Energy And Commerce Investigation Reveals Obama Secretly Cut A Deal With Lobbyist Group PhRMAOn Health Care Reform
It was first reported back in 2009 that the Obama administration cut a deal with the PhRMA to break specific campaign promises he made about health care reform in exchange for PhRMA spending money to politically support the bill. Thanks to some newly revealed emails via Philip Klein at the Washington Examiner we now have more details of how the deal was made.
Nancy DeParle, then director of the White House Office of Health Reform, wrote the following email to PhRMA’s chief lobbyist on June 3, 2009: “Yes – I pushed this to everyone (Messina, Rahm) is in Egypt with POTUS but Phil Schrillo, Dana Singlser and I made decision, based on how constructive you guys have been, to oppose importation on this bill.”
[…]
That September, top PhRMA lobbyist Bryant Hall reported to his coworkers in an email that he “had a good call w Messina,” and wrote: “Confidential: WH is working on some very explicit language on importation to kill it in health care reform. This has to stay quiet.”
Between May and August 2009, as the White House officials and key players in Congress were formulating the national health care law, the Obama administration held ongoing negotiations with PhRMA to secure industry support for the health care law as well as other policy concessions.
A report by the House Energy And Commerce goes into details:
“Documents obtained through the investigation confirm the existence of a deal between the White House and PhRMA. The deal included explicit policy commitments, affirmed in a closed-door meeting at the White House on July 7, 2009…And in its review of the tactics used by the White House, the investigation identified a potent combination of policy threats and private reassurances that industry would be protected against policies it disliked in exchange for support of the legislation and acceptance of other policies. Taken together, these findings help illuminate a previously opaque series of agreements that resulted in a fundamental reshaping of our nation’s health care system.”
Obama Administration To Argue In Court That They Can Spy On Americans With Impunity
The Obama administration is set to argue to a federal appeals court Friday that the government may breach, with impunity, domestic spying laws adopted in the wake of President Richard M. Nixon’s Watergate scandal.
The case tests whether Americans may seek recourse or monetary damages when a sitting U.S. president bypasses Congress’s ban on warrantless spying on Americans — in this instance when President George W. Bush authorized his secret, warrantless domestic spying program in the aftermath of the September 2001 terror attacks.
The government appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and arguments before a three-judge panel are set to be heard in Pasadena, California, this Friday.
Congress, with the vote of President Barack Obama — who was an Illinois senator at the time — subsequently legalized much of the warrantless spying in the summer of 2008. The legislation also provided the nation’s telecommunication companies immunity from lawsuits accusing them of being complicit with the government’s warrantless wiretapping.
The Obama Administration claims said it cannot be held liable under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act*, and that Congress has not waived sovereign immunity — meaning the government has not consented to being sued for breaching its own laws.
Fact: Barack Obama voted to legalize warrentless wiretapping (FISA) in the summer of 2008. His administration will appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this Friday to argue that they can spy on American citizens with impunity.
Whistleblowing Wednesday: Unclassified Memo Shows That The Army Knew Burn Pits Causes Illnesses
Since returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan, an untold number of soldiers have come down with puzzling health problems. Chronic bronchitis. Neurological defects. Even cancer. Many of them are pointing the finger at a single culprit: The open-air “burn pits” that incinerated trash — from human waste to computer parts — on military bases overseas.
Pentagon officials have consistently reassured personnel that there was no “specific evidence” connecting the two. But now, only days after Danger Room uncovered a memo suggesting that Army officials knew how dangerous the pits were, an animal study is offering up new scientific evidence that links burn pits to depleted immune systems.
“The dust doesn’t only appear to cause lung inflammation,” says Dr. Anthony Szema, an assistant professor at Stony Brook School of Medicine who specializes in pulmonology and allergies, and the researcher who led this latest study. “It also destroys the body’s own T-cells.” Those cells are at the core of the body’s immune system, “like a bulletproof vest against illnesses,” Szema tells Danger Room. When they’re depleted, an individual is much more prone to myriad conditions.
The unclassified memo (.jpg), dated April 15, 2011, stated that high concentrations of dust and burned waste present at Bagram Airfield for most of the war are likely to impact veterans’ health for the rest of their lives.
“The long term health risk” from breathing in Bagram’s particulate-rich air include “reduced lung function or exacerbated chronic bronchitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, atherosclerosis, or other cardiopulmonary diseases.” Service members may not necessarily “acquire adverse long term pulmonary or heart conditions,” but “the risk for such is increased.”
Accordingly, the health risks were not limited to troops serving at Bagram in 2011, the memo states. The health hazards are an assessment of “air samples taken over approximately the last eight years” at the base.
Rights Group Challenges NYPD’s Stop And Frisk Method, Claims Racial Bias
Police in New York City disproportionately stop black and Latino people even in low-crime areas, leading to a “two-tiered” policing system that divides along racial lines, according to civil rights campaigners.
A new analysis of NYPD figures by the New York Civil Liberties Union challenges the police’s assertion racial disparities in stop-and-frisks reflect the geography of New York’s high-crime areas.
