Bad Deeds for 10-12-2009

 

Insurance Company Refuses to Cover 4-Month-Old Baby Because He’s Too Fat – Alex Lange is a chubby, dimpled, healthy and happy 4-month-old. But in the cold, calculating numbered charts of insurance companies, he is fat. That’s why he is being turned down for health insurance. And that’s why he is a weighty symbol of a problem in the health care reform debate.

Insurance companies can turn down people with pre-existing conditions who aren’t covered in a group health care plan. Rocky Mountain Health Plans turned him down, saying insurers don’t take babies over the 95th percentile, no matter how healthy they are.

“I could understand if we could control what he’s eating. But he’s 4 months old. He’s breast-feeding. We can’t put him on the Atkins diet or on a treadmill,” his frustrated father, Bernie Lange, told the Post. “There is just something absurd about denying an infant.”

 

In Washington, Revolving Doors are Bad for Your Health – Polls show the overwhelming majority of Americans favor a non-profit alternative — like Medicare — that would give the private health insurance industry some competition. But if so many Americans and the President himself want that public option, how come we’re not getting one?

Because, the medicine has been poisoned from day one, in part because of that same revolving door that Congresswoman Kaptur and Simon Johnson were just talking about. Movers and shakers rotate between government and the lucrative private sector at a speed so dizzying they forget who they’re working for.

SEN. MAX BAUCUS: Our plan does not include a public option.

BILL MOYERS: Take a close look at that woman sitting behind Montana Senator Max Baucus. He’s the Democrat who’s the Chairman of the Finance Committee. Liz Fowler is her name. And now get this. She used to work for WellPoint, the largest health insurer in the country. She was Vice President of Public Policy. And now she’s working for the very committee with the most power to give her old company and the entire industry exactly what they want: higher profits, and no competition from alternative non-profit coverage that could lower costs and premiums.

I’m not making this up. Here’s another little eye-opener. The woman who was Baucus’ top health advisor before he hired Liz Fowler? Her name is Michelle Easton. Why did she leave the Committee? To go to work — where else? — at a firm representing the same company Liz Fowler worked for WellPoint. As a lobbyist.
It’s the old Washington shell game. Lobbyist out, lobbyist in. And it’s why they always win.

 

Speculator Getting $100 Million For Nothing of Value to the Rest of the World – The way in which oil speculator Andrew J. Hall is going to get his $100 million demonstrates clearly why we need to return to the 91 percent top bracket income taxes of the Eisenhower years.

Hall was scheduled to get nearly $100 million in bonuses for his services he and his firm Philbro provided to Citigroup. (Philbro is currently a subsidiary of Citigroup.) He earned his keep by using Citigroup capital to play the oil markets, which he did successfully. It’s unclear if his actions resulted in any real economic value–no part of our economy functions more efficiently and no one has fuel in their gas tank they wouldn’t have had because of his commodity trades. More than likely it resulted in a slight increase in overall oil prices that we all pay.

 

Sean Hannity Tries to Pull a Fast One on Michael Moore With Doctored Video – Someone really should have thought twice before letting Sean Hannity embarrass himself with the failed stunt he tried in his interview with Michael Moore, the second half of which aired last night on Fox.

Hannity wanted to make a point about how health care in Cuba is so much worse than it is in the USA — in contradistinction to Moore’s own reportage — so he offered what he called special video footage he had been provided of a “hospital” in Cuba.

What we then see is a rattletrap mess with old beds and rotting toilets, etc. But Moore notices what should be obvious: There are no patients, either.

Ah, but wait! We shortly see footage of patients in a hospital. But they’re in an obviously different building (or at least wing), because this room is clean and the beds and equipment sanitary and well-tended. But we only get to see them for a few seconds before — swoop! — off we go back to the rat’s nest.

Which is obviously an abandoned hospital or wing, which is certainly not unheard of, even in the USA.
Moore, of course, laughs at all of this with glee. Hannity quickly changes the subject, since his oh-so-convincing video evidence just makes him look as bad as he has recently in his Jennings Jihad.

