Rage Against the Machine : Diebold and the Massachusetts Election

Illustration by Doug Potter / The Austin Chronicle.
Hacking the vote:
Will Diebold steal the Senate?

As Bay Staters vote to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, most will be marking scantron ballots to be run through easily hackable electronic counters made by Diebold/Premier.

By Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / January 18, 2010

The same types of machines that helped put George W. Bush in the White House in 2000, and “reelect” him in 2004, may now decide who wins the all-important “60th Senate seat” in Massachusetts. The fate of health care and much much more hang in the balance.

As Bay Staters vote to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, most will be marking scantron ballots to be run through easily hackable electronic counters made by Diebold/Premier.

A paper ballot of sorts does come through these machines. But the count they generated was seriously compromised in the Florida 2000 election that put George W. Bush in the White House. Similar machines played a critical role skewing the Ohio 2004 vote count to fraudulently reelect him.

In 2004 in Lucas County (Toledo) Ohio, incorrectly calibrated Diebold scantron machines left piles of uncounted ballots in heavily black districts in the inner city.

The Free Press also found that on optiscan machines in Miami County, Ohio the reported totals were significantly higher than the actual number of people who signed in to vote.

Ironically, the cheated candidate in that election was Massachusetts’ now-senior Senator John Kerry. Kerry is circulating email appeals warning that this election is a "jump ball" in which "shady right-wing organizations and out of state conservatives have descended upon the state in droves."

But Kerry himself has infamously said nothing about the theft of the 2004 election. Neither he, the Democratic Party, nor the Obama Administration have done anything to change a system in which elections can be stolen by the very well-funded Republican-owned companies that make and administer the vote-counting machines. A dozen election protection groups from around the country have now issued an "orange alert" warning that the Massachusetts vote count could be "ripe for manipulation."

Thus Kerry’s new colleague could be “selected” by the same means that deprived him of the White House.

According to Selectman Dan Keller of the western town of Wendell, some Massachusetts communities -- including his -- do have hand-counted paper ballots.

But most of the state relies on Diebold scantron counters which can be manipulated in numerous ways, including by switching calibrations and moving ballots from precinct-to-precinct or county-to-county, thus reversing intended votes from one candidate to another.

According to Brad Friedman at BradBlog LHS Associates sells and services many of the machines being used in this special election. Though the vast majority of elected officials in Massachusetts are Democrats, control of the vote count can be a grey area where voting machines are involved, especially given Sen. Kerry’s six-year stupor over the stolen 2004 election, a record of inaction amply matched by the Democratic Party and Obama Administration.

According to Friedman, LHS “has admitted to illegally tampering with memory cards during elections,” and has a Director of Sales and Marketing who has been “barred from Connecticut by their Secretary of State.”

The stakes in this election cannot be overstated. The deceased Senator Kennedy’s seat holds the key to a filibuster-breaking 60-seat Democratic majority in the Senate. State Attorney-General Martha Coakley, the Democratic candidate, is a supporter of the Obama health care plan, and an opponent of atomic power.

Coakley’s opponent, conservative Republican State Senator Scott Brown, has been running a Tea Bagger-style “populist” campaign.

Poll results differ substantially as the campaign winds down, but all show a close race. Thus Diebold, a thoroughly tainted player with deep Republican roots, could hold the key to the election by shifting the outcome in just a few key precincts.

After internet-based reporting broke the story of the stolen 2004 election, thousands of election-protection activists turned out to monitor the 2008 vote count. Among other things, careful exit polling was done to provide a close reality check on official vote counts. Poll monitors interviewed voters and carefully scrutinized voting procedures and how ballots were handled and counted.

Often overlooked are voter registration manipulations, which were used in Ohio and elsewhere to strip hundreds of thousands of voters of their right to cast a ballot. In Ohio alone, more than 300,000 legally registered voters were electronically removed from the voter rolls between the 2000 and 2004 elections. Most were in heavily Democratic urban areas.

In 2008, the Free Press found that the number of purged Ohio voters jumped to more than a million.

Thus the fact that the electoral apparatus in Massachusetts is apparently in the hands of Democrats may not matter. Private vendors like LHS and Diebold have the actual control over the final numbers.

In Massachusetts, a recount only occurs if the final results are less than half of one percent, and as election reform activist John Bonifaz points out, Massachusetts does not require random audits of the computerized vote counting machines to compare the computer results to the optical scan ballots marked by the voters. Bonifaz notes that in the Al Franken-Norm Coleman Minnesota Senate race in 2008, “everything was ultimately hand-counted.” The problem in Massachusetts hinges on whether the race is close enough to trigger a recount, which candidates can petition for within 30 days.

Exit polls remain the gold standard for election integrity throughout the democratic world. But in Ohio in 2004, the exit polls indicated that the election results were reversed and that Kerry actually won. Jonathan Simon, election integrity expert, points out that the exit polls in 2008 in Minnesota “had Franken winning by 10%! This is a huge disparity, not remotely reflected by the recount.”

“Could the exit poll have been that badly off? Or could a large number of ballots, 200,000 or so, have been swapped out before the recount? Here is where the chain of custody, or lack thereof, comes in. These ballots were not exactly under heavy surveillance during the month-long period between election day and recount completion,” Simon said.

What will matter in Massachusetts is how thoroughly election-protection advocates are able to scrutinize voter certification, access, and ballot security. Billions of dollars -- and much more -- are riding on the outcome of this election. Those who believe it cannot or would not be stolen are simply in denial.

Given the Democratic party’s astonishing lack of leadership on so many issues, it is entirely possible that Scott Brown could legitimately beat Martha Coakley in this election.

But it is also possible that the outcome could be manipulated by the companies in control of the registration rolls and vote counts. It will be up to citizen election protection activists to make sure that doesn’t happen yet again.

[Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman broke many of the major stories surrounding the theft of the 2004 election, and have co-authored four books on election protection, which appear at www.freepress.org, where they are publisher and senior editor, and where this story also appears.]

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Senate Health Care Diagnosis : Bad Medicine

Cartoon from The Political Carnival.
The Senate health care bill:
Time to put it out of it's misery?

By Dr. Stephen R. Keister / The Rag Blog / December 20, 2009

According to the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights,

"Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control."

The Human Development Index is a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education, and standards of living for 177 countries worldwide. It is a standard means of measuring well being and especially child welfare. It is intended to distinguish whether the country is a developed, a developing, or an underdeveloped country, and also to measure the impact of economic policies on quality of life.

The latest update to the Human Development Index was released on December 18, 2008. The United States rated fifteenth, following Iceland, Norway, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Netherlands. Sweden, Japan, Luxembourg, Switzerland, France, Finland, Denmark, and Austria. There is some solace in the fact that we’re ahead of the United Kingdom, Poland, Mexico, Cuba and Panama. The nations listed ahead of the United States all have universal quality health care and are largely secular societies with very active social democratic parties. Of course, it may just be coincidence...!

I write this Rag Blog column in an extreme state of dejection. I tend to agree with Dr. Howard Dean, whom I have followed since his presidential bid in 2000. Dr. Dean has announced his position that the Senate should abandon its effort to pass health care legislation since the remaining, battered, deceitful legislation is nothing better than a taxpayer giveaway to the health insurance industry. However, in view of Saturday's release of the full legislation, of which I have read only a summary, it is probably wise to reserve final judgment until the debate is complete, the behind the scenes deals revealed, and a vote taken.

The Senate has proven itself corrupt, disingenuous, without honor, and below contempt, save for a handful of progressive idealists who somehow became party to this den of thieves. I imagine myself at a rural Mississippi dog fighting pit, with the locals still cheering, and looking down on a pit bull at the end of the contest -- pathetic, lacerated and bleeding.

It would appear to be time to put the poor animal out of its misery. However, we should await final developments before making a final decision about this legislation. It is clear, though, that what was supposed to correct the health care crisis in our nation instead has evolved into a giveaway of taxpayer money to the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries -- similar to what was done in 2003 when Medicare Part D and Medicare Advantage were created to underwrite the private insurance and pharmaceutical industrues, under the aegis of the Bush administration, with taxpayer funds.

