Fold/Spindle/Mutilate 2.1

By Muriel Kane

In a just-released interview conducted earlier this month with the New York Times and the Washington Post, former White House adviser Karl Rove appeared to be attempting to portray his involvement in the December 2006 firing of several US Attorneys as merely “peripheral” and not tied to any particular agenda.

The Times even headlined its story, “Rove Says His Role in Prosecutor Firings Was Small.”

However, all three of the US Attorney firings in which Rove has now admitted playing some role are linked by the common theme of allegations of voter fraud and by connections to a GOP front group known as the American Center for Voting Rights, which was formed in early 2005 to press the voter fraud issue. This suggests that Rove’s relationship to those three firings may not be as casual as he now claims.

The David Iglesias firing

“Yes, I was a recipient of complaints, and I passed them on to the counsel’s office to be passed onto Justice,” Rove told the Post, in reference to voter fraud complains which he had received from New Mexico. Rove further noted that the complaints “had the sound of authenticity to me. If what I’m told is accurate, it’s really troublesome.”

According to the Post, the complaints which Rove described himself as having merely passed on to the office of White House Counsel Harriet Miers began in 2005, when “then-Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), his chief of staff, Steve Bell, and GOP lawyers in the state lobbied aggressively to oust the prosecutor.”

However, testimony and analysis from the spring and summer of 2007, when the US Attorney scandal was first breaking, indicate a far deeper involvement on Rove’s part than merely transmitting the complaints of others. That June, for example, Rep. John Conyers wrote:

“The evidence gathered so far also shows significant White House involvement — including by Mr. Rove — in the decision to dismiss David Iglesias as U.S. Attorney for the District of New Mexico. We have learned from the testimony of the Attorney General and Mr. Sampson that Mr. Rove directly complained to the Attorney General about concerns that prosecutors were not aggressively pursuing voter fraud cases in districts in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and New Mexico. One of these districts was that of Mr. Iglesias, who was added after that complaint to the list of U.S. Attorneys to be replaced.”

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By David Edwards

Perhaps feeling guilty for referring to ‘birthers’ as ‘cranks’ recently, Ann Coulter made the absurd case to Larry King that police don’t stop enough African-Americans.

Partial transcript

COULTER: In fact, I have been — at least in the initial crankiness by Professor Gates, I’ve been somewhat of a defender of his, in as much as I’m someone who travels a lot. I get a lot of — I get cranky, too, especially after a long trip from China.

What can’t be defended, I think, is the next 48 hours, the next week, when he could calm down and think, oh boy, I over-reacted. Wish I hadn’t done that. But I think that is a problem. Both aggrieved minorities and aggrieved females are told to take every slight, interpret everything as it’s because your black. It’s because you’re a woman. I don’t think that’s good for blacks or females. I don’t think it’s good for the rest of the country.

And there is one thing I’d like to say about the studies on racial profiling, and even the Bush administration coming out with them. The Bush administration itself suppressed a study that disproved eight billion racial profiling studies about the New Jersey State Troopers. There was a scientific study setting up cameras of people speeding. It turns out New Jersey State Troopers, by scientific evidence that was — the Bush administration kept rejecting and rejecting — were stopping, if anything, not enough blacks.

Al Sharpton thought Coulter should take a lesson from the meeting between Sergeant James Crowley and Dr. Henry Louis Gates. “The climate, Ann, in America is no longer to start arguing and screaming and saying, even the Bush administration is covering up. The climate is, let’s sit down and say we disagree. Now let’s solve the problems, even though we disagree. I hope you learn to do that, Ann,” said Sharpton.

This video is from CNN’s Larry King Live, broadcast July 30, 2009.

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By John Byrne

Typical “Blue Dog” Democrats — moderate members of Congress who have been the most ardent among Obama’s own party in thwarting ongoing national healthcare legislation — receive 25 percent more campaign cash from the healthcare and insurance industry than other Democrats, an investigation has found.

In fact, a Blue Dog’s average receipts from the medical industry was just $3,625 less than that of the average Republican. Republicans have worked to block plans to enact universal health insurance legislation, saying that it would restrict individual choice and lead to the rationing of medical care.

