Karl Frisch: Those "death panels" really do
exist

At this point, if anyone still believes that progressive proposals for health insurance reform contain ominous "death panels" designed to kill their grandparents, I have a bridge to sell them in Arizona. Fear not, my conservative friends: The bridge connects a tea bag manufacturing plant with a militia training camp stuck in the 1990s, so you should feel right at home.

The "death panel" smear goes something like this: President Obama and his comrades in Congress are hell-bent on instituting mandatory end-of-life counseling sessions for American seniors as part of their socialist takeover of the health insurance industry. They will choose who gets to live and who will die. You know, just like Adolf Hitler and the Nazis did in Germany.

To date, the media have debunked the "kill granny" lie more than 40 times. The nonpartisan FactCheck.org says the claim of mandatory counseling on ending seniors' lives is "a misrepresentation." ABC's chief medical editor, Dr. Tim Johnson, said "the idea about death panels" is "not at all legitimate." PolitiFact.com has called "death panel" claims "a ridiculous falsehood." When the Associated Press conducted a fact check of the bogus charge, it reported, "No 'death panel in health care bill.' "

After former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin claimed that "Obama's 'death panel' " could decide the fate of her parents or her son who has Down syndrome, conservative radio host Larry Elder aptly called her comments "over the top."

Having been called on the carpet repeatedly for their "death panel" claims, other media conservatives like ABC's John Stossel and Fox News' Glenn Beck have taken a new approach. Many now claim that while proposals for health insurance reform may not actually force seniors into end-of-life counseling, they will result in "de facto death panels" via the government's rationing of care. Seriously.

The dubious right-wing spin surrounding health insurance reform is a bit like that bad cough that just won't go away -- persistent and annoying.

Despite the coverage allotted to debunking the right-wing "death panel" smear, the bigger picture remains intact. Americans face real death panels from their own health insurance providers. Rather than simply debunking the right's false talking point, the media should have gone one step further and pointed out that health insurance companies make life-and-death decisions every day when they decide what they are willing and not willing to cover.

Largely lost in the media discussion surrounding health insurance reform is the reality of the status quo -- you know, why we need reform in the first place.

Back in June, the evening news broadcasts on ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS ignored a congressional hearing on insurance companies' practice of investigating the medical histories of people who become ill and submit claims for expensive treatments, and then rejecting those claims on the grounds that those individuals had pre-existing conditions. The goal is quite simple. Find something -- anything -- and cancel or deny coverage for needed, potentially life-saving treatment. Why save a life when you can save a buck?

Robin Beaton, a former policyholder, testified in the hearing that she had been subject to this very practice. A retired registered nurse, Beaton's dermatologist had mistakenly indicated that she may have been suffering from a pre-cancerous skin condition. Soon after, she was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer. A few days before her scheduled double mastectomy, Blue Cross launched an investigation into her health records going back five years, convinced she was hiding a serious pre-existing condition.

Many Americans have stories just like Beaton's. Congress ultimately concluded that three major American insurance companies rescinded 19,776 policies for over $300 million in savings over five years, a number that Wendell Potter, a former senior executive at CIGNA health insurance company, said "significantly undercounts the total number of rescissions" by the companies.

It's not to say that the media ignore all stories like Beaton's; they don't. The modern media are in the drama business. Too often, media of all stripes characterize this important policy debate as a "he said, she said" over the government's role in health care, something that conservatives no doubt relish, and in the process, they fail to paint a picture of the way things currently exist.

This practice plays not only with the health of too many Americans, but with the health of modern journalism as well. We can hardly solve this crisis if we aren't being told the whole story.

Death panels are real. They do exist. Your own insurance provider could be in on it. And it's time the media said so.

Karl Frisch is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog and research and information center based in Washington, D.C. Frisch also contributes to County Fair, a media blog featuring links to progressive media criticism from around the Web as well as original commentary. You can follow him on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, or sign up to receive his columns by email.

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Vitter Secret Plan, Now With Video!

We've got hold of video of Sen. Vitter describing his secret plan to bankrupt the Canadian health care system. [...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Talking-Points-Memo/~3/UItf7rBeI0w/vitter_secret_p
lan_now_with_video.php

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Today's Criminal: Chris Christie (Updated)

OK, let's just call him an unindicted co-conspirator. Remember the Bush administration? The people who worked tireless night and day to eviscerate the Constitution and every law emanating from it that didn't meet their goals of "old rich guys first, everyone else can just die".

