Month: June 2009

Name That Lobbyist

by dday

This is a heck of an interesting project by NPR – during the markup of the health care reform bill in the Senate on June 17, one of their photographers snapped a picture of everyone in the audience. 99.9% of the time the cameras point in the other direction, at the lawmakers. This one points in arguably the right direction, at the lobbyists and stakeholders who will be just as responsible, if not more so, for the final shape of the bill. And they’ve asked people to help them identify the faces in the picture. So far there are a number of named lobbyists whose firms have earned millions from health care industry clients over the past year.

If we have any Washingtonian readers, help NPR ferret out these names by emailing to dollarpolitics-at-npr-dot-org or on the ubiquitous Twitter @DollarPolitics. We have an odd system in this country where the people who often write our bills are anonymous while the people who take their orders are well-known. We should maybe reverse that process and add some accountability into the mix at the same time.

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Learning Deficit

by digby

Linda Hirshman reports on the new Pew Poll questions about government spending and the deficit and guess what? It turns out that people’s attitudes depend on how you ask the question:

[T]he usually reliable folks at Pew have done the hard work of asking about stimulus vs. deficit without loading the question, and their results are quite different than the snapshot that got all the press last week. Instead of offering the public an elaborate scenario in which they were asked to probe their innermost feelings and choose a position that accords with their “point of view” about what should worry the government more, as NBC did, Pew asked: “If you were setting the priorities for the government these days, would you set a higher priority on ‘spending more to help the economy recover’ or ‘reducing the budget deficit'” (rotating the choices). Forty-eight percent of those questioned put a higher priority on spending more to help the economy recover, while 46 percent chose reducing the deficit. Pew explained the difference between their results and the answers the other two polls turned up:

“A number of recent surveys have attempted to gauge whether deficit concerns are eroding support for government spending to stimulate the economy, but the findings of these efforts are mixed. There is little doubt that Americans are worried about the deficit, but not surprisingly with such a complex issue, the way questions are worded clearly impacts how the public views the debate.” (emphasis added)

The fact that 46 percent of people don’t understand high school level macro-economics isn’t all that great a piece of news, but it’s substantially better than what the loaded poll questions in previous polls produced. And I shouldn’t be too hard on people that believe deficit spending is the cause of our problems. As I’ve said ad nauseam, it’s counterintuive to believe otherwise and they’ve been propagandized to believe this for decades with no dedicated education or explanation to the contrary. Under the circumstances, it’s heartening that more people aren’t convinced the government needs to tighten its belt in order to save the economy than are.

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King of Pop

by digby

LA Times:

Michael Jackson is dead

[Updated at 3:15 p.m.: Pop star Michael Jackson was pronounced dead by doctors this afternoon after arriving at a hospital in a deep coma, city and law enforcement sources told The Times.]

[Updated at 2:46 p.m.: Jackson is in a coma and family have are arriving at his bedside, a law enforcement source told The Times.

Jackson was rushed to a hospital this afternoon by Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics.

Capt. Steve Ruda said paramedics responded to a call at Jackson’s home around 12:26 p.m. He was not breathing when they arrived. The parademics performed CPR and took him to UCLA Medical Center, Ruda told The Times.

[Updated at 2:12 p.m.: Paramedics were called to a home on the 100 block of Carolwood Drive off Sunset Boulevard. Jackson rented the Bel Air home for $100,000 a month. It was described as a French chateau estate built in 2002 with seven bedrooms, 13 bathrooms, 12 fireplaces and a theater.

The home is about 2 1/2 miles, about a six-minute drive, from UCLA Medical Center. An earlier version of this post incorrectly described the time to travel between the home and hospital as two minutes.]

I was traveling the world in the 1980s and it didn’t matter where I went, from Paris to Mayan jungles, Thriller was playing. It was inescapable, the soundtrack to the era.

Michael Jackson was a legend and a casualty, his life both charmed and tortured. I’m not sure how he could have ever grown old. RIP.

