Word Barfs and Dark Alleys



Fighting the Good Fight

 Acting Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Elizabeth Warren doesn't mince words.  Now that the agency is under attack by Republicans at the behest of their Wall Street backers, she is fighting back with a vengeance. If the banksters aren't confusing us with what she calls "word barfs in contracts" they're dragging us into dark alleys and sticking a knife in our ribs.  Watch this clip of Warren talking to Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show" earlier this week.


 http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-april-26-2011/elizabeth-warren


Despite huge popular support, Warren may even be in danger of losing her job as well as the whole bureau. According to a report from Reuters, there are still those within the Obama Administration who think she is too controversial a choice to lead the agency she created.  Translation: they're afraid of her and her growing citizen-backed power.  If Obama has any guts, he'll publicly come to her defense,  forget about a stupid Senate confirmation battle, and name her via a recess appointment  He is kind of in a sticky situation, now that he's running for re-election and trying to hypnotize people into thinking he's a born-again progressive.  Now is his chance to prove it, or at least make a good-faith effort at proving it.  He does know how to use the bully pulpit when he wants to.  Witness his impassioned speech castigating Paul Ryan's roadmap to perdition.  Although a recess appointment for Warren would be temporary, it would give her that much more time to dig in until a Senate confirmation is mandated in another year.


But all is not smooth in The White House. There is disagreement among Barack Obama's aides over whether it would be "wise" for him to take on a highly visible fight over either a recess appointment or a confirmation for Warren in the U.S. Senate.  Not surprisingly, she has run into some really nasty opposition  from Republicans who say she would be too confrontational toward the financial industry.  But there  are also some Democrats in the mix of foes.  Among them, reportedly, is Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who has been pointedly lukewarm toward her from the get-go.  Geithner, former chairman of the New York Fed, has long been viewed as a loyal friend of Wall Street. He has in several interviews damned her with faint praise, with nonchalant remarks to the effect of she is a fine woman... she would make a fine chairman... she is definitely on the short list.  But never a ringing endorsement, not by a long stretch.

So now, anonymous Administration sources are saying, the talk revolves around appointing an "associate" of Warren in yet another Obama Compromise, aka capitulation.But picking anyone other than Warren could be problematic and could lead to an immediate revolt from "The Base", according to Reuters


On the Republican side, there are two bills pending in the House of Representatives that aim to "defang" the agency, Warren says. The first, sponsored by Spencer Bachus (R-AL), chairman of the Financial Services Committee, would transform the CFPB leadership into a five-person board, thus diluting its power. The second, promulgated by Wisconsin Rep.Sean Duffy, would in turn make a bipartisan, separate agency approved by the same Financial Services Committee and Congress the regulator of Warren's agency. They are not even trying to hide their cynical collusion. 


Warren, a Harvard professor who headed a panel that investigated government bank bailouts during the financial crisis, has been mentioned as a possible candidate to challenge Massachusetts Republican Senator Scott Brown, who must seek re-election in 2012.  So far, though, Brown's poll numbers are looking good.  If I were advising Warren, I'd tell her to stay right where she is and fight.  We have her back.  Besides, the Obama administration would probably love nothing more than for her to resign and challenge Brown.... and just go away.  Elizabeth Warren has been around long enough to know how the game is played.  The fact that she's stuck it out this long in the cutthroat world of Inside the Beltway speaks volumes for her power and influence.

And the fact is that the powerful men who are lashing out at her are only serving to betray their own fears and insecurities. They are eminently vulnerable. 

P.S.  Thanks to Kate and Valerie for reminding me to cover this.

P.P.S.  Links in Comments don't work, (thanks again Valerie) so here is where to find the members of the House Financial Services Committee:
http://financialservices.house.gov/singlepages.aspx?NewsID=397

Update 4/30 --  The subcommittee hearings on the proposed legislation will be held on May 4 beginning at 10 a.m.  Details can be found here.

The New York Times Princess Diaries

Ross Douthat, token junior conservative at The New York Times, thinks we Americans are aching for a monarchy to keep us down where we belong.  In his blog today, he posits that we the need the pomp and circumstance and sheer stabilizing control of queens and kings, princes and princesses -- and that our current regalization of politicians and personalities just does not satisfy that yearning.