 

Pilots on Food Stamps – by Michael Moore
… The plane landed and I stepped into the cockpit. “Read this,” the first officer said. He handed me a letter from the airline to him. It was headlined “LETTER OF CONCERN.” It seems this poor fellow had taken three sick days in the past year. The letter was a warning not to take another one — or else.

“Great,” I said. “Just what I want — you coming to work sick, flying me up in the air and asking to borrow the barf bag from my seatback pocket.”

He then showed me his pay stub. He took home $405 this week. My life was completely and totally in his hands for the past hour and he’s paid less than the kid who delivers my pizza.

I told the guys that I have a whole section in my new movie about how pilots are treated (using pilots as only one example of how people’s wages have been slashed and the middle class decimated). In the movie I interview a pilot for a major airline who made $17,000 last year. For four months he was eligible — and received — food stamps. Another pilot in the film has a second job as a dog walker.

“I have a second job!,” the two pilots said in unison. One is a substitute teacher. The other works in a coffee shop. You know, maybe it’s just me, but the two occupations whose workers shouldn’t be humpin’ a second job are brain surgeons and airline pilots. Call me crazy.

I told them about how Capt. “Sully” Sullenberger (the pilot who safely landed the jet in the Hudson River) had testified in Congress that no pilot he knows wants any of their children to become a pilot. Pilots, he said, are completely demoralized. He spoke of how his pay has been cut 40% and his own pension eliminated. Most of the TV news didn’t cover his remarks and the congressmen quickly forgot them. They just wanted him to play the role of “HERO,” but he was on a more important mission. He’s in my movie.
“I hadn’t heard anywhere that this stuff about the airlines is in this new movie,” the pilot said.

“No, you wouldn’t,” I replied. “The press likes to talk about me, not the movie.”

 

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) Holds Up Unemployment Extension, Hundreds Of Thousands Fall Off Rolls – Key Senate Democrats tried unsuccessfully today to quickly pass legislation to give jobless workers in Michigan and other hard-hit states an additional 20 weeks of unemployment benefits.

That delays action on the high-stakes issue until at least next week.

But when Reid asked senators to quickly pass the bill under a speedy procedure, Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., objected. That’s enough to prevent a quick vote.

 

Georgia Restaurant Owner Uses N-Word on Anti-Health Care Reform Sign Attacking Obama – An Atlanta, Georgia area restaurant owner with a history of racially provocative behavior is attracting renewed attention with a sign outside his restaurant saying “Obamas plan for healthcare: N****r rig it.”

“When you walk into the Georgia Peach Oyster Bar in Paulding County, you feel like you’ve walked into a different era,” CBS Atlanta reports. “Behind the pool table’s a mannequin in a Ku Klux Klan costume.”
“The centerpiece, presiding over the bar, is a portrait of Jesse Jackson, and it takes a minute to realize the reason,” the report continues. “Next to the painting is a cartoon of a black boy with a certain body part caught in a fence hole. ‘Yep, old Jesse got his pecker caught, too, didn’t he?’ boomed Lanzo. … He proudly displays the bar’s menu, emblazoned on the front with a drawing of a Klansman in a hammock. The hammock is formed by two lynched black men whose feet are roped together.”

 

Texas Governor Replaces Another Member of Key Investigative Committee – What’s He Hidding? – After a state-funded report revealed in August that Texas may have executed an innocent man under the watch of Governor Rick Perry, the Texas Republican currently facing a steep re-election climb was quick to act in his own best interest.

He replaced three members on the key committee charged with investigating the report’s truth, installing what CNN called a “political ally” to head up the Texas Forensic Science Commission.

Sunday, the cable news network reported that Perry had moved to replace a fourth member of the commission, reaching the legal limit of how many members he can seat. The five other members are selected by the attorney general and lieutenant governor.

Perry’s political ally who now leads the commission was quick to postpone a hearing in which the committee would have heard from the author of the report that suggested Cameron Todd Willingham may have been innocent.

