Amgen Pimps US Senator Baucus Et Al For Pennies On The Dollar

Amgen Gets a Gift From Congress - NYT
For a disheartening example of how intense lobbying and financial contributions can distort the legislative process in Washington, consider what happened to the “fiscal cliff” bill approved three weeks ago by Congress.

Senators who play a major role in federal health care financing were happy to help Amgen, the world’s largest biotechnology company, evade Medicare cost-cutting controls by delaying price restraints on a class of drugs used by kidney dialysis patients, including Sensipar, a drug made by Amgen. That provision was inserted into the final fiscal bill by Senate aides. Many members of Congress did not know it was in the bill until just hours before it was approved.

Although other companies will benefit financially from that delay, Amgen, which has 74 lobbyists in Washington, was the only company to lobby aggressively for the provision. The delay will cost the Medicare program up to $500 million over a two-year period.

The disturbing details were revealed in a report by Eric Lipton and Kevin Sack of The Times on Sunday. The maneuvering to exempt these drugs undercuts a five-year effort to change the incentives used to pay for kidney dialysis care. Previously, Medicare had paid providers separately for the drugs and for administering dialysis treatment, a system that often encouraged overprescribing.

But, in 2008, Congress reversed the incentives by requiring Medicare to pay a single, bundled rate for a patient’s dialysis treatment and related medications, starting in 2011. But certain oral drugs, including Sensipar, were given a two-year reprieve, to expire in 2014, from being included in that more cost-effective bundled system. The fiscal bill has now extended that exclusion for an additional two years.

Supporters of the delay — notably, Senator Max Baucus, a Democrat of Montana, who leads the Senate Finance Committee, and Orrin Hatch, of Utah, the ranking Republican on that committee — say it is needed to give the Medicare system and dialysis providers time to absorb other complicated changes in federal reimbursements for kidney care. But there is good reason to suspect other factors were involved as well. Both senators have political and financial ties to Amgen, as does Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, who exerted great influence over the fiscal negotiations and praised the Medicare provisions.

A top aide to Mr. Hatch, who was involved in negotiating the dialysis delay, previously worked as a health policy analyst for Amgen. The current lobbyists for Amgen include former chiefs of staff for both Mr. Baucus and Mr. McConnell. And the three senators have received substantial contributions from Amgen’s employees and its political action committee since 2007 — almost $68,000 to Senator Baucus, $59,000 to Senator Hatch, and $73,000 to Senator McConnell.

Amgen’s strong influence prevailed even though it had pleaded guilty just weeks ago to marketing an anti-anemia drug illegally and agreed to pay criminal and civil penalties of $762 million, a record settlement for a biotechnology company.

This dreadful episode is a classic example of the power of special interests to shape legislation and shows how hard it may be to carry out the reforms needed to cut health care costs.

See Original NYT story (here).

James C. Collier

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Aaron Swartz: 1986 -2013

There are some rare people who are driven to put it all on the line for what they believe - despite the risks. Swartz was one of those people. As an independent researcher, I often ran into the closed doors he fought so hard to prop open. Thanks. RIP.

P.S. To read a petition requesting the government terminate the US District Attorney for overreach against Swartz, click (here).

James C. Collier

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Responding to Newtown, Aurora, Blacksburg, et al

I watched President Obama's speech at the Newtown Memorial last night. My college and high school-aged kids and some of their friends and cousins were there too. It gave me a chance to not only consider how to pick myself up after such a senseless tragedy, but to also grasp what I could do as a father. But I was speechless, my internal BS detector was not having any of it.

During the President's words, all the kids, and adults, oscillated between silent tears, squirms, and nervous comments, reflecting the raw emotion and tension of the moment. It was clear that they were translating the events of Newtown to their own school and work lives. I was silent, because nothing I could say could assure them, or make them feel the safety that is supposed to be my parental job.

This morning I woke still without answers, but with a resolve that I did not have last night. Whatever I do going forward, it must be with a simple notion in mind. Mental health services must be more accessible to everyone, and guns must be more difficult to acquire. With my vote and my wallet I will support leaders who support this, and jettison support for those who dance around the issues.

Down? Yes. Out? No.

