In the furious debate gripping America over the future of its health system, one voice has been lost amid the shouting. It is that of a distinguished gynaecologist, aged 67, called Dr Joseph Manley.
For 35 years Manley had a thriving health clinic in Kansas. He lived in the most affluent neighbourhood of Kansas City and treated himself to a new Porsche every year. But this is not a story about doctors’ remuneration and their lavish lifestyles.
In the late 1980s he began to have trouble with his own health. He had involuntary muscle movements and difficulty swallowing. Fellow doctors failed to diagnose him, some guessing wrongly that he had post-traumatic stress from having served in the airforce in Vietnam.
Eventually his lack of motor control interfered with his work to the degree that he was forced to give up his practice. He fell instantly into a catch 22 that he had earlier seen entrap many of his own patients: no work, no health insurance, no treatment.
He remained uninsured and largely untreated for his progressively severe condition for the following 11 years. Blood tests that could have diagnosed him correctly were not done because he couldn’t afford the $200. Having lost his practice, he lost his mansion on the hill and now lives in a one-bedroom apartment in the suburbs. His Porsches have made way for bangers. Many times this erstwhile pillar of the medical establishment had to go without food in order to pay for basic medicines. In 2000 Manley finally found the help he needed, at a clinic in Kansas City that acts as a rare safety net for uninsured people. He was swiftly diagnosed with Huntington’s disease, a degenerative genetic illness, and now receives regular medical attention through the clinic.
So how does he feel about the way the debate in the US has come to be dominated by Republican-inspired attacks on Britain’s NHS and other “socialised” health services which give people the treatment they need even if they cannot afford to pay for it?
“I find that repulsive and an absolutely bone-headed way to go,” he says. “When I started out practising I certainly didn’t expect this would happen. I thought the system would take care of everybody.”
Over the last month President Obama’s attempts to live up to his election promise to extend healthcare to all Americans has stalled in the face of a sustained rightwing guerrilla attack. Opponents of Obama’s reforms have succeeded in distracting attention from Manley and the 46 million other medically uninsured, swinging the focus instead on to the “evils” of publicly funded healthcare. The fear tactics were epitomised by Sarah Palin’s wholly inaccurate claim that the reforms would set up “death panels” that would force euthanasia on to older people.
Such scaremongering has dismayed and infuriated Sharon Lee, the doctor who now treats Manley in Kansas City. “I’m very angry, very angry,” she says. “Many of the people I treat have already been in front of a death panel and have lost – a death panel controlled by insurance companies. I see people dying at least monthly because we have been unable to get them what they needed.”
Lee’s clinic, Family Health Care, is a refuge of last resort. It picks up the pieces of lives left shattered by a health system that has failed them, and tries to glue them back together. It exists largely outside the parameters of formal health provision, raising funds through donations and paying all its 50 staff – Lee included – a flat rate of just $12 an hour.
Poverty line
Lee has just opened an outpost of her clinic in the outlying neighbourhood of Quindaro, an area of boarded-up houses and deserted factories where work is hard to find and crack plentiful and a per capita income is $11,025. A third of the population is below the federally defined poverty line.
And yet the local health department has decided the only health centre in the area will be closed by the end of this year and moved 30 blocks west to a much more prosperous part of the city where income levels are five times higher. Before long, one of the poorest areas of Kansas – of America – will be left without a single doctor, with only Lee’s voluntary services to fall back on.
Even that is academic. Many of the residents of Quindaro were unable to see a doctor in any case – because they were uninsured. In Kansas, anyone who is able-bodied but unemployed is not eligible for government-backed health insurance as is anyone earning more than 39% of federal poverty levels. That leaves a huge army of jobless and low-income working families who are left in limbo. “It’s the working poor who are most at disadvantage,” Lee says.
As a result, she sees the same pattern repeating itself over and over. People with no insurance avoid seeking medical help for fear of the bills that follow, until it is too late. “When people come in they are already very, very sick. They have avoided seeing the doctor thinking that something may clear up, hoping they may be getting better.”
