AP: Economy Skids to Near Halt

Bread line, New York City

Associated Press article

Filed under Economics, Federal Reserve, Market Crash | Comment (0)

Invitations Sent, Date to Be Announced…

Will the Candidates Show?

Government leaders, university presidents, leading scientists, engineering leaders, business executives, American innovators have been making the call loudly and with some help from NPR, MSNBC, the New York Times and Time Magazine as well as increasing numbers of other media outlets. Now that both the Democratic and Republican fields of potential Presidential candidates are down to two apiece, it’s time for Science Debate 2008 to happen.

The invitations to the candidates have been sent, the debate will be held at the Franklin Institute before the Pennsylvania primary on April 22. Thus far none of the candidates have responded that they will commit. While we all know that issues of science and technology are usually handled by advisors who have knowledge of the subjects, it would be nice to get a feel for whether the candidates for our country’s highest office have a basic grasp of those issues and a defensible position on policy. Or find out if all they’re good for is to mouth sound bites their handlers feed them.

If you’re interested in what you may be able to do to help convince them, visit the Science Debate 2008 website and sign on. And it wouldn’t hurt to write to the campaigns and request the candidates’ participation while you’re at it.

Link:
Science Debate 2008

[Cross-Posted to Science News Review]

Filed under Campaigns, Debates, Energy, Policy, Presidential Candidates, Science | Comment (1)

Hate: When is Enough Enough?

On the last day of November, 2007, a tense standoff in Rochester, New Hampshire occurred when a man walked into Hillary Clinton’s local campaign headquarters, claimed he had a bomb strapped to himself with duct tape, and took two campaign volunteers hostage. It lasted for hours before he finally allowed the hostages to leave and walked out to unstrap the “bomb” to turn himself in.

There has been quite a lot of talk in the political blogosphere about how hate speech in the ‘normal’ course of politics as usual can incite unstable people to commit terrible crimes. And as people living near the economic edge begin to fall off, we aren’t seeing any slowdown of bizarre acts and mass murders. But in politics, the hate is just getting warmed up.

On the right (RedState and FreeRepublic) the denizens were hoarding popcorn and speculating that Clinton had arranged for this attention-grab herself, liberally (ha!) salted with the usual right-wingnut hate speech we’re so used to from that corner. Fox’s Bill O’Reilly has of course embraced “The Politics of Hate” as his theme for the election season.

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Filed under Barack Obama, Campaigns, Hate Speech, Hillary Clinton, Media, Party Primaries, Politics of Hate, Presidential Candidates, Racism, Religion | Comment (0)

“Justice is Meant to Serve the Party”

Kangaroo Trials for Gitmo prisoners

The Pentagon announced on February 11 that it is charging six detainees at Guantanamo Bay with war crimes, and will be seeking the death penalty for all. According to ex-JAG officers, it has already been decided that all will be convicted, and all will die. The highlights will be secret evidence and confessions gathered under torture from people who have been held for years sans habeas corpus.

Ross Tuttle’s Rigged Trials at Gitmo appears online from The Nation. Looks like BushCo are fixing to compound their own war crimes. Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor for Gitmo’s military commissions detailed a conversation with Pentagon general counsel William Haynes, who now oversees the tribunal process for the Department of Defense…

“[Haynes] said these trials will be the Nuremberg of our time,” recalled Davis, referring to the Nazi tribunals in 1945, considered the model of procedural rights in the prosecution of war crimes. In response, Davis said he noted that at Nuremberg there had been some acquittals, something that had lent great credibility to the proceedings.

“I said to him that if we come up short and there are some acquittals in our cases, it will at least validate the process,” Davis continued. “At which point, [Haynes's] eyes got wide and he said, ‘Wait a minute, we can’t have acquittals. If we’ve been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them off? We can’t have acquittals, we’ve got to have convictions.’”

Filed under 9-11, al Quaeda, Appointees, Guantanamo, Military, Torture, War, War Crimes | Comment (0)

People of New York vs. Vampires

If you’re middle class (like most of us), you know about how health insurance premiums keep going up, covering less, and robbing you of more than your COL increments every year. In my post Health Insurance Racket as Organized Crime I outlined the details of how two of New York City’s major public health care providers filed RICO suits against UHC and its underlings.

Because it is a racket, it’s bankrupting citizens everywhere, and now it’s all the way to closing important hospitals DOWN because they can’t get insurance to pay for care to patients who *are* insured. A case study in how Corporate Greed and Unbridled Lust for Profit can end up destroying the entire fabric of the nation on which these corporate raiders depend for their very life.

Today New York state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed a formal Intent To Sue action against the database company Ingenix – owned by the same parent company as UHC – for its fraudulent manipulation of the database most insurance companies use to set reimbursement rates for out-of-network medical expenses.

The United insurers and many other health insurance companies relied on the Ingenix database to determine their “reasonable and customary” rates.  The Ingenix database used the insurers’ billing information to calculate a “reasonable and customary” rate for individual claims by assessing how much a similar type of medical service would typically cost, generally taking into account the type of service, physician, and geographical location.  However, the investigation showed that the “reasonable and customary” rates produced by Ingenix were remarkably lower than the actual cost of typical medical expenses.

Links:

Cuomo Announces Industry-Wide Investigation Into Health Care Insurers’ Fraudulent Reimbursement Scheme

The Health Care Plans: Worthless

The Health Insurance Racket as Organized Crime

The Truth About Insurance

NY Atty. Gen. announces investigation into health insurer fraud

Filed under For-Profit Insurance, Government Lawsuits, Health Care, RICO Lawsuits, Universal Care | Comment (1)

Hillary’s Crew Jumping Ship Again

I know, I know. We’ve heard it all before. The news of Hillary Clinton’s political death may be slightly exaggerated, so take it with a large chunk of salt. But campaign manager Patti Solis has indeed stepped down after complete Obama sweeps in last weekend’s caucuses. Where it sort of looked like Hillary wasn’t even running (for all the action on the ground coming from her camp). Can she challenge him with something better than just the same old same old DLC-type machinery? If not, Obama’s highly motivated youth movement might make her a relic.

Seems Solis was hiding the campaign’s lack of cash on hand from Mrs. Clinton, who apparently figured it out for herself clearly enough to donate $5 million of her own money to the cause. What the heck have they been buying with all the millions raised? Answer: expensive dinosaurs – campaign advisors, chairs and managers. They cost a whole heck of a lot, but they know nothing about current reality and why Obama’s eating their lunch. Check out campaign chair Terry McAuliffe on Tweety’s show last week…

Filed under Barack Obama, Campaigns, Caucuses, Hillary Clinton, Party Primaries, Presidential Candidates | Comment (0)

The Health Care Plans: Worthless

Now that I’m over my disappointment in the sudden withdrawal of John Edwards from the nomination race, I’m back to officially “undecided.” I’ve reservations about both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, beginning on the policy side with health care.

Since both Clinton and Obama developed their plans while taking large campaign contributions from insurers, it’s not surprising that their plans are “insurer-friendly.” Both involve mandates requiring citizens to purchase health insurance from an insurance company. Both avoid highlighting problems with the way insurance works as the reason our system is in such outrageous disarray.

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Filed under Barack Obama, Campaigns, Class War, For-Profit Insurance, Health Care, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Party Primaries, Presidential Candidates, SCHIP, Universal Care | Comment (1)