March 24, 2011 DAY OF RAGE: Thousands Of Students & Workers United March...

Lounging With Laura


The New York Times Magazine is running (for paid-up subscribers and content thieves) a blessedly short puff piece titled "Laura Bush is Back at the Ranch."  Why so short?  Well, it was originally a little longer, but as you will see from this rough draft somebody rescued from the garbage can, there is a kindly editor who prettied it up a bit.  Remember -- the New York Times is a willing and eager spinner/enabler/PR tool of all presidential administrations: past, present and future.



I Had No Idea How Stressed I Was


GOOD RIDDANCE, WASHINGTON: There is a stark contrast between life in the White House and life at home. I didn’t really know I was stressed until I moved home and started taking massive doses of Valium I wasn’t.

 

HOME ALONE: Barney and Miss Beazley had a harder time adjusting than we did. They miss the large staff and have gotten clingy.  They started peeing in George's shoes when he took them off, and then squish.

NEW DISCOVERY: I found how incompetent I am around the home. For 14 years, I never cooked. This last Christmas, when the last of the help finally quit I cooked lunch for my mother and our daughter Barbara. I just roasted the turkey breast. The whole turkey seemed too difficult. Life is too difficult.

FAVORITE DEMOCRAT: Hillary Clinton. She and I have a lot of the same interests in helping women around the world.after we invade their countries and having annoying husbands. I am My secretary is still in touch with her publicist, and periodically our minions staffs talk.


GRANDKID PREP: We put a secret door from our bedroom that opens into the girls’ part of the house, in the hope of one day I can escape this living hell having to leave it open so that we could hear a baby or babies.


FAVORITE OBJECT: I have walking canes made by Roosevelt Wilkerson, a formerly homeless man in Dallas. He finds these great sticks and carves the Ten Commandments in them. We gave one to Pope Benedict that said Suffer the Little Children and No Child's Behind Left.


CHERISHED RUG: The one I got for free bought through ARZU, a company that an American woman started for Afghan women as a tax write-off, to help them find employment -  help, not actually find, mind you.


A TOUCH OF GORE: We built this house during the 2000 campaign. We knew we wanted it to be energy efficient. We have geothermal heat and air. We built a big cistern, and water runs off the roof into a trough into the cistern.  We put lots of Dow chemicals in the water to kill off all those Giant Texas skeeters and if the neighbors' pets trespass and take a drink, too bad.


FAVORITE CHORE: I love cleaning. The girls love to make fun of me about this. I just like for things to be orderly. My husband is pretty orderly, too.  We have untreated OCD.  We’re both ruthless about getting rid of clutter. We're both ruthless, we're both ruthless, got to wash hands...


ENTERTAINMENT CENTER: We loved “The King’s Speech” and “The Social Network,” but what I watched this year, which became an addiction besides the pills, was an old BBC series called “The House of Eliott.”  The help My staff had given it to me for my birthday, and when we had those long snow days, when George screamed if I tried to leave the room  I never got out, I watched all 34 episodes. It is about two sisters who are left by their father penniless, and they develop into fashion designers. Of course, I was never left penniless, haven't had to work in years and I am set for life because of George's investments in Middle Eastern oil and the Bush Crime Family's many and varied business ventures.


FANTASY CAREER: I would have made a very excellent book editor, because I am interested in writing and in words, and I like red pencils.  And orange pencils and purple pencils and green pencils and kaleidoscopes and the smell of glue and


COUPLES RETREAT: George and I do everything together, really. We read at the same time. We go to bed early and I read The Hardy Boys to him very single night. We have all of our breakfasts and dinners together. The ones the help cooks.


PRESIDENT BUSH'S MOST ANNOYING HABIT:  Smack. "Smacking on chewing gum."


ON THE PRESIDENT’S MIND: He’s always worried about our small lake that is stocked with bass, because he loves to fish. There’s always some concern: It’s too hot. It’s too cold. Too soft.  Too hard.He has to have everything just so. He's the decider..  Are the fish not getting enough feed? That’s what he worries about. Oh, and the frogs.  He has to have those frogs on the Fourth of July to stick firecrackers into and blow up, like the neighbor boy told Nick Kristof at The Times that time.  What a cute story that was.