Beth Gabaree, who came in to see Lee for the first time this morning, has experiences that sound extreme but are in fact quite typical. She has diabetes and a heart condition. Until two years ago they were controlled through ongoing treatment paid for by her husband’s work-based health insurance. But he was in a motorbike crash that pulverised his right leg and put him out of work.
That Catch 22 again: no work, no insurance, no treatment. Except in this case it was Beth who went without treatment, in order to put her husband’s dire needs first. He receives ongoing specialist care that costs them $500 a go, leaving nothing for her. So she stopped seeing a doctor, and effectively began self-medicating. She cut down from two different insulin drugs to regulate her diabetes to one, and restricted her heart drugs. “I do what I think I need to do to keep four steps out of hospital. I know that’s not the right thing, but I can’t justify seeing the doctor when my family’s already in money trouble.”
The problem is that she hasn’t kept herself four steps out of hospital. Her health deteriorated and earlier this year she became bedridden. Even then, it took her family several days to persuade her to go to the emergency room because she didn’t want to incur the hospital costs. “It was hard enough without that,” she says.
After an initial consultation, Lee has now booked Gabaree for a new round of tests for her diabetes and is arranging for free medication. “It’s wonderful,” Gabaree says. “I’m so blessed. I didn’t know you could get this sort of help.”
That she sees basic healthcare as a blessing, not as a right, speaks volumes about attitudes among the mass of the working poor. Also revealing is the fact that Gabaree has absolutely no idea about the debate raging across America. She hasn’t even heard of Obama’s push for health reform, nor the Republican efforts to prevent it. “I don’t watch much television,” she says.
That provides Palin et al with a massive advantage: the 46 million people who would most benefit from Obama’s plans are also among the least educated and informed, and thus the least able to make political waves. All of which leaves Lee fearful about the prospects for change. She has, after all, been here before – in 1993 when Hillary Clinton’s pitch to overhaul the health system foundered. That attempt ended up doing more harm than good from Lee’s perspective. Many of her most important donors stopped funding the centre because they assumed that the White House was fixing the problems. After the Clinton reforms crashed, brought down by the same rightwing assault that Obama is now enduring, it took many months for the centre’s funds to regain their pre-1993 levels.
Recession
Lee fears history could be repeating itself. This time round there is the recession more unemployed equals more uninsured people who come knocking on the door of Family Health Care. Last year Lee and one other doctor between them dealt with 14,000 visits, and the numbers are rising daily. All of which leaves Lee part despairing, part determined to fight even harder for the bare minimum of human dignity. The frustration is that every day she must beg and plead with other health providers for simple treatments for her patients. “It drives me crazy with frustration,” she says.
She rattles off a litany of horror stories. There was the man who walked into the clinic with a brain tumour. It took Lee three months to get him an MRI scan and another two to get an appointment with a neurosurgeon. Or the patient whose nerves in his neck were pushed against his spinal cord so that he lost use of both arms; by the time Lee found a way of getting him an MRI he was so sick he had to be operated on immediately. Or the woman who had such heavy periods she would wind up in ER every three months requiring a blood transfusion. What she really needed was a hysterectomy. “It took us almost a year to beg hospitals until she finally did get a hysterectomy,” Lee says.
These are the stories, the broken lives, that have been obscured by the fury generated by the Republican rump. Unless Obama finds a way to regain the political initiative, to remind Americans that only nine months ago they voted overwhelmingly for change, then the future of millions appears bleak.
“Here’s what I’d like to ask Palin,” Lee says. “People without health insurance are dying, here in America, right now. So I’d like to ask her: how does that fit into your vision of good and evil, Sarah Palin?”
Obama’s plan: health of the nation
What is Obama trying to do?
The goal is to increase access to healthcare by regulating costs. His plan would guarantee all citizens eligibility for care, but the government is not proposing a “single-payer system”, like the NHS. Instead, private health insurers would continue to operate under new rules that would lower premiums and remove loopholes that allow them to avoid paying for treatment when it is most needed. Per person, healthcare costs are higher in the US than in any other country, and have been rising faster than the level of inflation. The quality of care is less of an issue — although citizens with solid insurance may be frustrated by the paperwork and costs associated with the current system, they have fewer complaints about their doctors and hospitals.
