Even Charlie Crist would have been a step up from this putz

March 3, 2015March 15, 2015 ~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Millionaire healthcare fraud Gov. Rick Scott doesn’t give a shit about the uninsured — because he can’t squeeze any profit from them:

In case there’s anyone left who thinks Scott cares if even more Floridians die without health insurance, this quote from Scott in the New York Times should clear that right up for you. When asked what would happen if those insured under the ACA in states who didn’t create a state exchange, like Florida, lost their subsidies because Florida refused to set up such an exchange, Scott simply dismissed those Floridians as if they were excess baggage:

This week, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case, King v. Burwell, that challenges the legality of the subsidies in more than 30 states, including Florida. The case, developed by conservative legal scholars, argues that only people using state-run marketplaces are entitled to subsidies.

If the court agrees — a decision is expected in June — subsidies will disappear in states that do not have their own online marketplaces, almost all of which have Republican-led governments that oppose the law and have resisted creating state exchanges. No state would be more affected than Florida, where more than 1.6 million people have insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act, the most in the nation, and almost all of them receive subsidies.

Yet there is little talk of a Plan B here, such as creating a state-run exchange where subsidies would still be available, if the Supreme Court strikes down the subsidy program. Asked about the case last month at the American Action Forum, a conservative advocacy group, Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, said, “This is not my program.” He added, “It’s a federal problem.”

Not his problem.
Continue reading “Even Charlie Crist would have been a step up from this putz” →

Rahm’s corruption

March 2, 2015March 15, 2015 ~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Bill Moyers with a roundup of Emanuel administration scandals even I didn’t know about! Like this one:

Indeed, the mayor faced a drumbeat of outstanding journalistic exposés all throughout the campaign. The Chicago Sun-Times reported on Deborah Quazzo, an Emanuel school board appointee who runs an investment fund for companies that privatize school functions.

They discovered that five companies in which she had an ownership stake have more than tripled their business with the Chicago Public Schools since she joined the board, many of them for contracts drawn up in the suspicious amount of $24,999 — one dollar below the amount that required central office approval. (Chicago is the only municipality in Illinois whose school board is appointed by a mayor. But activists succeeded — in an arduous accomplishment against the obstruction attempts of Emanuel backers on the city council — to get an advisory referendum on the ballot in a majority of the city’s wards calling for an elected representative school board.

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Insurers try to silence Hurricane Sandy victims

February 26, 2015February 26, 2015 ~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Insurance carriers that administer the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Flood Insurance Program are asking Hurricane Sandy victims to keep quiet about allegations of fraudulently altered engineering reports. In exchange for settling claims with FEMA, the private insurers want homeowners to give up their right to cooperate in any state or federal investigations. Steve Mostyn, an… Continue reading “Insurers try to silence Hurricane Sandy victims” →

Chris Christie: Still lying

February 25, 2015February 24, 2015 ~ susie ~ 3 Comments

So Christie’s claiming that the court ruling saying he couldn’t get out of making the agreed-upon state pension payments is a liberal activist judge overriding the “will of the people.” But the real problem is that Chris Christie tripled the NJ management investment fees to build up Wall Street support for his presidential run, and if he hadn’t, he could make the payment:

Christie has said the pension cuts were necessary to balance the state’s budget and that “there are no alternatives” to such reductions. At the same time, he has backed record amounts of new corporate tax subsidies — some of which flowed to Republican campaign contributors. He has also vetoed legislation to increase taxes on income above $1 million. That legislation was projected to raise $1.1 billion, which proponents said would have allowed the state to make its required pension contribution.

Christie’s spokesperson, Michael Drewniak, told the Philadelphia Inquirer: “Once again liberal judicial activism rears its head with the court trying to replace its own judgment for the judgment of the people who were elected to make these decisions. This budget was passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor with a pension payment. The governor will continue to work on a practical solution to New Jersey’s pension and health benefits problems while he appeals this decision to a higher court where we are confident the judgment of New Jersey’s elected officials will be vindicated.”

Will the Brits finally be held accountable?

February 24, 2015February 22, 2015 ~ susie ~ 1 Comment

I’m glad this is finally going to be brought to worldwide attention. The British government should pay dearly for the things they did in the name of “fighting terror”:

Now Amal Clooney will represent Northern Ireland’s “Hooded Men,” 14 Irish prisoners who endured Britain’s version of Guantanamo in a case that, according to researcher Lauretta Farrell, has become “the benchmark by which other countries measure their ‘enhanced interrogation programs,’ and continues to be used to justify the use of torture by democratic societies.” The trial will be heard in the European Court of Human Rights, in Strasbourg, and its result could rewrite international law and help combat the use of torture globally.

Decades before Abu Ghraib’s hooded captives would become symbolic of torture in the public consciousness, the Hooded Men were subjected to dehumanizing, horrific “special treatment” at the hands of the British army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary—Northern Ireland’s former police force. Several of the men, who were arrested on suspicion of belonging to the Irish Republican Army, were in fact prominent civil rights activists, and one of them—P.J. McClean—was a founder of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association. None were ever convicted of any offense.

