The WAWG Blog

Many People Are Easily Misled; Don’t Help Spread the Lies – At a recent town hall meeting, a man stood up and told Representative Bob Inglis to “keep your government hands off my Medicare.” The congressman tried to explain that Medicare is already a government program — but the voter wasn’t having any of it. It’s a funny story — but it illustrates the extent to which health reform must climb a wall of misinformation.

Right-wing opponents of reform would have you believe that President Obama is a wild-eyed socialist, attacking the free market. But unregulated markets don’t work for health care — never have, never will. To the extent we have a working health care system at all right now it’s only because the government covers the elderly, while a combination of regulation and tax subsidies makes it possible for many, but not all, nonelderly Americans to get decent private coverage.

Now Mr. Obama basically proposes using additional regulation and subsidies to make decent insurance available to all of us. That’s not radical; it’s as American as, well, Medicare.

Defending Public Health Care: Truths and Lies – Last week a new study showed that 92% of Canadians would recommend their doctor to friends and family. Two-thirds have had their doctor for over five years and 85% of Canadians have a regular doctor.

Does that sound like the health care system depicted in the right-wing Republican-backed smear campaign against Canada? Once you look under the bed, the bogeymen of the right-wing smear campaign don’t exist.

More Truths and Lies about Health Care – IThom Hartmann interviews Sara Robinson, who has written about the issue.

Mythbusting Canadian Health Care – Let’s have some actual facts, instead of ideological posturing, wishful thinking, hearsay, and random guessing about how things get done up here.

Deconstructing the Right Wing Lies on the Health Insurance Bill -The right’s lies about the current health insurance proposals before Congress have rarely been compiled in such concise form before.

“Blue Dog” Democrats Getting Big Money From Healthcare and Insurance Industry – Typical “Blue Dog” Democrats — moderate members of Congress who have been the most ardent among Obama’s own party in thwarting ongoing national healthcare legislation — receive 25 percent more campaign cash from the healthcare and insurance industry than other Democrats, an investigation has found.

In fact, a Blue Dog’s average receipts from the medical industry was just $3,625 less than that of the average Republican. Republicans have worked to block plans to enact universal health insurance legislation, saying that it would restrict individual choice and lead to the rationing of medical care.

Regards,
Jim

If Bruce became President of the United States, what would become of America? Decide for yourself.

Bruce on the use of torture for the enemy – “The seeds of Abu Ghraib’s rotten fruit were sown by civilians at the highest levels of our government.” As president he would define who the enemy is.

The “Imperial” Bruce – “It is the fresh details of Cheney’s secretive and loyal coterie of officials at work that provides the most telling insight into how he pulls the strings of the federal government.”

Bruce’s Forty-eight Known Noble Lies – 935 false statements were made between October 2001 and September 2003 on at least 532 occasions by representatives of the Bush administration. Bruce only told 48 due to being hidden away in an undisclosed location with his man-sized safe. Has anyone been tracking his lies since the end of his imperial vice-presiency? • Cheney’s Guantanamo Lies • Cheney ordered CIA to lie to Congress

Spying on all our enemies – “There is no need to worry about our illegal, secret spying on you, because the Leader Himself — “personally” — reviews this and approves of it. And even though there is a law in place enacted almost 30 years ago by your democratically-elected representatives making it a felony for us to do this, and even though the only court to rule on this issue has ruled that we are violating not only your constitutional rights, but also a federal criminal statute, we are still doing it, and we will continue to. Because we want to and because we can.”

The End of Posse Comitatus – And now we find out Bruce argued that the President could use troops against its own citizens.

A life long goal: Bruce’s Desire for an Imperial Presidency – “Cheney bypassed acts of Congress as defense secretary in the first Bush administration. And his office has been the driving force behind the current administration’s hoarding of secrets, its efforts to impose greater political control over career officials, and its defiance of a law requiring the government to obtain warrants when wiretapping Americans. Cheney’s staff has also been behind President Bush’s record number of signing statements asserting his right to disregard laws.”

Part I: Why do they fear a public insurance plan?

We keep hearing that a pubic option will be far too expensive, can’t possibly work because it’s run by the Government and that it will kill the private sector health insurance industry. Leaving aside that if 1 & 2 are true then 3 is a non sequitur, how might a public, i.e. government run, insurance program be different than the private one we now have.

It’s accepted by Democrats and Republicans alike that Medicare spends 30% less on overhead expenses than private insurance companies and 92% of Medicare patients rate the care as good or excellent. What’s the difference between Medicare and private insurance?

Private insurance companies spend a lot of money on advertising, mostly to steal profitable customers from each other, as they don’t really want anyone who isn’t currently insured. Medicare doesn’t. Medicare doesn’t have to return a profit, private firms do. Take United Health Group, the largest insurance company in the U.S. Their net profits were up 155% last quarter to $889 million (extrapolated to a year that’s $3.5 billion). Not bad for the middle of a recession, huh? Then there’s executive compensation to contend with. I can’t find current numbers, but in 2005 the CEO of Health Care Group got $123 million, salary only not including “un-earned” compensation. I can only assume it’ll be more this year after such an increase in profits. The head of Medicare in the same year made a little less than $150k. Risk management is also an expense. Private insurance companies maintain a small army of claims administrators whose job it is to comb through incoming medical bills looking for exceptions to coverage. Medicare is pretty cut and dried; if your doctor prescribes it and it’s not classified as experimental it’s covered. The last major expense that the private industry has that Medicare doesn’t is lobbying and that expense has gone up a LOT since Obama and the Democrats began talking about health care reform. $1.4 million a day is the current rate of spending.