Who’s opposing Obama’s plan?
Those who fear the government would introduce congressional “death panels” to make end-of-life decisions for the elderly. The insurance industry is worried about their bottom lines. Members of Congress and voters on the left and right are concerned about the future tax burden. Many Americans also object to any increase in government involvement in their personal lives.
How can healthcare costs get so out of hand?
Many insurance plans do not cover “pre-existing conditions”, so it can be difficult for people who have a chronic ailment to secure cover. Loopholes allow insurers to refuse reimbursement even if the policyholder did not know they had a particular condition when they took out insurance. “Lifetime caps” allow insurers to set a maximum amount of cover.
Who are the uninsured?
Up to 46 million Americans are uninsured, because they are unemployed, or their employer does not provide cover, or because they do not qualify for existing government-funded healthcare. People 65 and older can qualify for Medicare, the poor can qualify for Medicaid, veterans and members of the military can qualify for Veterans Health Administration and Tricare and children can be covered under a programme called SCHIP. Those overlooked by the system include the young just entering the workforce, the self-employed, the unemployed and people who work for small businesses.
Vice President Joe Biden told us this week that the Obama administration “misread how bad the economy was” in the immediate aftermath of the inauguration.
Puh-leeze. Mr. Biden and President Obama won the election because the economy was cratering so badly there were fears we might be entering another depression. No one understood that better than the two of them. Mr. Obama tried to clean up the vice president’s remarks by saying his team hadn’t misread what was happening, but rather “we had incomplete information.”
That doesn’t hold water, either. The president has got the second coming of the best and the brightest working for him down there in Washington (think of Larry Summers as the latter-day Robert McNamara), and they’re crunching numbers every which way they can. They’ve got more than enough data. They understand the theories and the formulas as well as anyone. But they’re not coming up with the right answers because they’re missing the same thing that McNamara and his fellow technocrats were missing back in the 1960s: the human equation.
The crisis staring America in its face and threatening to bring it to its knees is unemployment. Joblessness. Why it is taking so long — seemingly forever — for our government officials to recognize the scope of this crisis and confront it directly is beyond me.
There are now five unemployed workers for every job opening in the U.S. The official unemployment rate is 9.5 percent, but that doesn’t begin to tell the true story of the economic suffering. The roof is caving in on struggling American families that have already seen the value of their homes and retirement accounts put to the torch.
At the present rate, upwards of seven million homes can be expected to fall into foreclosure this year and next. Welfare rolls are rising, according to a survey by The Wall Street Journal. The National Employment Law Project has pointed out that hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers will begin losing their jobless benefits, just about the only thing keeping them above water, by the end of the summer.
Virtually all of the job growth since the start of the 21st century (which was nothing to crow about) has vanished. If you include the men and women who are now working part time but would like to work full time, and those who have become so discouraged that they’ve stopped actively searching for work, you’ll find that 16.5 percent of Americans are jobless or underemployed. Nearly everyone who is fortunate enough to have a job has a spouse or a parent or an in-law or a close friend who is desperate for employment.
Anyone who believes that the Obama stimulus package will turn this jobs crisis around is deluded. It was too small, too weakened by tax cuts and not nearly focused enough on creating jobs. It’s like trying to turn a battleship around with a canoe. Even if it were working perfectly, the stimulus would not come close to stemming the cascade of joblessness unleashed by this megarecession.
I’d like to see the president go on television and, in a dramatic demonstration of real leadership, announce a plan geared toward increasing employment that is both big and visionary — something on the scale of the Manhattan Project, or the interstate highway program or the Apollo spaceflight initiative.
My choice would be a “Rebuild America” campaign that would put men and women to work repairing, maintaining, designing and rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure in the broadest sense — everything from roads and schools and the electrical power grid to innovative environmental initiatives and a sparkling new mass transportation network, including high-speed rail systems.
One of the ways of financing such an effort would be through the creation of a national infrastructure bank, which would provide federal investment capital for approved projects and use that money to leverage additional private investment.
There was a time when Americans could think on such a scale and get it done. We used to be better than any other nation on the planet at getting things done. It would be tragic if the 21st century turns out to be the time when that extraordinary can-do spirit disappears and we’re left with nothing more meaningful and exciting than lusting after tax cuts and trying to pay off credit card debt.