Blue Dog Democrats say they’re for moderate fiscal policy and aim to reduce the overall cost of a health insurance measure. It appears, however, that their ideological opposition is underwritten by the industry most affected by proposed changes.

Notably, the Blue Dog Political Action Committee has received lavish financial support from pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Novartis; insurers WellPoint and Northwestern Mutual and the trade group American’s Health Insurance Plans.

The average Blue Dog got more than half (54 percent) of total 2009 financial contributions from the medical care industry. Its PAC has more than doubled in size since 2005 — at a time when both national Republican and Democratic campaign committees reported double-digit drops in funding.

“PAC fundraising has increased in every cycle since the Blue Dogs founding in 1995,” the watchdog Center for Public Integrity writes. “Between the 2005-2006 and 2007-2008 cycles, as fundraising for the National Republican Congressional Committee declined 33 percent and fundraising for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee grew by just 26 percent, the Blue Dog PAC more than doubled its receipts. In all, 357 political action committees donated to the Blue Dog PAC in 2007-2008, up from 223 in the previous cycle.”

Blue Dog Democrats have, on average, received more than $10,000 each from the healthcare industry.

“The support for Blue Dogs from health care professionals is even more evident,” notes campaign watchdog OpenSecrets. “Health pros are among the top 20 industry donors to 38 Blue Dogs since 1989 and are the No. 1 donor for five of them. Health pros have also given the typical Blue Dog $47,550 more than the typical non-Blue Dog Democrat in the House.”

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Asking the obvious

By David Edwards and Stephen Webster

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), hoping to force the GOP to put up or shut up on health reform, introduced an amendment Thursday night that would have repealed medicare, thereby forcing Republicans to show their support for the largest form of government-run healthcare in the U.S.

Speaking to MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on Thursday broadcast, he took his point even further and wondered aloud why America even needs health insurance companies.

“What we’ve learned is that government-administered healthcare works pretty darn well,” he told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Thursday. “It’s got low overhead and people like it. So, when my colleagues pound the drum and pound the podium about how they hate government-run healthcare, I guess they haven’t looked at what they get.”

The congressman added that he believes medicare works so well and is so simple that America does not need the health insurance companies at all.

“Why do we even need the insurance companies?” he asked. “What constructive role are they playing? They’re taking tens of billions of dollars each year and putting that into profits when that should have been going into healthcare.”

He declared that only a “true single-payer system” will work and said he plans to introduce legislation that would accomplish those ends. “It’s simpler and we know it works,” he said.

This video is from MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast July 30, 2009.

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By John Amato

We need people like Senator Jeff Merkley fighting for us. Blue America still has our act-blue page alive and well for health care reform. Please pitch in if you can.
It’s so frustrating watching the Max Baucus coalition try and dictate health care reform for America.

Not to just keep flogging a dead horse endlessly, but it does strike me as worth noting that when you read a puff piece in The New York Times about the Gang of Six bipartisan dealmakers in the Senate that vast power is being wielded by people who, in a democratic system of government, would have almost no power. We’re talking, after all, about Max Baucus of Montana, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, Susan Collins of Maine, Mike Enzi of Wyoming, and Chuck Grassley of Iowa. Collectively those six states contain about 2.74 percent of the population, less than New Jersey, or about one fifth the population of California. The six largest states, by contrast, contain about 40 percent of Americans…read on

And Max Baucus was leaking out costs today to the media from the Holy CBO that he says gets their bill to cost under the magic 1 trillion mark. Of course the Holy Grail doesn’t have all the figures yet, Max says, but he’s trying to sell it to the media that way. If the plan doesn’t cost anything then it won’t do anything. Being obsessed by the Holy CBO has been a huge big mistake. Just to remind you, Max Baucus was instrumental in getting Bush’s tax cuts passed back in 2001.

Baucus started his career as a relatively low-profile congressman from conservative Montana but, in recent years, has shown a willingness to stray from the Democratic lines, at times sparking intense fights with the congressional Democratic leadership. He supported President Bush’s trillion-dollar tax cut that mainly benefitted the wealthy in 2001, fought to add a prescription-drug benefit to Medicare (in language pushed by the Bush administration) and sought billions in aid for drought-plagued farmers in his home state.