These are all legitimate expenses for any company doing any sort of business in the private sector. There is nothing wrong with any of them; they aren’t illegal, immoral or even fattening as far as I know. My only question is, is this the way you want to see the money you or your employer spend to protect you from massive expenses due to illness used?

Medicare poll
United Health profits
UHC ceo pay
Lobby expenditures

Part II, What does your representative have for health care?

The Federal Health Insurance program is a pool of many different plans offered by the private insurance sector. Because the federal government is the largest employer in the United States the pool, which determines the risk to the insurer and is the largest factor affecting the premium rate, is correspondingly large. Exactly what any individual plan is can’t be determined as it varies from state to state and coverage to coverage. In Texas there are 28 different plans with monthly premiums ranging from $300 to $1200. The amount the insured pays also varies from a low of 35% to a high of 90% with the government picking up the rest. Coverage ranges from no deductable, no co-pay, no limit to what most of us insured through our employers currently have. They can also take advantage of Health Savings accounts like we can and pay out of pocket expensed in pre-tax dollars. Suffice it to say that because of the pool size and open competition it’s a pretty good deal.

This is very much like what Obama and the Democrats plan for everybody; one giant pool of everybody in the country and negotiate costs with any insurance company that wants to participate plus add a public insurance option. Other reform changes include: no pre-existing conditions, no single illness or lifetime caps, no rescission as long as premiums are paid, a cap on out of pocket expenses and no premium or coverage discrimination based on sex, current health, risks or location.

Federal health plan
reform changes

Glenn Beck Has Meltdown Over Protecting Turtles And Otters That Don’t Carry Guns – It’s a challenge to keep being surprised by what Glenn Beck says, but watch the video at the link. Beck declares that funds to protect turtles and otters would only be worthy if they carried guns to protect The United States, and proceeds to start screaming about whether there’s a powerful turtle and otter lobby.

Pete Sessions is Against Earmarks Except His Own That Profit His Former Aide – Pete Sessions — the chief of the Republicans’ campaign arm in the House — says on his website that earmarks have become “a symbol of a broken Washington to the American people.” Yet in 2008, Sessions himself steered a $1.6 million earmark for dirigible research to an Illinois company whose president acknowledges having no experience in government contracting, let alone in building blimps. What the company did have: the help of Adrian Plesha, a former Sessions aide with a criminal record who has made more than $446,000 lobbying on its behalf.

Boston Cop Calls Henry Louis Gates a ‘Banana-Eating Jungle Monkey’ in Mass E-mail – Boston police officer Justin Barrett sent a letter to the editor of the Boston Globe, complaining of the Globe’s coverage of the Henry Louis Gates arrest on July 16. Of Gates, Barrett wrote: “He is a suspect and will always be a suspect. If I was the officer [Gates] verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey, I would have sprayed him in the face with OC [pepper spray] deserving of his belligerent non-compliance.” Barrett then went on to berate the author of the Globe article to which he objected.

Republican Scare Tactic (and Lie): Health Care Reform Will Kill People – Republicans are trying to rally opposition to President Obama’s health care plan by suggesting it will literally kill people. One GOP legislator said the reform plan is a way to advance assisted suicide.

Earlier Tuesday, President Obama fielded a question at a town hall hosted by the American Association of Retired Persons: “I have been told there is a clause in there that everyone that’s Medicare age will be visited and told to decide how they wish to die,” a woman named Mary hailing from North Carolina asked the president.

Here’s some of the lies that Republicans have told:

REP. VIRGINIA FOXX (R-NC): “Republicans have a better solution that won‘t put the government in charge of people‘s health care, that will make sure we bring down the cost of health care for all Americans, and that insures affordable access for all Americans, and is pro-life because it will not put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government.”

REP. PAUL BROUN (R-G): “A lot of people are going to die. This program of government option that‘s being touted as being this panacea, the savior of allowing people to have quality health care at an affordable price, is going to kill people.”

RUSH LIMBAUGH, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: “People at a certain age with certain diseases will be deemed not worth the investment, and they will just—as Obama said—they‘ll give them some pain pills and let them loop out until they die and they don‘t even know what‘s happened.”

Republican Representative Falsely Claims That Health Care Will Put Senior Citizens on Lists to Die – Last Friday, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) joined radical conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on his radio talk show for an interview:

GOHMERT: “We’ve been battling this socialist health care, the nationalization of health care, that is going to absolutely kill senior citizens. They’ll put them on lists and force them to die early because they won’t get the treatment as early as they need. […] I would rather stop this socialization of health care because once the government pays for your health care, they have every right to tell you what you eat, what you drink, how you exercise, where you live.”

They will make up and repeat any lie to help their big-business insurance buddies.

Insurance Company’s Profits Win Over Your Health – One Blue Cross employee earned a perfect score of “5” for “exceptional performance” on an evaluation that noted the employee’s role in dropping thousands of policyholders and avoiding nearly $10 million worth of medical care.

WellPoint’s Blue Cross of California subsidiary and two other insurers saved more than $300 million in medical claims by canceling more than 20,000 sick policyholders over a five-year period, the House committee said….