We have had absolutely no positive leadership from the president in the health care debate. Yes, he mouths platitudes and provides photo ops; however, from the beginning he has kept the true health reformers, especially the doctors, nurses, and other health professionals, at a distance, and has chosen to give his attention to, and receive favors from, the health cartel executives, the PhARMA lobbyists, and such true believers as senators Leiberman, Snow, Nelson, Baucus, and their ilk.

There has been little evidence of the Obama of the presidential campaign: no visionary, no man of the people, but merely an individual who has simpered in front of the corporate masters of our country.

Throughout the ongoing discussion of health care reform, the physician's voice has been largely absent. For some 20 years the 17,000 members of Physicians for A National Health Program have engaged in an in-depth study of national health care. These dedicated folks feel that once again, after years of domination by non-professional agencies, that our citizens deserve compassionate, informed health care, free of the dictates of a for-profit insurance company. No more rationing of care on the basis of one's ability to pay.

As the legislation stands now there is no vehicle to provide care for the uninsured and the underinsured. There is no antitrust legislation to control the price manipulations of the health insurance industry. The adherents rationalize that it will cover the folks with pre-existing conditions, but omit the fact that, in such instances, the cost to the individual may be three times the normal charges. There are no hard and fast regulations to control the yearly payments for care of a cancer patient, for example, with the insurer having the option to set a yearly limit on medical payments.

Further, it isn’t even clear in the Senate legislation what percentage of the premium collected will actually be paid out for medical care, and how much can be set aside for executive salaries, stockholder dividends, lobbying, and advertising. Currently only 81% of subscriber premiums actually go to health care costs. If the insurers spent 90% or 95% of the subscribers’ money on health care they could give their customers between $54 and $94 billion in rebates on premiums, according to Jason Rosenbaum, writing in The Seminal.

The legislation requires by fiat that everyone buy health insurance -- whether the individual can afford to do so or not. Buy insurance or be fined! What a boon to the insurance industry at the expense of those who cannot afford it. The legislation does not make the insurance affordable. It merely provides the insurance industry a taxpayer subsidy.

As I have previously noted, the constitutionality of such a law is questionable; however, it could take years to get a challenge through the court system and in the meantime poor folks will be required to spend approximately 12% of their income, amounting to a considerable wage cut, on Washington mandated health insurance. And the policies these folks receive will come at a cost they can’t afford -- policies with very high deductibles and high co-insurance. I must agree with Keith Olbermann who suggests that such a bill -- written for the benefit of the insurance cartel -- could result in widespead individual civil disobedience.

The other very sad development is the Senate's refusal to set aside the current legislation that forbids the individual to import prescription pharmaceuticals. It’s amazing that senators thought of as progressives voted to refuse the public this right. Of course, we cannot say exactly why they voted in this manner; however, there is no reason to assume that the financial corruption that is inherent in this august body should not reach certain of its progressive members.

And then there is the old ploy: tell the public that imported medications are not safe. Yet, the current pharmaceutical manufacturers are multinational corporations who produce their brand name drugs throughout the world, but package them in the United States and the uninformed public thinks that they are buying a made-in-the-USA product.

Humbug! Prescriptions cost 3-4 times more in the United States than they do in Canada or Europe. Other nations have prescription price control; hence, the manufacturers love to do business in the USA. The Canadian pharmaceutical oversight is probably much stricter than that inherent in the Bush era FDA. I know about this personally because I previously obtained medication for my prostate cancer through a Canadian pharmacy. Happily the product is now generic and can be purchased relatively reasonably in this country.

An excellent review of the sell out of health reform appears in SocialistWorker in an article by Andy Coates, M.D, a member, like myself, of Physicians for a National Health Program.

Meanwhile, even if some legislative miracle were to occur and a version of the House bill became law, a Harvard Medical School Study, as cited in the The Raw Story, indicates that during the time before legislation incorporating the public option would take effect, an estimated 135,000 citizens and over 6,600 U.S. veterans would die. Further, with the House bill, even after uninsured Americans begin to receive health care, there would still be another 18 million not covered. We must remember even the House legislation would not come into effect until 2013 or 2014.

In the meantime PNHP reports that the stocks of WellPoint, Cigna, and United Health have surged to a 52 week high. This is their reward for $53 million invested in lobbying in the first three quarters of 2009. The Raw Story points out that the White House has met early and often with these lobbyists. The author cites a plethora of CEOs and lobbyists of Blue Cross Blue Shield, Kaiser Health Plans, and heads of PhARMA , The American Hospital Association, and pharmaceutical companies SanofiPasteur, Takeda Pharmaceuticals America, Pfizer, and Amgen.

In the meantime we in the progressive community are seeking some purpose, some common ground. Yet I am haunted by Eric Hoffer's long ago observation: "Men of thought seldom work well together, whereas between men of action there is usually an easy camaraderie. Teamwork is rare in intellectual or artistic undertakings, but common and almost indispensable among men of action."

A worry, yes, but also a fear. A recent poll shows some 40% of Americans either consider themselves "tea-baggers" or are sympathetic towards the tea-baggers -- those folks unwittingly following the pied piper of big business. We progressives may smile and make sport of these people, but l remember that some years ago a more cultured, better educated society than ours, at a time of financial and societal turmoil, led and misled by corporate interests, followed a wall paper hanger into the abyss.

[Dr. Stephen R. Keister lives in Erie, Pennsylvania. He is a retired physician who is active in health care reform. His writing appears regularly on The Rag Blog.]

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Listen Up, Senate : Health Care Bill Needs Costs Reduction Amendment

Cartoon from the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
How to save the health care bill:
Add a medical costs reduction amendment

By Sherman DeBrosse / The Rag Blog / December 17, 2009

Dr. Howard Dean, a true progressive and advocate of health care reform has given up on the bill now wending its way through the Senate. He thinks it should be scrapped. It makes too many concessions to the insurance industry, does too little to reduce costs, and will force many to buy health insurance they cannot afford.

However, if the Democrats scuttle the bill, they admit failure and their inability to govern. The election results in 2010 would probably be worse than the perfect storm of 1994.

By passing something now, they establish the principle that all citizens have a right to good health coverage. It has taken seven decades to get most Americans to agree to that basic proposition. Whatever is passed now can be amended later when rising costs force Congress to revisit it.

However, progressive Democratic Senators need to make one concerted effort to pass an amendment they might call the Medical Costs Reduction Amendment. If it does not pass, it could be reconsidered as part of the budget reconciliation process because its parts deal with spending and collecting money.

1. At its core would be a provision requiring that a health insurance company’s “medical loss ratio” cannot go below 90%. That means they must spend 90% on actual health care expenses. Anything above that would be subjected to a healthcare excise profits tax. A similar tax would be applied to salaries of everyone in the health care industry.

2. People purchasing insurance in the new insurance exchanges will be able to buy insurance from providers across state lines.

3. Mechanisms will be established for small businesses to combine bargaining power for the purpose of purchasing health care insurance.

4. Operations in the Justice Department devoted to finding Medicare fraud will be vastly expanded with hundreds of millions being set aside to hire, train, and support new fraud hunters. Thomas Reuters has found that there is about $200 billion of fraud every year in the Medicare system. He found similar fraud in the general medical insurance arena. These fraud hunters would search for fraud throughout both system and be assisted by a robust bounty system for whistleblowers.

5. All medical insurance and medical equipment and service accounting must be absolutely transparent. The Health and Human Services Department must be given several thousand new accountants and agents to dig out waste, inaccurate accounting, and dishonesty. What they learn can eventually be used to regulate insurance rates. We have failed to move toward single-payer insurance, so the only other choice is to follow Germany and Switzerland in working through very tightly regulated insurance providers.

