Loophole in government program to buy toxic securities could cost taxpayers

Without safeguards, traders in the $40-billion program could use inside information to profit -- and any losses would be largely borne by taxpayers.

By Ralph Vartabedian

August 14, 2009

Reporting from Washington

A controversial $40-billion government program to buy toxic securities from ailing banks has a flaw that law enforcement and financial experts say could allow traders to illegally profit from inside information.

Critics of the program say that without adequate safeguards, traders could use the tens of billions of dollars provided by the government to manipulate prices and exploit the price swings in other trades.

Katha Pollitt: Healthcare We Can Believe In

I am not a wonk. Usually this is not a problem. But when it comes to healthcare reform, it matters. You see, I long to dash forward, flaming sword in hand, to champion President Obama's healthcare plan. Every day I get e-mails from Health Care for America Now, Organizing for America, MoveOn.org and similar groups urging me to write my Congressman, attend a town-hall meeting, host a gathering. But how can I speak knowledgeably about a plan that does not yet exist and in which the parameters keep shifting?

I'd like to tell people, Obama's plan is great--for example, it has a public option that will insure those who can't afford private coverage, help rein in the insurance companies by competing with them for members and drive down drug prices through forceful negotiation. But maybe the final bill won't allow the government to negotiate drug prices, because that's the price of Big Pharma's support, which apparently the Obama administration negotiated for in secrecy. Maybe it won't even have a public plan; it will have insurance co-ops instead. And then, maybe, I should say those will be just as good, as Rahm Emanuel's brother, Ezekiel Emanuel, the MD/PhD bioethicist, says.

John Brennan's Dangerous National Security Advice

by Marcy Wheeler

Last year, Glenn posted some statements from now-Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan [1] on counterterrorism. The post contributed to pressure that led Brennan to withdraw his candidacy to be CIA Director (which is how he ended up as Deputy NSA, which doesn't require congressional approval).

In addition to passages on rendition and torture, Glenn linked to an NPR story [2] attributing Obama's switch on counterterrorism issues -- particularly his infamous flip-flop on retroactive immunity for the telecoms that had illegally spied on Americans -- to Brennan.

What's important in that statement is Obama's reference to "the information I've received." He's advised on intelligence matters by John Brennan, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Like many intelligence professionals, Brennan says the FISA program is essential to the fight against terrorism.

By adopting Brennan's view, Obama improves his standing with the intelligence community; for someone looking ahead to a presidential administration, that's important.

So it was under Brennan's tutelage that Obama came to the following conclusion about Bush's illegal domestic surveillance program.

US Economic Myths Bite the Dust

by Mark Weisbrot

The Great Recession is allowing some widely held beliefs about the US economy [1] – which were the source of much evangelism over the last few decades – to run up against a reality check. This is to be expected, since the United States [2] has been the epicentre of the storm of policy blunders that caused the world recession.

This month my CEPR colleagues John Schmitt and Nathan Lane showed that the United States is not the nation of small businesses [3] that it is regularly dressed up to be for electoral campaign speeches and editorials. If we look at what percentage of our overall labour force is self-employed, or what percentage of manufacturing workers or high-tech workers are employed in small businesses – well, the US ranks at or near the bottom among high-income countries.

Consumer Prices Down 2.1 Percent Over 2008

By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 14, 2009 11:31 AM

Consumer prices over the past year have fallen at their fastest rate in 59 years, the Labor Department said Friday morning, raising troubling early warnings that the U.S. economy is shrinking.

Consumer prices, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, were flat in July, meeting analysts' expectations.

However, prices fell 2.1 percent over the past 12 months, their sharpest drop since the period ending in January 1950. The plunge was led by energy prices, which are down 28.1 percent since July of last year, when oil peaked at $147 per barrel and gasoline was going for $4.11 per gallon.

The Truth Will Not Out, on Its Own

By Robert Parry
August 13, 2009

The right-wing fury at town hall meetings over health care and the Republican obstruction of any serious reform in Washington are not just symptoms of a complex debate on an issue packed with powerful special interests; it is a test of whether reality matters in the United States.

When a supposedly “moderate” Republican like Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa endorses the crazed view of the “deathers” who claim that President Barack Obama’s health-care plan would promote euthanasia, it is clear that the nation’s problem is bigger than any one legislative battle, even one as big as health reform.

The overriding question has become whether the United States – as a representative democracy – is on the verge of losing its sanity.

