Conflict of interest much? Somehow I don't see the Republicans doing much about this shameful situation.
More than 17,000 doctors and other health care providers have taken money from seven major drug companies to talk to other doctors about their products, a joint investigation by news organizations and non-profit groups found.
More than 380 of the doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other professionals took in more than $100,000 in 2009 and 2010, according to the investigation released on Tuesday. The report said far more doctors are likely to have taken such payments, but it documented these based on information from seven drugmakers.
The payments are not illegal and usually not even considered improper. But the investigation by journalism group ProPublica, Consumer Reports magazine, NPR radio and several publications showed doctors were sometimes urged to recommend "off-label" prescriptions of drugs, meaning using them for conditions they are not approved for.
BP's new boss Bob Dudley has told the company's 80,000 employees that safety will be the sole measure for bonus payments in the fourth quarter.
Mr Dudley said in an email that payments would be linked to "reducing operational risks" and "excellent safety and compliance standards".
Existing bonus arrangements would be honoured for the first nine months of the year, he added.
Also of note is that BP has re-agreed to waive the $75 million liability cap. Many were surprised when BP lawyers suggested they may renege on their previous deal of accepting all costs for the Gulf of Mexico disaster.
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173 hours after #DADT was suspended, Judge Phillips once again stands with service against's #POTUS and his discriminatory policy
The Obama administration can now ask the Ninth Circuit for a stay -- and the Obama administration will.
I'm including the text of Judge Phillips' decision, but this is the bottom line:
None of the factors the Court weighs in considering whether to enter a stay favors granting a stay here. Accordingly, the Court DENIES Defendants' Application for a Stay.
Republican Christine O'Donnell challenged her Democratic rival Tuesday to show where the Constitution requires separation of church and state, drawing swift criticism from her opponent, laughter from her law school audience and a quick defense from prominent conservatives.
The First Amendment states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
The phrase "separation of church and state" is usually traced to President Thomas Jefferson. In a letter in 1802, he referred to the First Amendment and said that it built "a wall of separation between Church & State."
Now imagine a whole Congress for of people like her.
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Andrew Gully, senior vice president of the Brandeis University communications office, confirmed that Ms. Hill had received the message and that she had turned it over to the campus department of public safety. That office, in turn, passed it on to the F.B.I.
ABC News quoted from the voicemail:
“Good morning, Anita Hill, it's Ginny Thomas,” it quoted from the voicemail. “I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband. So give it some thought and certainly pray about this and come to understand why you did what you did. Okay have a good day.”
Wow, private industry really can be much more efficient than the government. Somehow giving the insurance industry new customers isn't enough for them. They only want the right kind of customers, as in those who are happy to be ripped off with high internal costs. Maybe there will be no other choice but to bring back the public option if the industry can't manage to control their excessive internal costs.
The Obama administration is awaiting the recommendation of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, meeting in Orlando this week, for how and when to implement key changes to the "Medical Loss Ratio" rule.
Under health reform, beginning 2011, insurance companies will have to spend 80% to 85% of the premiums they collect on care instead of toward their own profits and overhead costs.
Prior to reform, requirements varied from state to state. In some cases, insurers didn't have to meet any minimum requirements.
For example, some plans have a 40% loss ratio. That means individuals could be paying $1 for 40 cents of care.
For those of you looking for clues about the economic future and what's on the menu — inflation or deflation — for the next ten years or so, Paul Krugman points to this "remarkable" graph from Mary Daly of the San Francisco Fed.
That "History suggests" comment in the graph is not just Krugman's point; it's Mary Daly's as well. If our experience continues to parallel Japan's, we're looking at core CPI between +1% and –1% out past 2015. Energy costs will boost some prices, but that looks like it. A remarkable graph indeed.
[W]hen people expect falling prices, they become less willing to spend, and in particular less willing to borrow. After all, when prices are falling, just sitting on cash becomes an investment with a positive real yield...
And when that happens, the economy may stay depressed because people expect deflation, and deflation may continue because the economy remains depressed. That’s the deflationary trap we keep worrying about.
A second effect: even aside from expectations of future deflation, falling prices worsen the position of debtors, by increasing the real burden of their debts...
Finally, in a deflationary economy, wages as well as prices often have to fall – and it’s a fact of life that it’s very hard to cut nominal wages — there’s downward nominal wage rigidity. What this means is that in general economies don’t manage to have falling wages unless they also have mass unemployment, so that workers are desperate enough to accept those wage declines.
There's been an enormous amount of coverage about the spending by outside groups allied with the Republicans. Not so much spending by the Democratic allied groups. There's a reason. Today, Ben Smith takes a look at the edict from the Obama operation that rich donors should not contribute to progressive organizations. Mike Lux wrote about this a couple weeks ago.
As, you hear more stories about how Democrats are being outspent, keep this in mind:
Democrats enter the home stretch of the 2010 elections complaining vocally about the flood of Republican money, much of it anonymous, pounding their candidates.
