cosmic poaching

It will truly be a miracle if America ever recovers from the heinous corruption and ineptitude of the Bush era. Forget the fact that the regulated businesses on Wall Street became their own regulators – if you could even call it that. And forget the fact that Bush and Cheney bankrupted America by borrowing trillions of dollars from China to pay for the unnecessary war in Iraq.

The scariest negligence by Bush though is by far the way he got off the hook when it came to dealing with Iran’s nuclear weapons program. It’s no great secret the religious fanatics who run Iran want the bomb. So I was shocked two years ago when the National Intelligence Estimate’s (NIE) report Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities (November 2007) stated “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program; we also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons.”

The NIE was created in 1973. Its reports “are the Intelligence Community’s most authoritative written judgments on national security issues and designed to help US civilian and military leaders develop policies to protect US national security interests.”

The report is full of contradictions and pathetically states: “Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005 (that year the NIE assessed “with high confidence that Iran currently is determined to develop nuclear weapons despite its international obligations and international pressure, but we do not assess that Iran is immovable.”)

But according to the 2007 report: “Our assessment that the program probably was halted primarily in response to international pressure suggests Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue than we judged previously.” 

Incredulously the report also claims: “We assess with moderate confidence that Iran probably would use covert facilities—rather than its declared nuclear sites—for the production of highly enriched uranium for a weapon.  A growing amount of intelligence indicates Iran was engaged in covert uranium conversion and uranium enrichment activity, but we judge that these efforts probably were halted in response to the fall 2003 halt, and that these efforts probably had not been restarted through at least mid-2007.”

We are now frighteningly aware of the inaccuracy of this report. As reported by the Associated Press in Diplomats question purpose of Iran nuke plant, msnbc.com, 11-12-09, “Iran’s recently revealed uranium enrichment hall is a highly fortified underground space that appears too small to house a civilian nuclear program, but large enough to serve for military activities, diplomats told The Associated Press on Thursday.”

U.S., British and French leaders denounced Tehran for hiding this facility, located 20 miles outside of the holy city of Qom, the AP reported, and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei is quoted as saying Tehran was “outside the law” and should have told the IAEA about it.

The article also says Iran began building the facility seven years ago and, according to a senior European diplomat “the enrichment hall is too small to house the tens of thousands of centrifuges needed for peaceful industrial nuclear enrichment, but is the right size to contain the few thousand advanced machines that could generate the amount of weapons-grade uranium needed to make nuclear warheads.”

More ominously ElBaradei recently said (see IAEA Chief: Iran Nuclear Inquiry at “dead end,” msnbc.com, 11-26-09) the IAEA’s probe of Tehran’s nuclear program is at “a dead end” and the article notes “ElBaradei cannot confirm that Tehran’s nuclear program is exclusively geared toward peaceful uses, and expressed “serious concern” that Iranian stonewalling of an IAEA probe means “the possibility of military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program” cannot be excluded.”

Oh really Mr. ElBaradei? And whom did you previously work for, the NIE?

And getting back to that now-infamous NIE report Valerie Lincy, editor of Iranwatch.org and Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control rightfully trashed it shortly after it was released with a NY Times Op-Ed piece they wrote: In Iran We Trust? 12-6-07.

“We should be suspicious of any document that suddenly gives the Bush administration a pass on a big national security problem it won’t solve during its remaining year in office. Is the administration just washing its hands of the intractable Iranian nuclear issue by saying, “If we can’t fix it, it ain’t broke”?

They point out the NIE report “contains the same sorts of flaws that we have learned to expect from our intelligence agency offerings. It, like the report in 2002 that set up the invasion of Iraq, is both misleading and dangerous.”

Lincy and Milhollin go on to detail Tehran’s nuclear activities, including the centrifuge work at Natanz and a heavy water reactor at Iran’s research center at Arak “ideal for producing plutonium for nuclear bombs, but is of little use in an energy program like Iran’s, which does not use plutonium for reactor fuel… And why, by the way, does Iran even want a nuclear energy program, when it is sitting on an enormous pool of oil that is now skyrocketing in value? And why is Iran developing long-range Shahab missiles, which make no military sense without nuclear warheads to put on them?”

They note for several years these costly projects were seen as proof of Iran’s nuclear weapons program and ask, “Why aren’t they still?”

As for international pressure on Iran, Lincy and Milhollin write: “The new report has also upended our sanctions policy, which was just beginning to produce results. Banks and energy companies were pulling back from Iran. The United Nations Security Council had frozen the assets of dozens of Iranian companies. That policy now seems dead. If Iran is not going for the bomb, why punish it?”

I urge you to read their article. It’s scary stuff – just like the eventual showdown with Iran will be.