And this is not the first time this question has arisen recently. Only seven years ago, much of the American population was persuaded that Iraq was some lethal threat to the United States.

LiveBlogging Howard Dean

By Sara Robinson

Created 08/14/2009 - 8:54am

Sara Robinson liveblogs Howard Dean's talk at Netroots Nation, starting at 9am ET Friday morning. Come on by and join the chat!

8:55
There are a lot of people here, considering we were all up drinking past 1 am at vodka reception given at the nearby Andy Warhol museum by an associated gaggle of gay groups. (It was totally fabulous.) Dean can turn out progressives, even at this unholy hour among this many people with hangovers.

A spirited introduction by the co-author (sorry, he said his name fast and I didn't catch it, but he's a Think Progress editor) of Howard Dean's Health Care Prescription for Real Health Care Reform [1]. Mike Lux and Tanya Tarr will be moderating -- this should be good. I saw Tanya in a panel yesterday afternoon and found her very impressive.

9:09
Here's Dr. Dean.

A Self-Help Book for Societies

By Sam Pizzigati

Created 08/13/2009 - 9:33pm

Home Feature Box:

By every measure that matters, relatively equal nations far outperform nations where income and wealth concentrate at the top. A powerful new analysis from the UK explores these contrasts — and explains them.

By every measure that matters, relatively equal nations far outperform nations where income and wealth concentrate at the top. A powerful new analysis from the UK explores these contrasts — and explains them.

Huge numbers of people in the United States hold prescriptions for anti-depressants. Huge numbers of other Americans “self-medicate” — through illegal drugs and alcohol. Huge numbers of Americans, in other words, are feeling plenty of pain. Why? What's causing all this anguish?

"Sensitive" Oil Industry Memo Lays Out Plan For Astroturf Rallies Against Climate Change Bill

By Zachary Roth - August 14, 2009, 11:21AM

A leaked memo sent by an oil industry group reveals a plan to create astroturf rallies at which industry employees posing as "citizens" will urge Congress to oppose climate change legislation.

The memo -- sent by the American Petroleum Institute and obtained by Greenpeace, which sent it to reporters -- urges oil companies to recruit their employees for events that will "put a human face on the impacts of unsound energy policy," and will urge senators to "avoid the mistakes embodied in the House climate bill."

Internal Memo Confirms Big Giveaways In White House Deal With Big Pharma

A memo obtained by the Huffington Post confirms that the White House and the pharmaceutical lobby secretly agreed to precisely the sort of wide-ranging deal that both parties have been denying over the past week.

The memo, which according to a knowledgeable health care lobbyist was prepared by a person directly involved in the negotiations, lists exactly what the White House gave up, and what it got in return.

In MI., Blue Cross raising individual, group rates 22 pct.

Insurer originally sought 56 percent rate hike, but regulators refused

Michigan insurance regulators have approved a 22 percent increase for group and individual Blue Cross Blue Shield health policies in the state, according to reports published Thursday.

“Blue Cross officials have said they need rate increases to help cover $133 million in financial losses in 2008 on its individual health insurance policies,” [1] reported Crain’s Detroit Business.

UC Davis Challenge Produces a Better Air Conditioner

August 13, 2009

The first certified winner of the UC Davis “Western Cooling Challenge” is Coolerado Corp. of Denver. Recent federal tests showed that their five-ton commercial rooftop unit should be able to air-condition a typical big-box store with less than half the energy needed by conventional cooling units.

Paul Krugman: Republican Death Trip

“I am in this race because I don’t want to see us spend the next year re-fighting the Washington battles of the 1990s. I don’t want to pit Blue America against Red America; I want to lead a United States of America.” So declared Barack Obama in November 2007, making the case that Democrats should nominate him, rather than one of his rivals, because he could free the nation from the bitter partisanship of the past.

Some of us were skeptical. A couple of months after Mr. Obama gave that speech, I warned that his vision of a “different kind of politics” was a vain hope, that any Democrat who made it to the White House would face “an unending procession of wild charges and fake scandals, dutifully given credence by major media organizations that somehow can’t bring themselves to declare the accusations unequivocally false.”

So, how’s it going?

When the kooks take the stage

By Scot Lehigh | August 14, 2009

IT’S HARD TO SAY what’s more amusing, the wild-eyed rants at town hall meetings or the conservative attempts to portray those snarling sentiments as genuine mainstream anger about the president’s health care plans.

Some Republicans are gleeful in the hope that the testy town hall encounters will derail Obama’s signature initiative.

