Michael Smallberg | Nov 20

POGO - The House Financial Services Committee voted 43-26 yesterday afternoon in favor of an amendment introduced by Reps. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Alan Grayson (D-FL) that would remove restrictions preventing the GAO from auditing the Federal Reserve. The amendment was modeled after Rep. Paul’s long-standing bill to audit the Fed, which was co-sponsored by over 300 Members in the House and supported by POGO and many other groups.

The vote on the final passage of the financial regulatory package to which the Paul-Grayson amendment is attached has been delayed until after Thanksgiving. Nonetheless, yesterday’s vote signals a defeat for Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC), who had introduced an alternative amendment that would have limited the scope of the GAO’s audits.

Kudos to FDL: FDL Statement on the Committee Passage of H.R. 1207, the Paul-Grayson Bill to Audit the Fed

James Halpin | Anchorage | Nov 18

adn.com - Two Anchorage men who told investigators they were horsing around with a "redneck flamethrower" set a 5-year-old boy's head on fire and have been charged with felony assault and reckless endangerment, according to police and court records.

Jonathon Michael Miller, 29, and Stephen Ray Dilley II, 32, were jailed Tuesday after inflicting second-degree burns to the boy's head and singing his hair with an aerosol sprayer and lighter, according to Alaska State Troopers. The child, who was injured Friday, did not receive medical treatment until arriving at school near his home in Anchor Point on Monday.

"It was described to the troopers as an accident," troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters said. "I mean a child, two guys, can of Quick Start, Bic lighter: How could this not go wrong?"

According to a troopers' affidavit filed in court, Miller told investigators he's been trying to toughen the boy up and the best way to do it is to "scare the s--t out of them when they don't see it coming."

Asked why the child had not gotten treatment, Miller told investigators, "Why go make bills for yourself over little things," according to the affidavit.

Brad Knickerbocker | Washington | November 18

CSM - Though the congressional debate and legislative sausage-making are far from over, the Senate took a major step Wednesday in putting forth a $849 billion healthcare reform bill.

The bill, launched by Senate majority leader Harry Reid – and vigorously opposed by Republicans – aims to provide health insurance for 94 percent of all Americans, including 31 million people now uninsured.

Kristen mack | Chicago | Nov 19

LA Times - Studs Terkel, the American storyteller, author, radio host, actor and activist, sought a job at the FBI, according to recently released documents.

Terkel, who died last year at 96, applied for a job in the FBI's fingerprints division in the 1930s. "It's a non-agent position," FBI spokesman Bill Carter said. "You would have to go through a background investigation, the same as you would for an agent, but you don't have arrest powers."

Instead of hiring Terkel, the agency ended up amassing a file on him. The FBI spent 45 years tracking him as a suspected communist, according to the 147 pages released from his 269-page dossier. The file was obtained by the New York City News Service under an act that requires the FBI to release certain documents to the public after an individual has died.

Terkel's paper trail started in 1945. It references Terkel speaking at a Paul Robeson rally in Chicago and quotes a source who questioned Terkel's "loyalty to the United States" because he worked with the BBC on a piece about the "sordid side of life in Chicago."

His file ends in 1990, when agents cut and pasted a Wall Street Journal article quoting his reaction to financier Michael Milken's junk-bond scandal.

"We live in a corrupt, amoral moment," Terkel said. "There are a million Milkens. He's reflective of our society at this time. People have lost their sense of outrage."

Richard Fausset | Atlanta | Nov 19

LA Times - A federal judge says the agency showed 'gross negligence' in the years before Katrina. The ruling could leave the government open to billions in claims.

In a ruling that could leave the government open to billions of dollars in claims from Hurricane Katrina victims, a federal judge said late Wednesday that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had displayed "gross negligence" in failing to maintain a navigation channel -- resulting in levee breaches that flooded large swaths of greater New Orleans.

U.S. District Judge Stanwood R. Duval peppered his 156-page decision, issued in New Orleans, with harsh criticism of the Army corps, at one point citing its "insouciance, myopia and shortsightedness" in failing to maintain the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, known locally as MRGO.