It churns my stomach when politicians claim to be fiscally responsible. In The Defining Moment, NY Times Op-ED, 10-30-09, good old I’m a Democrat, no wait I just lost the primary so now I’m an Independent, oh wait I’m such a schmuck I’m going to get into bed with the Republicans on Iraq, Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman was quoted as saying “I want to be able to vote for a health bill, but my top concern is the deficit.”

Oh really Mr. I’m flopping around more than a fish out of water? If you’re so concerned about the deficit and its related problems how come you never did anything about health insurance reform for the 21 years you’ve been pretending to serve the public as a Senator? And if you’re so fiscally responsible how come you and the rest of the idiots in the 107^th Congress who voted for the Bush/Cheney Iraq war bankrupted America by borrowing trillions from China to pay for that completely unnecessary invasion? Great job, Joe.

Getting back to health insurance reform, the recent bill under House consideration would levy higher taxes on couples who make over $1 million and individuals who earn $500,000 per year to pay for the legislation. This I find unfair, and not because I fall into one of these categories (I don’t – by a long shot.) People who have worked hard and legally and amassed wealth shouldn’t be punished for something our government should have figured out decades ago.

Instead I have a better idea for coming up with revenue to pay for health insurance reform. Why don’t we make the thieves on Wall Street, who lavished themselves with pathetically huge bonuses, obscene salaries and financial shenanigans, pay to fix our healthcare mess. The government, which is in the pocket of these thieves (a $350 million lobbying/political contribution bribing campaign by Wall Street got the Glass-Steagall Act, a smart, six-decades old law, repealed), isn’t going after these bastards but instead is actually BAILING THEM OUT!

And our government is so connected to these investment banks the bankers, who are receiving billions in taxpayer funds, don’t even have to tell the feds how they’re spending our money. Are you still keeping your eye on that deficit, Joe?

I mean, if the government wants to punish rich people to pay for its shortcomings it should go after the crooks who aren’t being prosecuted for bringing down America’s and the world’s economy. It makes no sense to go after law-abiding people just because they have money.

But when you’ve “carted off up to $12.7 trillion – almost the size of the entire gross domestic product” like the thieves on Wall Street did (see No Justice. We’ve Bailed Out the Banks. When Do We Go After the Crooks Behind Our Financial Collapse? – The Village Voice, 10/28 – 11/3 2009) you bet your ass you should be punished!

Keep in mind politicians live and die by campaign contributions. They’re total whores for campaign money. The great conservative icon Ronald Reagan took a $10 million campaign contribution/bribe from one of the 20^th centuries’ most despotic rulers, Ferdinand Marcos, to look the other way when it came to Marcos’ blatant graft and human rights abuses in the Philippines. If you don’t believe me see Reagan’s former campaign manager’s book, Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms: My Life in American Politics, by GOP heavy-hitter Ed Rollins. He openly discusses this bribe.

And when the politicians take campaign contributions they have to pay back their contributors once in office. So since the government isn’t going after its campaign contributors on the Street and Wall Street is back to its old tricks – “expanding its use of new and exceedingly complex derivatives” – according to The Village Voice article and executives are lavishing themselves once again with huge bonuses and exorbitant salaries lets at least make these bastards pay for healthcare reform!

ADDITIONAL READING:

Please read No Justice. We’ve Bailed Out the Banks. When Do We Go After the Crooks Behind Our Financial Collapse? – The Village Voice, 10/28 – 11/3 2009 to get a better understanding of why our government isn’t going after the criminals on Wall Street. The article points out how after Attorney General Eric Holder left the Clinton administration he “made a lucrative living by conducting internal probes for companies and negotiating outstanding results for white-collar clients.” He even wrote a 2002 Wall Street Journal Op-Ed, “Don’t Indict WorldCom,” that “argued on behalf of the corporate perpetrator of one of the sleaziest frauds of the past decade.”

Attorney General Holder has also appointed his former law partner, Lanny Breuer, to head the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division. And, surprise surprise, Breuer has also represented white-collar scum along with the likes of Halliburton, Freddie Mac, Exxon Mobil and big pharmaceutical companies.

Another great Village Voice article, What Cooked the World’s Economy? It Wasn’t Your Overdue Mortgage, 1-27-09, rightfully questions Attorney General Eric Holder’s “will to tackle the widest fraud in American history,” noting that as a private lawyer Holder represented Big Tobacco and in another case Chiquita Brands where the food company paid a massive $25 million fine for employing terrorists as security in Columbia. The Voice article states: “Holder fits well within the gaggle of elite D.C. lawyers who move back and forth between government and defending corporate criminals. He doesn’t exactly have the sort of résumé that startles robber barons.”