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No Compete Claws

by digby

I’ve been busy this week and so wasn’t able to follow the little press corps hissy fit over Nico Pitney as closely as I would have liked. But I was wondering if the people who were so terribly upset that a member of the “low press”* was allowed into the inner sanctum to ask a question at a press conference had been equally upset when a former male escort working for a partisan Republican front group had been called upon repeatedly at white house press conferences.

Eric Boehlert checked and found out that the most vociferous critic of the alleged “manipulation” had never written a word about Jeff Gannon:

But please note that in 2005 when it was revealed that right-wing partisan James Guckert had been waved into the WH press room nearly 200 times without proper credentials, wrote under an alias (Jeff Gannon), and asked Bush officials softball questions, Milbank remained mum. (He wasn’t alone.) According to Nexis, Milbank never wrote about the Gannon story.

As I said, I haven’t had the time to follow this little brouhaha in detail, so maybe I’ve missed something. But from what I understand, the white house knew that Pitney had been soliciting questions from Iranians to ask the president at his press conference. There wasn’t anything secret about that. Pitney had built a huge audience on this story gathering all kinds of stories on twitter, youtube and in the foreign press and had developed a bunch of sources. So, being that he was a member of the low press, in order to allow him to ask the question from an Iranian, they had to give him a special pass to mingle with the blow dried fops and spokesmodels of the high press who are allowed to question the president. According to all parties, the question wasn’t known in advance. Indeed, Pitney could have asked about energy policy if he’d wanted to. But I would guess that everyone knew that he would likely ask a question from an Iranian because he’d said on his blog that’s what he was going to do!Is the DC press corps really this thick? If the president and favored reporters are cooking up questions in secret then it’s a problem. A writer publicly soliciting questions from readers and saying he will use one of them if the president calls on him is not the same thing, particularly when the exact question wasn’t known. It seems to me that this is a pretty obvious distinction.
The mainstream press in in a panic right now over their competition from online publications. It’s perfectly understandable. In that respect they are a lot like the insurance companies desperately clinging to their failing model because competition from outside of it will likely kill off those who can’t adapt. I can understand why they are feeling anxious. But Milbank seems to me to be an odd choice to be making this stink. He’s always been a sort of “new media” kind of guy with lots of attitude and an irreverent style. He could survive in the new environment just fine.
Of course, just like those insurance company CEOs, he won’t make as much money or have as much security. But hey, that’s what’s been happening to people all over this country for a few decades now — competition tends to do that. Ask all those Americans who used to work in factories or for companies that are no longer in business. Nobody’s immune from competition, not even political establishment celebrities.
Maybe these people need to reevaluate their blind faith in the market if they don’t like this outcome. It’s as predictable as the sun coming up in the morning.

*I saw this delicious term “low press” somewhere and would like to give credit, but I can’t find it. If anyone knows who coined it, let me know…

Major Player

by digby

These people think they can sell anything:

Wall Street’s largest trade group has started a campaign to counter the “populist” backlash against bankers, enlisting two former aides to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to spearhead the effort. In memos of confidential meetings with top financial executives, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association said it began this month the “execution phase” of the operation, which pledges to “embrace change” and accountability. The plan targets policy makers and the media in New York, London, Washington and Brussels and calls for a “city-by-city, grass roots” approach. […]The board meeting minutes and staff-written papers, obtained by Bloomberg News, outline the program crafted by polling, lobbying and public relations companies paid at least $85,000 a month. The memos provide a glimpse, in often candid language, into how Wall Street is grappling with its pariah status. “It is imperative that in this historic period of reform, the industry be recognized as playing a positive role in seeking change and providing solutions to the problems we face,” one of the documents said. “There is currently widespread skepticism about the industry’s commitment to this needed change.” The internal papers call for using regional securities firms, many of which have escaped notoriety in the financial crisis, to push the industry’s message with their local members of Congress. The plan notes that brokers across the country can also be used.[…]
To advise on the strategy, the trade group turned to a bipartisan roster of consultants. Such advice doesn’t come cheap and SIFMA is discussing dipping into its reserves to cover some of the costs, according to one memo. Michele Davis, Paulson’s former spokeswoman, and Jim Wilkinson, his former chief of staff, are among those leading the effort. SIFMA is paying their firm, Brunswick Group LLC, a monthly retainer of $70,000, the documents show. Both Davis and Wilkinson declined to comment. Paulson left office in January.

