Weekly Fireside Chats w/President - Elect

Landmark in Corporate Welfare

Here is a story about how you and I and everyone else are getting raped in our pocket book and our children's future by paying pharmaceutical companies WHATEVER they want for the drugs that go to Medicare recipients.

In fact, there are lists of prices for these drugs are secret and not shared. In fact, our government signed away its rights to edit the list of drugs they will pay for through this subsidy, pretty much ensuring that no cheaper, but no less effective, drugs will make it onto the list. Nor are they able to buy the drugs from the same companies, but made in another country for a pittance of what they cost to us here.

In the first year of this new program it is reported that pharmaceutical companies increased the prices of these drugs dramatically and that their profits have soared by 45%.

Smile, you've been f*k'd while you were trusting your elected officials to look out for you.

Corporate Welfare should be a Crime.

From the Christian Science Monitor: Linky Bit

CSM

By Mark Lange Wed Jul 18, 4:00 AM ET

San Francisco - Medicare Part D makes it easier for America's elderly to buy prescription drugs. It also gives drug companies a free ride on the backs of the next generation.

Social Security and other entitlements already threaten the nation's fiscal health. So why would Congress make Medicare Part D a landmark in corporate welfare? It may be a financial debacle, but it's a lobbyist's dream. Part D is a multibillion-dollar entitlement for the pharmaceutical industry that taxpayers will be underwriting for the rest of their lives, or until Congress fixes it, whichever comes first.

The White House and Congress claimed the private structure of the program would lead to lower drug prices. In fact, since the program began last year, the opposite has happened, thanks to the lobbying wizards of K Street. A fragmented band of more than 1,400 Part D insurance plans has had little negotiating power with the drug companies. Nor do those plans have much reason to bargain: Part D subsidizes patients on extended and expensive medication regimes at 80 percent.

Most remarkably the bill that Congress pushed through in 2003 didn't let the government negotiate drug prices. Why? Because the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) got no authority to define the "formulary" list of drugs for which Medicare will pay. Absent a credible threat to drop from that list any overpriced drugs that have branded alternatives – which the vast majority has – the government lost its negotiating stick.

Surprise! No price competition. So drug companies were able to raise rates for brand-name medications (that have comparable alternatives, but for which there are no generics) at twice the rate of inflation in the first six months of the program.

...snip...

When the bill was being debated, taxpayers were told the program would cost $400 billion. Today, realistic estimates put the figure at more than $1 trillion. The big drug companies, of course, love this. All those multiyear investments in lobbying have paid off – allowing them to use your tax dollars to boost their earnings.

..snip...

Kind of outrageous, isn't it? but who in congress is buying into this for us? who did we elect that would rather stiff your for the benefit of Corporate Welfare? And what could you do about it today?

Check out the top 20 list of congressional recipients of pharmaceutical lobbying largess in the last election, compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics (www.opensecrets.org). You'll see some familiar names: Sens. Orrin Hatch, Edward Kennedy, Joseph Lieberman, and Hillary Clinton.

During your next lunch break, call their offices. Ask their staffers why a failure to create real price competition in Medicare Part D should cost taxpayers and coddle drug companies. Or ask them how long the program can survive centrally planned profiteering. And you should suggest to them the following reforms:

First, sell medicines used by Medicaid "dual-eligible" patients to Part D plans at the lower Medicaid rates. Second, let congressional watchdogs monitor prices paid by Part D plans versus Medicaid's best prices (today both price lists are confidential). Third, let Medicare leverage global efficiencies by buying FDA-approved drugs made at FDA-inspected facilities overseas (they're the same pills, made by the same companies, at a fraction of the cost). And finally, fund staffing for the Food and Drug Administration to close its record backlog of more than 850 applications for generics, which typically cost 20 to 70 percent less.

..snip...

WA State Clean Energy Rep.

Here's the introduction to an interview with Jay Inslee by David Roberts of Grist.

Full Article

Rep. Jay Inslee's two central passions, clean energy and global warming, received scant attention during his last eight years in Congress. Now, after a power shift on Capitol Hill, he's at the center of high-profile efforts to attack climate change and promote a new energy economy -- not to mention get his colleagues up to speed on the issues.