For more than 40 years, the judge said, the corps had known that a crucial levee protecting suburban St. Bernard Parish and the Lower 9th Ward neighborhood would be compromised by the deterioration of the channel. The corps had "myriad" ways to address the problem, he wrote, but failed to do so.

Duval awarded a total of $719,000 to a small group of flood victims that sued the government in April 2006.

But according to Pierce O'Donnell, the lead plaintiff's counsel, roughly 100,000 New Orleans-area residents and businesses who have filed flood-damage claims with the Army corps were now potentially eligible for payment.

"The judge agreed with us that Katrina was not a natural disaster," O'Donnell said. "Katrina was a man-made disaster caused by the Army Corps of Engineers."

The results of this poll are pretty interesting:

Americans don't want to shoulder the cost of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul themselves. They think the rich should pay for it.

I don't think it will happen that way, however. As a matter of fact, I know it won't. At least not yet. But it's another indication that Americans are much more progressive, especially when it comes to taxation, than politicians realize--I also think it is an indicator of just how pissed the middle class is with the wealthy in this country.

As I have noted many times here, I am in favor of a return to golden-era Eisenhower-like taxation, but I'm not holding my breath. If the Democrats really wanted a decent health-care plan, one that creates real health-care cost savings across the board, however, they could push one through. Instead we'll get a mushy-halfway plan that will be more of regressive tax on the middle class. But we all knew that, didn't we?

Rachel Maddow had Frank Schaeffer on again. The rhetoric from the far right has become more "incite"-full.

Video after the jump.

Strange days up here in Minnesota. A guy by the pseudonym Robert Erickson spoke to an anti-immigrant Tea Party rally at the State Capitol on Saturday. Turns out he punk'd them and demanded "Columbus Go Home" and the deportation of all these European immigrants. The videos were hits on YouTube. I got the reverse angle of the crowd in HD, now we've got a bit of a viral event unfolding!

98000reasons.org: Quanisha Scott from American Association for Justice on Vimeo.

The entire staff of the Agonist has already come out against the health care bill because it's essentially a giveaway to the big health insurance companies. Well here's one more reason to oppose it.

The video above tells the story of 29-year-old Quanisha Scott who underwent a partial thyroidectomy to remove a goiter at a hospital in Little Rock, Arkansas. Twelve hours later, she began to develop a shortness of breath and began feeling her neck tighten. Despite complaints to the nurses, her condition was not appropriately monitored or reported to a physician. She went into respiratory arrest and suffered severe brain damage. It was later discovered that she had a hematoma at the site of the surgery. She is now bed-ridden and totally dependent on her mother for care.

Things like this happen to 98,000 Americans every year. If we lose our right to sue bad doctors due to "tort reform" people like Quanisha will be dependent on the tax dollars of the rest of us for care while the doctors, hospitals and health insurance companies that harmed her walk away scot free.

The Senate has indicated (page 210, PDF) they're eager to throw out our right to sue bad doctors as part of the current "health care reform" package. See the excerpt in the full entry.

Disclosure: I'm proud to be helping the American Association for Justice fight for patient's rights.

Mary Williams Walsh | Washington | November 16

NYT -
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York gave up much of its power in high-pressure negotiations with the American International Group’s trading partners last year, according to a government report made public on Monday.

Just two days before the New York Fed paid A.I.G.’s partners 100 cents on the dollar to tear up their contracts with the insurance giant, one bank volunteered to take a modest haircut — but it never got the chance.

UBS, of Switzerland, alone offered to give a break to the New York Fed in the negotiations last November over how to keep A.I.G. from toppling and taking other banks down with it. It would have accepted 98 cents on the dollar.

Gina Kolata | Nov 17

NYT - Most women should start regular breast cancer screening at age 50, not 40, according to new guidelines released Monday by an influential group that provides guidance to doctors, insurance companies and policy makers.