James C. Collier

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Letter to a future Republican strategist regarding white people

The Following post in italics is from Eric Garland (here):

To whom it may concern regarding the United States federal elections of 2014, 2016 and beyond:

Allow me to introduce myself to you, the existing (or aspiring!) strategist for the Republican Party. My name is Eric Arnold Garland and I am a White Man. Boy, am I ever – you need sunglasses just to look at my photo!

If I read the news correctly, I fit a profile that is of extreme importance to the GOP, as I embody the archetype that fits your narrative of Real Americans. Just how much should my profile interest you? Are you sitting down?

My family lineage goes back to the MAYFLOWER, BOAT ONE!!! (Garland family of New England-> John Adams -> Howard Alden -> Plymouth colony ->KINGS OF MUTHAF***IN’ ENGLAND)

I am a heterosexual, married to the super Caucasian mother of my two beautiful children who are, inexplicably, EVEN WHITER THAN I AM. I am college educated (Master’s degree!) and affluent. I am a job creator and small businessman. We pay a lot of taxes! Every year! I grew up in a rural area and despise laziness! Having started my own business, I have complained at length about the insanity of federal, state and local bureaucracy – and its deleterious impact on the innovative small businessman. I currently live in the suburbs in a historically Red state. HOLY WHITE PEOPLE, BATMAN!!! Wow, you’re thinking – this is not some Mexirican in the Sun Belt we need to attract via harsh anti-Castro policies or appeals to “valores de familia” - this is the BREAD AND BUTTER OF THE GRAND OLD PARTY, a Mayflower-descended small business owner, burdened by taxation, looking out for his beautiful White family in the suburbs of a city (St Louis) surrounded by racial tension and urban blight! How can I put this gently? My wife and I are not sensitive to your messaging, nor did we vote for the candidates you proposed for us this past Tuesday. B-b-but, what? Aren’t we investors, hard-workin’ white folk surrounded by same in a manicured cul-de-sac, scared by a vision of economic collapse amidst the takers in a land of fewer givers? Didn’t Mitt Romney’s strong family, wealth, leadership history and chiseled chin give us the uncontrollable urge to high-five him into the White House? No. May I explain why not, purely for your education, such that you might be interested in winning an election on the national level at some point in the future? It bears pointing out that I should be your Low Hanging Fruit, the easy vote to get as opposed to, say, African-Americans, Latinos, or Asians – and you’re not even speaking well to me. The reasons why ought to concern you deeply.

As a Card-Carrying White Male I love expressing my opinion irrespective of whether people care to hear it, so let’s get started. >>>>>>

Science - One of the reasons my family is affluent is that my wife and I have a collective fifteen years of university education between us. I have a Masters degree in Science and Technology Policy, and my wife is a physician who holds degrees in medicine as well as cell and molecular biology. We are really quite unimpressed with Congressional representatives such as Todd Akin and Paul Broun who actually serve on the House science committee and who believe, respectively, that rape does not cause pregnancy and that evolution and astrophysics are lies straight from Satan’s butt cheeks. These are, sadly, only two of innumerable assaults that the Republican Party has made against hard science – with nothing to say of logic in general. Please understand the unbearable tension this might create between us and your candidates.

Climate - Within just the past 18 months the following events have come to our attention: a record-breaking drought that sent temperatures over 100 degrees for weeks, killing half the corn in the Midwest and half the TREES on our suburban property – AND – a hurricane that drowned not New Orleans or Tampa or North Carolina but my native state of VERMONT. As an encore, a second hurricane drowned lower Manhattan, New Jersey and Long Island. The shouted views of decrepit mental fossil Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma that this is a fraud perpetrated on the American people by evil, conspiring climate scientists is belied by such events and is looking irresponsible to even the most skeptical.

Healthcare - My wife and I are quite familiar with America’s healthcare system due to our professions, and having lived abroad extensively, also very aware of comparable systems. Your party’s insistence on declaring the private U.S. healthcare system “the best in the world” fails nearly every factual measure available to any curious mind. We watch our country piss away 60% more expenditures than the next most expensive system (Switzerland) for health outcomes that rival former Soviet bloc nations. On a personal scale, my wife watches poor WORKING people show up in emergency rooms with fourth-stage cancer because they were unable to afford primary care visits. I have watched countless small businesses unable to attract talented workers because of the outrageous and climbing cost of private insurance. And I watch European and Asian businesses outpace American companies because they can attract that talent without asking people to risk bankruptcy and death. That you think this state of affairs is somehow preferable to “Obamacare,” which you compared ludicrously to Trotskyite Russian communism, is a sign of deficient minds unfit to guide health policy in America.

