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NEW YORK – Goldman Sachs is emerging as the king of post-meltdown Wall Street.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090714/ap_on_bi_ge/us_earns_goldman_sachs
Gee, it makes one wonder if the meltdown wasn't planned in order to wipe out the competition.
Why can the minimum wage pegged to a percentage of Senator or Representative pay?
Bernie!
Can you give Senator Max Baucus (D-Health Insurance Industry) my thanks for squelching single-payer insurance cuz 62% of bankruptcies due to healthcare is not enough.
Remind Senator Mary L. Landrieu (D-Wal-Mart) that forcing people choosing to buy bread to attempt to culture penicillin to treat infections is an adequate healthcare plan.
And congratulate the entire Blue Dog Caucus for recognizing that a for-profit corporation denying my medically necessary procedures so the company can annually pay their corporate officers more than the GNP of 30% of the nations on the face of the planet, rather than just having the government pay for the procedure, is good for me and our nation.
Vice President Joe Biden told the AARP today:
We’re going to go bankrupt as a nation. Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’ The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling you.
I got some ‘splainin’ to do!
I gotta ‘splain why the dust-up over Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, is silly at best and harmful at worst.
Many have claimed that it was racist when Coburn responded to Sonia Sotomayor’s hypothetical by quipping, “You have lots of ‘splainin’ to do.” Thom Hartmann said it was “very racist”. Marjorie Cohn (president of the National Lawyers Guild, a progressive counter to the American Bar Association) brought it up on the show yesterday, but fortunately guest host Nicole Sandler ended that by saying it was just a bad joke and Cohn didn’t press the point. Left-wing journalist David Corn brought it up on GRITtv yesterday and it’s been hotly debated across the blagojevich.
I say, “Come on.” Coburn made that joke at a time in the hearing when he, Judge Sotomayor and many people in the hearing room were laughing about a hypothetical that Sotomayor was using to explain a point in response to Coburn’s question about the right to self-defense. There wasn’t a hushed silence after Coburn made the joke. People, including Sotomayor and Coburn laughed.
If it could be shown that Coburn was mocking Sotomayor, the joke could be seen as racists, and I think some people think that is exactly what happened, but they can only back it up with opinion, not facts. I look at the joke in the context in which it was made and I say, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
“You got some ‘splainin’ to do” is a joke going back to the 1950s TV show “I Love Lucy”. My guess is that the line is used by many people every day of the year. Part of the reason people find it funny is that it’s so familiar, just like the line “where’s the beef”. It’s part of the American culture and sense of humor. I’ve heard people from all kinds of backgrounds use the line with no hint of racial animus.
If you want to criticize racial stereotyping or insensitivity, how about Judge Sotomayor offering a hypothetical, in which she (a Latina) goes home, gets a gun, comes back to the hearing room and shoots Coburn. But it would be just as silly to interpret her hypothetical in that way.
What was racist was the constant and repeated questioning of Sotomayor about her “wise Latina” remark. Even more racists was the way many Republican senators talked down to and lectured Judge Sotomayor about her “temperament” and the importance of her use of language, judgment and impartiality. They need that lecture far more than she does.
My first thought when I heard the claim that Coburn’s quip was racists was it’s another example of the left making itself look thin skinned and foolish and holding us up to ridicule. But then I thought that right wingers ridicule us even when they have to make things up (i.e., lie).
What really bothers me is that when opinion leaders go off half-cocked with opinions like this, it encourages us little people out here to engage in shallow simple minded thinking rather than really trying to understand situations. We don’t need to be encouraged to do that. You hear such ill considered opinions all the time from callers and even on blogs like this.
Thom justifies his constant debates with right-wingers by saying that he’s “modeling” proper political discussions. He’s giving us an example of how to do it right. Well this time, the model’s makeup is smeared, he put his clothes on backwards and he slipped and fell off the runway. It will show up in his blooper reel.