The joblessness the nation is experiencing is crushing any hope of a real economic recovery. With so many Americans maxed out on their credit cards and with the value of their homes deep in the tank, the only money available to spend in most cases is from paychecks. The best and the brightest in Washington may have a theory about how to get the economy booming without dealing with the employment crisis, but I’d like to see that theory work in the real world.
A few weeks ago there was a furor when the budget office “scored” two incomplete Senate health reform proposals — that is, estimated their costs and likely impacts over the next 10 years. One proposal came in more expensive than expected; the other didn’t cover enough people. Health reform, it seemed, was in trouble.
But last week the budget office scored the full proposed legislation from the Senate committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP). And the news — which got far less play in the media than the downbeat earlier analysis — was very, very good. Yes, we can reform health care.
Let me start by pointing out something serious health economists have known all along: on general principles, universal health insurance should be eminently affordable.
After all, every other advanced country offers universal coverage, while spending much less on health care than we do. For example, the French health care system covers everyone, offers excellent care and costs barely more than half as much per person as our system.
And even if we didn’t have this international evidence to reassure us, a look at the U.S. numbers makes it clear that insuring the uninsured shouldn’t cost all that much, for two reasons.
First, the uninsured are disproportionately young adults, whose medical costs tend to be relatively low. The big spending is mainly on the elderly, who are already covered by Medicare.
Second, even now the uninsured receive a considerable (though inadequate) amount of “uncompensated” care, whose costs are passed on to the rest of the population. So the net cost of giving the uninsured explicit coverage is substantially less than it might seem.
Putting these observations together, what sounds at first like a daunting prospect — extending coverage to most or all of the 45 million people in America without health insurance — should, in the end, add only a few percent to our overall national health bill. And that’s exactly what the budget office found when scoring the HELP proposal.
Now, about those specifics: The HELP plan achieves near-universal coverage through a combination of regulation and subsidies. Insurance companies would be required to offer the same coverage to everyone, regardless of medical history; on the other side, everyone except the poor and near-poor would be obliged to buy insurance, with the aid of subsidies that would limit premiums as a share of income.
Employers would also have to chip in, with all firms employing more than 25 people required to offer their workers insurance or pay a penalty. By the way, the absence of such an “employer mandate” was the big problem with the earlier, incomplete version of the plan.
And those who prefer not to buy insurance from the private sector would be able to choose a public plan instead. This would, among other things, bring some real competition to the health insurance market, which is currently a collection of local monopolies and cartels.
The budget office says that all this would cost $597 billion over the next decade. But that doesn’t include the cost of insuring the poor and near-poor, whom HELP suggests covering via an expansion of Medicaid (which is outside the committee’s jurisdiction). Add in the cost of this expansion, and we’re probably looking at between $1 trillion and $1.3 trillion.
There are a number of ways to look at this number, but maybe the best is to point out that it’s less than 4 percent of the $33 trillion the U.S. government predicts we’ll spend on health care over the next decade. And that in turn means that much of the expense can be offset with straightforward cost-saving measures, like ending Medicare overpayments to private health insurers and reining in spending on medical procedures with no demonstrated health benefits.
So fundamental health reform — reform that would eliminate the insecurity about health coverage that looms so large for many Americans — is now within reach. The “centrist” senators, most of them Democrats, who have been holding up reform can no longer claim either that universal coverage is unaffordable or that it won’t work.
The only question now is whether a combination of persuasion from President Obama, pressure from health reform activists and, one hopes, senators’ own consciences will get the centrists on board — or at least get them to vote for cloture, so that diehard opponents of reform can’t block it with a filibuster.
This is a historic opportunity — arguably the best opportunity since 1947, when the A.M.A. killed Harry Truman’s health-care dreams. We’re right on the cusp. All it takes is a few more senators, and HELP will be on the way.
Back in 2002, the Rhode Island General Assembly, in its infinite wisdom, passed what is known as the alternative flat tax option. This special tax break went into effect in 2006, and is essentially a reduction of the top marginal income tax rate for the state. Year after year this flat tax rate gets smaller and will eventually cap out at 5.5% in tax year 2011.