Dick Cheney needs to shut his hypocritical mouth and disappear. Take a vacation, Dick. Like a permanent one to some far-away place. Tahiti though is still too close to America and the rest of the world. And too beautiful for him. Actually we should just put him on a spaceship and launch him into outer space.

He is by far the most heinous, disgusting thing to ever hold power. Oh wait, I forgot about W. Okay, we have a tie. Cheney weaseled out of the draft during the Vietnam War by getting five deferments. He then becomes vice president and proceeds to lie to America and the world to get his war in Iraq. A war he and his friends at Halliburton, big oil and the military industry complex (he is also a former Defense Secretary) profited off of immensely.

For seven long years vice president Dick Cheney ignored the real threats to America – Afghanistan and Pakistan – because neither one of those countries has any oil. Yet he’s so arrogant and ignorant he has the nerve to call President Obama “afraid” when it comes to policy on Afghanistan and recently said “The President must stop dithering while America’s troops on the ground are in danger.”

If you’re so worried about those troops, Dick, then how come when there was a draft in this country and we were at war in Vietnam you weren’t fighting side by side with them? Oh yeah, you were too busy getting all those deferments. Damn you’re tough. And macho.

As Dick Cheney got older he played the revolving door game of greed and power in Washington, DC and served as Poppy Bush’s Defense Secretary, where he made a lot of contacts in the military and military industrial complex.

He then landed a job at Halliburton, the world’s biggest oil services company. The great documentary Why We Fight (2005, and please click on the link, watch the trailer and listen to what a former CIA agent has to say about war profiteering and a former President AND Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower says about the dangers of the military industrial complex in his infamous 1961 presidential farewell speech) points out how once Cheney was at Halliburton he used his connections with the military to expand his company’s business and provide food, laundry and other services to our soldiers.

And while all that might seem like a savvy businessman increasing the bottom line for his company Cheney, the great patriot always looking out for America’s best interests, also did business with the world’s biggest state sponsor of terrorism, Iran.

According to Fox News’ (yup, look how fair and balanced I am!) Iran Oil Probe Focuses on Halliburton, 7-21-04: “A Halliburton controversy erupted Tuesday, fueled by a grand jury investigation into whether the oil services giant violated federal sanctions by operating in Iran while Vice President Dick Cheney was running the company.

The investigation centers on Halliburton Products and Services Ltd., a subsidiary registered in the Cayman Islands and headquartered in Dubai that provided oil field services in Iran. The unit’s operations in Iran included Cheney’s stint as chief executive from 1995 to 2000, when he frequently urged the lifting of such sanctions.” (emphasis added)

Not only did he do business with the radical, Islamic fascists who run Iran and support terrorism but even Fox News reported that he “frequently urged the lifting” of sanctions against Iran so he could do more business with the corrupt mullahs over there.

The Fox News piece continued with this: “Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.), whose office has provided information on the case to the Treasury Department, said Tuesday that Halliburton Products and Services was a sham that existed only to circumvent the sanctions.

“It’s unconscionable that an American company would skirt the law to help Iran generate revenues,” Lautenberg told reporters…”

For those of you who think Bush and Cheney kept us safe in the post-9/11 world keep in mind they borrowed billions, if not trillions, from China to pay for their unnecessary war in Iraq. China now firmly owns America due to our massive debt to that country. And that does not bode well at all for America’s security and future.

If China wanted to invade the Korean peninsula, Taiwan, Japan or any other country we couldn’t lift a finger to stop them. Not because it’s such a massive country with a huge military, but simply because China owns us. Thanks Dick, great job.

The following headlines, all from reputable sources, continue the pathetic, disgusting tale of Dick Cheney:

Questions for Vice President Dick Cheney, CNN.money.com, 11-25-07 (here he admits opposing sanctions against Iran when he was at Halliburton)

Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technologies in Iran

Terror Watch: Halliburton’s Deal With Iran, msnbc.com/Newsweek, 2-16-05

Halliburton Operates in Iran Despite Sanctions, msnbc.com, 3-8-05

Halliburton Pulls Out of Iran: But…., huffingtonpost.com, 4-10-07

Somebody, please, put this scumbag on a spaceship, NOW!

It’s pretty pathetic that the health insurance industry is spending a whopping $1.4 million PER DAY lobbying / bribing Congress not to pass any legislation that hurts the health insurance companies’ bottom line (See: Missing Richard Nixon, NY Times Op-Ed, 8-30-09.)

You’d think they might want to spend that money on something like, oh I don’t know, maybe providing health care for their customers. But unfortunately they’re not really in the health care business; they’re just flat out in business.

We need to take drastic action to begin any attempt at fixing the health insurance mess and while I’m not a total supporter of the public option several intelligent people do think it’s a good idea.