The new recommendations, which do not apply to a small group of women with unusual risk factors for breast cancer, reverse longstanding guidelines and are aimed at reducing harm from overtreatment, the group says. It also says women age 50 to 74 should have mammograms less frequently — every two years, rather than every year. And it said doctors should stop teaching women to examine their breasts on a regular basis.

Just seven years ago, the same group, the United States Preventive Services Task Force, with different members, recommended that women have mammograms every one to two years starting at age 40. It found too little evidence to take a stand on breast self-examinations.

The task force is an independent panel of experts in prevention and primary care appointed by the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

Its new guidelines, which are different from those of some professional and advocacy organizations, are published online in The Annals of Internal Medicine They are likely to touch off yet another round of controversy over the benefits of screening for breast cancer.

Ian Urbina | Nov 17

NYT - Several times every year, Teodoro Nguema Obiang arrives at the doorstep of the United States from his home in Equatorial Guinea, on his way to his $35 million estate in Malibu, Calif., his fleet of luxury cars, his speedboats and private jet. And he is always let into the country.

The nation's doors are open to Obiang, the forest and agriculture minister of Equatorial Guinea and the son of its president, even though federal law enforcement officials believe that "most if not all" of his wealth comes from corruption. The graft is related to the extensive oil and gas reserves discovered more than a decade and a half ago off the coast of his tiny West African country, according to internal Justice Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement documents.

And the doors are open despite a federal law and a presidential proclamation that prohibit corrupt foreign officials and their families from receiving U.S. visas. The measures require only credible evidence of corruption, not a conviction for it.

Susan Pittman, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement in the State Department, said she was prohibited from discussing specific visa decisions. But other former and current State Department officials said Equatorial Guinea's close ties to the American oil industry are the reason for the lax enforcement of the law. Production of the country's nearly 400,000 barrels of oil a day is dominated by American companies such as ExxonMobil, Hess and Marathon.

"Of course it's because of oil," said John Bennett, U.S. ambassador to Equatorial Guinea from 1991 to 1994, adding that Washington has turned a blind eye to the Obiangs' corruption and repression because of its dependence on the country for natural resources. He noted that officials of Zimbabwe are barred from the United States.

Tony Pugh | Washington | Nov 17

McClatchy - The number of U.S. households that are struggling to feed their members jumped by 4 million to 17 million last year, as recession-fueled job losses and increased poverty and unemployment fueled a surge in hunger, a government survey reported Monday.

These "food-insecure" households represent about 49 million people and make up 14.6 percent, or more than one in seven, of all U.S. households. That's the highest rate since the U.S. Department of Agriculture began monitoring the issue in 1995.

Additionally, more than one-third of these struggling families — some 6.7 million households, or 17.2 million people last year — had "very low food security," in which food intake was reduced and eating patterns were disrupted for some family members because of a lack of food.

In phone interviews, more than two-thirds of people with very low food security said they went hungry from time to time, and 27 percent of these adults said they didn't eat at all some days.

These families make up 5.7 percent of U.S. households, again the highest rate since 1995, up from 4.1 percent and 4.7 million households in 2007.

Julia Duin | Baltimore | Nov 16

Washington Times - Cardinal Francis George, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, defended the bishops' involvement in national health care legislation Monday, saying the church must be "leaven" in the debate.

Speaking at the opening of the bishops' annual business meeting, "to limit our teaching or governing to what the state is not interested in would be to betray both the constitution of our country and, much more importantly, the Lord himself," he said.

Not only did USCCB staff and individual bishops play a vital role in getting abortion restrictions into the recently passed House version of the health care overhaul bill, they served notice Monday they will influence the bill's future.

Duff Wilson | Nov 16

NYT - Even as drug makers promise to support Washington’s health care overhaul by shaving $8 billion a year off the nation’s drug costs after the legislation takes effect, the industry has been raising its prices at the fastest rate in years.

In the last year, the industry has raised the wholesale prices of brand-name prescription drugs by about 9 percent, according to industry analysts. That will add more than $10 billion to the nation’s drug bill, which is on track to exceed $300 billion this year. By at least one analysis, it is the highest annual rate of inflation for drug prices since 1992.