The committee investigation uncovered several rescission practices that one lawmaker called egregious, including targeting every policyholder diagnosed with leukemia, breast cancer and 1,400 other serious illnesses. Such investigations involve scouring the policyholder’s original application and years’ worth of medical and pharmacy records in search of any discrepancies.

Same Firm That Worked for the Tobacco Industry is Now Lobbying Against Health Care – The new anti-health reform front group known as the Coalition to Protect Patients’ Rights, is being managed by the lobbying firm known as the DCI Group. After being contacted by ThinkProgress about its sponsorship of CPPR’s press conference last week, DCI Group staffers acknowledged that they coordinate PR for the front group. Not be confused with Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, another front group opposing health reform, CPPR has been organizing lobbying efforts against health reform and publishing op-eds across the country with misinformation about the public option.

Tom Synhorst, a former staffer to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Bob Dole, joined fellow right-wing operatives Doug Goodyear and Tim Hyde to form DCI Group in 1996. The firm quickly flourished working for the tobacco industry, coordinating a sophisticated astroturf campaign to build public opposition to tobacco regulations. Ironically, before helping to manage this “patients’ rights” campaign, DCI founded “Smokers’ Rights” groups across the country for the tobacco lobby.

Republican Family-Values State Senator Has Affair With 22-Year-Old Intern – A Tennessee lawmaker resigned from the state Senate on Tuesday after his extramarital affair with a 22-year-old intern was revealed by an investigation into an extortion case. Stanley’s legislative proposals were largely focused on pro-business issues, but he also sponsored failed measures to ban gay couples from adopting children. He also spoke out against funding for Planned Parenthood because he said unmarried people should not have sex. Stanley is a married father of two, so he probably thinks it’s OK.

Oil Speculators “Played a Significant Role” in a Sudden Spike in the Price of Oil – The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is now admitting that oil speculators “played a significant role” in a sudden spike in the price of oil in the summer of 2008. That summer oil reached $147 per barrel, and, at that time, the CFTC claimed the price increase was due to the forces of supply and demand. Bart Chilton, one of the agency’s four commissioners, now says that analysis was based on “deeply flawed data.” (In other words, regular people suffered so a few could make big money at our expense.)

Regards,

Jim

Conservatives Lie About What They Said (Again) – When the Dow was down below 7,000, Republicans couldn’t stop citing it as ‘proof’ that President Obama’s economic plans had failed.

Now that the Dow is in 9,000 territory — up well over 10% since inauguration day — right-wing pundits like J.P. Frere are trying to pretend conservatives never attacked Obama on the stock market.
Well, as Faiz Shakir of Think Progress and David Shuster and Tamron Hall of MSNBC reminded Frere, that’s exactly they did — and as the clip at the link shows, the videotape doesn’t lie.

The Republican Phantom Health Care Bill – Questions swirl around the phantom Republican bill on health care reform … is it so good that it will never see the light of day?

Our bill is never going to get to the floor, so why confuse the focus? – Roy Blunt

… or has everyone already seen it?

Our reform plan to lower costs, increase access, and improve quality was released weeks ago and it is well-known. – Roy Blunt

… or, is it a work in progress?

We’re continuing to put the final touches on our bill as the Democrats are continuing to put the finishing touches on their bill – John Boehner

Confused? You should be because all three statements were made on the same day.

Inhofe: If GOP Can ‘Stall’ Or ‘Block’ Health Care Reform, It Will Be ‘A Huge Gain’ for Republicans in the 2010 Elections (But Not for Americans) – Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) isn’t shying away from revealing his honest feelings. Appearing on Janet Parshall’s radio show yesterday, Inhofe argued that the defeat of President Clinton’s health care reform “started the demise of Bill Clinton that led to the 1994 Republican takeover of the House and the Senate.” He then added that he is now “tracking the demise” of Obama’s health care plans and it is making him “optimistic”. It doesn’t make Americans in need of health care optimistic, but that’s not what’s important to Inhofe.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) released this statement:

Slowly but surely the Republicans are revealing their true strategy on health care: partisans gamesmanship comes before getting something done. If Republicans believe doing nothing will ingratiate themselves with the American people, they have not learned a single lesson from the last two elections. Their do nothing approach is why health care costs have skyrocketed, and it’s why Republicans are in such a bad place today. This strategy is bad politics, but it is also a deeply troubling way to govern.

Sign the petition for a not-for-profit public option on health care

Tell Congress to Pass Health Care Legislation Now! – Americans United for Change just put out a new ad. The Republican tactic to stall the bill is their idea on how to destroy it. The ad is quite good and falls in line with what I’ve been saying. To stall the bill is an attempt to kill the bill. Say No to the August Recess if Congress can’t get their act together.

Republican Congressperson: We’re Not Going To Cry “Emergency” Every Time There’s a Katrina! – Marsha Blackburn (Oblivious-TN): “Let’s agree that we’re going to have PAYGO enforcement. That we’re not going to cry ‘emergency’ every time we have a Katrina, every time we have a Tsunami, every time we have a need for extra spending, that we don’t go call for a special appropriation that allows us to circumvent the PAYGO rules.”