And now he plans to kill health care.

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By Stephen C. Webster

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) went on the attack against the private health insurance industry and urged Democrats to follow her lead over the congressional recess.

“[Private insurers] are the villains in this,” she said speaking to reporters outside of her offices. “They have been part of the problem in a major way. They are doing everything in their power to stop a public option from happening. And the public has to know that. They can disguise their arguments any way they want, but the fact is that they don’t want the competition.”

“The public option — that’s where the insurance companies are making their attacks — it’s almost immoral what they are doing,” Pelosi added, according to Politico.

She continued: “Of course, they’ve been immoral all along. They are the villains in this, they have been part of the problem in a major way. They are doing everything in their power to stop a public option from happening and the public has to know.. They have had a good thing going for a long time at the expense of the American people and the health of our country.”

“[Aides] in attendance described [the] fiery speech [as directed toward] House Democrats, urging them to take the fight to insurance companies over the five-week recess scheduled to begin Friday,” reported Roll Call.

“I am for the strongest possible public option, because, as the president said, that’s the way to keep the private sector honest, that’s how you have true competition, and achieve true universal, quality, accessible healthcare for all Americans,” Pelosi said, noted The Hill.

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By David Edwards and Ron Brynaert

President Barack Obama is set to meet with Professor Henry Louis Gates and Sergeant James Crowley early Thursday evening to discuss how the black scholar’s arrest can be a “teaching moment.” Wednesday night, Stephen Colbert used his “The Word” segment to explain how racism is like farts and neither should be discussed.

“Nation, as you know, I don’t see race,” Colbert said. “People tell me I’m white and I believe them because my fridge is full of drinkable yogurt.”

Colbert blasted President Obama, because “six months after racism officially ended, he fanned the flames of prejudice by taking sides in the Gates arrest controversy.”

Obama’s use of the word “stupidly” divided “Americans into two groups: those outraged over Gates’ arrest and those outraged at the other group’s outrage.”

As for the mama crack that the police report described but that Gates denied making. Colbert said he believed Gates really said, “Yo mama so fat when she wears red the police say ‘hey Kool Aid Man’…and then falsely arrest her.”

Colbert then noted that his “crazy eyes” nemesis Glenn Beck called Obama a racist (Video at this link) a few days ago.

Beck told the hosts of Fox & Friends that “this president has exposed himself, I think, as a guy — over and over and over again — who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”

Moments later, Beck added, “I’m not saying he [Obama] doesn’t like white people, I’m saying he has a problem. This guy is, I believe, a racist.”

“Right,” Colbert agreed, “that’s not saying [Obama] dislikes white people. He’s saying that he has a deep-seated hatred for them.”

Colbert continued, “Like how Beck likes arguing but has a deep-seated hatred for logic.”

Later, Colbert played clips of former Bush brain Karl Rove saying how “Americans don’t like to talk about race” and Fox’s Bill O’Reilly saying, “I’m just not gonna talk about race with black people unless I know them very, very well.”

Regarding O’Reilly’s comment, Colbert quipped, “In other words, he’s not gonna talk about race.”

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Timothy Webb, 49, left, and Bruce, 59, live in a tent city, dubbed Camp Runamuck, in Providence, R.I., under an overpass stretch of Route 195 that is scheduled for demolition. More Photos >

By DAN BARRY
PROVIDENCE, R.I.

The chief emerges from his tent to face the leaden morning light. It had been a rare, rough night in his homeless Brigadoon: a boozy brawl, the wielding of a knife taped to a stick. But the community handled it, he says with pride, his day’s first cigar already aglow.

By community he means 80 or so people living in tents on a spit of state land beside the dusky Providence River: Camp Runamuck, no certain address, downtown Providence.

Because the two men in the fight had violated the community’s written compact, they were escorted off the camp, away from the protection of an abandoned overpass. One was told we’ll discuss this in the morning; the other was voted off the island, his knife tossed into the river, his tent taken down.

