Month: July 2009

We’re Calling This Victory?

by dday

You all probably know by now that Karl Rove was deposed in front of House Judiciary Committee staffers the other day, about the US Attorneys scandal and the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. But what you don’t know, and what I don’t know, and what nobody knows, is why. At some level, I’m glad that Congress was able to assert a modicum of its authority and at least get Rove (and apparently, Harriet Miers back in June) on the record with a set of questions. But to what end? Certainly not one of precedent, and not an investigative one as well, it seems.

The White House’s foot-dragging may have inflicted some measure of political damage. But in terms of the legal repercussions, by coming to a deal while the case was still pending in an appeals court, the Bushies have largely succeeded in one of their goals: ensuring that no clear precedent has been established limiting the president’s power to claim executive privilege in such cases. And the Obama White House’s role in helping to secure the deal for Rove’s testimony suggests that’s an outcome they wanted too.

As for the underlying issue — the quest to learn what really happened in the firings and the Siegelman prosecution, things remain murky at best. There are conflicting reports about whether Rove will sit for another day of testimony. It’s also unclear when and how the committee will decide which parts of Rove’s testimony, if any, can be made public, and in what form the probe’s findings will be released.

Siegelman, quoted later in the piece, thinks John Conyers will continue to investigate until he finds the truth. He must be an eternal optimist. This has reached the point where Republicans can demagogue with the words “old news,” and that was precisely the Bush White House’s goal. Even if House Judiciary eventually cobbles together a report and makes recommendations, the chances of the Justice Department taking whatever recommendations concern accountability measures are, in a word, remote. They haven’t even moved to set aside the verdict on Siegelman, though I did notice that the Justice Department whistleblower in the case has been fired. At least someone is held to account, right?

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The Bernie Madoff Of Health Care

by digby

Did I miss the blogospheric attacks on this guy or is this the first we’ve heard of it?

You’ve probably seen the ads. Ominous voice-overs warn you about how health care reform “could put a bureaucrat in charge of your medical decisions, not you.” A massive bulldozer with “government-run insurance plan” written on the side crushes your health care “choices.” Canadians and Britons relay horror stories of their experiences dealing with health care in those nightmarish socialist dystopias.

The ads are the product of a multimillion-dollar ad campaign designed to derail health care reform—especially what’s been dubbed the “public option,” which would set up a government-run plan to compete with private insurers. The man behind this ad blitz is the person who might be Public Option Enemy No. 1: one-time hospital executive and longtime Republican donor Richard Scott.

[…]

Scott certainly is an odd spokesman for the right’s health care agenda. The giant hospital company Scott led in the 1980s and 1990s, Columbia/HCA, was the subject of a seven-year federal investigation. The probe concluded with the company pleading guilty to 14 felony counts of criminal misconduct and paying $1.7 billion to settle civil charges relating to overbilling of state and federal governments—the largest settlement of its kind in American history. Scott, claiming ignorance of what was going on, was booted by his own board in 1997 and received a $10 million golden parachute with $300 million in stock options for his troubles.

[…]

Scott doesn’t seem eager to remind visitors to CPR’s website of his past. Not surprisingly, the “Fast Facts about Richard L. Scott” section contains no mention of the HCA fraud scandal, though it does highlight the fact that HCA “became the world’s largest private health care provider” and was named “one of the 50 best performing companies of the S&P 500” by BusinessWeek. The bio does mention Scott’s current venture, a company called Solantic, which “provides urgent care services, immunizations and other services at 23 locations”—including some in Wal-Mart stores—”across Florida.” What it doesn’t explain is that Solantic makes a lot of its money by catering to the uninsured—giving Scott a direct financial interest in preventing the expansion of health insurance to all Americans.

It seems to me that it should be somebody’s job to expose this man. He’s the most evil of evil CEOs. He should be a reviled and loathed character on par with the lowliest criminals at this point, and yet he’s on TV lying about health care for his own profit. How can this be?

His ads are running on a loop and there should, at least, be some sort of pushback. According to the article, he’s just considered a “nuisance” by public plan advocates, which I think is just bizarre. A focused national media buy with a lot of money behind it can do real damage, as the former Clinton administration folks know very well.