Well, I’m sure Blackburn will hold herself to that. I’m sure that any time a disaster threatens her state of Tennessee, she won’t cry emergency and bother to get federal funding to help people in need. Unless …

WASHINGTON, D.C. U.S. Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and U.S. Representatives Lincoln Davis (D-Tenn. 4), Bart Gordon (D-Tenn. 6), and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn. 7) have joined Governor Phil Bredesen in requesting that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack issue a federal disaster declaration for five counties in Tennessee “to help farmers who have suffered crop losses and damage to farm equipment and structures as a result of excessive rain and extensive flooding that occurred in May.”

Or when …

Title: Letter to The Honorable Mike Johanns, Secretary, U.S. Department of Agriculture
Date: 07/12/2007
Alexander, Corker Join Tenn. Delegation In Requesting Disaster Declaration For Drought
from the Office of Senator Bob Corker
U.S. Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker joined other members of the Tennessee Congressional Delegation Tuesday in asking U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns to issue an agricultural disaster declaration for all 95 Tennessee counties due to the results of the ongoing drought.
Marsha Blackburn
Member of congress

Well, I must admit, those are not another Katrina.

Republican Hypocrite!

The Great Tax Con Job – Republicans are using the T-word – taxes – to attack the Obama healthcare program. It’s a strategy based in a lie.

A very small niche of America’s uber-wealthy have pulled off what may well be the biggest con job in the history of our republic, and they did it in a startlingly brief 30 or so years. True, they spent over three billion dollars to make it happen, but the reward to them was in the hundreds of billions – and will continue to be.

Billionaire Rupert Murdoch loses $50 million a year on the NY Post, billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife loses $2 to $3 million a year on the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, billionaire Philip Anschutz loses around $5 million a year on The Weekly Standard, and billionaire Sun Myung Moon has lost $2 to $3 billion on The Washington Times.

Why are these guys willing to lose so much money funding “conservative” media? Why do they bulk-buy every right-wing book that comes out to throw it to the top of the NY Times Bestseller list and then give away the copies to “subscribers” to their websites and publications? Why do they fund to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year money-hole “think tanks” like Heritage and Cato?
The answer is pretty straightforward. They do it because it buys them respectability, and gets their con job out there.

Lies About Global Cooling – You won’t find links to actual climate data, or even the original “scientific” works in the “global cooling” writing on Right Side News. Instead, you’ll find links to other rants on other right-wing websites like World Net Daily that also contain the same quotations, also without links to either original scientific works or actual climate data.

There’s a reason that these rants don’t link to original scientific work or actual climate data: actual climate data show that the globe is warming.

In a Washington Times column, Wesley Pruden falsely claimed that “the earth has been measurably cooling for the last decade, despite everything [former Vice President] Al [Gore] and his followers have done about it.” In fact, the United Kingdom’s Met (Meteorological) Office lists as a “fact” that “[t]emperatures are continuing to rise” and states that “temperature change over the latest decade (1998-2007) alone shows a continued warming of 0.1° C per decade.”

The Secret Evidence of Global Warming That Bush Tried to Hide – Photos from US spy satellites declassified by the Obama White House provide the first graphic images of how the polar ice sheets are retreating in the summer. The effects on the world’s weather, environments and wildlife could be devastating. Graphic images that reveal the devastating impact of global warming in the Arctic have been released by the US military. The photographs, taken by spy satellites over the past decade, confirm that in recent years vast areas in high latitudes have lost their ice cover in summer months. The pictures, kept secret during the presidency of George W Bush, were declassified by the White House last week.

What do you get when you get rid of the elite left? – In 1963, the U. S. backed a coup against the government of Iraq headed by General Abdel Karim Kassem, who five years earlier had deposed the Western-allied Iraqi monarchy. The CIA helped the new Baath Party government led by Abdul Salam Arif in ridding the country of suspected leftists and Communists. In a Baathist bloodbath, the government used lists of suspected Communists and other leftists provided by the CIA, to systematically murder untold numbers of Iraq’s educated elite — killings in which Saddam Hussein is said to have participated. The victims included hundreds of doctors, teachers, technicians, lawyers and other professionals as well as military and political figures. According to an op-ed in the New York Times, the U.S. sent arms to the new regime, weapons later used against the same Kurdish insurgents the U.S. supported against Kassem and then abandoned. American and UK oil and other interests, including Mobil, Bechtel and British Petroleum, were conducting business in Iraq.

References:

1. “A Tyrant 40 Years in the Making”. New York Times. 2003-12-15. Retrieved on 2007-09-18.

2. “The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq”, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978; Peter and Marion Sluglett, “Iraq Since 1958” London, I.B. Taurus, 1990

3. Regarding the CIA’s “Health Alteration Committee’s work in Iraq, see U.S. Senate’s Church Committee Interim Report on Assassination, page 181, Note 1

TVA Lawyers Limited Coal Ash Spill Report per Auditor – The Tennessee Valley Authority failed for more than 20 years to heed warnings that might have prevented a massive coal ash spill in Tennessee, then allowed its lawyers to stifle a $3 million study into the disaster’s cause to limit its legal liability, an inspector general’s report said Tuesday. The breach of 5.4 million cubic yards of toxic-laden coal ash from the earthen dams and holding ponds at TVA’s Kingston Fossil Plant into the Emory River and lakeside homes has raised questions about the risks and lack of regulation of hundreds of similar sites around the country.

Sarah Palin Makes Stuff Up, Then Tells the Press to Stop Makin’ Stuff Up – At her farewell speech, Sarah Palin said that it gets 150 degrees hotter in the summer in Alaska. Then she chastised some members of the press for “makin’ stuff up.”

