Mobile Bay native Brinkley Hutchings flew over the water and saw the crude oil heading for her home.

Oil oozes through reeds in Mississippi Delta, 2010-05-20 – John Moore, AFP / Getty Images

Tony Hayward, CEO of BP, at interview, 2010-05-13 – The Guardian

Oil slick from satellite, 2010-05-18 – NASA

Flyover by hccreekkeeper, 2010-05-07

Further Info

‘Latest Gulf Oil Spill FAQ: How Much Oil Has Spilled, Why Hasn’t It Been Plugged, and More…’ by Marian Wang, ProPublica – May 19, 2010

‘Timeline Of The Spill’ – NPR

Sources

¹ Tony Hayward interview – The Guardian, 2010-05-13

² ‘Tar balls wash ashore on Dauphin Island’ – by Renee Dials, Ryan Coleman; Photojournalist: Jason Caldwell; WALA, 2010-05-08

³ ‘Nightmare Scene of Oil Unfolding in Wetlands’ – AFP, 2010-05-20

⁴ ‘A Local’s Account of the Deepwater Disaster’ by Brinkley Hutchings, 2010-05-10

⁵ ‘Gulf oil spill: NOAA expands no-fishing zone to nearly a fifth of the gulf’ by Bettina Boxall, LA Times, 2010-05-18

⁶ ‘Fishery Closure Boundary – map’ – NOAA, 2010-05-18, pdf

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at TheParagraph.com

Sources

¹ ‘Off center: the Republican revolution and the erosion of American democracy’ By Jacob S. Hacker, Paul Pierson, 2005, Yale University Press Quote by Chuck Muth

² The Death of Supply-Side Economics’ – DLC, 2003-04-03

“Do tax cuts pay for themselves?” [Wall Street Journal columnist Alan] Murray asks. “That’s been the hot debate of American political economy for the better part of three decades. But it ended last week — with a whimper.” As Murray explains the CBO report, “The results: Some provisions of the president’s plan would speed up the economy; others would slow it down. … But in every case, the effects are relatively small. And in no case does Mr. Bush’s tax cut come close to paying for itself over the next 10 years.”

³ ‘Voodoo Economics’ NBC, 1980-04-10

⁴ ‘Starve the Beast – Origins and Development of a Budgetary Metaphor’ by Bruce Bartlett, The Independent Review, Summer 2007

⁵ ‘Tax Cuts Offer Most for Very Rich, Study Says’ By EDMUND L. ANDREWS, New York Times, January 8, 2007

Based on an exhaustive analysis of tax records and census data, the [CBO] study reinforced the sense that while Mr. Bush’s tax cuts reduced rates for people at every income level, they offered the biggest benefits by far to people at the very top — especially the top 1 percent of income earners.

…

Economists and tax analysts have long known that the biggest dollar value of Mr. Bush’s tax cuts goes to people at the very top income levels. One reason is that two of his signature measures, tax cuts on investment income and a steady reduction of estate taxes, overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest households.

⁶ ‘President Asserts Shrunken Surplus May Curb Congress’ By DAVID E. SANGER, New York Times, August 25, 2001

⁷ ‘Dick Cheney on Budget & Economy’ – ontheissues.org

O’Neill said he tried to warn Vice President Dick Cheney that growing budget deficits-expected to top $500 billion this fiscal year alone-posed a threat to the economy. Cheney cut him off. “You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don’t matter,” he said, according to excerpts. Cheney continued: “We won the midterms (congressional elections). This is our due.” A month later, Cheney told the Treasury secretary he was fired.

⁸ ‘Tax Day 2009 — Reversing the Great Tax Shift: Seven Steps to Finance Our Economic Recovery Fairly’ – Institute for Policy Studies, April 8, 2009

… Over these [last several decades], grand concentrations of private wealth have been the engines behind the high-risk, high-return speculation that fueled economic bubbles in technology, housing, and commodities. …

⁹ ‘290,000 New Jobs Added Last Month, Most In Four Years’ By SCOTT STODDARD, INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY 05/07/2010

The underemployment rate, including people who have given up looking for work and part-time workers who want to be full time, rose 0.2 point to 17.1%. That’s near October’s record high of 17.4%.

¹⁰ ‘New Consensus Sees Stimulus Package as Worthy Step’ By JACKIE CALMES and MICHAEL COOPER, New York Times, November 20, 2009

Now that unemployment has topped 10 percent, some liberal-leaning economists see confirmation of their warnings that the $787 billion stimulus package President Obama signed into law last February was way too small. The economy needs a second big infusion, they say.