At least The Times has had the good sense to allow Douthat only one full column a week, on Mondays -- and that one goes head to head with Paul Krugman.  So poor Ross doesn't garner all that much attention.  To compensate, he appears to be aiming toward outlandishness.  From writing about fear of hell as being the best reason to be good human beings, to glorifying the monarchy today, this young man is all over the map.  One week he's Cotton Mather in a Brooks Brothers suit spewing watered-down fire and brimstone. Today he's stuck in a Disney princess movie.  And if we common folk can't admit that deep down in our little peasant hearts we don't yearn to be crushed by a bejewelled despot, then we're the crazy ones.

Cinderella Man

 "But even the American experience suggests that the anti-monarchical temper...  is ultimately artificial and unnatural, a triumph of theory over instinct and idealism over human nature. In their hearts, most people want a king and queen."  --- Ross Douthat.




Speak for yourself, Ross.  Better yet, don't speak at all.  Or try to find a job at a Fleet Street tabloid. I hate to clue you in, but the Brits are pretty damn sick of the monarchy themselves. Check this out, Douthat:



"In their hearts, most people want a king and queen..."



Disingenuous Disinvitatons

The King of Bahrain was disinvited from Kate and William's wedding because of violence against his own people. Andrew Breitbart was disinvited from election night coverage by ABC last year when an uproar by activist groups over his race baiting shamed them into it. Birther-in-Chief Donald Trump, as of this writing, has not yet been disinvited by The Washington Post to the White House Correspondents' Dinner, which will also be attended by the President. If Obama even bothers showing up (and I wouldn't blame him if he didn't) I hope he uses the occasion to subject Trump and all the prom-goers to another public shaming.  Since Stephen Colbert is not this year's entertainment, Obama should nevertheless use him as speechwriter.


Ezra Klein tweeted his profound embarrassment at his paper's association with Trump, but other than that, the paper has remained mum.  But really, the entire mainstream press is to blame, even those who continue to half-heartedly debunk the birthers.  When every respectable media outlet follows the debunking with poll numbers revealing that most Republicans don't believe Obama is a natural-born citizen, they are only perpetuating the myth.  Even Lawrence O'Donnell, successor in bombast to Keith Olbermann, keeps the story alive by publicly calling for NBC to fire Trump and then invites loony birther Orly Taitz on his show for the sole purpose of kicking her off.  Even Oprah keeps the story alive by inviting the Obamas on her show and asking "what took you so long?"  Even I am keeping the story alive by blogging about it, so I'll shut up now.  In case you missed them, here are my two New York Times comments on the issue, published today:


http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/opinion/28thu1.html?permid=26#comment26


http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/opinion/28collins.html?permid=1#comment1

One last thought before shutting up:  Obama is coming out of this looking mighty good. 

Obama's Enforcer: Pretend Like We Never Hated You

If you're like me, you've remained on various White House propaganda lists and campaign email subscriptions just out of curiosity -- to find out what they're trying to sell us today.

Despite the fact that we're still a year and a half away from the presidential election, Obama's campaign manager. Jim Messina, is wasting no time.  I think he may have an inkling that the president's (former) base is feeling the disenchantment, so he has a solution:  Forget the past.  Let's start all over, shall we?  Pretend we never called you whiners and sanctimonious purists for not getting the Public Option.  Make believe Obama is not an incumbent who sold you out. Imagine he is a brand-new, fresh unknown community organizer again.  Let's make it a resurgent campaign.  Surge like it's a war.  Do the metrics.  Grow some more grass roots!  (actually, being a sometime gardener, I was under the impression that you grow plants from roots, and that roots are either there or they're not.)  Here's what he sent out today. Judge for yourself.

http://my.barackobama.com/2012-First-Look-Video

Ari Berman of "The Nation" recently wrote an in-depth piece about the curious choice of Messina as Obama's campaign manager.  After watching the video, I can see why he would rub would-be volunteers the wrong way.  He talks at, rather than to, his audience.