The chief flicks his spent cigar into that same river. There is talk of rain tonight.

Behind him, the camp stirs. Other tent cities have sprung up recently around the country, but Rhode Island officials have never seen anything like this. A tea kettle sings.

Slide Show

Seeking a Home With No Certain Address

A heavily pierced young person walks by without picking up an empty plastic bottle, flouting the camp compact that says everyone will share in the labor. The compact may be as impermanent as this sudden community by the river, but for now it is binding. The chief speaks, the bottle is picked up.

The chief, John Freitas, is 55, with a gray beard touched by tobacco rust. He did prison time decades ago, worked for years as a factory supervisor, then became homeless for all the familiar, complicated reasons.

Layoffs, health problems, a slip from apartment to motel room. His girlfriend, Barbara Kalil, 50, lost her job as a nursing-home nurse, and another slip, into the shelter system. A job holding store-liquidation signs beside the highway allowed for a climb back to a motel, but it didn’t last.

Weary of shelters, the couple pitched a pup tent in Roger Williams Park, close to a plaque bearing words Williams had used to describe this place he founded: “A Shelter for Persons in Distress.” But someone complained, so Mr. Freitas set off again in search of shelter. The March winds blew.

Down South Main Street he went, past the majestic court building and the upscale seafood restaurant, over a guardrail to a gravelly plot beneath a ramp that once guided cars toward Cape Cod. Foul-smelling and partially hidden, a place of birds and rodents, it was perfect.

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by Harvey Wasserman

As Leonard Peltier approaches his 65th year—having spent half his life in prison—every day is now critical to lifting this burden from our collective souls.

For a formidable and growing global community of supporters, the prospect of Native American activist Leonard Peltier finally leaving prison inspires a longing that cuts to the depths of the soul.

So Peltier’s first parole hearing of the Obama Era—on Tuesday, July 28—inspired hope of an intensity that will have a major impact on the new presidency. A decision must come from the Federal Parole Commission within three weeks. His attorney is calling for a surge of public support that would create an irresistible political climate for Leonard’s release.

The relationship between Peltier and those who have followed his case over the decades can be intensely personal. His imprisonment has come to stand not only for five centuries of unjust violence waged against Native Americans, but also for the inhumane theft of the life of a man who has handled his 33 years in jail with epic dignity, effectiveness and grace.

Peltier’s latest parole hearing convened at the federal penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, where he is currently held. According to Eric Seitz, Peltier’s Honolulu-based attorney, Peltier spoke for more than an hour “with great eloquence” about the nature of his case, his imprisonment and his plans for freedom. “The hearing officer seemed to listen carefully,” said Seitz. “We thought it went very well.”

The decision on Peltier’s parole will be made by the four sitting members of the Federal Parole Commission (http://www.usdoj.gov/uspc/ ) whose offices are in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Commissioners Isaac Fulwood, Jr., Cranston Mitchell, Edward Reilly and Patricia Cushware are all Bush appointees. One seat is vacant; Fulwood was elevated to the Chairman’s seat in May by President Obama.

According to Seitz, the hearing was taped by an officer charged with reporting to the Commissioners within 48 hours. The Commissioners are required to render a decision within 21 days—by August 18. Should they rule in his favor, Peltier could walk out of prison very soon after the decision is issued.

Should the Commssioners turn down his parole application, Seitz says the appeal would go to the federal district court in Harrisburg. The report of the hearing would become available to Peltier and the public.

Seitz said he spoke to the record for about 20 minutes on the legalities of the case. He said Peter Mattheissen, author of IN THE SPIRIT OF CRAZY HORSE, explained the history of the 1970s incidents that led to Peltier being accused of murdering two FBI agents. CRAZY HORSE is the definitive account of the origins of the case and of the climate of violence and repression imposed on the native community at the time of the killings. Seitz said Mattheissen emphasized “the many reasons to have misgivings about whether the system performed well and fairly in Leonard’s case.”

Mattheissen was joined by Dr.Thomas Fassett of the United Methodist Church, who testified, said Seitz, “to the negative impact of Peltier’s 33-year imprisonment on the world’s view of how the US government treats its native population. Leonard’s case is viewed in the larger community both nationally & internationally as a major embarrassment…as a gross injustice…a black mark.”