War - Nations do have to go to war sometimes, but that Iraq thing was pretty bad, to put it mildly. Somebody should have been, I dunno – FIRED for bad performance. Aren’t you the party of good corporate managers or something? This topic could get 10,000 words on its own. Let’s just leave it at: You guys suck at running wars.

Deficits and debt - Whenever the GOP is out of power, it immediately appeals to the imagination of voters who remember the Lyndon Baines Johnson (!) administration and claim that the Republican alternative is the party of “cutting spending” and “reducing the deficit.” The only problem with your claim is that Republican governments throughout my entire 38 year life (Reagan, Bush 41, Bush 43) have failed to cut spending and deficit and debt EVEN ONCE. I hope you understand that your credibility suffers every time you promise one thing for three decades and do the EXACT OPPOSITE. Egads – if you actually were the party of fiscal responsibility – you might win our votes despite your 13th century view of science!

Gay marriage - As the child of Baby Boomers who got divorced (as was the fashion!) in the 80s and 90s, and for whom 50% of my friends had their homes broken by divorce in the critical years before age 18, I sure am unsympathetic to your caterwauling bullshit that “gays will destroy the sanctity of marriage.” Perhaps if everyone in your generation didn’t take the period of 1978 – 1995 to start surreptitiously banging their neighbors and coworkers, only to abandon their kids because “they just weren’t happy,” I would take your defense of marriage more seriously. The institution of Middle Class suburban marriage was broken by the generation of aging white Baby Boomers who populate what is left of the Republican Party, so your defense is wrongheaded and disingenuous. And moreover, as someone who got called “faggot” about 127 times a day from the years 1985 through 1991 – guess what – I grew up to be pretty good friends with actual homosexuals, whose sexual orientation is usually the least significant thing about them. The Republican perseveration on homosexuals as any sort of threat consigns them to history’s trough of intellectual pig dung. >>>>>>

That’s quite enough for one essay, wouldn’t you say? Now, given my initial description as a wealthy, hard-working, job creating, heterosexual, married suburban White Male – doesn’t your current platform look woefully insufficient to the task of gaining my vote? This doesn’t even get into the demographic tensions that show that people of my exact profile are going away permanently in America. You can’t even win on what you perceive to be “home field advantage.” Uh oh, wait, I can already hear you through the web browser, dismissing all of my above points because THAT GUY WAS NEVER GONNA BE A REPUBLICAN ANYHOW, CUZ HE’S A LIBRUL WHO HATES AMERICA AND…

All right, let’s do one last point: Meanness- Your party is really mean, mocking and demonizing everyone who does not follow you into the pits of hell. You constantly imply – as Mitt Romney did in his “47% speech” – that anybody who disagrees with you does so not by logic or moral conviction, but because they are shiftless, lazy parasites who want “free stuff” from “traditional Americans.” Wow, you guys managed to follow up a stunning electoral defeat with insulting the very people you wish to attract for a majority in the political system! Brilliant! You are losing elections because being angry and defensive and just-plain-mean is more important than being smart and winning elections – and thus you deserve everything happening to you.

If you want to know exactly where you failed in 2012, and will continue to fail, here it is. Look you assholes, I’m as traditional an American as it gets, and I do not “want free stuff.” I am a taxpayer, and ALWAYS HAVE BEEN. I got my first job – dragging bags of cow manure, horse feed and fertilizer around a farm store – when I was 12. I started my first company when I was 28. I have followed the vast majority of the rules set out for middle class white males (for good and for ill.) And if it weren’t bad enough that your policy positions are a complete clusterfuck for the reasons I lay out in great detail, you manage to follow up the whole exercise with insulting me, my wife, and my friends of every stripe who didn’t vote for your political party – all of whom are hard-working, taxpaying, job creating, law abiding, great AMERICANS of EVERY COLOR AND CREED.