"Messina begins the re-election campaign with a significant amount of baggage", Berman writes. "As a former chief of staff to (Max, D-Montana) Baucus and deputy to (Rahm) Emanuel, Messina has clashed with progressive activists and grassroots Obama supporters both inside and outside Washington over political strategy and on issues like healthcare reform and gay rights, alienating parts of the very constituencies that worked so hard for Obama in 2008 and that the campaign needs to reinspire and activate in 2012. Obama’s fixer has arguably created as many problems as he’s solved.  'He is not of the Obama movement,' says one top Democratic strategist in Washington. 'There is not a bone in his body that speaks to or comprehends the idea of a movement and that grassroots energy. To me, that’s bothersome.' ”

You can read the entire article here: http://www.thenation.com/article/159577/jim-messina-obamas-enforcer

So....ARE YOU IN, OR NOT?  Messina wants to know, he wants to know now, and he wants it to go viral. NOW! (Nothing like the old soft sell).

Here is my proposal.  If President Obama goes on national TV and swears on the Bible of Lincoln that he will unequivocally support the Progressive People's Budget, support universal health care, stop the wars, raise taxes on the rich -- then I will think about it while remaining highly skeptical  But first he has to show he means it.  Maybe by reversing that signing statement and taking back his order holding Gitmo prisoners indefinitely without charges? That would be a start.  Then he could announce a special surcharge on Wall Street.

Sorry, Jim Messina.  As much as I would like to believe Obama is a born-again fresh candidate, I gave up believing in the tooth fairy a long time ago.  All the words in the world  will not enable him to grow those ephemeral roots in a soil that is barren and depleted.

And no, Bambots -  criticizing Obama is not tantamount to supporting the Republicans. Obama is a Republican anyway, so what have we got to lose? 

No Peeps at The People's House




Can You Guess Which is the Soft-Boiled, Rolled Over Easy One?

  Are you bummed that you didn't score a ticket to Monday's annual White House Easter Egg Roll?  Not to worry.  You can always go to next Saturday's annual Peep-Off candy fest in Maryland instead, or just stay home and watch one living old pope beatify another dead one in Rome. Then, if you are really bored and have a strong stomach, or just want to laugh at the expense of the rich and self-involved, tune in to the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner.  The WaPo has invited The Donald, and even Bristol Palin will make an appearance.  It's a gala opportunity to watch the Fourth Estate stenographers fawn all over the people they are supposed to cover. As in, give cover to.  Of course, you will probably still be recovering from your 3 a.m. wakeup call Friday to watch the Will and Kate nuptials on all 145 networks.  It is all too much to handle, especially since most of those polled are termininally depressed about "where the country is headed" and have other things to worry about, like eating and gassing up the car.


But just in case you did score a magical golden ticket to the White House day-after-Easter event, you WILL be checked at the gate. Since the hoi polloi have no earthly idea about proper attire and accessories, the cryptkeepers are laying it out for us:


 "The following items are prohibited and will not be permitted into general public and public ticketed areas: firearm / ammunition of any type, weapon of any type, hazardous materials, chemical materials, radiological materials, biological materials,knives (of any kind), toy guns / toy weapons, fireworks, pepper spray / mace, scissors, razor blades, needles, leatherman brand tools (or similar), screwdrivers (or similar), glass bottles / containers, thermoses, tripods, backpacks / coolers, air-horns, laser pointers, aerosol containers, sticks / poles, chairs, animals except guide dogs, and duffle bags / suitcases."

So, how much fun could it be?  Besides leaving your crochet hooks and leftover radioactive spinach at home, you'd better forget about your stash of Peeps candy too. It's not on the list, but Peeps are known to be dangerous.  Not only are they about 500 percent sugar, (and this is an official  First Lady "let's move" anti-obesity event)  they are potential weapons of mass destruction.  It is estimated that more than one billion Peeps chicks, ducks and bunnies will have been consumed by the nation's children (and their sneak-thief parents) by the time some of them reach the White House lawn on Monday.  We are talking massive sugar hangovers and residual candy buzz. It is estimated that Americans have spent close to $2 billion on Easter Candy this year, and Peeps are second only to chocolate in popularity.  Plus, we have evidence that Peeps smoke and drink: 



(pics from PeepsResearch.org)



So, besides the Secret Service, the White House Drug Czar should be at the ready, just in case. Unless, of course, he and the narco squad are busily raiding doctors' offices to make sure sick people aren't getting too many pain meds. 