They’re getting the band back together again.I have written many, many times about Jim Wilkinson over the years starting within the first months of this blog with this one:

Via Atrios this may be the best article yet about the surreality of Operation Big Swinging Manhood.

Even Kubrick and Southern couldn’t have made this stuff up:

Clearly marked as the rabble-rouser of the get-out-of-Doha movement, I was approached by some enforcer types. The first person was a version of a Graham Greene character. He represented the White House, he said. Wasn’t of the military. Although, he said, he was embedded here (“sleeping with a lot of flatulent officers,” he said). He was incredibly conspiratorial. Smooth but creepy: “If you had to write the memo about media relations, what would be your bullet points?”

The next person to buttonhole me was the Centcom uber-civilian, a thirty-ish Republican operative. He was more full-metal-jacket in his approach (although he was a civilian he was, inexplicably, in uniform – making him, I suppose a sort of para-military figure): “I have a brother who is in a Hummer at the front, so don’t talk to me about too much fucking air-conditioning.” And: “A lot of people don’t like you.” And then: “Don’t fuck with things you don’t understand.” And too: “This is fucking war, asshole.” And finally: “No more questions for you.”

I had been warned. (Read the whole thing)

It’s pretty clear who that civilian in uniform is and he’s a real piece ‘o work:

Signaling the high interest in improving the military’s image is the appointment of [Jim] Wilkinson as spokesman for CENTCOM. A veteran White House publicist as well as a Navy Reserve lieutenant, Wilkinson headed the anti-Taliban Coalition Information Center during the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan and was spokesman for the Bush campaign in Miami-Dade County during the Florida recount after the 2000 election.

Wilkinson’s political credentials have aroused journalistic concerns that the Bush administration, not known for its openness, is trying to control the message and use it for re-election purposes in the 2004 campaign.

Buzzflash reported:

…this entire public affairs operation is headed Jim Wilkinson, one of the thugs who protested the Florida recount. Ever the good soldier, (though a civilian, Wilkinson reportedly wears a military desert camouflage uniform to work)…

Wilkinson wasn’t just another flak. He was instrumental in rolling out all the new Bush product. And they had a very particular way of doing it.

“We’re getting the band together,” White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett told the group on their first conference call last week.

The “Band” is made up of the people who brought you the war in Afghanistan—or at least the accompanying public-relations campaign. Their greatest hit: exposing the Taliban’s treatment of women.

Now, they’re back for a reunion tour on Iraq. The Band’s instrument, of course, is information.

They aim to use it against Saddam Hussein, respond to his disinformation and control the message within the administration so no one—not even Vice President Dick Cheney—freelances on Iraq.

That’s no easy task. The members talk every day by phone at 9:30 a.m.

The key players are a handful of rising stars in their early 40s and under:

For starters there’s Deputy Communications Director Jim Wilkinson, 32, a fast-talking Texan who has become an unlikely but keen student of Islam. He recently got back from a trip to Morocco where he continued his study of Arabic (which he can now read and write pretty well).

It was Wilkinson who spearheaded the successful Afghan women’s campaign last year. A Naval Reserve officer, Wilkinson got his start working with Bush ally Texas Rep. Dick Armey. He’s the go-to guy when the White House needs information against its enemies.

In the last few weeks, he and his underlings have weeded through hundreds of pages of news clippings, U.N. resolutions and State Department reports to compile an arsenal of documents against Saddam Hussein. They released the first round last week: “Decade of Defiance and Deception” (a broken-U.N.-resolutions hit parade).

But Wilkinson’s style wasn’t honed in the post 9/11 era:

“Wilkinson first left his mark on the 2000 Presidential race in March 1999, when he helped package and promote the notion that Al Gore claimed to have ‘invented the Internet.’ Then the Texan popped up in Miami to defend Republican protesters shutting down a recount: ‘We find it interesting that when Jesse Jackson has thousands of protesters in the streets, it’s O.K., but when a small number of Republicans exercise their First Amendment rights, the Democrats don’t seem to like it,’ he told the Associated Press.