SIGN OFF: I actually just got a BlackBerry message from George that said "jdsdseihfgye8ddg", “Where are you?”

Obama Gets Ironic Transparency Award Behind Closed Doors





Keep Out

 

Maybe  politicians have vestigial consciences after all.  Even as President Obama was insisting to a gullible nation that there would be no actual military boots on the ground in Libya, there have, in fact, been shiny CIA boots on the ground all along.  In retrospect, this is no big surprise, or even a small surprise. Who else could have armed and trained those rag-tag bands of rebels who conveniently popped up out of nowhere, to seize our undivided attention just as Bahrainis were being slaughtered by their oily U.S. puppet- king  and his Saudi pals?

  Maybe that's why, when the president was awarded a prize for White House "transparency" on Monday by a coalition of open government advocates, it was done in secrecy, without notifying the press.  The president was honored for his so-called honesty behind closed doors, without so much as an MSNBC stenographer-journalist to record the event.  He was probably hoping against hope that nobody would even notice the prize, given the heights of hypocrisy he was about to scale in his Libya speech the following evening.  There wasn't even a mention of it in "West Wing Week", the daily propaganda email that usually misses no opportunity to gush about every feel-good, staged PR event at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Attendees of the awards ceremony -- originally scheduled for March 16 to mark "Sunshine Week" -- were understandably miffed and no doubt suffering a bad case of awarders' remorse when they discovered the media lock-out. “It’s almost a theater of the absurd to have an award on transparency that isn’t transparent," Garry Bass of OMB, a public policy group, griped to The Washington Post. “The irony is that everything the president said was spot-on. I wish people had heard what he had to say.”

(They apparently never will. No official transcript of the sit-and-chat has been released, if in fact it even exists.  Ascribe it to the plausible deniability doctrine).
 

Danielle Brian of the Project on Government Oversight was even more critical, telling The Post that the White House's failure to announce the awards ceremony or allow reporters in to cover it was "crazy stupid", and that she is not about to defend President Obama for his behavior.

Press Secretary Jay Carney actually had the chutzpah to tell the uninvited press right before the postponed meeting earlier this month: "This President has demonstrated a commitment to transparency and openness that is greater than any administration has shown in the past, and he’s been committed to that since he ran for President and he’s taken a significant number of measures to demonstrate that."

 

Now, the Sunshine Law advocates are kind of walking back their purpose in giving Obama the award in the first place, calling it "aspirational"   --  in other words, to give him a nudge in the right direction.  That makes more sense given that the president did his utmost to hide the little event. He really has no intention of being any more transparent than he has been - which has not been very transparent at all.  He likes to talk the honesty talk, but it's becoming evident that truthiness matters more to him than truth. It must be the opacity of hope.

For example,  according to "The Hill," Ellen Miller of the Sunlight Foundation has called the actions of the Obama Administration a disappointment.  Emails have come to light showing it has actively sought to delay release of documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act.  The AP obtained the emails, showing that Homeland Security Department workers were accusing some senior officials in the Obama Administration of delaying the release of files.  Some emails described the president's appointees as "meddling"  -- and echoed Danielle Brian in their calling the unnamed Obama staffers stupid, though not  crazily so. 

We got our first clue about transparency and lack thereof when the president reneged on his campaign promise to broadcast healthcare reform negotiations live on CSpan. Not only didn't that happen, Obama was making backroom deals with Big Pharma to back off reimporting drugs from Canada and drug price negotiations in exchange for their backing off on his own efforts at cosmetic insurance company reforms.  At the same time he was advocating for a public option and urging his volunteers to go door to door for the DNC in the name of his cause, he'd quietly taken the public option off the table without letting us know.

Now, out-Bushing Bush as he embarks on what is variously being called a third war, or a temporary selective humanitarian effort, or a limited kinetic military exercise, we can expect even more secrecy in the name of all-important national security or protecting troop movements.  Hypocrisy in this president is now a given.  When are we going to start adding mendacity to the list?