If you can’t stand to listen to Palin, here’s William Shatner reading Palin’s speech.

She would be right if she finished her statement by saying, “And I’m talkin’ about you, Hannity and O’Reilly.” (except they don’t qualify as members of the press.)

Regards,

Jim

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

From William Butler Yeats’, The Second Coming

Besides not wanting to completely waste a Masters Degree in English I thought Yeats’ poem, written about the excesses of the 1920s, seemed apropos of our current situation. The economy is falling apart and the Democrats can’t seem to agree on anything while the Republicans are full of passionate intensity against everything anybody wants to try.

During the roaring ‘20s Robber Barons amassed huge fortunes and the disparity in income between the top 1% and the middle incomes grew to 24:1. The crash of ‘29 followed by the New Deal, bank regulation, tax reform and finally WWII’s GI bill evened out the wealth spread to about 8:1 where it remained until 1980. That’s when Ronald Reagan was elected and we began 30 years of supply side economics, aka trickle down, and that’s what has us where we are today.

Since 1979 the average income of the top 1% has increased more than 256%, from $337k to $1.2 mil, while the middle one fifth of incomes has increased 21% from $43k to $52k. CEOs and other top executives now receive a third of all payroll dollars in the U.S. and that does not include stock options or other non-payroll incentives. Income disparity is now at 23:1. All of this was achieved through the tax code and de-regulation and while it was happening the national debt swelled from less than $900 billion to over $10 trillion. As a percentage of GDP the debt is as high as it has been since the Korean War and may reach WWII proportions before it’s over.

When Reagan took office the top marginal tax rate for earned income was 50% (above $215k) and 70% on unearned income. The current highest marginal rate for earned income is now 35% (above $311k, up from a low of 28% above $39k) and unearned income is taxed at 15%. The last time marginal taxes were this low was just before the 1929 crash. The highest marginal rate since then was 91% on income above $5 mil in the mid ‘50s.

During the years with the highest marginal tax rates the growth in GDP averaged 5%, since Reagan began cutting taxes it has averaged 2.5%. Two things caused this: the conversion of our economy from manufacturing to a service economy (outsourcing of jobs) which in turn shifted GDP from a manufacturing base to a consumer spending base and the concentration of wealth in a few hands resulting in less money for consumers to spend.

In addition to concentrating wealth in the hands of a very few, the huge increase in executive compensation is sapping the Social Security trust fund. As more and more wages are concentrated in fewer and fewer paychecks less of it is subject to Social security taxes. Since 1982 the percentage of wages subject to Social Security taxes has declined from 90% to 83%.

If the United States is to remain a world power I believe we must do two things: shift the GDP back to a more balanced service vs manufacturing base and fund the government through a much more progressive tax system. It is too late to bring the Levi Jeans manufacturing back to the United States (it was in Waco, TX back in 1980) because the price of that product has been set to Chinese levels. However, as we did in the ‘60s, as we create new technology we can keep those manufacturing jobs here through changes in the tax code to make it less profitable to ship those jobs off shore and we can create a level playing field by requiring foreign trade partners to meet the same environmental and human rights standards US companies must. Strengthening the manufacturing sector will create high paying jobs raising the wages of the middle-income earners. If the burden of funding the government is shifted to the few top earners the large number of people in the middle incomes will have more to spend, stimulating the service sector of our economy.

In short, we need to go back to the future . . .

• income disparity 1929
• income disparity 79 vs 06
• executives get 1/3 of all wages
• Pay of Top Earners Erodes Social Security

Republican Senator Says at Least Half Our Opposition to Health Care is Just Plain Politics – Half the Republicans’ opposition to a public health care option comes not from policy differences with the Democrats, or fundamental philosophical differences about the role of government, but purely from a desire to score political points against President Barack Obama, a senior Republican senator has admitted.

George Voinovich (R-OH) said on CNBC Wednesday that a desire to prevent the Democratic president from scoring a historical victory with a public health plan accounts for at least 50 percent of the GOP opposition to the plan.

Why the Rush on Healthcare? – One of the media asked at the President’s press conference on health care, “Why the rush?” The simple answer is because we’ve been waiting 60 years for health care reform and many Americans (including American businesses) are being devastated by their health care costs.

Don’t Be a Bad Deeder: Stand Up for Health Care – Support President Obama’s three principles for real health care reform, and call on Congress to enact a plan upholding them in 2009.

Now Do More …

Insurance Company Rules – How the health care insurance companies make things work for them, not you.

Flesh-Peddler Bill O’Reilly Plays Erin Andrews Peephole Video On-Air – Yesterday, Fox News was hyping a Bill O’Reilly “investigation” into the naked Erin Andrews peephole video incident, prompting us to wonder, “Will the ole smut-merchant show the video on the air?” Well, of course he would, duh!

Now, O’Reilly, and Fox News in general, have a long history with this sort of thing. He’ll bloviate righteously about softcore porn on YouTube or underage strippers or how the Make-A-Wish foundation turned down money from a bikini car wash fundraiser or whatever, and all the while he’ll have salacious clips running over the audio of he and his guests mouthing off about the gross injustice of whatever it is they’re talking about. So you just knew that O’Reilly would take this whole thing straight into the gutter, and he did not disappoint. Classic. Just classic Bill O’Reilly slimeballage, wrapped up neatly under the guise of “investigative reporting.”

