our dog, Kiki, is still barking at all the helicopters. Interlaced into this post will be a series of pictures taken by various Phoenicians and submitted to the Arizona Republic for open use on their website. I would have taken proprietary photos for Emptywheel, especially of the shots going down the road right by my house and entering Montelucia, but, alas, I was tied up with conference calls with multiple attorneys, all of whom are every bit as annoying as I am. Trust me on the latter.

246347.thumbnail.jpgFrom the New York Times:

President Obama pledged on Wednesday to help as many as 9 million American homeowners refinance their mortgages or avert foreclosure, an initiative he said would shore up distressed housing prices, stabilize neighborhoods and slow a downward spiral that he said was “unraveling homeownership, the middle class, and the American Dream itself.”

The plan, more ambitious than many housing analysts had expected, was unveiled by Mr. Obama in a high school gymnasium here, in a community that is among the nation’s hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis.246467.thumbnail.jpg

“This plan will not save every home, but it will give millions of families resigned to financial ruin a chance to rebuild,” the president told the crowd. “It will prevent the worst consequences of this crisis from wreaking even greater havoc on the economy. And by bringing down the foreclosure rate, it will help to shore up housing prices for everyone.”

In a nutshell from the LA Times, the plan would:

• Remove restrictions on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that prohibit the institutions, both taken over by the government last year, from refinancing mortgages they own or have guaranteed when more is owed on a home than it is worth. The White House says this could reduce monthly payments for up to 5 million homeowners.

246470.thumbnail.jpg• Create incentives for lenders to modify subprime loans at risk of default or foreclosure. For lenders that agree to reduce rates to levels borrowers can afford, the government will make up part of the difference between the old monthly payment and the new payment. Participating lenders also will be required to cut payments to no more than 31 percent of a borrower’s income. Up to 4 million homeowners could benefit.

Read more →

Obama Hates The Truth On Binyan Mohamed

/119 Comments/in , , , , /by
Graphic by Darkblack

Graphic by Darkblack

The news last week that President Obama had bought into and signed off on the full boat of shameful state secrets assertion in the case of Binyan Mohamed v Jeppesen Dataplan set off a wave of criticism. Obama came to the criticism the old fashioned way, he earned it by breaking his campaign promise and continuing the wretched excess of unitary secrecy. Obama’s about face, and turn to the dark side of Bush/Cheney secrecy shocked even Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Mary Schroeder when confronted with it at the Mohamed v. Jeppesen Dataplan hearing.

That is the part of Obama’s war on Binyam Mohamed through Bush style secrecy that has been widely reported, but there is much more that is not as well known. It ought to be. From this morning’s Guardian:

A policy governing the interrogation of terrorism suspects in Pakistan that led to British citizens and residents being tortured was devised by MI5 lawyers and figures in government, according to evidence heard in court.
…
The existence of an official interrogation policy emerged during cross-examination in the high court in London of an MI5 officer who had questioned one of the detainees, Binyam Mohamed, the British resident currently held in Guantánamo Bay. The officer, who can be identified only as Witness B, admitted that although Mohamed had been in Pakistani custody for five weeks, and he knew the country to have a poor human rights record, he did not ask whether he had been tortured or mistreated, did not inquire why he had lost weight, and did not consider whether his detention without trial was illegal.
…
Mohamed was eventually able to tell lawyers that before being questioned by MI5 he had been hung from leather straps, beaten and threatened with a firearm by Pakistani intelligence officers. After the meeting with MI5 he was "rendered" to Morocco where he endured 18 months of even more brutal torture, including having his genitals slashed with a scalpel. Some of the questions put to him under torture in Morocco were based on information passed by MI5 to the US.

The Guardian has learned from other sources that the interrogation policy was directed at a high level within Whitehall and that it has been further developed since Mohamed’s detention in Pakistan. Evidence of this might emerge from 42 undisclosed US documents seen by the high court and sent to the MPs and peers on the intelligence and security Read more →

BREAKING: Burris Fesses Up

/81 Comments/in , , , /by

rolandburris-1thumbnail.thumbnail.jpgChicago tenor Roland Burris is singing a new tune:

U.S. Sen. Roland Burris has acknowledged he sought to raise campaign funds for then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich at the request of the governor’s brother at the same time he was making a pitch to be appointed to the Senate seat previously held by President Barack Obama.

Burris’ latest comments in Peoria Monday night were the first time he has publicly said he was actively trying to raise money for Blagojevich. Previously Burris has left the impression that he always balked at the issue of raising money for the governor because of his interest in the Senate appointment.

In comments to reporters after appearing at a Democratic dinner, the senator several times contradicted his latest under-oath affidavit that he quietly filed with the Illinois House impeachment panel earlier this month. That affidavit was itself an attempt to clean up his live, sworn testimony to the panel Jan. 8, when he omitted his contacts with several Blagojevich insiders.

Now this is something that Marcy (see: here and here) predicted, as did many of you. So, it is not exactly a shocking Captain Renault moment. That said, it is still extremely damning and is going to lead to a justified uproar. Already Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan is calling for a deeper investigation, although she has held short of claiming perjury by Burris.