Question: Do they really think the country is dopey enough to mistake microwave mobs staging Potemkin Village protests as an accurate expression of true American opinion?

If so, they’re delusional.

10 Awesome Things That Would Happen If Health Reform Passes

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on August 14, 2009, Printed on August 14, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/141916/

Unable to win the debate on the merits of their arguments, opponents of health care reform have resorted to a dizzying array of outright falsehoods to terrify Americans into opposing a process that might deliver real benefits to their families.

They've falsely claimed that the government would "take over" the health system, put private insurers out of business and let pasty bureaucrats decide what treatment Americans would receive.

Education ‘Miracles’ Don’t Survive Scrutiny

By Mike Rose

Despite a childhood of incantations and incense, of holy cards and stories of crutches being tossed, I don’t believe in miracles. So it is with less than wonderment that I watch as a language of miracles—along with a search for academic cure-alls and magic bullets—infuses our educational discourse and policy.

We started off the new century with the Texas Miracle, the phenomenal closing of the achievement gap and reduction of dropout rates through a program of high-stakes standardized tests. (The Texas Miracle would then spawn the federal No Child Left Behind Act.) Politicians and media-savvy administrators have also found the miraculous; the governor of my state, Arnold Schwarzenegger, referred to an Oakland charter school as an “education miracle.” And the pundits have appropriated the lingo. A recent New York Times column by David Brooks on the charter school of the Harlem Children’s Zone was titled “The Harlem Miracle.” And so it goes.

Right-wing pundits tear into 11-year-old girl for asking Obama a question

Julia Hall may be the most hated 11-year-old among conservative pundits in America today.

Ever since the sixth-grade resident of Malden, Massachusetts, asked President Barack Obama a question at his town hall on health care Tuesday, the conservative punditocracy has unleashed a torrent of criticism against the girl, accusing her of being an Obama plant.

Why we need the media to focus on the facts

August 13, 2009 9:06 am ET

In a conversation earlier this week about polls showing that large numbers of Republicans don't believe Barack Obama was born in the United States, I wondered how many of those respondents might not know that Hawaii is a state. That wasn't a shot at Republicans; I just think people in general know less about their country than we tend to assume.

The next day, The Washington Independent's David Weigel -- whose birther coverage has been indispensable -- pointed out a new poll showing that 8 percent of North Carolinians (and 11 percent of McCain voters in North Carolina) either think Hawaii is not part of the U.S. or are not sure.

Cheney Uncloaks His Frustration With Bush

'Statute of Limitations Has Expired' on Many Secrets, Former Vice President Says

By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 13, 2009

In his first few months after leaving office, former vice president Richard B. Cheney threw himself into public combat against the "far left" agenda of the new commander in chief. More private reflections, as his memoir takes shape in slashing longhand on legal pads, have opened a second front against Cheney's White House partner of eight years, George W. Bush.

Cheney's disappointment with the former president surfaced recently in one of the informal conversations he is holding to discuss the book with authors, diplomats, policy experts and past colleagues. By habit, he listens more than he talks, but Cheney broke form when asked about his regrets.

Another Story from The UK

From TPM Reader EK ...

I am an middle aged, white male American who lives in the UK working for a medium sized US company. The following is a true story about my many years experience of the NHS (National Health Service) in the UK, only the names have been changed to protect the identity of my family.

I live with my wife and son just outside of London. When our son Leo was due to be born, like virtually every family in the UK (rich or poor), we went to our local NHS hospital for the delivery. An unpredictable chain of events resulted in unforeseeable complications during his birth. Leo was born in very poor health and was immediately transferred to a SCBU (Special Care Birth Unit) in another hospital. Because of the severity of Leo's condition we were transferred to the most advanced SCBU in the region.

Getting Cancer in a 'Hell Hole' Socialist Country

August 12, 2009, 11:24AM

TPM has a fasicnating headline today about about mistaken assumptions: on the face of it, it's just an embarrassing blunder. The editor of Investor Business Weekly speculated that the eminent scientist Steven Hawking would have been eliminated by NHS death panels had he been, erh.. British.

As embarrassing as that is, not knowing Hawking's nationality is a mere detail. The real mistake, far more ominous for its ignorance, are the mistaken assumptions flourishing in the media about "hell hole socialist countries" and "death panels."