6. Eliminate incentives for doctors and hospitals to overtreat by making lump payments for treatments of illnesses, rather than fees for each procedure.

7. Simplify and streamline billing procedures.

There are many other provisions that should be added, but we have already seen that the tolerance of Senate Democrats for real reform and cost cutting is fairly low. Recently, many of them even voted to kill Kent Conrad’s effort to help people get drugs at lower prices. In this they were upholding a tawdry deal President Obama and Rahm Emmanuel entered into with Big Pharm.

The months-long slog toward some sort of health bill has revealed how strategically inept the Democrats are. They are not good at defending themselves, and it took them forever to begin to sort out differences among themselves. They have also sacrificed opportunities to do something about carbon emissions and restoring some of the rights intended for labor under the Wagner Act. Above all, this sad debate demonstrated how center-right this country really is and how even the Congressional Democrats are in the hip pockets of the big interests.

Thirty years ago, scholars were still writing about the differences between Congressional Republicans and Presidential Republicans, etc. These were intricate discussions about how some people had powerful institutional memories and biases and others had deep commitments to governing well.

All that began to change when Newt Gingrich forced his party to put obstruction ahead of governing. Then Bob Dole, who once had contempt for Gingrich, hit on the tactic of using the threatened filibuster for every important matter before the Senate. When a Black community organizer got into the White House, total obstruction became the order of the day and almost no Republican put governance ahead of partisanship.

Governance at any cost is more of a habit for the Democrats, and this commitment also made them look weak when they were out of power. Some of us saw this tendency in people like Lee Hamilton, but now it seems to characterize the Obama administration.

When one observes all the concessions the administration has made to the big banks and the defense establishment, it is difficult to see progressive principles at work. The Justice Department’s inclination to function like the old Bush injustice operation is also deplorable. On the other hand, the situation would be so much worse if Republicans ran Congress and the White House.

If the Democrats want to go into the 2010 elections as the champions of both health care and health care cost cutting, they had better get some backbone and insist on a Medical Costs Reduction Amendment. They need to put the GOP on the record as fighting tooth and nail to prevent true cost cuts. They might also consider a 50% tax on compensation in excess of $500,000 in the financial services industry. The amendment and the tax might enable them to get back in touch with their natural constituency -- ordinary Ameericans.

[Sherman DeBrosse is a retired history teacher. Sherm spent seven years writing an analytical chronicle of what the Republicans have been up to since the 1970s. The New Republican Coalition : Its Rise and Impact, The Seventies to Present (Publish America) can be acquired by calling 301-695-1707. On line, go here.]

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Health Care 'Reform' : Just Say No to Traitor Joe!

Don't Surrender to Senator Joe
Vote "No" on the health care joke

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / December 16, 2009

It looks like the United States Senate is going to cave in and surrender to Joe Lieberman. They first dumped the most important part of health care reform -- the public option. This was the part of the reform bill that would offer inexpensive and decent health care insurance to Americans, and would force the private insurance companies to lower their prices to compete. But Traitor Joe didn't like it, so it's gone.

But that wasn't enough. The Senate then tossed out a compromise idea -- the creation of a private non-profit insurance program that would be overseen by a federal government agency. Although not as good as a true public option, this would have also caused some downward pressure on insurance premiums and saved consumers a ton of money. But Traitor Joe didn't like it, so it's gone.

Still, that wasn't enough. Now the Senate is willing to toss out an expansion of Medicare to those between 55 and 64. At age 55, people are entering the years where they are much more prone to medical problems than younger Americans. This would have guaranteed they would be covered by a government insurance program that has been proven to work efficiently and effectively (just ask someone over 65 if they would give up their Medicare). But Traitor Joe didn't like it, so it's gone.

I'm beginning to think if Lieberman wanted Senate Democrats to kiss his scrawny ass, most of them would line up, get on their knees and pucker up. Are there any real Democrats left? Do any of them have even a remnant of a spine? Where are the progressives who promised us real health care reform?

All we are left with now is a bill that would force ordinary Americans to give the large private insurance companies a gigantic payday. And they would be forced to do it without getting lower costs or better health care. This bill would still leave medical decisions in the hands of insurance companies rather than doctors. Personally, I am appalled.

I think any Senate progressive with a functioning brain and a fully-developed conscience should vote against this travesty of a bill that is empty of any real health care reform. And it looks like Howard Dean agrees with me. He told Vermont Public Radio the following:

This is essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate. Honestly the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill, go back to the House, start the reconciliation process where you only need 51 votes and it would be a much simpler bill.

I urge any remaining progressive senators -- don't check your conscience at the door to the Senate chamber. Vote against this bill. Kill it, then start over and do it right.

[Rag Blog contributor Ted McLaughlin also posts at jobsanger.]

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Health Care : Senate Clowns Come Up With a Deal

Same old song. Harry Reid's committee comes up with a health care deal. Image from Liberal Street Fighter.
Health care and the Senate:
The circus comes to town

By Dr. Stephen R. Keister / The Rag Blog / December 10, 2009

Mark Twain in 1891 described Congress like this: "The smallest minds and the selfishest souls and the cowardliest hearts that God makes.” And little has changed as we watch in action the dysfunctional legislative body that is the United States Senate as it fumbles the ball on health care reform.

Finally the physicians of the United States have overcome their fear and their lethargy and the vast majority are willing to speak up for a government health care program for all Americans. They have been joined in this by most of the nurse's associations, the bulk of the Union movement, and, in fact, the majority of the American people. Sixty-five percent of Americans approve of a public plan.

And so what happens? Our elected representatives, especially in the Senate, have given away the store to their paymasters in the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries, with the exception of a courageous and honorable few. Now, all that stands between a decent health care system for all and total capitulation to the corporatocracy, is the House Progressive Caucus. One hopes that they are able to exhibit the courage of the Greeks at Thermopile or the Cold Stream Guards holding the perimeter at Dunkirk.

Where is the President in all of this? Mr. Obama would appear never to have had any commitment to universal/single payer health care, and in spite of his campaigning for reasonably priced health care he has bent knee to the health insurance cartel and PhARMA, to which the White House has been an open house since his inauguration. The bow to the Emperor of Japan was minor compared to the deference paid to these two cartels.

I believe that the best description of Mr, Obama's style of leadership comes from Brendan Cooney, writing in Couterpunch about the president’s handling of the Honduran situation:

But perhaps most haunting of all in this mess is the man in the White House. He showed that while he has better instincts for democracy than his predecessor, the results are the same because he does not act on them. What good is a quarterback who can find the open receiver if he can't pass the ball?

My fear is that his timidity on these issues -- just like his Justice Department’s recent interference in the indictment of John Yu, and the administration's handling of other matters involving Bush war crimes -- will leave him with the same legacy with the American progressives as Pierre Laval left with the majority of the French people in 1940.

We have much to hang our heads in shame about. The Progress Report on November 24 reveals that a record 49 million Americans had trouble finding enough to eat in 2008. The USDA reported in the annual food security report that the number of people who “lacked consistent access to adequate food” soared to the highest level since the study began 14 years ago. Even more disturbing, nearly one in four children -- almost 17 million -- lived in households in which food at times was scarce. Not only do we let people die in this country for lack of a physician, but we also let them go hungry.

The public option appears to be lost in the Senate. Instead Democrats would allow older Americans starting at 55 to buy into Medicare. There is a definite spin to this. The "buy-in" would not kick in until 2011 and a "subsidized buy-in" would not be available until 2014. And only Americans without current health insurance would be eligible. There is no provision for those paying outlandish premiums for private insurance to switch to the Medicare substitute. And what happens to all those Americans under the age of 55 who are being gouged and deceived by the health insurance cartel?

Sen. Jay Rockerfeller would also require insurers to spend at least 90% of premium money on medical care, rather than on administrative costs or profits. Of course we do not know the details of the proposed deal, nor whether it has any possibility of being sustained by the full Senate. To their credit Senators Feingold and Sanders are reserving judgment.