Morgan Stanley Sets Aside 72% of Revenue to Pay Bonuses – Morgan Stanley is setting aside a huge sum to pay out bonuses despite posting its third consecutive quarterly loss and admitting it is disappointed with key departments. There’s nothing like rewards for work poorly done by people who are already rich. Ah, free enterprise!

Lou Dobbs’ Promotes Birther Theory Even After His Guest Host Debunked It – Dobbs repeatedly made claims about Obama’s birth certificate that his CNN colleagues call “total bull.” Then, Kitty Pilgrim, guest-hosting Lou Dobbs’ CNN show, debunked claims that President Obama does not have a valid birth certificate and is therefore ineligible to be president — claims that Dobbs himself advanced days earlier on his radio program. Then, days after Pilgrim answered the bogus claims, Dobbs claims Obama birth certificate “questions won’t go away.” Maybe Dobbs really thinks that NASA Faked Obama’s Birth.

Regards,

Jim

Poll: Just Six Percent of Scientists are Republicans – Now, why would that be? Scientists deal with facts; Republicans deal with … Oh, never mind.

The States That Voted Republican in the 2008 US Presidential Election Tend to be Lower in per Capita GDP, K-12 Education, and Public Health – That’s right, vote Republican at your own risk! Remember, these are the people who say health care is just fine the way it is. And that’s true, if you have the Congressional health care plan, or if you’re an insurance company CEO.

The Moral Roots of Liberals and Conservatives – Liberals score high on openness to experience. Conservatives do not. They like things the way they are used to seeing them. Discrimination, war, the rich staying rich, millions of people without health care; it’s the way they think things should stay. Watch the video at the link above.

Conservatives Not Too Concerned About Behavior of Their Leaders – While for Democrats, adultery often leads to ruined or constrained careers – think Gary Hart, Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, John Edwards – Republican adulterers from Newt Gingrich to David Vitter have lived to see another political day, still championing their hard-line conservative positions.

Their survival isn’t in spite of the GOP’s evangelical base, but rather because of it. And while liberals tend to see continued support as hypocrisy from both the politician and his supporters, what matters to conservative Republicans is not so much the behavior of their leaders as the repentance they show after their fall from grace.

In the rambling announcement of his affair, Gov. Sanford said little about politics and a lot about his faith. At times he sounded like a preacher expounding on the nature of God’s law, of self, and of sin. By getting it spiritually right, Sanford is well on his way to getting it politically right.

New Downbeat Unemployment Numbers Include Republican Mistresses – Unemployment surged over the past two weeks, new statistics released today show, but the Department of Labor was careful to point out that much of that increase was due to “forced layoffs of Republican mistresses.”

Tea Party Republican Warns That the Next Step After the Ballot Box is the Bullet Box – From a Tea Party in Virginia, where a Republican legislative candidate named Catherine Crabill got up and said the following:

Crabill: “If war is inevitable, then let it come, I repeat sir, let it come. We have the chance to fight this battle at the ballot box before we have to resort to the bullet box.

You have to wonder what Crabill will do if she fails at the ballot box. Get out her bullets?

Conservative Group Offers to Sell Endorsement for $2M – The American Conservative Union asked FedEx for a check for $2 million to $3 million in return for the group’s endorsement in a bitter legislative dispute, then flipped and sided with UPS after FedEx refused to pay. For the $2 million plus, ACU offered a range of services that included: “Producing op-eds and articles written by ACU’s Chairman David Keene and/or other members of the ACU’s board of directors. The letter exposes the practice by some political interest groups of taking stands not for reasons of pure principle, as their members and supporters might assume, but also in part because a sponsor is paying big money.

Karl Rove Advocates Breaking the Law When it Comes to the CIA and Congress – On Bill O’Reilly’s show earlier this week, Karl Rove said that Dick Cheney and the CIA should never inform Congress of what they are doing because it won’t remain a secret so, never mind about the law. Rove then appeared to make the argument that executive branch should not inform Congress of what it is doing:

ROVE: Look, it’s interesting. The CIA briefed Congress to this, I guess, in June. And the Congress immediately leaks it. That, itself is, a violation, I think, of several statutes and indicative of why it is so dangerous to give Congress information.

To clarify, Congress did not “leak” details of the secret program. The Wall Street Journal cited “former intelligence officials familiar with the matter” in its report. But Rove’s comment seems to confirm the Bush administration’s motives for routinely attempting to hide information from Congress.

Rove lies about what happened when the facts are clear as a bell. The CIA is required by law to inform Congress on what they are doing. Period. There are no exceptions.

Obama Administration Approves First Roadless Logging Contract In Alaska’s Tongass National Forest – This week, the Obama administration approved the sale of timber in a roadless national forest in Alaska. The Tongass National Forest is a 17 million acre temperate rain forest in southeast Alaska, which is home to both endangered species and native Alaskan tribes. It is the largest temperate rain forest in the United States.

Bush Administration Blacklisted Liberal Groups – According to an internal Justice Department report from 2008, from 2006 to 2007, “candidates to the Honors Program whose applications indicated liberal affiliations were rejected at a high rate, around 55 percent, as opposed to candidates who had conservative affiliations, who were rejected at a rate of about 18 percent.” Eighty-two percent of applicants who had “liberal affiliations” were rejected for summer internships, while only 13 percent with conservative affiliations were rejected for the same programs. “We found that in 2006 the screening committee inappropriately used political and ideological considerations to deselect many candidates,” the report as said.

