Thursday, September 29, 2005
Insurance Scam in the Gulf - from ATLA eNews
Although the insurance industry is well positioned to keep its financial commitments, many insurance executives don't want to dip into their huge profits to honor their contracts.
Many Gulf Coast residents lost their homes or occurred thousands of dollars in clean up and repair costs from the hurricanes.
These victims with homeowners insurance have paid thousands of dollars in premiums and are due restitution from their insurance companies. However, some insurance representatives are tricking them into signing waivers that will make it easier for these insurance companies to deny the claims of their policy holders, according to a lawsuit filed by the Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood.
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Although the insurance industry is well positioned to keep its financial commitments, many insurance executives don't want to dip into their huge profits to honor their contracts.
Many Gulf Coast residents lost their homes or occurred thousands of dollars in clean up and repair costs from the hurricanes.
These victims with homeowners insurance have paid thousands of dollars in premiums and are due restitution from their insurance companies. However, some insurance representatives are tricking them into signing waivers that will make it easier for these insurance companies to deny the claims of their policy holders, according to a lawsuit filed by the Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood.
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Monday, September 26, 2005
The Excess of the Republicans' Proposed Cuts to Cover Hurricane Damage Is Almost Unbelievable. - MoveOn.org
The Republican proposal, titled "Operation Offset", was authored by the Republican Study Committee, a group of over 100 influential members of Congress, including powerful committee chairs and members of the Republican leadership. The proposal starts with support from at least these 100 representatives, and they are looking to quickly build momentum.
A full reconstruction of the Gulf Coast region is generally estimated to cost around $200 billion. We could more than meet this cost by rolling back Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for just the wealthiest one percent of the country, which would save us an estimated $327 billion.
"Operation Offset", however, calls for an astounding $949 billion dollars in cuts over 10 years to vital national services.(almost five times the full cost of reconstruction) To further put that in perspective, it's also more than 4 times what we've spent in Iraq.
This plan is not about "offsetting," or rebuilding—it's about exploiting this crisis to push the Republicans' longstanding goals for America. As conservative movement leader Grover Norquist has often put it, the goal is to get government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." This proposal is their latest attempt to drown the public sector.
Here are just some of the most egregious cuts:
$225 billion cut from Medicaid, the last-resort health insurance program for the very poor.
$200 billion cut from Medicare, the health care safety net for the elderly and the disabled.
$25 billion cut from the Centers for Disease Control
$6.7 billion cut from school lunches for poor children
$7.5 billion cut from programs to fight global AIDS
$5.5 billion to eliminate all funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
$3.6 billion cut to eliminate the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities
$8.5 billion cut to eliminate all subsidized loans to graduate students.
$2.5 billion cut from Amtrak
$2.5 billion to eliminate the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative
$417 million cut to eliminate the Minority Business Development Agency
$4.8 billion cut to eliminate all funding for the Safe and Drug-Free schools program
And the list goes on and on.
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The Republican proposal, titled "Operation Offset", was authored by the Republican Study Committee, a group of over 100 influential members of Congress, including powerful committee chairs and members of the Republican leadership. The proposal starts with support from at least these 100 representatives, and they are looking to quickly build momentum.
A full reconstruction of the Gulf Coast region is generally estimated to cost around $200 billion. We could more than meet this cost by rolling back Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for just the wealthiest one percent of the country, which would save us an estimated $327 billion.
"Operation Offset", however, calls for an astounding $949 billion dollars in cuts over 10 years to vital national services.(almost five times the full cost of reconstruction) To further put that in perspective, it's also more than 4 times what we've spent in Iraq.
This plan is not about "offsetting," or rebuilding—it's about exploiting this crisis to push the Republicans' longstanding goals for America. As conservative movement leader Grover Norquist has often put it, the goal is to get government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." This proposal is their latest attempt to drown the public sector.
Here are just some of the most egregious cuts:
$225 billion cut from Medicaid, the last-resort health insurance program for the very poor.
$200 billion cut from Medicare, the health care safety net for the elderly and the disabled.
$25 billion cut from the Centers for Disease Control
$6.7 billion cut from school lunches for poor children
$7.5 billion cut from programs to fight global AIDS
$5.5 billion to eliminate all funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
$3.6 billion cut to eliminate the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities
$8.5 billion cut to eliminate all subsidized loans to graduate students.
$2.5 billion cut from Amtrak
$2.5 billion to eliminate the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative
$417 million cut to eliminate the Minority Business Development Agency
$4.8 billion cut to eliminate all funding for the Safe and Drug-Free schools program
And the list goes on and on.