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Click here for the new animation.

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by Cenk Uygur

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by David Michael Green

When Barack Obama became president I wondered whether he would have the courage and integrity to bring long absent progressive politics back to the fore in America.  Unhappily, that question has now more or less been answered, though of course anything can happen in the remaining three-and-a-half or seven-and-a-half years of his presidency.

Here’s what I didn’t wonder about:  whether his administration would be competent, and whether he would be skilled at the using the most powerful and important tool at a president’s disposal, mass communications and the bully pulpit.

Turns out I shoulda, as Obama so far has failed on both fronts.  This presidency is centrist in every respect, except on those occasions when it is as regressive as George W. Bush’s.  That’s a huge disappointment, but not a shocker by any means.  Far more surprising, however, is the ineptness of the administration, particularly concerning its communications strategy.

This should never have happened.  Obama is rightly considered one of the most eloquent and moving speakers in American political history.  I came to that conclusion with some skepticism, too, having seen him campaign in person, and having watched his 2004 convention speech that everyone thought was so spiffy.  I was unimpressed with both.  But since then, Obama has astonished me on a couple of occasions, beginning with his race speech in Philadelphia, and perhaps most recently with his talk in Cairo.  Importantly, it is not the delivery of these addresses – which is actually fairly muted, as political speeches go – but rather their content that shines.  It’s been so long since an American politician spoke to the public with this degree of honesty, and demanded as much maturity from listeners, that I couldn’t help but be struck by these powerful orations.

Otherwise, however, I would rate the communications ability of this White House at just slightly above catastrophic.  These failures were on full display last week with the healthcare press conference disaster, but, in fact, they have been in the making right from the beginning.

In fact, they began in the very first minutes of the administration.  Remember the Lincolnesque eloquence and profundity of the inaugural address?  Yeah, me neither.  That speech was an unbelievably blown opportunity to give a forceful, game-changing oration that could have brought along tens of millions of people through the majesty and power of the occasion.  All the elements were there:  the massive crowds, the global attention, the momentous development of our first black president, the much promised “change”, the many crises warranting it, and the overwhelming public desire to turn away from a disastrously failed prior regime.

But instead of a majestic oration charting a new course and calling upon us to be the change we need, Obama gave a short and not at all sweet speech to his planetary audience.  It was a talk that was most notable for not being notable.  Do you remember anything from it?  Any of the amazing turns-of-phrase that marked Lincoln’s or Kennedy’s inaugural prose?  Any of the courageous willingness to call out the economic predators who are destroying the country, as FDR did, or that’s president’s courage-inducing language, giving hope to a despondent nation?  I don’t.  In fact, I don’t remember a single word or theme from Obama’s inaugural speech.

Oh well.  I figure everyone’s entitled to a dropped ball now and then, though it would be preferable to have that happen some time other than at the most watched political moment of the decade.

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Ron Moore – DC Special Interests Examiner

Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels

For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.

-Jesus Christ, as reported by Matthew addressing health care and the dire consequences faced by His followers if they refuse to live a life of compassion

Family Research Council Action President Tony Perkins has unveiled a new hard hitting ad campaign that lays out what he considers two key threats to his view of the American way of life should President Obama’s plan become reality namely, rationing and taxpayer funded legal medical procedures like abortion.The TV ad campaign will initially run in five key states including Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Alaska, Louisiana, and Nebraska.

Perkins explains: “In a world of health care rationing, the elderly, the handicapped and the frail are the most likely to lose their lives because care was delayed or denied. Under the government-run plans in England and Canada, the countries’ sick and elderly aren’t getting the care they need. As a result, their system isn’t improving lives but prematurely taking them. Here in the United States, President Obama’s rationing would mean that you and I could be denied basic care while our tax dollars are used to underwrite a mother choosing to end the life of her unborn child.”

The ad attempts to instill fear in patients, particularly the elderly, falsely asserting that they will face denial of vital treatments and that Obama’s real goal is to deny care to ‘our greatest generation’ and deny life to ‘our future generation.’