It is just the bundling efforts that Marcy predicted may be in play that appear to be in issue:

Burris said Robert Blagojevich told him, “‘We need to raise some funds. We hope that you could probably get some of your friends together.’ I said, ‘What type of money we looking for?’ He says, ‘Can you raise us 10-or-15 thousand dollars?’

Here are the new details Burris has copped to as of last night:

“So some time shortly after Obama was elected, the brother called,” Burris said last night of Robert Blagojevich. “And now in the meantime, I’d talked to some people about trying to see if we could put a fund-raiser on. Nobody was—they said we aren’t giving money to the governor. And I said, ‘OK, you know, I can’t tell them what to do with their money.’”

“So when the (governor’s) brother called me back, I said, ‘Well, look Rob…I can’t raise any money from my friends. I said, maybe my partner and I, you can talk this over and see, could we go to some Read more →

GM Gets Its Loan; No Bankruptcy for Now

/21 Comments/in , , /by

When it was announced Sunday that President Obama had decided against appointing an "Auto Czar", instead opting for a panel of Administration financial experts including, but not limited to, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers and Ron Bloom, it pretty much signaled that the Administration was going to continue to work with GM as an existing, functioning entity instead of forcing them into bankruptcy.

Monday night, that was borne out. From Reuters:

The U.S. government will release $4 billion in additional aid to General Motors Corp (GM.N) on Tuesday as planned, a White House aide said on Monday, ahead of the deadline for the automaker to submit a new survival plan.

The aide said GM’s smaller rival Chrysler LLC’s request for additional aid would be treated as a new request and dealt with separately.

GM is seeking concessions from the United Auto Workers union and creditors under the terms of its $13.4 billion federal bailout. It must submit a restructuring plan to U.S. officials on Tuesday showing how it can cut costs and pay back the loans.

Now that does not mean that the moment is over for GM, far from it. The company still has ongoing crucial negotiations with the auto workers union (UAW) that must be completed, and must formally submit its grand restructuring plan. The plan will not be fully known until officially submitted and made public, which is likely not to occur until the markets close tomorrow, but early details reveal a framework for a radically different General Motors in the future:

G.M. will file what is expected to be the largest restructuring plan of its 100-year history on Tuesday, a step it must take to justify its use of a $13.4 billion loan package from the federal government.

The plan will outline in considerable detail, over as many as 900 pages, how G.M. will further cut its work force, shutter more factories in North America and reduce its lineup of brands to just four, from eight, according to executives knowledgeable about its contents. The remaining core brands will be Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC and Buick.
…
The plan will also probably include revisions in executive compensation and targets for cutting dealers and brands like Saturn and Pontiac.

Similar discussions are underway with Chrysler, which also has a deadline tomorrow to submit its restructuring plan; details of the plan or government commitment are not yet forthcoming.

Conason’s Lost Truth About Reconciliation

/98 Comments/in /by
h/t Zapirpo @ sahistory

h/t Zapiro @ sahistory

Joe Conason has a new piece out in Salon that is enough to cause sane heads to explode. Noting that, like math, bringing accountability is hard, Conason biliously opines:

Here we have no such consensus and no revolutionary government with the power to mete out retribution to vanquished foes. What we have instead are the unrepentant officials of the Bush era, who continue to justify their misconduct as critical to the nation’s survival. We have a new administration, immured in a world economic crisis, that recognizes conflicting imperatives of accountability and cooperation. And we have a responsibility to explore how the nation embarked on "a dangerous and disastrous diversion from American values," as Leahy put it.

Is there a way for President Obama to pursue that responsibility without inflicting vengeance or humiliation? Perhaps he ought to consider the creation of a presidential commission whose aims would be purely investigative — and encourage the participation of those implicated in the abuses of the past by promising a complete pardon to anyone who testifies fully, honestly and publicly.

With that gesture, he would acknowledge the importance of uncovering the facts, no matter how ugly, while magnanimously binding up the nation’s wounds. He could leave the issue of criminal prosecution to international authorities that can act without any partisan taint. And he could seek truth without vengeance.

Conason waxes romantic about Sen. Pat Leahy’s much ballyhooed truth and reconciliation plan. Here is the money quote from Leahy:

We could develop and authorize a person or group of people universally recognized as fair-minded, and without axes to grind. Their straightforward mission would be to find the truth. People would be invited to come forward and share their knowledge and experiences, not for purposes of constructing criminal indictments, but to assemble the facts.

That’s right, another blue ribbon commission that is going to solve our difficult problems of governance. Yeah, that is going to work out well because, you know, such things always do. Paging Lee Hamilton to the blue ribbon phone. The problem with Leahy and Conason’s commission is that there exists a body of law, both statutory and common, for a reason; for it to be the rule and for the rule to be enforced. Conason wants to be "magnanimous" and "pardon" and "leave the issue of criminal prosecution to international authorities that can act without any partisan taint". What Read more →

image_print