No, some conservative-leaning economists counter, we were right: The package has been wasteful, ineffectual and even harmful to the extent that it adds to the nation’s debt and crowds out private-sector borrowing.

These long-running arguments have flared now that the White House and Congressional leaders are talking about a new “jobs bill.” But with roughly a quarter of the stimulus money out the door after nine months, the accumulation of hard data and real-life experience has allowed more dispassionate analysts to reach a consensus that the stimulus package, messy as it is, is working.

… Mr. Obama’s promise to “save or create” about 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010 is roughly on track, though far more jobs are being saved than created, especially among states and cities using their money to avoid cutting teachers, police officers and other workers.

…

Among Democrats in the White House and Congress, “there was a considerable amount of hand-wringing that it was too small, and I sympathized with that argument,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Economy.com and an occasional adviser to lawmakers.

Even so, “the stimulus is doing what it was supposed to do — it is contributing to ending the recession,” he added, citing the economy’s third-quarter expansion by a 3.5 percent seasonally adjusted annual rate. “In my view, without the stimulus, G.D.P. would still be negative and unemployment would be firmly over 11 percent. …

…

That sort of impact is what makes federal aid to state governments rank high in economists’ reckoning of the stimulus value of various proposals. Every dollar of additional infrastructure spending means $1.57 in economic activity, according to Moody’s …

…

By contrast, most temporary tax cuts cost more than the stimulus they provide, according to research by Moody’s. …

¹¹ ‘Could Bush Tax Cuts Survive?’ – All Things Considered, NPR, 2010-04-18

RAZ: Now, at the end of this year, the Bush era tax cuts expire, and before he left office, Mr. Bush urged Congress to make his tax structure permanent.

Now, Republicans say that at the very least, those tax cuts should be extended. But with a high deficit gap, Democrats say the richest Americans should get ready to pay more, starting next year.

…

RAZ: How long, in your view, should those Bush era tax breaks last?

Sen. GREGG: …[C]learly in the foreseeable horizon, raising rates is a really bad idea if you want to get this economy moving.

RAZ: That’s New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg. He’s the ranking Republican on the Senate’s Budget Committee. …

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at TheParagraph.com

Rep. Roskam (R-IL) shakes his Etch-A-Sketch as Pres. Obama looks on. from C-SPAN

1. Good, Constant Coverage: I want a plan with good, reasonable coverage that is always in effect — even when I’m in between jobs.

2. Insurance Standards: I want coverage without insurance company tricks and loopholes: no caps, no denial for preexisting conditions, no cancellation when needing an pricey treatment.

3. Quick Treatment: I want to be able see my doctor, or go to a walk-in clinic and get treatment, without waiting days for an appointment.

4. No Paperwork: I want to be able to show my health care card and get treatment — no interview, no forms.

5. Doctor’s Best Judgment: I want my doctor to act from one’s own best judgment, and not from the need to ring the cash register.

6. No Premiums: I want to pay for this out of our taxes. But if I have to pay a premium, it should be affordable, and I should be able to pay it into a public, non-profit plan.

7. Everyone In: I want these things for everyone in America. A healthier nation is a stronger and freer nation.

Which of these features do you want in a health care bill? Please check ALL the ones you want, then click “Vote”:

While Congress’s bills would address some of these features in some measure, I think that the best and least costly way to get them would be to improve and extend Medicare to all.³⁶ While Congress has not moved on that, several states are now moving towards a single-payer system.³⁷

Sources

³⁰ ‘Health care summit: Transcripts from every speaker’ – Washington Post, 2010-02-25

³¹ ‘Sen. Mitch McConnell suggests the President starts over on reform at White House health summit’ – CQ Transcriptions, 2010-02-25

³² ‘Rep. Peter Roskam makes remarks at White House health summit’ – CQ Transcriptions, 2010-02-25

³³ ‘White House Health Care Summit, Part 2’ C-SPAN, 2010-02-25 – video Etch-A-Sketch routine at 134:40

³⁴ ‘Vice President Joe Biden makes remarks on cost at White House health summit’ – CQ Transcriptions, 2010-02-25

³⁵ ‘Poll: Americans Want Dem Health Care Reforms, Not Dem Bills’ by Evan McMorris-Santoro, Talking Points Memo, February 24, 2010

³⁶ ‘Comparing the House and the Senate Health Care Proposals’ New York Times, 2010-02-23

³⁷ ‘Single-Payer Healthcare Coming to Minnesota and Maryland’ by David Swanson, 2010-03-03

California keeps passing bills for state single-payer healthcare, but Ahhhnold won’t sign em, and Jerry Brown who wants to be governor doesn’t seem to want it badly enough to make a commitment on healthcare. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania is encouraged that their current governor has said he probably will sign a single-payer healthcare bill, and the legislature just might pass one. But Minnesota has an angle neither of these other states can claim: a serious candidate for governor who is the state’s leading advocate for single-payer.