Former insurance industry flak turned reform crusader Wendel Potter wrote in The Huffington Post:

There was a time, in the early 1990s, when health insurance companies devoted more than 95 cents out of every dollar to paying doctors and hospitals for taking care of their members. No more. Since President Bill Clinton's health plan died 15 years ago, the health insurance industry has come to be dominated by a handful of insurance companies that answer to Wall Street investors, and they have changed that basic math. Today, insurers only pay about 81 cents of each premium dollar on actual medical care. The rest is consumed by rising profits, grotesque executive salaries, huge administrative expenses, and the cost of weeding out people with pre-existing conditions and claims designed to wear out patients with denials and disapproval's of the care they need most.

Mr. Potter continues:

Wall Street investors expect insurers to pay as little as possible for medical claims. As a result, the nation’s health insurance industry has evolved into a cartel of huge for-profit companies that together reap billions of dollars a year at the expense of their policyholders. The seven largest firms -- United Group, WellPoint, Aetna, Humana, Cigna, Health Net, and Coventry Health Care -- enroll nearly one of three Americans in their health insurance plans. This year the industry will take about 25 BILLION in profits for getting between American patients and their doctors. Further in Firedoglake of December 4, Jason Rosenbaum revealed that Aetna had cut 600,000 people from its insurance rolls to raise its profits for next year. This was in accord with Wellpoint CEO Angela Braly when she said, ‘We will not sacrifice profitability for membership.

Bill Scher in Campaign For America’s Future discusses another part of the Senate deal.

The new compromise proposal would mean an insurance exchange would offer private plans. This alternative would create a national coverage plan operated by private insurers but run by the Office of Personnel Management, which administers health coverage for federal workers, Senators participating in the talks said the OPM idea had been well received across the ideological spectrum, although details were sketchy.

Public option architect Jacob Hacker rips the idea. He writes,

An even stranger idea is to offer the non-profit plans available in the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan within the exchange. Since the FEHBP is itself a form of exchange, this amounts to offering a new set of private plans within a new set of private plans. How is this going to provide real pressure on private insurers in a consolidated insurance market in which non-profit plans already have a large presence (and often act little differently from the for-profit plans)?

This sounds to me like another variant of the old shell game.

When buying health insurance, the average American is completely cowed by the legalese in the terms of the policy. The information provided by Isaiah Poole, writing in OurFuture, should be very helpful in this regard. Before buying a private health insurance policy it is always best to discuss the specifics of that policy with your attorney or personal physician.

An excellent summary of the overall health care situation is provided by John Garry Maxwell, M.D. -- who has practiced surgery in university and community hospitals for 40 years -- in his superbly written op-ed in The Wilmington, Star News.

In Great Britain several years ago, a perceptive woman afflicted with a bowel disease requiring a great deal of medical attention, offered me her view: 'Americans have no sense of community welfare, no willingness to be discomforted in the least for the greater good of the entire population.'

As I have previously noted, we in the United States have a blindspot in this country when it comes to the public good. Our national problem is much larger that how we provide health care to our citizens. At the core, we have become a "what is good for me," "lets make a lot of money" society. This may well explain why we in the United states are still fighting for the right for all Americans to have decent health care, a right that has existed in Western European nations, in Canada, Japan and Australia, for decades.

[Dr. Stephen R. Keister lives in Erie, Pennsylvania. He is a retired physician who is active in health care reform. His writing appears regularly on The Rag Blog.]

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Dems Who Voted Against Public Option : $19 Million in Healthcare Bucks

CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGEMax Baucus Health Care Lobbyist Complex

Democrats who voted against public option
Got $19 million from healthcare firms

...compared to the profits the insurance industry will make if a public option is defeated... They got a great deal for that 19 million.

By Muriel Kane / September 30, 2009

Five Democratic members of the Senate Finance Committee who voted on Tuesday to shoot down a proposed public option for the health care reform bill -- a measure which polls show is favored by 81% of Democrats -- are coming under close scrutiny for their ties to the health care industry.

According to Intershame.com -- a site which aims to draw attention to misbehavior -- those five senators have collectively been the recipients of over $19 million in donations from health care, pharmaceutical, and health insurance companies over the course of their Congressional careers.

Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) alone accounts for nearly $8 million of the total. In addition, five of his former staff members -- including two former chiefs of staff -- are now lobbyists representing organizations with a strong interest in the health care bill.

Joan Walsh of Salon took Baucus to task for his vote, writing, "So let's get this straight: Baucus admits the public option would 'hold insurance companies' feet to the fire,' but he voted against it? Is there any clearer evidence that Baucus is in the pocket of the health insurance industry?"

Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) comes in second on the Intershame list, with about $4 million in health industry donations, and Kent Conrad (D-ND) is third at around $3 million. Like Baucus, both Lincoln and Conrad have former chiefs of staff who are now health industry lobbyists.

Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com did some number-crunching last June which revealed the extent to which health insurance donations can influence Congressional voting. "Lobbying contributions appear to have the largest marginal impact on middle-of-the-road Democrats," Silver wrote. "Liberal Democrats are likely to hold firm to the public option unless they receive a lot of remuneration from health care PACs. Conservative Democrats may not support the public option in the first place for ideological reasons, although money can certainly push them more firmly against it. But the impact on mainline Democrats appears to be quite large."

Calls are already appearing at places like the liberal message board Democratic Underground for progressives to sponsor primary challenges to all three senators.

Bill Nelson (D-FL) at $2.5 million and Tom Carper (D-DE) at $1.5 million fill out the Intershame list. Both voted in favor of the weaker Schumer version of a public option, which would not include robust measure to control costs, but against the stronger version proposed by Sen. Jay Rockefeller. Carper has also been a prominent supporter of a "trigger," which would activate a public option only "if there is no meaningful competition after a couple of years."

"If money is the reason these five Democrats rejected the public option," Intershame concludes, "then it only took a little over 19 million dollars over 20 years to buy the five votes the health insurance industry needed to kill any meaningful reform to their industry. 19 million dollars is nothing compared to the profits the insurance industry will make if a public option is defeated. They got a great deal for that 19 million. The American people? Not so much.

Source / The Raw Story

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The Lion Passes: A Different Look at Chappaquiddick

Teddy Kennedy and Chappaquiddick:
The official story doesn't wash

After the airplane crash and the shooting of JFK and RFK, killing Ted Kennedy would not do. Gullible as the public is, too many would think a plot was afoot. Kennedy had to be neutralized by some sort of scandal that would damage any run for the White House.

By Sherman DeBrosse / The Rag Blog / August 26, 2009

Brain cancer has claimed the life of Edward M. Kennedy, most likely the greatest U.S. Senator of recent times. Over the decades, “the Lion of the Senate” courageously stuck by his guns, bucking a national conservative tide, seeking justice and to improve the lives of his fellow citizens.

Some historians will see a parallel between Ted and his two slain brothers and the Gracci brothers of ancient Rome who fought for ordinary citizens in the second century BC. Senator Kennedy was known for a great sense of humor and compassion for the sufferings of others. For example, he often sat by the bedside of Senator Phil Hart and performed many kindnesses for columnist Mary McGrory, when a stroke felled her and made it difficult to speak.

Sen. Edward Kennedy with President Barack Obama.
Yet, it is likely that he will be remembered for the 1969 incident at Chappaquiddick, in which Mary Jo Kopechne, 28, drowned in an accident most blame on Kennedy. Witnesses said she did not drink that night or at other times, yet she had a high blood alcohol level. There was a puncture mark on the back of her neck, and it is possible to inject ethanol that way.

Ms. Kopechne was a self described “novena Catholic,” who did not like bad language or sexual impropriety. She was described as an idealist and serious. She was close to being engaged to a foreign service officer. She was one of the “boiler room girls” who had worked in the Robert F. Kennedy presidential campaign. They were all well-educated and professional people of good character, not mere secretaries looking for a good time. Mary Jo was simply attending a reunion of campaign friends.