And I’m not against it because it’s socialism, which it isn’t. For more on the dreaded S word and other reform lies spread by the health insurance industry and its highly paid PR companies read Why Everyone Needs to Know About Wendell Potter.

Mr. Potter spent 20 years working as a health insurance company public relations executive until he got fed up with lying to the American public about his industry and reform. He is now divulging some of the most pathetic, heinous information to ever be released by a corporate insider. And he’s one of the intelligent people I mentioned above who supports a public option.

My problem with the public option is I just don’t buy the government’s line that it will save us money in the long run given the fact that politicians always screw up large-scale projects like this one.

Take Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as examples. What started out as a good thing, providing home mortgages to middle- and lower-income families, turned into another moneymaking scheme for the fat cats in Congress. The government actually allowed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (which are for the most part government-sponsored programs) to make campaign contributions to politicians. That’s incredibly pathetic and asinine. The politicians basically treated Fannie and Freddie like additional bank accounts.

But another one of those smart people I mentioned who does support the public option is New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg (although what he did regarding term limits is absolutely abhorring.)

Keep in mind Mayor Bloomberg is a capitalist all the way (and not the dreaded S word!) This past summer he wrote an op-ed piece for the NY Daily News called A public insurance plan will help heal a broken health care system (7-1-09.) He notes that if done properly, the public option will provide “exactly the kind of competition our system needs.”

He then writes about his own highly successful company: “When I started a small business 28 years ago, there were other companies that offered financial information to banks and businesses. But we found a way to do it better. That gave our customers more options, and it strengthened the marketplace of financial information.”

Bloomberg also points out that public option plans could provide the same coverage as private plans for less money because the public option providers will have lower administrative costs than private companies. He also says the public option plans could use their market share to get lower prices for consumers.

Bloomberg adds that: “These two steps would also positively affect the rest of the health insurance market, making it more efficient, innovative and customer-oriented, which is exactly what we need.”

No wonder the private health insurance companies are spending the incredulous sum of $1.4 million PER DAY lobbying / bribing Congress to kill the public option.

Another very smart person, Cappy McGarr, has intimate knowledge of the health insurance problem and also supports a public option. McGarr currently runs a private equity firm (no socialist here!) but was also the chairman of the Texas Insurance Purchasing Alliance from 1993 to 1995. This Alliance was one of those health insurance exchanges many politicians talk about who think exchanges are better than a public option.

These health insurance exchanges create a system where small businesses (over half of all the uninsured people here work for small businesses) form purchasing groups that are big enough to get lower wholesale health insurance rates that large companies receive.

Unfortunately though, if you read McGarr’s A Texas-Sized Health Care Failure, NY Times Op-Ed, 10-6-09, you’ll see how the private health insurance companies figured out how to kill the exchanges. And this is also probably why so many politicians support such exchanges – it pleases their private health insurance campaign contributors since they shut so many down!

In his Op-Ed McGarr writes that it would be better for Congress to create a public plan “that could provide an attractive choice for consumers and real competition for private insurers, to give them the incentive to offer good coverage at affordable prices.

But without a public plan, tough rules and restrictions on insurance companies will be essential. Otherwise, Americans will never be able to count on good, affordable health care.”

I guess I see the public option as the lesser of the two evils. Private health insurers have proven, for years unfortunately with ever-increasing rates, precondition denials and canceling policies when people get sick or injured, that they can’t do the job properly. They’re in it for the profit, plain, pure and simple. And if you don’t believe me I urge you to read what Wendell Potter has to say.

In theory, the public option should work. But it would be a miracle if the government pulls it off.

In a previous post here, (“You say you want a revolution…”) I wrote that Wall Street and our government are one and the same and that legislation is passed or killed based on what the moneyed interests want and not the people.

Now it’s certainly easy to dismiss such comments as the pathetic, liberal ravings of a lefty. But when a legitimate, successful businessman, and a capitalist all the way, says the same thing and goes further, it is truly sad and frightening.

I don’t watch much television but after reading Even Glenn Beck Is Right Twice a Day, NY Times Op-Ed, 9-19-09, I was shocked to find myself agreeing with something Beck had to say (we’ll get to that businessman shortly):

“Wall Street owns our government,” Beck declared in one rant this July. “Our government and these gigantic corporations have merged.” He drew a chart to dramatize the revolving door between Washington and Goldman Sachs in both the Hank Paulson and Timothy Geithner Treasury departments.”

My curiosity extremely piqued, I clicked on the drew a chart link, which led to a Huffington Post piece and video clip from one of Beck’s shows. In the clip Beck goes off on a confusing, but well-deserved rant about the ties between Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs and our federal government. One thing that set him off was when, this past summer and after taking $10 billion in taxpayer bailout money, Goldman Sachs posted a profit of $3.44 billion for the second quarter.