From this white, Mayflower-descended strategic analyst, allow me to offer you the three strategic options you have before you: 1. You drastically moderate your platform to harmonize with the policy positions I present above 2. You disband the party and reorganize it to reflect current realities 3. You kick and scream and stamp your feet and call me and my friends names – and submit to several decades of one party rule While I do not want a one-party system, I also don’t particularly care which of these options you choose. If you look carefully at the numbers on Tuesday, nobody else cares, either. Just a word to the wise from one White Man to (presumably) another.

James C. Collier

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Romney's Losing Ground Game Revealed

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Yesterday, I wrote (here) about Obama's winning ground game. So, it makes sense to look up Mitt Romney's game for comparison-sake. His campaign's on-line voter turn-out approach was code-named ORCA, and by all inside accounts it beached itself on election day resulting in a whole lot of white votes for Romney/Ryan that went un-netted (to exhaust the whaling metaphor).

The Boston Globe describes the detail (here), but the plan was to station 30,000 field workers at key battleground polls on election day to track which of the Romney faithful were actually voting, versus sitting at home. In response, eight-hundred Romney staff were at the call-center in the TD Garden (new Boston Garden) prepared to telephone the slugs, as reported from the field, and talk their sedentary white-behinds into moving to vote.

It seems, however, that there were some problems with the execution, if not the plan itself. Many of the field workers were not properly credentialed to carry out their task of figuring out who was or was not voting, and were turned away by poll authorities. On top of this, the actual system for reporting crashed for at least ninety minutes in the middle of voting, throwing the whole she-bang in Boston and across the country into chaos. So there was limited Romney 'call-and-push' to match the Obama 'knock-and-drag' I spoke of in my Obama ground game post.

Unsurprisingly, Romney failed to mention this facet of failure, on the part of his campaign, in his election post-mortem analysis. Romney said he lost because Obama gave stuff to minorities and women (here).

After hearing his sorry excuses for losing, more than a few Romney supporters (check out the comments here) seemed glad their guy lost. Wow!

James C. Collier

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Obama’s Winning Ground Game Revealed

There has been much talk on the losing side of the presidential election about the Obama “Ground Game”. By example, losing VP candidate Paul Ryan (R) of Wisconsin focused (here) on what he called “record-breaking turnout numbers from urban areas”, code for black votes, as the reason for the Romney/Ryan pounding at the polls. What about the battleground states, like Colorado, Iowa and Ohio, that were mostly rural and/or white?

So now, about this Obama Ground game - was it a “fair and square” win as Ryan back-tracked, or something more sinister, as offered by Republican strategist Karl Rove, who stated (here) that “Obama won by voter suppression”, clearly an act that, if found to be true, would be illegal? For the record, Rove has yet to back up his allegation with anything resembling evidence.

Moving along, I dug deeper into the Obama Ground Game, with a reputable source – my retired sister Karen, an Obama volunteer from the trenches in the battleground state of Colorado, (she is pictured here with Obama volunteer/actor Laurence Fishburne, aka Morpheus from the Matrix series).

It seems that over the past months Karen has been phone-banking (calling); canvassing (walking door-to-door); registering and otherwise educating goo-gobs of people as to why they, within her assigned territory, should vote for Obama. She pursued Blacks, Whites, Asians, and Latinos, without distinction. She did this during the day, evenings and on weekends. She said there were thousands like her all over the city, counties, and the Columbine state. Each volunteer was prepped to get people to act their support of the President.

All the way from Bill Clinton holding a pep rally for volunteers at Manual HS, to actress Angela Bassett (What’s Love Got To Do With It) cheering on N.E. Denver precincts, to comedian/actor George Lopez working West Denver, and actor Jon Hamm (Madmen) in North Denver, the Obama machine left no motivating stone unturned or potential vote uncast. Fishburne not only 'bumped' the troops in the precinct offices, the actor was spotted hawking votes door-to-door in the eastern suburb of Montbello.