Eric Burns, the president of liberal media watchdog Media Matters for America, says Scott’s advocacy is having an impact. “Scott is spending an enormous amount of money to influence the debate over health care reform. He’s essentially cornered the market on providing false and misleading information on the health care reform debate.” Some of Scott’s ads focus on nightmarish tales of government-run health care in places like Canada and Britain, but President Obama hasn’t proposed going to a Canadian-style single-payer system. And it is not just Media Matters that has criticized the ads—the Annenberg Center’s FactCheck.org also found the group’s ad “very misleading.”

To disseminate its message, CPR has hired the same public relations company that handled the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The firm, CRC Public Relations, did not respond to questions for Scott submitted by Mother Jones. But Burns says CPR’s ties to CRC are no coincidence. “CPR is essentially the conservative Swift Boat operation for the health care reform debate,” Burns says.

Does anyone think the Swift Boaters didn’t have an impact?

And, once again, they are being aided by a lazy media who fail to acknowledge how these people operate:

The media have certainly aided Scott’s efforts to dodge his history and his conflicts of interest. CNN and Fox News, among others, have interviewed Scott without questioning him about HCA or his new company’s dependence on the uninsured.

Perhaps the health care debate is beyond public opinion now, but I doubt it. The right has an amazing ability to mobilize on votes, as people just found out again on the Cap and Trade legislation, and if opposition to health care is well prepared by guys like this and the vote is close, they could make a difference.

And why in the world hasn’t somebody seen the value in making this jackass the face of our health care disaster? He actually is the worst of the worst. Why is he even allowed to go out in public much less make and star in advertisements against health care?

Update: This is embarrassing: Chris Hayes wrote an entire column about Scott, even calling him the Madoff of health care last March. My very bad.

Be sure to read the column for more dirty details about Scott, who really is a world class creep.

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When Pat Buchanan Isn’t Racist Enough

Every once in a while the mask slips. Big time:

That’s the host of Fox & Friends, Brian Kilmeade, saying:

We keep marrying other species and other ethnics…The problem is the Swedes have pure genes. They marry other Swedes, that’s the rule. Finns marry other Finns; they have a pure society. In America we marry everybody. We will marry Italians and Irish.

And oh! How this crowd loves to call Sotomayor “racist.”

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

by dday

Morgan Stanley has this amazing plan to take a bunch of toxic crap, call it a different name, put a bow on it and sell as a magic moneymaking product. Innovative!

Morgan Stanley plans to repackage a downgraded collateralized debt obligation backed by leveraged loans into new securities with AAA ratings in the first transaction of its kind, said two people familiar with the sale.

Morgan Stanley is selling $87.1 million of securities that it expects to receive top AAA ratings and $42.9 million of notes graded Baa2, the second-lowest investment grade by Moody’s Investors Service, according to marketing documents obtained by Bloomberg News. The bonds were created from Greywolf CLO I Ltd., a CDO arranged in January 2007 by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and managed by Greywolf Capital Management LP, an investment firm based in Purchase, New York.

Two years after the credit markets began to seize up, costing the world’s biggest financial institutions $1.47 trillion in writedowns and losses, banks are again taking so- called structured finance securities and turning them into new debt investments with top credit ratings. While the Morgan Stanley deal is the first to involve CDOs of loans, banks have been doing the same with commercial mortgage-backed securities in recent weeks.

A lot of banks and insurers “cannot buy anything but AAA,” said Sylvain Raynes, a principal at R&R Consulting in New York and co-author of “Elements of Structured Finance,” which is due to be published in November by Oxford University Press. “You’re manufacturing AAA out of not AAA, therefore allowing those people who have AAA written on their forehead to buy.”

That last paragraph is my favorite part – investors cannot buy anything but AAA, so we’ll call a bunch of garbage AAA and sell it to them! Genius! And if you’re still wondering why that federal buy-up of toxic assets has amounted to nothing, I guess it’s because enough customers have been found for this “New and Improved Shitt With Two T’s.”