The drug trend is distinctly at odds with the direction of the Consumer Price Index, which has fallen by 1.3 percent in the last year.

Drug makers say they have valid business reasons for the price increases. Critics say the industry is trying to establish a higher price base before Congress passes legislation that tries to curb drug spending in coming year.

Lesley Clark | Washington | Nov 16

McClatchy - Supporters of the U.S. embargo against Cuba have contributed nearly $11 million to members of Congress since 2004 in a largely successful effort to block efforts to weaken sanctions against the island, a new report shows.

In several cases, the report by Public Campaign says, members of Congress who had supported easing sanctions against Cuba changed their position — and got donations from the U.S.-Cuba Democracy Political Action Committee and its donors.

All told, the political action committee and its contributors have given $10.77 million nationwide to nearly 400 candidates and members of Congress, the report says.

The contributions include more than $850,000 to 53 Democrats in the House of Representatives who sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi earlier this month opposing any change to U.S.-Cuba policy. The average signer, the report says, received $16,344.

The top five recipients of the embargo supporters' cash: Miami's three Cuban-American Republican members of Congress, 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain and New Jersey Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez, whose parents fled Cuba before his birth.

The report comes as defenders of the embargo fend off efforts to repeal a decades-old ban against U.S. travel to Cuba. Proponents of greater engagement with Cuba contend that they have the votes, and a hearing on the issue is scheduled for Thursday before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Critics of U.S.-Cuba policy long have suggested a link between campaign contributions and policy. Public Campaign — which advocates for public financing of political campaigns — says the contributions raise questions about the role that money plays in lawmakers' decision-making.

duh

The announcement of financial overhaul legislation in the U.S. Senate this week smacked of irony as its author, Senator Chris Dodd—the recipient of a sweetheart rate on his own home mortgage—announced a sweeping 1,136 page piece of legislation to “protect consumers.” It appears at this point that the protection consumers and Middle America really need is from this nation’s politicians, who have too long lined their pockets with campaign contributions from big business and who have allowed financial institutions to fleece Middle America.

It wasn’t but a couple of years ago that big business and congress all but eliminated the ability of consumers to effectively discharge their debts in bankruptcy proceedings. At the same time, banks and financial institutions were making loans to borrowers who clearly could not qualify. Banks, financial institutions and credit card companies continued extending generous limits on credit cards and lines of credit to consumers. Now be fair, much of the mortgage activity came from Democrats in congress who believed that everyone had an inalienable right to own a home, evidently whether they could afford it or not. And naturally, Republicans, who long ago sold their soul to big business, positioned their bank and financial institution contributors for all of the mortgage business.

“Disillusioned” is the word that best describes how many Americans feel after eight years of George Bush and the election of Barack Obama a year ago. Republicans had a majority in congress and the presidency, yet achieved little for Middle America. They betrayed voters by inflating the deficit and growing government, sending men and women into nation-building wars whose purposes are still unknown, and created a culture of moral and ethical corruption in Washington D.C. It was under lax and pathetic regulatory oversight that a Republican president and Republican congress allowed corporations to betray shareholders with questionable and highly leveraged credit default swaps, only to be followed by a $700 billion taxpayer bailout created by the Bush administration—so much for limited government. Republicans are a party without a message and without a messenger.

Yes, yes, I know I've been on my hobby-horse about women's rights in America most of this week. But really, can one describe the desire for equal pay and an equal choice set for fully half of our population as a hobby-horse? I think not. I do realize that women have it very well on our society. But it could be better. Much better, as this post demonstrates.

The only quibble I have with the post--and the report--is that it's too narrowly focused on economic determinants. Matters of choice, education and general quality of life measures would be most welcome too.

And yet, how can such things improve when women are only 3% of CEOS, or, even more worrisome, when women are 'losing ground relative to men in terms of salaries: female CEOs [of non-profits] now make only 66 percent of male salaries, compared with 71 percent in 2000,' or in politics: "In state politics, there are only six women governors, and women comprise only 15 percent of mayors of cities with populations of over 100,000."