P.S.: I think it’s fair to point out, as I have many times before, that although Thom Hartmann is an advocate for diversity on the Supreme Court and in fire departments, “people of color” rarely are guests on his radio program. That’s no joke.
The other evening Randi Rhodes was expressing incomprehension why senators like John Cornyn repeatedly asked Sonia Sotomayor where in the Constitution did it say that international law could be used to interpret constitutional law, outside of international treaties. The implication was that she had done so, but Sotomayor just as repeatedly denied that she had any view of that sort, and in fact agreed with Justices Scalia and Thomas that international laws outside of treaties had no bearing on the Constitution, and had never made a ruling that implied otherwise. Afterwards, the Republican senators still had “doubts” about Sotomayor’s position on this.
I think it is perfectly understandable why Republicans chose to follow this seemingly pointless line: for the sake of their racist constituency, they were playing to their belief that Sotomayor wasn’t “one of us”—she was a “foreigner,” like those “Mexicans.” The very idea of a Hispanic on the Supreme Court implied an “alien” presence. The Republicans have played racial low-ball all week, and this is just an example of how low into the gutter they will go.
At any rate, Sotomayor is certainly more worthy than that “renegade” Time magazine put on its cover again; Time might be infatuated with Sarah Palin, but most of the rest of us have long since grown tired of her self-obsessed shtick. Renegade? How about plain old-fashioned screwball?
Congressman Bill Shuster from the conservative (cheap) ninth district of Pennsylvania sent an email with this poll in it. He obviously made the poll to get the results he wants to cite when he votes against a reasonable health care bill. I found out that it is possible to vote as many times as you want to vote. I think he would be puzzled if enough people voted to reverse the results that he wants.
http://shuster.houseenews.net/mail/util.cfmgpiv=2100043053.12140.223&gen=1
One of the key problems with the current system is that profit is defined as denying coverage to people. There are NO incentives at present for lowering costs or increasing quality of patient outcomes.
For all the republicans that believe in profit as the fix for everything we need to ask them how can the system be fixed so that providing better service and better patient outcomes are linked to increased profit. In our current system, profit is increased by denying service until the patient dies (insurance companies) and providing wasted services to run up the bill (hospitals, drug companies, and doctors). These outcomes are exactly what we are getting.
Many new drugs are no more effective than placebo or existing medicines and are constantly pushed on Americans. They are pushed for profit not patient benefit. These expensive in-effective treatments are pushing our costs up without control of any kind. More people die from drug interactions and hospital errors that in highway accidents every year. These deaths actually increase profits for both hospitals and insurance companies and have been very difficult to reduce as a result.
It is the responsibility of government to set the rules for business such that the peoples interests are in alignment with business's interest in profits. The Congress has failed to meet this responsibility for at least the last 28 years.
For our Republican friends: Do you want the decision of whether your Mom receives treatment for myeloma to be based on her dying quicker (Increased profit for the insurance company) or based on her living longer and in better health?
For our Democratic friends: Single payer and public options are a good start but how do we create incentive for these alternatives to provide better outcomes. A government equivalent of the current insurance mess is still set up with the same destructive incentives that plaque our current health system.
The current mechanisms have impoverished new doctors, denied needed services for people that can be helped and generated immense profits for drug companies based on government sponsored monopolies (drug patents).
The insurance companies and existing health system players are only too happy to have us arguing about single payer or private systems, taxes to pay for the un-insured, etc. as they give them the same results as today. They will continue to deliver bad service and laugh all the way to the bank.
I would rather contract with a hospital, medical equipment vendor, doctor, and drug company and the payments be based on increased patient benefit rather than how many people I can deny coverage to. This is where our creative energies must be focused if we want to get a different result than we have experienced in the last 28 years.
Richard Adlof,
Of course, the Supreme Court has the power (but not the inclination) to effect changes with the corporations...
Richard Adlof,
1) You forgot "thin-skinned" in your Jesse Ventura description...