The Democrat from Washington state's first district, which encompasses suburbs north and west of Seattle, holds spots on two House committees that will play key roles in debates over how to tackle the climate crisis: the Energy and Commerce Committee, chaired by Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), and the new Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, created this year by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Happily, he's prepared. Inslee has focused on energy issues since the early 1970s and amassed a wonk's expertise. This fall, he will release a book called Apollo's Fire: Igniting America's Clean Energy Economy, about the challenges and opportunities facing America as it navigates the twin crises of global warming and peak oil.

I caught up with Inslee at a Seattle café, where he enthusiastically dove into the weeds of energy and climate policy, all the while cautioning the environmental community to be realistic and understand that Congress is at the beginning of a long journey on these issues.

Justice Dept. Aide Not Willing To Testify

...yeah, you work for the 'Justice' department and you are not willing to stand up and tell the Truth? Not even in a Private meeting with Congressmen/women? What does that say about you as an individual? as a public employee? as the highest ranking aide to the the AG? and a former counsel to the White house?

Actually, it speaks volumes, doesn't it?

Full Article


A snippit...

House Democrats on Tuesday asked a top Justice Department aide to come to Capitol Hill for a private interview in the next week on the firing of federal prosecutors, arguing that she cannot simply refuse to testify on the matter.

Monica Goodling, who has said she would assert her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to avoid appearing at Senate hearings, must tell Congress which specific questions she's refusing to answer, Democrats said in a letter to her lawyer.

Goodling was senior counsel to embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and was the department's White House liaison before she took a leave earlier this month amid the uproar over the ouster of eight U.S. attorneys.

Senate Judiciary Committee members, meanwhile, are pressing Gonzales to say how he plans to deal with Goodling taking the Fifth Amendment. Her action, they say, means he can't fulfill his pledge to make Justice employees available for questioning under oath.

"Who do we talk to at the Department of Justice? The office of the Attorney General appears to be hopelessly conflicted," Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the Judiciary chairman, and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said in a letter to Gonzales released Tuesday.

Two Steps Back, One Step Forward

Brushing aside a veto threat, the House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to overturn a 2001 order by President George W. Bush that lets former presidents keep their papers secret indefinitely.

The measure, which drew bipartisan support and passed by a veto-busting 333-93 margin, was among White House-opposed bills the House passed that would widen access to government information and protect government whistleblowers.

"Today, Congress took an important step toward restoring openness and transparency in government," House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman said.

The presidential papers bill nullifies a November 2001 order, criticized by historians, in which Bush allowed the White House or a former president to block release of a former president's papers and put the onus on researchers to show a "specific need" for many types of records.

Among beneficiaries of the Bush order was Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, a former vice president and president.

The order gave former vice presidents the right to stop the release of their papers through an executive privilege that previously only presidents could use. And it extended to deceased presidents' designees rights to keep their papers secret indefinitely.

...snip....

Also passed by the House by a 331-94 margin, despite another veto threat, was a bill aimed at bolstering protections of government whistleblowers who report wrongdoing, especially those with private contractors and national security and scientific agencies.

A third bill, which passed 308-117, was aimed at speeding requests for government information made under the Freedom of Information Act. The White House stopped short of threatening to veto it but said it could not support the bill.

Read Full Article

Conditions at Walter Reed Known about for Years

Full Article at CQ

Senior Republicans who knew about problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center while their party controlled Congress insist they did all they could to prod the Pentagon to fix them.

But C.W. Bill Young, R-Fla., former chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, said he stopped short of going public with the hospital’s problems to avoid embarrassing the Army while it was fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Young and Thomas M. Davis III, R-Va., the former chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, both acknowledged in interviews that they were aware of patient care problems at Walter Reed long before The Washington Post exposed them two weeks ago.

At a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing Wednesday, Young detailed his efforts to assist patients at Walter Reed during visits he or his wife made to the hospital as early as 2003. He described repeatedly confronting the hospital’s then commander, Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, about patients who, they discovered, had received poor care.