On election day, Karen was picking up and delivering sealed ballots from people she had earlier convinced to sign up for mail-in-ballots - but who had not mailed them. She drove people to the polls and back, when a ride stood between them and voting. The volunteers gleefully called this the knock-n-drag - knock on the door and drag them to the polls to vote. All of this was done on her time and dime – no reimbursement. She said people liked Obama over Romney when you lined up their positions, but the key was getting them into action - to vote. “That’s what our ground game did – that’s how we won!"

James C. Collier

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Obama Shares Moment With Young Team

James C. Collier

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Gov. Christie (R) Stumps For Obama

There are some moments in blah-blah-blah politics that deserve mention. This is one of them. Gov. Christie (R) New Jersey, aggressively thanking President Obama for his efforts to help the state, hit by super tropical storm Sandy. Of course, Christie left out the part about the deep shit NJ would be in if his boy Romney was president, with his campaign promise to eliminate FEMA, the instrument of the President's aid.

“I have to give the president great credit,” Christie, who delivered the keynote address at Romney’s nominating convention, said on the Fox News Channel. “He’s done, as far as I’m concerned, a great job for New Jersey.”

What Governor Crispie Creme is really saying is that for all his lambasting of President Obama and the Federal government, before, during and after his blow-hard Republican convention speech, his ample-ass would be in one fat jam were it not for the President and his ability/willingness to send aid, most importantly critical disaster funds to help patch and re-float Christie's state.

Meanwhile, Romney supporters will claim that Obama created and routed Sandy, as part of his socialist plot to steal the election from Mitt. Of course, Mitt has gone completely deaf on whether he still would eliminate FEMA, "since the states are so much better at this stuff". Obama has issues, for sure, and FEMA can always do better, nevertheless, Romney's pants are around his ankles on this one - ask anyone from Jersey.



James C. Collier

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Racist Gov. John Sununu (R) Stumps For Obama

Everytime one of these Republican gadfly's opens their mouth to spout some racist dribble, Obama gets more votes because of race. How stupid is that?

"Frankly, when you take a look at Colin Powell, you have to wonder whether that's an endorsement based on issues or whether he's got a slightly different reason for preferring President Obama," Sununu said in an interview on CNN. When pressed on what those reasons might be, he replied, "Well, I think when you have somebody of your own race that you're proud of being president of the United States, I applaud Colin for standing with him."

Former NH Gov. Sununu claimed that General Powell is endorsing Obama because of race, despite all that Republicans have come to know about this most widely respected modern-day Black Republican - serving three Republican administrations, and Democrats as well.

So in response, a bunch of otherwise centrist 'Rockefeller' Republican voters, who had planned to hold their noses and vote for Mitt, decide to hold their noses and vote for Obama, so at least they can look themselves in the mirror and imagine that they are NOT as Mr. Sununu portrays them.

Everyday it becomes more clear, the Dems don't need a good story to stay in power, just a story that is slightly better than their opponents. It seems to be the job of these gadfly politicians and pundits, like Sununu, to continuously pump stupidity into the contest.

James C. Collier

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Obama Blinks All Debate, Romney Surges

Anyone who knows or reads me, knows that I have plenty of bones to pick with President Obama about the last four years. Nevertheless, I plan to vote for him, as the lesser of evils (certainly a far cry from why I voted for him in 2008). Today's bone is special and about why in hell he let Mitt open a can of whup-ass on him in the debate. I mean really - the only lie Mitt did not tell that night was that his best friend growing up was an old black man named 'Smokey'.

Being presidential is one thing, getting punk'd by Mitt is quite the other. Samuel Jackson, and his kids, had to be throwing around the F-bombs like M&M's that night.

I think Obama forgot the most important numbers. Fifty percent of Americans don't think his behind should have ever THOUGHT that a black man should run the country. Another twenty-five percent said we will give you ONE CHANCE, so you better not F--- it up! That leaves only another twenty-five percent solidly in his corner.

Now, while the one-chancer's are willing to concede that the devil-duo of Bush/Cheney left way more than a hella-mess for Obama to deal with, no one likes to see their leader get his ass whupped by a lying-thieving private-equity bastard who made his fortune by buying companies, loading them with debt, raping them, and then shooting them in the head. Nice f---ing guy!

I have never seen so many depressed Dems and Independents in my life! The Repubs are saying, 'hell, we just might win this MF'!