It says in the article that Goldman Sachs is preparing a similar sale. Matt Taibbi, you have the floor.

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Poor Pitiful Me

by digby

So it isn’t just Jonah Goldberg. Sarah Palin also believes that she has been more persecuted by her enemies and the press than Hillary Clinton — which is completely absurd.

Time’s Jay Newton-Small asked Palin about this contradiction in a new interview. Palin replied that she’s totally different than Clinton because the accusations she’s facing are way worse:

What I said was, it doesn’t do her or anybody else any good to whine about the criticism. And that’s why I’m trying to make it clear that the criticism, I invite that. But freedom of speech and that invitation to constructively criticize a public servant is a lot different than the allowance to lie, to continually falsely accuse a public servant when they have proven over and over again that they have not done what the accuser is saying they did. It doesn’t cost them a dime to continue to accuse. That’s a whole different situation. But that’s why when I talk about the political potshots that I take or my family takes, we can handle that. I can handle that. I expect it. But there has to be opportunity provided for truth to get out there, and truth isn’t getting out there when the political game that’s being played right now is going to continue, and it is.

Honest to Gawd…

Independent counsel Kenneth Starr has concluded that presidential aide Vincent Foster was not murdered and that President Bill Clinton and the first lady were not involved in a coverup, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.

The Times quotes anonymous sources as saying Starr’s report covers more than 100 pages and is due to be released soon.

The report refutes claims by conservative political organizations that Foster was the victim of a murder plot and coverup, the newspaper said.

“It puts the lie to that bunch of nuts out there spinning conspiracy theories and talking about murder and coverups,” one source told the paper.

Starr’s probe marks the third investigation into Foster’s July 1993 death. The earlier examinations — carried out by a coroner and Robert Fiske Jr., Starr’s predecessor as independent counsel — also determined Foster’s death was a suicide.

However, despite those findings, right-wing political groups have continued to allege that there was more to the death and that the president and first lady tried to cover it up.

Foster, who served as deputy White House counsel, was a close friend of the Clintons and a former law partner of the first lady. Among his other duties, Foster helped prepare the tax returns of the Whitewater Development Corp., the controversial Arkansas real estate venture involving the Clintons.

According to the Times, the independent counsel’s office had signaled that a report in the case would be forthcoming, first by the end of 1995, then the summer of 1996, then by the end of 1996.

Starr has not indicated when he might release the report.

Has Palin been accused of murder? Have the charges been conclusively proven false by three separate special prosecutors to the tune of many millions of taxpayer dollars in investigations that last for years and personally cost her millions of dollars in legal fees? No? Then I think she needs to rethink her claims.

There are zero well funded liberal hit groups trying to get Sarah Palin. The ethics complaints that have been filed against her are coming from her own constituents and local officials who are fed up with her. And she’s lying about the extent of the complaints remaining and calculating the costs in the most ridiculous way possible. Her endless hyperbole on the subject indicates that she can’t do her job if people are criticizing her, which disqualifying in a politician.

Let’s put it this way; if she can’t handle this, there’s no way she can handle higher office.

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Pressure Works

by dday

Several weeks ago Digby and Blue America noticed that Blanche Lincoln, one of the few centrist Democrats facing re-election in 2010, was taking the side of the insurance companies over her constituents in the health care debate. She claimed that “if all Congress comes up with is a government-backed plan, then there will be very little incentive for the private industry to be able to be competitive perhaps in the plans they will be offering and the individuals they will be offering,” showing exactly where her sympathies lie – with those poor, henpecked insurance industry CEOs who scrape by on $14.9 $1.49 billion dollars over five years.

So we decided to do something about it. Blue America kicked off the Campaign for Health Care Choice and produced three advertisements to press Lincoln on supporting a quality public insurance option to compete with private companies. Digby write the spots, John Amato helped with locations and logistics, I directed and edited them, Howie Klein managed the fundraising. Blue America held a contest to pick the best spot, and after raising $23,740, voters chose their favorite:

Today, we can announce that, before the spots even fully hit the airwaves in Arkansas, Blanche Lincoln is already hedging on her rejection of a public insurance option.