Young said his wife, Beverly, found one Walter Reed patient lying in his hospital bed without sheets or blankets, having soiled himself. Another, who suffered from a battlefield brain injury, had fallen out of his bed three times, even after Young had told Kiley about the problem, the lawmaker said. And he said a third patient, who had an aneurysm, died after a respiratory therapist ignored family warnings about the patient’s fragile condition and treated him anyway.

“We got in Gen. Kiley’s face on a regular basis,” Young said, adding that he even contacted the commander of the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda in the hopes of getting better care there for the patient with the aneurysm, though doctors at Walter Reed declined to transfer him.

“What else do you want me to do? I am not going to go into a hospital and push my way into a medical situation,” Young said after the hearing.

Young said he “separates my life as a member of Congress and the work I do on a volunteer basis,” visiting military hospitals with his wife almost every week.

Young said he used his role as an appropriator to push to fund a new lab at Walter Reed and a new phone system at Fort Carson so patients could more easily make appointments.

But he said he purposely opted to bring concerns about individual patients’ care privately to the attention of Walter Reed commanders, rather than wield his clout as an Appropriations subcommittee chairman.

“We did not go public with these concerns, because we did not want to undermine the confidence of the patients and their families and give the Army a black eye while fighting a war,” Young said.

At the time, Young said, he believed “what I was dealing with was basically isolated cases, solder by soldier,” rather than a systemic problem at the hospital.

Even now, Young said, he’s not sure what more he could have done.

“Appropriations alone cannot solve all problems,” he said. “It takes more. It takes skill, it takes experience, it takes determination, and it takes attitude.”

He placed the blame for the hospital’s substandard conditions on Kiley, who now serves as the Army’s surgeon general, its top-ranking uniformed doctor. Young said he was not satisfied with Kiley’s answers at the hearing Wednesday and predicted that he would be relieved of his post by the weekend.

“The rumor around the Capitol is they’re keeping him here to take all the spears,” Young said.

Davis’ Panel Aware Since 2004

Davis, the former chairman of the committee with responsibility for oversight of government programs, said his options also were limited. He said his committee staff first learned in 2004 about problems with wounded soldiers’ health care while investigating their pay problems.

At a February 2005 hearing on care for wounded Army Guard and Reserve soldiers, Davis said, “I’m appalled that these men and women not only have had to face the recovery from their war wounds, but are simultaneously forced to navigate a confusing and seemingly uncaring system of benefits.”

Davis said he directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct several studies, “some of them coming from complaints from veterans that were stationed” at Walter Reed.

Davis’ committee staff aides fielded calls and attempted to help wounded soldiers and their families who called with complaints about pay and health care problems. At the committee’s March 5 hearing at Walter Reed, Annette L. McLeod testified that only after calling Davis’ office in 2006 did she make progress in getting proper care for her husband, Army National Guard Spec. Wendell W. McLeod Jr., who was injured while deployed in Iraq.

But Davis says he never pressed other committees or Republican leaders for legislation or new money to address problems his staff had identified.

“We are not appropriators. . . . I don’t know what else we could have done,” Davis said. “If generals don’t go around and look at the barracks, how do you legislate that?”

Democrats Also Aware

Democrats said they did all they could while in the minority.

John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, who was the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, said he sought appropriations to address problems he found during visits to military hospitals. For example, he obtained money for air conditioners for the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and modern stretchers for a Baghdad field hospital.

Murtha focused blame for the Walter Reed scandal on the Bush administration and said the Pentagon discouraged patients from talking to lawmakers in both parties.

“My impression is that the military was constrained, even intimidated, from telling me and other congressional members about the real problems and the real needs,” Murtha said.

Democrat Henry A. Waxman of California, who now chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, defended how his predecessor as chairman had handled the problems at Walter Reed.

“It isn’t that Chairman Davis didn’t ask them to account for it,” Waxman said. “I don’t think the problem is in our committee. The problem is in the Department of Defense.”

John F. Tierney, D-Mass., the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, made a point to praise Davis and former subcommittee Chairman Christopher Shays, R-Conn., at the March 5 hearing at Walter Reed. “I want to thank those members for their leadership so far,” Tierney said.

Martial Law: Now Easier Than Ever...

From and Editorial in the New York Times on February 19, 2007...