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at TheParagraph.com

K2 from air, West Face (Guilhem Vellut)

… I walked behind the village, and I saw 84 children sitting in the dirt during their school lessons. There were five girls, 79 boys. What really struck me, though, was that there was no teacher there. And I said, where’s your teacher? And they said, Master Hussein is in the next village because we can’t afford his daily one dollar salary. So that day in ’93 I made a promise to try and get a school built there.

After working at it for three years, Mortenson fulfilled his promise. Since then, his Central Asia Institute (CAI) has built 131 schools in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan.

CAI’s Pigish High School in the Wakhan Corridor, Afghanistan (Teru Kuwayama)

Community Buy-In is Key to Success

The school-building process starts when persons of a village ask Mortenson to meet with them.²³+²⁴ Community members then take part in every stage of planning and building. The CAI provides the teacher training, materials and skilled labor, and the community provides the land, resources, and 2000 to 5000 days of manual labor. So with this community buy-in, in these countries where the Taliban has bombed or otherwise shut down hundreds of girls’ schools, only one CAI school has been attacked. Mortenson tells the story of how that school was closed and soon reopened:²⁶

About 14 Taliban came in at night. They beat up the night watchman and the next day they said if anybody comes to school, we’ll kill you. The headmaster got on his bicycle. He pedaled about 23 miles. He went to the local commander. Now, he’s somewhat of a shady guy, but he also has two daughters in school, and so he rounded up about 120 men. He came in with his militia. He killed two Taliban and then, for lack of better words, he extracted information from the other Taliban.

And he found out they had gotten $3,000 to shut the school down from the local mullah. So today, some of those men are in prison and two days later, the school was reopened. He appointed 12 Askari, which are – Askari is like militia men – to guard the school. And they have orders that if anybody tries to hurt or harm the school or the students, that they should just shoot them.

School under construction in Daltir, Thaile Valley, Baltistan, Pakistan (Teru Kuwayama)

Educating Girls is Powerful

Gultori Girls’ School near
Skardu, Baltistan, Pakistan (Teru Kuwayama)

Well, it’s obvious the boys need education also. But as a child in Africa, I learned a proverb. And it says, “If we educate a boy, we educate an individual. But if we can educate a girl, we educate a community.” And what that means is when girls grow up, become a mother, they are the ones who promote the value of education in the community. The education of girls has very powerful impacts in a society. Number one, the infant mortality’s reduced. Number two, the population is reduced. The third thing is the quality of health improves. … And another compelling reason is when women are educated, they’re not as likely to condone or encourage their son to get into violence or into terrorism. In fact, culturally when someone goes on jihad, they should get permission from their mother first. And if they don’t, it’s very shameful or disgraceful. So when women are educated, as I mentioned, they are less likely to encourage their son to get into violence. And I’ve seen that happen … over the last decade in rural areas of Afghanistan, Pakistan. I mean, I could go on all day about this, but educating girls is very powerful.

A Girls’ School in Taliban Country

Mortenson tells the story of how the CAI came to be building a girls’ high school in the heart of Taliban country:²⁴

[O]ne of our goals … was to put a girls’ high school in Urozgan province in Afghanistan, which is in the south. It’s the home of Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban — it’s probably one of the last bastions who are completely opposed to girls going to school. And so last year we kind of set a rough goal that would take us … 20 years to set up a girls’ school there. So this spring, a year later, we got contacted by … the elders of Urozgan province. They wanted to visit one of our schools. And we said sure. And so this summer they came to Char Asiab, where we have a girls’ school. And these are about 14 men. When they got to the school, these are, you know, some of them are, you know, kind of shady guys, black turbans. They’re armed to the teeth, have, you know, big, long beards. And when they got there, they saw the giant playground. So they threw down their weapons. For the next hour and a half, they went on the swings and slides and had a glorious time playing. And I finally kind of had to stop them and say, “You know, let’s get serious. We need to — this is the headmaster. We need to talk to the principal.” And he said, “No, no. We’re totally satisfied. We want a girls’ high school in Urozgan Province. But it has to have a playground. And you have to come and have tea with us.” So I got up the nerve in September to visit Urozgan. And this is an area, there’s no U.S. troops there. I mean, there’s no nothing there. There’s a lot of Taliban. We had a giant jirga. And I was pretty, you know, pale faced and kind of fearful. But it was a beautiful meeting. When they got done, they said, “We want to start this school. Of course we want the playground built first.” And so in October 2009 we started breaking ground on the school, and this year, in 2010, the school will be finished this summer.