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Right Wing Orwellian Speech Twist
Support for U.S. troops fighting abroad mixed with anger toward anti-war demonstrators at home as hundreds of people, far fewer than organizers had expected, rallied Sunday on the National Mall just a day after a massive protest against the war in Iraq.
In truth, the anti-war protestors have never made any disparaging remarks against our soldiers themselves. In fact, they are the ones vigorously supporting the troops because their main focus is getting our men and women safely back home to their families.
On the other hand, the pro-war demonstrators use the euphemism 'support our troops' as a code phrase to support George Bush and his gang, the Republican party and the corporate war profiteers. They want to unnecessarily mire our men and women in harms way in Iraq to face death and dismemberment hourly. How does this sentiment support our troops? The pro-war demonstrators actually have no regards at all for our troops.
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Support for U.S. troops fighting abroad mixed with anger toward anti-war demonstrators at home as hundreds of people, far fewer than organizers had expected, rallied Sunday on the National Mall just a day after a massive protest against the war in Iraq.
In truth, the anti-war protestors have never made any disparaging remarks against our soldiers themselves. In fact, they are the ones vigorously supporting the troops because their main focus is getting our men and women safely back home to their families.
On the other hand, the pro-war demonstrators use the euphemism 'support our troops' as a code phrase to support George Bush and his gang, the Republican party and the corporate war profiteers. They want to unnecessarily mire our men and women in harms way in Iraq to face death and dismemberment hourly. How does this sentiment support our troops? The pro-war demonstrators actually have no regards at all for our troops.
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Thursday, September 22, 2005
Halliburton Serves Contaminated Water& Food to Troops. from OpEd News
Outrage overflowed on Capitol Hill this summer when members of Congress learned that Halliburton's dining halls in Iraq had repeatedly served spoiled food to unsuspecting troops. "This happened quite a bit," testified Rory Mayberry, a former food manager with Halliburton's KBR subsidiary. But the outrage apparently doesn't end with spoiled food. Former KBR employees and water quality specialists, Ben Carter and Ken May, told HalliburtonWatch that KBR knowingly exposes troops and civilians to contaminated water from Iraq's Euphrates River. One internal KBR email provided to HalliburtonWatch says that, for "possibly a year," the level of contamination at one camp was two times the normal level for untreated water.
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Outrage overflowed on Capitol Hill this summer when members of Congress learned that Halliburton's dining halls in Iraq had repeatedly served spoiled food to unsuspecting troops. "This happened quite a bit," testified Rory Mayberry, a former food manager with Halliburton's KBR subsidiary. But the outrage apparently doesn't end with spoiled food. Former KBR employees and water quality specialists, Ben Carter and Ken May, told HalliburtonWatch that KBR knowingly exposes troops and civilians to contaminated water from Iraq's Euphrates River. One internal KBR email provided to HalliburtonWatch says that, for "possibly a year," the level of contamination at one camp was two times the normal level for untreated water.
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Monday, September 19, 2005
More Republican Cuts in Social Programs?
One day after pledging to undertake one of history's largest reconstruction efforts, President Bush served notice that rebuilding the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast will require spending cuts elsewhere in the federal budget. The federal government can foot the bill without resorting to a tax increase. Bush said, "It's going to mean that we're going to have to cut unnecessary spending."
(Editor's note .. How about cutting out the Iraq war? .. It is certainly unnecessary! .. And, we can't afford it anymore!)
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One day after pledging to undertake one of history's largest reconstruction efforts, President Bush served notice that rebuilding the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast will require spending cuts elsewhere in the federal budget. The federal government can foot the bill without resorting to a tax increase. Bush said, "It's going to mean that we're going to have to cut unnecessary spending."
(Editor's note .. How about cutting out the Iraq war? .. It is certainly unnecessary! .. And, we can't afford it anymore!)
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Not the New Deal .. By PAUL KRUGMAN - New York Times
Now it begins: America's biggest relief and recovery program since the New Deal. And the omens aren't good.
It's a given that the Bush administration, which tried to turn Iraq into a laboratory for conservative economic policies, will try the same thing on the Gulf Coast. The Heritage Foundation, which has surely been helping Karl Rove develop the administration's recovery plan, has already published a manifesto on post-Katrina policy. It calls for waivers on environmental rules, the elimination of capital gains taxes and the private ownership of public school buildings in the disaster areas. And if any of the people killed by Katrina, most of them poor, had a net worth of more than $1.5 million, Heritage wants to their heirs from the estate tax.