The public perception of that incident is based largely on the assumption that Kennedy was a very different man. It could be that we do not have the full story of the event that was to be forever linked with his name.

Conservatives assume heavy drinking and sexual involvement without a shred of evidence about either. Kennedy admits to letting nine hours elapse before reporting the accident, which would place the blame for a death on him. However, very little of that story makes a lot of sense.

A writer named Bob Cutler put together a scenario of what could have happened. Here it is in the words of Richard Sprague.

The Group hired several men and at least one woman to be at Chappaquiddick during the weekend of the yacht race and the planned party on the island. They ambushed Ted and Mary Jo after they left the cottage and knocked Ted out with blows to his head and body. They took the unconscious or semi-conscious Kennedy to Martha's Vineyard and deposited him in his hotel room.

Another group took Mary Jo to the bridge in Ted's car, force fed her with a knock out potion of alcoholic beverage, placed her in the back seat, and caused the car to accelerate off the side of the bridge into the water. They broke the windows on one side of the car to insure the entry of water; then they watched the car until they were sure Mary Jo would not escape.

Mary Jo actually regained consciousness and pushed her way to the top of the car (which was actually the bottom of the car -- it had landed on its roof) and died from asphyxiation. The group with Teddy revived him early in the morning and let him know he had a problem. Possibly they told him that Mary Jo had been kidnapped. They told him his children would be killed if he told anyone what had happened and that he would hear from them.

On Chappaquiddick, the other group made contact with Markham and Gargan, Ted's cousin and lawyer. They told both men that Mary Jo was at the bottom of the river and that Ted would have to make up a story about it, not revealing the existence of the group. One of the men resembled Ted and his voice sounded something like Ted's. Markham and Gargan were instructed to go the the Vineyard on the morning ferry, tell Ted where Mary Jo was, and come back to the island to wait for a phone call at a pay station near the ferry on the Chappaquiddick side.

The two men did as they were told and Ted found out what had happened to Mary Jo that morning. The three men returned to the pay phone and received their instructions to concoct a story about the "accident" and to report it to the police. The threat against Ted's children was repeated at that time.

Ted, Markham and Gargan went right away to police chief Arena's office on the Vineyard where Ted reported the so-called "accident." Almost at the same time scuba diver John Farror was pulling Mary Jo out of the water, since two boys who had gone fishing earlier that morning had spotted the car and reported it.

Ted called together a small coterie of friends and advisors including family lawyer Burke Marshall, Robert MacNamara, Ted Sorenson, and others. They met on Squaw Island near the Kennedy compound at Hyannisport for three days. At the end of that time they had manufactured the story which Ted told on TV, and later at the inquest. Bob Cutler calls the story, "the shroud." Even the most cursory examination of the story shows it was full of holes and an impossible explanation of what happened.

Ted's claim that he made the wrong turn down the dirt road toward the bridge by mistake is an obvious lie. His claim that he swam the channel back to Martha's Vineyard is not believable. His description of how he got out of the car under water and then dove down to try to rescue Mary Jo is impossible. Markham and Gargan's claims that they kept diving after Mary Jo are also unbelievable.

Leaving aside talk of an unidentified “group,” Cutler’s theory still makes a lot more sense than Ted Kennedy’s first statement, which follows:

On July 18, 1969, at approximately 11.15 on Chappaquiddick Island, Martha’s Vineyard, I was driving my car on Main Street on my way to get the ferry back to Edgartown.

I was unfamiliar with the road and turned onto Dyke Road instead of bearing left on Main Street. After proceeding for approximately a half mile on Dyke Road I descended a hill and came upon a narrow bridge. The car went off the side of the bridge.

There was one passenger with me, Miss Kopechne, a former secretary of my brother Robert Kennedy. The car turned over and sank into the water and landed with the roof resting on the bottom. I attempted to open the door and window of the car but have no recollection of how I got out of the car. I came to the surface and then repeatedly dove down to the car in an attempt to see if the passenger was still in the car. I was unsuccessful in the attempt.

I was exhausted and in a state of shock. I recall walking back to where my friends were eating. There was a car parked in front of the cottage and I climbed into the back seat. I then asked for someone to bring me back to Edgartown. I remember walking around for a period of time and then going back to my hotel room. When I fully realized what had happened this morning, I immediately contacted the police.

It took Kennedy and his circle three days to concoct a more complete explanation of what happened. They had to deal with the fact that the young woman died in the back of his car after running out of air. Ted’s pregnant wife Joan was at Martha’s Vineyard, and the girl had been at a party that Kennedy attended.

The brothers: from left, Jack, Bobby and Teddy.
It was better to let people make assumptions about alcohol than illicit sex. Oddly, the Kennedys paid to have tests conducted to see if the car would have come off the dock and into the water in the manner Ted said it did. They should have looked into the likelihood of his getting out of a submerged car. They must not have really known what happened. It is doubtful if anything the Kennedy circle said after the official story came out can be believed. Their comments all supported a very implausible story.

He said he got out of the car, which was underwater and then started diving into Poucha Pond to save Mary Jo. Did he open the car door, exit, and then close it? This might happen in the movies, but not in real life. In The Bridge at Chappaquiddick, Jack Olsen argues that the water pressure would have been too great for Kennedy to open the car door. A window was broken, admitting water, but only Harry Hudini could have gotten out through it.

After eight attempts to rescue her, Kennedy went back to the cottage, got help, and returned to the diving.

The wounds above his ear and the large bump on the top of his head indicate he was probably knocked unconscious. But how and where? Police saw the broken windshield and wondered why Kennedy’s head and face did not reflect the level of damage associated with a wreck of that scale. . His face bore no marks.

Markings on the bridge suggest the car was at rest and then somehow greatly accelerated. It had to have been in the air for a distance before landing in the water. There was a rope attached to a stick that could have been attached to the rear-view mirror, which was askew and hanging only by one screw.

The Kennedy story does not match the testimony of Deputy Sheriff Christopher Look and three others, that two women were with Kennedy that night at 12:45 . Of course, the senator was completely familiar with those roads, but there had to be an explanation for where the car was found.

There are some other odd things about the official story. All the witnesses who knew Mary Jo said she did not drink at all and that she did not drink that night. Yet there was alcohol in her blood stream.

It is just assumed Kennedy was smashed, but no witness said this was the case. His chauffeur John Crimmins was present and could have driven Kennedy. If he wanted sex with Mary Jo, he would have stayed at the Lawrence cottage. Why did he not have Crimmins drive and Mary J to the hotel?
.
Senator Kennedy said he swam a complicated route from Chappaquiddick back to the inn on Martha’s Vineyard. Professional swimmers have not been able to duplicate swimming that route at the same time and against the same tides. People assume he swam it dressed, but if it happened at all, he had to be in his shorts. But Kennedy, exhausted from the night’s exertions, claimed he was able to do this. No one saw an all wet Kennedy when he reached the Edgartown inn.

Even at the time, in 1969, many noted that he did not behave at the hotel the next morning as though he knew that Mary Jo was dead or that anything was wrong. It is pretty clear that he did not know until former U.S. Attorney Paul Markham and Joe Gargan arrived and told him about the tragedy. An elderly couple saw Kennedy coming into the dining room. He was relaxed and completely at ease. When the two men spoke to him he seemed to be completely shocked and upset.

The three men then made the trip over to Chappaquiddick to use the pay phone. This makes no sense unless they went there to receive a call, not make one. There were pay phones at the hotel.

Some wonder about the June, 1964 airplane crash in western Massachusetts in which only Edward Kennedy emerged a survivor. He was laid up for some time with serious injuries. Teddy came out of that alive. If anyone wanted to harm Ted Kennedy it was either to prevent him from running for president or, more likely, to prevent him from using the power of that office to examine the deaths of his brothers.

After the airplane crash and the shooting of JFK and RFK, killing Ted Kennedy would not do. Gullible as the public is, too many would think a plot was afoot. Kennedy had to be neutralized by some sort of scandal that would damage any run for the White House.