Greg Mortenson, second from right, with tribal leaders in Tarin Khot, Urozgan Province, Afghanistan (Teru Kuwayama)

Advice for U.S. Officials

From his many years of working with the people of Afghanistan, Mortenson gives two strong points of advice to officials of the United States, which has 100,000 of its soldiers in that country, along with 130,000 persons under contract.²⁵ One point is to talk with the elders:²⁴

Every province has three to five dozen shura. And these are elders. They’re poets. They’re warriors. They’re businessmen, a few women. And they’re not elected, but they’ve kind of risen up through the ranks. And these to me are the real people with integrity and power in Afghanistan. … And it’s not that difficult. You can do it at a district level, or local level, or at a national level. It’s, you know, I think half of diplomacy is just showing up. You know, we’ve got to actually just show up and start to talk and then maybe we could get somewhere.

And the other point is to not bomb people:²⁴

[O]f all things that the elders say is, please, do not bomb and kill civilians. That is the number one way to antagonize people.

Further Information

Video: Bill Moyers interviews Greg Mortenson — video and transcript

Book: Three Cubs of Tea – One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time By Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, 2007

Book: Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan By Greg Mortenson and Mike Bryan, 2009

Sources

²⁰ ‘Greg Mortenson – bio’ – gregmortenson.com – pdf

²¹ ‘Three Cups of Tea’ (excerpt) by Greg Mortenson & David O. Relin, 2006, Viking Press

²² ‘K2: The Story of the Savage Mountain’ by Jim Curran (1995). Hodder & Stoughton. p. 25. ISBN 978-0340660072

²³ ‘Teach a Girl, Change the World’ By Judith Stone, Good Housekeeping, May 2009

²⁴ Greg Mortenson interview, video and transcript, Bill Moyers Journal, 2010-01-15

²⁵ ‘DOD: Obama’s Afghan Surge Will Rely Heavily On Private Contractors’ by Justin Elliott, TPM Muckraker, December 15, 2009

²⁶ ‘Greg Mortenson: ‘Ordinary Oprah’ – NPR, March 12, 2009’

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at TheParagraph.com

I hope to work with [Chairman Leahy] and other members of this committee to make further improvements as this bill goes forward. In the end, however, Democrats have to decide if they are going to stand up for the rights of the American people or allow the FBI to write our laws. For me, that’s not a difficult choice.⁸⁸

Feingold: “We’re not the Prosecutor Committee”

JUSTICE Act Senators

The senators sponsoring the JUSTICE Act are:

• Russ Feingold (D-WI)
• Daniel Akaka [D-HI]
• Jeff Bingaman [D-NM]
• Richard Durbin [D-IL]
• Robert Menendez [D-NJ]
• Jeff Merkley [D-OR]
• Bernard Sanders [I-VT]
• Jon Tester [D-MT]
• Tom Udall [D-NM]
• Ron Wyden [D-OR]

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Sources

⁸⁰ ‘WATCH: DoJ Official Blows Cover Off PATRIOT Act’ by Ryan Grim, The Huffington Post, 2009-09-23

⁸¹ ‘Dems Block PATRIOT Act Excesses – Your cousin may breathe easier’ The Paragraph, 2005-12-23

⁸² ‘USA PATRIOT Act of 2001’ U.S. Government Printing Office Short Title: Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism

⁸³ ‘Myths and Realities About the Patriot Act’ – ACLU

The government attributes convictions it says are terrorism-related that have nothing to do with the Patriot Act. The “400 convictions” claim overstates actual number of convictions and omits a number of key facts related to these numbers. Only 39 of these individuals were convicted of crimes related to terrorism. The median sentence for these crimes was 11 months, which indicates the crime the government equated with terrorism was not serious.