But as the White House points the finger at outside Republican groups, many Democrats point the finger back at the White House, which dismantled the Democratic Party's own outside infrastructure in 2008 and never tried to rebuild it.
Never tried to rebuild it. Ben calls it "unilateral disarmament":
But it's also easy to underestimate the president's ability to increase the flow of cash to Democrat-friendly groups, had he chosen to do so. Instead, Obama's choice has been unilateral disarmament.
To the White House, that posture is a mark of the purity of the presidential brand, and of Obama's consistency. "Throughout his 2008 campaign, the President vowed to change business as usual in Washington and take on some of the tough challenges that politicians in Washington had put off for too long," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. "We're pleased to have made so much progress on these priorities — from Wall Street reform to health care reform - while staying true to the values and vision that earned the enthusiastic support of so many Democrats and Republicans during the campaign."
True to the values and vision? I guess that's true on this particular issue of discouraging any outside spending on progressive groups. And, good to know Team Obama is so "pleased," despite the havoc that is being wreaked upon the Democrats. (Outside of DC media types, does anyone actually use the word "pleased"?)
Now, as you can imagine, not everyone thinks "unilateral disarmament" is a great idea:
But to some of its more practical-minded allies, the White House is protecting the brand at a very real cost to the party.
"The leadership of the Obama campaign warned their donors against giving to outside groups - including many of the key issue groups that motivate progressives. The leadership in the White House has done the same thing," said Erica Payne, one of the founders of the Democracy Alliance, a group of the largest liberal donors, who now heads the Agenda Project. "As a result, the administration often looks like Will Ferrell in the movie 'Old School' - running through the street naked, shouting, 'Come on everybody's streaking' when in reality they are all by themselves."
According to one fundraiser, some donors aren't giving so they'll get invited back to the White House:
Jennifer Swanson, a fundraising consultant briefly connected with one of the independent 2008 efforts, cited both the bad economy and low Democratic expectations as factors cooling independent donors.
But she said a persistent sense of presidential disapproval is also a major factor.
"Donors don't want to do something that is going to make them unwelcome at the White House," she said.
That is just absurd. That's like knowing advocacy groups won't push the White House because they want to get invited to the White House.
The point of what we're doing isn't to get invited to the White House. It's supposed to be about enacting a progressive agenda.
So, the donors and the advocates have rigged things so that they can continuing having fun at their White House parties. Meanwhile, action on the progressive agenda is slipping away -- and will go nowhere after the November elections.
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ABC News - here's John McCain talking to George Stephanopoulos:
But the fact is that this president has not reached out, not one time, on a major issue to Republicans. I hope that he will. We look forward to problem solving with him. But we really need to respond to the anger and frustration that the American people feel today." [emphasis added]
Yeah, like the time President Obama cut the stimulus in half, and then cut another $100bn, and then gave 35% of what was remaining away in near-useless tax cuts in order to appease the Republicans - and pretty much guaranteed we'd lose the House as a result of the weak impact the remaining stimulus would have on the economy - is that what you mean, Senator Magoo?
Or the time Obama left it up to Chuck Grassley, for months and months and month, to come up with a health care reform compromise, and then - surprise! - Grassley and the Republicans apparently were never interested in ever finding any compromise at all!
Or how about the time the President left global warming in the capable hands of Lindsey Graham. How's that going?
I liked John McCain a lot more before he lost his mind.
And, excuse me, but how in the world did George Stephanopoulos let McCain get away with saying this, and then simply respond by saying "Thanks for being on our show"?
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According to Politics Daily, the two of races with the most outside spending are in Pennsylvania and Missouri:
Pennsylvania's Senate race between Democrat Joe Sestak and Republican Pat Toomey ranks second in outside general election spending at almost $9 million, followed by Missouri's Senate race between Republican Roy Blunt and Democrat Robin Carnahan at $7.7 million.
And, it's GOP-related outside groups who are doing most of that spending.
That's why two polls released from Public Policy Polling (PPP) are especially significant -- and hopeful.
You can put Pennsylvania Senate back in the toss up category. Joe Sestak leads Pat Toomey 46-45 in our newest poll of the race, erasing the 9 point deficit he had in an August PPP survey.
Toomey's support has remained stagnant over the last 2 months while Sestak's has gone up 10 points from 36% to 46%.
I've always thought that Joe Sestak was going to win this race. It's a tough one, no doubt. But, he's tenacious and he seems to have a history of surging ahead just at the right time. Well, that's what happened in the primary earlier this year. Sestak's website is here.
The Missouri Senate race is getting closer, with Robin Carnahan pulling within 5 points of Roy Blunt in a new PPP poll conducted for her campaign. Blunt's lead is 46-41, in contrast with the 45-38 advantage he had when we last took a look at the race in August.
On Missouri, PPP's Tom Jensen concludes:
Some pundits have written off this race as an opportunity for Democrats to pick up a seat but Carnahan is within the margin of error and picking up support and if her party's base continues to awaken in the final 15 days before the election this race could provide a surprise.