Let Them Gum Cake

In an altruistic outreach to states feeling the burden of increasing Medicaid expenses -- on top of all the salaries they have to pay those greedy teachers and cops -- the Health and Human Services Secretary has written a letter to all 50 governors reminding them that several optional programs covered by Medicaid are.... well, optional.

Pssst.... says Kathleen Sebelius.  Just between us - you don't really have to cover people for dental work, physical therapy, all those expensive drugs, eyeglasses.  You can even drop people from coverage entirely! Or make them help pay for things themselves!  So much health care is just so darned wasteful. The letter reads, in part:

".... States have substantial flexibility to design benefits, service delivery systems, and payment strategies, without a waiver.  In 2008, roughly 40 percent of Medicaid benefits spending – $100 billion – was spent on optional benefits for all enrollees, with nearly 60 percent of this spending for long-term care services.  The enclosed paper identifies a range of State options and opportunities to more efficiently manage Medicaid, many of which are underway across the country.  Some of the key areas of potential cost savings are described briefly below:  

•Modifying Benefits. While some benefits, such as hospital and physician services, are required to be provided by State Medicaid programs, many services, such as prescription drugs, dental services, and speech therapy, are optional.  States can generally change optional benefits or limit their amount, duration or scope through an amendment to their State plan, provided that each service remains sufficient to reasonably achieve its purpose.  In addition, States may add or increase cost sharing for services within limits (see attachment for details).  Some States have opted for more basic benefit packages for higher-income enrollees (e.g., Wisconsin provides benefits equivalent to the largest commercial plan offered in the State plus mental health and substance disorder coverage for pregnant women with income between 200 and 250 percent of poverty).  A number of States charge beneficiaries $20 for non-urgent emergency room visits or use cost sharing for prescription drugs to steer individuals toward generics or preferred brand-name drugs." 

Translation: You just heard it from the top. Guvners - get out your axes and your chopping blocks, and get to work instead of asking for waivers and bitching to me!  We all need to tighten our belts, except for me and other high-ranking government officials and  rich people and multinational corporations.  Poor people don't have clout, so they shall be the first to suffer, saith the Obama Administration. 





Kathleen Antoinette





Needless to say, some people who are still considered true Democrats are stark raving livid over the Sebelius missive. 

"When you consider that – in a for-profit healthcare system, about 30 percent, and as much as 33 percent, of all spending goes for corporate profits, stock options, executive salaries, advertising, marketing, processing paperwork – it's cruel!" said Dennis Kucinich, D-OH, of the Sebelius letter. Kuninich is a longtime proponent of Single Payer Health Care, or Medicare for all.

Sebelius had written in response to an earlier letter last month from 33 governors asking her to lift a provision of the new reform law – called the maintenance of effort (MOE) requirement – preventing states from trimming Medicaid rolls ahead of the Affordable Care Act's broad 2014 expansion.

Mary Kahn, spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS),  issued a denial that the letter was a barely disguised set of instructions to states on how to drop people from coverage.

Regarding dental coverage, what  is covered varies widely from state to state. In New York, Medicaid will not pay for root canals. Poor people on Medicaid who can't come up with upwards of $1000 for that procedure instead have to opt for an extraction of a tooth that could otherwise be saved. In California, Medicaid no longer pays for dentures. And since the majority of Medicaid recipients are the elderly (not the mythical Reagan Cadillac welfare queens the politicians love to rail against), there are going to be an awful lot of people walking around who literally can no longer eat.  But maybe that's the plan.  Despite the health care reform act, more people are uninsured now than when the law took effect. Benefits are decreasing and premiums are skyrocketing.  But  the insurance companies  who sell the junk policies are posting record profits, as are the drug companies. The president agreed not to negotiate lower prices with Big Pharma in exchange for their not fighting him on health care legislation - or, more accurately, private health insurance practices legislation. 

And what does Obama think about the government covering dental procedures under health care reform? During a town hall in Las Vegas last year, a dentist asked him that very question. His response, accompanied by his million-dollar smile, was "Everybody floss!"

WTF.  As far as I'm concerned, everybody's been fleeced.



Look Ma, No Cavities! (and No Principles)



This Just in from the White House....

I just received my daily email briefing from The White House, containing this announcement:


The Deapartment of Education's TEACH campaign is an initiative to encourage talented Americans to become teachers.