Fascist America II: The Last Turnoff

By Sara Robinson

Created 08/11/2009 - 3:15pm

Writing about fascism for an American audience is always a fraught business. Invariably, a third of the readers will dismiss the topic (and your faithful blogger's basic sanity) out of hand. Either they've got their own definition of fascism and whatever's going on doesn't seem to fit it; or else they're firm believers in a variant of Godwin's Law [1], which says (with some justification) that anyone who invokes the F-word is a de facto alarmist of questionable credibility. I get letters, most of which say something to the effect of, "Calm down. You're overreacting. We're nowhere near there yet."

Another third will pepper me with missives that are every bit as dismissive -- for exactly the opposite reason. To them, anyone who's been paying the barest amount of attention should realize that America has been a fascist state since (choose one:) 1) 9/11; 2) Reagan; 3) McCarthy; 4) The Civil War; 5) July 4, 1776. For them, my careful analysis and worried warnings are dangerously naive -- clear evidence that I'm simply not seeing the full horror of America as it truly is, and always has been, at least since (insert date here).

Newt Gingrich Changes What’s Left of his Mind on End-of-life Care

More than 20 percent of all Medicare spending occurs in the last two months of life. Gundersen Lutheran Health System in La Crosse, Wisconsin has developed a successful end-of-life, best practice that combines: 1) community-wide advance care planning, where 90 percent of patients have advance directives; 2) hospice and palliative care; and 3) coordination of services through an electronic medical record. The Gundersen approach empowers patients and families to control and direct their care. The Dartmouth Health Atlas has documented that Gundersen delivers care at a 30 percent lower rate than the national average ($18,359 versus $25,860). If Gundersen’s approach was used to care for the approximately 4.5 million Medicare beneficiaries who die every year, Medicare could save more than $33 billion a year.

via Health Care Rx: Across the Country, Some Systems Are Getting It Right – Newt Gingrich.

That was Newt Gingrich just a few months ago praising the “Advance Directives” practiced by a hospital in Wisconsin. Advance Directives are another word for the end-of-life consultations that the teabggers have been flipping out over of late.

Charter schools lag in serving the neediest

Disparity widens rift with districts

By James Vaznis, Globe Staff | August 12, 2009

Governor Deval Patrick has touted his proposed expansion of charter schools as a way to help students who face the greatest academic challenges, such as language barriers and disabilities. But a Globe analysis shows that charter schools in cities targeted by the proposal tend to enroll few special education students or English language learners.

That imbalance raises questions about how much expertise these schools can offer and about their efforts to recruit such students, whose academic needs are generally greater than those of other youngsters.

Sewage Breeds Bigger, Faster Mosquitoes

A new study, presented at the meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Albuquerque, found far more mosquitoes in sewage-contaminated streams than in clean ones. Sewage-bred mosquitoes were also bigger and faster than those in purer waters.

HHS: Insurance Companies Encourage Employees to "Revoke Sick People's Health Coverage"

By David S. Hilzenrath

You might have known that insurers can deny health coverage based on preexisting medical conditions, but here’s something else to worry about: They can take away the coverage you thought you had when actually need it, the government says.

The Department of Health and Human Services put a spotlight on that practice Tuesday in its continuing campaign to build support for an overhaul of health insurance.

'I wouldn't be here if not for the NHS': What Stephen Hawking told U.S. politicians attacking the British healthcare system

By Daniel Bates
Last updated at 12:08 AM on 13th August 2009

Professor Stephen Hawking has spoken out in defence of the NHS after high-level U.S. politicians have branded the National Health Service 'evil' and 'Orwellian'.

The British professor, who has suffered from Lou Gehrig's disease for 40 years, insisted that he 'would not be here' were it not for the NHS.

Over the top and beneath contempt

Today, we live in the age of rabid response.

Not rapid response. Rapid response was yesterday. Rapid response was the political tactic of responding quickly to all attacks, no matter how outrageous or unbelievable.

Those who did not respond rapidly, those who told themselves the public would not believe outright lies, failed to win higher office. (Thus Democrats still blame John Kerry for not responding rapidly enough in 2004 to the attacks of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.)

GAO: "Free Trade" Not Improving Environment, Labor

By Marcy Wheeler

Created 08/10/2009 - 9:28pm

Max Baucus asked GAO to look at [1] four Free Trade Agreements--Jordan, Singapore, Chile, and Morocco--to measure the economic, environmental, and labor benefits of the FTA. And while the report touts Jordan's 400-person environmental law enforcement force, the reality is that our trade partners are making little progress in environmental and labor issues.