Remember the attorneys they fired because they were disloyal to their ends? Well, just like Nixon, they had an enemies list. (Think Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame). They also had a loyalist list. Guess who won? 

As early as 2005, the Bush Administration was ranking federal prosecutors by their allegiance to the president as well as their job skills -- and then-U.S. attorney Chris Christie was considered one of most loyal, according to newly released documents. [...]

The ranking -- disclosed for the first time this week as part of a Congressional investigation into the controversial firings of U.S. attorneys in 2006 -- places Christie among prosecutors who "produced, managed well and exhibited loyalty to the President and Attorney General." [...]

The March 2005 list, sent to the White House by the Justice Department, was part of a trove of internal documents and Congressional testimony released on Tuesday. The documents also included testimony by Bush political advisor Karl Rove, who said he and Christie had discussed the possibility that Christie might run for governor. Those discussions occurred while Christie was still U.S. attorney, a non-political post.

HHHMMMNN... seems like a good time to check out how political his prosecutions might have been.  

Update: Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ):

"The more we learn about Mr. Christie's penchant for mixing campaign politics with law enforcement the more evidence there is that he has broken the law multiple times," said Congressman Pallone. "Breaking the law is bad enough for any federal employee, but it is especially bad by those with the responsibility of enforcing the law impartially and responsibly."

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Obama Clarifies Public Option Position at
Healthcare Forum and Hints at a White House Farmer's Market

BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Meg White

At a healthcare forum hosted by Organizing for America, the DNC's iteration of Obama's campaign team as transformed into a policy support outreach center, President Obama assured progressives that the public option is not dead.

"This is an example of a controversy that has been manufactured this week," Obama said Thursday in response to a question from a leader of Durham For Obama, a volunteer group in North Carolina. "I continue to support a public option; I think it is important."

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Obama Clarifies Public Option Position at
Healthcare Forum

BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Meg White

At a healthcare forum hosted by Organizing for America, the DNC's iteration of Obama's campaign team as transformed into a policy support outreach center, President Obama assured progressives that the public option is not dead.

"This is an example of a controversy that has been manufactured this week," Obama said Thursday in response to a question from a leader of Durham For Obama, a volunteer group in North Carolina. "I continue to support a public option; I think it is important."

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Message guru George Lakoff on Obama and health
care reform

A brilliant post by George Lakoff over at Daily Kos. It's a tad long, but even just reading the first half will open your eyes with wonder. A lot of our readers have asked us, "but what SHOULD Obama have done?" Lakoff tells you. (One quibble: Lakoff lumps "blogs" in with the usual suspects Obama has been using to date to fight for health care reform. That's wrong. Obama's people have barely used for the blogs for anything since they've taken office. Lots of folks are to blame for the fiasco that is becoming health care reform. We are not one of them.)

Barack Obama ran the best-organized and best-framed presidential campaign in history. How is it possible that the same people who did so well in the campaign have done so badly on health care?

And bad it is: The public option may well be gone. Neither Obama himself nor Senior Advisor David Axelrod even mentioned the public option in their pleas to the nation last Sunday (August 16, 2009). Secretary Sibelius even said it was ?not essential.? Cass Sunstein?s co-author, Richard Thaler, in the Sunday NY Times (August 16, 2009, p. BU 4) called it ?neither necessary nor sufficient.? There has been a major drop in support for the president throughout the country, with angry mobs disrupting town halls and the right wing airing its views with vehemence nonstop on radio and tv all day every day. As the NY Times reports, Organizing for America (the old Obama campaign network) can?t even get its own troops out to work for the President?s proposal.

What has been going wrong?

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Abortion Debate Solved, Teabag Style

What was I supposed to say to this?Last week, I attended a town hall meeting in Virginia. I sought out a couple that looked kinda grumpy and started talking with them. Our discussion was pretty far-ranging, and, in the end, I left thinking that these[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://firedoglake.com/2009/08/20/abortion-debate-solved-teabag-style/

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Obama & The Case of Troy Anthony Davis

Troy Davis, as you may know, is a  (black) former sports coach from Georgia, who was convicted and sentenced to death in 1991 for the August 19, 1989 murder of (white) off-duty Savannah, Georgia police officer Mark MacPhail under unresolved circumstances in a dark parking lot in Atlanta.