Twelve of the men were captured on Aug. 9, 1971, when 342 Catholics were arrested as part of Operation Demetrius, which ushered in one of Ireland’s darkest times with mass internment, or imprisonment, without trial. During the first half of the 1970s, almost 2,000 people were interned and 7,000 people fled or were forced out of their homes amid sectarian violence. Under the notorious Special Powers Act, which rescinded habeas corpus and allowed almost free rein to British forces, internment had been employed by the Unionist government in every decade since the creation of the Northern Irish state as a means to suppress Republican opposition.

The 14 men would later describe themselves as “the guinea pigs” for what became known as the five techniques for in-depth interrogation: prolonged “wall-standing,” hooding, subjection to noise, sleep deprivation and deprivation of food and drink. Wall-standing involved forcing prisoners to stand balanced in the “search position” against a cell wall for hours at a time, causing painful muscle cramps. One of the men described being forced to remain in this position for 43½, and there were many other recorded instances of prisoners being kept this way for more than 20 hours. According to Amnesty International, hooding meant that a prisoner’s head was covered with an “opaque cloth bag with no ventilation” except during interrogation or when in isolation. Subjection to noise meant placing the prisoner in close proximity to “white noise” from machinery, such as a generator or compressor, for as long as a week. One of the men described to Amnesty International how he was driven to the brink of insanity by the noise and how he tried to commit suicide by banging his head against metal pipes in his cell.
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Follow the money

February 23, 2015February 22, 2015 ~ susie ~ 3 Comments

And it leads you right to a Koch climate whore:

A prominent academic and climate change denier’s work was funded almost entirely by the energy industry, receiving more than $1.2m from companies, lobby groups and oil billionaires over more than a decade, newly released documents show.

Over the last 14 years Willie Soon, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, received a total of $1.25m from Exxon Mobil, Southern Company, the American Petroleum Institute (API) and a foundation run by the ultra-conservative Koch brothers, the documents obtained by Greenpeace through freedom of information filings show.

According to the documents, the biggest single funder was Southern Company, one of the country’s biggest electricity providers that relies heavily on coal.

The documents draw new attention to the industry’s efforts to block action against climate change – including President Barack Obama’s power-plant rules.

Unlike the vast majority of scientists, Soon does not accept that rising greenhouse gas emissions since the industrial age are causing climate changes. He contends climate change is driven by the sun.

In the relatively small universe of climate denial Soon, with his Harvard-Smithsonian credentials, was a sought after commodity. He was cited admiringly by Senator James Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who famously called global warming a hoax. He was called to testify when Republicans in the Kansas state legislature tried to block measures promoting wind and solar power. The Heartland Institute, a hub of climate denial, gave Soon a courage award.

Soon did not enjoy such recognition from the scientific community. There were no grants from Nasa, the National Science Foundation or the other institutions which were funding his colleagues at the Center for Astrophysics. According to the documents, his work was funded almost entirely by the fossil fuel lobby.

“The question here is really: ‘What did API, ExxonMobil, Southern Company and Charles Koch see in Willie Soon? What did they get for $1m-plus,” said Kert Davies, a former Greenpeace researcher who filed the original freedom of information requests. Greenpeace and the Climate Investigations Center, of which Davies is the founder, shared the documents with news organisations.

“Did they simply hope he was on to research that would disprove the consensus? Or was it too enticing to be able to basically buy the nameplate Harvard-Smithsonian?”

I’d say it’s safe to discount the former. Just a hunch!

Big surprise

February 20, 2015February 20, 2015 ~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Jeb Bush is a gladhanding bagman, just like his father:

WASHINGTON — Jeb Bush personally lobbied the secretary of health and human services, while his father was vice president, on behalf of a Miami figure who would later flee the country accused of one of the greatest Medicare frauds in the program’s history.

Bush pressed then-HHS Secretary Margaret Heckler to give the man’s HMO a waiver so that it could accept larger sums of Medicare money than it otherwise would have been allowed, Heckler told The Huffington Post.

Miguel Recarey Jr., head of the health maintenance organization International Medical Centers (IMC) who often boasted of connections to the Miami Cuban mafia, paid Bush $75,000 in the mid-1980s. Bush has acknowledged receiving the payment but said it was tendered for real estate consultation. But the deal he consulted on was never closed.

The New York Times recently reported that the younger Bush made frequent use of his connection to his father both as vice president and president. “Even within a family long steeped in politics, Mr. Bush stood out to White House aides for the frequency of his communications and the intensity of the opinions,” the paper reported.

Kicking ass for the working class

February 20, 2015February 20, 2015 ~ susie ~ 7 Comments

Remember, this movement started with no help (let alone leadership) from the political establishment on the minimum wage organizing, and this certainly wasn’t driven by electoral politics. This was accomplished by the workers themselves and some good old-fashioned organizing, and those organizers who helped pulled it off should be congratulated:

BENTONVILLE, Ark. — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is spending $1 billion to make changes to how it pays and trains U.S. hourly workers as the embattled retailer tries to reshape the image that its stores offer dead-end jobs.