Senators Call for Health Care Delay, Receive Big Campaign Contributions – Six senators called for a seventy day hold on voting on health care reform legislation today. The senators involved include three Democrats, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu and Ron Wyden, two Republicans, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, and one Independent, Joe Lieberman. Each these senators has raised at least $1 million from the health and insurance sectors combined over the course of their respective careers.

Americans Losing Health Coverage – At least four people lose coverage every minute. That’s more than 260 people every hour, more than 6,300 people every day, 2.3 million people every year.

California Councilman Sent Racist Anti-Obama Jokes To Staff – In the past several months Atwater City Councilman Gary Frago has sent at least a half-dozen e-mails to city staff and other prominent community members containing racist jokes aimed at President Barack Obama, his wife and black people in general. In all, the Sun-Star obtained seven e-mails that Frago sent from October 2008 to February 2009 from an anonymous source. Some compared Obama to O.J. Simpson while others suggested that “nigger rigs” should now be called “presidential solutions.”

“I don’t see where there’s a story, I’m not the only one that does it,” Fargo said in his defense

Average Income in 2006 up $60,000 for Top 1 Percent of Households, Just $430 for Bottom 90 Percent: Income Concentration at Highest Level Since 1928, New Analysis Shows – Sometimes a picture is worth a million words. This graph, from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities tells you why it makes sense to tax the very rich to fund reform.

CIA Officials Committed Fraud – A federal judge has ruled that CIA officials committed fraud to protect a former covert agent against an eavesdropping lawsuit and is considering sanctioning as many as six who have worked at the agency, including former CIA Director George Tenet. According to court documents unsealed Monday, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth referred a CIA attorney, Jeffrey Yeates, for disciplinary action. Lamberth also denied the CIA’s renewed efforts under the Obama administration to keep the case secret because of what he calls the agency’s “diminished credibility” and the “twisted history” in the case.

The Audacity of Nope: The GOP Channels Groucho Marx: “Whatever It Is, I’m Against It” – The lead story in the WashPost today is “GOP Focuses Effort To Kill Health-Care Bills.” But really, the story could be about climate or clean energy — or anything else.

Here’s Groucho Marx singing in Horsefeathers:

“I don’t know what they have to say,

It makes no difference anyway,

Whatever it is, I’m against it.

No matter what it is or who commenced it, I’m against it.

Your proposition may be good,
But let’s have one thing understood,
Whatever it is, I’m against it.
And even when you’ve changed it or condensed it,
I’m against it.”

U.S. Health Care System Is In Need of Emergency Care – Here are some statistics, via the nonpartisan/bipartisan National Coalition on Health Care (NCHC), to demonstrate just how dire the current health care situation is:

· 46 million Americans under the age of 65 (which represents 18 percent of the population) had no health insurance in 2007. And given the spike in the unemployment rate and downturn in the economy since then, that figure has to be even higher now.

· 2.4 trillion was spent on health care in 2008, representing 17 percent of the U.S.’s gross domestic product. That’s more than four times what we spend on defense.

· Costs are trending in the wrong direction. Projections have costs reaching3.1 trillion in 2012 and4.3 trillion by 2016, if the same health care system remains in place.

· The NCHC has compiled projections on the negative impact of spiraling health care costs on the economy, state and federal budgets and employers, large and small, and the effects are stifling. Health care costs are a major threat to our future.

· We are also very inefficient. We spend more money per person on health care than nations that provide universal coverage to their citizens. The NCHC, citing the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, points out that health care spending was only 10.9 percent of the gross domestic product in Switzerland, 10.7 percent in Germany, 9.7 percent in Canada and 9.5 percent in France, all countries that provide single-payer health care.

· And what about the small businesses Republicans are always pretending to defend? They are getting killed by health insurance payments. Employer-based premiums rose 5 percent in 2008. In 2007, rates for small employers went up 5.5 percent and companies with less than 24 employees saw an even bigger increase, 6.8 percent. The Republicans call any health care reform measure from the Democrats a job-killer, but nothing is killing the ability of small businesses to hire Americans more than the rising cost of health insurance.

· In 2008, employees had to pay a whopping 12 percent more in health insurance premiums than they did in 2007, so that the average worker is now paying $1,600 more a year for premiums than he/she did in 1999. In fact, since 1999, premiums for employment-based health insurance have increased 120 percent. (NCHC notes that during that same period, wages grew only 29 percent.) That means that health insurance costs are increasing four times faster for American workers than their wages are, on average.

· Republicans love to talk about how bad health care will be if the government gets involved, and President Obama has taken great pains to assure Americans that, under his plan, if they like the coverage they have, they can keep it. But the evidence points to the fact that care in the United States isn’t as good as it could or should be, and is not the best in the world. The NCHC notes that our infant death mortality rate is 7 percent, while the leaders are at 2.7 percent. A drop more than half of adult Americans get the care recommended for them, and less than half of those suffering from diabetes and less than a third with coronary heart disease receive proper care.

Media Helping Conservatives Spread Misinformation about Health Care – Despite passage of health care reform bills in House and Senate committees and the endorsement by major medical organizations of congressional Democrats’ reform efforts, numerous television pundits have suggested that President Obama’s health care plan is in serious jeopardy.