Perkins continues: “On the other key life-and-death decisions there is an active commitment on the part of Senate Democratic Leadership to allow the rationing of health care. This is what the White House and Congress mean when they say they will cut costs. It means cutting off your access to health care services by creating the legal authority to do so, while stopping any provision becoming law that would prevent rationing.”

The ad urges viewers to tell Congress to oppose health care for all Americans and Perkins calls on his members to join the fight:

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Special To The Huffington Post Investigative Fund |  Danielle Knight

When Sallie Mae, the nation’s largest provider of student loans, saw the possibility of its own extinction in a plan advanced by the Obama administration, it did what just about any big corporation would do: It hired the best lobbyists money can buy.

That was standard procedure for Sallie Mae, which for two decades has almost single-handedly stymied attempts to reduce or eliminate federal subsidies to the multibillion-dollar private student loan industry.

This time, however, Sallie Mae has elected not to fight to preserve the current system. Rather, it is trying to leverage its lobbying muscle and years of showering money on lawmakers to push an alternative plan that would position itself not only as a survivor, but a clear winner – with an even larger share of the market.

Even so, despite ramping up its spending on lobbying — nearly $2 million in the first half of the year according to disclosure reports released this month — Sallie Mae faces an uphill struggle in Congress. Legislation that would radically reshape the financial aid landscape along the lines proposed by President Obama cleared a key House panel last week. Credit rater Standard & Poor’s immediately warned investors that it might downgrade the company’s debt to junk level because “we believe the likelihood has increased” that within a year Sallie Mae will no longer be able to originate loans.

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chair of the House Education and Labor Committee, said at a committee meeting that the bill would stop “wasteful taxpayer subsidies that are keeping a broken system afloat.”

The plan would end lending by private firms by giving the Department of Education a monopoly over federally backed student loans. That could save the government $87 billion in subsidies over ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office – money that would be redirected to Pell Grants for low-income students. Sallie Mae and other lenders would be confined largely to servicing loans held by the government and collecting on defaulted loans.

Presently there are two types of government-backed loans: At schools that have signed up for direct federal lending, students can borrow directly from the government. Or they can borrow from a lender such as Sallie Mae as part of the Federal Family Education Loan Program. Either way, the taxpayers take on the risk that a borrower might default.

Sallie Mae surprised the rest of the industry earlier this year when it announced it supported Obama’s plan – but with certain caveats. The company argues that if lenders are still allowed to originate and service the loans that the government holds, they could produce similar savings that could also go toward Pell Grants. Under its proposal, companies that don’t already service loans wouldn’t be able to participate in the new system and thus could be pushed out of the business, leaving Sallie Mae with a bigger share.

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(But has he turned back?)

By Greg Palast

He’s in hot water now. For a moment, on national television, the President of the United States turned black!

Last week, when his buddy “Skip” Gates got busted for being Black in Boston, Barack Obama forgot his official role: to soothe America’s conscience with the happy fairy tale that his election marked the end of racism in the USA.

Instead, Obama, the excruciatingly middle-of-the-road President, was seized by Barack the militant State Senator from the South Side of Chicago, who reminded us that cops bust Black guys for no goddamn good reason all the goddamn time.

I’m reminded that it was not so long ago that we watched the vicious gang-beating by Los Angeles cops of a defenseless, handcuffed, Rodney King, an African-American. King’s beating was unusual only in that it was caught on videotape.

Yeah, I know: we’ve come a hell of a long way. Obama won, Jessie cried, Beyoncé has her own line of perfume and Tiger Woods plays where 30 years ago he couldn’t eat lunch.

Good on them.

But what about Robert Pratt, Mr. President?

Pratt, a United Auto Workers member, has five kids and a mortgage payment of $1,100 a month on a house in Detroit worth no more than $40,000. The payment’s astronomical because he pays 11% on his mortgage balance, double the national average interest rate. Now, on those crazy terms, he’s sure to lose his house.