Those who can, teach.  Those who can't, write White House press releases without feeling the need to use SpellCheck or proofread.  Winning the Future?  Out-educating the rest of the world? Well, at least they didn't put out a blurb urging us to support pubic education. 

This Week in GOP Witch Hunts: Demonizing the Old People's Lobby

Remember the northern California congressman who made headlines at one of those anti-healthcare reform town halls by congratulating an audience member who described himself as a "proud, right-wing terrorist?"  The congressman's name is Wally Herger, in case you forgot.  He garnered a Keith Olbermann "Worst Person in the World" honor in August 2009 for responding to the Tea Partyer's outburst by enthusing "Amen!  There goes a great American!"



Wally Herger: Anti-AARP Crusader 



The audience member later amended his terrorist characterization of himself, saying what he really meant was "extremist"-- as if that is any more palatable than terrorist.  Herger, though, amended nothing and refused to apologize.  He would do anything, say anything to defeat "Obamacare" then - and it appears he'll do what it takes to repeal it now.  And destroy the biggest lobby for older Americans in the country while he's at it.


Herger is co-chair of an investigative joint House Oversight and Health  subcommittee "looking into" AARP - the American Association of Retired Persons.  According to Herger and his sidekick, Louisiana Republican Charles Boustany, the purpose of Friday's go-fish game hearing will be to see if AARP is profiting unfairly from selling Medicare supplement insurance policies to its members.


According to Herger, "AARP is known for being the largest and most well known seniors’ organization in the country.  But what Americans don’t know is that AARP was the 4th highest spending lobbying organization between 1998 and 2010 or that the AARP brand dominates the private Medicare insurance market.  This hearing is about getting to the bottom of how AARP’s financial interests affect their self-stated mission of enhancing senior’s quality of life.  It is important to better understand how AARP’s insurance business overlaps with its advocacy efforts and whether such overlap is appropriate.”


And Boustany added, “As one of the country’s most well-known non-profits, many of America’s seniors trust AARP to represent their interests.  But in light of AARP’s dependence on its income from insurance products, there is good reason to question whether AARP is primarily looking out for seniors or just its own bottom line.  Before seniors decide whether AARP is worthy of their trust, or their hard-earned dollars, they deserve all of the facts.  The purpose of this hearing is to provide a public examination of the facts so seniors can decide those questions for themselves.”


Those statements do indeed sound noble  --  but coming from these two right-wingers, they are anything but.  AARP has long been a thorn in the side of conservatives for its support of the Affordable Care Act. Although seniors as a group shifted to the right in the last election,  Republican candidates have used the law's alleged cuts to Medicare (supporters call them efficiencies) as one rationale for repeal.  AARP remains the top lobbying group defending the law. It is also the single strongest lobby defending Social Security and Medicare from planned cuts -- and therefore anathema to Republicans and their wealthy corporate puppetmasters.


It's curious that Boustany and Herger are mouthing such concern about the possible bilking of senior citizens by the AARP insurance arm, when some of the biggest contributors to each of their campaigns have been insurance companies. I wonder if these contributions from insurance companies overlap with the congressmen's stated purpose of serving their constituents, and whether these overlaps are appropriate. Let's examine the facts, as the good gentlemen suggest, and let people decide for themselves:

  The single top donor to Herger's war chest was Blue Cross/Blue Shield, which contributed $96,000 to his cause last year. His other big contributors were "health professionals," pharmaceuticals and health products and HMOs.  Boustany, a Louisiana heart surgeon, received $224,000 from health care professionals, more than $100,000 from insurance companies, and $67,132 from pharmaceuticals and health products. (source: OpenSecrets.org).  And Dick Cheney, probably at the top of some secret list for a government-funded heart transplant, campaigned for him.


Herger and Boustany have yet to announce their witness list for the hearing, but I am willing to bet it will include professionals  from conservative think tanks and insurance company front organizations testifying in the personae of unaffiliated geriatricians and social workers.