Using the department’s figures, the report revealed that in six out of the 10 precincts with the lowest numbers of black and Latino people in the city, black and Latino citizens represented over 70% of those stopped (92% in April-June 2011).
In all, there were more stops of young African American men than the total of population of that group in the city. Nine out of ten of them had committed no crime.
Whistleblowing Wednesday: NSA Locations Collect And Intercept Private Data
The following is a list of possible locations of NSA domestic interception points inside the United States. The list was presented by computer security researcher Jacob Appelbaum at a recent event held at the Whitney Museum in New York along with filmmaker Laura Poitras and ex-NSA employee William Binney.
One of the addresses, an AT&T building on Folsom Street in San Francisco, is the location of Room 641A which was the subject of multiple lawsuits regarding the warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens. A recent article in Wired quoted Binney as estimating that there are likely ten to twenty of these locations around the country.
12976 Hollenberg Dr Bridgeton, MO 63044 / AT&T / View
Make This Go Viral: NYPD randomly assaults protester at May Day march then makes false arrests.
Revealed: Full List Of ALEC’s Corporate Members
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has been under fire lately after the 15 major corporations and organizations pulled their support for the conservative organization, which helps quietly implement corporate-backed legislation in statehouses across the country.
Now, the watchdog advocacy group group Common Cause has released a complete list of corporations on ALEC’s task forces.
Not surprisingly, four of the five major oil companies are members, as are many other energy companies. Some houshold names on the list include Johnson & Johson, State Farm insurance, and AT&T. There are lots of major online businesses, including AOL (the parent company of the Huffington Post), eBay, Amazon.com, Yahoo, and Time Warner.
Minnesota Police Reportedly Give Drugs To Occupy Protesters For ‘Impairment Study’ And Become Snitches
Occupy protestors in Minnesota are alleging that police gave drugs to young people as part of an ‘impairment study’ that helps officers identify the symptoms of drug use.
In a video (watch above), activists claim that for three weeks, law enforcement officers have been picking up volunteers to participate in a program called “Drug Recognition Expert.”
The footage shows alleged participants in the scheme, including one who claims, “They [the police] come into downtown… and basically pick up random people, and ask them to do drugevaluations.”
The man adds, “They let you smoke and then they send you back to Occupy [demonstration in Peavy Plaza]. You smoke right in front of them.”
People in the video are seen discussing police officers giving them marijuana to smoke for evaluation purposes. However, one subject also said officers were interested in obtaining subjects already under the influence of harder drugs.
One young man who identified himself as Panda said he got “high as fuck” in front of a couple police officers. He said he was walking down the street downtown when an officer told him he smelled like marijuana.
“I started walking faster… [but then] he asked me if I wanted to smoke more. I stopped in my tracks, said ‘yes,’ and then I smoked with a cop,” Panda said, adding that the weed given to him by officers was “some of the best shit I’ve had in a while.” He said officers bought him a double cheeseburger at McDonald’s on his way back downtown.
Interviewed hours later after he sobered up, Panda said police offered him a quarter-ounce bag of marijuana if he’d become a police informant and snitch on the activities of fellow Occupy protestors.
FCC: Google Staff Knew Street View Cars Stole Private Information
The Google engineer behind the collection of wireless data by Street View cars told at least two colleagues – including a senior manager – about the controversial plans before it was released, a US regulator has found.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said in a report that the Google engineer told colleagues in 2007 that his Street View programme could collect private information including emails and text messages.
In a report published by Google on Sunday, the FCC said that five engineers were involved in implementing the Street View code but did not realise it could collect so-called payload data.
“For more than two years, Google’s Street View cars collected names, addresses, telephone numbers, URLs, passwords, email, text messages, medical records, video and audio files, and other information from internet users in the United States,” the report said.
Google was found to have collected similar data from users in the UK, Netherlands, France and other countries where its Street View cars operated.
The FCC said that the engineer intended to collect and store the data for possible use in other Google projects. On at least one occasion, the engineer reviewed payload data to identify frequently visited websites, according to the report.
Google acknowledged in its latest lobbying disclosure form that it is working behind the scenes on a controversial cybersecurity bill, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA).
The bill’s author, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.),told The Hill last week that Google has been “supportive” of CISPA, which has angered some of the same Internet activists who joined with Google to defeat the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).
A Google spokeswoman said that although the company is lobbying on the bill, it has not taken a public position.
“We think this is an important issue and we’re watching the process closely but we haven’t taken a formal position on any specific legislation,” the spokeswoman said.
The disclosure form lists CISPA along with 10 other consumer issues that Google is lobbying on. The company has eight lobbyists working on the category of issues, including former Rep. Susan Molinari (R-N.Y.) and Pablo Chavez, Google’s director of public policy and a former aide to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)
The goal of the legislation is to help companies beef up their defenses against hackers who steal business secrets, rob customers’ financial information and wreak havoc on computer systems.
But civil liberty groups are campaigning against the bill, warning it would encourage companies to hand over private information to government spy agencies.
Supporters of CISPA include Facebook, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Symantec, AT&T and Verizon.
Apple ‘Avoiding Billions In Global Taxes,’ Report Claims
Gadget giant Apple is avoiding billions of dollars in taxes by setting up small offices around the world to collect and invest the company’s profits, according to The New York Times.