How did that happen? Pratt, whose story we’ve been tracking, was “steered” into a sub-prime loan by Countrywide Financial. “Steering” is the polite term for forcing folk into crappy loan terms. And not just any folk: Black folk, like Pratt. Over 60% of African-American mortgage applicants were (and ARE) steered into “sub-prime” predatory loans.

According to exhaustive studies by the Federal Reserve Board and the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), African Americans are 250% more likely to get a loan with an “exploding interest” clause than white borrowers – and notably, the higher the income and the better the credit rating of a Black borrower, the more likely the discrimination.

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Jason Linkins
jason@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting

One of the things that gets obscured by the huge sums of money being spent by lobbyists to degrade, deride, and defuse legislation is that in reality, the big industries get what they want very cheaply.

Lawmakers already make use of so many systemic advantages when it comes time to defend their seats that a little bit of industry largess goes a long way. So they can afford to be generous, and they never ask for an additional cut. This is something that Ian Welsh at Open Left observes today:

…the [return on investment] on lobbying is astronomical. For example, the American Jobs Creation act earned corporations 82 billion. The cost in lobbying? 283 million. Return on investment? 22,000%

Over at Campaign Silo, Teddy Partridge looks at the kinds of returns involved in the health care reform arena:

News that Senator Max Baucus’ Finance Committee deal on health care financing excluded a public option sent health insurance stocks soaring Tuesday.

Shares of U.S. health insurers rose broadly on Tuesday on hopes a health reform bill would not include a government-run option, which has drawn strong opposition from insurers who fear it would destroy the private marketplace.The S&P Managed Health Care index of large U.S. health insurers closed 6.5 percent higher.

Aetna rose 12.6 percent, Coventry was up 12.7 percent and Cigna was 7.7 percent higher, all on the New York Stock Exchange. Centene rose 7.9 percent.

This is funny, because I am reliably informed that Max Baucus has concerns that government intervention in private markets could be a disaster for the country!

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Could High-Speed Trading Lead To Another Panic?

By PAUL WILMOTT

Istanbul

ON vacation in Turkey, I am picked up at the airport by a minibus. It’s past midnight, pitch-black, the driver is speeding around corners. Only one headlight is working. And I have my doubts about the brakes. In my head I’m planning the letter of complaint to the tour company. And then the driver’s cellphone rings, he picks it up and answers it, he has only one hand on the steering wheel. Now I’m mentally compiling the list of songs to be played at my funeral.

That’s rather how I feel when people talk about the latest fashion among investment banks and hedge funds: high-frequency algorithmic trading. On top of an already dangerously influential and morally suspect financial minefield is now being added the unthinking power of the machine.

The idea is straightforward: Computers take information — primarily “real-time” share prices — and try to predict the next twitch in the stock market. Using an algorithmic formula, the computers can buy and sell stocks within fractions of seconds, with the bank or fund making a tiny profit on the blip of price change of each share.

There’s nothing new in using all publicly available information to help you trade; what’s novel is the quantity of data available, the lightning speed at which it is analyzed and the short time that positions are held.

You will hear people talking about “latency,” which means the delay between a trading signal being given and the trade being made. Low latency — high speed — is what banks and funds are looking for. Yes, we really are talking about shaving off the milliseconds that it takes light to travel along an optical cable.

So, is trading faster than any human can react truly worrisome? The answers that come back from high-frequency proponents, also rather too quickly, are “No, we are adding liquidity to the market” or “It’s perfectly safe and it speeds up price discovery.” In other words, the traders say, the practice makes it easier for stocks to be bought and sold quickly across exchanges, and it more efficiently sets the value of shares.

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PHOENIX — For sale: historic buildings with reliable tenants.

Arizona lawmakers, desperate for cash, are considering selling the House and Senate buildings, then leasing them back over several years before assuming ownership again.

Dozens of other state buildings may also be sold off and leased back as the state grapples with a huge budget deficit.

Under the complex financial arrangement, state government services would continue without interruption while the state picks up a cash infusion estimated at $735 million.

For investors, the deal means long-term lease payments from a stable source.

The state’s budget shortfall is projected at around $3.4 billion.
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Information from: The Arizona Republic, http://www.azcentral.com

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Sam Stein
stein@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting

The man Barack Obama consulted on medical matters for over two decades said on Tuesday that the president’s vision for health care reform is bound for failure.