FTA negotiations spurred some labor reforms in each of the selected partners, according to U.S. and partner officials, but progress has been uneven and U.S. engagement minimal. An example cited was Morocco’s enactment of a longstalled overhaul of its labor code. However, partners reported that enforcement of labor laws continues to be a challenge, and some significant labor abuses have emerged. In the FTAs we examined, Labor provided minimal oversight and did not use information it had on partner weaknesses to establish remedial plans or work with partners on improvement.

The selected partners have improved their environmental laws and made other progress, such as establishment of an environmental ministry and a 400- strong environmental law enforcement force in Jordan, according to U.S. and foreign officials. However, partner officials report that enforcement remains a challenge, and U.S. assistance has been limited. Elements needed for assuring partner progress remain absent. Notably, USTR’s lack of compliance plans and sporadic monitoring, State’s lax management of environmental projects, and U.S. agencies’ inaction to translate environmental commitments into reliable funding all limited efforts to promote progress.

The Wall Street Journal's Fraud Blindness

The newpaper's preposterous editorial about AIG and me.

By Eliot SpitzerPosted Monday, Aug. 10, 2009, at 2:42 PM ET

I have tried not to say too much about former AIG CEO Hank Greenberg's efforts to dance his way through his $15 million settlement with the SEC. Greenberg's troubles largely derived from a case brought by the New York attorney general's office when I was attorney general. As has been widely reported, AIG settled the case with my office in 2006 by restating its financials, paying a fine of $1.6 billion—at the time, the largest in history—and separately, by removing Greenberg as CEO. Thereafter, five people were convicted in federal court of criminal charges, and the prosecutor in that case referred to Greenberg as an "unindicted co-conspirator."

Why Neoconservative Pundits Love Jon Stewart

8/9/09 at 9:10 PM

Back in April, when the debate over torture was roaring, Jon Stewart invited Cliff May, a national-security hawk and former spokesman for the Republican Party, to come on The Daily Show and defend waterboarding. May was hesitant. He thought Stewart would paint him as a crazy extremist. The audience would jeer. It would be a disaster. "I was apprehensive about going on, even though I've been on TV for a dozen years," says May. "A lot of my friends told me: 'Don't do it. You're meat going into the sausage factory.'"

Energy interests to fund ‘astroturfing’ efforts during congressional break

Posted 3:10 PM on 7 Aug 2009
by Kate Sheppard

Astroturfing – the corporate practice of funding initiatives that mimic “grassroots” support for an issue – has been getting a lot of attention these days, after it came to light that a pro-coal group was ultimately behind forged letters to Congress on the climate bill. But the practice is neither new nor rare, and we can expect to see similar actions over the next weeks as representatives return to their home districts for August recess.

A Scary Reality

By BOB HERBERT

Last week was a pretty good one for President Obama. Bill Clinton helped out big time when he returned from North Korea with the American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee. Sonia Sotomayor was elevated to the Supreme Court. And Friday’s unemployment report registered a tiny downward tick in the jobless rate.

But for American workers peering anxiously through their family portholes, the economic ship is still sinking. You can put whatever kind of gloss you want on last week’s jobs numbers, but the truth is that while they may have been a bit better than most economists were expecting, they were still bad, bad, bad.

Christian Cowboy Plots to Bring Christ into Kids' Social Studies Class

By Rob Boston, Church & State Magazine
Posted on August 11, 2009, Printed on August 11, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/141867/

When the Texas State Board of Education issued a list of proposed "experts" to sit on a social studies curriculum panel, one name immediately leaped out to defenders of church-state separation: David Barton.

The panel is supposed to consist of academics and others with specialized knowledge to assist the board in drafting new social studies standards for public schools across the state. The selection of Barton, a Religious Right propagandist who for years has pushed a fundamentalist "Christian nation" view of American history, is a sure sign that trouble lurks ahead.

I Didn't Wake Up Planning to Write About Samuelson

I woke up this morning planning to write about Newt Gingrich or maybe Sarah Palin. But they'll have to wait because it's Monday. And that means there's another Robert Samuelson column out in the Washington Post.

Samuelson has come to the conclusion that Obama is no more serious about trying to control costs in his health care plan than his predecessors have been:

One of the bewildering ironies of the health-care debate is that President Obama claims to be attacking the status quo when he's actually embracing it. Ever since Congress created Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, health politics has followed a simple logic: Expand benefits and talk about controlling costs. That's the status quo, and Obama faithfully adheres to it. While denouncing skyrocketing health spending, he would increase it by extending government health insurance to millions more Americans.