Still, even conservatives admit that deregulation, tax cuts and privatization won't be enough. Recovery will require a lot of federal spending. And aside from the effect on the deficit - we're about to see the spectacle of tax cuts in the face of both a war and a huge reconstruction effort - this raises another question: how can discretionary government spending take place on that scale without creating equally large-scale corruption?
President Bush subscribes to a political philosophy that opposes government activism - that's why he has tried to downsize and privatize programs wherever possible. Also, he has consistently stonewalled corruption investigations and punished its own investigators if they try to do their jobs.
Bush's promise on TV that he will have "a team of inspectors general reviewing all expenditures" rings hollow. Whoever these inspectors general are, they'll be mindful of the fate of Bunnatine Greenhouse, a highly regarded auditor at the Army Corps of Engineers who suddenly got poor performance reviews after she raised questions about Halliburton's contracts in Iraq. She was eventually demoted.
There's every reason to believe the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast, like the failed reconstruction of Iraq, will be deeply marred by cronyism and corruption.
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Now it begins: America's biggest relief and recovery program since the New Deal. And the omens aren't good.
It's a given that the Bush administration, which tried to turn Iraq into a laboratory for conservative economic policies, will try the same thing on the Gulf Coast. The Heritage Foundation, which has surely been helping Karl Rove develop the administration's recovery plan, has already published a manifesto on post-Katrina policy. It calls for waivers on environmental rules, the elimination of capital gains taxes and the private ownership of public school buildings in the disaster areas. And if any of the people killed by Katrina, most of them poor, had a net worth of more than $1.5 million, Heritage wants to their heirs from the estate tax.
Still, even conservatives admit that deregulation, tax cuts and privatization won't be enough. Recovery will require a lot of federal spending. And aside from the effect on the deficit - we're about to see the spectacle of tax cuts in the face of both a war and a huge reconstruction effort - this raises another question: how can discretionary government spending take place on that scale without creating equally large-scale corruption?
President Bush subscribes to a political philosophy that opposes government activism - that's why he has tried to downsize and privatize programs wherever possible. Also, he has consistently stonewalled corruption investigations and punished its own investigators if they try to do their jobs.
Bush's promise on TV that he will have "a team of inspectors general reviewing all expenditures" rings hollow. Whoever these inspectors general are, they'll be mindful of the fate of Bunnatine Greenhouse, a highly regarded auditor at the Army Corps of Engineers who suddenly got poor performance reviews after she raised questions about Halliburton's contracts in Iraq. She was eventually demoted.
There's every reason to believe the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast, like the failed reconstruction of Iraq, will be deeply marred by cronyism and corruption.
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Diebold Insider now Speaking - Election Fraud 2004
In exclusive stunning admissions to The BRAD BLOG some 11 months after the 2004 Presidential Election, a "Diebold Insider" is now finally speaking out for the first time about the alarming security flaws within Diebold, Inc's electronic voting systems, software and machinery.
The source is acknowledging that the company's "upper management" -- as well as "top government officials" -- were keenly aware of the "undocumented backdoor" in Diebold's main "GEM Central Tabulator" software well prior to the 2004 election. A branch of the Federal Government even posted a security warning on the Internet.
I have seen these systems connected to phone lines dozens of times with users gaining remote access," said the insider. "What I think we have here is a very serious problem. Remote access using phone lines eliminates the need for a conspiracy of hundreds to alter the outcome of an election. Remote access using this backdoor means that it takes only one malicious person to change the outcome of any Diebold election.
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In exclusive stunning admissions to The BRAD BLOG some 11 months after the 2004 Presidential Election, a "Diebold Insider" is now finally speaking out for the first time about the alarming security flaws within Diebold, Inc's electronic voting systems, software and machinery.
The source is acknowledging that the company's "upper management" -- as well as "top government officials" -- were keenly aware of the "undocumented backdoor" in Diebold's main "GEM Central Tabulator" software well prior to the 2004 election. A branch of the Federal Government even posted a security warning on the Internet.
I have seen these systems connected to phone lines dozens of times with users gaining remote access," said the insider. "What I think we have here is a very serious problem. Remote access using phone lines eliminates the need for a conspiracy of hundreds to alter the outcome of an election. Remote access using this backdoor means that it takes only one malicious person to change the outcome of any Diebold election.
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Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Barbara Bush on NPR:
"So many of the people (Katrina victims) in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this -- this is working very well for them."
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"So many of the people (Katrina victims) in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this -- this is working very well for them."
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