I urge you to watch the clip, which runs about ten minutes. Stay with it, especially for the last three minutes or so, when Beck interviews the businessman I mentioned above, Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne. Here’s a guy who is a capitalist through and through. He runs a very legitimate, successful Internet company that has been around for several years. And what he has to say about America is truly frightening.

During the interview Beck says that the way Goldman Sachs is tied to the government, it’s “a criminal organization.”

“It’s as if we bailed out the Corleone family,” Byrne replied, “and then they turn around two quarters later and have a record quarter. This is rich bankers bailing out rich bankers on your credit card.”

“Will you agree with me that Wall Street owns our government?” Beck asked.

“Absolutely. Economists have a term for it, it’s called Regulatory Capture.” Byrne told him. “Society sets up regulators to protect us from certain industries like Wall Street but often these regulators come under the thumb of the industry and they’re called a captured regulator. Wall Street has captured the institutions that are supposed to have protected our country from Wall Street. They’ve just become wholly owned subsidiaries.”

Beck shoots back with: “Our government and these gigantic corporations have merged and if you’re not in one of those gigantic corporations forget about it, Jack.”

Byrne then gets truly scary. “It’s called an oligarchy (government by a few, well-connected people.) A group of powerful folks who have basically hijacked the government. We have an oligarchy who’s captured Washington, DC and they have just prevented, they’ve manufactured this… they’ve manufactured the loopholes that let this happen and they’re doing everything they can do to keep those loopholes from being closed.”

Not good. Not good at all. Sing it with me: “You say you want a revolution…”

ADDITIONAL READING:

For a great explanation on how Wall Street and the bankers took America and the world to the cleaners watch a guy named William K. (Bill) Black being interviewed on PBS by Bill Moyers. Bill Black was a government regulator during the S&L scandal of the late 1980s (brought to you by another Bush, George H.W.) and was formerly the Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention. He now teaches economics and law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and wrote the book The Best Way to Rob A Bank is to Own One.

Black further proves my point of Wall Street and our government being one and the same when during the interview he points out how, as the economy imploded in the fall of 2008, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who prior to getting that job was CEO of Goldman Sachs (which is a major problem to start with!), created a recommendation group to tell the Treasury Department what they should do about the AIG disaster. Guess whom he included on the panel of this recommendation group? That’s right, friends of his from Goldman Sachs, who also happened to have a huge stake in the outcome of how the government handled AIG. This was an immense conflict of interest, yet they got away with it.

I also urge you to read the great investigative reporting done by Matt Taibbi for Rolling Stone Magazine. Here’s a great piece called Inside The Great American Bubble Machine – Matt Taibbi on how Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression.

Some of the most damning, heinous inside information to ever be released is being divulged by Wendell Potter. For 20 years Mr. Potter worked as a corporate public relations executive, mostly in health care. Last year he quit his job as head of communications for Cigna, one of America’s largest health insurers. Prior to that job he served in the same capacity for Humana, another big health insurance company.

In 2007 Mr. Potter had an epiphany of sorts. He went to see Michael Moore’s documentary, “Sicko,” a scathing film about our health care system. Mr. Potter wanted to develop a propaganda attack against the film but suddenly found himself agreeing with most of what he saw up on the screen.

In Health Care Fit for Animals, NY Times Op-Ed, 8-27-09, Mr. Potter says he “flew in corporate jets to industry meetings to plan how to block health reform” and concocted “messaging to scare the public about reform.”

Mr. Potter has been interviewed on MSNBC, PBS and testified before Congress. According to Whistleblower is Dems’ best ammo in health care fight, NY Daily News, 8-3-09, “As a homegrown Southerner from Tennessee, Wendell Potter would be hard to dismiss. Even the people who sometimes blindly support fear-based policy would listen long and hard. Those fear-based policies function against their own interests but are presented as a socialist plot bent on destroying our health care system and doing the public in. But Potter said this to Bill Moyers early last month:

“I am speaking out about how big for-profit insurers have hijacked our health care system and turned it into a giant ATM for Wall Street investors, and how the industry is using its massive wealth and influence to determine what is (and is not) included in the health care reform legislation members of Congress are now writing. I was in a unique position to see not only how Wall Street analysts and investors influence decisions insurance company executives make, but also how the industry has carried out behind-the-scenes PR and lobbying campaigns to kill or weaken any health care reform efforts that threatened insurers’ profitability.”

The health insurance problem gets more frightening as Potter gets specific about public relations campaigns he worked on in a piece he wrote for CNN.com called Commentary: How insurance firms drive debate, 8-17-09.

