Diary of a Wimpy Health Care Bill
By Rose Ann DeMoro
California Nurses Association

Passage of President Obama’s healthcare bill proves that Congress can enact comprehensive social legislation in the face of virulent rightwing opposition. Now that we have an insurance bill, can we move on to healthcare reform?

As an organization of registered nurses, we have an obligation to provide an honest assessment, as nurses must do every hour of every day. The legislation fails to deliver on the promise of a single standard of excellence in care for all and instead makes piecemeal adjustments to the current privatized, for-profit healthcare behemoth.

When all the boasts fade, comparing the bill to Social Security and Medicare, probably intended to mollify liberal supporters following repeated concessions to the healthcare industry and conservative Democrats, a sobering reality will probably set in.

Read more.

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Pro-single-payer doctors: Health bill leaves 23 million uninsured
A false promise of reform

As much as we would like to join the celebration of the House’s
passage of the health bill last night, in good conscience we cannot.
We take no comfort in seeing aspirin dispensed for the treatment of
cancer.

Instead of eliminating the root of the problem — the profit-driven,
private health insurance industry — this costly new legislation will
enrich and further entrench these firms. The bill would require
millions of Americans to buy private insurers’ defective products, and
turn over to them vast amounts of public money.

The hype surrounding the new health bill is belied by the facts:

* About 23 million people will remain uninsured nine years out.
That figure translates into an estimated 23,000 unnecessary deaths
annually and an incalculable toll of suffering.

Read more.

In Kabul, Obama meets with Afghan President Karzai, addresses U.S. troops
By Laura King and Julian E. Barnes

President Obama flew into Afghanistan’s capital Sunday night on an unannounced visit, his first
trip as president to this war-battered country where tens of thousands of new U.S. troops are to
be deployed in coming months.

Read more.

the American Enterprise Instutute, apparently for his too-frank appraisal of Obama’s
health care victory as the GOP’s “Waterloo.”

MCM

***

So What Happened?

After my dismissal from AEI Thursday, I posted in this space my letter of resignation. I declined television interviews, but I did speak to print journalists about the basic facts, in a way that
expressed respect for AEI and its leadership.

I spent most of today flying from Washington to San Francisco and emerged from the plane to a fierce counter-attack, including an especially unpleasant piece from Charles Murray.

Let me respond here to some specific issues in this matter.

Read more.

From a friend:

Mark,

In case you didn’t catch this:

“Are you saying that (Mexican President Felipe) Calderon has expressed an openness toward a uniformed, U.S. military presence within Mexico?”

“Yes,” [Homeland Security Secretary Janet] Napolitano [replied].

Troop levels and “los raids” (as they’re being obliquely referred to in the Press) have just jumped
in Mexico City. What I heard today: “The security of Mexico is now in the hands of the United States.”

This would seem to be what started in Cuidad Juarez.

U.S. Military Doing ‘Limited’ Drug War Work In Mexico, Napolitano Says

“Our military, in certain limited ways, has been working with the Mexican military in their efforts against the drug cartels” inside Mexico, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told NPR’s Robert Siegel this morning. Her comments were among the most extensive to date from a U.S. official about the U.S. military’s role in the drug war raging across the border.

During a conversation about the visit to Mexico yesterday by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Napolitano and other top U.S. officials, Robert asked “is there any role, any potential role, for the U.S. military south of the border in Mexico?’

Napolitano said that since Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen were among those in the delegation that went to Mexico yesterday, “you can deduce from that that there are discussions about the proper role for our military.”

Read more.

Alan Greenspan and the New York Times Are Gunning for Your Social Security
AlterNet / By Zach Carter

The battle for Social Security is on — and the Times is fighting for the bad guys.

With health care reform finally signed into law, a new policy battle over Social Security
is quietly but unquestionably building momentum. Make no mistake — Wall Street is now doing its best to gut Social Security, and as afront-page article in yesterday’s New York Times makes clear, the media is not ready to challenge them on it.

Read more.

Feeling his oats at last, Obama has named 15 top officials as recess appointments,
thereby “end-running GOP obstruction,” as Dan Froomkin puts it on HuffPost
(see below).

It’s surely nice to see the president no longer kowtowing to the ultra-rightist fringe
in Congress. But before we start high-fiving each other, we ought to ask ourselves
exactly who will now be working in Obama’s government–because certain of
his picks are actually bad news, even if the trogs obstructed their appointment.

Take Islam A. Siddiqui, who was no doubt blocked because of his “terroristic”-
sounding name. That he will serve as the nation’s Chief Agricultural Negotiator
is, to say the least, unfortunate, as he’s a veteran of the pesticide lobby.