The subcommittee is accepting testimony and comments by internet, so drop them a line and tell them what you think. Go to waysandmeans.house.gov., select "hearings" and follow the instructions for submissions.  I wrote them a quick message, saying if we'd gone for Single Payer/Medicare for All, they wouldn't be in this pickle, worrying about AARP having a stake in the for-profit insurance scams which have done more than anything else to drive up all our health care costs. Two-thirds of us still want a public option, Wally and Charlie!  Actually, even the Tea Party would just love government-run health care, once they had it.


 Remember - this Friday, April Fools Day, 9 a.m., Longworth Office Building. Show up or tune in to C-Span. Hope for a contingent of Gray Panthers to storm the hearing room and raise a ruckus. Herger will rue the day he joined the Republican Overreach Club and will be praying for his show trial to end.  We will not be hearing any resounding "Amens" from him this time.  He will go down in ignominy as just one more craven, self-serving politician, joining the likes of Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Peter King and Joe McCarthy in the Congressional Hall of Shame. 

Obama CEO Pal's Company Guilty of Unsafe Radioactive Waste Storage

Union Memorial to Deceased Plant Workers

Honeywell International, whose CEO is a member of President Obama's Bipartisan Deficit Reduction ("Cat Food") Commission, has pleaded guilty to knowingly storing hazardous radioactive waste without a permit, and has been sentenced in federal court to pay a criminal fine of $11.8 million. 

While all eyes are on Japan's nuclear disaster, an eerily similar scenario born of corporate greed, union-busting, political influence peddling and safety shortcuts  had been playing out for years in Metropolis, IL.  Yes, that Metropolis: named after Superman's city and complete with a giant sized statue of Superman and all kinds of tourist- trappy accoutrements, including a newly-built memorial to the late actress who played Lois Lane on TV.

There's also a memorial to the workers of the Honeywell plant, where the Steelworkers' Union claims many of its members contracted cancer and died due to radiation exposure over the years.  It is particularly telling, in this age of union demonization, that it was the steelworkers' local which blew the whistle on Honeywell executives for blatantly ignoring safety laws.   The union, incidentally, was locked out of the plant by CEO David Cote last June after voicing its concerns.  The Environmental Protection Agency  finally listened, and prosecuted. (after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission did nada.)  The company entered its guilty plea on March 11, the same day as Japan's earthquake --and along with the fine (a drop in the bucket in Corporate World) was sentenced to five years' probation and some community service in the way of a recycling campaign in Metropolis.  Neither Cote nor any other human was held criminally responsible.

Here are excerpts from the official Justice Department press release:

Honeywell, a Delaware corporation with corporate headquarters in Morristown, N.J., owns and operates a uranium hexafluoride (UF6) conversion facility in Massac County, Ill., near the city of Metropolis and the Ohio River. Honeywell is licensed by the U.S. Nuclear Reulatory Commission to possess and otherwise manage natural uranium, which it converts into UF6 for nuclear fuel. The Metropolis facility is the only facility in the United States to convert natural uranium into UF6.

At the Metropolis facility, air emissions from the UF6 conversion process are scrubbed with potassium hydroxide (KOH) prior to discharge. As a result of this process, KOH scrubbers and associated equipment accumulate uranium compounds that settle out of the liquid and are pumped as a slurry into 55-gallon drums. The drummed material, called "KOH mud" and consisting of uranium and KOH, has a pH greater than or equal to 12.5...

Honeywell needed, but did not have, a RCRA permit to store any drums of KOH mud at its facility longer than 90 days.

In July 2007, Honeywell requested a modification of its RCRA permit from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) so that they could store drums of KOH mud. IEPA issued Honeywell a modified permit in July 2008, allowing Honeywell to store drums containing KOH mud only in a KOH container storage area designed to contain any spills, leaks or precipitation that accumulates in the drum storage area.   By September 2008, Honeywell had accumulated over 7,000 drums of KOH mud.   In April 2009, EPA special agents conducted a search warrant and found nearly 7,500 illegally stored drums containing waste that was both radioactive and hazardous.   Honeywell began storing the KOH mud drums in compliance with the terms of its RCRA permit in approximately March 2010.