Happy Easter everybody!

Let the Gaming Begin: Record Profits Despite "Reform"

If you own stock in any of the for-profit health insurance companies, you have reason to rejoice. Shares in UnitedHealth Group Inc's  quarterly profit "crushed estimates, fueled by growth across its health plans and continued benefits from Americans' moderate use of healthcare services, and its shares soared as much as 10.5 percent to a three-year high" according to a Reuters report published Thursday. 

The prognostications of the cynics have come to pass. Despite the much- ballyhooed health care reform law, the for-profit health care system is raking in the big bucks.  They claim that we're just not seeking medical attention like we used to. According to them, we are voluntarily choosing to suffer because we are getting with the austerity program. We are becoming careful and responsible health care "consumers." Fools that we are, we  continue to pay these parasites their skyrocketing premiums, even as we go to the doctor less.  We can't afford the deductibles, the co-pays and all the other out of pocket expenses, analysts concede.  But too bad for us, and hooray for them is the talking point they're not even trying to hide.

 "It was a great quarter," according to one Wall Street analyst, who added that the profits -- amounting to more than $1 billion in income for the United Health leeches -- "pretty much confirms, at this point at any rate, the best hopes that you could have had."

Shares of rival private insurers rose after the report, with WellPoint Inc  up 3.6 percent, Aetna  rising 4.6 percent and Coventry Health Care  climbing 5.3 percent, the Reuters article said. 

The report on profits is the first since provisions in the health care reform law, requiring that private insurers invest at least 80 percent of their profits back into patient care, went into effect at the beginning of the year. It proves that the new law, while ensuring that young people can stay on their parents' plans longer, that you can't be dropped if you get sick, and  that you can't be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions, really benefits large insurers at our expense.  They win, and we lose, albeit just a miniscule amount less than we did before. We continue to pay obscenely high premiums and still can't afford to go to the doctor. "Obamacare" as its Republican critics derisively call it, really is a scam of epic proportions. Progressives and conservatives are in agreement that we should not be forced to buy this "product" that purports to care for our health. The so-called good bits don't go into effect until 2014 anyway. 

And just as we suspected, the private insurers have figured out a way to game the system. They post record profits after they are supposedly reined in.  The irony is delicious.

Meanwhile, more of us are uninsured than ever.  And judging from the massive influx of cash to the venal health care cartel, the coverage we do have is pure  junk.  They still rake in much more than they shell out. 

" The report card is an 'A'," gloats David Heupel, a large-cap growth fund portfolio manager with Thrivent Investment Management, whose fund holds Aetna shares. "It's hard to really find anything here that you can poke at." (Presumably, Heupel doesn't have a worry in the world with his gold-plated health insurance plan and his secure job.)

UnitedHealth blames crappy winter weather for its premium payers not going to the doctor as much as might be expected, though it does acknowledge lower than normal claims even in areas not impacted by severe winter storms. They suspect people will start going to the doctor again once the weather warms up. Huh?  Last I heard, people get sick more in the winter, during cold season.  I suggest we look into claims denials along with the unconscionable rate hikes as  big, huge, glaring factors in their "wow, like we totally didn't expect this" windfall profits.  I also suggest we continue to clamor for Single Payer, Medicare for All and send the private insurers straight to the penultimate circle of Dante's Hell where they belong.

Feel the Pain

Elected officials across the political spectrum are in unanimous agreement.  We are in austerity mode, and the only cure is that we all share the sacrifice and feel the intense, unrelenting pain.  Otherwise, the spending will cause Armageddon and we will all be dead.  Even Standard & Poors, the credit rating agency that said subprime mortgage securities were AAA-OK, is warning of disaster unless we  raise the damn debt ceiling to avoid cracking open our fool skulls and making our national headache even worse.