As part of its biggest investment in worker training and pay ever, WalMart told The Associated Press that within the next six months it will give raises to about 500,000 workers, or nearly 40 percent of its 1.3 million U.S. employees. Wal-Mart follows other retailers that have boosted hourly pay recently, but because it’s the nation’s largest private employer, the impact of its move will be more closely watched.

In addition to raises, Wal-Mart said it plans to make changes to how workers are scheduled and add training programs for sales staff so that employees can more easily map out their future at the company.

“We are trying to create a meritocracy where you can start somewhere and end up just as high as your hard work and your capacity will enable you to go,” CEO Doug McMillon told the AP during an interview this week at the company’s headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas.

The changes, which Wal-Mart announced Thursday as it reported stronger-than-expected fourth quarter results, come at a time when there’s growing concern for the plight of the nation’s hourly workers.

Thousands of U.S. hourly workers and their supporters have staged protests across the country in the past couple of years to call attention to their financial struggles. Business groups and politicians have jumped into the fradebating a proposal by President Obama to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour. And a new Associated Press-GfK poll found that most Americans support increasing the minimum wage.

At the same time, competition for retail workers is becoming increasingly stiff. As shoppers get more mobile savvy, retailers are seeking sales staff that’s more skilled at customer service. But in the improving economy, the most desirable retail workers feel more confident in hopping from job to job.

I like Gawker’s take:

Walmart is giving raises to its workers for one simple reason: it has to. The company is smart enough to see that the ongoing protest campaign against it by its own poor employees demanding a living wage will not end. It will not end, just like the similar campaign by fast food workers will not end. Not only will the cries of low-paid workers not end; they will be heard. Walmart knows that these demands must, eventually, be met. Because they are eminently reasonable. And more to the point, because America is a nation that is starting to realize in a very public way the the economic inequality that has been choking us for three decades now is unsustainable. The Walmart corporation and its well-paid executives and fabulously wealthy owners understand this simple truth: there are many, many more people who identify with Walmart workers than there are people who identify with the richest family in America.

Walmart is giving its workers raises. It is doing so because it doesn’t have a choice. This is a good example of rising public anger accomplishing something. Just a couple of dollars an hour, for now. More, soon.

Slave labor in Louisiana

February 20, 2015February 19, 2015 ~ susie ~ 3 Comments

If it wasn’t for these worker visas, employers might have to pay a living wage and provide safe working conditions! Can’t have that:

NEW ORLEANS—Yesterday, a jury awarded over $14 million in damages to the plaintiffs of David v. Signal International, the first of a series of lawsuits that together constitute one of the largest human trafficking and forced labor cases in U.S. history. After more than four weeks of testimony and several days of deliberations, the jury found that marine construction company Signal International and its agents engaged in human trafficking, forced labor and racketeering, among other violations.

It is “an historic verdict,” said Alan Howard, lead counsel for the plaintiffs, “finding damages against every defendant on every single claim that we brought, and finding punitive damages against every defendant for every claim for which we were entitled to ask for punitive damages.” Signal must pay over $12 million to the five plaintiffs, while the company’s recruiter and its immigration lawyer must pay over $900,000 each.

The original suit, filed on behalf of almost 600 Indian welders and pipefitters, alleged that the workers had been lured to the United States with false promises of green cards, which enable permanent residency. They paid $11,000-25,000 in recruiting fees for the opportunity, the complaint said, selling property, pawning jewelry, and taking out high-interest loans to finance the fees. The suit was brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights organization, which enlisted the cooperation of several top law firms to litigate multiple cases pro bono after the original was not certified as a class action.
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Screwing the Greeks

February 19, 2015 ~ susie ~ 2 Comments

What Germany just did to Greece’s new ruling coalition:

Germany has rejected a Greek request for a six-month extension to its eurozone loan programme.

The rejection came despite the European Commission calling the Greek request “positive” only minutes earlier.

Greece had sought a new six-month assistance package, rather than a renewal of the existing deal that comes with tough austerity conditions.

However, a German finance ministry spokesman said the new plea was “not a substantial proposal for a solution”.

Later on Thursday, Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras and German chancellor Angela Merkel spoke by telephone, according to the Reuters news agency.

One Greek government official described the 50-minute call as “constructive”, adding: “The conversation was held in a positive climate, geared towards finding a mutually beneficial solution for Greece and the eurozone.”

Meanwhile, Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi spoke to Mr Tsipras and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in a further effort to strike a deal, an Italian government source said, according to Reuters.

Greece formally requested a six-month extension to its eurozone loan agreement on Thursday, offering major concessions as it raced to avoid running out of cash within weeks, but the German finance ministry abruptly dismissed the proposal.

The BBC’s Mark Lowen in Athens says Germany’s rejection of the Greek proposal suggested “a rift between Brussels and Berlin at the very highest level”.

“It’s not yet clear which side will prevail, and which side will give ground, but clearly the hopes that Greece was moving towards a deal… have been thrown into doubt once again.”

Sounds like a pitchfork moment to me. May I remind you of how the Greeks have dealt with previous austerity?