Workers had complained, to no avail, that the waste was corroding the drums and leaching out - possibly spreading to the nearby Ohio river.  But instead of reporting the problems to the NRC or the Environmental Protection Agency -  Honeywell covered its behind by dropping a quick line about the toxic  sludge to - get this - the Securities and Exchange Commission! This is the same SEC which can't even regulate Wall Street, let alone radioactive waste.  Disingenuous cynicism does not even begin to cover this blatant attempt at a cover-up.

Meanwhile, Honeywell is continuing to protect its ass by issuing a press release this week, claiming it always totally self-reports itself and as a matter of fact, has just closed the plant down for five weeks, for routine maintenance and to make "capital improvements".  The sludge was/is being packed in plastic and taken "elsewhere".... maybe to nearby Metropolis, or wherever Lex Luthor keeps his stash of kryptonite.

 
According to the union, 42 plant workers have been diagnosed with cancer, with 27 cancer deaths reported over the past 20 years.  No correlation between toxins or radioactive waste at the plant and the cancers has yet been established, although union workers say it's common knowledge that you can expect to have 10 years knocked off your life from working there.

The union, by the way, is still locked out and replaced with "scab" workers who were allegedly helped to pass their hastily-administered certification exams by plant management.  And the removal of the radioactive waste does not spell the end of the problems.  In December,  there was a leak of hydrofluoric acid at the facility, setting off its mass sprinkler system to prevent the escape of gas to the surrounding community - home to some 128,000 people.

Cote and Obama Share a Tender Moment

Oh, and back to David Cote, who has been described as one of Obama's favorite CEOs of all time.  Not only did the president tap him to serve on the Cat Food Commission to lend some corporate cred in the scrapping of Social Security, he also invited him along on that India trade junket last year. ( Cote is also a past executive of G.E., another one of Obama's favorite, corporate tax-evading companies of all time).   Obama's decision to help Cote further his business interests in India predictably infuriated the more than 200 locked-out Honeywell union members. USW Local 7-669 President Darrell Lillie, who represents them, had this to say in November on learning of Cote's inclusion by Obama:

"We've been forced out of our jobs for the past 20 weeks and watched unskilled scabs brought in by this company steal our jobs, cheating our families out of income that puts food on the dinner table and pays the mortgage. It strikes me as a poor choice for Honeywell's CEO David Cote to be accompanying President Obama on a mission to India for promoting American jobs and exports."

According to Mike Elk, a third generation union organizer and labor journalist who wrote about the Obama-Cote connection last year for The Huffington Post (when it was still the old, pre-AOL HuffPo), "It should come as no surprise to political observers that President Obama is taking Honeywell's side in the dispute. Honeywell is the number one political contributor in the United States. It has increased its political contributions by 400% since Obama took office in 2008. President Obama has routinely described Honeywell CEO David Cote as one of his closest advisers in the business community. Cote ensured an early political victory for the President when he persuaded the US Chamber of Commerce to stay on the sidelines during the stimulus fight."

"In return for their political contributions," Elk continued, "Honeywell has received $13 billion dollars' worth of federal contracts, mainly defense contracts, over the last ten years. Honeywell is also accused of using its political clout to get the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to approve allowing undertrained scabs to work with enriched uranium at the Metropolis facility. In the 60-plus years that the United Steelworkers union has represented the Metropolis uranium facility, the NRC has never allowed scabs to be hired during a lockout due to the safety issues related to enriching uranium."

In light of his disinterest in private sector unions, should it come as any surprise that the President didn't put on those comfortable shoes as he promised to do during his campaign, and join the public sector union demonstrations in Wisconsin?  Elk, who has gone on to call Cote "the most dangerous man in America" for locking out trained union workers in favor of inexperienced lower-paid employees, also bemoans the scant press coverage of Cote and Honeywell and union-busting and presidential enabling.

Scant indeed.  I must confess, I came across news of the criminal case purely by accident, via an email from the "Labor Notes" union blog.  There has been no coverage of the criminal conviction, nor of the cozy relationship between Obama and Cote, in any corporate media that I can find.  But I did happen upon this pic of Obama on the official Metropolis website, proving at least that he once set foot in that Land of Comic Book Heroes and Nuclear Sludge:

Where's a Pro-Union Toxic Avenger When You Need Him?