“…the (health insurance) industry funnels millions of its policyholders’ premiums to big public relations firms that provide talking points to conservative talk show hosts, business groups and politicians. I also described (during his Capitol Hill press conference) how the PR firms set up front groups, again using your premium dollars and mine, to scare people away from reform.

What I’m trying to do as I write and speak out against the insurance industry I was a part of for nearly two decades is to inform Americans that when they hear isolated stories of long waiting times to see doctors in Canada and allegations that care in other systems is rationed by “government bureaucrats,” someone associated with the insurance industry wrote the original script.” (Emphasis added)

Not only is this a terrible indictment of the health insurance industry but it also speaks volumes about how pathetic public relations is in America. In one of the mother of all PR deceptions, just prior to Persian Gulf War I, in October of 1990 a tearful 15-year old Kuwaiti girl who called herself Nayirah told a Congressional caucus (lying to a Congressional committee is a crime, lying to a caucus is “public relations,” see Additional Reading below) that she watched in horror as invading Iraqi soldiers removed babies from incubators in a Kuwait City hospital, left the babies “on the cold floor to die” then shipped the much-needed incubators back to Iraq.

Unfortunately this was all a lie and the girl was the daughter of Saud Nasir al-Sabah, Kuwait’s Ambassador to the US. The story was a total fabrication, made up by PR-powerhouse Hill & Knowlton, who was paid over $10 million by the Kuwaiti royal family to convince Americans to go to war against Iraq.

Getting back to Mr. Potter, he goes on to write that the health care industry goes to great lengths to hide its involvement in PR campaigns from the public. He closes the CNN.com piece with: “So the next time you hear someone warning against a “government takeover” of our health care system, or that the creation of a public health insurance option would send us down the “slippery slope toward socialism,” know that someone like I used to be the one who wrote those terms, knowing it might turn many of the very people who would benefit most from meaningful reform into unwitting spokespeople for the industry.”

Shortly after Mr. Potter saw “Sicko” he visited his parents in Tennessee. During that trip he went to a charity program set up at a county fairground that provided medical treatment for people who could not afford doctors.

The NY Times piece, Health Care Fit for Animals, notes that “Long lines of people were waiting in the rain, and patients were being examined and treated in public in stalls intended for livestock.” Another epiphany for Mr. Potter as he is quoted as saying, “It was a life-changing event to witness that.”

The article also says Mr. Potter argues that tough health insurance regulation is essential and “a robust public option is an essential part of any health reform, to compete with for-profit insurers and keep them honest.”

ADDITIONAL READING:

Please click on the links in the above post and read all three articles I cite, they’re great. One of them, Health Care Fit for Animals, NY Times Op-Ed, 8-27-09, details how health insurance companies deny claims and cancel policies after a paying customer gets sick and needs costly care so they can increase profits and keep their stock prices high.

Hill & Knowlton (see their profile at SourceWatch – A Project of the Center for Media and Democracy) is one of the oldest PR firms in America and represented the tobacco industry from 1953 to 1968. While whoring for big tobacco Hill & Knowlton created an advertising campaign to counter scientific evidence that linked smoking to lung cancer.

Read The Babies From Incubators Hoax (from SourceWatch – A Project of the Center for Media and Democracy) to see how Hill & Knowlton created a front group, Citizens for a Free Kuwait, held press conferences showing torture by Iraqi soldiers and distributed thousands of “Free Kuwait” T-shirts and bumper stickers to convince Americans to go to war. Dozens of other tactics, including setting up media interviews for visiting Kuwaitis, creating observances like National Free Kuwait Day and making video news releases shown by TV news directors who rarely, if ever, mentioned that the footage and stories were created by Hill & Knowlton, were employed by the PR powerhouse.

You can also read here about how Hill & Knowlton executives were extremely well connected to the Reagan and Bush I administrations. It also points out how the two politicians who held the House Human Rights Caucus hearing where the incubator story was told also used for one of their foundations, free of charge, office space in Hill & Knowlton’s Washington, DC office.

When Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) yelled out “you lie” during President Obama’s health care speech to Congress and the nation he wasn’t upset because of Obama’s plan.

Wilson doesn’t care about serious health care reform because his taskmasters/campaign contributors don’t want him to do anything that would hurt their bottom line. And just who are these taskmasters/campaign contributors?

According to OpenSecrets.org (part of the Center for Responsive Politics and a nonpartisan organization that shows the influence money has on U.S. elections and public policy) Wilson’s biggest campaign contributor (for the 2009-2010 campaign cycle) is the American Hospital Association at $7,000. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association gave him $6,000 while health insurer Blue Cross/Blue Shield gave him $3,250. 

The health care industry largesse continues: Astra Zeneca Pharmaceuticals gave him $2,500, the American Society of Anesthesiologists $2,500 and Merck, Eli Lilly & Co. and Glaxo Smith Kline each gave him $1,000. Click here for his OpenSecrets.org profile.