Now, I know what some of you are going to say, any reduction in taxes is a good thing because Rhode Island’s taxes are just too damn high. While Rhode Island’s taxes may seem high, it’s not entirely true and depends on the specific taxes. More importantly, however, while anyone can use the alternative flat tax to determine their tax liability to the state, the benefits of the alternative flat tax flow almost exclusively to those Rhode Island tax filers making over $200,000 a year. This special tax cut only benefits less than 1/2 of 1% of those filing Rhode Island personal income tax forms. Of the 490,975 tax forms filed in 2007, only 2,267 of them were flat tax forms.
Even more egregious, almost 2/3 (63%) of the people benefiting from the alternative flat tax live out-of-state - there were 1,429 of them in tax year 2007. So not only are we lowering taxes on those who are most able to pay while the rest of us struggle to make ends meet during the recession, 2/3 of the benefit crosses the border into Massachusetts and Connecticut. Only 838 Rhode Island residents benefited from the alternative flat tax in 2007.
Now let’s look at the escalating cost of the alternative flat tax option. In tax year 2007, the reduced personal income tax revenue cost the state $14.1 million. This means that each of the 2,267 flat tax filers, who each make more than $200,000 annually, received an average tax cut of over $6,200. As the flat tax rate decreases, more individual tax filers will benefit from the reduced tax rate and will use the flat tax option, and the state will lose even more money. This will happen year after year, until 2010 when the state will lose over $77 million every year. As a reminder, about 2/3 of this money (around $50 million starting in 2011) will leave the state.
The alternative flat tax is expensive, and it is a growing problem. It benefits only a handful of Rhode Island residents while 2/3 of the tax cut leaves the state. So, let me ask a simple question… Why did the state “spend” $14.1 million for the benefit of the wealthiest 838 Rhode Island residents?
We are at a critical point for Rhode Island’s fiscal health. The newest update from the Revenue Estimating Conference shows Rhode Island’s deficit grew by $200 million to a total deficit of $590 million for FY 2010. Since 2004, the structural deficit has grown each year, despite the repeated claim that tax cuts will generate jobs and grow our economy. The Governor has presented his budget designed to handicap Obama’s stimulus plan, the House and Senate Finance Committees are debating it now, and it is assumed that the vote will happen sometime in mid-June.
Please join us for a discussion about Rhode Island’s current budget deficit and taxation policy. The current fiscal crisis will be examined with regard to recently enacted budget and taxation policies and the current economic recession. Components of the Governor’s Fiscal Year 2010 budget will be explained and a responsible alternative will be presented to ameliorate the ongoing structural deficit.
Ample time will be provided for a question and answer period. After the presentation, attendees will be encouraged to contact their state Representatives and Senators.
For your convenience, the budget presentation will be given in six different locations around the state. Space is limited, however, so please RSVP by clicking the links below.
Monday, June 1st - 6:30-8pm - RSVP Richmond Senior Center, 1168 Main Street, Richmond, RI
Tuesday, June 2nd - 6:30-8pm - RSVP
Middletown Public Library, 700 West Main Road, Middletown, RI
Wednesday, June 3rd - 6:30-8pm - RSVP
Harmony Public Library, 195 Putnam Pike, Harmony (Chepachet), RI
Thursday, June 4th - 6:30-8pm - RSVP
Rogers Free Library, 525 Hope Street, Bristol, RI
Tuesday, June 9th - 6:30-8pm - RSVP
Peace Dale Library, 1057 Kingstown Road, Peace Dale, RI
Thursday, June 11th - 6:30-8pm - RSVP
Rochambeau Public Library, 708 Hope Street, Providence, RI
In recent weeks, new revelations about the harsh interrogation and torture of detainees during the Bush administration years have made headlines and stirred controversy. The positions of prominent advocates and opponents on each side are clear. But what do we know about how the American people in general have come to view the use of torture by the U.S. government?