Just why this approach is perennially popular is no secret. Health care is viewed as a "right." Promoting it seems "moral." Cost controls suggest dreaded "rationing." So there's a powerful bias toward expansion....

Geithner Bullies Financial Regulators to Accept Fed as Top Dog

The Wall Street Journal reports that Timothy Geithner tongue-lashed Federal financial services regulators over their bucking the Obama Administration initiative for the Fed to become The One Regulator to Rule Them All. This comes on the heels of Congressional testimony which showed rather clearly that the key actors were not singing from the same hymnal.

This display of pique seems badly misdirected. I doubt that the show of disarray will make much difference in the outcome. Congress is engaged in a turf war against the Fed, justifiably unhappy with the Fed acting, as Willem Buiter put it, as quasi fiscal agent, effectively circumventing Congress' control over budgetary purse-strings via stretching the TARP through various off-balance-sheet vehicles (from the Treasury standpoint). If Lyndon Johnson were still Senate majority leader, you'd have had a Constitutional crisis before things would have gotten this far. Congress was far more zealous about protecting its sphere of influence, but successive Presidents have managed to cut it down to size.

James Fallows: Let's mark this moment in the health debate as it happens

09 Aug 2009 04:32 pm

Nearly fifteen years ago, after the collapse of the Clinton health-reform effort, I spent a lot of time working on an Atlantic article (and subsequent book chapter) about how, exactly, the discussion of the bill had become so unmoored from reality and finally determined by slogans, stereotypes, and flat-out lies.

It's better to do that after the fact than not to do it at all. And, if I do say so, I think the article remains useful background reading for what's going on now -- including the return-guest-star role of the voluble but consistently misinformed Elizabeth "Betsy" McCaughey.

Two Key Details Emerge about Mob at Now Notorious Lloyd Doggett Town Hall

By: Blue Texan
Sunday August 9, 2009 7:30 am

Lloyd Doggett's town hall on health care in Austin last week was one of the first such events that got national attention because of the outrageously thuggish tactics employed by the Teabagger mob. At the time, the media coverage suggested this was a spontaneous protest.

We now know that isn't true.

A Gazette reporter was there to witness an unruly hollering mob of people disrupt the meeting and personally insult Congressman Doggett. Conservative cable news and talk radio stations around the country hailed the event as a spontaneous outbreak of opposition to proposed healthcare reform. But it was later discovered that the Travis County Republican Party Chair had led an organizing effort to disrupt the event...

These people were Republican ringers, period. Keep in mind that Travis County went for Obama. This is hardly a right-wing stronghold.

GOPers Join ‘Read-the-Bill Movement’ to Slow Health Care Debate

By David Weigel 7/30/09 4:15 PM

In early July, settled in at one of Grover Norquist’s conservative movement breakfast meetings, Colin Hanna and Peter Roff had a brainstorm. Hanna, who commutes to Washington from the Wilmington, Delaware offices of his organization Let Freedom Ring, speculated that Americans were concerned about Congress considering a health care bill that not every member had read. Roff, a senior fellow at the libertarian Institute for Liberty, suggested that there was a way to take advantage of this. Members of Congress could be put to the test: No vote on health care unless they’d read the entire bill.

“The credit for the actual idea, I want to give to Peter,” Hanna told TWI on Wednesday. “From there we refined the language and we came up with our respective pledges for members of Congress.”

U.S. to Hunt Down Afghan Drug Lords Tied to Taliban

By JAMES RISEN

Published: August 9, 2009

WASHINGTON — Fifty Afghans believed to be drug traffickers with ties to the Taliban have been placed on a Pentagon target list to be captured or killed, reflecting a major shift in American counternarcotics strategy in Afghanistan, according to a Congressional study to be released this week.

United States military commanders have told Congress that they are convinced that the policy is legal under the military’s rules of engagement and international law. They also said the move is an essential part of their new plan to disrupt the flow of drug money that is helping finance the Taliban insurgency.

Blackwater Heir Wants to Keep State Dept. Security Contract

Despite Eviction From Iraq, Company at Work in Afghanistan

By Spencer Ackerman 8/10/09 6:00 AM

Even as a wrongful-death lawsuit moves forward against the controversial private security company formerly known as Blackwater, the firm seeks to renew its contract with the State Department to guard diplomats when the deal expires next year. And the State Department shows no signs of ruling the company out of competition, despite a high-profile incident in 2007 that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead.