“For his troubles, Mr. Wilkinson was made deputy director of communications for planning in the Bush White House, and was among the aides who set up the Sept. 14, 2001, visit to Ground Zero that redefined George W. Bush’s Presidency. During the Afghan war, he managed ‘Coalition Information Centers’ in Washington, D.C., and London, as well as in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In Qatar, he became the point man on the rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch and delivered the most memorable and sellable quote of Gulf War II: ‘America doesn’t leave its heroes behind,’ he told reporters at a late-night briefing.”

Here’s one of my favorite Wilkinson quotes when he was assigned the hit on Richard Clark after his book came out:

White House officials strongly dispute Clarke’s conclusion, saying it reflects an old-fashioned approach to dealing with terrorism. “Those who question Iraq have an outdated and one-dimensional view of what is really a multi-dimensional threat to our nation,” said Jim Wilkinson deputy national security adviser for communications. “Some think the solution is to kill Osama bin Laden, finish Afghanistan and then go back to a defensive posture and hope we’re not attacked again. This approach represents the old way of thinking because it ignores the fact that the modern terrorist threat is a global threat.”

I think it’s entirely predictable that the people who wrecked the world economy have hired the chief flack for the administration that wrecked everything else. They are all cut from the same cloth — entitled modern aristocrats who can’t ever learn from mistakes and think all they need to do is come up with a good advertising slogan and a marketing campaign to sell fetid compost and call it Godiva chocolate.

Hank Paulson really should have looked over Wilkinson’s record. His clients of the past decade were George W. Bush and the Republican Party. I’m not sure anyone in history has ever helped destroy a brand more thoroughly than Jim Wilkinson. Bring it.

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Question

by tristero

Question: Do the folks who own Orca Distribution West, Inc. and Setton Pistachios – do they let their own children eat the shit they sell?

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is warning people not to eat California Prime Produce- or Orange County Orchards-brand pistachios.

FDA officials said Orca Distribution West Inc. of Anaheim, Calif., received and repackaged pistachios recalled by Setton Pistachios of Terra Bella Inc. Setton had recalled all of its pistachios because of possible salmonella contamination that can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections.

The products were distributed to retail locations in airports and hotels nationwide in clear 6-ounce flexible plastic Ziploc bags, with “Sell By Dates” of “7/30/09” and “8/30/09.”

Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before

by dday

The health insurance industry maximizes their profits by delivering as little care as they can legally get away with, or for that matter, illegally.

Health insurers have forced consumers to pay billions of dollars in medical bills that the insurers themselves should have paid, according to a report released yesterday by the staff of the Senate Commerce Committee.

The report was part of a multi-pronged assault on the credibility of private insurers by Commerce Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.). It came at a time when Rockefeller, President Obama and others are seeking to offer a public alternative to private health plans as part of broad health-care reform legislation. Health insurers are doing everything they can to block the public option.

At a committee hearing yesterday, three health-care specialists testified that insurers go to great lengths to avoid responsibility for sick people, use deliberately incomprehensible documents to mislead consumers about their benefits, and sell “junk” policies that do not cover needed care. Rockefeller said he was exploring “why consumers get such a raw deal from their insurance companies.”

The star witness at the hearing was a former public relations executive for major health insurers whose testimony boiled down to this: Don’t trust the insurers.

Wendell Potter is the name of the star witness, a former VP for corporate communications at insurance giant Cigna. His testimony was devastating, as he offered a step-by-step tour into how the insurance industry works to increase their profits. This is the system that Republicans and conservative Democrats want to hold a monopoly over your health care, in a forced market where you have to sign up with them.

What drove Potter from the health insurance business was, well, the health insurance business. The industry, Potter says, is driven by “two key figures: earnings per share and the medical-loss ratio, or medical-benefit ratio, as the industry now terms it. That is the ratio between what the company actually pays out in claims and what it has left over to cover sales, marketing, underwriting and other administrative expenses and, of course, profits.”