Now, admittedly, I'm biased in this one. Robin has been a good friend for a long time. But, I've watched win before when it was not expected. And, she's a marathon runner -- and that's how she's approached this campaign. She's been steady throughout. These new numbers show movement towards Robin despite all the outside spending by Karl Rove and the Chamber of Commerce. Her website is here.
This is a Maddow two-fer, a revealing look at a problem, followed by the solution. I'm going to post both videos.
The Problem: "The media narrative ... has turned into a Republican campaign ad." It's that simple.
Rachel Maddow gets right to the point in this well-produced segment. Her bottom line — the media narrative is identical the Republican party spin on what the midterm elections mean. As I said, well-produced:
While this focuses on conservatives, let's not forget her spotlight on the press: "The media dressing these guys up like there is some coherent narrative here ... conveniently obscures what's really going on here. ... [W]e are on the precipice of elevating into federal office the most extreme ... set of conservative candidates in a lifetime."
Exactly. (And note that word "conveniently". I think she means it.)
And now the Solution: Attack, attack, attack. Her follow-on segment contains many effective examples of Democrats fighting back hard.
The discussion with Chris Hayes teases out some of the corner ideas, but the bottom line advice is clearly to defy the current Beltway pundits — and I'll add, that of many consultants as well. Don't hunker down; man up (as it were).
About "It's the Deficit", the lead lie in the pool. This one is totally disingenuous, both from the media (whose job is to know better) and conservatives (whose job is to lie to win).
Here's Paul Krugman's n-th attempt to illustrate a simple concept: The "deficit" has two components — income and expenses — not just one. The first set of bars in the graph below shows change in GDP, Expenditure, and Revenues in the last business cycle, 2001–2007. The second shows what came after. The "deficit" is the difference between the red bar (Expenditure) and the green bar (Revenues) next to it. (Note that the bars show rate of change, not nominal values.)
The red bar doesn't change much, but the green bar tanks. Hmm. Looks like "deficit" as code for "spending on the Wrong People" doesn't wash — not in the real world anyway. Keep your eye on that lie though. You'll hear it from a lot from people whose job is to know better. Just sayin'.
Meanwhile, GMAC Mortgage, whose procedures helped prompt the controversy when one its executives testified that he had signed 10,000 documents in a month, is also proceeding with foreclosures.
“We announced a temporary suspension of evictions and foreclosure sales in the 23 judicial states several weeks ago so we could commence the appropriate review,” said Gina Proia, a spokeswoman for GMAC. “As cases are being reviewed and, when needed, remediated, the foreclosure process moves forward as appropriate.”
Guy Cecala of Inside Mortgage Finance, an industry publication, said: “This draws a line in the sand that the banks expect this problem will be over in relatively short order and it will be back to business as usual. If Bank of America can do it, certainly the smaller ones will follow suit.”
No campaign events on the President's schedule today. Although, he is hosting a ceremony to mark the "Obama Administration’s Executive Order on the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics."
Obama is also meeting with Defense Secretary Robert Gates this afternoon. I'm sure they'll spend most of their time talking about the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and the ongoing conflict in Iraq. But, I have to think Gates is also going to instruct Obama on how to proceed on Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Because, we all know, Gates is calling the shots. Yesterday, Judge Phillips refused to grant the government's stay of her worldwide injunction on DADT enforcement -- for the time being, anyway. So, DADT is not the law right now. But, Gates wants the law back in effect. And, that's what matters.
I just find it very odd that a constitutional scholar, like our President, won't say if DADT and DOMA are unconstitutional. We've been trying to get that question answered for months to no avail. The White House won't answer it.
Biden is on the campaign trail today. He's going to be at an event for Patty Murray in Vancouver, Washington. Then, he'll be in San Francisco campaigning for Barbara Boxer. He's ending his day in Reno.
A Russian police spokesman says at least six people are dead after insurgents stormed the Chechen parliament complex, including the insurgents and two others.
Ramzan Bekkhoyev says there were at least four militants, one of whom blew himself up, killing two security guards at the complex in Grozny, the provincial capital.
Russian news agencies earlier reported the deaths of police, saying insurgents set off an explosive device at the entrance of parliament, while two others ran into the building, sparking a shootout with police.
Both sides continue to dig in, with the government preparing to make the final vote later this week on pension reform. Drivers have been concerned over stories of fuel shortages though the government has insisted supplies are fine. BBC News:
Tuesday will be France's sixth national day of protests since early September with further disruption expected to air travel, trains and schools.
Half of flights in and out of Paris's Orly airport have been cancelled and 30% of flights at other airports have been affected.
One opinion poll on Monday suggested that 71% of those surveyed supported the strikers, despite the increasing effect on people's lives.
Oil refineries have been shut for a week, hundreds of petrol stations have run dry and a further day of national strikes is under way.