Saturday’s report said an office in Reno, Nevada, where the corporate tax rate is zero, was one of many that the California-based technology giant uses to legally sidestep state income taxes on some of its gains.
California’s corporate tax rate is 8.84 percent.
Record sales of iPhones and iPad tablet computers, particularly in China and other parts of Asia, saw Apple report last week that it made a $39.2 billion profit in the quarter ended March 31.
The Times quoted Apple executives who said the Reno office and others in Ireland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, the British Virgin Islands and other low-tax places were among the legal methods the company was using to reduce its global tax bill.
Mayor Bloomberg Veto’s Bill That Would’ve Raise Minimum Wage And Calls It Communism
Michael Bloomberg axed the Prevailing Wage bill last week and vowed to veto the Living Wage bill if passed by the City Council.
“Let them eat cake!”
That’s the message Mayor Bloomberg sent New Yorkers with his veto of the Prevailing Wage bill last Wednesday.
With little patience for any measure that could put even the smallest dent in the private sector’s bottom line, Bloomberg has also promised to veto the Living Wage bill.
“By vetoing this legislation, the administration has turned a blind-eye to the suffering of New York residents who are in desperate need of wage-relief,” said Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal (D-Manhattan).
Actually income inequality is out of control in Bloomberg’s New York with more than 40% of all income in the city going to 1% of the population.
“The last time we really had a big managed economy was the USSR and that didn’t work out so well,” said Michael Bloomberg, “You cannot stop the tides from coming in.”
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn announced a watered down deal on the living wage agreement Wednesday, which will require businesses receiving $1 million or more in city subsidies and earning more than $5 million a year in revenue to pay their workers at least $11.50 an hour, or $10 with benefits.
Quinn called the bill “the most impactful living-wage law in the United States,” according to Capital New York. After some businesses were exempted from the measure, however, experts say it will effect roughly only 500 New Yorkers.
The 2008 Niger Delta Oil Spill Was 60-200 Times Worse Than Shell Reported
A major oil spill in the Niger Delta was far worse than Shell previously admitted, according to an independent assessment obtained by Amnesty International and the Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development (CEHRD), which exposes how the oil giant dramatically under-estimated the quantities involved.
The spill in 2008, caused by a fault in a Shell pipeline, resulted in tens of thousands of barrels of oil polluting the land and creek surrounding Bodo, a Niger Delta town of some 69,000 people.
The previously unpublished assessment, carried out by US firm Accufacts, found that between 1,440 and 4,320 barrels of oil were flooding the Bodo area each day following the leak. The Nigerian regulators have confirmed that the spill lasted for 72 days.
Shell’s official investigation report claims only 1,640 barrels of oil were spilt in total. But based on the independent assessment the total amount of oil spilt over the 72 day period is between 103,000 barrels and 311,000 barrels.
Audrey Gaughran, Director of Global Issues at Amnesty International, said:
“The difference is staggering: even using the lower end of the Accufacts estimate, the volume of oil spilt at Bodo was more than 60 times the volume Shell has repeatedly claimed leaked.
“Even if we use the start date given by Shell, the volume of oil spilt is far greater than Shell recorded.”
Shell’s oil spill investigation report also claims that the spill started on 5 October 2008 – while the community and Nigerian regulators have confirmed a start date of 28 August 2008.
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![Energy And Commerce Investigation Reveals Obama Secretly Cut A Deal With Lobbyist Group PhRMA On Health Care Reform
It was first reported back in 2009 that the Obama administration cut a deal with the PhRMA to break specific campaign promises he made about health care reform in exchange for PhRMA spending money to politically support the bill. Thanks to some newly revealed emails via Philip Klein at the Washington Examiner we now have more details of how the deal was made.
Nancy DeParle, then director of the White House Office of Health Reform, wrote the following email to PhRMA’s chief lobbyist on June 3, 2009: “Yes – I pushed this to everyone (Messina, Rahm) is in Egypt with POTUS but Phil Schrillo, Dana Singlser and I made decision, based on how constructive you guys have been, to oppose importation on this bill.”
[…]
That September, top PhRMA lobbyist Bryant Hall reported to his coworkers in an email that he “had a good call w Messina,” and wrote: “Confidential: WH is working on some very explicit language on importation to kill it in health care reform. This has to stay quiet.”
Between May and August 2009, as the White House officials and key players in Congress were formulating the national health care law, the Obama administration held ongoing negotiations with PhRMA to secure industry support for the health care law as well as other policy concessions.
A report by the House Energy And Commerce goes into details:
“Documents obtained through the investigation confirm the existence of a deal between the White House and PhRMA. The deal included explicit policy commitments, affirmed in a closed-door meeting at the White House on July 7, 2009…And in its review of the tactics used by the White House, the investigation identified a potent combination of policy threats and private reassurances that industry would be protected against policies it disliked in exchange for support of the legislation and acceptance of other policies. Taken together, these findings help illuminate a previously opaque series of agreements that resulted in a fundamental reshaping of our nation’s health care system.”
Source/Credit](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4x7v9AohX1r4vpxio1_500.jpg)