Lincoln, who’s getting hammered by ads demanding she commit to the public option, has now shifted towards supporting one, at least in rhetorical terms. In a piece for today’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, she says health care reform should include a public plan or a non-profit substitute.

Here’s the key graf from Lincoln (the piece is subscription only):

Health care reform must build upon what works and improve inefficiencies. Individuals should be able to choose from a range of quality health insurance plans. Options should include private plans as well as a quality, affordable public plan or non-profit plan that can accomplish the same goals as those of a public plan.

The assertion that reform “should” have a public plan or non-profit substitute is a shift from her previous position, which was only that she was “evaluating” a public plan or a substitute.

In this op-ed, Lincoln makes absolutely no mention of an employer mandate to provide coverage to their workers, which Wal-Mart, America’s largest employer and a virtual kingmaker in Arkansas, signed onto this week. Instead, Lincoln goes out of her way to support a public insurance option in competition with private insurance. There are weasel words there, of course – note the “non-profit plan that can accomplish the same goals.” But in the final analysis, two events happened to Blanche Lincoln in health care recently – Wal-Mart’s sign-on to the employer mandate and the prospect of Blue America running ads in her state ($25,000 can go a fairly long way on cable in Arkansas, by the way). She chose to specifically align herself with the element of health care policy that Blue America endorses.

But she’s not all the way there, so we plan to keep pushing. But this should be a valuable lesson – every small thing you do to advance solutions to the health care crisis can make a difference. The political animals in the Senate know that on this high-profile vote, defying the public on a popular plank will cause them some difficulty. It’s up to us to make sure of that.

Please support the Campaign for Health Care Choice so we can continue to raise the pressure on the ConservaDems who want to hijack this crucial policy goal.

…More at FDL and Washington Monthly.

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Tenured Torturer

by digby

The University of Colorado doesn’t owe former professor Ward Churchill his old job even though a jury found regents improperly terminated him, a judge ruled Tuesday. Denver District Judge Larry Naves vacated the jury’s finding, ruling that CU’s Board of Regents is a “quasi-judicial” panel that cannot be sued. […]
CU began investigating Churchill after an essay surfaced in which he had called some victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks “little Eichmanns.” The statement triggered outrage and led to calls for his dismissal. Subsequently, the university launched an investigation of his scholarly writing and found that he engaged in repeated acts of plagiarism over a period of years. CU said he was fired, in 2007, for academic misconduct. Churchill and his supporters said that the university manufactured a case against him to appease his critics, among whom was then-Gov. Bill Owens. “This shows that if you step out of line and do something considered unpalatable by people with power, you are in danger of losing your job,” said retired CU faculty member Tom Mayer.

Well, let’s not go crazy, here. After all:

That’s an excellent question.The difference between Churchill and Yoo probably comes down to the different stature of the two professors and the two Universities, which makes it much easier to scapegoat Churchill than Yoo. But it’s still amazing that a tenured professor can be hounded out of the academy for writing an obscure literary tract that nobody would have read if the right hadn’t made it a cause and the legal architect of a torture policy that will have reverberations for generations is untouchable. Amazing.

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And Justice For None

by dday

Glenn Greenwald has the gory details about yet another civil liberties backtrack for the White House, introducing the new term of “presidential post-acquittal detention power.” Basically, if the Administration puts a terror suspect on trial and they are actually found innocent, the President reserves the right to detain them anyway for an indefinite period.

All of this underscores what has clearly emerged as the core “principle” of Obama justice when it comes to accused Terrorists — namely, “due process” is pure window dressing with only one goal: to ensure that anyone the President wants to keep imprisoned will remain in prison. They’ll create various procedures to prettify the process, but the outcome is always the same — ongoing detention for as long as the President dictates. This is how I described it when Obama first unveiled his proposal of preventive detention:

If you really think about the argument Obama made yesterday — when he described the five categories of detainees and the procedures to which each will be subjected — it becomes manifest just how profound a violation of Western conceptions of justice this is. What Obama is saying is this: we’ll give real trials only to those detainees we know in advance we will convict. For those we don’t think we can convict in a real court, we’ll get convictions in the military commissions I’m creating. For those we can’t convict even in my military commissions, we’ll just imprison them anyway with no charges (“preventively detain” them).