2) I don't know how we will ever get most "professional politicians" to change campaign finance rules. Maybe the change needs to happen farther up the food chain. Maybe we need to think of things we can do to "convince" (or strong-arm) corporations to change. But how does one make a "dent" in the corporations?
Term limits destroy institutional memory and historically leads to Libertarian effects in governance.
What is required is:
1. Public financing of political campaigns, and
2. Force corporate media to do public good to maintain their licenses by allowing access for viable candidates to express themselves.
Self-centered hacks . . . (Jesse Ventura and Ross Perot and . . . ) make temporary slashes but are not an foundation for change.
mstaggerlee,
Both want the same information towards different ends:
1. Representative Paul to destroy government, and
2. Senator Sanders to shame government into being better.
DRichards,
It seems to me that these bills throw open investigations of the Fed without previous exceptions. Ron Paul has had a problem with the Fed and has called for doing away with it. Bernie Sanders wants more oversight (I don't know his position on dissolving it.)
Please look at the following. Does this address your question, or am I not understanding what you meant?
If you look at the actual US CODE TITLE 31 > SUBTITLE I > CHAPTER 7 > SUBCHAPTER II > § 714, it seems that major changes will be made. The NEW wording becomes:
(b) Under regulations of the Comptroller General, the Comptroller General shall audit an agency.
The OLD wording to be changed is:
(b) Under regulations of the Comptroller General, the Comptroller General shall audit an agency, but may carry out an onsite examination of an open insured bank or bank holding company only if the appropriate agency has consented in writing. Audits of the Federal Reserve Board and Federal reserve banks may not include—
(1) transactions for or with a foreign central bank, government of a foreign country, or nonprivate international financing organization;
(2) deliberations, decisions, or actions on monetary policy matters, including discount window operations, reserves of member banks, securities credit, interest on deposits, and open market operations;
(3) transactions made under the direction of the Federal Open Market Committee; or
(4) a part of a discussion or communication among or between members of the Board of Governors and officers and employees of the Federal Reserve System related to clauses (1)–(3) of this subsection.
... unless there's more than one Senator Sanders?
DRichards -
When I first read over the text of HR1207 (http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-1207), I wasn't terribly impressed. Seems that all it really does is mandate a change in the way reports about the Fed are prepared. Didn't seem like a big deal to me.
Then I looked at S604 (http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s111-604) , the Senate version (essentially identical, except for the name), and saw that it was introduced by Bernie Sanders.
Maybe I'm dense, but I don't see the substance here that would bring Ron Paul & Bernie Sanders together on the issue - can someone enlighten me?
DRichards,,
OMG, I'm really having problems today: s.b. "FDR."
Richard Adlof,
Thanks for the wonderful format: Senator Max Sieben Baucus (D-Health Insurance Industry), Senator Mary L. Landrieu (D-Walmart.)
I am going to try to remember to use that!
DRichards,
Yes, ever since corporations received "personhood" in the late 1800s, we have been run by the corporations,with DFR as the exception.
Refresh my memory; I think it was Noam Chomsky who said we would have government provided health care insurance when corporate America wanted it, and that the automakers were approaching that point because of the cost of health care to their workers.
No big surprise that a friend of HiFructose CS is no friend of Public Health, is it?
Maybe it's not just Chuck Grassley that's holding up a report from Baucus' committee - Take a look at opensecrets.org, and see who's been making contributions to Max's 2010 campaign fund?
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=2010&cid=N00004...
Just a bit heavy on Insurance and Pharmaceutical firms, eh?
So - howzabout Max's buddy from North Dakota?
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=2010&cid=N00001...
Different companies for sure - but a similar sector mix.
Like Deep Throat said in "All the President's Men" - Follow the MONEY!
Of course, Senator Max Sieben Baucus (D-Health Insurance Industry) and Senator Mary L. Landrieu (D-Walmart) have expressed issues with single-payer.
No big surprise that a friend of HiFructose CS is no friend of Public Health, is it?