The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press has been polling Americans on this key question for almost five years. Since 2004, representative samples have been asked, “Do you think the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information can often be justified, sometimes be justified, rarely be justified, or never be justified?” The results over this time period have shown only minor fluctuations. The most recent numbers, from last month, reveal that 15% of Americans believe torture is often justified, 34% think it is sometimes justified, 22% consider it rarely justified, and 25% believe torture is never justified. So not only do 49% consider torture justified at least some of the time, fully 71% refuse to rule it out entirely.
Further insight into these numbers can be garnered from a different poll conducted a few months ago, in January 2009. Fox News/Opinion Dynamics asked a national sample of Americans, “Do you think the use of harsh interrogation techniques, including torture, has ever saved American lives since the September 11 (2001) terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon?” The results: 45% “Yes” and 41% “No” (with 14% responding ‘Don’t Know”). In other words, almost half of Americans think torture “works.”
BAGHDAD – An American soldier opened fire at a counseling center on a military base Monday, killing five fellow soldiers before being taken into custody, the U.S. command and Pentagon officials said.
Although it was unclear what prompted the shooting, the incident draws attention to the issue of combat stress and morale after six years of war as the mission of the 130,000-strong force transforms to one of training and mentoring the Iraqis.
Attacks on fellow soldiers, known as fraggings, were not uncommon during the Vietnam war but are believed to be rare in Iraq and Afghanistan.
President Barack Obama said in a statement that he was “shocked and deeply saddened” by the report, adding that “my heart goes out to the families and friends” of all those involved “in this horrible tragedy.”
After a meeting with Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Obama said he would make sure “that we fully understand what led to this tragedy” and will do everything possible “to ensure that our men and women in uniform are protected as they serve our country so capably and courageously in harm’s way.”
A brief U.S. military statement said the assailant was taken into custody following the 2 p.m. shooting at Camp Liberty, a sprawling U.S. base on the western edge of Baghdad near the city’s international airport. Obama visited an adjacent base last month.
The current economic crisis threatens to be worse than the Great Depression, yet our federal government hasn’t shown any indication that it will thoroughly investigate how it happened and why. Instead, we’ve only been told that our economy will collapse unless we give unprecedented amounts of public money to the very financial markets whose actions have created this crisis. It is unwise to carry on in the same way without fully understanding what occurred in the financial markets to bring us to this outcome.
To this end, we advocate for the authorization of a special prosecutor with full subpoena power to investigate any person or institution that had a major role in creating or exacerbating this crisis. A precedent for this has already been set when in 1932 the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking and Currency began the Pecora Investigation to determine the causes of the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
A thorough investigation is necessary to learn the facts in order to guide corrective legislation and to prevent further financial crises. The public has suffered dearly in terms of lost employment, lost retirements, lost homes, lost health care, as well as the staggering sums of money paid to banks instead of being spent for other public needs. These catastrophic losses have occurred to the public even though they have done nothing wrong.
In particular, the following subjects need to be critically examined by a special prosecutor with unrestricted subpoena power:
1) To what extent did the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act by the Gramm-Leach-Billey Act (1999) contribute to the economic crisis?
2) To what extent did the unregulated nature of Credit Default Swaps (CDS) contribute to the crisis? Furthermore, because CDSs are essentially derivative contracts more akin to an insurance policy rather than a financial instrument, should they be regulated according to insurance industry standards?
3) To what extent did members of Congress and/or their family members benefit from the deregulation of derivatives and CDs and did the potential monetary gains influence the method of passage of specific deregulation (the legislation was added to the 11,000 page Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2001 leaving no time for review it before its passage)? Specific individuals to investigate in this regard are: Senators Gramm, Lugar and Ewing.; Larry Summers, then Treasury Secretary, now in the President Obama’s National Economic Council; Alan Greenspan; Arthur Levitt.
4. To what extent has the creation of specific derivatives led to payment avoidance of U.S. taxes? These derivatives should be identified and outlawed.
5. Should a tax be levied on any or all financial instruments in order to assist investment banks in the repayment of public monies granted from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)? Reliable sources estimate that a small 0.1% tax on such instruments could generate about $500 billion each year.
