Corporatism

KERA-TV catches Kay Bailey Hutchison, who kinda may be running for governor, in a lie about why Texas leads the nation in people with no health insurance. Read below the fold...

An Illinois resident needed surgery. The insurance company preauthorized the treatment. The surgery went well. The insurer then denied the claim, three times.
Tell me again how bureaucrats aren't getting between Americans and their doctors?? Read below the fold...

I know, I know, I know. Passe, declasse, all that stuff. Old hat, old news, not what we want to discuss here today.
Read below the fold...

As if a statewide roundup of politicians on corruption charges possibly including a human organ trafficking ring weren't sufficiently gruesome, the only hospital in a working-class New Jersey city has filed suit to stop Horizon Blue Cross / Blue Shield from sending couriers to force patients to leave its ER or choose "in-network" hospitals more distant. Hey, there, Mr. President. D'ya think we could have SINGLE PAYER NON PROFIT CARE NOW?????????? Read below the fold...

According to the Detroit News, Toyota's considering closing a California plant since GM dropped out of the joint venture. California needs more job losses, yeah.

Among the issues the company is considering in its re-evaluation process is whether to keep open the 25-year-old New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. assembly plant in Fremont, Calif. The plant, which employs 4,700 people, is a joint venture formed with General Motors, but the Detroit automaker recently withdrew from the pact during its stay in bankruptcy court.

Read below the fold...

Remember that UK bioweapons expert who supposedly killed himself five months after the war started? Remember how the FBI couldn't figure out who mailed anthrax? Go read. It's possible none of the things the Bush administration said about the war -- including why they started it -- were remotely close to true. Read below the fold...

Not only that, Medicare Part D (death) is the model.

Never forget who Rahm Emanuel works for. Read below the fold...

You need to see the whole tape, but the killer comes with about 12 seconds to go.

If you want real health care available to everybody in the US, do not -- I repeat, DO NOT -- let the Senate, Congress, and President think what he says in answer to this question is acceptable. Call. Write. March. Congress is on break -- find your local critter at a barbecue or a town meeting or some other innocuous occasion, and buttonhole the sucker. You want single payer? Make it ABSOLUTELY UNMISTAKABLY CLEAR -- NOTHING LESS WILL DO. OR YOU WILL TAKE AWAY THEIR JOBS. Read below the fold...

Letter to the IndyStar

I am writing to comment on a TV advertisement from Patients United Now that started running over the weekend. It attacks the Canadian-style single-payer health care. Your readers should know that this is the production of large corporations (health-care insurers, big pharmaceutical companies) as well as the right wing.

Read below the fold...

...all over the constitution, a further time.


EFF and ACLU plan to appeal. Read below the fold...

Alternative currency organization Fourth Corner Exchange is planning to expand worldwide. A move which I expect will make alternative currency exponentially more useful.

President Francis Ayley:

"We are putting together a 'Community Coordinator' package that will have
all the necessary info on how to start a local chapter of the 'Life
Dollar Community', which is what we are calling ourselves now. I am
selling this as 'Democratic Money', as opposed to Bank Issued Money,
which is economic slavery. If an individual, group or local community
want to take back their economic power from the banks, this is how to do

Read below the fold...

Over at Eschaton there's a nifty little mention of this. The new national one-size-fits-all standards

will combine California’s tough new auto-emissions rules with the existing corporate average fuel economy standard to create a single new national standard, the officials said. As a result, cars and light trucks sold in the United States will be roughly 30 percent cleaner and more fuel-efficient by 2016. Read below the fold...

Rush Limbaugh, as Minnesota's new but unseated Senator famously titled a book, is a big, fat liar. What's more, his new $400-million contract is crippling his employer. Since his employer is the same Clear Channel that tried to destroy the Dixie Chicks and has effectively eliminated liberal voices from AM radio, that should be good news, no? Read below the fold...

US Senate Committee on Finance

Roundtable Discussion on “Expanding Health Care Coverage”

May 5 , 2009, at 10:00 a.m., in 106 Dirksen Senate Office Building

Member Statements:
Max Baucus, MT
Charles Grassley, IA

Witness Statements:

Stuart M. Butler, Ph.D., Vice President, Domestic and Economic Policy Studies, The Heritage Foundation, Washington, DC

John Castellani, President, Business Roundtable, Washington, DC

Gary Claxton, Vice President and Director of the Health Care Marketplace Project, Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, Washington, DC

Donald A. Danner, President and CEO, National Federation of Independent Business, Washington, DC

Read below the fold...

Or so says the current take on the Chrysler restructuring.

Chrysler's creditors would get $2 billion in cash and no equity stake. The automaker's current owner Cerberus Capital Management would be wiped out.

Read below the fold...