Think about that term for a moment: The industry literally has a term for how much money it “loses” paying for health care.

The best way to drive down “medical-loss,” explains Potter, is to stop insuring unhealthy people. You won’t, after all, have to spend very much of a healthy person’s dollar on medical care because he or she won’t need much medical care. And the insurance industry accomplishes this through two main policies. “One is policy rescission,” says Potter. “They look carefully to see if a sick policyholder may have omitted a minor illness, a pre-existing condition, when applying for coverage, and then they use that as justification to cancel the policy, even if the enrollee has never missed a premium payment.” […]

Potter also emphasized the practice known as “purging.” This is where insurers rid themselves of unprofitable accounts by slapping them with “intentionally unrealistic rate increases.” One famous example came when Cigna decided to drive the Entertainment Industry Group Insurance Trust in California and New Jersey off of its books. It hit them with a rate increase that would have left some family plans costing more than $44,000 a year, and it gave them three months to come up with the cash.

The insurers simply follow the profit motive. Under the current system, there is no profit in offering people care, only denying them it. And so competition in the marketplace, or more to the point competition on Wall Street to increase share price (because most insurance markets in this country are limited), depends on coming up with new and exciting ways to either deny care or off-load costs onto customers. Like this ingenious little bit, from the WaPo article:

Many Americans pay higher premiums for the freedom to go outside an insurer’s network of doctors and hospitals. When they do, insurers typically pay a percentage of what they call the “usual and customary” rates for the services. How insurers determine the usual rates had long been opaque to consumers and difficult if not impossible for them to challenge.

As it turns out, insurers typically used numbers from Ingenix, a wholly owned subsidiary of the big insurer UnitedHealth Group. Ingenix had an incentive to produce benchmarks that low-balled usual and customary rates and shifted costs from insurers to their customers, the report said.

Ingenix got its data from the same insurers that bought its benchmark information, the report said. Insurers that contributed information to Ingenix often “scrubbed” their data to remove high charges, and Ingenix further manipulated the numbers, removing valid high charges from its calculations, the report said.

Cuomo found that insurers under-reimbursed New York consumers by up to 28 percent, the report said. A dozen insurers have reached settlements agreeing to change their practices; UnitedHealth agreed to the largest payment, $50 million, to help a nonprofit organization set up a new database to replace Ingenix.

I’m convinced that polls showing large numbers of people happy with their health insurance stems from the fact that most people at any given moment don’t have occasion to use it. When they do, the horror stories roll in.

These insurance industry groups claim that a public insurance option would dismantle their business. The goal of it would actually be to reverse those incentives. With millions of new customers entering the market, the profits have the potential to soar. But with a public option in competition, as long as there are strong regulations available so insurers cannot cherry-pick the healthy, suddenly they would have to compete on offering the best price or the highest quality plan. The arguments that government can deliver insurance with lower administrative costs, better economies of scale, etc. would be a feature and not a bug, and I don’t think the public will react unfavorably to better-quality coverage at a lower price.

The last time that Congress featured the truth about the insurance companies, it went uncovered in the major media. Democrats and especially the President have the ability and the imperative to turn the spotlight on the industry and their practices, and the goal of reversing the incentives in a better fashion for businesses large and small, government and consumers.

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White Hats/Black Hats

by digby

I think Florida Congressman Alan Grayson’s antipathy toward government corruption is pretty obvious. The man made his bones taking on corrupt military contractors. Accountability is his raison d’etre.

Needless to say, Republicans particularly loathe Grayson because he’s a progressive who plays outside the comfortable boundaries the Villagers of both parties all observe when it comes to sacred cows like the Big Money Institutions and the Military Industrial Complex. So, they are naturally kvetching about an earmark he made for some civil rights group in his Republican-leaning district. (You know how that stuff works — get the conservative locals all riled up about the blacks.)