I quote myself:

Obama has now named, as Chief Agricultural
Negotiator, Islam A. Siddiqui, who is VP
for “Science and Regulatory Affairs” at CropLife
America-formerly the American Crop
Protection Association, whose mission is to push
the use of pesticides (or, as they put it,
“ensuring safe and responsible use of crop
protection products to improve food supplies”).

It’s no surprise that CropLife America’s PAC
supported Bush/Cheney in the last election:

http://deltafarmpress.com/news/110104cla-endorse.

And, considering their mission, it’s no surprise
that CropLife objected to Michelle Obama’s
garden, since she (or somebody) decided against
using pesticides in that protected patch.
They sent her husband an indignant letter which
included this great line: “Fresh foods grown
conventionally are wholesome and flavorful yet
more economical.” (“Conventionally” means
“using chemical pesticides.”) (http://www.slate.com/id/2219772/)

http://www.mail-archive.com/newsfromunderground@googlegroups.com/msg02129.html

If that’s the kind of move Obama makes when he “end-runs GOP obstruction,”
what’s to cheer about (unless, as in this case, you’re into pesticides)? So he’s
taking a page out of BushCo’s book (as Bush, of course, made quite a few recess
appointments). If he does so in furtherance of policies that BushCo also would
have pushed, forgive me if I don’t burst into tears of joy.

I welcome any further observations on these 15 new recess appointments.

MCM

Obama Recess Appoints 15 Top Officials, End-Running GOP Obstruction

Dan Froomkin
HuffPost Reporting

President Obama on Saturday announced the recess appointment of 15 political appointees whose nominations had been stalled by Republicans.

They are:

* Jeffrey Goldstein: Nominee for Under Secretary for Domestic Finance, Department of the Treasury
* Michael F. Mundaca: Nominee for Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy, Department of the Treasury
* Eric L. Hirschhorn: Nominee for Under Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration and head of the Bureau of Industry and Security, Department of Commerce
* Michael Punke: Nominee for Deputy Trade Representative – Geneva, Office of the United States Trade Representative
* Francisco “Frank” J. Sánchez: Nominee for Under Secretary for International Trade, Department of Commerce
* Islam A. Siddiqui: Nominee for Chief Agricultural Negotiator, Office of the U.S. Trade Representative
* Alan D. Bersin: Nominee for Commissioner, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Department of Homeland Security
* Jill Long Thompson: Nominee for Member, Farm Credit Administration Board
* Rafael Borras: Nominee for Under Secretary for Management , Department of Homeland Security
* Craig Becker: Nominee for Board Member, National Labor Relations Board
* Mark Pearce: Nominee for Board Member, National Labor Relations Board
* Jacqueline A. Berrien, Nominee for Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
* Chai R. Feldblum: Nominee for Commissioner, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
* Victoria A. Lipnic: Nominee for Commissioner, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
* P. David Lopez: Nominee for General Counsel, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

“The United States Senate has the responsibility to approve or disapprove of my nominees. But if, in the interest of scoring political points, Republicans in the Senate refuse to exercise that responsibility, I must act in the interest of the American people and exercise my authority to fill these positions on an interim basis,” Obama said in a statement.

Read more.

GUILTY VERDICT IN KENTUCKY ELECTION FRAUD TRIAL
By Brad Friedman

Convicted high-ranking officials include a circuit court judge, county clerk and school superintendent
Each face up to 20 years in broad conspiracy that included manipulation of electronic voting machines…

All eight defendants in Clay County, Kentucky’s election fraud trial have been found guilty today by a federal jury. Six of those eight were high-ranking election officials, including the county clerk, a circuit judge and the school superintendent. The conspirators were charged with having manipulated federal elections in 2002, 2004 and 2006 by buying and selling votes and manipulating electronic voting machines.

Read more.

RARE HONESTY:
The Politics of ‘Corrections’
by Robert Parry
Originally published in ConsortiumNews.com earlier yesterday, 25 March 2010

Perhaps nothing measures the imbalance of media and political power in the United States better than the decision-making by major news organizations about when to issue “corrections.”

The bottom line is this: When the American Right is offended, the “corrections” come fast and are sweeping, even in highly dubious situations. Sometimes heads roll.

But when the American Left feels aggrieved, the “corrections” are slow and grudging, often very narrow in scope and still misleading. Nobody is likely to get punished.

Read more.

The president’s base hopes he will name a full-throated champion to counter Justice Antonin Scalia, the most forceful conservative on the bench. . . . The candidates who would most excite the left include the constitutional scholars Harold Hongju Koh,

Cass R. Sunstein and Pamela S. Karlan.

Read more.