Throughout the trial and subsequent appeals, Davis maintained his innocence, claiming he was wrongfully convicted of the crime as a result of false identification.

After the trial and first set of appeals, seven of the nine prosecution eyewitnesses who had linked Davis to the killing recanted or contradicted their original trial testimony, claiming police coercion and questionable interrogation tactics.[1] The witness who first implicated Davis and has remained consistent, Sylvester "Redd" Coles, was initially a suspect in the crime. Coles was seen acting suspiciously the night of MacPhail's murder and has been heard boasting that he killed an off-duty police officer.[2] There is only one witness who did not recant his testimony and is not himself a suspect in the murder, but he made an in-court identification of Davis two years after the crime.

Last week, the Supreme Court--over the objections of Antonin ("Tony, the Toad") Scalia and Clarence ("Unca Tom") Thomas--ordered a federal district court in Georgia to consider and rule on whether new evidence "that could not have been obtained at the time of trial clearly establishes [Davis'] innocence."

Davis could still be executed, which would be--by many lights--a gross and criminal injury to justice. Prosecutors and judges, generally, and in the Soputh particularly, hate to revisit cases in which they may, in retrospect, be seen to have acted in undue, and racially animated haste. They hate to see anyone convicted of anything released. However many people are now urging President Obama, if the potentially exculpatory evidence is not allowed, and the sentence of death is re-instated, to pardon Davis.

Which ain't gonna happen. No Way! Period! No Chance!

Why?

The biggest reason that Obama can't issue a pardon to Davis was exemplified by the "Rev. Wright" flap, exaggerated by the Skip gates fiasco, and further exacerbated by the whole "birfer/deather/guns-at-rallies" phenomena, which is  nothing but an elaborate surrogate for the racial animus of the protesters: If, as a (even if only HALF) black president interferes in the case of a Black defendant already convicted of killing a white man, there will be unholy hell to pay amid the raving racist contingent, probably amounting to half the white population in the country. He will be accused of racism, or favoring the interests of black citizens over whites, of undermining the fundaments of the judicial system, all for the sake of freeing a (guilty!) "ni66er."

Resentment, fostered by right-wing/racist demagogues (Beck, Limbaugh, Dobbs, O'Reilly, Hannity & Savage, mainly) will explode at this "blatant" act of "racial preferrence." It will happen...

And the cops will not eagerly exercise civil authority against the violent, raging, (well-armed) white, middull-class...

Here's my theory, in fact, on why the "authorities" were not and will not be more aggressive in isolating and/or disarming the armed militia-types lately frequenting (mainly Dim/Presidential 'town-meetings'. It is/was that the the local lconstrabulary were afraid to be seen by their local constituents to be protecting a black--any black, even the President--from "legal" threats from whites.

It's race, stupid: If you are ever in doubt about the sources for legal injustice in the USer system, look first to the race of the victim and the alleged perpetrator...

Read The Full Article:
http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=25397

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Michelle Bernard Trashes Unions: A Lot of Unions
are What Pulls America Back and Keeps Us From Being as Good as We Can Be

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Where to even begin with this segment from MSNBC's Morning Meeting. I've really got to wonder if a single one of these people has ever done a hard day of physical labor in their entire lives to be able to carry on trashing unions the way they did.

First, Dylan Ratigan asks if unions are against health-care reform because everyone having health-care benefits would mean union members' benefits are no longer better than other non-union members' benefits, and of course the only thing unions care about is getting bigger. Ratigan doesn't seem to understand that those benefits are bargained for and part of an overall compensation package, and that if we weren't having to bargain for the health-care benefits, that would likely play out in being able to negotiate for higher take-home pay or some other benefit instead.

He also ignores the fact that this would be good for unionized companies if the burden of paying health-care expenses were taken off of their backs, which would make them more competitive, thus also benefiting the workers at those companies. Bernard follows with this:

Absolutely, the labor unions right now simply exist for one reason. To self perpetuate receiving union dues and having political influence. I think it's absolutely amazing to watch that clip from The Rachel Maddow Show last night. This guy is, he's saying to President Obama, I'm strong-arming you buddy. And my answer to this would be they are showing themselves to be as ridiculous as many members of the American public think they are. What happened to pragmatism? What happened to competition, and what actually happened to winning?

Maybe it would be great for the Democratic Party to lose the support of labor unions because quite honestly a lot of labor unions are what holds America back and keeps us from being as good as we can be.