Maybe it's not just Chuck Grassley that's holding up a report from Baucus' committee - let's take a look at opensecrets.org, and see who's been making contributions to Max's 2010 campaign fund, shall we?
Top 20 Contributors
Senator Max Baucus 2010
Rank Contributor Total Indivs PACs
1 Schering-Plough Corp $66,200 $64,200 $2,000
2 Goldman Sachs $47,900 $47,900 $0
3 KKR & Co $47,000 $47,000 $0
4 American International Group $46,750 $37,000 $9,750
5 Aetna Inc $45,250 $35,250 $10,000
5 Amgen Inc $45,250 $35,250 $10,000
7 UST Inc $41,950 $32,950 $9,000
8 New York Life Insurance $41,650 $41,650 $0
9 Blue Cross/Blue Shield $40,850 $21,350 $19,500
10 DaVita Inc $40,350 $36,600 $3,750
11 American Express $39,800 $29,800 $10,000
12 Akin, Gump et al $38,836 $34,350 $4,486
13 JPMorgan Chase & Co $38,100 $28,600 $9,500
14 Citigroup Inc $35,000 $26,000 $9,000
15 Morgan Stanley $34,500 $25,500 $9,000
16 Huntsman Corp $32,200 $32,200 $0
17 Paulson & Co $29,900 $29,900 $0
18 Wyeth $29,170 $18,170 $11,000
19 Verizon Communications $29,001 $19,001 $10,000
20 Kindred Healthcare $28,400 $18,400 $10,000
Hmmm - seems that list is kinda heavy on insurance and pharmaceutical companies, eh?
Howzabout his buddy from North Dakota?
Top 20 Contributors
Senator Chuck Grassley 2010
Rank Contributor Total Indivs PACs
1 Amgen Inc $33,300 $24,300 $ 9,000
2 Select Medical Corp $18,700 $18,700 $ 0
3 Mylan Laboratories $17,000 $ 7,000 $10,000
4 DaVita Inc $16,500 $ 8,000 $ 8,500
4 Williams & Jensen $16,500 $14,500 $ 2,000
6 Blue Cross/Blue Shield $14,750 $ 2,250 $12,500
7 American Academy of Ophthalmology $12,500 $ 0 $12,500
8 Livingston Group $11,500 $11,500 $ 0
9 Clark Consulting $11,350 $ 6,350 $ 5,000
10 American Academy of Dermatology Assn $10,000 $ 0 $10,000
10 Bluegrass Cmte $10,000 $ 0 $10,000
10 Federation of American Hospitals $10,000 $ 0 $10,000
10 FPL Group $10,000 $ 0 $10,000
10 Hercules Holding $10,000 $ 0 $10,000
10 Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance $10,000 $ 0 $10,000
10 New York Life Insurance $10,000 $ 0 $10,000
10 Renal Leadership Council $10,000 $ 0 $10,000
10 US Oncology $10,000 $ 0 $10,000
19 Winston & Strawn $ 9,250 $ 3,750 $ 5,500
20 CME Group $ 9,000 $ 0 $ 9,000
20 Roche Holdings $ 9,000 $ 0 $ 9,000
Different companies - but a similar mix of sectors.
Like they said in "All the President's Men" - Follow the MONEY!
Great discussion re: "Goodfellas Government" with Eliot Spitzer, etc.:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/31943847#31943847
Video clip re: Max Baucus:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/31943503#31943503
Health insurers do NOT provide healthcare. Healthcare providers provide healthcare.
Health insurance is a financial instrument. Healthcare is the medically necessary procedures, practices and services required to maintain the life and health of any individual or group of individuals.
The stated basic premise of health insurance is to spread the risk (costs) of healthcare over a larger population to minimize the financial impact (cost) to any specific member/insured. We, the People, are the largest possible population available to our nation. Single-payer makes the single most efficient and effective grouping to maximally disperse those costs.