 

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Aggressive Opposition to Anything For Average Americans – Thomas J. Donohue, the combative head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, isn’t one to step away from a fight. Donohue is renowned for his bulldog style.

The Chamber has moved sharply to oppose much of the legislation and many of the regulations and policies streaming out of the Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress on health care, labor issues, and finance. In a move some see as little short of a declaration of war on the White House, Donohue has been crisscrossing the country to raise $100 million to launch the “Campaign for Free Enterprise.”

As proof of the Chamber’s flawed approach, Democrats point to its recent leading role in what many saw as an over-the-top attack on the Administration’s plans for an agency to protect consumers from predatory lenders.

 

U.S. Chamber of Commerce: What Can You Do? – The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, under the leadership of Tom Donahue, has gone from a well respected trade organization to an extremist political organization dedicated to corrupting American democracy by elevating the profits of big corporations over the well being of the citizens they serve. The most recent example of this corrupt behavior is the Chamber’s announcement that it is spending more than $100 million to defeat initiatives to protect the environment and provide affordable health care to everyone.

The Chamber is the biggest lobbying operation in the United States, spending billions of dollars on behalf of bi g business over the past decade to corrupt the political system. Polluters like Big Coal, Big Asbestos, and Big Oil only need call the Chamber to stop any accountability for their toxic destruction. Wall Street banks and CEOs need only make sure that they have paid their Chamber dues to ensure that they can continue to rip off the taxpayers. And killers like Big Tobacco need only form a partnership with the Chamber to ensure that they will be given immunity from lawsuits that seek accountability for the death and sickness of millions of Americans.

Tom Donahue has turned the once respected and even-handed Chamber into an extremist organization, bragging that the Chamber gutted the Clinton tobacco settlement, killed the Clinton health care plan, and scuttled previous oversight of Wall Street and the banking system. Now the Chamber is spending tens of millions on ads and lobbyists to stop health care for all, protect polluters from accountability, and shield the financial industry from government regulation.

 

Support the Troops? Taylor, Texas Doesn’t Want Veteran’s Facility – A California company wants to convert an empty facility formerly used as nursing home into a trauma assistance center for as many as 88 female veterans, including those who have been sexually assaulted by fellow soldiers.

But some Taylor residents say they don’t want the facility in their town.

“It would put veterans in a situation where they are going to a town that doesn’t want them,” said Cherri Wolbrueck, co-owner of a Taylor bookstore. She talked about her opposition after attending a zoning board meeting where representatives of the company — Center Point Inc., based in San Rafael, Calif. — spoke.

Wolbrueck lives across the street from the proposed facility where veterans would live. She said she fears that veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder might attack residents in the Buttermilk Hill neighborhood.

Laura Lambe, the executive vice president of Texas Center Point Inc., which would operate the facility and is a subsidiary of the California company, said the veterans who would be served at the facility would not be a danger to the community.

“We have a moral obligation to help veterans,” said Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, an advocacy group based in Washington. “Veterans are the kind of neighbors we want, and it’s safe to be around them.”

 

Lou Dobbs’ Dangerous Brand of Journalism – Lou Dobbs’ brand of journalism is dangerous to America — and it’s time to fight back.

This week, the CNN anchor broadcast his radio show from the conference of anti-immigrant hate group FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Founded by a white nationalist, FAIR was linked earlier this year to vigilantes in Arizona who brutally murdered 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father in their home.

The appearance at FAIR is just the latest example of Dobbs using his status as a CNN anchor to spread fear about Latinos and immigrants. Dobbs’ show on CNN is riddled with faulty reporting and conspiracy theories like the “Birther” movement, and he has publicly pledged to oppose any policy President Obama puts forth. Yet, CNN continues to broadcast the Lou Dobbs Tonight as a “news” program. That needs to end.

It’s time we said ¡Basta! Enough is enough. Please join me in demanding that CNN drop Dobbs from its network.

Regards,

Jim