I'd like to see these clowns try to have this conversation with someone like Leo Gerard at the table. He'd have eaten them for lunch. Heaven forbid someone who represents labor might have a seat at this table.

I hate to break it to them, but unions care about a whole lot more than just building up membership and accumulating political power. They have their problems like every other organization does, but to trash the only entity out there that is standing up for the interests of working Americans is just reprehensible.

They bargain for better pay and benefits, look out for the safety of workers on the job and they give the workers a chance to earn a living wage instead of a race to the bottom that there would be if corporations ran the whole show. They also drive up the wages of of non-union workers in industries similar to the unionized ones and for the non-union workers within the same company. Who's going to volunteer to be someone's non-union boss if your workers are making more money than you are?

The Michelle Bernards and Dylan Ratigans and Mike Allens of the world will never have to worry about working double shifts at two lousy jobs just to take care of their families because their first job doesn't pay enough to make the bills. They'll never have to worry about whether they might lose a hand at work because their company decided to skimp and not replace a guard on a piece of rotating equipment and they were afraid to complain about it because it might make their boss mad and find an excuse to fire them.

They won't have to worry about having a repetitive stress injury from doing the same task over and over all day, and because they have no union to ask that the jobs are rotated between workers, they can barely use their hands at a young age. They'll never have to be concerned that their backs are going out because they worked some job where they were stooped over day in and day out.

Instead, they sit on their pedestals and tell the public how awful the institutions that brought this country the end of child labor, the forty hour work week, overtime pay and a way for workers to be allowed to speak up for themselves in the work place without fear of losing their jobs are, and that all they care about is a "power grab".

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Midday open thread

• The FDA taps Dr. Lawrence Deyton, chief public health and environmental hazards officers that the Veterans Health Administration, to act as its first director of the newly created Center for Tobacco Products, the department that will handle tobacco regulation.
• Scary shit:

  My experiences have shown that the inundation of invitations for fundamentalist Christian prayer and fellowship, "spiritual growth" and "moral development" that target fellow Soldiers tends to thinly mask an undeniable and comprehensive underlying propensity for aggression, hatred, and ambition to subjugate the United States Army to an official religion; fundamentalist Christianity. The result for the American military is a total destruction of esprit de corps, teamwork, morale, good order and discipline. The result for the fundamentalist Islamic enemies we fight is an immeasurable bonanza of emboldenment for their recruitment, propoganda and insurgency efforts to maim and kill our soldiers down range in Iraq and Afghanistan. I was there. I saw it. I lived it. I am still living it.

• Despite recent polling showing him trailing badly, Marco Rubio still has devoted believers over at the National Review.
• Joe Klein declares the Republican Party to be the party of nihilists.
• Funding for electronic medical records receives a boost.
• Armand Biroonak at Campaign for America's Future looks at how we can shift dollars and jobs from defense spending to green spending.
• Open-source textbook company is meeting with impressive success. As the parent of several college students, I rejoice.
• Jayson Blair, Life Coach. In case making shit up and getting paid for it doesn't come naturally to you.
• In a push for healthcare reform, last night President Obama held a conference call with religious leaders, calling reform a moral obligation.

  "The one thing that you all share is a moral conviction," Obama said. "This debate over healthcare goes to the heart of who we are as American people... This is part of an ethical and moral obligation that we look out for one another. "In the wealthiest nation on Earth, we are neglecting to live out that call," the president said.

• The Dept. of Labor released a few sobering facts this week, including a study which shows workplace suicides increased by 28% last year.
• South African runner Caster Semenaya will undergo gender testing. Her competitors have raised doubts and she now appears set for a battery of medical and psychological testing.
• Dave Weigel debunks the latest attack that David Axelrod is getting rich on contracts backed by the administration:

  Scarborough argues that Axelrod "benefits from any business they receive as do other people on the payroll," which is only true insofar as Axelrod might lose his installments if the firms went belly-up. The pay-out of $1 million from Ask and $2 million from AKP is locked in; it doesn’t go up or down depending on what passes in Congress. It’s enough to get an attack going, though.

• A warning to parents:

  The CPSC has issued a second recall of convertible "close-sleeper/bedside sleeper" bassinets made by Simplicity after learning of two additional infant deaths since the bassinets were recalled last August ...

  If you bought a recalled bassinet, you should return it to the retail store where it was purchased. Most stores have agreed to issue their own recalls and provide a refund to consumers.

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