To reclaim our democracy it is imperative that we get corporate money out of politics. For more on this see “You say you want a revolution…” on this blog.

Man were the Beatles right. We need serious changes in the way our government operates, and we need them NOW. We are living in truly heinous times. While most people think things are bad because of the “Great Recession” they don’t understand the root causes: the fact that Wall Street and our government are one and the same (it’s always been that way) and as a result legislation is passed or killed based on what the moneyed interests want and not the people.

To further prove my point, the government bailout program for the financial industry (which was really a quid pro quo agreement – you give us campaign contributions, we cover your losses when you screw up royally) does not require banks to tell the Treasury Department how they are spending the taxpayer’s money.

This, “despite recommendations from the bailout’s special inspector general that the government demand a periodic accounting.” (See The Crisis, a Year Later – NY Times editorial, 9-9-09) The article concludes that without this information it will be impossible to figure out the efficiency of the bailout and difficult to create reforms to make sure such a catastrophe doesn’t happen again.

Are you kidding me?! This is a friggin’ joke people!

Our government is so corrupt pundits are actually praising Nixon – that’s right, Nixon! NY Times Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman, in Missing Richard Nixon, 8-31-09, wrote:

“But the Nixon era was a time in which leading figures in both parties were capable of speaking rationally about policy, and in which policy decisions weren’t as warped by corporate cash as they are now. America is a better country in many ways than it was 35 years ago, but our political system’s ability to deal with real problems has been degraded to such an extent that I sometimes wonder whether the country is still governable.” (Emphasis added.)

And Krugman closes the piece appropriately with:

“I’m not saying that reformers should give up. They do, however, have to realize what they’re up against. …Actually turning this country around is going to take years of siege warfare against deeply entrenched interests, defending a deeply dysfunctional political system.” (Emphasis added.)

“Seige warfare?!” “A deeply dysfunctional political system?!” This is truly heavy and frightening stuff coming from the mainstream press.

Krugman writes about how our “corporate-cash-dominated system” makes reform of any kind “extremely difficult” and that the health insurance industry is currently spending a whopping $1.4 million a day lobbying Congress in an attempt to kill any legislation that hurts its bottom line. I want someone to show me where in that most hallowed of all documents, our Constitution, the word lobbying appears and where lobbyists are granted so much power.

The same column also discusses Nixon’s health care reforms, ideas proposed nearly 40 years ago (that’s right, the health insurance industry with its campaign cash has been killing reform for at least four decades) and Krugman points out how Nixon’s proposals were actually stronger than ObamaCare.

Nixon wanted all employers, regardless of business size, to offer health insurance. He also wanted – gasp, that’s right, a REPUBLICAN proposed this – “tighter regulation of insurers, calling on states to approve specific plans, oversee rates, ensure adequate disclosure, require an annual audit and take other appropriate measures.”

And if that $1.4 million per day in lobbying (which is synonymous with bribing) isn’t bad enough, Krugman’s All the President’s Zombies – NY Times Op-Ed, 8-24-09 notes that “In particular, vast amounts of insurance industry money have been flowing to obstructionist Democrats like Mr. (Ben) Nelson (Nebraska) and Senator Max Baucus (Montana), whose Gang of Six negotiations have been a crucial roadblock to legislation.”

To get an idea of just how vast that money is and how the pigs at the trough in Congress slop it up, from 2003 to 2008 Senator Baucus took $479,100 from health services and HMOs and another $855,813 from pharmaceuticals and health products makers (see Baucus’ profile at OpenSecrets.org.)

Matt Taibbi’s “Sick and Wrong. How Washington is screwing up health care reform and why it may take a revolt to fix it.” (Rolling Stone, Issue 1086, 9-3-09, and my apologies for no link, their articles are not available for free online) claims Baucus has taken overall $2,880,631 from the health care industry. And the article also notes that two of Baucus’ ex-chiefs of staff and several of his former staffers now work as lobbyists for health care companies.

From 2003 to 2008 Senator Nelson’s third biggest individual campaign contributor was Blue Cross/Blue Shield, which gave him $60,900 of largesse. During that same time period the pharmaceuticals and health products industries gave him $296,098 (see Nelson’s profile at OpenSecrets.org.)

Another pundit, Errol Louis from the NY Daily News, also gets radical in his great column Citizens must be heard as the debate over President Barack Obama’s health care plan heats up, 7-30-09. He writes:

“We the people need to get organized and get loud about how to change America’s broken health care system before our voices get drowned out altogether. A good place to start is with the Universal Health Care Action Network, whose Web site lists contact info on more than a dozen pro-reform national campaigns (uhcan.org).