James C. Collier

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Michele Obama Impresses At DNC2012

Politics aside, I like seeing the first lady up there 'putting it over the wall', the way no first lady has ever done (including Hillary). Impressive indeed.

James C. Collier

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Waiting For Obama

In high school I read the absurdist parable, "Waiting For Godot", by Samuel Beckett, about two men waiting by a tree for someone named Godot to intervene in their dreary lives.

As I watch the country continue to flail its economic and social arms, accompanied by the current round of Obama promise-one-on-one with Mitt, I no longer wonder if the leader we have been waiting for will ever show up. Obama and Romney, or McCain before him, are more like the tragic characters of the book, Vladimir and Estragon.

Mr. Obama was the closest thing to a godsend the country has had in decades - but alas, he morphed into just a good politician, who at best reflects the clueless desperation of the masses interwoven with his focused ambition. Of course, our problems are much bigger than the president or his even more ambitious adversary. We need someone to take us beyond our current state of national meaninglessness.

We need Godot.

James C. Collier

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Disintermediation: The End of Black America

If the economic troubles of this country were a swimming pool - black folks, including their inability to swim, are definitely in the deep-end. Low-level jobs, not just the ones in manufacturing - are disappearing at an alarming rate.

I was buying something at the Apple store recently and was told that I did not need a sales clerk to 'check out'. There is now an app for this. I found my item, scanned and paid for it with my iPhone, and walked out without any intervention. I even asked the black security guard how he knew I was not shop-lifting, whereupon he instantly pulled up my name and picture of my purchase on, you guessed it, his iPhone.

Expect to see this capability in all retail stores soon - along with more double-digit black unemployment. It's called disintermediation when middle channel jobs go away due to whatever the reason - technology, globalization of labor, etc. - you name it. It is the process of squeezing out every penny of cost from the goods we just can't live without.

Blacks, as the lowest educated/skilled demographic (of size) in this country, are unemployed at minimally 2x the national average, and well beyond the reach of the Congressional Black Caucus, President Obama, or Bill Gates/Warren Buffet. Add to this the carte-blanche that US financial institutions have been given to exploit black financial ignorance (via financial deregulation), and you get one unmitigated economic and social disaster, with no end in sight!

James C. Collier

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Rodney Glen King: 1965 - 2012

James C. Collier

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Vietnam War's "Napalm Girl" 40 Years Later: Kim Phuc

I was nearly fourteen when AP photographer Nick Ut took the Pulitzer-winning picture of nine-year old Phan Thi Kim Phuc, running naked after being stripped of her clothes and badly burned by napalm, an anti-personnel weapon provided by US Forces.

My young emotions went spinning as I witnessed that our country could hurt innocent children, in the name of democracy. This only added to my suspicion of our government's motives. At home, dogs and water hoses turned on peaceful protesters, while foreign babies died abroad. Much for a kid to take in.

It now waters my eyes to know that the little girl in the famous picture survived that hell and went on to realize her dream of love and family.

Those days taught me that war is hell. Time has mercifully offered that the human spirit can triumph, when you least expect it, as well.

James C. Collier

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Obama's Gay Marriage Head Fake

When I first heard that President Obama was coming out in support of same-sex marriage, I thought for once that he was playing it 'straight', so to speak - but no such luck. I say this because the president added the caveat that laws granting this 'civil-right' of union, should be left up to the states. Say what?

As a constitutional scholar, Mr. Obama knows too well, after studying Brown v. Board of Education (desegregation), that state implementation of civil-rights protection is a dog that does not hunt. In other words, he knows that gay marriage left up to the states does not stand a chance in hell of becoming a right, by law. His Harvard legal education showed him, in no uncertain terms, that when the Supreme Court, under Justice Earl Warren, handed-off the implementation of their landmark rebuke of 'separate but equal' (Plessy v. Ferguson) in 1954, it took the states another twenty years to make it a reality. Even then, desegregation occurred amid street battles. To hear former NAACP lawyer and Justice Thurgood Marshall tell it at the time, the Warren Court was being purposefully "S-L-O-W" in handing their desegregation decision to the states, as I believe is Mr. Obama in his caveat-ed support of gay marriage.