⁸⁴ ‘Patriot Act – Eight Years Later’ – ACLU

National Security Letters (NSLs). The FBI uses NSLs to compel internet service providers, libraries, banks, and credit reporting companies to turn over sensitive information about their customers and patrons. Using this data, the government can compile vast dossiers about innocent people. Government reports confirm that upwards of 50,000 of these secret record demands go out each year.

⁸⁵ Sneak-and-Peek Report for 2008 – Administrative Office of the United States Courts, 2009-07-02 – pdf

⁸⁶ JUSTICE Act Overview 2009-09-17

⁸⁷ JUSTICE Act text – pdf See SEC. 201. LIMITATION ON AUTHORITY TO DELAY NOTICE OF SEARCH WARRANTS.

⁸⁸ ‘It’s Not the Prosecutors’ Committee, it’s the Judiciary Committee’ by Senator Russ Feingold, Daily Kos, 2009-10-08

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

Cartoon Credit: John Jonik

See Also

‘Public v. Corps in National Health Care Debate’ The Paragraph, 2009-05-17

‘John Kerry Swats Insurance Company Bargaining Chip’ The Paragraph, 2009-05-23

‘119 Million Americans Must Be Wrong’ By Robert Parry, Consortiumnews.com, June 5, 2009

Sources

³⁰ ‘Weiner Amendment Vote Moved to Wednesday’ – PDA, 2009-07-21

The silence in the House of Representatives around single-payer healthcare and H.R. 676 will end this Wednesday. Rep. Anthony Weiner, (D-NY09) … will move to amend the current bill. His proposal is essentially to replace H.R. 3200 with H.R. 676—single payer Medicare for All.

³¹ H.R. 3200 – ‘America’s Affordable Health Choices Act’ Summary, 2007-07-15 – pdf

³² ‘Canadian Straw Man’ Factcheck.org, July 17, 2009

³³ CBO Report to House Ways and Means Committee, 2009-07-14 – pdf

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

Sources

Photo Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty

²⁰ ‘S.E.C. No Evil’ by Scot Paltrow, October 2008 Issue, Portfolio

Approval of the enforcement division’s requests to initiate investigations, which was an expeditious process under former chairman Donaldson, turned into a logjam, as the commission closely scrutinized each one.

——

Since Cox took office in 2005, the staff count in the [enforcement] division has dropped 9 percent, to 1,124 people this year.

…

Demoralized, key enforcement staffers started heading out the door. Veteran S.E.C. lawyer James Coffman left in 2007 after he was passed over for a promotion. He says that Thomsen told him he didn’t get the job because he was viewed as “too tough.” Thomsen, noting that toughness is one of the qualities necessary for an enforcement job, dismissed the notion that anyone would be denied a promotion for being “too tough.”

— —

Besides pulling back on enforcement, Cox also cut back on the S.E.C.’s new risk-assessment office, created under Donaldson to help the agency do a better job of anticipating financial upheavals. After the head of that office left, Cox didn’t replace him for nearly two years. …

Also, under Cox, the commission loosened a key limit on short-selling in 2007, scrapping what’s known as the uptick rule, which is meant to forestall plunges in share value by allowing short-selling only when a stock is rising. …

²¹ ‘An Inside Story of Wall Street Bank Crashes’ – The Paragraph, 2008-12-26

²² ‘Is There an Antidote to the Republican Amnesia?’ by Rep. Barney Frank, March 18, 2009

… the present financial crisis has many fathers. The failure to pass any meaningful legislation before 2007 allowed unscrupulous actors to gorge themselves at the public’s expense. Unregulated mortgage brokers sold subprime loans including the now infamous NINA (No Income No Assets). Major financial institutions packaged bad mortgages into securities and sold them as low-risk investments. Rating agencies gave stellar grades to toxic assets while being paid by the companies who stood to benefit from their actions. Insurance companies like AIG issued Credit Default Swaps which magically turned toxic assets into gold.

²³ ‘GAO Report to Congressional Requesters – Securities and Exchange Commission’ – March 2009 – pdf file

… several Enforcement attorneys told us that even when they presented cases in which a corporation had agreed to pay a penalty, the Commission might lower or eliminate the amount. One attorney described a case in which a company proposed a settlement with a higher penalty than was approved by the Commission, which required the attorney to return to the company and explain that the Commission wanted a lower amount. Another described a case in which the Commission halved a proposed penalty. Yet another described having conducted the required nine-factor analysis, and arriving at a proposed penalty range of $10 million to $35 million, but having the Commission reduce it to $5 million to $15 million. …

——

… a number of investigative attorneys and others told us that the policies, as applied, also have discouraged pursuit of more complicated cases, those based on novel legal reasoning, or those with industrywide implications, in favor of those seen as more routine or more likely to win Commission approval. For example, one attorney said there has been relatively more focus on modest cases like small Ponzi schemes, insider trading, and day trading, because such cases were thought to stand a better chance of winning Commission approval, compared to more difficult and time-consuming cases like financial fraud. Likewise, one Enforcement manager said that the Commission signaled that it did not favor cases involving industrywide practices.