I have a sinking feeling that there has been a steady erosion of women's rights in the country over the last twenty-five years and I'd like to see a study focusing on that. Sure, there has been some high profile window dressing in corporate America and in politics, but still. How can 78 cents on the dollar be a good thing?

Lita Beck | Nov 15

Raw Story - A crime as old as the West is taking off again like a stampede as cattle rustlers armed with wire cutters and cattle trailers crisscross country roads.

"We've got some awful good cowboys, you know," said Marvin Willis, Texas Special Ranger. "They can load the cattle in a hurry."

For the second year in a row, cattle rustling may reach record levels. There were 6,404 cattle thefts in Texas in 2008 and only 2,400 thefts in 2007, according to the Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association.

A modern-day posse of more than two dozen Texas Rangers -- including Willis -- is charged with tracking down cattle thieves.

But it's nothing like the old Westerns, Willis said. Willis called the modern-day outlaws "common thugs."

"If it wasn't cattle, it would be something else they'd be stealing," he said.

Ranchers such as Sammy Ward said they fear the increase in cattle thefts is tied to the economic recession.

"But I think the worse the economy gets, you're going to see more," he said.

The victims are often small ranchers, and the loss cuts deep.

Send a coat hanger to pro-choice Dems who voted for the Stupak Amendment, here.

Grant McCool | New York | November 13

Reuters - Two computer programmers provided technical support to falsify documents and trading records for swindler Bernard Madoff and took hush money to help keep the massive fraud going, U.S. authorities said.

The FBI arrested Jerome O'Hara, 46, and George Perez, 43, at their homes on Friday morning on criminal charges of conspiracy for falsifying books and records at both the broker-dealer and investment arms of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC in New York.

Lance Mannion writes and I suggest we all read it. Damn fine post.

Greg Mitchell | Nov 10 | Huff

Early this week, President Obama -- perhaps under new pressure as a Nobel Peace Prize winner -- said he would like to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki during his presidency. If he does, he will become the first sitting U.S. president to make that trip.

Yesterday, Veterans Day arrived, so here I'd liked to pay tribute to two of the most remarkable veterans I've ever encountered.

In the weeks following the atomic attacks on Japan 64 years ago, and then for decades afterward, the United States engaged in airtight suppression of all film shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings. This included footage shot by U.S. military crews and Japanese newsreel teams. In addition, for many years, many newspaper photographs were seized or prohibited.

The general public did not see any of the newsreel footage for 25 years, and the U.S. military film remained hidden for nearly four decades. I first probed the coverup back in 1983, and developed it further in later articles and in my 1995 book with Robert Jay Lifton, Hiroshima in America and in a 2005 documentary Original Child Bomb.

Chris McGreal | Los Angeles | Nov 13

The Guardian - UN special rapporteur says wealthy US ignoring deepening homeless crisis while pumping billions into bank rescues

• Investigator meets homeless victims of American dream

UN special rapporteur Raquel Rolnik says the burden falls most heavily on the very poor, leaving the extent of the housing crisis invisible to many in the US. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images A United Nations special investigator who was blocked from visiting the US by the Bush administration has accused the American government of pouring billions of dollars into rescuing banks and big business while treating as "invisible" a deepening homeless crisis.

Raquel Rolnik, the UN special rapporteur for the right to adequate housing, who has just completed a seven-city tour of America, said it was shameful that a country as wealthy as the US was not spending more money on lifting its citizens out of homelessness and substandard, overcrowded housing.

"The housing crisis is invisible for many in the US," she said. "I learned through this visit that real affordable housing and poverty is something that hasn't been dealt with as an issue. Even if we talk about the financial crisis and government stepping in in order to promote economic recovery, there is no such help for the homeless."

She added: "I think those who are suffering the most in this whole situation are the very poor, the low-income population. The burden is disproportionately on them and it's of course disproportionately on African-Americans