 And when they say feel the pain, boy, do they ever mean it. Literally. The Obama Administration wants to clamp down hard on the inordinate amount of narcotics being prescribed to a nation of slobbering junkies. They want doctors to undergo special training in order to weed out the addicts from the bona fide legal sufferers. And guess who would provide this special training to the clueless doctors who have already gone through three years of medical school and another three to five years of internship, residency and postgraduate training?  Why, the drug companies, of course! The very pharmaceutical companies which manufacture the pills will be trusted to tell doctors how to prescribe less and vet their patients with a vengeance. They would also be forced to bear the costs of the pain meds classes.  I can just envision the outcome.  Profits are at stake here, people!  Watch out for a merry-go-round of lobbyists and sudden influxes of political contributions from drugmakers to the lawmakers in charge of this noble effort. Watch out, too, for a chilling effect on doctors trying to alleviate the pain of the suffering.  Big Brother DEA will be watching them more closely than ever and monitoring every controlled substances form in triplicate.  Watch out for people in pain being turned away, in droves.


Pain medication is actually being underprescribed by most American physicians, according to a slew of surveys.  Doctors are already afraid enough of being investigated by the DEA. (The only sure way to score a Vicodin prescription, according to one unnamed doctor I know, is to be a police officer with an on-the-job injury.  Then your health care provider is safe from scrutiny.)


Meanwhile, the Administration is "absolutely committed to legislation that will make prescriber education mandatory,” R. Gil Kerlikowske, the Obama Drug Czar, announced. He said the White House will push hard for the legislation, and that he has already approached members of congress to discuss and craft it. He wants it done by the end of the year.  Among the drugs to be more strictly monitored are  OxyContin (long-acting oxycodone), fentanyl and methadone.


 "They are considered critical to pain treatment. But they also have been associated in recent years with a national epidemic of prescription drug abuse and addiction, as well as thousands of overdose-related deaths," according to The New York Times. "The F.D.A. has long argued that only Congress has the authority to mandate physician training as a condition of prescribing narcotics, because the legal distribution of the drugs is regulated by the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 and the licensing of doctors to prescribe them is overseen by the D.E.A., not the F.D.A."


Kerlikowske, former Seattle Police Chief, is the same guy who got rid of the "War on Drugs" slogan, but he continues to do battle against marijuana legalization.  He's the same guy who threatened to sue the State of California if it legalized weed.  He loves Nancy Reagan's "Just Say NO" anti-drugs campaign, and thinks it worked.  He also has a pretty poor civil liberties reputation. In March 2007, the NAACP called for his resignation, stemming from his alleged cover-up of a police brutality incident against a drug dealer. The case was referred to the FBI and the Justice Department, which found no evidence of corruption against Kerlikowske or the Seattle P.D, despite video footage of the incident. Kerlikowske is  a graduate of the FBI Academy's executive program.


Kerlikowske, who also has a masters degree in criminal justice, thinks our doctors just didn't get enough training about addiction and pain management in medical school.  So, his solution is to legislate the drug companies -- the altruistic drug companies which have only the best interests of the populace at heart and work hard to keep the prices of its United States drugs the highest in the world, and blackmailed the President into backing off drug price negotiations in health insurance reform in exchange for their cooperation - into teaching doctors who already have more education than their overpaid CEOs could ever hope to attain.


Sure, there's a drug problem in this country.  People often self-medicate because they have no health insurance, they're miserable due to joblessness, or they are in psychic pain for any number of reasons.  And the way we have of dealing with it is ass backwards. We don't treat addicts -- we jail them. Only the rich and insured go to rehab. Insurance companies are stingy about covering it. The government's solution is to make both the addicts and the sick suffer needlessly and crack down on doctors instead of cracking down on illegal drug labs and internet sales and the constant barrage of TV commercials actually urging us to pop a pill for any condition, real or imagined. How sick is that?




Take Two Aspirin and Don't Call Me in the Morning