——

… the number of investigative attorneys has decreased 11.5 percent over fiscal years 2004 through 2008.

——

[Enforcement] action memorandums go through multiple levels of review:

• Staff investigative attorney;
• Branch chief;
• Assistant director;
• Associate director;
• Regional director (for regional offices);
• Senior Enforcement management, other relevant divisions of the agency,
  and Office of General Counsel;
• “To-be-calendared” review (for additional review by senior Enforcement
  management in advance of Commission meeting); and
• Pre-calendar review immediately before Commission meeting.

Investigative attorneys with whom we spoke noted that an action memorandum can be subject to review and revision numerous times as it moves through this process. …

…

Some attorneys estimated that they spend as much as a third to 40 percent of their time on the internal review process, thus making it harder to meet the division’s emphasis on bringing cases on a timely basis. A number of attorneys told us that the effect of the intensive review process is to create a culture of risk aversion, an atmosphere of fear or insecurity, or incentives to drop cases or narrow their scope. They provided several personal examples. In one instance, an attorney closed a case rather than go through a review with another division. … In two other cases, charges were dropped or reduced because the matters had taken so long that people were unable to recall earlier considerations of evidence. … [I]n another case, staff prepared multiple drafts of a Wells memo over 3 years before finally closing the case because it was so old. Finally, one investigative attorney told us that a company under investigation offered to pay whatever penalty amount Enforcement asked; 5 months later, the matter still remained open, with an action memorandum in its tenth draft.

²⁴ ‘SEC Inspector General’s Semi-Annual Report to Congress’ October 1, 2008 to March 31, 2009

Our audit found that despite the tremendous amount of attention that naked short selling has generated in recent years, Enforcement has brought very few enforcement actions based on conduct involving abusive or manipulative naked short selling. … Of approximately 5,000 naked short selling complaints received in the ECC from January 1, 2007 to June 1, 2008, only 123 (approximately 2.5 percent) were forwarded for further investigation. These were forwarded not because of the naked short selling allegations but because they pertained to ongoing investigations. None of these complaints resulted in any enforcement action … Additionally, we found that only six of approximately 1,900 complaints that were entered into Enforcement’s CTR database during the period we examined alleged naked short selling. Based on data that was available to us, these complaints did not lead to any
enforcement actions. Also, the OIG was informed that none of the approximately 900 SRO referrals that OMS received between January 1, 2007 and June 1, 2008, involved naked short selling.

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

Sources

Cartoon credit: ‘U.S. Senate of Trusts’ by Joseph Keppler of British Puck magazine circa 1880.

Top caption says: “This is a Senate, of the Monopolists, by the Monopolists, for the Monopolists.”

¹⁰ ‘Public v. Corps in National Health Care Debate’ – The Paragraph, May 17th, 2009

¹¹ ‘Health insurers offer to stop charging women more’ by Erica Werner, et al., Associated Press, 2009-05-06

¹² ‘Health Insurers’ Strategy Divide and Conquer?’ by ramara, Daily Kos, Thu May 07, 2009

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) on Tuesday introduced legislation (S. 969) that would prohibit insurers from considering gender when setting premium rates. Kerry said the premium disparity is “just plain wrong, and it has to change.” … (New York Times, 5/6).

¹³ S.969 – govtrack.us

Title: A bill to amend the Public Health Service Act to ensure fairness in the coverage of women in the individual health insurance market. Sponsor: Sen John Kerry [MA]. Introduced 5/5/2009. Cosponsors: Sen Debbie Stabenow [MI]. Referred to Committee.