Sign up for any and all of them, and devote as much time, money and energy as you can to the fight for health care. You will not only help fix health care, you’ll help reclaim our democracy from the big-money vultures that are destroying it.” (Emphasis added.)

Wake up people! Every member of Congress needs to be bitch slapped, along with every health insurance company executive!

Here’s what we should do. Remember the infamous climax to the movie Frankenstein, where the angry villagers, pitchforks and flaming torches thrust forward, chase down the big, scary monster?

We should all lay siege to the health insurance vultures’ corporate headquarters, with pitchforks and torches at hand. We’ll then drag out all the multi-millionaire executives, who got rich by denying claims and constantly raising rates, and force them into the Capitol Building in Washington, DC.

We’ll lock the doors and tell the legislative vultures inside to fix the mess they’ve created with their friends at the health insurance companies or face another Boston Tea Party – they all get tossed into the Potomac River!

EDITOR’S NOTE: This post, along with Does George Bush Know the Bronx Exists? and Politics as Usual? Hopefully not, are a bit dated but I moved them over from a defunct political blog. Newer posts appear below Politics as Usual? Hopefully not.

Tomorrow marks a sad day, eight years since 9-11. And thanks to the horribly misguided and grossly corrupt George W. Bush and Dick Cheney we still haven’t captured or killed the real bastards who attacked us on 9-11. It is absolutely criminal and disgusting. I wrote the following piece three years ago. It unfortunately still rings true.

New York City, August 2006

As we approach the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, it is truly sad how we are not even remotely close to capturing or killing Osama bin Laden (or his second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri or former Taliban leader Mullah Omar). What is even sadder is the fact that our misguided, incompetent leaders, from President Bush to his entire administration, never even say the name Osama bin Laden. This was apparent as far back as 2003, when the administration began ratcheting up the drive to invade Iraq — and replaced bin Laden with Saddam Hussein. In response to the President’s silence on the 9/11 mastermind, Bob Graham, then a Democratic Senator from Florida, referred to the al Qaeda leader as “Osama bin Forgotten.” I wouldn’t be surprised if Karl Rove issued this edict: Don’t mention his name!

So today, five years after 9-11, the administration is still toeing their pathetic line that somehow Saddam Hussein was the real threat and we needed to get rid of him. Right, Saddam Hussein, the man that had nothing to do with September 11 and never attacked America during his nearly three decades in power. We don’t even get updates from the President or his minions on how the hunt for bin Laden is going. I guess when you don’t mention someone’s name, you can bet on people forgetting about him and don’t need to even bother to seriously try and track him down.

The media is also at fault here. Sure, as we approach the five-year mark you’ll be hearing about bin Laden, but reporters should be asking the President’s spokespeople every day how the search is going and if any new, excuse me, if any at all, since we never hear his name, attempts at capturing or killing bin Laden are in the works. Actually, the White House press corps might need to remind Tony Snow who Osama bin Laden is, given the dearth of information the White House provides about the hunt for you-know-who and Mr. Snow certainly never mentions his name.

Unfortunately for the administration and its supporters, and here is the kicker, WE KNOW WHERE BIN LADEN IS! He’s in the Waziristan part of Pakistan – the same country that was one of only three countries on the planet to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate rulers in Afghanistan. The same country that provided millions of dollars in support to the Taliban. The same country that, in the aftermath of 9-11, we gave one billion dollars to for support in the war on terror. At least that’s what the administration said it was for, and we know how solid the word of our President is.

And if you’re curious, the other two countries that recognized the Taliban as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan were: the United Arab Emirates (UAE), who President Bush vigorously defended in their controversial U.S. port takeover deal amid allegations of UAE complicity in funding terrorism; and Saudi Arabia, a dictatorial monarchy, also tied to funding terrorism, that the Bush family is good friends with and has conducted business with for several years.

For the past three years or so, several media outlets, including The New Yorker Magazine, the UK’s Guardian newspaper and dozens of TV, radio and web reports, have run stories about bin Laden being holed up in Pakistan, surrounded by a network of loyal supporters. He doesn’t use a cell or satellite phone, or any type of radio communications, for fear of being tracked by our military.

Yet, speaking of our military, we have no troops in Pakistan. There are occasional reports of paramilitary CIA agents and Delta Force soldiers descending into Pakistan to kill or capture you-know-who, but soon these operatives vanish. The same way a certain name has vanished from the mouths of our president and his administration.

MULLAH OMAR UPDATE: In an in-depth, excellent article in 2006 in the Sunday New York Times Magazine, titled The Return of the Taliban, a reporter spent about three months in Afghanistan and Pakistan. She claims, without being an eyewitness though, that Mullah Omar is training new Taliban members in Pakistan. Given the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, it’s probably true.