After yesterday, we have to add an even more extreme prong to this policy: if by chance we miscalculate and deign to give a trial to a detainee who is then acquitted, we’ll still just keep them in prison anyway by presidential decree. That added step renders my criticism of Obama’s conception of “justice” even more applicable:

Giving trials to people only when you know for sure, in advance, that you’ll get convictions is not due process. Those are called “show trials.” In a healthy system of justice, the Government gives everyone it wants to imprison a trial and then imprisons only those whom it can convict. The process is constant (trials), and the outcome varies (convictions or acquittals). Obama is saying the opposite: in his scheme, it is the outcome that is constant (everyone ends up imprisoned), while the process varies and is determined by the Government (trials for some; military commissions for others; indefinite detention for the rest). The Government picks and chooses which process you get in order to ensure that it always wins. A more warped “system of justice” is hard to imagine.

I get the feeling that if those left at Guantanamo wanted to engage in mass suicide right now, someone in the White House would give the go-ahead to mix the Kool-Aid for them. This is just a problem they don’t want to solve.

And of course, the focus on Guantanamo, and the fate of the prisoners there, keeps everyone’s eye off of those indefinitely detained at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, without charges, and in greater numbers at this point than in Cuba. Furthermore, what Obama’s team has not answered is if they plan to continue these show trials and preventive detention tactics for those they capture, not just the artifacts of the Bush regime. That answer could come soon.

We have, through expansion of executive power, extreme Congressional deference and a failure to counteract the push in the popular culture, allowed the arguments of reactionaries – that any suspect in the so-called “war on terror” must be detained indefinitely until the end of combat in an endless, figurative war – to take hold in the public mind. When these issues made the public debate, when torture became the stuff of online poll topics, when they were allowed legitimacy, we inevitably and inescapably lost that debate. The genie has left the bottle, and while a popular President could put it back in, he has shown absolutely no willingness to expend an ounce of political capital to do so. And we will look back on decisions like this as part of a sad legacy, regardless of the rest of the tenure.

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Mission Accomplished

by digby

For those who were glued to the cable networks all day for the breaking memorial service news John Dickerson does a recapitulation of yesterday’s message mishmash coming out of the White House. He points out that Obama didn’t actually contradict Rahm and sets forth the shocking proposition that the president is keeping his options open, not foreclosing the trigger or any other “com[promise.” He ends with this:

Liberal Democrats and their allies were concerned enough about Emanuel’s remarks to seek clarification from the White House. But the president’s statement, while aimed at reiterating his commitment, doesn’t actually contradict anything Emanuel said. If, in the end, if Obama decides that a trigger or a cooperative plan keeps insurance companies honest, then he will say he’s kept his word on the goals of the public option. So Obama’s statement today can be read as both a walk-back of Emanuel’s remarks and support of them. When I pointed this out to a White House adviser, the response was succinct: “Mission accomplished.”

(Cute. But this person might want to think a little bit about the recent history of that phrase…)

I think Dickerson is reading this pretty well. This is a negotiation and Obama has not drawn any lines in the sand. He has stated broad goals and preferences, but he is “keeping his options open.” A trigger or co-ops or some other rube goldberg scheme have not been ruled out.

It occurs to me that progressives might be more inclined to trust the White House on this if it hadn’t already shown that it is more than capable of being total tools for the bankers and sycophantic servants of the national security state. It makes it a little bit hard to feel confident that they are pursuing a super duper crafty progressive strategy to reform health care.

The trigger is still on the table. It always was. It will be up to those progressives in the House and Senate to dig in and hold the line. Now we have the reanimation of the co-op zombie:

Schumer has declared the idea dead previously, but sounded more positive Tuesday. “If we can come to some kind of compromise on some kind of co-op situation that really keeps the insurance companies honest, I’m open to it. It can’t be two little co-ops in two little places.” Schumer even seemed to have compromised on a key sticking point in his negotiations with conservative Democrats. He had previously advocated that the co-op board be linked to the government. Now he says that while “there would be a role for the federal government in setting it up, then it would become independent.”