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

As the U.S. Congress works on a national health care bill, people have lined-up behind three main proposals. The one most favored by citizens and doctors — and many Democratic lawmakers — is the single-payer system, which would improve and extend Medicare to all persons.x¹ With this system everyone chooses one’s own doctors, and no one has to shop for health insurance. This type of system has been proven to work well in many other developed countries.x² But both Congressional committees working on the national health care bill have taken single-payer off the table, saying that moving to it from today’s huge for-profit insurance system would be “disruptive”.x³ The second proposal, favored by much of the national Democratic leadership, is the public option, where a person would pick one from a menu of several insurance company plans and a non-profit government insurance plan.x⁵ Like single-payer, the public option would be free of the huge costs in marketing, executive pay and profits of insurance company plans. But, to keep the public option viable, lawmakers would have to tool the system to guard against insurance companies cherry-picking the healthiest persons. To get the public option passed, proponents might have to deal with renegade Democrats sympathetic to insurance company gripes of not being able to compete.x⁶ The third proposal, favored by insurance companies, and those Republican lawmakers who favor any proposal at all, keeps an all-private insurance system, which would have some new regulation while requiring all persons to buy insurance.x⁷ This type of system was adopted three years ago in Massachusetts, but has failed to control costs and provide health care to all.x⁸ Still, the millions of dollars the insurance business has put into lobbying and lawmakers’ campaign chests might sway Congress to choose this system.x⁹ So, while it appears that corporate pull has yanked single-payer off the table, it remains to be seen if the people have enough pull in Congress to at least get a viable public option.

Sources

Cartoon credit: ‘Count Bleed-Ya-Dry’ by Bill Jarcho via The Backbone Campaign

¹ ‘AMERICAN PUBLIC OPINION: TODAY VS. 30 YEARS AGO – January 11-15, 2009’ CBS NEWS/NEW YORK TIMES POLL – pdf

Americans are more likely today to embrace the idea of the government providing health insurance than they were 30 years ago. 59% say the government should provide national health insurance, including 49% who say such insurance should cover all medical problems.

Poll by Annals of Internal Medicine, 1 April 2008 – pdf

More than one half of the respondents from every medical specialty supported national health insurance legislation, with the exception of respondents in surgical subspecialties, anesthesiologists, and radiologists. Current overall support (59%) increased by 10 percentage points since 2002 (49%). Support increased in every subspecialty since 2002, with the exception of pediatric subspecialists, who were highly supportive in both surveys.

H.R.676 cosponsers

Title: To provide for comprehensive health insurance coverage for all United States residents, improved health care delivery, and for other purposes. (This is the single-payer bill in the House; it has 75 cosponsers.)

² ‘Rep. McDermott: The Medical-Industrial Complex in this Country is Bigger than the Military-Industrial Complex’ – Democracy Now! 2009-04-01

REP. JIM McDERMOTT: Basically, a single-payer system, which is what every industrialized country in the world, except the United States, has adopted, is a system in which you guarantee a set of benefits for every citizen of the country. No matter how much money, where they live, what color they are, what ethnicity they are, whatever, everybody is entitled to the same generous benefit package. And that’s true in France, and it’s true in Germany, and it’s true all over the place. The French, for half the money that we spend, are getting, by the World Health Organization, the best healthcare in the world.

Now, the second thing that you have to have besides a generous benefit package is a single-payer system. And you can put the money together through the government, or there are a lot of different ways it’s done in all the countries of the world, but when a patient goes into a hospital in Canada, they hand a card in for the national plan, and that’s the end of it. And you are not threatened with bankruptcy in Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Japan, Italy, Spain. None of these countries can a citizen be bankrupted by their illness. But it is the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States, because we have put the emphasis on individuals doing it.

³ ‘Doctors Arrested at Senate Roundtable on Healthcare’ – Institute for Public Accuracy, 2009-05-05

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, has stated on multiple occasions that single payer is “off the table” of health reform.

‘Pelosi Pushes For Truth Commission’ – Hotline On Call, 2009-04-22

As our members came back from their recess, a great deal of what they heard out there was public options, public options, public options, public options. In our caucus, over and over again, we hear single payer, single payer, single payer. Well, it’s not going to be a single payer. … We had an opportunity for that awhile back, and it was not realized. And that’s not what it’s going to be. So we had to take people from a place that they see universal, affordable, quality health care available best in single payer and say this can be achieved in other ways.”

‘Proposal would require all to have health coverage’ By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR and ERICA WERNER, Associated Press, 2009-05-14

The summary of the House proposal says one of its main goals is to “minimize disruption” for people who already have coverage by allowing them to keep their coverage. All Americans would be protected by an annual limit on out-of-pocket costs, a safeguard already in the best private plans.