(Notice that these are all rich people with incredible health care who are doing all the smearing.)

Big Business is the Middle-Man Today – To Dr. Regina Benjamin, health care is a service, helping people in need with grace and compassion. To Ed Hanway, the Chairman and CEO of Cigna, and his highly paid friends, it’s big business, a commodity to be sold to those who can afford it. And woe to anyone who gets between them and the profits they reap from sick people.

Concentration of Pay at the Top Erodes Social Security – Executives and other highly compensated employees now receive more than one-third of all pay in the U.S., according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Social Security Administration data — without counting billions of dollars more in pay that remains off federal radar screens that measure wages and salaries.

The pay of employees who receive more than the Social Security wage base — now $106,800 — increased by 78%, or nearly $1 trillion, over the past decade, exceeding the 61% increase for other workers, according to the analysis. In the five years ending in 2007, earnings for American workers rose 24%, half the 48% gain for the top-paid. The result: The top-paid represent 33% of the total, up from 28% in 2002.

The growing portion of pay that exceeds the maximum amount subject to payroll taxes has contributed to the weakening of the Social Security trust fund.

Now that Walter Cronkite has passed on, who is America’s most trusted newscaster? – Is it Brian Williams? Nope. Katie Couric? Nope. Charlie Gibson? Nope. To see who, click the link above.

Regards,

Jim

Senator Jim DeMint, R SC, succinctly laid out what is important to the Republican Party on a conference call to fellow conservatives[ without conscience (CWCs)]. He said, “If we’re able to stop Obama on this (health care) it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.” For them it isn’t about health care or fixing the economy or representing their constituents; it’s all about breaking the President, forcing him to fail and with him the entire country.

The other shoe is the claim that everybody is happy with health care as it is. True, most people who have health care are happy because their employer, at little or no cost to them, provides it. If you’re happy with the health care provided by your employer, don’t get too comfortable with it. As of now only 60% of employers provide health care and that number is falling fast. For small businesses, the engine that drives our economy, the number is much lower and many are dropping insurance as rates increase at the rate of doubling every five years. There are 50 million Americas currently without any health insurance of any kind. Of those upward of 18,000 die every year as a direct result of not having health insurance.

Okay, so you’re already out of the employer provided insurance pool, so what? Well there are fifty states and fifty sets of rules for insurance providers. Even if you can afford to purchase your own insurance it may or may not be a very good deal. The cost of covering a family of four can run as much as $2000 a month even with ridiculously high deductibles.

Fine, you’re not one of the 50 million uninsured either by dent of having employer provided insurance or purchasing your own. Half of all bankruptcies in the US are caused by medical bills and 70% of them actually have insurance. See, you or your employer pay through the nose for insurance but the company limits your coverage with one-time and lifetime limits on payments.

Then there’s rescission. Rescission is the practice of canceling insurance coverage for obscure reasons usually un-related to the illness suffered by the patient. For instance, should you be diagnosed with colon cancer and the treatment promises to be long and expensive the insurer will go over every bit of your medical history they can find. If they find something not listed on your original application like the acne treatment you got at age 16 they can cancel your coverage. In testimony before the Senate the CEOs of our largest insurance companies said flatly that they would not cease that practice as part of reform.

Finally, for all the teeth gnashing, ashes and sackcloth from the conservative right about the cost of public coverage, America is drowning in health care costs. If you total Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance premiums plus out of pocket expenses we spend $2.2 Trillion a year on health care. That’s more than four times the cost of national defense. $2.2 Trillion and there are 37 industrialized nations that have better health care than we do at less than half the cost.

I’ve got an idea. Confiscate every dime spent by the Insurance and Pharma companies on lobbying and use it to pay for universal health care. Since Obama took office those industries have hired 350 lobbyists (there are only 435 congress people) at the cost of $1.4 Million a day to defeat health care reform. $1.4 MILLION A DAY. Senator Baucus (D Mont), leader of health care reform, has six (count ‘em SIX) lobbyists assigned to him. They have spent $225 billion in six months, almost half of what the CBO says a public insurance option would cost over ten years. Those numbers should give you some idea of how much money these companies are making off human misery.

For a summery of what the public insurance option might look like go here:

• Public Insurance Summary
• Public Insurance Benefits

The debate is going on right now. Call your Senator and Representative, even if they are Republican, and tell them how you feel.

Mr. Holder,

Every time the executive branch of our federal government erodes the rule of law, our nation takes one more step toward its end. To delay that end, there must be a thorough and complete investigation of any laws that were broken. There should be a restoration of those broken laws and those responsible should be prosecuted for their illegal actions.

This investigation should be done by Congress, or the Department of Justice, or both working together to restore the rule of law.

In particular, we, as a country, cannot ask others to respect human rights when we are violating the rights of both our citizens and those we accuse of perpetrating crimes against our nation.

Please appoint an independent prosector to help restore the rule of law with respect to any violation of human right through the use of torture and prosecute those rankng individuals that are responsible for the violations.

Here is a quote from the movie “Swing Vote:”

Nations have followed the same historical path:
From bondage to liberty
From liberty to abundance
From abundance to complacency
From complacency to apathy
From apathy, back to bondage.

We, as a nation, are somewhere between complacency and apathy. If, as the Attorney General, you don’t act, we move closer to apathy.

We need moral clarity and prosecuting violations of human rights through the use of torture is a good place to start.