“We welcome the chance to bid on any program,” said Stacy DeLuke, a spokeswoman for the private security company Xe, which changed its name from Blackwater earlier this year, using an acronym for the Worldwide Personal Protective Services contract. Asked if the company was under any restrictions from the State Department following its September 2007 shootout in Baghdad’s Nisour Square — in which its employees shot a family in a car approaching their guards and then opened fire on other cars attempting to flee the scene — DeLuke replied, “I don’t think there have been any restrictions.”

Nader Was Right: Liberals Are Going Nowhere With Obama

Posted on Aug 10, 2009

By Chris Hedges

The American empire has not altered under Barack Obama. It kills as brutally and indiscriminately in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan as it did under George W. Bush. It steals from the U.S. treasury to enrich the corporate elite as rapaciously. It will not give us universal health care, abolish the Bush secrecy laws, end torture or “extraordinary rendition,” restore habeas corpus or halt the warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of citizens. It will not push through significant environmental reform, regulate Wall Street or end our relationship with private contractors that provide mercenary armies to fight our imperial wars and produce useless and costly weapons systems.

The sad reality is that all the well-meaning groups and individuals who challenge our permanent war economy and the doctrine of pre-emptive war, who care about sustainable energy, fight for civil liberties and want corporate malfeasance to end, were once again suckered by the Democratic Party. They were had. It is not a new story. The Democrats have been doing this to us since Bill Clinton. It is the same old merry-go-round, only with Obama branding. And if we have not learned by now that the system is broken, that as citizens we do not matter to our political elite, that we live in a corporate state where our welfare and our interests are irrelevant, we are in serious trouble. Our last hope is to step outside of the two-party system and build movements that defy the Democrats and the Republicans. If we fail to do this, we will continue to undergo a corporate coup d’etat in slow motion that will end in feudalism.

Health care's big money wasters

More than $1.2 trillion spent on health care each year is a waste of money. Members of the medical community identify the leading causes.

By Parija B. Kavilanz, CNNMoney.com senior writer

Last Updated: August 10, 2009: 12:13 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Down the drain: $1.2 trillion.

That's half of the $2.2 trillion the United States spends on health care each year, according to the most recent data from accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers' Health Research Institute.

What counts as waste? The report identified 16 different areas in which health care dollars are squandered. But in talking to doctors, nurses, hospital groups and patient advocacy groups, six areas totaling nearly $500 billion stood out as issues to be dealt with in the health care reform debate.

Labor's last stand: The corporate campaign to kill the Employee Free Choice Act

By Ken Silverstein

On a Monday morning this past April, a few dozen Arkansans from that state’s Chamber of Commerce could be found holing up in a Marriott hotel in Crystal City, Virginia, less than a mile from Washington’s Ronald Reagan National Airport. They assembled in the hotel’s Jefferson Ballroom, on one wall of which hangs a portrait of the third president standing before a giant Declaration of Independence. Despite the early hour, the visitors were cheerful, sipping from big Starbucks cups as they gathered up political literature and hard candies and waited for their program to begin.

Paul Krugman: Averting the Worst

So it seems that we aren’t going to have a second Great Depression after all. What saved us? The answer, basically, is Big Government.

Just to be clear: the economic situation remains terrible, indeed worse than almost anyone thought possible not long ago. The nation has lost 6.7 million jobs since the recession began. Once you take into account the need to find employment for a growing working-age population, we’re probably around nine million jobs short of where we should be.

And the job market still hasn’t turned around — that slight dip in the measured unemployment rate last month was probably a statistical fluke. We haven’t yet reached the point at which things are actually improving; for now, all we have to celebrate are indications that things are getting worse more slowly.

Where did that bank bailout go? Watchdogs aren't entirely sure

By Chris Adams, McClatchy Newspapers
Sun Aug 9, 6:00 am ET

WASHINGTON — Although hundreds of well-trained eyes are watching over the $700 billion that Congress last year decided to spend bailing out the nation's financial sector, it's still difficult to answer some of the most basic questions about where the money went.

Despite a new oversight panel, a new special inspector general, the existing Government Accountability Office and eight other inspectors general, those charged with minding the store say they don't have all the weapons they need. Ten months into the Troubled Asset Relief Program, some members of Congress say that some oversight of bailout dollars has been so lacking that it's essentially worthless.

How the White House's Deal With Big Pharma Undermines Democracy

August 9, 2009, 3:16PM

I'm a strong supporter of universal health insurance, and a fan of the Obama administration. But I'm appalled by the deal the White House has made with the pharmaceutical industry's lobbying arm to buy their support.