6. Would the direct lending from the federal government through a newly establish consumer lending bank be more fruitful in relieving the credit crisis than giving money to failed banks, at no interest, so the banks can begin loaning money back to the public at an interest rate of their choosing? Moreover, should the banks receiving public funds through TARP be allowed to charge interest on the loans given to the public?
7. Explain where the trillions of dollars of money went which was made each and every year on financial instruments. How could that money have simply vanished, causing a credit crisis which required interest-free public money to correct?
8. Address why, If Larry Summers helped cause this crisis, why is he still on the Obama team?
9. Have any of the sellers of bundled mortgages, derivatives, CDS’s, or other financial instruments committed consumer or banking fraud according to existing laws?
10. Is it possible that a group of financial extremists within the financial industry didn’t intentionally create this crisis so they could profit when the market was going up (i.e. selling derivatives and CDS’s) and then make even more money when the market was in decline?
11. Did the Federal Reserve have any role, specifically through the promotion of banking deregulation, in causing the current crisis?
12. To what extent did Standard & Poors, Moody’s, and other rating agencies engage in fraud and/or other corrupt practices by issuing extremely high ratings (AAA) to extremely risky derivatives and other financial instruments?
13. Restrict the practice of selling hedge funds, short selling, and options trading.
14. Investigate employees of banks receiving TARP funds who were recipients of bonuses.
“In the past, I opposed gay marriage while supporting the idea of civil unions,” Baldacci said in a statement. ”I have come to believe that this is a question of fairness and of equal protection under the law, and that a civil union is not equal to civil marriage.”
There is serious legislative activity to approve gay marriage in DC (where last night the city council voted to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere), New Jersey, New Hampshire and New York.
Also, in California, there’s a state Supreme Court challenge to Prop. 8.
As we wrote this morning, it’s example #457 that we’re long removed from 2004.
Here’s Baldacci’s full statement:
I have followed closely the debate on this issue. I have listened to both sides, as they have presented their arguments during the public hearing and on the floor of the Maine Senate and the House of Representatives. I have read many of the notes and letters sent to my office, and I have weighed my decision carefully. I did not come to this decision lightly or in haste.
I appreciate the tone brought to this debate by both sides of the issue. This is an emotional issue that touches deeply many of our most important ideals and traditions. There are good, earnest and honest people on both sides of the question.
In the past, I opposed gay marriage while supporting the idea of civil unions. I have come to believe that this is a question of fairness and of equal protection under the law, and that a civil union is not equal to civil marriage.
Article I in the Maine Constitution states that ‘no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law, nor be denied the equal protection of the laws, nor be denied the enjoyment of that person’s civil rights or be discriminated against.’
This new law does not force any religion to recognize a marriage that falls outside of its beliefs. It does not require the church to perform any ceremony with which it disagrees. Instead, it reaffirms the separation of Church and State,” Governor Baldacci said. It guarantees that Maine citizens will be treated equally under Maine’s civil marriage laws, and that is the responsibility of government. Even as I sign this important legislation into law, I recognize that this may not be the final word. Just as the Maine Constitution demands that all people are treated equally under the law, it also guarantees that the ultimate political power in the State belongs to the people.
While the good and just people of Maine may determine this issue, my responsibility is to uphold the Constitution and do, as best as possible, what is right. I believe that signing this legislation is the right thing to do.
Health care activists disrupted a Senate Finance Committee hearing Tuesday, standing up one after the other as Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) tried to restore order.
As soon as police escorted one protester out of the room, another would stand up, criticizing the committee for convening a panel of 15 experts and excluding witnesses who support creating a Medicare system for all Americans. About eight were led out of the hearing.
Today, Sunday Loon Watch focuses on former Republican (edit: and now Democratic) Senator Arlen Specter’s interview on Meet the Press.
In the interview, Specter came out clearly and unambiguously against a key part of President Obama’s health care reform plan, the establishment of anoptional public health plan. (Democratic Senator Ben Nelson also doesn’t support the president’s plan.)
In another interesting comment, Specter affirmed his opposition to using reconciliation to pass health care reform, putting the possibility of a filibuster on the table.
