Pravda has what looks like a fine report today on AIDS programs in Washington, DC. Here's how they describe it:

About this Investigation
Over ten months, the Washington Post analyzed the spending, services, and finances of every specialized AIDS organization funded by D.C.'s HIV/AIDS Administration from 2004-2008, an estimated 90 groups, building a database from tax returns, audits, lawsuits, real estate records, D.C. Council records, and corporate and police reports. The Post also obtained grant agreements, invoices and government correspondence for about 60 of these groups. The newspaper interviewed dozens of people with HIV or AIDS patients, their families and service providers, and visited more than a dozen offices across the city.

The largest possible sum at issue seems to be $25 million, since that's the total sum available to non-profits, where the problems seem to be concentrated.

So, one question:

It seems that the Washington Post has written an editorial challenging the necessity of FCC enforcement of net neutrality. While not entirely a surprise, the Washington Post Corp. owns cable systems in Appalachia, it is a very bad sign. Melinda gates sits on the board of directors and this may indicate that Microsoft is backing away from its previous commitment to net neutrality.

Today's Huffington Post has an article alleging the Medicare and Social Security are Ponzi schemes.

Health Insurance Giant Aetna Paying $80,000 For Health Reform ‘Town Hall’ Moderated By CNN Host Tony Harris

Tomorrow, health insurance giant Aetna is sponsoring a “town hall conversation on the national health system reform debate” at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta. CNN anchor Tony Harris will moderate the panel, which features lobbyists from the health insurance industry and opponents of reform

According to FAIR, CNN has corporate relationships with AIG, Health Cap, and Paratek Pharmaceuticals. I don't think they were ever going to do any honest reporting.

Emptywheel has the latest on Payola Patty:

In all, Ceci presents a landscape in which the most important players--aside from two Senators who have been slighted in the process thus far--are trade industry groups. And the most important issue for them is the profit they stand to make off of taxing America's middle class to make them wealthier.

I would love to know if any of the private industry sources for the article has ties to Warren Buffet.

Natasha has a great post about Alex Witt of MSNBC hyping anti immigrant and anti-abortion talking points by way of drumming up opposition to health care reform. It is necessary to document every lie in real time. Or at least as many as we can.

But we also have to look at the big picture. General Electric manufactures medical imaging and other medical equipment. They have a vested interest in killing any meaningful cost control.

John Amato alters us to NBC's characterization of the support for the public option as a "fetish." Like Disney, GE has a corporate relationship with a pharmaceutical company, Procter & Gamble, which has a vested interested in no government body having the power to negotiate for prices. Alan Lafley sits on the board of both companies where he spends his time dumping stock.

Chuck Todd is a sock puppoet, Lafley is our problem.

Once again Atrios alerts us to a Media Matters report that documents the news as entertainment reporting of ABC, never letting their viewers know that Obama was telling the truth when he said that illegal aliens would not be covered under his plan.

So why would ABC News leave that out? We have no way to know, but since ABC's parent company, Disney, has a relationship with a pharmaceutical company, Procter & Gamble, clearly they have a vested interest in misreporting the health reform story.

Once again Atrios points to a great blogger who has caught a member of the celebrity press corps being unusually stupid.

Going back to the early years of The Daily Howler, we have been documenting the atrocities for a decade. And in that time exactly what has changed? OK, maybe a little around the edges. We can stop lies, at least sometimes. Every now and then someone gets singed by a blogswarm. But we have not changed the ability of the radical right to dictate the terms of debate.

As usual Somerby buries the lede:

"What really counts from Congo: Dowd’s column teaches a lesson today in the meaning of “tabloid” journalism. Before pretending to discuss something important, Dowd burns up half her piece with Clinton’s briefly awkward moment. Cable “news” has had a ball with it too. It’s what these imbeciles live for.

I'm sure you all recall the early days of the NSA Hoovering up all domestic data warrantless wiretapping scandal, when they referred to it as the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" and assured us that they were only targeting Al-Qaeda operatives.

Naturally, this turned out to be a lie enhanced duplicity technique, because it turns out they were spying on all of us everyday American citizens. Nobody was off the target list, and we were all potential Al-Qaeda operatives.

Now, there's a big hubbub about some sketchy CIA assassination ring, apparently answering to Cheney himself. Nobody's willing to talk about the nitty-gritty details, but it's enough to have even Nancy "off the table" Pelosi spooked or pissed off enough to start publicly discussing how fucked-up it was, whatever "it" was.

The public justification for this shadowy, super-classified, apparently reprehensible death squad?

They were only targeting Al-Qaeda operatives.

Yeah, okay, I'm gonna go ahead and call bullshit. Does anyone seriously doubt that what we'll eventually learn is that they formed a group to assassinate American citizens in the National Interest? Consider this, via TPM:

Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief, told TPMmuckraker that because we've been in a state of war against al Qaeda since just after September 11, there would have been no need for a secret CIA program that received special legal authorization...