E. Howard Hunt, later a Watergate burglar, was at Martha's Vineyard.
One witness has said that James McCord, a CIA agent, and one Albert Peterson followed Kennedy throughout 1969. The witness added that Peterson was an alias for E. Howard Hunt. Frank Sturgis and E. Howard Hunt were on Martha’s Vineyard at the time for a Regatta. Both had CIA connections and would be among the Watergate burglars later. Hunt explained to Watergate investigators that he was there to gather dirt on Kennedy but only admitted to getting there after the accident.

He came to see some unknown person and admitted to having a disguise and a voice alteration device. Charles Colson later obtained the disguise from the CIA and Hunt used them at the burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist and at the break-in at the Democratic National Committee Headquarters at the Watergate. Hunt’s son St. John said his father spoke with approval of the murders of JFK and RFK and wanted to finish the job on Ted Kennedy. David Morales, a CIA hit man, was photographed at the Ambassador Hotel.

Richard Milhouse Nixon also had an operative there that day, but the president may not have known about it at the time. Nixon had established Operation Sandwedge to keep track of Kennedy and other enemies. Tony Ulasewicz, a skilled investigator in Nixon’s employ, admits being there the morning after the accident. He said he was sent there to dig up dirt on Kennedy. However, he was seen there that morning before news of the accident was public.

In a conversation between John Dean and President Nixon, Dean refers to him without mentioning him by name, saying that he was there again in 1971, both times posing as a reporter and steering other reporters to look into matters that would damage Kennedy. However, it appears he was poking around there for about two years and may have come up with something that showed Kennedy had been set up. Dean said to Nixon, “If Kennedy knew the bear trap he was walking into…”

It sounds as though they could prove the White House had nothing to do with the accident, but perhaps they knew who did. If Nixon had an even more damaging story about Kennedy and Chappaquiddick, he would have used it. Ulasewicz’s salary was financed with money left over from the 1968 convention. He was controlled by John Caulfield, who first answered to John Ehrlichman and then to John Dean.

The Boston office of the FBI investigated the incident on orders from the White House. The agency had earlier put out stories that Ted Kennedy had cheated on an exam and was a poor student.

Finally, there is the remote possibility that Mary Jo’s death had something to do with dealing with two birds with one stone, or event. Mary Jo shared an apartment with Nancy Carole Tyler, a real looker who worked for Bobby Baker, who owned the building and had parties there while the girls occupied it. . She later expressed frustration that Baker did not leave his wife to marry her. Tyler died in a 1965 plane crash.

At one point she refused to talk to investigators about Bobby Baker but then had changed her mind. She knew a great deal about Baker and corrupt deals in the Senate and could have shared information with Mary J. Kopechne worked for Senator George Smathers, who was close to LBJ and Baker. Smathers claimed to be a Kennedy friend, but he put out the story about the Kennedy brothers’ involvement with Marilyn Monroe. She became RFK’s secretary after the assassination of JFK. These two girls knew about JFK’s efforts to dump LBJ and leaked the story. After RFK’s death. Mary Jo allegedly had the job of packing Bobby’s files and then worked for a Kennedy-connected consulting firm.

It is said that Edward Kennedy does not express an interest in getting behind the official accounts of his brothers’ deaths and that he urges friends not to probe these questions. What happened at Chappaquiddick will never be known. He may have learned something then that convinced him it was best to leave these matters alone. Christian Cafarakis, Jackie’s butler in Athens, wrote in 1972 that Aristotle Onassis hired a New York firm to look into the JFK assassination. It gave Jackie the names of the four assassins and told who was behind it. Jackie was dissuaded from turning over the report to LBJ by threats to the lives of members of her family.

There is no way to know what happened that night at Chappaquiddick. We do know that John Dean said to Nixon in 1973, "If Teddy knew the bear trap he was walking into at Chappaquiddick. . . ." Those who have long disliked Senator Edward Kennedy will assume the worst and think that he somehow got out of that car and went back to the inn without another thought about that young woman.

Others may see the courageous, compassionate man he has proven himself to be and give him the benefit of the doubt or even analyze the evidence more closely and conclude that Bob Cutler was not that far wrong.

[Sherman DeBrosse spent seven years writing an analytical chronicle of what the Republicans have been up to since the 1970s. It discusses elements in the Republican coalition, their ideologies, strategies, informational and financial resources, and election shenanigans. Abuses of power by the Reagan and G. W. Bush administration and the Republican Congresses are detailed. The New Republican Coalition : Its Rise and Impact, The Seventies to Present (Publish America) can be acquired by calling 301-695-1707. On line, go to here.]

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Sen. Sessions : Alabama Hypocrite Would Sit in Judgment

Graphic: US News & World Report, June, 16, 1986.

Click on image to enlarge.

There is great irony here in the once rejected nominee [for federal judge] now trying to sharpen his claws on Judge Sotomayor. But she is lots tougher and sharper than Sessions could ever be, and is letting him claw away, as he loudly displays his lightweight duplicity and demagoguery.

By Larry Ray / The Rag Blog / July 14, 2009

The Republican Party's finest continue to exhibit just how sorry, brazen, and unprincipled many of them can be as questioning of Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor has gotten underway. One of the worst and most shameless of the GOP interrogators is Alabama junior senator, Jeff Sessions.

In 1986 Sessions himself sat in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee as a Reagan nominee for a federal judgeship, and was promptly rejected because of his history of racially insensitive remarks and a poor civil rights record. One of those questioning Sessions was Senator Edward Kennedy who even back in 1986 called him "a throwback to a shameful era."

Today, after 23 years of playing the good old boy politician, becoming a U.S. Senator in 1997, Sessions, who switched from the Democratic to the Republican party, was assigned to be the Ranking Member on the Senate Judiciary Committee less than three months ago.

There is great irony here in the once rejected nominee now trying to sharpen his claws on Judge Sotomayor. But she is lots tougher and sharper than Sessions could ever be, and is letting him claw away, as he loudly displays his lightweight duplicity and demagoguery.

In his confrontational opening statement of the confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor, Sessions, in his high nasal whine, he lectured the nominee about 'prejudice' in the legal system.

Twenty years ago when Sessions sat before the very panel he now heads, he was asked about well documented reports of his publicly recognized racism. His response, "I may have said something about the NAACP being un-American or Communist, but I meant no harm by it."

Sessions allegedly referred to the (NAACP) and the (ACLU) as "un-American" and "Communist inspired" because they "forced civil rights down the throats of people." At his confirmation hearings, Sessions said that the groups could be un-American when "they involve themselves in un-American positions" in foreign policy.

Sessions had been frequently accused of "gross insensitivity” on racial issues by his detractors. Among a variety of blatant racial comments his opponents pointed to, was his joking reference to the Ku Klux Klan which he said "was not so bad until he found out that some of them smoked marijuana." Sessions, with a straight face, claimed his remarks were made in jest.

The panel didn't buy it, and rejected him. One of those voting against him was Alabama Democratic Senator Howell Heflin.

Today Republican Senator Sessions is but one more example of GOP leadership tinged with documented hate, racism, anti immigration xenaphobia, and unrealistic conservative dreams of "keeping things like they have always been."

The almost certain approval of Judge Sotomayor will, indeed, not be the way things have always been. That is the point of President Obama's having nominated her to the join the ranks of what has historically been the dominion of white men only, with only recent minor exceptions.

Meanwhile Senator Sessions may well be called into other hearings since he was one of of only nine opponents of Senator John McCain's anti-torture amendment. Sessions supports former Vice President Dick Cheney's proposal to exempt the (CIA) from any ban on the use of torture.

Session's is a real humanist too. Last month reportedly during testimony by a 42-year-old Filipino woman scheduled to be deported, the mother of two American children, who had been in the USA for 23 years, Sessions was clearly heard telling one one of his aides, "Enough with the histrionics," when the woman's 12-year-old son began crying during the testimony.