Obama is denying what he knows - that it is the role of the federal government, as outlined in the constitution, to defend the civic-rights of every citizen (including equality under the law), particularly when individual state pursuits might abridge such rights. In true political slight-of-hand, Mr Obama is looking for voter credit, for gesture over real substance, while giving the politician's wink/nod to anti-gay factions that know history, especially those folks in the South.

Thurgood Marshall is certainly shaking his head, somewhere in the after-life, and maybe wishing Obama had attended Howard Law (Marshall's alma mater), rather than Harvard.

James C. Collier

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Obama vs. Biden On Gay Marriage, And Euphemisms

The other day, when Vice-Presiden Joe Biden usurped President Obama's yet-announced position on gay marriage with his own "I'm comfortable with it", I'm sure many things ran through Obama's head in response - before he hastily put out his own position of support. Here is my quick list of Obama's thoughts...

1. Obama the Urban President... "Biden let his mouth overload his hips on that one!"

2. Obama the Gangsta' Prez... "Biden f_cked-up!"

3. Obama the Black Intellectual President... "Excuse me Joe, it's woodshed time!"

4. Obama the Post-Racial President... "Biden's timing could have been better!"

5. Obama the Two-Term President... "Joe got out a little bit over his skis...but out of a generosity of spirit!"

President Obama's challenge, as I see it, is to be as good a leader of a nation-in-decline, as he is a politician looking for re-election.

James C. Collier

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Gloom Of Our Doom: Money, Power, And Wall Street

I just watched Part One of a PBS Frontline show on the financial crisis in America, and how it came to be.

I thought I was fully aware, yet I was amazed at the level of greed and incompetence of the financial community, willing to take us to the brink of another 1929 type of disaster. Alan Greenspan and his supporters are true idiots to have believed and behaved as though the bankers, and their markets, would regulate themselves. When bankers are allowed to prey upon the ignorant masses, without scrutiny or fear of reprisal from the authorities, our great society is destined for the scrap-heap - an so we are.

Sadly, no one has or will go to jail for the biggest heist in history. The taxpayers are left with the bill, while Long Island is up to its neck in estates, and the country has more million and billionaires than ever. Decline is our fate, regardless of the color of your state, party, or skin.

Go to "MONEY, POWER, AND WALL STREET", at PBS Frontline (here) - if you dare!

James C. Collier

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The Riot Within By Rodney King, With Lawrence Spagnola

I place Rodney King in a similar iconic category with actor/politician Ronald Reagan, with no intent to offend either. Their individual significance is not about who they are/were, but rather what they reflect about their fellow Americans, from their respective moments in the sun until now.

The emblazoned images of King being beaten with no mercy by the LAPD, and the acquittal of his captors by an all-white jury, galvanized how blacks felt and still largely feel about law enforcement and justice in America.

Even today, the Trayvon Martin killing and George Zimmerman trial have people wondering what will happen once a jury speaks. Will blacks riot? Will vigilantes re-double? 

As for the book itself, beyond its macro-relevance, I enjoyed the easy and honest read of how King, the man, came into infamy. I stopped to think of how the fifty-one person death toll of the riots hit him harder than the bone-breaking baton strikes of Officer Stacy Koon, and others that night. I realized how logical it was that the events of those days would only accelerate the litany of abuse he would continue to heap upon himself, as an alcoholic. It was also interesting to know just how little compensation he actually received ($1.8M of a $5.4 settlement and fees), and how his lawyers, black and white, beat the hell out of him financially, on top of it all.

The up-shot is that whether you loved or hated Rodney Glen King, he is forever a part of history that represents quite the tragic tale of race and the pursuit of justice in America.

James C. Collier

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Newark Mayor Cory Booker Saves Woman From Fire

It is not too often that a mayor risk his life by running into a burning building, orders his security detail to "let me go!", and saves a women from serious injury/death. I have heard other good things about this mayor, mostly that he is hard working, honest and caring. He pretty much proved that. If only the rest of our leaders were so capable. Better be careful, Booker just might wind up Governor of NJ. Story (here).

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: Newark Mayor Cory Booker Saves Woman From Fire, Super Mayor, Hero, Smoke Inhalation, Second-Degree Burns, Acting White