As for what the program did involve, Cannistraro suggested that it involved Americans as targets, and that it went beyond surveillance, but declined to elaborate. He added that, though Cheney may have directly ordered the CIA to keep Congress in the dark, the veep wasn't acting alone. "The approval was from the president," said Cannistraro.

Hmm, I wonder...

Tell Media: Include Single-Payer in Healthcare Debate

Reforming the dysfunctional U.S. healthcare system is a major issue in the news these days. The goal of the reform efforts, we're told, is to expand coverage to the uninsured and to reduce costs. But what many experts and citizens see as the most sensible solution to these problems is kept out of the discussion by the corporate media.

THE ANSWER LIES IN THE WORLD OF WEYMOUTH! Weymouth was going to stage a soiree. To manufacture consent?

THE ANSWER LIES IN THE WORLD OF WEYMOUTH: By complete happenstance, Lally Weymouth’s first salon was going to be about health care.

This is a few days old, but in case you missed it, Jonathan Schwartz caught CBS News fixing the news because it's more important to show Billy Graham in a good light than inform the public accurately. Take it away Mr. Schwartz (internal links omitted):

Yesterday CBS ran a story about the latest batch of Nixon tapes made public. And they included a section of a February 21, 1973 conversation with Billy Graham that showed Nixon at his psycho best:

David Brooks

Let’s say that you are President Obama. You’ve inherited a health care system that is the insane spawn of a team of evil geniuses from an alien power. Pay is divorced from performance. Users are separated from costs. Rising costs threaten to destroy your nation and everything you hold dear.

Because you have a lofty perspective on things, you know there are basically two ways to fix this mess. There is the liberal way, in which the government takes over the health care system and decides who gets what. And then there is the conservative way, in which cost-conscious consumers make choices in the context of a competitive marketplace.

Spectacular take down of Dana Milbank in his own paper.

Medicare Drug Plan Ought to Be Model for Health Reform

No matter how often I see it, I can never get over their staggering indifference to the rest of the country.

Check out this excerpt from a NewsHour report on the health care debate:

MITCH STEWART: I think having this face-to-face conversation happening across the country is something that's never happened before. And I think our leaders in Washington are going to take note of that.

THOMAS MANN, Brookings Institution: Yes, it's unprecedented in the scope, in the reach.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But congressional scholar Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution thinks the effort won't have much impact on health care reform.

Alec MacGillis' online chat

Topeka, Kan.: I would like to know the real reason why single payer health insurance is off the table. Is it because our Congress is beholden to the insurance lobby?

Ezra Klein

And all this elides a simple fact: Capping the employer health care exclusion is good policy. Eliminating it entirely would be better policy. It's true that some unions, like AFSCME, would see the value of their employer benefits degrade slightly. (Some unions, like Service Employees International Union, would scarcely be affected at all. Janitors are not, as a rule, given generous employer health benefits.) But the labor movement, as a whole, is much worse off in a world where the employer exclusion is capped but we have health reform than in a world where we don't have health care reform and can't control premium costs.

Go here for the mythbusting rundown on Obama/Biden anti-terror policy vs. Bush/Cheney anti-terror policy. Just so you're properly warned, Brooks likes what he sees.

The reality is that after Sept. 11, we entered a two- or three-year period of what you might call Bush-Cheney policy. The country was blindsided. Intelligence officials knew next to nothing about the threats arrayed against them. The Bush administration tried just about everything to discover and prevent threats. The Bush people believed they were operating within the law but they did things most of us now find morally offensive and counterproductive.

CT on NYT Caucus Blog

Is anyone going to be there to represent a public plan option? Why not?
HR 676 is a public health care option. Who will represent HR 676 at this meeting?

The only way to control medical costs is to regulate them and only governments have been able to do this fairly and equitably. Health care is not something you want to leave to the dog-eat-dog competition of the marketplace. Remember, free market capitalism gives you HMO and rationing. Only universal health care provides complete coverage for all in need.

Once again Politico fails to quote anyone from Healthcare-Now!, Physicians for a National Health Plan, California Nurses, Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care, John Conyers, or anyone advocating a Medicare for All Solution.

It is a little like reporting on the Civil Rights Movement and not talking to anyone from SCLC, NAACP, SNCC, CORE, A Phillip Randolph Institute, or anyone else advocating for an end to Jim Crow.

You look stupid Politico, just plan stupid.

The Chicago Tribune TELEVISION section features a brief profile of MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. It begins:

Maddow slips in ratings but not in her resolve
By Yvonne Villarreal | Tribune Newspapers
April 22, 2009

The first 100 days of a new presidential administration are known as the honeymoon because it marks a time of friendly relations between the new chief executive and the media. But for MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show," the early days of the Obama administration have meant an unwelcome drop in ratings.

You know you are being lied to when you see the construction some say or anything like it. Take today's assault on Medicare in Isvestia:

Some doctors — often internists but also gastroenterologists, gynecologists, psychiatrists and other specialists — are no longer accepting Medicare, either because they have opted out of the insurance system or they are not accepting new patients with Medicare coverage. The doctors’ reasons: reimbursement rates are too low and paperwork too much of a hassle.