And now he lectures a Supreme Court nominee about "prejudice in the legal system."

The only thing more disgusting and upsetting than Sessions' troubling racist past are the voters out there who are nodding their heads in agreement with his "tough questioning."

[Retired journalist Larry Ray is a Texas native and former Austin television news anchor. He also posts at The iHandbill.]

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Sign of Times : Coleman Out, Franken In

Sign of the Times... Finally!

The GOP's worst nightmare has become reality. When Franken is seated next week, the Democrats will have a filibuster-stopping 60 vote majority in the Senate.

By Larry Ray / The Rag Blog / July 1, 2009

One term Republican Minnesota U.S. Senator, Norm Coleman, has finally thrown in the towel conceding the Senate race to Democrat Al Franken, who won by a narrow 312 votes out of 2.9 million ballots cast by Minnesotans last November. A 5-0 Minnesota Supreme Court decision against Coleman ended eight months of GOP delaying tactics in the courts following a total vote recount, and endless legal challenges to Franken's narrow victory.

The more Coleman desperately claimed voter irregularities, the more the vote recount eliminated his thin 206 vote lead and uncovered votes that eventually shifted a 312 vote victory to Franken.

The GOP's worst nightmare has become reality. When Franken is seated next week, the Democrats will have a filibuster-stopping 60 vote majority in the Senate.

And the old-boy National Republican Senatorial Committee will have a lot of crow to choke down. Below is a reduced version of a November 2008 G.O.P. plea for money to "stop the liberals' plan to break our firewall!"


Orrin Hatch, in this almost comical appeal for "Just $7" unabashedly vilifies Al Franken:

"If you are like me, 'Franken wins' are two words you never want to hear again in your life. We have to stop Al Franken! He is the darling of the radical left. He is the hero of Move-on.org, Big Labor and anti-drilling environmentalists. Al Franken is also the poster boy for the liberal's plan to break our firewall in the senate and to seize control of our government. Frankly, Al Franken is unfit for office."

Then Orrin winds up his hysterical diatribe:

"Washington liberals are spending millions of dollars raised by Barack Obama and Joe Biden to attack our Republican candidates, just like they are attacking Gov. Sarah Palin -- and elect liberals like Al Franken to the Senate."

Well, what a difference eight months makes, Orrin. Not only did Poster Boy nemesis Saturday Night Live comedian, Al Franken win, you will now get to smile and shake his hand.

After all the dust settled on the old crumbled firewall, six GOP senators had lost their places on the wall, falling off just like a bunch of Humpty Dumpties including a long-time Dumptyette, Liddy Dole. Add a G.O.P. defection to "the liberals," the disgrace of Ted Stevens of Alaska, and viola' the despised 'liberals' now tote up a 60 seat majority.

Orrin, you might like to know that Al graduated cum laude from Harvard College, is a highly successful author, and a little occasional SNL humor in the Senate chambers might be a good idea. You really should read Frankin's, 1993 book, "I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me."

[Retired journalist Larry Ray is a Texas native and former Austin television news anchor. He also posts at The iHandbill.]

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Rabbi Arthur Waskow to the Senate : We Need Cloture

Sometimes cots have been set up at the Senate during filibusters. Photo by Stephen Crowley / NYT.

Is it possible that an anti-filibuster campaign, grounded on the importance of letting a majority of Americans address this crisis that endangers us so deeply, would win instant and strong support in the country?

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow / The Rag Blog / February 18, 2009

I am wondering whether it would make sense to aim for a national campaign to reduce the number of Senators necessary to call cloture from 60 to 55, or 51.

The question arises from what happened to the Recovery Act in the Senate. I think Paul Krugman is right, and we are standing on the brink of an economic disaster that will destroy our economy and with it the Obama Administration and every possibility of progressive change.

Many if not all of the anti-cloture Republicans know this perfectly well, and are seeking it. Like Limbaugh, they want Obama to fail. They think that their own insular constituencies, now that they have lost “moderate” districts and states, will stick with them, and they will not lose in 2010. (In fact, it will be a lot harder to make Democratic gains in the Senate in 2010, because the one third class of Senators up for reelection then are more slanted to Democrats than the class of ‘06 or ‘08. There are fewer Republicans to defeat.)

The conservatives expect that Obama’s failure would put the country back under their control. What they may or may not have taken into account is that if a liberal Presidency and Congress cannot deal with this crisis, we know from the ‘30s there is likely to be a furious upwelling of not conservative but ultra-right-wing energy. (Remember that in the Great Depression, it was a conservative administration — Hoover —that failed. Turning leftward made sense. But if a liberal administration fails?)

Progressive/liberal responses to the only half-success of the final Recovery Act has taken two basic tacks: (1) Obama screwed up by trying for bipartisanship too hard and long [Krugman]; (2) Obama had no choice because there weren’t 60 votes in the Senate, and he pulled off the best possible result [Herbert]. But what if they’re both right -- Obama did the best he could, and it isn’t good enough to save him or the country -- and the real problem is that the Senate rules are heavily skewed toward giving a conservative minority a veto, on top of the minority rule that is built into the two-senators-per-state structure?

Indeed, adding up the number of constituents of the Senators who voted for cloture on the Recovery Act vs. the number of constituents of those who voted against it would make very impressively clear how the will of a great majority of Americans to address the danger of Great Depression II is being thwarted.

And this goes beyond the Recovery Act. What will happen to health care, capping CO2, another Recovery Act, etc? It seems likely that any attempt to deal with the major issues we face will fail unless the filibuster is taken out of play.

Is it possible that an anti-filibuster campaign, grounded on the importance of letting a majority of Americans address this crisis that endangers us so deeply, would win instant and strong support in the country?

Certainly a national campaign would be necessary; the Senate will not take this step on its own. The Senate rules, of course, make it hard. According to a review of them by the Congressional Reference Service of the Library of Congress, this is the situation:

The Senate sees itself as a “standing body” because two thirds of its membership are always incumbents. Therefore the standing body always has a set of standing rules, unlike the House of Reps, which adopts new rules at the beginning of each new congress. The standing rules of the standing body say that it does take a super-majority to amend the rules (and thus to reduce cloture to 55 or 51 votes).

BUT -- there is a long-standing and unresolved argument that when the Constitution says “the Senate” makes its rules, that means a majority of the Senate is free to do so. Just four years ago the GOP was threatening to do that by majority vote, about confirming judicial nominations — it’s what people then called the “nuclear option” -- and they were certainly saying it was legal. But the Senate has never, even when VP Mondale ruled that it could, accepted the proposition and changed the rules by majority vote.

So it’s rough. But -- if we don’t do this, what do you think is going to happen to health insurance, to cap-and-trade, to any more than marginal reform? The question is whether there is energy in the country to raise enough hell to make the Senate change -- maybe demanding majority vote will make them go to 55? Is there more energy for this than for, let’s say, a decent healthcare bill? Is it just inside baseball? Could it break loose if the filibuster threat damages enough bills that people care about?

“Bring democracy to the Senate!” Could it work, or does it make more sense to focus on the bread-and-butter issues like healthcare?

For background, see How the Filibuster Became the Rule by David Herszenhorn / The New York Times / Dec. 2, 2007

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Dear Sen. Cornyn : You Have Pork for Brains

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX). Image by Bill Narum / The Rag Blog.

Senator Cornyn: 'Your political ambitions are clearly far more important to you than the well being of ordinary Americans who are losing their jobs in the millions.'

By Sarito Carol Neiman / The Rag Blog / February 9, 2009

I just sent Sen. John Cornyn [Very R-TX] an email to tell him the biggest piece of pork I saw in the neighborhood of the economic stimulus plan was the pork in the place where his brains should be, and mentioned that it's called being "pigheaded.”

I told him:

Your political ambitions are clearly far more important to you than the well being of ordinary Americans who are losing their jobs in the millions. If you really want to fix everything with tax cuts and let the state budgets, education, alternative energy solutions, and affordable health care continue to be in the hands of the so-called "free market". . .