But what I don’t get is why the government watchdog CREW went after him with everything they have. The man is a muckraking, crusading lawyer who took on the corrupt practices in military procurement. You’d think they’d give him an award too. Instead they have joined with the Republicans in staging a minor hissy fit over this earmark which they are saying is some sort of quid pro quo, which frankly, I don’t even understand. I guess they think Grayson is illegitimately spending taxpayer money because a civil rights group, (which is headed by some guy who is a showboating, self dealer) gave him a plaque? I see the quid, but where’s the quo? If politicians can’t accept political support from people who also receive government funding, they can’t actually function at all. Grayson can be criticized for consorting with a goofball, if that’s what the guy is, but that doesn’t make him corrupt.

CREW’s criticism makes no sense to me and it is really short sighted. Grayson is one of the only credible people in congress who has the guts and audacity to go after the biggest, most corrupt practitioners in DC, including the Temple itself, the Fed. He’s the last public official that a watchdog group should be castigating on such thin evidence and with such inexplicable illogic — particularly when it’s clear to anyone that its genesis is typically offensive GOP racist smear tactics.

Liberals often behave badly this way and I don’t know exactly why. They get protective of their turf and lost in the minutia of their own hype and lose sight of the big picture. It’s a sign of political immaturity and shallow self-interest, I’m sorry to say, and it’s sort of embarrassing.

Grayson’s one of the good guys who is fighting a courageous battle for the transparency and accountability agenda. Like CREW — I thought. He shouldn’t have to fight off his left on something like this.

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Challenge To The Weapons System Status Quo

by dday

I’m going to try and get off Sanford Watch for a moment, mainly because I’m reading the cringeworthy emails with most of my hand in front of my face. Because, despite the fact that it will get almost no media coverage, this is a pretty important statement from the Administration.

Preparing for a possible showdown with Congress, the White House on Wednesday threatened to veto legislation authorizing a $680 billion military budget if it contains money for jet fighters the Pentagon doesn’t want.

In a statement, the White House Office of Management and Budget said the $369 million that a House committee added to the bill as a downpayment for 12 additional F-22 fighters runs counter to the “collective judgment” of the military’s top leaders.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates wants to end production of the radar-evading F-22 after 187 aircraft have been built. Last week, in a preview of the White House’s veto threat, Gates called the funding boost a “big problem.” […]

Another provision in the House bill the White House strongly objects to adds $603 million for a back-up engine intended for another fighter jet in development called the F-35. The committee says the alternative engine is needed in the event the primary propulsion system has problems that might ground the aircraft.

But the White House says the extra engine isn’t needed and will slow the fielding of the F-35, a single-engine aircraft to be used by the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.

The backstory is that the Defense Department and the White House signed off on these cuts to the military budget, so did the relevant leadership in the armed services, and so did THE MANUFACTURERS OF THE PRODUCTS. At the time I didn’t consider it that big a deal, because a lot of this money gets shuttled around to other equipment, and the overall military budget remains unsustainably high, at a time when we’re scrounging for funding to give people quality health care. But some parochial politicians, and considering that the F-22 gets supplies from 43 states they’re practically ALL parochial when it comes to the war machines, stuck the funding back in, for weapons and equipment that the defense establishment doesn’t want.

For the President to offer a veto threat, which to my recollection is the first veto threat of his Presidency, over ending the military-industrial complex gravy train is pretty significant. If we don’t take the first step and restore the ability to end weapons systems, then the military budget will just grow and grow. Most politicians already consider it magic and unrelated to any other spending, even while they scold about “runaway budget deficits” in the same breath. The jobs argument attempted here is bogus, “weaponized Keynesianism”, as Barney Frank called it. Building bridges and roads and a smart energy grid were the kinds of job-creating engines that all the fiscal scolds considered too expensive during the stimulus fight, but suddenly when defense is on the menu, they’re all “jobs, baby, jobs.” Those Blue Dogs who scream about budgets can now tell everyone why we can afford a plane that the Air Force doesn’t need and the manufacturer doesn’t even want to make.