Transcript:
MR. GREGORY: It was reported this week that when you met with the president you said, “I will be a loyal Democrat. I support your agenda.” Let me test that on probably one of the most important areas of his agenda, and that’s health care. Would you support health care reform that puts up a government-run public plan to complete with a private plan issued by a private insurance company?
SEN. SPECTER: No. And you misquote me, David. I did not say I would be a loyal Democrat. I did not say that. And last week, after I said I was changing parties, I voted against the budget because the budget has a way to pass health care with a 51 votes, which undermines a basic Senate institution to require 60 votes to impose cloture on, on key issues. But I…
MR. GREGORY: All right, just to be clear, Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal Jonathan Weisman and Greg Hitt reported that when you met with the president you said, “I’m a loyal Democrat,” and, according to people familiar with the White House, “I support your agenda.” So that’s wrong? You didn’t say those things?
SEN. SPECTER: I did not say I’m a loyal Democrat. You know, I read once another mistake in the newspaper, some newspaper.
MR. GREGORY: Let me—I just want to turn, then, to the issue of health care. You would not support a public plan?
SEN. SPECTER: That’s what I said…
MR. GREGORY: OK.
SEN. SPECTER: …and that’s what I meant.
MR. GREGORY: Do you support taxing the value of, the value of employer-provided health care for workers?
SEN. SPECTER: No, I’d be very reluctant to do that. Health care provided by employers, which is deductible for them and not added on as income to the recipient, has been the mainstay of health coverage for millions of Americans, and I’d be very reluctant to abandon that.
MR. GREGORY: So the health care reform you would like to see is what?
SEN. SPECTER: I would, I would like to see all Americans covered. I’ve joined with the Wyden-Bennett plan, has 14 co-sponsors. I would like to see health care which emphasizes exercise and diet and, and makes premiums lower on that basis. I would like to see health care which had very tough prosecution against Medicare and Medicaid fraud, put people in jail as opposed to fines, which are licenses to steal. I would emphasize National Institute of Health research. What better way to reduce the cost of health care than to, than to have—prevent illness? I would support advanced directives, where we find so much of medical care is paid for the in the last few hours or few days or a person’s life. Not to tell people what to do on their care at that time, but have them, have them think about it. I support programs which improves technology, as the stimulus package has $19 billion. I’ve been in this field for a long time and have a lot of ideas, participated in the president’s task force, and I’m ready to put my shoulder to the wheel to get legislation adopted. But I’m going to take a look at it piece by piece. I’m not committed.
Apparently, Specter doesn’t realize that if he stands in the way of progress on key priorities like health care reform, he could find himself just as unpopular within the Democratic Party as he was in the Republican Party.
He’s a beefy, 41-year-old former Australian army officer who served in Iraq as a top advisor to U.S. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus. He’s one of the counter-insurgency warrior/theorists who designed Petraeus’ successful “surge” of troops into the streets of Baghdad.
But a few days ago, when a congressman asked Kilcullen what the U.S. government should do in Pakistan, the Australian guerrilla fighter sounded like an antiwar protester.
“We need to call off the drones,” Kilcullen said.
In the arid valleys of western Pakistan, the United States is fighting a strange, long-distance war against Al Qaeda, the Taliban and their Pakistani allies. Unmanned “drone” airplanes take off from secret runways, seek out suspected terrorists and, with CIA employees at the remote controls, fire missiles to blow them up.
Washington - The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing “war crimes” and called for those responsible to be held to account.
The remarks by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who’s now retired, came in a new report that found that U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices.
“After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” Taguba wrote. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”
Clearly not. We should be wary of pollsters who phrase their questions like this. A better question might be, “How likely is it for someone who really wants to work to find adaquate employment?” Many of those who are employed, and many of the jobs available, do not provide enough hours for the average person to support him or herself. While it is still possible for most adults to find an undesirable minimum wage job, these are likely not sufficient to support a single adult living on one’s own, or to raise a child with or without a partner. Even if one is lucky enough to be given 40, 50, or 60 hours per week.
In some areas, even these jobs are becoming rare.
The recession is not an imaginary condition. It is not a “doctor’s note” for the lazy to avoid work. It is the economic reality that well-qualified, hard-working people are losing their jobs and cannot find adaquate employment.