Dr. David Scheiner, a 70-year Chicago-based physician who treated Obama for more than 20 years, said he was disheartened by the health care legislation his former patient is championing, calling it piecemeal and ineffectual.

“I look at his program and I can’t see how it’s going to work,” Scheiner told the Huffington Post. “He has no cost control. There would be no effective cost control in his program. The [Congressional Budget Office] said it’s going be incredibly expensive … and the thing that I really am worried about is, if it is the failure that I think it would be, then health reform will be set back a long, long time.”

Scheiner, who prefers a more progressive approach to reform, was hesitant about trying to divine the president’s motives, although he said he believed that “in his heart of hearts” Obama “may well like a single-payer program.”

“His pragmatism is what is overwhelming him.” Scheiner added: “I think he’s afraid that he can’t get anything through if he doesn’t go through this incredibly compromised program.”

Admitting that he was not a political practitioner, Scheiner said he felt compelled to speak out because of his unique relationship with the president and this critical moment in the health care debate. A champion of a single-payer health care system, Scheiner noted repeatedly that he came to the debate from the perspective of having dealt with the hassles and pitfalls of the current system. His speaking out is part of a larger effort, launched by Physicians for a National Health Program, to push Congress to consider single-payer as an alternative to current reform proposals.

As Scheiner sees it, all alternatives simply fall short. Keeping private insurers in the market, he warns, would simply maintain burdensome administrative costs. He argued further that the pharmaceutical industry is not being asked to make “any kind of significant sacrifices” in the current round of reform negotiations. As for a public health care option, Scheiner insists that the proposal remains vague and inadequate.

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Rural Medical Camp Tackles Health Care Gaps

by Howard Berkes

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It was a Third World scene with an American setting. Hundreds of tired and desperate people crowded around an aid worker with a bullhorn, straining to hear the instructions and worried they might be left out.

Some had arrived at the Wise County Fairgrounds in Wise, Va., two days before. They slept in cars, tents and the beds of pickup trucks, hoping to be among the first in line when the gate opened Friday before dawn. They drove in from 16 states, anxious to relieve pain, diagnose aches and see and hear better.

“I came here because of health care — being able to get things that we can’t afford to have ordinarily,” explained 52-year-old Otis Reece of Gate City, Va., as he waited in a wheelchair beside his red F-150 pickup. “Being on a fixed income, this is a fantastic situation to have things done we ordinarily would put off.”

Becky Lettenberger/NPR

See Photos Of Thousands Who Received Free Medical Care

For the past 10 years, during late weekends in July, the fairgrounds in Wise have been transformed into a mobile and makeshift field hospital providing free care for those in need. Sanitized horse stalls become draped examination rooms. A poultry barn is fixed with optometry equipment. And a vast, open-air pavilion is crammed with dozens of portable dental chairs and lamps.

A converted 18-wheeler with a mobile X-ray room makes chest X-rays possible. Technicians grind hundreds of lenses for new eyeglasses in two massive trailers. At a concession stand, dentures are molded and sculpted.

Desperate For Health Care

The 2009 Remote Area Medical (RAM) Expedition comes to the Virginia Appalachian mountains as Congress and President Obama wrestle with a health care overhaul. The event graphically illustrates gaps in the existing health care system.
Coburn Dukehart/NPR
See Portraits Of Patients And Providers

“We’re willing to sleep in pickup trucks or cars and deal with the elements to at least get some kind of health care,” Reece adds. He earned a six-figure income working for an international industrial supply firm until an accident five years ago left him disabled. Joining him for dental, vision and medical checks are his wife, daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren.

“Tomorrow, I’m going to see the doctor to get my ear and my nose fixed!” grandson Jacob shouts excitedly. His nose appears battered and his ear has an oozing scab.

Before the gate opened, Loretta Miller, 41, of Honaker, Va., got four hours’ sleep behind the wheel of her parked minivan. She was No. 39 in line for her eighth RAM expedition. Her visit last year saved her life.

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