Well. . . then I threatened to camp out on his lawn in a tent and hunt squirrels for dinner if it got to that point, and suggested if he gets his way he won't be able to find a cop to throw me off his lawn because they'll all be out preventing food riots.

It was fun, a kind of catharsis.

Being a gentleman, he wrote right back to thank me "for contacting his offices” and attached my letter in case I might have forgotten what I had just said. He closed with his “warmest regards.”

I sent KB Hutchinson a much nicer note, trying to shame her into looking at herself in the mirror and doing what she knows is the right thing. Girl talk, you know.

Geez, these people make me so mad!!

As an officially "unemployed" person, I wish we could've organized a "million-person unemployed vigil" on the mall today. Or at least a few people holding up a continuous string of paper dolls representing each of the 3.5 million unemployed plus their 2.5 (or whatever it is these days) children. The numbers don't have faces and the Republicans don't have any shame.

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GOP : Whoops! There Goes the Firewall...

Click image to enlarge.

Firewall status: Six GOP senators have lost their places on the wall, falling off just like a bunch of Humpty Dumpties. Three more GOP seats teeter precariously.
By Larry Ray / The Rag Blog / November 14, 2008

This is an update to an earlier article on Senator Orin Hatch's frenetic September internet email plea for $7.00 donations to “defend the firewall!” Just two months ago, the Vice Chairman of the angst-ridden GOP Senators' Club was mainly concerned that Al Franken would beat Norm Coleman in Minnesota. Now, Franken and Coleman are barely a couple hundred votes apart. A Statewide vote recount gets underway there shortly. Franken could win. Poor Senator Hatch is still digesting the cold, hard post-Nov. 4th election results which saw him lose a half dozen of his fellow Senators in a massive firewall breach. What's a Senior Senator to do?

In September Sen. Hatch warned, “Al Franken is the poster-boy for the liberals' plan to break our firewall in the Senate and to seize total control of our government. Frankly, Al Franken is unfit for office." Damn, imagine, Al Franken unfit and a poster boy to boot! Al graduated cum laude from Harvard College, is a highly successful author, and a little of his SNL humor in the Senate chambers might be a good idea. Orin should read Franken's, 1993 book, "I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me."

Since the early panicked pleas for money, here’s the firewall’s status: Six GOP senators have lost their places on the wall, falling off just like a bunch of Humpty Dumpties including a long-time Dumptyette, Liddy Dole. Three more GOP seats teeter precariously. Democrats now have 57 Senate seats. Three more wins for a true firewall-smashing majority of 60 votes is very possible.

They are still counting in Alaska in legendary incumbent and convicted felon, Senator Ted Steven's race. At this writing with some 35,000 ballots left to count, Democratic challenger and Anchorage Mayor, Mark Begich, has the lead. Again, Al Franken has a good shot in Minnesota as the recount gets underway there.

And three's a charm in Georgia. A December 2nd runoff is scheduled there between GOP incumbent, political hack Saxby Chambliss, and Democratic challenger, Jim Martin, an Atlanta attorney. In 2004, then Georgia Senator, Max Cleland, a triple amputee who was awarded the Silver Star for exceptional bravery in Vietnam was targeted by Chambliss and the GOP slimemeisters in a filthy Rove-style campaign of lies and denigration. The ever lovely Ann Coulter was Chambliss' cheer leader savaging Cleland with her vapid vitrol. And the Senate Republicans are only worried about firewalls?

Looks like you should have asked for more than $7.00, Senator Hatch. More than money, your private senator's club needed a dose of humility and a reality check. And that is just what you have just gotten. You might have also considered that your firewall was already being attacked from the inside by the excess weight of Senatorial hubris, greed, negativity and a massive overgrowth of moss in your midst.

[Retired journalist Larry Ray is a Texas native and former Austin television news anchor. He also posts at The iHandbill.]

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Keating Five Ring a Bell? Remember That John McCain?

Sen. John McCain at a March 1990 hearing of the Senate Ethics Committee investigating the relationship between a group of senators and banker Charles Keating Jr. Photo by John Duricka / AP.
Past collides with Present: McCain, the Keating Five and the Wall Street debacle
By Rosa Brooks / September 24, 2008

Once upon a time, a politician took campaign contributions and favors from a friendly constituent who happened to run a savings and loan association. The contributions were generous: They came to about $200,000 in today's dollars, and on top of that there were several free vacations for the politician and his family, along with private jet trips and other perks. The politician voted repeatedly against congressional efforts to tighten regulation of S&Ls, and in 1987, when he learned that his constituent's S&L was the target of a federal investigation, he met with regulators in an effort to get them to back off.

That politician was John McCain, and his generous friend was Charles Keating, head of Lincoln Savings & Loan. While he was courting McCain and other senators and urging them to oppose tougher regulation of S&Ls, Keating was also investing his depositors' federally insured savings in risky ventures. When those lost money, Keating tried to hide the losses from regulators by inducing his customers to switch from insured accounts to uninsured (and worthless) bonds issued by Lincoln's near-bankrupt parent company. In 1989, it went belly up -- and more than 20,000 Lincoln customers saw their savings vanish.

Keating went to prison, and McCain's Senate career almost ended. Together with the rest of the so-called Keating Five -- Sens. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), John Glenn (D-Ohio), Don Riegle (D-Mich.) and Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), all of whom had also accepted large donations from Keating and intervened on his behalf -- McCain was investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee and ultimately reprimanded for "poor judgment."

But the savings and loan crisis mushroomed. Eventually, the government spent about $125 billion in taxpayer dollars to bail out hundreds of failed S&Ls that, like Keating's, fell victim to a combination of private-sector greed and the "poor judgment" of politicians like McCain.

The $125 billion seems like small change compared to the $700-billion price tag for the Bush administration's proposed Wall Street bailout. But the root causes of both crises are the same: a lethal mix of deregulation and greed.

Today's meltdown began when unscrupulous mortgage lenders pushed naive borrowers to sign up for loans they couldn't afford to pay back. The original lenders didn't care: They pocketed the upfront fees and quickly sold the loans to others, who sold them to others still. With the government MIA, soon mortgage-backed securities were zipping around the globe. But by the time many ordinary people began to struggle to make their mortgage payments, the numerous "good" loans (held by borrowers able to pay) had gotten hopelessly mixed up with the bad loans. Investors and banks started to panic about being left with the hot potato -- securities backed mainly by worthless loans. And so began the downward spiral of a credit crunch, short-selling, stock sell-offs and bankruptcies.

Could all this have been prevented? Sure. It's not rocket science: A sensible package of regulatory reforms -- like those Barack Obama has been pushing since well before the current meltdown began -- could have kept this most recent crisis from escalating, just as maintaining reasonable regulatory regimes for S&Ls in the '80s could have prevented that crisis (McCain learned this the hard way).

But, despite his political near-death experience as a member of the Keating Five, McCain continued to champion deregulation, voting in 2000, for instance, against federal regulation of the kind of financial derivatives at the heart of today's crisis.

Shades of the Keating Five scandal don't end there. This week, for instance, news broke that until August, the lobbying firm owned by McCain campaign manager Rick Davis was paid $15,000 a month by Freddie Mac, one of the mortgage giants implicated in the current crisis (now taken over by the government and under investigation by the FBI). Apparently, Freddie Mac's plan was to gain influence with McCain's campaign in hopes that he would help shield it from pesky government regulations. And until very recently, Freddie Mac executives probably figured money paid to Davis' firm was money well spent. "I'm always in favor of less regulation," McCain told the Wall Street Journal in March.

These days, McCain is singing a different tune.

"There are no atheists in foxholes and no ideologues in financial crises," Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said last week, explaining the sudden mass conversion of so many onetime free marketeers into champions of robust government intervention. Fair enough. But as you try to figure out what and who can get us out of this mess, beware of those who now embrace regulation with the fervor of new converts.

Source / Los Angeles Times

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