Last week, after being reported in the Los Angeles Times, the White House confirmed it has promised Big Pharma that any healthcare legislation will bar the government from using its huge purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices. That's basically the same deal George W. Bush struck in getting the Medicare drug benefit, and it's proven a bonanza for the drug industry. A continuation will be an even larger bonanza, given all the Boomers who will be enrolling in Medicare over the next decade. And it will be a gold mine if the deal extends to Medicaid, which will be expanded under most versions of the healthcare bills now emerging from Congress, and to any public option that might be included. (We don't know how far the deal extends beyond Medicare because its details haven't been made public.)

FBI raids NOLA police over Katrina killings

Nearly four years after the police shootout that took the lives of Ronald Madison and James Brissette on New Orleans’ Danziger Bridge, the FBI raided the offices of the police investigators who had been looking into the deadly incident.

The bureau’s move suggests that the federal government may be serious about seeing police officers prosecuted over the Sept. 4, 2005 shootout, when Madison and Brissette were allegedly killed by police while four others were wounded as they crossed a bridge in the midst of the Hurricane Katrina crisis.

Democrats in Pay-For-Play Deal With PhRMA?

by Firedoglake

by Jane Hamsher

The NYT is reporting that PhRMA will spend $150 million in advertising to support the White House health care plan in August [1]:

The drug industry has already contributed millions of dollars to advertising campaigns for the health care overhaul through the advocacy groups like Healthy Economies Now and Families USA. It has spent about $1 million on similar advertisements under its own name.

All of the commercials closely echo common Democratic themes about medical care for all, consumer protection and "health insurance reform." Some supporters of the overhaul have hired public affairs and advertising firms with close ties to the White House and Senate Democrats, including GMMB, which worked on the Obama campaign, and AKPD, which previously included David Axelrod, who is now the president's top political adviser.

Deposition of Sibel Edmonds Completed, DoJ a 'No Show,' Bombshells Under Oath

UPDATES INCLUDE: CONGRESS MEMBERS NAMED IN ESPIONAGE, BRIBERY, SEXUAL BLACKMAIL SCHEMES; NEW BREWSTER JENNINGS / VALERIE PLAME DISCLOSURE...

'State Secrets' privilege NOT asserted by DoJ; FBI whistleblower answered ALL questions under oath on Turkish infiltration of U.S. Government...

Posted By Brad Friedman On 8th August 2009 @ 08:51 In Ohio, Sibel Edmonds, Dennis Hastert, CIA Leak Case, National Security, Whistleblowers, Mainstream Media Failure, Accountability, U.S. House, Dept. of Justice, FBI, State Department, Bush Legacy, Jean Schmidt | 186 Comments

Live blogging coverage of the Sibel Edmonds deposition at the National Whistleblowers Center ^[1] in Washington D.C. For background see previous coverage:

• 8/5/09: Sibel Edmonds Subpoenaed, Set to 'Break' Gag Order ^[2]
• 8/7/09: EXCLUSIVE: FBI Attempts to Block Edmonds Testimony in OH Election Case ^[3]
• 8/7/09: EXCLUSIVE UPDATE: DoJ Pressures Ohio Election Commission to
  

Frank Rich: Is Obama Punking Us?

“AUGUST is a challenging time to be president,” said Andrew Card, the former Bush White House chief of staff, as he offered unsolicited advice to his successors in a television interview last week. “I think you have to expect the unexpected.”

He should know. Thursday was the eighth anniversary of “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” the President’s Daily Brief that his boss ignored while on vacation in Crawford. Aug. 29 marks the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s strike on the Louisiana coast, which his boss also ignored while on vacation in Crawford.

So do have a blast in Martha’s Vineyard, President Obama.

Barbara Ehrenreich: Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor?

IT’S too bad so many people are falling into poverty at a time when it’s almost illegal to be poor. You won’t be arrested for shopping in a Dollar Store, but if you are truly, deeply, in-the-streets poor, you’re well advised not to engage in any of the biological necessities of life — like sitting, sleeping, lying down or loitering. City officials boast that there is nothing discriminatory about the ordinances that afflict the destitute, most of which go back to the dawn of gentrification in the ’80s and ’90s. “If you’re lying on a sidewalk, whether you’re homeless or a millionaire, you’re in violation of the ordinance,” a city attorney in St. Petersburg, Fla., said in June, echoing Anatole France’s immortal observation that “the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges.”