Right. We were already down this road last month. Here’s what Robert Reich said about this at the time:

Nonprofit health-care cooperatives won’t have any real bargaining leverage to get lower prices because they’ll be too small and too numerous. Pharma and Insurance know they can roll them. That’s why the Conrad compromise is getting a good reception from across the aisle, just as Olympia Snowe‘s “trigger” (which means no public option until some time down the pike, and only if Pharma and Insurance don’t bring down and extend coverage a tad) is also gaining traction. The truth is that there’s only one “public option” that will truly bring down costs and premiums — one that’s national in scale and combines its bargaining power with Medicare, and is allowed to negotiate lower drug prices and lower doctor and hospital fees. And that’s precisely what Pharma and Insurance detest, for exactly the same reason. Whatever it’s called — public option or chopped liver — it has to be able to squeeze Pharma, Insurance, and the rest of the medical-industrial complex. And the more likely it is to squeeze them, the more they’ll fight it. And the greater the opposition from Republicans, and from Dems who either believe any bill has to have some Republican support or who have sold themselves out to the medical biggies.

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Fighting Back

by dday

The structure of California government makes rational solutions impossible. But the people who bear the brunt of the pain from a structure wired to drown government in the bathtub have an option. They can stand their ground and refuse to be moved.

And so it begins. As Anthony Wright is tweeting, a group of disabled activists have taken up positions in the Capitol building and are refusing to leave until the health and human services cuts are reconsidered:

Wheelchairs blocking the Governor’s office for the last two hours over the budget cuts.. CHP threatens arrest, they say they are prepared…

Over 100 folks protesting cuts in the hall outside Governor Schwarzenegger’s office. Gov is at Mason’s having lunch… maybe Jacuzzi later?

CHP threatens not just arrest-and-release, but taking disabled protestors to county jail. They say they rather be in jail than nursing home.

Outside Gov’s office… Several Dem legislators came down to talk to/cheer on the disabled protestors: Cedillo, Perez, Beall, Skinner, etc

Budget protesters call out “hold the line” when someone tries to pass. The wheelchairs effectively stop any traffic in hallway.

Bad budget boon for Blimpie’s: Food arrives for protestors with disabilities, as thet settle in for the long haul in front of Gov’s office…

UPDATE: The protest organizers, the “People’s Day of Reckoning Coalition” (an offshoot of the IHSS Coalition) have explained their actions to the media:

Caregivers and people with disabilities are furious that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is asking for more cuts to California’s in-home support services.

About 100 protesters said they successfully blocked the entrance to the governor’s office Tuesday. The People’s Day of Reckoning Coalition organized the protest.

The coalition sent a letter to Schwarzenegger in June, asking him to come up with a budget solution that includes new sources of income and not just cuts to services.

“We are calling for a budget solution that is based upon shared responsibility and shared sacrifice — not a solution that falls squarely upon on the shoulders of children, people with disabilities, elders, the chronically ill, the unemployed and the impoverished,” the letter said.

The People’s Day of Reckoning Coalition represents human services, health care, community improvement and educational interest….

John Campbell, a caregiver, said claims of fraud are exaggerated, calling the governor’s remarks “just a bit of political theater.”

The California Highway Patrol cited about a dozen protestors. They’ll be back, to coin a phrase.

The long story of Governor Stogie and In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) is here. The short version is that Arnold up and decided, after months of budget negotiations, that there was massive fraud in this program (there isn’t), which allows the elderly, disabled and blind to receive in-home care rather than being consigned to a nursing home, and he demanded that anti-fraud provisions immediately get adopted as part of a budget deal, adding a massive, complex policy shift 24 hours before the budget deadline. There’s more about how ridiculous this all is at the link.

What’s important here is that those with a stake in Governor Stogie’s ruthless cuts – the people who actually feel the effects – have had enough. The structure makes decent solutions impossible, but the only way to fix that structure starts with activists like this, literally blocking the way to right-wing shock doctrine tactics.

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