The President’s taking a small risk here. I can already hear the resurrection of Zell Miller demagoguing in 2012 about “what are we gonna use, spitballs?” But this represents the setting of a marker, one of the first I can remember, that our military budget is not sustainable, and as a first step we have to be able to wind down Cold War-era weapons systems that are completely inapplicable to the present day. Not many people have allowed themselves to publicly make this argument. So it deserves some credit.

The relevant parts of the statement from the OMB below.

The Administration supports House passage of H.R. 2647, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010. The Administration appreciates the House Armed Services Committee’s continued strong support of our national defense, including its support for the Department’s topline budget requests for both the base budget and for overseas contingency operations.

The Administration appreciates, among other things, the leadership of the Committee in supporting many of the President’s initiatives to terminate or reduce programs that have troubled histories, or that failed to demonstrate adequate performance when compared to other programs and activities needed to carry out U.S. national security objectives. In addition, the Administration welcomes the Committee’s support for the Secretary of Defense’s plan to increase the size of the civilian acquisition workforce and reduce the Department’s reliance on contractors for critical acquisition functions. Also, the Administration appreciates that the Committee included authorities that are important to field commanders, such as the Commanders’ Emergency Response Program and the authority to reimburse coalition partners.

While there are many areas of agreement with the Committee, the Administration nonetheless has serious concerns with a number of provisions that could constrain the ability of the Armed Forces to carry out their missions, that depart from Secretary Gates’ decisions reflected in the President’s Fiscal Year 2010 Budget which carefully balanced fiscal constraints, program performance, strategic needs and capabilities, or that raise other issues. The Administration looks forward to working with the Congress to address these concerns, some of which are outlined below, and to refine this legislation to align it more closely with national defense priorities.

F-22 Advance Procurement: The Administration strongly objects to the provisions in the bill authorizing $369 million in advanced procurement funds for F-22s in FY 2011. The collective judgment of the Service Chiefs and Secretaries of the military departments suggests that a final program of record of 187 F-22s is sufficient to meet operational requirements. If the final bill presented to the President contains this provision, the President’s senior advisors would recommend a veto.

F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program: The Administration strongly objects to the addition of $603 million for development and procurement of the alternative engine program, and the requirement for the Department to fund the alternative engine program in future budget requests to the President. These changes will delay the fielding of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) capability and capacity, adversely impacting the Department’s overall strike fighter inventory. In addition, the Administration objects to provisions of the bill that mandate an alternative engine program for the JSF. The current engine is performing well with more than 11,000 test hours. Expenditures on a second engine are unnecessary and impede the progress of the overall JSF program. Alleged risks of a fleet-wide grounding due to a single engine are exaggerated. The Air Force currently has several fleets that operate on a single-engine source. The Administration also objects to the limit on the obligation of overall JSF development funding to 75% of the amount authorized until Department of Defense (DOD) has obligated all funds provided in FY 2010 for the alternative engine program. If the final bill presented to the President would seriously disrupt the F-35 program, the President’s senior advisors would recommend a veto.

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Happy Days Are Here Again

by digby

… for the masters of the universe anyway:

Citigroup Inc., the U.S. bank that got $45 billion of government funds, will raise base salaries by as much as 50 percent to help compensate for a reduction in annual bonuses, a person familiar with the plan said.

The biggest increases will go to investment bankers and traders, said the person who declined to be identified. Workers in consumer banking, credit cards, legal and risk management will see smaller salary adjustments. The New York-based company also plans to award stock options to try to keep employees after Citigroup’s market value plummeted 84 percent in the past year.

Citigroup joins Morgan Stanley and UBS AG in boosting salaries for executives and employees. Morgan Stanley said last month it will increase base pay for many of the New York-based firm’s top executives and double the pay of Chief Financial Officer Colm Kelleher.

“Citi continues to examine ways to ensure its employee compensation practices are competitive in this very challenging market environment,” Citigroup spokesman Stephen Cohen said yesterday, declining further comment.

Right. Because apparently there is a bidding war going on for all those traders and investment bankers who tanked the economy. Talk about failing up.Meanwhile the people in credit and risk management aren’t quite as much in demand.

The markets are fully functioning again. Let the next bubble begin. Tulips have been done. How about arugula?

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