⁵ ‘HEALTHY COMPETITION: How to Structure Public Health Insurance Plan Choice to Ensure Risk-Sharing, Cost Control, and Quality Improvement’ By Jacob S. Hacker, Ph.D., UC Berkeley Department of Political Science and UC Berkeley School of Law, April 2009 – pdf

⁶ ‘Ben Nelson Plans To Oppose Public Health Plan’ by Ryan Grim, The Huffington Post, 2009-05-02

Nelson’s problem, he told CQ, is that the public plan would be too attractive and would hurt the private insurance plans. “At the end of the day, the public plan wins the game,” Nelson said. Including a public option in a health plan, he said, was a “deal breaker.”

…

As he so often does, Nelson said, according to CQ, that he planned to form a “coalition of like-minded centrists opposed to the creation of a public plan, as a counterweight to Democrats pushing for it.”

⁷ ‘Republicans Dithering on Health Care’ By Philip Klein, The American Spectator, 5.13.09

The major fault line that is emerging between Republicans and Democrats is over the creation of a new government-run plan modeled after Medicare that would be offered alongside private insurance plans on a government-run and regulated national insurance exchange. …

…

[Republican Senators] Enzi, along with Grassley and Hatch, have all come out strongly opposed to a government-run plan, meaning that if Democrats go ahead with it, bipartisan reform will fall by the wayside.

⁸ ‘Massachusetts’ Plan: A Failed Model for Health Care Reform’ by Dr. Rachel Nardin with Drs. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, all of Harvard Medical School, February 18, 2009

⁹ ‘Health Sector Has Donated Millions to Lawmakers’ By Dan Eggen, The Washington Post, Sunday, March 8, 2009; Page A09

Health insurers and drug makers have showered members of the 111th Congress with millions in campaign contributions over the last four years, with a special focus on leaders who will play major roles in shaping health-care legislation, according to a study to be released tomorrow.

Health insurers and their employees contributed $2.2 million to the top 10 recipients in the House and Senate since 2005, while drug makers and their employees gave more than $3.3 million to top lawmakers during that period, according to an analysis of federal elections data by Consumer Watchdog, a California-based advocacy group.

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

Here’s how it would work in a Chapter 11 if this were any other industry: all the equity would be wiped out, then the creditors would get a percentage on the dollar,” she said. “We would totally protect all the deposit accounts, and the rest of the debt would get some combination of stock and pennies on the dollar. The minute that happens, the banks are solvent, and new capital can flow in.”

Someone said to me, You’re describing ripping the Band-Aid off all at once, and we’re saying how ‘bout we just keep peeling the corners off a little at a time — ouchy, ouchy, ouchy — and maybe we can adjust as we go along. [In the early 90’s,] Sweden ripped the Band-Aid off all at once, and Japan took ten years. But the Band-Aid had to come off.

Who are we trying to protect here? Is it a banking system that is in service to American families and the economy, or is it the American families and the economy in service to a banking system? I know what I think the answer should be.”

The biggest taker of banking bailout money, AIG — getting $40B of TARP money in November, plus $43B from its own special bailout fund and $38B in loan money — is now in line to get another $30B from TARP.x⁶³ Ouchy, ouchy, ouchy.

Sources

Photo of Elizabeth Warren by Millicent Harvey, published in the Harvard Law Bulletin

⁶⁰ ‘President insists economy is strong – Congress must stay focused on fiscal priorities, he says’ By Mark Silva and Washington Bureau, The Chicago Tribune, August 10, 2007

The American economy is the envy of the world, and we need to keep it that way, Bush said. “The fundamentals of our economy are strong … Job creation is strong. Real after-tax wages are on the rise. Inflation is low.”

‘Bush sees serious signs economy is weakening’ By Tabassum Zakaria, Reuters, Feb 1, 2008

“The fundamentals are strong,” Bush said. “We’re just in a rough patch, witnessed by the unemployment figures today.”

⁶¹ ‘Administration Is Seeking $700 Billion for Wall Street’ By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN, The New York Times, September 20, 2008

⁶² ‘COP on the Beat’ By Christopher Hayes, The Nation, February 18, 2009

⁶³ ‘Adding Up the Government’s Total Bailout Tab’ The New York Times

Beyond the $700 billion bailout known as TARP, which has been used to prop up banks and car companies, the government has created an array of other programs to provide support to the struggling financial system. Through March 2, the government has made commitments of nearly $9 trillion and spent $2.1 trillion. Here is an overview, organized by the role the government has assumed in each case.

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com