Original Article Here

A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night. So it was with a provision quietly tucked into the enormous defense budget bill at the Bush administration’s behest that makes it easier for a president to override local control of law enforcement and declare martial law.

The provision, signed into law in October, weakens two obscure but important bulwarks of liberty. One is the doctrine that bars military forces, including a federalized National Guard, from engaging in law enforcement. Called posse comitatus, it was enshrined in law after the Civil War to preserve the line between civil government and the military. The other is the Insurrection Act of 1807, which provides the major exemptions to posse comitatus. It essentially limits a president’s use of the military in law enforcement to putting down lawlessness, insurrection and rebellion, where a state is violating federal law or depriving people of constitutional rights.

The newly enacted provisions upset this careful balance. They shift the focus from making sure that federal laws are enforced to restoring public order. Beyond cases of actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or to any “other condition.”

Changes of this magnitude should be made only after a thorough public airing. But these new presidential powers were slipped into the law without hearings or public debate. The president made no mention of the changes when he signed the measure, and neither the White House nor Congress consulted in advance with the nation’s governors.

There is a bipartisan bill, introduced by Senators Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, and Christopher Bond, Republican of Missouri, and backed unanimously by the nation’s governors, that would repeal the stealthy revisions. Congress should pass it. If changes of this kind are proposed in the future, they must get a full and open debate.

House Panel Seeks Administration's Documents

A House Panel headed by Democratic Chairman Rep. Henry Waxman says that the White House Administration is not handing over documents that have been requested in their inquiry into how the administration has handled government scientific reports having to do with climate and the environment.

The allegations are that the administration has strong-armed scientists into taking out mention of global warming and climate change from reports and in other instances inserting their own verbiage and altering that of the scientists to change the meaning of the entire report.

Link Here

Excerpt to follow:

Two private advocacy groups, meanwhile, presented to the panel a survey of government climate scientists showing that many of them say they have been subjected to political pressure aimed at downplaying the threat of global warming.

The groups presented a survey that shows two in five of the 279 climate scientists who responded to a questionnaire complained that some of their scientific papers had been edited in a way that changed their meaning. Nearly half of the 279 said in response to another question that at some point they had been told to delete reference to "global warming" or "climate change" from a report.

The questionnaire was sent by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a private advocacy group. The report also was based on "firsthand experiences" described in interviews with the Government Accountability Project, which helps government whistleblowers, lawmakers were told.

Kucinich Taking Heat...

By Rep. Dennis Kucinich

Editor’s note: The Ohio Democrat sees desperation in the Republican National Committee’s attack on his potential 2006 ascent to a key national security subcommittee.

The Founders envisioned and created a national government with an intricate series of checks and balances. One-party rule has demolished that system. It has led to a government which has abused the war power, corrupted the Bill of Rights, established a national security state, and sharply accelerated upwards the wealth of the nation.

Under these circumstances, the American people, fed up with an illegal and untenable war, are demanding accountability and a true restoration of the two-party system. The 2006 elections will reflect the American people’s desire for a new start and a new direction. The desire for change is palpable. Few are more aware of this shift than the operatives of the Republican National Committee, who, in this election season, have attempted to make a new art form of the political smear.

A few days ago the RNC singled me out for obloquy. Let us consider the source. The tenor of their fear-driven attack is a measure of their anxiety-ridden anticipation: They have been institutionally and constitutionally incapable of publicly (and legally) accounting for their conduct of state.

I will not prejudice with any criticism or charges any oversight hearings of any committee I may chair in the next Congress. However, I do know that the American people still have unanswered questions about 9/11, WMDs, the abandonment of international law and the Geneva Conventions, the war in Iraq, the White House Iraq Group, the Rendon propaganda machine, Afghanistan, Abu Graib, Guantanamo, the Pat Tillman case, Iraq war casualties, the missing $10.8 billion in Iraq reconstruction funds, the human and economic toll of the war, rendition, wiretapping, domestic spying, and plans for an attack on Iran,

I do know that the American people cannot believe what has happened to this country in the past six years. I do know that the American people are demanding accountability.

And, in whatever capacity I serve in the next Congress, I will uphold the solemn oath I take to defend the Constitution of the United States, without regard to fear or favor.